Have Heart Will Travel:

Fighting Racism in the Ring in Southpaw

Author:

Philip R. Fagan

2001

Ireland’s Legacy of Racial Scapegoating:

In examining Ireland’s long troubled history, the role of prejudice and racial discrimination cannot be overemphasized. From the earliest days of English colonization in the Twelfth Century, the indigenous Irish people were the victims of a wide range of negative stereotypes propagated by their oppressors. Such institutionalized racism was a valuable tool in quelling the frequent uprisings against English rule, while also dismissing the Irish people as insignificant at the same time. For over 800 years, various forms of English popular culture have continued to reinforce these negative images of the “Paddy”. He is portrayed as an ignorant violent drunkard, an uncivilized tribal subhuman monster (either a “Frankenstein” or “missing link”/gorilla type, resembling the similar stereotyping of minorities in other countries); a lazy, illiterate, superstitious beast or a rootless care-free troubadour with no sense of responsibility; indeed, no sense to speak of at all (Curtis, 1996.). As a result of this legacy, even the Irish have come to view themselves as such to a certain extent. As early as 1598, Irishmen were parodying themselves on stage in productions of Shakespeare’s Henry V (Curtis, p. 35), and this has grown into the rich tradition of “Stage Irishness”, or “Paddywhackery” that continues in film, theater, and fiction even today. As often as not, such texts are produced by the same Irish people they negatively stereotype.

As the brief overview above seeks to demonstrate, elitist propaganda such as that implemented by British Colonists, if effective, eventually becomes a form of institutionalized racism, transforming even the self-conception of its targeted social group. Through the practice of scapegoating, a social hierarchy legitimizes, or excuses its failings by placing the blame for those failings onto a specific subsection of that social structure (Carter, 1996). In the case of British-ruled Ireland, the Colonials used the scapegoating of the Irish people in the form of racist propaganda, both as a weapon to beat the unruly Irish into submission, and as a tool to cope with England’s own inability to conquer the tiny island over the course of several centuries. This scapegoating became so pervasive that it eventually became entrenched in the collective psyche of the Irish people.

This acceptance of racial stereotyping by the oppressed themselves is inevitably accompanied by its transference onto a marginalised subsegment within the initial scapegoated social hierarchy. In the still troubled Ulster counties of Northern Ireland, this is evidenced by the violent prejudice which characterizes the ongoing clashes between Republicans, the segment of Northern Irish society wanting a united Ireland free of British influence, and Loyalists, those supporting the economic and social order imposed by Britain. Although the issues dividing them are purely political in nature, the warring factions choose to identify the enemy in terms of religion (Catholic and Protestant respectively) and race (Fenians, or “Native Irish”, and Orangemen, those of British descent, respectively). That the greatest champions of the Republican movement throughout history have been Protestant does not seem to alter the prejudice of either side. Ulster is apparently still so torn by its violent past that it cannot move beyond race-based hostilities in order to embrace a peaceful political compromise.

The turbulent history behind Ulster’s ongoing struggle with racial violence is shared by all of Ireland. The “Troubles” of the North are a source of shame to many in the Irish Free State, an embarrassing reminder of a past that refuses to go away. Even As Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy assures the nation’s role as a major player in the world market, and as Dublin continues to evolve into a cosmopolitan European capital, the Irish people are still apparently grappling with the issues of their troubled past: Centuries of oppression, infighting, and bloodshed; the archaic deference to the moral authority of the Catholic Church; their all too recent status as an impoverished ”third world country”; the very late arrival of technology and mass media to their shores; the mass emigration to other countries due to lack of opportunities; and the general perception that the country somehow missed out on the Industrial Revolution and failed to enter the modern age (McLoone, 2000). As a result of such perceived failures, the Irish people have transferred their guilt, failings, and all the ills of their modern society, onto the racial minority of the Traveller.

The Problem of the Traveller:

Travellers are a nomadic race of Irish people who exist as a separate society within the country. They live in trailer caravans, camping in different sites mostly around the west of Ireland until the settled community runs them off. They are closely related to the Romany, or Gypsies, of Eastern Europe, and are very clannish, marrying early within their “tribes” and having little to do with the outside world other than economic-related activities. They are a very religious people and, like their fellow Irish, mostly Roman Catholic. Although “white” to a non-Irish eye, they are easily identifiable to their countrymen due to manner and appearance. In addition to a hybrid of English and Gaelic, they speak an unwritten language known only to other Travellers and passed down orally from generation to generation. Their work is generally associated with the metal trades and horse training. The Travellers of England and Scotland are of the same descent, as are the “Irish Traveller” communities of the United States, all whom share the customs and language of their Irish “cousins”.

This itinerant race is the scorn of Ireland, effectively banned from most public establishments, openly despised and discriminated against by the public at large, and the recipient of racial slurs such as “tinker” and “knacker”. The source of such hostility seems to be a deeply ingrained set of stereotypes. Travellers are perceived as slovenly, lazy, incestuous, dishonest, violent, superstitious, illiterate, and drunken. They are rootless con artists and thieves; bestial subhuman drifters who live off the hard work of honest Irish taxpayers and refuse to assimilate with the settled and civilized hegemony. While others work, they laze about irresponsibly, drinking, playing music and telling tall tales. It seems undeniable that the stereotypes of the Traveller are almost identical to those traditionally associated with the Irish people in general. Through the process of scapegoating, it would seem that the modern enlightened Ireland of the European Union clings to its last socially acceptable prejudice.

Travellers are invisible to society by their very nature, and their troubled existence and struggle to continue their ancient way of life continues to be a non-issue in Ireland’s political landscape. Proposed legislations of the past that have addressed the issues raised by Travellers have generally been oriented toward assimilation, which would entail the death of their culture. As race is not a lifestyle choice, even Travellers who have left their clans to lead a domesticated life remain Travellers to themselves and their countrymen. To most Travellers, a settled sedentary lifestyle is not only unthinkable, but also impossible. Due to their ancient heritage, which has in essence produced a genetic inability to assimilate with the dominant social structure, they remain as marginalised by their homeland as African Americans before the victories of the 1960s Civil Rights movement in the United States. Even Ireland’s most progressive social critics are reluctant to address the Traveller issue, with the exception of some religious leaders (Sheehan, 2000).

Ireland’s Emerging Film Culture and The Traveller of Popular Imagination:

The still evolving Irish cinema, with its ongoing emphasis on the country’s history and pressing social concerns, has proven equally as reticent in addressing the problem posed by the Traveller and the institutionalized racism that seeks to destroy him and his way of life. One exception to this cultural avoidance has been Liam McGrath’s 1998 documentary Southpaw. The film carries on a rich tradition of indigenous Irish film production, but breaks the socially sanctioned silence in providing a screen voice for a liberal progressive perspective on the Traveller issue. McGrath’s heartfelt chronicle of Traveller boxer Francis Barrett and his supporters is a timeless and shining cinematic portrait of the human spirit. At the same time, sadly, the film delivers a message that is likely to not be acknowledged by its intended Irish audience.

Martin McLoone (2000) has observed that Ireland’s emerging film industry has many elements of a “Third Cinema”, that is, film movements that are indigenous in theme and subject and reflect a national culture. The Third Cinema is the result of, and expression of, a liberalizing climate produced by political and cultural changes that allow such forms. Due to a failure to embrace the modern age under the long traditionalist rule of Eamon de Valera, Ireland’s film culture only began developing in earnest in the 1960s, a period of widespread social change throughout the western world. This was a period of increased social consciousness and political activity and film was considered a tool for implementing needed changes. Documentary and feature filmmakers around the world felt that by showing society’s ills, needed changes would necessarily follow (McLoone, pp. 121-124). Still, the documentary movement in Ireland is often criticized for failing to live up to its potential for tackling tough social issues (O'Brien, 1999, p.64). The problem of the Traveller in Irish film and television has largely been addressed through fiction formats.

When television arrived in Ireland in 1961, the burgeoning state-sponsored production industry faced the problem of catching up with the standards set by the US and Britain while at the same time creating programs that remained relevant to Irish audiences. Soap operas proved to be an appropriate vehicle in which to address issues both universally human and distinctly Irish. The Riordans was an immensely popular soap that aired from 1965-1979 on RTE. In addition to addressing the sensitive issues of nationalism, sexuality, family values, adultery, divorce, contraception, alcoholism, illegitimacy, religion, community tensions, property disputes and the clash of rural tradition with urban modernity, the show also addressed the Traveller problem through various characters employed by the family as farm laborers. One Traveller character, played by Gabriel Byrne, was so popular a heartthrob that a spin-off called Bracken (1980-81) eventually replaced The Riordans and Byrne’s character fully assimilated into domestic society and took center stage (Gibbons, 1996, pp.57-69). Family, a 1994 miniseries written by Roddy Doyle, was a gritty portrait of a family of flatdwellers in the slums of Dublin fathered by a violent alcoholic criminal. As in The Riordans and Bracken, the program largely avoided explicit references to its characters’ Traveller roots, but peppered its dialogue with identifiers such as “knacker” and “tinker”. These programs reflect a distinct shift in the cultural perception of the Traveller, from Byrne’s romanticized symbol of Ireland’s rural mythology to Sean McGinley’s portrayal of Carlo, a ruthless alcoholic slum dweller who violently abuses his family while supporting them through petty graft.

Joe Comerford, arguably the harshest social critic in the contemporary Irish film culture, made a number of short films in the 1970s before directing his first feature in 1982. This film was Traveller, and like his other work, Comerford focused on the “totally marginalised and dispossessed in society…and the severe victims of modernity’s inequalities” (McLoone, p.134). In addition to the plight of the Traveller, Comerford has explored heroin addition, the troubles in Northern Ireland, prostitution, homosexuality and the fascism inherent in Irish Nationalism. Notably, his portrayal of the Traveller community as “forgotten victims of progress” (McLoone, pp. 134-135) is given only a cursory glance in McLoone’s lengthy analysis of Comerford’s work, and is completely omitted from Brian McIlroy’s examination of the same films (2001, pp.84-85).

The increased hostility toward the Traveller community in Ireland in the 1990s coincided with Travellers suddenly finding explicit representation in a variety of mainstream texts. Gabriel Byrne returned to the role of romanticized and domesticated Traveller in 1992’s Into the West, a family-friendly film produced by Byrne and Jim Sheridan. Drawing on the mythology of the West of Ireland, the film finds Byrne and his family fleeing the stultifying urban malaise of Dublin to embrace their rural Traveller roots. In the US, Bill Paxton produced and starred in Traveler (1997), a Hollywood take on the Irish Traveller community of North Carolina. Paxton and co-star Mark Wahlburg portray the Traveller as a hybrid of charming “good old boy”, scam artist, and Irish Mafia. The film’s release coincided with national news coverage of the tragic deaths of four young Irish Travellers in Fort Worth, TX, and the subsequent curiosity about the mysterious sub-culture generated widespread news coverage and prime-time documentaries. These generally focused on incest, early marriage, criminal activity, and various other taboos, and were at best tabloid journalism. The Travellers captured the American imagination for a moment, but only to have their negative stereotypes reinforced in another culture.

Since the release of Southpaw in 1998, Brad Pitt’s portrayal of “The Knacker” in Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film Snatch is perhaps the most blatant cinematic stereotype of all. The Knacker’s only talent is violence and like Francis Barrett he is a talented boxer. Other than that, he is an alcoholic who drinks himself senseless, wears lots of gold, lives in a tiny dilapidated trailer with his large family in abject poverty, spews indecipherable gibberish, and provides much of the film’s humor through his clownish antics. Like the films of Byrne and Paxton, Ritchie’s is intended primarily for American audiences and continues to propagate the pervasive cultural myths surrounding the Traveller. As the trajectory of the three films demonstrates, the reification of these myths seem to become more and more negative throughout the decade: Byrne’s assimilated Traveller is an entirely positive portrayal that situates the Traveller as the embodiment of Irish rural mythology, however he has had to abandon his wild western roots to fit into modern society. Paxton’s “Knight of the Road” is an irresponsible grifter but charming and good deep down. While Byrne returns to his roots, Paxton abandons his for a woman in the settled community. Pitt’s “Knacker” stays in the Traveller world, but that world is simply something for the larger community to laugh at and feel superior to.

Other than McGrath’s documentary it would appear that the only realistic examinations of the Traveller have come from outside the realm of popular culture, restricted to the work of scholars and advocacy groups such as the Travellers Movement and the Parish of the Travelling People. One notable exception is John F. McDonald’s 2002 novel Tribe, which focuses on the struggle of a Traveller in England to reconcile his roots with the modern world. However, despite its obvious affection for its subject, the book propagates many of the same mythical stereotypes it wants to explode: violence, alcoholism. promiscuity, crime, superstition, personal and social irresponsibility, etc.

As these examples demonstrate, it would appear that Southpaw occupies an important and exclusive space among the various representations of the Traveller in popular culture.

Breathnach and McGrath: Exploding Cultural Mythology:

Before setting their sights on the deconstruction of the negative mythology surrounding the Traveller, Paddy Breathnach and Liam McGrath, Southpaw’s director, had individually played vital roles in exploding Ireland’s cultural mythology through fiction film. Breathnach’s previous feature films are set in Ireland, but his Ireland is a transformed barely recognizable place that has little grounding in either the historical or mythological notions of Ireland. The Dublin of Ailsa (1994) is “a sophisticated city of leafy suburbs and European angst…Breathnach has fashioned a European art movie, character-driven with a minimal amount of action” (McLoone, p.199). The story centers on a young man’s sexual obsession with his neighbor and the discovery of his landlord’s dead body in his apartment. Ailsa looks not to Ireland’s past for tradition or a departure point for revision. Neither does it present a critical view of the present. Instead it envisions a post-Celtic Tiger Dublin to come, free of the chains of the past and simply just another European capital. Similarly The Long Road Home (1995) is a Hitchcockian suspense thriller built around a mysterious hitchhiker. Any overt “Irishness” in the film, its characters and setting, is completely irrelevant to the world of the film. In I Went Down, released the year before Southpaw, Breathnach continues to deconstruct traditional notions of “Irish Film” by presenting a Coen Brothers/Elmore Leonard-like crime comedy and road movie set in the boglands of Ireland. Breathnach thus cleans the slate and achieves a vision of a new Ireland by first adapting a European style, sensibility and subject matter to his work, then transferring Hollywood genre film conventions to an Irish setting in the same manner. In this way, his films are perhaps the first to emerge from the country that manage to avoid Irish stereotypes all together.

In stark contrast to Breathnach’s utter rejection of social issues, history, tradition and myth, Liam McGrath confronts these notions head on in his work. Film Ireland has called him “an unapologetic evangelist for the documentary form…(with) the ability to recognize a story worth telling before anyone else does” (Clarke, 1998, p. 14). McGrath began his filmmaking career under the tutelage of John T. Davis, an eccentric filmmaker who created experimental documentaries blurring the Ulster punk rock scene with the issues of the Troubles (McIlroy, pp.192-193). McGrath’s 1993 student film Boys for Rent was an unflinching chronicle of male prostitutes in Dublin and won a prize at the Cork Film Festival. The same year, he was also the cinematographer on the short films Faith, a meditation on the power and persistence of memory, and Wastelands, which used a medical student’s sleeplessness as a metaphor for hidden Irish history. He returned to creating documentary in 1996 with the controversial Male Rape, a film consisting of interviews with men who had been subjected to rape or sexual abuse at some point in their lives. Such subject matter went deep against the grain of homophobic, patriarchal Ireland’s self-imaging of its own masculinity. In 1997, along with directing Southpaw, he performed as cinematographer on Belfast Building, another short documentary film focusing on the troubles in the North. Coinciding with the release of Southpaw, McGrath directed the miniseries Home. The episodes were a standard and formulaic look into the various places people call home and the lifestyles and worldviews of those that live in them. The last episode, however, provided an opportunity to implement the director’s penchant for shocking his audience with reality. Seemingly out of left field, this final installment focused on Ireland’s homeless population and their hardships and struggles. It has been suggested that this episode would never have been aired had it not been for the set-up provided by the previous entries (O’Brien, pp. 68-69). It appeared that McGrath had literally sneaked the final episode in and that this installment was the one he had been working toward all along; in essence a very subversive trick played on both network and audience.

Apart from McGrath and a handful of other directors, documentary filmmaking has struggled to find a niche in Ireland, despite the Third Cinema orientation of its fiction film output since the 1970s. Perhaps it is easy for the conservative majority of the country to dismiss the social critique of the fiction film, while legitimate documentation remains largely taboo. As Harvey O’Brien observes in his article “Documenting Ireland” there have been “a relatively small number of films which tackle important social issues head-on” (O’Brien, p. 64). Despite its entry into the modern European marketplace, this trend is symptomatic of a society that has come to rely too readily on a system of scapegoating rather than an honest evaluation of its dysfunctional tendencies. Another reason for the lack of critical documentaries is strictly economic. The RTE, Ireland’s government-sponsored television network continues to operate on very limited funds and must find sponsors for the programming it airs. The state-sponsored Irish Film Board faces a similar dilemma and remains focused on projects that can be marketable internationally, as distribution in Ireland alone is not in the least profitable. Perhaps most tellingly, the Irish constitution states that while the people have the right to free speech, such expression “shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the state” (O’Brien, p.64). Thus, challenging productions such as The Family (1978) and Our Boys (1981), which deal with a free-love commune and the abuses of the Catholic Church respectively, are often shelved and remain unseen for more than a decade (O’Brien, p.65). This presents a daunting task for the socially progressive documentarian. Most documentaries produced on the island continue to provide entertainment rather than challenge. As O‘Brien expresses it, “The Irish documentarist is quiet and cautious when it comes to questions of social and political change, working as they must in the shadow of the Constitution and the patrimony of the State. This is a singular paradox from a people reckoned to be among the most political in the world, but it is perhaps characteristic” (p. 69).

With Southpaw, Liam McGrath continued to challenge prevailing myths of the Irish condition using the documentary form while Paddy Breathnach returned to his roots in the medium. Despite the ahistorical de-mythologizing of Ireland in his fictional feature films, Breathnach had been in partnership with Robert Walpole since 1992 and the two have produced several Irish television documentaries together under the Treasure Films banner, in association with RTE. These include two films about the Irish Soccer Team (The Charlton Years, and The Road to America, both 1994) and more recently WRH (1999), a cinema-verite examination of the day to day activity in a major hospital. In addition to Southpaw, Walpole also produced the Home series for McGrath as well as Breathnach’s three features. (O’Brien, p.68) Treasure Films continues to be a major player in Irish film, but has again drifted away from the documentary in favor of fiction features. With Southpaw, McGrath and Treasure Films would combine their distinctive radical attacks on cultural mythology in challenging the socially sanctioned stereotypes of the Traveller.

Documenting “The Barrett Boy”:

Southpaw chronicles two years in the life of young Francis Barrett. A poor Traveller encamped with his family in Galway, Francis goes to the Olympics as a boxer, gets married and becomes a father in the course of the film. McGrath constructs his subject in such a way that while acknowledging Francis’ social status as the catalyst of the young man’s impending celebrity, “the Traveller issue ceases to matter very quickly and it does indeed become a purely human drama” (Clarke, p. 14). In this way, it constitutes a major victory over the mindset of its largely Irish audience.

Accruing four amateur titles in four years (O‘Connell, 1998), Barrett had won the Irish light welterweight title in 1996, qualifying for the European Championship in Denmark. There, he placed in the top nine to qualify for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. He came to national attention in Ireland in March 1996, about the time McGrath was finishing up Male Rape. When McGrath approached Breathnach and Walpole about producing a documentary about the boxer, he found they had all ready been in touch with Chick Gillen, Barrett’s trainer in Galway.

Southpaw is as much about Chick as it is about Barrett. Chick is a kindly middle-aged barber in Galway who has refused to embrace the societal prejudice against Barrett’s race. A former amateur boxing champion himself, he was asked by a local priest to “have a look” at some Traveller kids in a nearby encampment who were apparently serious about boxing. Seeing the enthusiasm and determination of Barrett and his peers, Gillen tried to get them accepted by the local youth boxing clubs, but was rejected by all due to the children’s race (Clarke, p.14). In one of the film’s interviews, Gillen tenderly recounts what a “keen” little boy “Francie” had been, a tireless enthusiast who worked out around the clock and spoke of nothing but the sport and all he had been doing to train. He quickly earned a place of honor in the cab beside Gillen, as the barber relentlessly drove in search of a club that would accept the boys. Gillen recalls when young Francie overheard a man refer to the barber’s ragtag boxing brood as “knackers”. The boy asked Gillen what a knacker was, to which Gillen replied “a shithouse like that one”. On another occasion, he defended the boys to a priest by reminding him that “Our Lord was a Traveller.”

Finally, Gillen formed his own club for the Travellers, calling it the Olympic Boxing Club, thus reflecting the world games’ creed of inclusiveness for all races, creeds and colors. At one point, Gillen recalls in the film, Francie asked him if a Traveller had ever gone to the Olympics. He replied that he didn’t know for certain, but that it was likely Travelling folk had performed, if not from Ireland than Travellers from Russia and other places. He assured Barrett that there was no reason he could not represent Ireland someday if he kept up the hard work. When Francis begins traveling as an amateur boxer, it is Chick whom he calls long distance for moral support, training advice and words of encouragement. Near the end of the film, some Traveller boys spar in Chick’s barber shop as one of them sings a humorous, but heartfelt litany of praise to the Galway barber who changed their lives: “It was Chick who formed the Olympic Boxing Club. It was Chick who saw Frank to the Olympics…Chick is the best trainer in the World…Chick is second only to God!” Gillen laughs it off, telling the camera modestly, “That one’s off his head!” When it appears Barrett’s glory days are behind him at the end of the film, Chick assures him that if he really wants to enter the next Olympics, “You’ve done it once, I don’t see why you can’t do it again”. Critics hailed the man’s example of heroism and humanity as though he was a character in a Hollywood film: Film West wrote that he “emerges as the unassuming hero” (Kenny, 1998) of the piece, while Film Ireland found it to be “the story of Chick Gillen’s dedication, generosity of time, belief and support for Francis” (O’Connell, 1998). McGrath admits that “straight away it was Chick’s passion that got to us” (Clarke, p.14) While exploring this “relationship between sportsman and coach” (O’Connell, 1998), at its heart the film is about the difference one person can make in another’s life.

Barrett himself is also painted as a virtual saint. He dispels the stereotype of the Traveller in a number of ways, claiming that he and his entire family neither drink nor smoke, saving themselves the embarrassment of Travellers who are frequently turned away from pubs and discos. He claims that any victories he may claim in the ring are not just for the Travellers, but for “everyone in Galway”, including his oppressors. Training in the most Spartan of conditions, in a community without running water, Francis explains that he and “the brothers” bought the dilapidated trailer they use as a gym for 300 pounds after saving their scrap gathering money for ‘too or tree yeers”. Before this luxury, his training had been frequently interrupted by bouts of the flu from constantly wet feet. Inspired by Irishman Michael Carruth’s medal victory at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Francis began working his way up in Ireland’s amateur ranks. Archival footage shows a much younger short and stout Barrett winning his early bouts, “brief but stirring footage…with his familiar set jaw already showing resolute purpose” (Kenny, 1998). Barrett claims that any financial ambition he may aspire to is not to “move up” into the society that has rejected him, but simply to have a running water system installed at the Hillside encampment for his family. Francis is handsome, clean-cut, soft spoken, well dressed, loyal, modest, and intensely driven.

McGrath claims the film was a total collaboration with Barrett from the start. Barrett watched the director’s previous films and decided it would be good to have some record of himself for his children and grandchildren. It was always important, McGrath claims, that he be a friend to Barrett. “We had a long talk about the documentary and once we established the reasons for doing it, he was quite open…He and chick made that decision and I was always conscious that I wouldn’t step over the line. You know straight away when it’s good to film and when it’s intrusive. If you take any sort of documentary where you’re following someone around for a long time, it becomes a part of yourself” (Clarke, p.14). The director goes on to say that the availability of film stock often overrode any aesthetic considerations, and that funding to shoot the film was virtually nonexistent throughout. By using Fuji film, Treasure Films was able to delay paying the company while he shot. If they had delayed shooting while finding funding for the production, Barrett’s Olympic days would have passed them by. Eventually, the Irish Film Board and Channel 4 assisted with a loan as well, but shooting was always dictated by the limited film stock. In the scene in which Olympic coach Nicholas Cruz bids Francis farewell and good luck in Galway, the film ran out literally as the two men shook hands.

McGrath implements several methods of documentary style throughout Southpaw. Fly-on-the-wall Direct Cinema approaches are intercut with talking head interviews. Archival footage of Barrett’s early bouts is used, while his later attempts at Irish and English belts are captured by McGrath’s crew. His bid for the Irish Welterweight title is represented by a slow motion montage of close-ups detailing the ring action and accompanied by the strains of the jazz standard “Round Midnight”. His Olympic bouts in Atlanta are captured from television screens as Chick and the Hillside Travellers cheer his initial victory and suffer with his subsequent loss in different Galway locations.

Donald Clarke addressed the “concern that there is an inherent unreality in the fly on the wall technique” to McGrath. “Asking the audience to accept that the participants are not aware of the film crew lumbering around after them is a moral quandary for all filmmakers in this genre”. The director acknowledged the challenge, claiming “the hardest thing, is to make sure the camera isn’t affecting what’s going on, that you’re still getting reality” (Clarke, p. 15). McGrath claims that this can be accomplished through developing a certain comfort level between the camera and its subject, so that eventually Francis and Chick are indeed not influenced by the crew of filmmakers recording their private conversations. In scenes such as the one in which Chick gets teary-eyed describing Barrett’s heart and commitment as a “wee lad”, the camera pulls back and veers away out of respect for the man’s emotions.

The biggest challenge, according to McGrath, is constructing some sort of story while not knowing what will happen next and if you will have the resources to cover it (Clarke, p. 15). He had no idea in the early days of Galway filming that Barrett would soon be married, living in London and challenging the British Amateur Boxing Association title following an all too brief moment of glory in Atlanta.

At the lavish triple wedding ceremony of Traveller couples, McGrath served as wedding videographer, making fifty copies to give to family members. “(Barrett is) a friend, this was never like a real job to me…Frank always talks about it as our documentary” (Clarke, p. 15). The wedding is a beautiful moment in the film, recalling similar scenes in films such as The Godfather and King of the Gypsies.

The film also provides vivid glimpses into the abject poverty Barrett has been raised in. The Hillside is a junkyard of scrap metal, broken-down caravans, and the struggle for survival. While County Galway had extended a temporary permit for the Travellers to camp there, it denied them a license to install a running water system. By the end of the film, Francis’ clan would have their camping permit revoked by the local government and be ordered to move on. Francis and his brothers appear in stark contrast to this environment, relentlessly sparring and training, often in their Sunday best to present a good image for the camera. Barrett’s older family members sit on the sidelines in folding chairs watching and occasionally making humorous on-camera comments such as “That’s a lot of work, isn’t it?” There are other moments such as these where McGrath’s honesty doesn’t shy away from the sources of Traveller stereotyping. Barrett’s marriage to an English traveller he met at the horse races is followed by a rowdy celebration where Francis is seen drinking and being tossed in the air repeatedly by “the brothers”. At a triple baptism ceremony for three new Traveller babies (all children of the triple marriage ceremony!), including Barrett’s son, the young mothers stand at the altar in teased air, heavy make-up, miniskirts and go-go boots. Chinks in the young boxer’s armor are captured during bouts when he complains of hurting elbows and laments that he “boxed horribly”.

Other major characters include Nicholas Cruz, the Irish Olympic coach who brought Carruth to prominence, who appears in Galway periodically as Francis’ unofficial trainer. That Cruz is a black man adds another poignant layer to Barrett’s struggle. The trainers of London’s Trojan Boxing Club also help Francis in his quest for the amateur English titles following the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Barrett moves to London to live with his bride’s family, admitting it will “be very hard to leave Chick”.

Still, the film as a whole is an indictment against institutionalized racism. An interview with liberal journalist Tom Humphries is used throughout the film to reinforce Barrett’s challenge to the country’s intolerance. Humphries states that while the myth of Ireland is that of a “charming, warm people”, the country is in fact “the most brutally racist in the world” when it comes to the Travelling people. He criticizes the myth of the Traveller as a freeloading sycophant who has all the luxuries and electronic gadgetry of the modern age hidden in his caravan, while lazing away his days and letting honest Irish taxpayers pay for it all. This ridiculous assessment of the people, he claims, is but a way for the Irish to “justify their own prejudice”. He goes on to say that while the Irish that took a schizophrenic pride in Barrett’s rise to prominence assumed he would assimilate with the larger society and reject his roots, they were shocked by the boxer’s declaration that he simply wanted to get electricity on his plot and the rest of the Hillside. The majority of the population apparently felt the “Barrett Boy” had “no right to represent the country”. Humphries observes that at the Olympics, Francis carried the flag of “the only country that would discriminate against him”. One critic referred to Barrett as a “lad who has never worked a day in his life”.

The film found theatrical distribution after previewing at the Galway Film Fleadh and the Dublin Film Festival. It went on to Sundance in the States as an official selection and was praised by critics like Roger Ebert. Sadly, it was all but disregarded by Irish audiences and critics alike. The Galway-based Film West, whom it would be assumed would take a special local interest in the production, restricted its coverage to one page review. Film Ireland was more generous, with a half-page review followed by Clarke’s three-page cover story on Barrett and McGrath. Still as with previous cinematic representations of the Traveller, the issues of race-based adversity were severely downplayed and the documentary is typically elided by contemporary Irish film scholars and social historians alike. Like the Travellers themselves, Southpaw remains nearly invisible to the culture at large, relegated to the dustbin of the Irish popular conception of itself and its social issues.

Conclusion:

As Luke Gibbons (1996) has stated crtitcally, “ Ireland is a First world Country, but with a Third World memory” (p. 3). Ironically, Mr. Gibbons is among the progressive social critics and media scholars (McLoone, McIlroy) who continue to write the Traveller out of Irish history and popular culture alike. The issue of the Traveller continues to be approached all too cautiously. Even in examining the fictional works in which he appears, he remains invisible and ignored. The lukewarm reception of, and lack of critical writing on, an important work like the documentary film Southpaw is symptomatic of a wider cultural avoidance and legacy of scapegoating in Irish culture. To put such a work in a proper context, critics must begin to address not only Ireland’s history of racial tensions, but also the ways in which the Traveller has been represented, and failed to be represented, in the popular culture of his home country.

It is significant that aside from McGrath’s portrait of Francis Barrett, filmic representations of the Traveller have largely been of two stereotypical approaches: The romantic myth of the Man of the West, the “Wild Irish Rover” who must eventually come to embrace modern society if he is to survive; and the racial stereotype embodying all the traits of “Stage Irishness” that have settled onto the Traveller through the scapegoating process. It is the radical Irish Third World memory that heaps onto the Travelling people all that the Irish want to forget- the displacement of the Famine, the oppression by the English and the institutionalized racism that is at the root of their history.

James Joyce once wrote of his native Ireland that ”History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”. The message of Southpaw, if only embraced, could greatly assist Ireland in waking up from its legacy of racism to truly become the socially progressive European nation it currently imagines itself to be.

Bibliography

Breathnach, P. & Walpole, R. (Producers), & McGrath, L. (Director). (1999).
Southpaw [Motion picture]. Ireland: The Irish Film Board. Carter, C. A. (1996).
Kenneth Burke and the scapegoat process. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. . Clarke, D. (1998, December/1999, January).
The real boxer. Film Ireland, 68, 14-16. Curtis, L. (1996).
Nothing but the same old story: the roots of anti-Irish racism. Belfast, Ireland: Sasta. Gibbons, L. (1996).
Transformations in Irish culture. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press. Kenny, J. (1998, October).
Francis Barrett: Southpaw. Film West, 34, 66. McDonald, J.F. (2002).
Tribe. San Francisco, CA: MacAdam/Cage Publishing. McIlroy, B. (2001).
Shooting to kill: Filmmaking and the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. Richmond, BC: Steveston Press. McLoone, M. (2000).
Irish Film: The emergence of a contemporary cinema. London: British film Institute. O’Brien, H. (1999).
Documenting Ireland [Special issue]. Cineaste, Vol. XXIV, NOS. 2- 3(64-69).
O’Connell, D. (1998, August/September).
Francis Barrett- Southpaw. Film Ireland, 66, 35. Sheehan, E. (Ed.) (2000).
Travellers: Citizens of Ireland. Dublin, Ireland: Parish of the Travelling People.

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