2016 RTE Drama: Rebellion - no spoilers please (mod warning in post #1)

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

It's amazing to see the bitterness and hostility some people still have towards any version of history that isn't the one they want to be true.

Really? Like the attempt to rewrite the people of 1916 as "constitutional nationalists" as Micheal Martin of Fianna Fail did recently? Like John Bruton's scribbling in the "Irish" Independent newspaper about those nasty people in 1916 betraying his hero Redmond and how "Independence" could have been achieved (in his neo-Unionist fantasy) without 1916?

At the time of the Rising there were people who were staunchly Irish and despised everything British. There were also plenty who held the exact opposite opinion. To imply the Rising was not universally supported or that some Irish natives actively supported the army at the time is not "revisionist" history. It's a balanced and unbiased look at the events.

A typical strawman argument. As an "Irish native", your wibbling is rather offensive. There was a lot of poverty in Ireland at the time that the British Army and Navy provided employment for Irish men and there was a World War in progress. Home Rule had been on the statute books for a number of years but it was the continued obstruction of its implementation, the Curragh Mutiny and the introduction of the gun into Irish politics by the arming of the UVF with German weapons that created the conditions for the Rising. This is the real backstory that Rebellion seems to ignore. Then there is the willingness of politicians such as Redmond to stupidly sacrifice tens of thousands of Irish lives for broken promises. (More of this History thing that seems to have been ignored in RTE's Down Town Abbey.)

Rebellion, so far, is not balanced and it is not unbiased. Some of the cliches are grating.

Perhaps it would be a good thing to watch how it handles the executions of the leaders of the Rising and the aftermath before making such a claim that it is balanced and unbiased.

Ironically, and too late, Redmond realised the effect that those would have on the Irish people. Incidentally, though you didn't mention it, it was described in the Dublin media of the time as the "Sinn Fein Rebellion" though SF had little to do with it. That attitude of journalistic inaccuracy and hatred of anything hinting of Irish Independence from the UK still seems to permeate some sections of the Dublin media. But will RTE's Down Town Abbey revise all that history to provide a Politically Correct view of events acceptable to those who refer to the Irish people of the time as "Irish natives"?

Regards...jmcc

jmcc wrote: »

Challenging reality must be a fascinating hobby. The reality is that Ireland had been occupied for approximately 800 years.

Well the violent suppression of any uprisings, the execution of probably hundreds of thousands of people and the deaths of millions in various famines and military campaigns should have been a clue that there was a desire for Ireland to stand on its own.

So 1798 never happened?

Again, rubbish! The Irish people, even then, were not British. No matter how much revisionist "historians" and other crayon jockeys in RTE and the Dublin media would like it so, the Irish people were not British and were not considered so. Even the 1801 Act of Union (more of this history stuff that you seem to want to challenge) does not make Ireland "British" but part of a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Irish society at the time of the Rising was quite complex and the growing Catholic middle classes had a lot to lose but the working classes were being screwed as usual. The trite anachronisms of the Rebellion series ("but we're British") do a disservice to the history. The Rising has become almost a backdrop in the series rather than the central theme.

Regards...jmcc

The "We're not British, we're Irish" conversation is something that has come along post-independence and dare I say much more recently. People in Ireland in the early 20th century weren't remotely interested in labels of national identity nor they did they have hang ups about flags, national anthems and royal families....all of that came with Irish republicanism and nationalism later in the century ie. via the likes of Fianna Fail and then Sinn Fein.

Even those who firmly wanted independence weren't bothered with labels of identity and flags, that was an irrelevant sideshow. They were much more concerned with their day to day lives.

Of course there was violent suppression of uprisings but that would have happened anywhere in Europe be it in the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman empire etc. As I said earlier, large swathes of Europe and it's people were "occupied" and governed by a nation which wasn't it's own, that was the status quo in many cases (and even in the countries that weren't occupied, living conditions were often pretty awful for it's citizenry, hence something like the French Revolution taking place).

Irish_rat wrote: »

+100. The lad crying on top of the poor dead child was so emotional I nearly fell asleep.

I have to say I watched that thinking he seemed more like someone bringing a tough bout of constipation to it's painful end than a man grieving the nephew he had a fatherly relationship with.

Irish_rat wrote: »

The scenes in the house out in Dalkey were fascinating too, May Lacey finally came down the stairs after vomiting for half the day in the bedroom. It felt both actresses were dying for 4 o'clock to come to get out the door so the speak.

The one thing I couldnt help thinking was "This girl is having an affair with her husband, and is now carrying her child, yet she is still letting her stay in her house?"

Mod:

Ok less of the squabbling and the insults.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO - attack the post not the poster.
Blackie Grey - that a moderator is a moderator in this, or any other forum is irrelevant

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

Not a mistake per-say, but of the three main characters, only one seems to be a big player in the events of that week, and that's pushing it. of the other two, one is only in the periphery and the other has no involvement alltogether so it feels like the writers are pulling hens teeth trying to come up with ways to make them relevant.

I imagine in the next series Frances will be the only female member of the 12 Apostles and in the Civil War episodes she will be the sniper who kills Collins at Beal na Blath.

josephryan1989 wrote: »

I imagine in the next series Frances will be the only female member of the 12 Apostles and in the Civil War episodes she will be the sniper who kills Collins at Beal na Blath.

Like I said before the character is more to do with playing to the modern day feminists and being populist than it has to do with reality. And the dialog is absolutely cringeworthy. Like last week, one of the men was about to leave the post cos they were being overrun. But not Frances. "I'm here to fight and die for Ireland" says she. So you see children, not only are the girls JUST as good as the boys, they are even braver.

In the days of female quotas and stupid boy/clever girl advertising, it is certainly a popular decision to write in a female hero (or heroine), but it's not based in reality.