Scotland in feature film

Haider, Sandra-Elisabeth

Scotland in feature film

The countrys screen-image then and now, with focus on the City of Glasgow and the development of a Scottish film industry

von Sandra-Elisabeth Haider (Autor:in)

Medien / Kommunikation - Film und Fernsehen

Zusammenfassung

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract:
At Glasgows University Library I discovered a book about Scotland on film, Scotch Reels. Originally, Scotch Reels is the title of a research carried out in 1982 about the depiction of Scotland on screen. It was revealed then that the predominant image of Scotland was very much engaged with stereotypes (defined as the heather and haggis image by one of the books critics) and had obviously nothing to do with the contemporary reality of Scotland. Not surprisingly, that radical view has found a lot of stern critics.
On superficial examination, when I think of all the recent films set in Scotland (ranging from the historical epos Braveheart to the contemporary fast-paced drug story Trainspotting, to mention two of the more popular examples), it seems to me that contemporary films set in Scotland show a wider spectrum of Scottish life than they apparently did before the 1980s, when the stories were mostly (with a few exceptions only) set in the Highlands or on an island, in a community far away from contemporary (modern and industrial) life. As a classic example of those films one can mention the musical Brigadoon by Vicente Minnelli from the year 1954.
However, in my thesis I want to concentrate on films set in the City of Glasgow, since there would be far too much material concerned if I considered every single available recent film set in Scotland.
I would like to find out whether the image of Glasgow has improved (or widened in its conception) through the release of recent films, compared to its depiction in older movies.
As I could not analyse all recent feature films set in Glasgow in this context, I decided to concentrate on a few examples. By taking a closer look at these films I hope to be able to demonstrate how varied (or one-sided as will be determined) the contemporary portrayal of the city is.
I do not want to omit mentioning my awareness of the fact that my selection is very subjective. Had I selected other movies, the result would naturally have been a different one. Also, I have not taken into account television films or series set in the Glasgow area. Especially in recent years a whole range of series has been produced and broadcasted, for instance the surreal hospital-drama Psychos, starring Douglas Henshall, the controversial Tinsel Town, set in Glasgows lively clubbing scene, or Glasgow Kiss, which portrays the city as a modern, airy place, inhabited by sympathetic, educated middle-class people […]

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

ID 6120

Haider, Sandra-Elisabeth: Scotland in feature film - The country's screen-image then and

now, with focus on the City of Glasgow and the development of a Scottish film industry

Hamburg: Diplomica GmbH, 2002

Zugl.: Wien, Universität, Diplomarbeit, 2002

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Printed in Germany

Inhaltsverzeichnis/ Contents:

Preface ... 1

Introduction... 3

Chapter I: The debate on Scottish film and the representation of Scotland and

Glasgow on screen... 8

1.1

Introduction Chapter I: Scotland and Film... 8

1.2

Scotch Reels Edinburgh 1982... 12

1.2.1

Introduction... 12

1.2.2

Aims ... 14

1.2.3

Results ... 15

1.2.3.1 Tartanry and Kailyard ... 17

1.2.3.1.1 Introduction ... 17

1.2.3.1.2 Historical connections... 19

1.2.3.1.3 Literary connections... 21

1.2.3.1.4 Pictorial connections... 28

1.2.3.1.5 Cinematic connections... 29

1.2.3.2 Clydesidism/ The image of the city... 31

1.2.3.2.1 Introduction ... 31

1.2.3.2.2 Historical connections... 32

1.2.3.2.3 Literary connections... 33

1.2.3.2.4 Pictorial connections... 37

1.2.3.2.5 Cinematic connections... 39

1.2.4

Conclusion ... 41

1.3

Reactions to and criticism of Scotch Reels... 42

1.3.1

Introduction... 42

1.3.2

John Caughie... 42

1.3.3

Cairns Craig ... 45

1.3.4

Pam Cook... 47

1.3.5

David McCrone ... 48

1.3.6

Duncan Petrie... 49

1.3.7

More criticism... 52

1.3.7.1 John Brown ... 52

1.3.7.2 Thomas Elsaesser ... 54

1.3.7.3 Scott L. Malcomson ... 55

1.3.7.4 Forsyth Hardy... 56

1.3.7.5 Jeffrey Richards... 57

1.3.8

Conclusion ... 57

1.4

Conclusion Chapter I... 58

Chapter II: Popular images of Glasgow and its people ... 59

2.1

Introduction Chapter II ... 59

2.2

Details ... 62

2.2.1

The Hard Man ... 62

2.2.2

Slums... 64

2.2.3

The legacy of the "Red Clydeside" ... 67

2.2.4

Heavy drinking ... 69

2.2.5

Sectarianism... 71

2.2.6

Football... 73

2.3

Conclusion Chapter II... 74

Chapter III: The development of a Scottish film industry... 76

3.1

Introduction Chapter III... 76

3.2

"A Poor Scottish Cinema"... 76

3.3

Critics of "A Poor Scottish Cinema"... 79

3.4

Chronicle ... 82

3.4.1

1920s ... 83

3.4.2

1930s ... 84

3.4.3

1940s ... 88

3.4.4

1950s ... 89

3.4.5

1960s ... 90

3.4.6

1970s ... 92

3.4.7

1980s ... 93

3.4.8

1990s ... 98

3.4.9

2000 ... 105

3.4.10

2001 ... 106

III

3.4.11

2002 ... 109

3.5

Conclusion Chapter III ... 114

Chapter IV: Recent films and their depiction of Glasgow ... 116

4.1

Introduction Chapter IV ... 116

4.2

Films ... 118

4.2.1

Ratcatcher... 118

4.2.2

Orphans ... 121

4.2.3

Small Faces ... 123

4.2.4

My Name is Joe ... 126

4.3

Conclusion Chapter IV ... 129

Conclusion... 131

German Abstract/ Zusammenfassung auf Deutsch... 139

Bibliography ... 152

A) Books ... 152

B) Newspaper-articles, essays, periodicals and URL-addresses... 155

Appendix ... 162

A) Abbreviations ... 162

B) Film list 1995 to date ... 164

Preface

During my studies I have always tried to attend as many film-related courses and

seminars as possible, because I am both interested in and fascinated by the

medium of film.

My fascination is due to the fact that film is such a multi-layered medium and

allows many interpretations.

Every single part of a film e.g. its story, the forms of narration used, its

characters and their development, its rhythm, the use of sound and music as well

as its pictures - is important, and analyses of the whole "product" can be very

informative. By watching a film and concentrating on a different aspect of it every

time, it can be enjoyed over and over again.

In my Erasmus

year abroad 1998/99, which I was lucky to be able to spend in

Glasgow, the "European City of Culture 1990" and "UK City of Design and

Architecture 1999", I attended various film lectures, participated in the short film

festival "Longshots" organised by Glasgow University and worked as a voluntary

"Information Assistant" at the Edinburgh International Filmfestival 1999.

One of my favourite (and one of the many) cultural places in Glasgow was and is

the Glasgow Film Theatre (gft)

, where I watched numerous new releases and

classics alike.

I have become especially interested in British, and in particular Scottish film and

film history, which is also due to the highly acclaimed Edinburgh International

Filmfestival with its annual focus on Scottish filmmakers.

Scholarship 1998/99 from the ÖAAD (Österreichischer Akademischer Austauschdienst) within

the European Union's Socrates-programme.

URL: http://www.gft.org.

Considering my love of Scotland and the medium of film it is perhaps no surprise

that I chose to combine both aspects in the topic of my thesis.

My aim is to find out which kind of image(s) of the City of Glasgow and its

inhabitants is/ are conveyed in recent feature-films.

After all, a city's image is -

besides other important influences

- also a result of its representation on screen.

There is hardly any recent investigation on the subject available, leaving out of

account a few books and articles on the Scottish film industry and the popularity

of a small number of Scottish actors and actresses in the 1990s. Please see the

chapter of introduction for more detailed information on the contents of my thesis.

At this point I would like to take the opportunity to thank my professor at Vienna

University, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Hüttner for his help. Also, I want to thank my

parents for their financial and psychological support, patience and trust in me.

Note: The British Film Institute defines a feature film as being over 72 minutes long and made on

celluloid with the intention of theatrical release in at least one country. (Scottish Screen Data 1998,

Section 3).

Cf. Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland: Tourist Images of Scotland, 1770-1914

(University of Virginia: Dissertation, 1990). In this study, Haldane examines the influence of 18

and 19

century literature and art on the popular (tourist) image of the country and shows how,

under the influence of Romanticism, Scotland became associated with the wild and primitive - an

image that is in part still existent today, although it bares (and bore) little relation to contemporary

Scotland. A similar approach can certainly be applied to the development of Glasgow's image,

although with different contents.

Introduction

At Glasgow's University Library I discovered a book about Scotland on film,

Scotch Reels

Originally, Scotch Reels is the title of a research carried out in 1982 about the

depiction of Scotland on screen. It was revealed then that the predominant image

of Scotland was very much engaged with stereotypes (defined as the "heather and

haggis image"

by one of the book's critics) and had obviously nothing to do with

the contemporary reality of Scotland. Not surprisingly, that radical view has found

a lot of stern critics.

On superficial examination, when I think of all the recent films set in Scotland

(ranging from the historical epos Braveheart to the contemporary fast-paced drug

story Trainspotting, to mention two of the more popular examples), it seems to me

that contemporary films set in Scotland show a wider spectrum of Scottish life

than they apparently did before the 1980s, when the stories were mostly (with a

few exceptions only) set in the Highlands or on an island, in a community far

away from contemporary (modern and industrial) life. As a classic example of

those films one can mention the musical Brigadoon by Vicente Minnelli from the

year 1954.

However, in my thesis I want to concentrate on films set in the City of Glasgow,

since there would be far too much material concerned if I considered every single

available recent film set in Scotland.

Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels. Scotland in cinema and television (London: BFI, 1982).

Hardy Forsyth, Scotland in film (London: BFI, 1990), p.128.

Note: I include a list of films reflecting some aspect of "Scottishness" in my appendix, though,

from 1995 to date. There, not only British or Scottish films are taken into consideration. I cannot

claim completeness of this list, but it should give the interested reader an impression of the range

of films produced.

I would like to find out whether the image of Glasgow has improved (or widened

in its conception) through the release of recent films, compared to its depiction in

older movies.

As I could not analyse all recent feature films set in Glasgow in this context, I

decided to concentrate on a few examples. By taking a closer look at these films I

hope to be able to demonstrate how varied (or one-sided as will be determined)

the contemporary portrayal of the city is.

I do not want to omit mentioning my awareness of the fact that my selection is

very subjective. Had I selected other movies, the result would naturally have been

a different one. Also, I have not taken into account television films or series set in

the Glasgow area. Especially in recent years a whole range of series has been

produced and broadcasted, for instance the surreal hospital-drama Psychos,

starring Douglas Henshall, the controversial Tinsel Town, set in Glasgow's lively

clubbing scene, or Glasgow Kiss, which portrays the city as a modern, airy place,

inhabited by sympathetic, educated middle-class people something the title

might not indicate.

The following films have been chosen for closer examination:

Small Faces (Gilles McKinnon, 1995)

My Name is Joe (Ken Loach, 1998)

Orphans (Peter Mullan, 1998)

Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999)

What I considered of importance for this selection are the facts that I have actually

seen these films on screen at least once, and that they are available on VHS.

Actually, I would have liked to include more recent films set in Glasgow (such as

the digitally shot One Life Stand by May Miles Thomas, 2000; Sweet Sixteen, Ken

Loach, 2002; Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay, 2000), but as most of them are not

available on video (yet) an analysis is made more difficult. Another important

A "Glasgow Kiss" means a headbutt.

point for selection is, naturally, that the story of those films is wholly or at least

partially set in Glasgow.

Looking at the films it becomes obvious that all these productions are British,

some even Scottish. This was not intended, but should not influence my analysis

of Glasgow's recent screen image in any way.

This lack of non-British film-makers' interest in setting their films in Glasgow is

interesting to note, especially because films set in Scotland's rural areas do exist

(mostly in the Highlands or on the Islands; e.g. Braveheart, Mel Gibson, 1995;

Rob Roy, Michael Caton-Jones, 1995; Breaking the Waves, Lars van Trier, 1996).

However, Glasgow has been the backdrop for a range of films, although not

featuring as itself: In House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000), for instance, the

Scottish city doubles as a fin de siècle New York. In some scenes of Aberdeen

(Hans Petter Molland, 2000) as well as Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994),

Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1995) or Regeneration (Gillies Mackinnon, 1997)

Glasgow stands in for Edinburgh.

General facts on the screen-image of Scotland and examples of how films are

interpreted by the Scotch Reels authors are included in my thesis, as they are

important for a basic understanding of the topic.

I hope to have been able to make clear that the topic I have chosen is of interest to

the academic discussion on "Scotland on film". Since the early 1980s no

extensive research has been carried out. However, taking into consideration the

prerequisites of this publication, I have to maintain certain limits and therefore

concentrate on a selection of films.

A broader analysis, taking into account all productions (productions for television

as well as documentaries, feature and short films), would surely be informative.

During recent years there was a discussion going on about the building of a

Scottish film studio. On one hand it was said that such a studio is urgently needed

if Scotland wants to assure a striving film industry, on the other hand it was

argued that money should be put into specific local productions rather than into a

big studio complex that hardly any young Scottish film-maker would be able to

afford. Those arguing against a film studio claimed that such a project would only

be affordable for big non-Scottish film companies, mainly American or also

English ones, who have no interest in carrying out productions in Scotland

anyway, since they have their own, usually better infrastructure available.

I have decided to include a chapter on the Scottish film industry in my thesis,

since this industry is undoubtedly a strong factor in providing certain prerequisites

for (here: Scottish) filmmakers. This is done in the form of an extensive chronicle.

The kind of filmic analysis I am going to do is not based on a specific school. I

have merely worked with general introductions to the topic.

In general I have

used a very personal approach, by trying to confirm and being able to explain my

initial impression by watching the films over and over again.

In selecting the films I have not paid attention to the criterion of representation.

Therefore my results should not be generalised. The result is merely a personal

and subjective one.

The literature I am going to work with is based on four publications: Scotch

Reels

from 1982, although often criticised, is cited as groundbreaking research

on "Scotland and film" in nearly every publication on the topic. Another

influential book was published eight years after Scotch Reels: Eddie Dick's From

Limelight to Satellite

shows already different and more positive points of view

than its predecessor. Also from 1990 is Forsyth Hardy's Scotland in Film

. The

Cf. e.g. Rich Grant, "Lights, cameras, mixed reaction...", The List, Issue 398 (Oct 5-9, 2000),

p. 8.

Knut Hickethier, Film- und Fernsehanalyse, 2

edn (Stuttgart/ Weimar: Metzler, 1996);

Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film, 3rd edn (New York et al: Longman,

1998).

Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels.

Eddie Dick (ed.), From Limelight to Satellite (London: BFI, 1990).

Hardy Forsyth, Scotland in Film.

most recent work on Scotland on screen and the Scottish film industry is

Screening Scotland

by Duncan Petrie, published in 2000. Petrie "examines the

longer and deeper history of Scottish cinema in a more positive light than

previous commentaries"

I want to introduce these publications and the different views or their authors in

my thesis and will also use newspaper-articles and essays from various specialist

periodicals to give an insight into the Scottish situation.

What I do not intend to do here, though, is an in-depth study of the complex field

of the search for a Scottish identity, or a historical survey. My main focus is on an

aesthetic analysis of recent films and their depicted image of Glasgow, then and

now.

Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland (London: BFI, 2000).

Ibid., backcover.

1 Chapter I: The debate on Scottish film and the

representation of Scotland and Glasgow on screen

1.1 Introduction Chapter I: Scotland and Film

I want to start this chapter with a short outline of the general subject of "Scotland

and film".

John Caughie in his encyclopaedia of British and Irish cinema under that heading

writes the following:

(...) The problem is, of course, that like most other small countries (...)

Scotland has had a limited capacity to represent itself in feature films. The

appetite for film was prodigious from the start, and in the 1930s Glasgow

had the largest cinema in Europe Green's Playhouse and more cinema

seats per capita than any other city in Europe. Production, however, was

restricted almost exclusively to documentaries and educational films and

to politically motivated activists and inspired amateurs (...).

His closing sentence on the subject (which as a whole takes up only two pages in

the book) contains the claim that it is "still too early to talk about a Scottish film

industry"

. He wrote this in 1996.

Four years later Brian Pendreigh, journalist of The Guardian, draws an altogether

more positive picture of the Scottish film industry. In his book on the so-called

"Scot Pack"

, which is aimed at an audience interested in celebrities' life stories

rather than in film studies, he enthusiastically speaks of a sudden dominance of

Scottish talent on (international) screen. In his eyes, beginning with the success of

the film Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994), a phase of international recognition

John Caughie, "Scotland and Film", in John Caughie (ed.), The Companion to British and Irish

Cinema (London: BFI, 1996), pp. 144f.

John Caughie, "Scotland and Film", pp. 146f.

Brian Pendreigh, The Scot Pack (Edinburgh/ London: Mainstream Publishing, 2000).

for Scottish actors and actresses such as Angus McFayden

, John Hannah

Dougray Scott

, Ewan McGregor

, Kelly Macdonald

and others began.

In introducing the topic of "the representation of Scotland on screen" I have

chosen a quote by Peter Meech. It is applied to Scotland's popular cinematic

representation:

Tartan and the sound of the bagpipes are probably the most immediately

identifiable cultural symbols of Scotland. Throughout the world, and not

only in areas with high concentrations of emigre Scots, they have long

been accepted without question as a visual and acoustic shorthand for the

imagined (Highland) essence of the country. In Scotland itself, however,

they represent aspects of a cultural phenomenon which for many, in

particular leftwing intellectuals, has been problematic.

This critique on the predominantly stereotyped representation of Scotland on

screen will be discussed in more detail in another chapter. Here I just want to

outline the situation to give a first impression.

Considering that most films show clichés of a romantic Scotland it is maybe not

surprising that "real Scots" have rarely constituted important parts of those

movies at all. Instead, English, American or Australian actors have been playing

Scottish protagonists, mostly with false accents.

E.g. Braveheart, Mel Gibson, 1995; Titus, Julie Taymor, 1999.

E.g. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mike Newell, 1994; Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt, 1998, The

Hurricane, Norman Jewison, 1999.

E.g. Twin Town, Kevin Allen, 1997; Ever After, Andy Tennant, 1997; Mission: Impossible II,

John Woo, 2000.

E.g. Brassed Off, Mark Herman, 1996; Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes, 1998; Star Wars

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, George Lucas, 1999; Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann, 2001.

E.g. Stella Does Tricks, Coky Giedroyc, 1996; Elizabeth, Shekhar Kapur, 1998; Some Voices,

Simon Cellan-Jones, 2000.

Peter Meech, "The lion, the thistle and the saltire: national symbols and corporate identity in

Scottish broadcasting", Screen, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring 1996), p. 72.

Similarly, Scottish actors hardly had any chances to make careers in Scotland, as

they were mainly used for minor, often comic roles. So most of them emigrated

south to the film-centre of London (or to the United States) and denied their roots

and regional accents in order to be able to succeed: "The biggest stars seemed to

play down their Scottishness, for the simple reason that to be seen as Scottish

relegated an actor to character roles."

In an interview in 1997, the Scottish actor Robert Carlyle confirms this, but also

admits that the situation has improved in the past few years:

Scottish actors tend to be quite good at accents because their whole

experience of the media from early childhood is English accents. It's

perhaps more difficult the other way round, for English actors to do Scots

accents. And it's really only been in the past five years that it's been in any

way acceptable to hear a Scottish accent in a lead character.

It is probably also due to Sean Connery, that Scottish vernacular on screen has

been more and more accepted. As Pendreigh points out, the actor's Scottish accent

has become "an integrant part of the Connery screen persona"

. John Millar

elaborates:

He has (...) refused to let his natural soft Scots burr become a hang-up.

When you cast Sean Connery in a movie that's exactly what you get. So

we've seen him, Scots accent and all, as an Arab sheikh in The Wind and

the Lion, a Spaniard in Highlander, an old Irish/ American cop in The

Untouchables, a high-powered Norwegian cop in Ransom, a Saudi

diplomat in The Next Man and the Lithuanian hero of The Hunt For Red

October.

Most of the time, however, so Pendreigh writes, "Scotland supplied the basic

storylines, and it sometimes supplied scenery, and supporting cast, but Hollywood

or London supplied the stars."

Brian Pendreigh, The Scot Pack, p. 27.

Robert Carlyle in an interview by Sally Chatsworth, Sight and Sound (Nov 1997), p. 13.

Brian Pendreigh, The Scot Pack, p. 41.

John Millar, "Sean Connery", in Eddie Dick (ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p.167.

Brian Pendreigh, The Scot Pack, p.24.

Here, once again one can give examples from early film history, such as Annie

Laurie (1918) with silent-film star Lilian Gish, Wee Willie Winkie (1938) with

Shirley Temple, or the often-cited Brigadoon (1954), which starred Gene Kelly

and was shot entirely in a Hollywood-studio. More recent films, such as

Australian Mel Gibson's Braveheart from 1995 (largely shot in Ireland) or Rob

Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995) with Irishman Liam Neeson as protagonist can

be cited as further examples.

It is not only the Hollywood or London film industry which is to blame for the

stereotyped representation of Scotland and the Scots on screen throughout the

history of film: many of the Scottish-based movies themselves do not show any

different kind of images.

Hardy mentions, however, that as late as 1955

Scottish films were still not being made by Scotsmen in Scotland. (...) It

was hardly surprising that the film-makers in Hollywood and elsewhere

had seized, when making Scottish films, on the most easily identifiable

elements in dress, character and background. These were, in the short

term, assets in a visual medium.

And he continues, "if Scots wanted to change the image, or even influence it, they

had to do it themselves."

The cliché-ridden discourses, called "Tartanry" and "Kailyard" in critical

literature, have their roots in 18

century literature and were not first and foremost

apparent on screen. They "entered various forms and artefacts: poems, novels,

operas, paintings, prints, photographs, postcards, shortbread tins and soft

furnishings as well as films and, later, television programmes."

Forsyth Hardy, Scotland in Film, p. 100.

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The iniquity of the fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, pp. 44f.

I will describe Tartanry and Kailyard in more detail later. I wanted to introduce

the terms here already though, since they are of great importance to the subject.

The impact of these discourses on Scottish film is obviously so strong, that an

escape from them seemed (and seems?) nearly impossible. As Colin McArthur in

Scotch Reels claims:

Since there were simply no alternative traditions of representation with

comparable power, the tendency was for any film dealing with Scotland,

or having a Scot as a character, to be pulled strongly towards the armature

of images, characters and stories making up Tartanry and Kailyard.

I have to note here that McArthur's opinion was often criticised as too negative or

even biased in recent publications. Critics accuse McArthur of not having

researched thoroughly (and above all not objectively)

- but the so-called Scotch

Reels debate, mounted in Edinburgh in the year 1982 (followed by the publication

with the same title from which I have taken the above quotes) was so central to

the discussion about "Scotland and film", that it cannot be ignored.

In my first chapter I want to introduce the whole event and its outcome and also

give some examples of critiques of the results. I will not, however, include in it an

in-depth study of the films analysed at Scotch Reels. (For that the reader can

always refer to the publication itself.)

1.2 Scotch Reels Edinburgh 1982

1.2.1 Introduction

Although re-evaluating the outcome of Scotch Reels rather critically in 1990, John

Caughie, himself one of the event's organizers and contributors to the book,

cannot deny the importance of the event:

Ibid., p. 45.

I will introduce these reproaches of "Scotch Reels" in the second part of this chapter.

(...) `Scotch Reels' does seem important as a particular moment at which

the idea of a Scottish cinema began to take on some material force for

many people who had not hitherto been directly involved in its production.

More than that, in the event and the publication, `Scotch Reels' did

articulate a coherent cultural analysis of the representation of Scotland in

film and television. However, preliminary, polemical and `of its time' that

analysis may now seem, it will be difficult for any new analysis to ignore

it.

Also Duncan Petrie in his book Screening Scotland, published in the year 2000, is

still aware of the importance of Scotch Reels and calls it, compared to other

publications on the topic "the most influential critical and cultural analysis"

Apart from one book from the year 1945 on the representation of Scotland on

screen

that I came across during my research, there had not been, according to

McArthur

, a single sustained debate about the topic in Scotland before the

initiation of the three-day discussion event Scotch Reels in 1982, organised within

the Edinburgh International Filmfestival

(Duncan Petrie in this context also

mentions Fifty Years at the Pictures by Charles Oakley

, which mainly concerns

itself with Scottish picture-houses and exhibition, though.

John Caughie, "Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema", in Eddie Dick

(ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p. 14.

Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p. 2.

I.e. Norman Wilson, Presenting Scotland. A film survey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Film Guild, 1

edition January 1945).

Cf. Colin McArthur, "Introduction", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 1.

Note: The organizing group actually consisted of John Caughie, Murray Grigor, Jim Hickey,

Colin McArthur, Gus MacDonald, Tom Nairn and Gillian Skirrow, who are all either Scots or

were living and working in Scotland at that time.

Charles Oakley, Fifty Years at the Pictures (Glasgow: Scottish Film Council, 1946).

Cf. Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p. 2.

This is surprising, considering that Scotland and the Scots had been present on

screen since the very beginnings of filmmaking and Scottish film institutions

already began to develop in the thirties.

1.2.2 Aims

What the participants of the Scotch Reels-debate wanted to discuss was "why

Scottish film culture is so limited in achievement and what can be done about

it"

. As McArthur states in his article in the Scottish periodical Cencrastus, the

cinema audience in 1982 is (was)

(...) of course aware of movies like Brigadoon, The Maggie and Gregory's

Girl; they know names like John Grierson and Bill Forsyth; they may even

have heard of Films of Scotland and recall that one of its films, Seawards

the Great Ships, won the Oscar in the Best Documentary category in 1961;

and it is just possible that they have heard of the Scottish Film Council, the

publicly-funded body responsible for the development of film culture in

Scotland. What is lacking, however, is any general perception of the

relationship of these elements to each other and to Scottish history and

culture as a whole.

So the participants of the event did not limit their discussions to the area of film-

culture, but tried to widen their viewpoint by taking into consideration the general

problems of Scottish history and culture, topics that are for instance also

examined in more detail by Tom Nairn in The Break-up of Britain

With the event and the following publication, a collection of essays, McArthur

hoped to "help Scottish film workers to take stock of their situation, to question

where they have come from and to clarify the directions they wish to go in"

. He

Colin McArthur, "Introduction", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 1.

Ibid.

ColinMcArthur, "Scotland: The reel image. `Scotch Reels' and After", Cencrastus. Scottish and

International Literature, Arts and Affairs, No. 11 (New Year 1983), p. 2.

Cf. Tom Nairn, "Old and New Scottish Nationalism", in Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain.

Crisis and neo-nationalism (London: Verso, 1981), pp. 126-195.

Colin McArthur, "Introduction", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 5.

stresses, though, that he not only wants to address Scottish film-makers, but all

others who are in some way involved in local film-culture, like film festival-staff,

teachers, journalists writing about film, or politicians.

However, McArthur was often criticised consequently for not suggesting actual

alternatives to the current situation.

1.2.3 Results

Summing up the results of Scotch Reels, Scott L. Malcomson lists the following

points:

Broadly, the Scotch Reels event sought to establish (1) that filmic

representations of Scotland had generally fallen into two "frozen

discourses" labelled Tartanry and Kailyard; (2) that these discourses have

perpetuated a representation of Scotland as politically and culturally

irrelevant; (3) that a debate is needed to discover how these discourses

might be overcome by progressive (Left) modes of cinematic

representation.

McArthur in his summary of the event states

that the discourses within which Scotland and the Scots have been

represented in films have been wholly inadequate for dealing with the

historical and contemporary reality of Scotland. Some of these filmic

discourses (...) Scots film-makers have been powerless to oppose, since

they were deployed within production structures fashioned outside

Scotland. Nevertheless, they had a pernicious two-fold effect. On the one

hand, they defined the cinematic terrain within which several generations

of Scots actors could function, setting a limited range of roles and

foregrounding particular modes of acting. (...) The second pernicious

effect of the dominance of Tartanry/ Kailyard is that, when indigenous

Scots film-makers came to make their own films, these powerful existing

traditions of representation beckoned them Circe-like and lured more than

a few onto the rocks.

Scott M. Malcomson, "Modernism Comes to the Cabbage Patch. Bill Forsyth and the `Scottish

Cinema'", Film Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring 1985), p. 16.

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, p. 66.

However, McArthur does not want to blame individual Scottish filmmakers for

their disability to withstand those questionable traditions; he rather allocates these

failures to institutions, which in his eyes were simply not able to provide the

circumstances needed:

Put epigrammatically, institutions like the Scottish Film Council, the

Scottish Federation of Film Societies, Films of Scotland and, more

recently, the Scottish Arts Council, have failed to keep a historic

appointment with the discourses of marxism and modernism, the

conjunction which has dynamized analogous institutions in other cultures.

The single Scottish institution which to any degree has made this

engagement, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, is the only one

with any reputation in international film culture.

I will include in my thesis a separate chapter on the Scottish film industry, in

which the above mentioned institutions as well as others are portrayed.

In retrospect, McArthur mentions two more points of criticism. Firstly he

denounces the stereotypical representation of women within Scottish life and

history on screen, the lack of any critical reflection in contemporary film-culture's

discussion on women's experiences and the dearth of women in the Scottish film-

business in general. Secondly he attacks the limited conception of contemporary

politics in the discourse of the so-called "Clydesidism"

I will discuss

Clydesidism in more detail later, but will not delve in feministic approaches to the

topic here.

In order to close that chapter with a more positive comment on the dilemma of

Scotland's screen personage, I want to cite a quote by Forsyth Hardy from 1990:

Ibid., p. 67.

For an explanation of the term "Clydesidism" please see Chapter One.

Colin McArthur, ,,Scotland: The reel image. `Scotch Reels' and After ", Cencrastus. Scottish

and International Literature, Arts and Affairs, No. 11 (New Year 1983), pp. 2f; and Colin

McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch

Reels, pp. 67ff; note: Petrie in Screening Scotland (2000) already comments much more positive

on women's involvement in Scottish film business.

There was a time when the easiest way to establish Scottishness was to

employ the familiar symbols: the kilt, the bagpipe, heather, whisky,

haggis, Highland cattle and the thatched cottage by the lochside. That time

has passed, although there are still film-makers overseas who have

recourse to these symbols when they want to identify Scotland.

Nine years later, Philip Kemp takes an even more positive stock of the situation:

Trainspotting was defiantly Scottish. (...) Tartanry is in retreat, or

banished to the Hollywoodisms of Braveheart or Loch Ness: east of the

Atlantic at least, on-screen Scotland has become a country in its own right,

not a tourist construct.

A list of material screened round the Scotch Reels event (which included features,

documentaries and TV-material) can be found in the New Year 1983 issue of the

Scottish periodical Cencrastus

1.2.3.1 Tartanry and Kailyard

1.2.3.1.1 Introduction

The representation of Scotland on film is a much-discussed topic and various

authors have expressed many different points of view.

John Brown in Sight and Sound (1983/84) explains

(...) that cinema audiences in Scotland are not at all accustomed to seeing

Scottish movies. The result (...) is that a complex set of presumptions,

suspicions and indeed fears comes into play as soon as the audience is

presented with itself on the screen. (...) but the problems are thornier than

a worried scepticism about the quality of home-made movies. At root, they

connect with the needle-sharp Scots sense of national identity and image,

and with the way these have been traditionally mediated for Scots

themselves as well as for the wider world by cinema.

Forsyth Hardy, Scotland in film, p. 211.

Philip Kemp, "New Maps of Albion", Film Comment, Vol. 35, No. 3 (May/ Jun 1999), p. 64.

Cf. Colin McArthur, ,,Scotland: the reel image. `Scotch Reels' and After ", Cencrastus. Scottish

and International Literature, Arts and Affairs, No. 11 (New Year 1983), p. 2.

John Brown, "Land Beyond Brigadoon", Sight and Sound (Winter 1983/84), p. 41.

He further explains that there are three films that are often mentioned as

emblematic examples in this context - Brigadoon by Vincente Minnelli (1954)

and Alexander Mackendrick's two Ealing comedies, Whisky Galore! (1949) and

The Maggie (1953):

(...) the way they represent the Scots (...) has long been the subject of

bitter attack (...). (...) First, there is a profound distaste for what might be

called the infrastructure of these films: for the way the Scots are insistently

portrayed as quaint and old-fashioned, comically innocent or comically

cunning, and for the way the country is characterised as no more than a

natural paradise for romanticised mountain, loch and glen. This is made

worse by the consistent thematic use of `Scotland' as being superior to the

real modern world, sophisticated and industrialised, by which the natural

paradise is blessedly untouched (...). The second level of the attack

follows on from this and focuses on the base or substructure, as it were, for

it takes the form of a political revulsion against the cultural/ industrial

institutions themselves (Hollywood, i.e. the commercial cinema) which by

their very mode of operation create such images of Scotland and then

impose them on the international consciousness to the exclusion of other,

more authentic images. The charge is therefore essentially one of wilful

misrepresentation.

The points of critique Brown mentions here can be summarized under the terms of

"Tartanry" and "Kailyard". Both ways of depicting Scotland stem from 18

century literature and are not limited to the realms of film.

Scotch Reels constructs a detailed analysis of the continuities of these

tropes [Tartanry and Kailyard] from nineteenth-century literature and

painting to cinema and television and various other forms of popular

cultural transmission: postcards, whisky bottles, shortbread tins, tea towels

and popular songs.

Ibid.

Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p.2.

1.2.3.1.2 Historical connections

Historically, the myth of Tartanry can first and foremost be connected with the

battle of Culloden, which ended in 1746.

After the Jacobite rebellion, led by

"Bonnie Prince Charlie",

London was determined to subdue and control the North. The government

ensured the effective end of Jacobitism with mass transportations,

executions, and measures designed to extinguish the distinct aspects of

Highland life. Highlanders were forbidden to carry arms, and the kilt,

tartan, and the bagpipes were outlawed.

In 1707 the Act of Union had united Scotland and England. Although this

merging bore many economic advantages for Scotland, it put an end to her

political autonomy.

The long-term result of the measures taken after 1746 was that typical Highland

traditions, previously often judged as primitive (in a negative sense), started to

become attractive again and were then seen as unique and distinctive symbols for

Scotland.

In that context, the example of the history of tartan is often mentioned. McCrone,

Morris and Kiely draw attention to the fact, that the tartan, as it is sold in tourist

shops throughout the country today, had never existed like this before: "There

was little evidence of a systematic association between family names/ clans and

specific designs such as appear in the sales catalogues of tartan manufacturers of

today."

On the contrary, "Tartan was `made' for the modern world in the

relatively short time between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century."

Cf. John Caughie, "Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema", in Eddie Dick

(ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p. 15; or Scott L. Malcomson, "Modernism comes to the

cabbage patch. Bill Forsyth and the `Scottish Cinema'", Film Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring

1985), p. 16

Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland, p. 3.

Cf. ibid., p. 2.

Cf. ibid., p. 4.

David McCrone/ Angela Morris/ Richard Kiely, Scotland the Brand. The making of Scottish

Heritage (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), p. 51.

When the restrictions of wearing kilts were lifted in 1782, this was the result of

"political pressure from a group of rich and influential `chieftains' living in

London who were becoming conscious of the interest in the Gael, as were

Scotland's élite generally."

By the repeal of these restrictions "the peasants had

got used to wearing trousers and did not return to the kilt. But the middle and

upper classes took up trews, plaids, and kilts."

It was at this time, that Scottish nationalism grew strong again, as it gained a

focus: Romanticism, with its particular liking for the wild and primitive, was

fostered by literature and art, and resulted in a romantic and somewhat backward

image of Scotland which is in parts still prevalent today.

Hence, apparently

distinct Highland symbols, such as the kilt in its contemporary appearance, "came

to signify the mystery of primitive society and consequently what had been lost

since 1746 or had never been known was simply invented."

After the battle at Culloden, tartan was restricted to army uniforms: "(...) both kilt

and tartan were appropriated by the British state to kit out its erstwhile enemies

while in its military employ."

New tartans were invented subsequently:

This proved to be a master-stroke by the British state in literally stealing

its enemy's clothes, and helped to incorporate tartanry into an élite rather

than a rebel form of dress. By the late nineteenth century, the myth of

tartan had been made.

Kailyardism

, as we will see later, was originally a literary movement whith its

heyday at the end of the 19

and beginning of the 20

century. At the centre of

such Kailyard-novels the minister of a small parish often figures. This stress on

Ibid.

Jeffrey Richards, Films and British National Identity (Manchester/ New York: Manchester

University Press, 1998), p. 183.

Cf. Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland, p. 4.

David McCrone/ Angela Morris/ Richard Kiely, Scotland the Brand, p. 51.

Ibid., p. 52.

Ibid.

Note: "Kailyard" is a Scots word which literally means "cabbage patch".

religion can be linked to the Great Disruption of the Church of Scotland (1843).

At that time, over 400 "(...) ministers seceded from the Church of Scotland to

form the Free Church, so that for the rest of the century internecine struggle

raged within Scottish churches."

The break "involving issues of local

democracy, moral authority and social welfare (...) left traces within the stable

communities of the small townships well into the twentieth century."

1.2.3.1.3 Literary connections

Cairns Craig is one of the authors who contributed to the Scotch Reels-

publication. In his essay he gives examples for Tartanry and Kailyard myths in

century Scottish literature.

I found these examples very useful for a basic

understanding of the discourses, and that is why I also want to include them in my

thesis.

The Tartanry-discourse has its roots in the works of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

as well as in the idea of a Romantic Scotland. As mentioned above, the Jacobite

Rebellion of 1745 (with the battle at Culloden) is central to the idea of Tartanry.

Duncan Petrie indicates that this insurrection produced "the idea of the romantic

and noble Highlander"

, and McArthur mentions that by the late 18

century

Scotland was seen as "the Romantic domain par excellence"

To illustrate what the Romantic literary vision of Tartanry was like, Craig uses a

quotation from Scott's most popular novel, "Waverley" (1814):

(...) A short turning in the path (...) suddenly placed Waverley in front of

a romantic waterfall (...) After a broken cataract of about twenty feet, the

stream was received in a large natural basin filled to brim with water,

Jeffrey Richards, Films and British National Identity, p. 184.

John Caughie, "Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema", in Eddie Dick

(ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p.15.

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19

-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, pp. 7-15.

Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p. 3.

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, p. 41.

which, when the bubbles of the fall subsided, was so exquisitely clear that,

although it was of great depth, the eye could discern each pebble at the

bottom. Eddying round this reservoir, the brook found its way over a

broken part of the ledge, and formed a second fall, which seemed to seek

the very abyss (...) The borders of this romantic reservoir corresponded in

beauty; but it was beauty of a stern and commanding cast, as if in the act

of expanding into grandeur (...)

Here, like one of those lovely forms which decorate the landscapes of

Poussin, Waverley found Flora gazing on the waterfall. Two paces further

back stood Cathleen, holding a small Scottish harp (...) The sun, now

stooping in the west, gave a rich and varied tinge to all the objects which

surrounded Waverley, and seemed to add more than human brilliancy to

the full expressive darkness of Flora's eye, exalted the richness and purity

of her complexion, and enhanced the dignity and grace of her beautiful

form. Edward thought he had never, even in his wildest dreams, imagined

a figure of such exquisite and interesting loveliness.

According to Craig, Flora is "the archetype of Romantic Scotland, a world that

has not been demeaned by modern civilisation and is still in touch with the

nobility we associate with classical antiquity"

As a contrast, he gives an example from J.M.Barrie's "Auld Licht Idylls" from the

year 1888 ("auld licht" stands for the doctrine of Scottish Calvinism, which

Barrie's protagonists are still devoted to):

When they had red up the house, the Auld Licht lassies sat in the gloaming

at their doors on three-legged stools, patiently knitting stockings. To them

came stiff-limbed youths who, with a `Blawy nicht, Jeanie' (to which the

inevitable answer was, `It is so, Cha-arles'), rested their shoulders on the

doorpost, and silently followed with their eyes the flashing needles. Thus

the courtship began often to ripen promptly into marriage, at other times

to go no further. The smooth-haired maids, neat in their simple wrappers,

knew they were on trial and that it behoved them to be wary. They had not

compassed twenty winters without knowing that (...) Finny's grieve turned

from Bell Whamond on account of some frivolous flowers in her bonnet

(...) Some night Bell would have `seen him to the door', and they would

Sir Walter Scott, Waverley (1814), chapter XXII; quoted by Cairns Craig, "Myths Against

History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19

-Century Scottish Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, pp. 7f.

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19

-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 8.

have stared sheepishly at each other before saying goodnight. The parting

salutation given, the grieve would have stood his round, and Bell would

have waited with him. At last, `Will ye hae's, Bell?' would have dropped

from his half-reluctant lips; and Bell would have mumbled `Aye' with her

thumb in her mouth (...) The only really tender thing I ever heard an Auld

Licht lover say to his sweetheart was when Gowrie's brother looked into

Easie Tamson's eyes and whispered, `Do you swite (sweat)?' Even the

effect was produced more by the loving cast in Gowrie's eye than by the

tenderness of the words themselves.

Here, Barrie is describing "a world of grotesquely impoverished human

potential"

. Tom Nairn very clearly describes Kailyard in the following manner:

Kailyardism was the definition of Scotland as consisting wholly of small

towns full of small-town `characters' given to bucolic intrigue and wise

sayings. At first the central figures were usually Ministers of the Kirk (as

were most of the authors) but later on schoolteachers and doctors got into

the act. Their housekeepers always have a shrewd insight into human

nature. Offspring who leave for the big city frequently come to grief, and

are glad to get home again (peching and hoasting to hide their feelings). In

their different ways village cretins and ne'er-do-wells reinforce the

essentially healthy Weltanschauung of the place.

What Tartanry and Kailyard, which the Scottish director Bill Forsyth calls "the

gaping trap that awaits every Scottish film-maker"

have in common, is the

denial of any examination of the realities of the modern world

- or as Craig

elaborates:

Tartanry and Kailyard, seemingly so opposite in their ethos, are the joint

creations of an imagination which, in recoil from the apparently featureless

J.M.Barrie, Auld Licht Idylls (1888), chapter IV; quoted by Cairns Craig, "Myths Against

History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19

-Century Scottish Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, pp. 7f.

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19

-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 8.

Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain, 2

expanded edn, (London: Verso, 1981), p. 158; also

quoted by Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p. 3.

Bill Forsyth, "Comfort and Joy. Glasgow locations for a serious comedy", Sight and Sound

(Spring 1984), p.85.

Cf. Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland, p. 3.

integration of Scottish life into an industrial culture whose power and

whose identity lies outside Scottish control, acknowledges its own inability

to lay hold of contemporary reality by projecting itself upon images of a

society equally impotent before the forces of history.

In Barrie's novels, a rather condescending view of Scotland is expressed.

Kailyard's humour

is based almost entirely on convincing the reader that he/she and the author

share a sophisticated sense of the world, and that the characters whose

lives they look down upon are backward, parochial, narrow-minded and

utterly incapable of becoming conscious of the values by which they are

being found comic.

This stems from the fact that Barrie, although born in Scotland, did not see

himself as a part of Scotland anymore (like so many other members of the

Scottish cultural elite at that time), but rather strived to be part of a sophisticated

English society. So, in his works he "is not expressing the values of the Auld

Lichts, but using them as a reinforcement of the presumed values he shares with

the literary culture he aspires to join."

Although one might get the impression upon first examination, Scott actually did

not subscribe to Romanticism either. In fact, for him "the world of Jacobites [the

time-period he chose to write about] is a world as false to the true needs of

civilisation as Barrie's Auld Lichts are to the true needs of culture."

What Haldane determines as the dominant element in Scott's literary works, is

"the theme of a romantic, almost spellbinding past in opposition to the

established, practical present"

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19th-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 13.

Ibid., p. 8.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid.

Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland, p. 115.

His stories often centre on relations between a romantic adventurer and a modern

hero, who is very much intrigued by the past. "Although Scott sees the

adventurers as dangerous, reckless characters who have no place in the real life

of the hero, he is also intrigued by them and invests in them romance and

magnetism."

Subsequently, the author's image of his country was less progressive than he

intended it to be, as "his depictions of the glories of former days were so

captivating that the impression they made was stronger than Scott's renunciation

of them."

The problem with the establishment of such a backward and unprogressive myth

is, according to Craig - and this is also the point of view of the other Scotch Reels

authors (who all sympathise with the Left) - the fact that those, who could have

worked against such discourses, namely members of the educated middle class,

were not fulfilling their responsibilities in building up a national identity, but

assimilating to English culture instead. The question remains open, however, as to

whether the problem is not too complex for such a relatively "easy" solution.

Craig elaborates, that whereas these literary works, on one hand, provide a kind of

confirmation for middle-class Scotland that they were right in turning their backs

on their country and its back-minded culture, on the other hand they provide a

means of identification for the working-class:

(...) it is important to recognise that Kailyard's success is not just the

exploitation of Scottish lower-class life by exiled Scots for a public largely

made up of exiles who want to remember, nostalgically, the land they have

left behind but also want to be convinced that they were right to leave it

behind. Kailyard also gave expression to the only class in Scotland which

still felt itself to have, or to be burdened with, a separate identity the

working class.

Ibid., p. 116.

Ibid., p. 118.

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19th-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 11.

Apparently, these fictional works do not contain a critical view at the

contemporary situation with its religious or political conflicts,

because such conflict would have brought into focus the tension between

the different meanings different groups of readers would ascribe to

Kailyard authentic expression of lower-class life or parodic justification

of a middle class's assimilation to a higher culture.

Additionally, it is interesting to note that J.M.Barrie was also the author of Peter

Pan. The boy who never grows up escapes to a world similar to the Kailyard one,

and finds himself unable to deal with the issues of a modern world.

Another literary influence on the myth were the Ossianic poems. Published in

1761 by James MacPherson and translated into ten languages, they had a big

impact all over Western Europe and hugely contributed to the construction of a

romantic Scottish identity. Haldane about the impact of the poems: "Suddenly the

Highlanders were seen not as savages but as a Kulturvolk, capable of producing,

at a time when the English were still barbarians, an epic poet equal, if not

superior to Homer."

Richards and other scholars blame MacPherson for having created "an entirely

fictitious history and culture of Celtic Scotland"

. He argues that the Celts as a

people never existed and that the concept of a distinct Highland culture was an

invention of the 18

and 19

centuries, in order to construct a national identity of

the peripheries:

Ibid., p. 12.

Cf. ibid., p. 14.

Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland, p. 108.

Jeffrey Richards, Films and British National Identity. From Dickens to Dad's Army, p. 182.

Note: This concept is also elaborated by Malcolm Chapman, The Gaelic Vision in Scottish

Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978); Hugh Trevor-Roper in "The

Invention of Tradition: the Highland tradition of Scotland", in Eric Hobsbawn/ Terence Ranger

(eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 15-41;

Charles Withers in "The Historical Creation of the Scottish Highlands", in Ian Donnachie/

Christopher Whatley (eds.), The Manufacture of Scottish History (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1992), pp.

The entire cycle of Scottish ballads which he [MacPherson] ascribed to an

ancient bard Ossian were in fact Irish stories simply taken over and

relocated in Scotland. Reverend John MacPherson then wrote a critical

dissertation proving the existence of Celtic Highland history and culture

based on this forgery. It had the effect of claiming that Celtic Scotland was

the `mother nation' and Ireland its cultural dependency whereas it was in

truth the other way round.

As Craig shows, the consequences of such Tartanry/ Kailyard-dominated

discourses are not to be underestimated:

What Kailyard did was to turn the language of Lowland Scots into a

medium necessarily identified with a couthy, domestic, sentimental world.

After Kailyard it becomes impossible to give expression to a vernacular

working-class environment in Scotland without provoking those

connotations.

He goes even further and suggests that

(...) the problem that these mythic structures have left to twentieth-century

Scottish art is that there are no tools which the artist can inherit from the

past which are not tainted, warped, blunted by the uses to which they have

been put. The speech of Lowland Scotland, the landscape of the Highlands

have become clichés which need to acquire a new historical significance

before they can be released into the onward flow of the present from the

frozen worlds of their myths of historical irrelevance. And what that

historical significance needs, of course, if it is to come into being, is a sense

of the nation's particular and individual development, both past and future.

143-156; or Malcolm Chapman, The Celts: The Construction of a Myth, 4

edn (Basingstroke:

Macmillan, 1996).

Jeffrey Richards, Films and British National Identity, p. 182.

Cairns Craig, "Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19th-Century Scottish

Literature", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, p. 11.

Ibid., p. 14.

1.2.3.1.4 Pictorial connections

Murray Grigor's contribution to the Scotch Reels book is a photo-essay, which

shows the influence of traditional paintings on the representation of Scotland on

cinema.

Edwin Landseer (1802-1873), a popular painter of Scottish scenery, and a

personal friend of Sir Walter Scott, is probably best known for his painting The

Monarch of the Glen (1851), which depicts a majestic stag in typical Highland

scenery - a metaphor for the powerful forces of nature.

As Haldane points out in her study on tourist images of Scotland, visual images of

the country often went hand in hand with the backward image conveyed by

literature at the same time.

100

Often, artists served as illustrators for novels. The

first depictions of Scotland's landscape on canvas were made in the 18

century.

Those paintings always stressed the picturesque qualities of the country. The

Highlands and Islands were favourite sites for artists, professionals and amateurs

alike, and obviously especially suitable for the Romantic art at the turn of the 18

to the 19

century.

In Romantic paintings, showing the mood of the depicted scene was often more

important than an accurate image of the landscape: not the actual physical scene,

but rather the atmosphere, either very green and pleasant or mysteriously gloomy,

was shown.

This sometimes meant, that exaggerations were necessary: mountains were

depicted higher than they really are, dramatic cloudbanks added to the gloomy

mood. Human features like houses, on the other hand, were small, which made the

scenes even more impressive.

Paintings were then widely known and very popular, as they were printed in many

tourist guidebooks. Also national newspapers regularly printed Highland-pictures.

As tourism increased at the turn of the century, the Highlands, which had come to

Murray Grigor, "From Scott-land to Disneyland", in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels, pp.

17-39.

100

Cf. Katherine Jean Haldane, Imagining Scotland, pp. 159-192.

stand for all of Scotland, were considered the ideal Romantic destination. Not

only were they easily reachable within the newly developed railway system, but

they were also quite cheap as a destination. Tourists, English as well as Scots,

often went in search of the picturesque spots they knew from paintings (or

novels). Haldane stresses that they were seldom disappointed by reality, as they

tended to see what they expected to.

101

One has to keep in mind that, as the beginning 19

century was a time of rapid

change, people were looking for a place seemingly untouched by the industrial

revolution. Of course, reality was different - with the Clyde-region being the

prototype of an industrial area with modern problems such as congestion,

dependence on the industry or diseases - but the romantic image of Scotland was

so widely known and accepted at that time, that people just seemed to ignore

those signs of modernity.

Interestingly, the vision of Scotland as "a simple rural haven, unchanging and

timeless"

102

lasted for years, although modernity had already moved into

Scotland. Haldane: "Only in the early twentieth century did artists, such as

Muirhead Bone, begin to depict Scottish urbanization and industrialization."

103

1.2.3.1.5 Cinematic connections

Interestingly, many films dealing with Scotland boil down to the same kind of

storyline: it often revolves around an intrusion from the (modern, industrialised)

outside world into a small Highland or Island community.

104

Mostly, those

intrusions are unsuccessful and Scotland "(shows) the world (...) that whatever

historical processes might be doing to Scotland, it was still (...) `the best wee

nation ever God put breath in'."

105

101

Cf. ibid., p. 186.

102

Ibid., p. 178.

103

Ibid., p. 188.

104

Cf. e.g. Cairns Craig, "Visitors From the Stars", Cencrastus, No. 11 (New Year 1983), pp. 6-11.

105

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, p. 48.

Examples for such films are for instance The Maggie (Alexander Mackendrick,

1953), in which a Glaswegian puffer crew outwits an American businessman,

Trouble in the Glen (Herbert Wilcox, 1954), in which an Argentine creates ill

feeling in a Scottish rural community, Rockets Galore (Michael Relph, 1958), in

which Hebridean islanders resist a rocket base intrusion, or, as a more

contemporary example, Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983), in which an American

oil executive who is sent to a coastal village in order to buy up land is faced with

various difficulties.

106

The most noteworthy contribution in the Scotch Reels publication is undeniably

McArthur's chapter on "Scotland and Cinema"

107

. The author traces the depiction

of Scotland from the Silent Cinema era onwards. He remarks that "a concern (...)

with popular sentimental forms is evident right from the beginnings of cinema"

108

Later versions of Kailyard-films have put stress on comic aspects, rather than

sentimental contents.

109

McArthur especially emphasizes a range of films being made in the 1940s and

1950s, which for him "constitute the definite modern statements of Tartanry and

Kailyard in the cinema"

110

. With those films, including the Gainsborough pictures

106

For all these films and their production details please see: Janet McBain, "Scotland in Feature

Film: a Filmography", in Eddie Dick (ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, pp. 233-253.

107

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, pp. 40-69.

108

Ibid., p. 42.

109

Note: Here, Stan Laurel's and Oliver Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (James W. Horne, 1935) comes

to mind, for instance.

Stan Laurel was born in Lancashire as Arthur Stanley Jefferson. He made his debut on the

miniature stage of Pickard's Museum, Glasgow Trongate. His father, himself actor, playwright and

producer, had wanted him to become a theatre manager like himself, but soon recognised his son's

comical talent. (Cf. Allen Foster, The Movie Traveller. A Film Fan's Travel Guide to the UK and

Ireland (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2000), p. 229.)

110

Colin McArthur, "Scotland and Cinema: The Iniquity of the Fathers", in Colin McArthur (ed.),

Scotch Reels, p. 45.

The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945) or The Man in Grey (Leslie Arliss, 1943),

the British succeeded in penetrating the American market. The popularity of such

films then led to the making of films such as Bonnie Prince Charlie (Anthony

Kimmins, 1948), the Disney production Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue (Harold

French, 1953) and last but not least the American film Brigadoon from 1954

(Vincente Minnelli).

The latter productions all inhabit the already mentioned detestation of modernity,

which for McArthur lacks any examination of contemporary politics: "With a

nod, a wink and a dram the Scots once more triumph at the level of the

imagination while in the real world their country gets pulled out from under

them."

111

The author then continues to examine a range of seemingly more radical films,

which in his view also fail in the end to challenge any political contents. (Please

see the next chapter on "Clydesidism" for more information.)

1.2.3.2 Clydesidism/ The image of the city

1.2.3.2.1 Introduction

Clydesidism concerns itself with the depiction of the City of Glasgow and its

working-class. There are numerous novels, plays and films centred on the

shipping industry on the Clyde, which from the late 19

century was the most

important factor of British industrial labour.

What mostly is forgotten is the fact that the discourse of Clydesidism, although in

its contents very different to Tartanry and Kailyard, became just another

mythology. As John Caughie puts it:

`Clydesidism' is the mythology of the Scottish twentieth century, the

discourse which seems currently most potent, and not yet universally

acknowledged as mythology. The gritty hardness of urban life parades itself

as an antidote in the real world of today to all those legends of tartanry and

111

Ibid., p. 51.

couthy tales of kailyard. It turns out, nevertheless, in most of its available

forms, to be just another mythology: a modernised myth of male industrial

labour, with its appurtenances of labour, pub and football field alive and in

place, surfacing, for example, in the celebration of a `real Glasgow' beneath

the yuppie surface of shopping malls and Garden Festival and City of

Culture.

112

An interesting shift occurs when (e.g. the shipping or steel) industry does not

predominate the city's appearance as in earlier days: masculinity cannot identify

itself with labour anymore, and in order to oppose itself to the feminine domain of

consumption (the "New Glasgow"

113

of shopping-malls and wine bars), shifts into

another image, the image of "the `hard man' for whom anguish, cynicism and

violence are the only ways to recover the lost dignity of labour"

114

1.2.3.2.2 Historical connections

115

At the end of the 19

and beginning of the 20

century Glasgow was known as

the shipbuilding capital of the world. In the 1850s and 1860s as much as seventy

per cent of total UK iron tonnage was produced at the Clyde

116

, and in 1913, after

a downswing in the 1880s, more than one third was launched at the Clyde (which

is more than one fifth of the world tonnage produced at this time).

117

A great share

of Glasgow's companies was either directly or indirectly dependent on the

shipbuilding trade and its fluctuations.

118

112

John Caughie, "Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema", in Eddie Dick

(ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p.16.

113

The so called "New Glasgow" was promoted in the late 1980s with a powerful campaign, based

on the slogan "Glasgow Smiles Better".

114

John Caughie, "Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema", in Eddie Dick

(ed.), From Limelight to Satellite, p.16. Please see Chapter Two for more information on the

"Hard Man" type.

115

Please find more information on Glasgow's history in Chapter Two.

116

Cf. Irene Maver, Glasgow (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 116.

117

Cf. Glasgow Herald (Dec 23, 1913); quoted by Irene Maver, Glasgow, pp. 117f.

118

Cf. Irene Maver, Glasgow, p. 139.

But strangely, as Petrie points out, despite being the most urbanised country in the

world (after England) as early as 1911, Scotland's dominant cinematic projection

still contained its rural areas.

119

1.2.3.2.3 Literary connections

The dominant narrative of Glasgow, with its "darkness, poverty, drunkenness,

sectarianism and male violence"

120

can be traced back to the end of the 19

century, when reports on public health and housing conditions increased. Before

that time, articles about the city were much more positive, often stressing the

quality of its air and comparing it to Oxford.

121

McArthur also traces the roots of Clydesidism back to a range of fiction on similar

topics.

122

No Mean City from the mid-1930s by A. McArthur and H. Kingsley

Long, about a dark and dirty Glasgow and its razor-gang wars can be cited as the

Details

Seiten
Erscheinungsform: Originalausgabe
Erscheinungsjahr: 2002
ISBN (eBook): 9783832461201
ISBN (Paperback): 9783838661209
DOI: 10.3239/9783832461201
Dateigröße: 844 KB
Sprache: Englisch
Institution / Hochschule: Universität Wien – Human- und Sozialwissenschaften, Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft
Erscheinungsdatum: 2002 (November)
Note: 1,0
Schlagworte: image klischees mythos nostalgie vorurteile
Produktsicherheit: Diplom.de

Autor

Sandra-Elisabeth Haider (Autor:in)