1985 and the Moving Statues Phenomena

whisky_galore · 20-07-2015 01:03PM

Sam Kade wrote: »

Didn't the media zoom in on the tree stump less than 10 years ago? The media nowadays still report rubbish to fill airtime.

That was one stump in one location as a 3 min news space filler...with a limited 'following'.

The moving statues was a nationwide craze, if it can be called that.

LDN_Irish · 20-07-2015 01:10PM

Sam Kade wrote: »

Yeah you were :rolleyes:
You're only trying to redeem yourself.

Funny enough, it was your "NOT EVERYONE BELIEVED IT" posts that spurred me to my first post. Protesting too much? I'd say it was you who kicked the whole thing off. You've already admitted to going along "just to see what the crack was like."

NachoBusiness · 20-07-2015 01:13PM

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't think the media in 2015 would indulge it though to the same degree it would have in the 1980s.

Not too sure about that..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvN43mOpTg

Samaris · 20-07-2015 01:32PM

You know what's more nationally embarrassing than a brief national crazy for moving religious statues thirty years ago?

Anxiously protesting thirty years on that #notallIrish and how specifically you particularly never believed a word of it and wasn't it MORTIFYING, sure the neighbours will never let us live this down, oh the shame, begorrah.

Jeez, national stereotype right there.

Thirty years ago. The rest of the world is not always intently staring at our small and pretty irrelevant little country. No-one, in short, cares. It was probably a case of mass hysteria, which in this particular epidemic, had a religious aspect to it. Some of them do, some of them don't. Look up the June Bug epidemic of 1962 in the US, or the Tanganika mass laughter, New Delhi Monkey Man (2001) even possibly the Gloria Ramirez infection. Further back, the Dancing Plague of Strasborg and the Salem Witch Trials. And right now, the Karnataka farmer suicides. Our bout of it was pretty harmless really.

In short, it is a pretty common thing, the religious aspect is almost irrelevant and the rest of the world neither remembers nor cares.

Fighting Irish · 20-07-2015 02:11PM

fryup wrote: »

we were the laughing stock of europe

we still are

DeadHand · 20-07-2015 02:28PM

There was a commercial element to this too as I recall stories of bus drivers being under strict instruction from their boss to claim they saw something in order to keep the brisk business going.

The logic behind these apparitions (which are a worldwide phenomenon) always perplexed me. Let's say I'm a deity with the ability to manifest in the physical world. Why? To enhance people's faith is the only reason I can think of. Why appear in obscure, rural villages and pieces of toast?

If the idea is to convert the faithless, wouldn't an appearance at the throw in to the All-Ireland final leave little room for doubt?

Sam Kade · 20-07-2015 03:04PM

LDN_Irish wrote: »

Funny enough, it was your "NOT EVERYONE BELIEVED IT" posts that spurred me to my first post. Protesting too much? I'd say it was you who kicked the whole thing off. You've already admitted to going along "just to see what the crack was like."

Look who can't handle a p1ss take now.

LDN_Irish · 20-07-2015 03:21PM

Sam Kade wrote: »

Look who can't handle a p1ss take now.

Reported for trolling.

Menas · 20-07-2015 03:29PM

Any of you kids who are laughing at how backward things were in 1985 should know that we were rocking to the finest hits that summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMoLENWsSk

Kiwi in IE · 20-07-2015 04:00PM

Menas wrote: »

Any of you kids who are laughing at how backward things were in 1985 should know that we were rocking to the finest hits that summer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMoLENWsSk

Was that song and video allowed in Holy Catholic Ireland?

Capt'n Midnight · 21-07-2015 12:04AM

fryup wrote: »

1985 more like 1885

janey mac!! were really that backward??

we were the laughing stock of europe

This.

Today.

Another Senator brought up the issue of seagulls again and others joined in.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/cull-the-other-one-call-for-hunt-of-vicious-seagulls-1.2291134

I heard on the radio earlier that a lady in the Botanic Gardens had her telephone taken by a seagull.

ClovenHoof · 21-07-2015 12:25AM

the_monkey wrote: »

Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue .

Have you not watched Royal Wedding news reports then?

fryup · 21-07-2015 10:23AM

fryup wrote: »

we were the laughing stock of europe

Fighting Irish wrote: »

we still are

i think the Greeks have taken up that mantle

whisky_galore · 21-07-2015 10:25AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

This.

Today.

Another Senator brought up the issue of seagulls again and others joined in.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/cull-the-other-one-call-for-hunt-of-vicious-seagulls-1.2291134

Not the first nor the last time that the glorified nursing home that is our Senate has made irrelevant commentary.

21-07-2015 03:36PM

the_monkey wrote: »

Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue .

An inferiority complex as big as the above needs immediate psychiatric intervention. Seriously. It's up there with your "IRish language will soon be dead anyway - thank Christ!!"(sic) comment a while back.

Let's have a couple of home truths about your supposedly rational British culture. You're comparing the Irish statue worshippers in the 80s negatively to a class-ridden British culture today which has an all-pervasive cult of royalism where enormous numbers of people cry if one of their royal idols die and where their media is saturated with photos and lifestyle reports on the toing and froing of aforesaid superior blue-blooded beings. Cringe on the escapism peasant-mentality front.

And this is all before we mention the comical "commemoration" culture of the same British society, where millions of people and all of their media outlets engage in irrational, emotionally-charged displays commemorating people they never even knew. Useful idiots to the powerful, just as their socio-economic ancestors were in 1614, 1714, 1814 or 1914.

And people like you think you can sneer at Irish society. Get a grip.

darkpagandeath · 21-07-2015 03:39PM

Deleted User wrote: »

An inferiority complex as big as the above needs immediate psychiatric intervention. Seriously. It's up there with your "IRish language will soon be dead anyway - thank Christ!!"(sic) comment a while back.

Let's have a couple of home truths about your supposedly rational British culture. You're comparing the Irish statue worshippers in the 80s negatively to a class-ridden British culture today which has an all-pervasive cult of royalism where enormous numbers of people cry if one of their royal idols die and where their media is saturated with photos and lifestyle reports on the toing and froing of aforesaid superior blue-blooded beings. Cringe on the escapism peasant-mentality front.

And this is all before we mention the comical "commemoration" culture of the same British society, where millions of people and all of their media outlets engage in irrational, emotionally-charged displays commemorating people they never even knew. Useful idiots to the powerful, just as their socio-economic ancestors were in 1614, 1714, 1814 or 1914.

And people like you think you can sneer at Irish society. Get a grip.

What's that got to do with the Catholic churches idolatry ? sure try buying condoms in the 80s without any lectures.

21-07-2015 03:46PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

What's that got to do with the Catholic churches idolatry ?

Everything, when the person I responded to explicitly was concerned with what British people might think about the Irish, as if the British are not steeped in their own idolatry where their cult is royalism rather than the CC. Strange how you didn't ask him what their views had to do with anything.

dilallio · 21-07-2015 03:50PM

I remember it well.

It all kicked off in our church when St. Martin called St. Francis Assisi ...

21-07-2015 03:51PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

sure try buying condoms in the 80s without any lectures.

Sure, try running a British state in the 80s without invading another people's country, arming fascist dictators, authorising a shoot-to-kill policy against the Irish, supporting apartheid South Africa, supporting the genocide of the East Timorese. And so on, with these "Britain, great; Ireland, awful" inferiority-complex comparisons.

Sunnyisland · 21-07-2015 04:10PM

I remember the early eighties very well, Ireland was indeed a very dark place,NI was in turmoil with bombings shootings everyday, high profile kidnappings happening, don tiedy , shergar, Ben dunne, Galen Weston ,hunger strikes were on ,governments colapsing,recession hitting everyone,emergration, plus the it never stopped raining, I think the moving statues gave a people some hope, a falsh hope but some hope all the same,it was a crazy time living here and we in the worlds media for all the wrong reasons everyday.
Don't think it did us any harm really did it :-)

darkpagandeath · 21-07-2015 04:14PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Everything, when the person I responded to explicitly was concerned with what British people might think about the Irish, as if the British are not steeped in their own idolatry where their cult is royalism rather than the CC. Strange how you didn't ask him what their views had to do with anything.

Why would one care what others think ?

21-07-2015 04:21PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Why would one care what others think ?

I think the poster above who said "Yep can you imagine any British people watching that report on BBC - laughing their asses off at a bunch of inbred illiterate paddies gawking at a statue" might, deep in cultural cringe land, have an answer for that.

Schadenfreudia · 21-07-2015 08:58PM

It is generally the mentally colonised cringe-merchants who are concerned about "what will the British think of us" (and those pathetic forelock-tuggers infested the main-stream media in the 80s, even more then than they do today)

Personally, I lived through the miserable 1980s and what the British thought of us was not even on the register of my list of concerns.

whisky_galore · 21-07-2015 09:04PM

Christ, this all went downhill rapidly. All we need now is to bring cyclists into this somehow.

Samaris · 21-07-2015 09:19PM

I blame the Catholic cyclists for everything.

Archeron · 21-07-2015 10:04PM

whisky_galore wrote: »

Christ, this all went downhill rapidly. All we need now is to bring cyclists into this somehow.

Christ on a bike!

traprunner · 21-07-2015 10:10PM

Sure the people in Templemore started this type of craze in 1920 to move guns around the country. Bleeding statues and other "miricles": http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-templemore-miracles/

Sam Kade · 21-07-2015 10:11PM

realies wrote: »

I remember the early eighties very well, Ireland was indeed a very dark place,NI was in turmoil with bombings shootings everyday, high profile kidnappings happening, don tiedy , shergar, Ben dunne, Galen Weston ,hunger strikes were on ,governments colapsing,recession hitting everyone,emergration, plus the it never stopped raining, I think the moving statues gave a people some hope, a falsh hope but some hope all the same,it was a crazy time living here and we in the worlds media for all the wrong reasons everyday.
Don't think it did us any harm really did it :-)

Where were you in 1984? We had no rain from April to September, July 1983 was a scorcher as well.

philstar · 22-07-2015 10:03AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Everything, when the person I responded to explicitly was concerned with what British people might think about the Irish, as if the British are not steeped in their own idolatry where their cult is royalism rather than the CC. Strange how you didn't ask him what their views had to do with anything.

but they are our betters

LordSutch · 22-07-2015 10:59AM

I consider the whole "moving statues phenomena" to be one of the last hurrahs of "Auld Ireland", the old Ireland rooted in the past full and of blarney and superstition - then the country woke up, and we now laugh at the craziness of it all . . . .

1985 and the Moving Statues Phenomena

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