[March 17th
is St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday
that is apparently a far
bigger deal in the U.S. than in Ireland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a
handful of famous Irish American cultural figures, leading up to a post on some
wonderful Irish American literary voices!]
On a song that
reinforces and yet also transcends cultural stereotypes.
One of the
difficulties of writing a weeklong series focused on an ethnic community (and I
would argue that in America at least Irish Americans are more of an
ethnic than a national community and perhaps have always been, although
that 2020 census question is no less pernicious for that overall trend) is how
easy it is to resort to stereotypical or clichéd images and narratives of that
community. Even if they seem to align with historical trends, it’s just such a
slippery slope to painting an entire community with that broad brush; so for
example I decided not to include a post on the
New York City Draft Riots because of the stereotypical narrative of Irish
Americans as antagonist to African Americans. “The Irish are not known for
their fondness for the coloreds” is one of the only lines in Glory that really gripes my cookies, for
precisely that reason; indeed they are not, and perhaps the regiment’s overly demanding
Irish American drill
sergeant was indeed influenced by that broader tendency, but it seems to me
that in a film so dedicated to moving beyond cultural stereotypes, there would be
other ways to characterize that important figure in the story.
Mackelmore’s “Irish Celebration” (2009),
an irresistibly catchy rap song about the artist’s Irish American heritage and
family, is far from immune to those issues with stereotypes. In particular,
Macklemore rests hard on the image
of Irish people as hard-drinkers; the video (the first hyperlink in this
paragraph) is largely set in a bar, and the song features lines like “Now with
whisky in our veins/Claiming we’re the bravest men” and “Challenge us in football,
yeah we might lose/But don’t put us next to a bar stool.” Hell, the chorus
itself identifies the entire song as a drinking song, as it includes the
repeated phrases “We put our glass to the sky” and “So raise a pint.” Obviously
any community has their celebratory times and occasions, and many of those
celebrations are linked to alcohol; but in a song that begins with the line “I’m
an Irishman,” this central thread of alcohol and drinking seems a bit more culturally
defining than it needs to be. Given how much the image of the “drunken Irishman”
was tied
to anti-Irish and (in the United States) anti-immigrant
propaganda, this is a particularly frustrating emphasis to get in a
celebratory pro-Irish song from a proudly Irish American artist.
Yet at the same
time, Macklemore reveals personal histories in the song that complicate and
perhaps even transcend these stereotypical issues. He has struggled for more
than a decade with addictions, including alcoholism; he entered rehab in 2008,
stayed sober for a few years, relapsed in 2011 (the subject of his 2012 song “Starting Over”), and has
been working to remain sober ever since. “Irish Celebration” was released
during that initial post-rehab period, and Macklemore references these personal
histories directly, writing, “Dad sipped Guinness, I sipped Old English/’Til he
sat me down at 16 and said ‘Boy, this is what a beer is’/I put down the drink,
couldn’t drink like a gentleman/Doesn’t mean I can’t make a drinking song for the
rest of ‘em.” There is of course significant irony in a person trying to stay
sober writing a “drinking song,” irony not only for the speaker but perhaps also
for the culture associated with alcoholism, and Macklemore is clearly aware of
and engaging with those ironies. Yet you could also argue that by noting the
possibility of alcohol being something more positive, part of a communal celebration
rather than an ethnic slur, Macklemore is working to reclaim this oft-maligned
element of both his own identity and his heritage. At the very least, he’s
thinking through these personal and cultural issues, as he so
often does.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Irish Americans you’d highlight?
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