Should the Irish be decanonized?

[Trekker4747]

Few ethnic groups in Trek, which is usualy very progressive, have suffered more than the Irish, possibly all Celts and, OK, the Native Americans don't fare to well either.

But everytime a group is needed to play for chuckles or rubes it seems Trek falls back on the Irish for laughs and their potrayal is often pretty offensive.

Let's first look at Up the Long Ladder. In this episode the Enterprise comes across a colony that is in danger of being wiped out by the Threat of the Week so they're brought aboard.

Lo an behold these colonists look and act exactly like the stereotypical Irish people... circa 1865. Naturaly the "lead" colonist is a drunk, the woman is a stand-offish spitting-nails redhaired, they insist on bringing livestock on the ship, are shocked by the technology and... BAH.

Later in TNG we're given "Sub Roasa" where we happen upon ANOTHER Irish-Human colony and, again, they're filled with stereotypes this time with a healthy dose of supersition.

And let's not even start on the Fair Haven program over on Voyager.

So I think the solution is simple. We decanonize the Irish in TNG. O'Brien, Beverly and the few others we've seen are rare exception but otherwise we've never seen an Irish colony on the series.

 

[captcalhoun]

actually, in Sub Rosa, they were Scots. and since the Scots had to put up with Scotty, they've really got the shitty end of the ethnic stick.

 

[Kegek]

"Sub Rosa" is Scottish. It's true there's a connection between Ireland and Scotland, but they are not the same country. Beverly is thus of Scottish descent. It's strongly implied Janeway is of Irish ancestry, but if memory serves that's about it among regulars.

I absolutely and unequivocally loathe "Up the Long Ladder" as a coalescence of numerous stupid and idiotic Irish cliches, a matter I am sure recent visitors to the TNG board are sick of hearing me rant on about (although I'll gladly recap here). Worst episode, period. "Fair Haven" is indeed trite and cliched, but I found the idea of Robert Picardo playing a cleric to be very amusing. While stereotyped, at least these holograms are not idiotic.

No discussion is complete without "The High Ground", which isn't that bad an episode, really, but is also a thinly veiled analogy to the then contemporaneous Northern Ireland problem. An off-hand mention by Data of a violent Irish reunification was quite a controversial point, causing the episode to either not be shown in parts of Britain or for that line to be deleted.

However, de-canonising? *shrug* It's not like the weaker epeisodes in question will ever be mentioned again, and even as non-canonical they still have their flaws. It's neither here nor there in my book, and the important thing about Star Trek is it gave Colm Meaney, one of the great Irish actors of our generation (and there are many!) a steady job and a great character.

Edit: captcalhoun... while Scotty was certainly cliched and has a fairly fake Scottish accent, he's not even close to "Up the Long Ladder". Plus he's actually, y'know, likeable.

 

[Odon]

Yes, I remember Colm Meaney mentioned in the DS9 Companion (I think he was talking about that episode where Rumpelstiltskin turned up in his room) that people have this idea of Ireland as being a place of leprechauns and such, but it's more like the gritty Ireland of The Commitments.

 

[SiorX]

^
Horrifying though it is to think of a whole nation being represented by a race of diminutive green-clad ginger cobblers, I think I'd far rather that than Jimmy Rabbitte.

 

[erastus25]

You can't decanonize something. If it's on-screen it's on-screen.

 

[M'Sharak]

Trekker4747 said:
Few ethnic groups in Trek, which is usualy very progressive, have suffered more than the Irish, possibly all Celts...

What "all Celts"?

On Star Trek, you had Scots and you had Irish, that's all. No Welsh, no Cornish, no Manx, no Bretons, and that's not even getting into the Celtic peoples from the rest of Europe. From Biblical times, you could find Celts everywhere from what is present-day Turkey, the Ukraine and Poland all the way to Northern Spain, and you consider two groups on a few islands off the mainland to be representative of all Celts?

If you had said "Gaels" instead, you might have had a leg to stand on, but not a very long one.

 

[zenophite]

wah wah. I have yet to even hear of a Portuguese or Italian. The vast majority of cultural references are all Anglo-American and by extension Irish as well. give me a break.

 

[Kegek]

^
We're not Anglo-American.

I think there have been some minor Italian or Italian-originated characters, and the Doctor of course loves Italian opera... but true, that's about it.

Odon said:
that people have this idea of Ireland as being a place of leprechauns and such, but it's more like the gritty Ireland of The Commitments.

It's more like a consumer paradise. Nice as hell place to live if I say so myself, and I do. It certainly bears no resemblance to its Star Trek depiction...

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

M´Sharak said:

What "all Celts"?

I suppose he's refering to the Celt 'cultures', the Irish, the Scots etc consider themselves to have a Celt heritage and ancestry. England had one but it slowly got wiped out during Caesar's invasions of Britain and the years that followed. If you look across the Celt-world in parts of France, Ireland, Scotland ect you can see common links in the art, the writings, bagpipes, deities, the music, the mythology and so on. Celt cultures started to disappear in some regions of Europe as Magyars, Romans, Franks, Saxons etc moved into areas which were once Celt.

 

[SiorX]

Celtic culture, the art of selling a bodhrán at a 150% mark-up because somebody doodled scribbly lines on it.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Saint Patrick would be pissed.

Having run screaming out of an ethnic Irish pub a time or two, it's a nation that doesn't need Hollywood to send it up.

 

[Sci]

Let's face it, Trek doesn't generally do too well at respectfully and non-stereotypically depicting any real culture other than English or white American.

 

[Kegek]

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Having run screaming out of an ethnic Irish pub a time or two, it's a nation that doesn't need Hollywood to send it up.

Ah yes, the charming ethnic stereotype. Sure, there are drunkards, but it's no worse or better than the same problem in England. And I'm cold sober. Never touched alcohol and never will. Put that in your cliche and smoke it!

Celtic culture wasn't exactly destroyed by the Roman invasion of Britain, although they kind of coalesced. It was the subsequent Anglo-Saxon migration/invasion that forced the Romano-Celtss into the corners of England (and some escaped to northwestern France)... where they became the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Bretons.

 

[SiorX]

Veering wildly off topic:

I ended up in an Oirish bar in Paris once, because it was the only place we could find that was open to get a drink. It had all the trimmings - shamrocks, green paintwork, flags, banners, and poorly spelled sayings on the walls. It was owned, managed and staffed entirely by Germans.

Perhaps these Germans were inspired by episodes of Star Trek. That would make for a very bizarre cultural convergence.

The Irish stereotype in Up the Long Ladder is ridiculous, but then "Irishness" as a saleable commodity doesn't have much to do with actual Ireland either. And a lot of authentic Irish culture actually got made up by revivalists at the start of the last century.

It happens to just about every culture when they hit TV. The image projected is a ridiculous parody that's half invented and half made up.

 

[Stormrage]

This is the same show where the only french character has a british accent. In fact his entire family had a British accent.

 

[Kegek]

SiorX said:
The Irish stereotype in Up the Long Ladder is ridiculous, but then "Irishness" as a saleable commodity doesn't have much to do with actual Ireland either. And a lot of authentic Irish culture actually got made up by revivalists at the start of the last century.

Thank you. "O Danny Boy"? New York song. "The Fields of Athan Ri"? Barely two decades young. 'Irish' pubs? Not exactly a barometer.

This said, and as I've said before, Star Trek did treat Miles O'Brien intelligently and with respect. He's a very realistic Irishman. So, one profoundly stupid episode aside and two more cutesy endeavours, (and that whole infamous little line), Star Trek by-and-by did good on the subject.

 

[Deleted 2]

^ There's DeSalle in S1 TOS, which was, in many ways, more self-conscious about representing many nationalities than the later shows (Voyager's crew, by comparison, seems more like it was designed to include representatives of all the major ethnic groups in North-America)

 

[Kegek]

DeSalle did not have a French accent either, actually. And the only Frenchman with a French accent on TNG was a holographic waiter in "We'll Always Have Paris".

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Kegek said:

The Laughing Vulcan said:
Having run screaming out of an ethnic Irish pub a time or two, it's a nation that doesn't need Hollywood to send it up.

Ah yes, the charming ethnic stereotype. Sure, there are drunkards, but it's no worse or better than the same problem in England. And I'm cold sober. Never touched alcohol and never will. Put that in your cliche and smoke it!

As mentioned, had nothing to do with alcohol consumption rather the abundance of sterotypes. F***ing theme pubs should be burned down.

For excess alcohol consumption, just check outside any off licence in the UK for teenagers.