'No Sex Please, We're Irish'
David O Mahony gives an overview of how Irish cinema has dealt with the erotic.

I recently agreed to write this, an introductory article for the special edition of Film Ireland which is to take on the knotty subject of sex in Irish cinema. Upon telling a friend of this endeavour, he quickly quipped that it could prove to be the slimmest issue of the magazine ever. A choice line which happens to go to the heart of what I believe is being attempted here – the assessment of how the physical act of sex is represented by Irish directors and screenwriters. Also being examined is the validity of the common perception that sex and Irish cinema are unhappy bedfellows and that our national cinema is coy – or at least awkward – when the focus turns towards the body. Is our cinema a sexless one, fraught with Catholic guilt, insecurities and self-image issues? Has our industry not matured beyond the stage of gauche teenager?

Whether reluctant or incapable of putting the nation’s sexual identity in focus, Irish filmmakers have historically employed sex in their narratives as a means to confront religious and political inequalities of the age. A noble pursuit, you will agree. In more recent times the focus has shifted towards sex as its own reward, and contemporary characters are often aligned towards the more libidinous end of post-Celtic Tiger living. However, the response elicited from domestic audiences where Irish sex scenes are concerned is invariably one of queasy embarrassment. Why is this?

Keen to be a part of what promised to be an illuminating debate, I accepted the commission. I was, however, anxious that I would have nothing useful to say on the subject save for a kind of general speculation, the journalistic equivalent of a bemused shoulder-shrug. But then this potentially weak stance tells a story in that it generates a question that I have rarely, if ever, asked myself – why is it that I don’t find Irish cinema to be at all sexy? What is it that makes the concept of being aroused by an Irish movie so absurd?

It is, perhaps, too simplistic to ascribe the absence of the erotic in our filmmaking culture as being a symptom of our once regressive and restrictive society; the legacy of Catholic Ireland and its religious institutions is well documented and need not be raked over once more. It is interesting to compare our national cinema with that of Spain and Italy, two countries which are more culturally Catholic than Ireland ever was. From Pasolini and Fellini to Almodóvar and Medem, the cinema of these two countries is demonstrably preoccupied with all things fleshly; this uninhibited filmmaking isn’t, perhaps, strictly accurate in its representation of the societies it depicts, but it reveals a thoughtful cinematic community attempting to come to terms with its sexual identity, and at the very least affords the viewer some vicarious thrills.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 120.