Postmodern Culchies. University Observer 1998

From 1998, mirrored here and I think more than a little prophetic. the ag way is the only way Only the most blinkered Hot Press subscriber who still believes that they're radically redefining Irish society by not going to Mass of a Sunday can fail to see that the old jackeen/culchie divide, characterised in the past as thrusting, hip modern Young Ireland versus backward, unhip Old Ireland, has disappeared. If it ever really existed in the first place. Instead today we have a new class of culchies or boggers or "country folk" or whatever animalistic metaphor you prefer yourself who are as well-informed, as well-dressed, as articulate and as capable as anyone from within the Pale (this won't sound like a Public Service anti-discrimination ad for much longer) Like the cocky young buck I am, I have tarred this apparently new class with the epithet Postmodern Culchies, and they are everywhere you go; on the streets, in the bars, biding their time. They are the nation underground, under-represented in the media (including the national media) but their time will come; blessed are the young men and women of from Tipp and Clare and Laois and Longford for theirs is the Kingdom of Dublin. Postmodernism is the most fertile source of academic waffle since Aristotle; it has given a grateful world such completely incomprehensible and basically useless concepts as "deconstruction", "intertextuality" and indeed "postmodernism" itself. For self-styled cultural commentators bankrupt of particularly original ideas (like, eh, me) postmodern is a handy label to attach to anything in order to create the impression that one is saying something really radical. All this is helped by the fact that essentially no-one understands what postmodernism means, and therefore anything remotely contemporary can be tagged "postmodern." The Simpsons is "a postmodern look at family values and late Twentieth Century culture." Titanic is "a postmodern revival of the romantic Hollywood epic." Tony Blair and New Labour are "a postmodern approach to politics after the death of ideology" Adrian Langan is "a postmodern approach to the death of Radical Student Politics" The only coherent link of the varying uses of "postmodern" in what could be termed the pretentious press (as opposed to the popular press) is as a term meaning both new and old, opposed to "modern" because of the conviction that nothing really meaningful can be said about our times. Postmodern Culchies is a perfect term because the essential meaningless of the word "postmodern" as commonly used suits the fact that the Culchies were always dead cool. But why "post" modern? That other cliché, the Information Revolution, means that new fashions and new styles in popular culture can reach every part of the Western World (for want of a better term) Now Clonlara in the County of Clare can be as "with it" as California. This of course means that in many respects we are becoming increasingly homogenised, cultural colonies of the USA or part of some beige EuroCulture. But there's a flipside to that coin as de Niro said to Pacino in Heat. The Postmodern Culchie may have all Radiohead's albums and be perfectly MTV- (il)literate, but they have a strong culture of their own. The GAA, for example, has become increasingly wise to the value of media exposure. 1996 and 1997 were the years when Gaelic Football and (especially) hurling became, especially in counties like Wexford and Clare, "trendy" to use a rather 80s term. Yes, hurling has followed comedy and landscape gardening and become another media cliché, "the new rock'n'roll." With its blend of a very traditional ethos and a very professional ethos; widespread corporate sponsorship, the ambitious new Croke Park (that favourite target for whingers everywhere) and the roots in a few lads kicking an auld ball around a field, the GAA could really be termed postmodern. No longer is the GAA a kind of social embarrassment; the new stadium and the new support reflect a newfound confidence and maturity. Irish Dancing and Traditional Music have never been healthier. Or is it really so newfound? The GAA was right from the start a very self-confident organisation (quite possibly too much so) Indeed all this "new confidence" allegedly brought to us by that other Great Cliché, the C***** T**** has always been there. (By the way, please please please SHOOT anyone who ever uses the phrase C***** T**** again, or what's worse extensions of the metaphor, involving cubs and stripes and the like) Only the ageing Mullahs of Hot Press, the likes of unreconstructed Dub bigot George Byrne, can still cling to the cultural assumptions of the not too distant past. So who exactly can be a Postmodern Culchie? Let me give you an example. I was born and educated in South County Dublin. I am a Postmodern Culchie. How postmodern can you get? Like Texas, it is more a state of mind than anything else; a self-confidence in who you are that transcends fickle fashion and the residual snobbery of D4 types. The one thing that Trinity College needs is a Faculty of Agricultural Science; there we could see fine upstanding examples of Irish manhood and fine portions of Gaelic womanhood display Postmodern Culchiehood in all its glory. In the Science Block in UCD I once saw a piece of graffiti which read "The Ag Way is the Only Way" You could call it the Tao of Ag. And what better philosophy to live your life by?