Documentary Film: Examining Ireland Through Media

As a writer, I am endlessly fascinated by the examination and portrayal of all sorts of different people through various media. In the consumption of media, audiences must always be wary of taking the information at face value – there are always biases, no matter how unimportant they may seem, and it skews viewer perception of the people involved. In taking this Documentary Film class, we were able to question our own perceptions of Ireland and its people by looking at the realities of its history. We were then able to take that history and apply it to how various forms of media portrayed the Irish experience, which we often found to be lacking.

All of that questioning, searching, and analysis culminated in the experience of traveling to the country and physically interacting with the place we had only ever read or watched documentaries about, allowing us to finally form our own thoughts and opinions about it. We were able to experience traditional Irish music firsthand in some local Dublin pubs and interact with history by taking a tour of Glasnevin Cemetery and visiting the graves of some of the famous names in Irish history. Ireland’s long search for its identity and the rapid push of progress away from its past culminates in the dedication of preserving the thoughts and words of its most famous authors, capturing a time in Irish culture that is seen to be vanishing. The diversity of the country and the varying levels of acceptance towards it show a part of Ireland that many may not realize exist.

By mixing our viewed and read experiences to actually visiting the country, we were able to more fully and completely construct a vision of Ireland and its history. While a week was not enough to learn it all, being able to go to Ireland and experience it firsthand filled in an element of our learning that we never would have been able to access otherwise.

Cailen Fienemann ’24
English & Creative Writing