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all right so a diagram which goes okay we meet Aaron and their cousin what’s cousin’s name and then the first person they meet is Claire and then it’s Michelle and Jamie James you’re thinking about Lander you’re thinking of men and hello and welcome to audio-visual cultures support cast that explores different areas of cultural production I’m the host and creator polo player this is the first of a two parter in which and Rochelle and I take an in-depth look at Episode one of Derry girls way back in episode 8 of the podcast we discussed series 1 of Derry girls alongside another of Lisa McKay’s channel 4 comedy series London Irish for teaching on a new module on critical practices Andrew wanted to MA fight the narrative beats of an establishing episode of a sitcom so we recorded the process it took around three hours across two sessions which I’ve edited down to two hopefully digestible podcasts massive thanks to our members on patreon.com forward slash a V cultures for your continued support it’s so much appreciated for details on ways to support the podcast and how to get in touch listen right to the end for now enjoy the discussion as we pointed out in our first Aragon that what we basically get by the time they’re on that bus is actually no it’s some that is outside school and I said the bus stop the bus stop is the second location the first location is the shop isn’t it have again sweets good of the shop before the bus because it’s just clearing air in them all right then that’s the bus stop and that’s the jet point so that’s the we shop so road and we shop so house very sharp bus stop checkpoint bus at the school mostly systematical stressy conversation 60 Michael’s office again which is the confrontation with Tina you think okay then the beginning of detention which ends with the sister death and dying and doing where than that there okay we’ll fill it out sister Michael becomes a good guy okay so what exactly is it the narrative beat sure cannot mmm-hmm what by establishing information yeah we didn’t did we so yeah we have to establish to be all that Aaron stuff just because he the very first thing you say is the army land rover and this aerial drone shot which is interesting because this is the 1990s so they’re using this drone that’s not yeah used for these purposes and you’re you’re in the outskirts and it rises overlooking City of Derry but you’ve also got and the shot missed punch alerts graffiti a night the London on the Londonderry and just hit pause on this shot we’re looking east from the western side of the river that’s the old city on the western side which means that this is the area affectionately known as the Bogside of course pointing is really great for podcast listeners here this bit rough foreground of the shot the other side this field okay so yeah I’m gonna actually get their stuff dumped in the field site because you don’t really actually need to be able to pause to do this sort of thing Susi’s it’s hard to say because they’re in the distance and it’s quite a wide shot but they’re like tarpaulins or sheets or something I mean there could be bodies and those and this is kind of dumping grind that you would get things like this you just get this debris of a conflict or something going on so it’s interesting actually pause and look at all of this before any of my arcs to do with characters we have to stick in it’s not London yeah also the song that’s being played it’s The Cranberries yeah it’s very noticeable we need to double check the title of this song I always forget but this song is if you’re not a fan of The Cranberries but if you’ve ever seen adverts by the Irish tourist boards this is one of the millions songs they will use oh yes you’re right yeah so it’s notable that that’s the song yeah and it’s quite an uplifting song yes it’s positive note song it’s pretty compact rate at the time and it says this is going to be about Northern Ireland because you’ve got associations of The Cranberries because of some base which is used very interestingly and now Shane basen yes comedy series Oh blimey that was amazing zine so we’re looking back through this telescope of history from here but anyway yet opening narration which turns out not to be opening narration lovely races of aremy land rover over three looks like teenage boys
very walls army and the walls chuckle ER new roles in the West
cranberry poster Angela Lansbury’s Murder She Wrote Aaron waking up Sara cousin Orla reading her diary
alright so it’s the roughly 50 so within a minute so you’ve got this traveling establisher it’s zooming in it’s owning in on this one house where this family lives and they’re the central family traveling establishing montage with roughly 53 difficultto using Netflix exactly when now is but seems to be about if you include the channel for a logo but it is pretty quick cuz out of almost 22 minutes one minute ed establishes location roughly the time period because they were maize occupying City of Derry I think because of the poster on the wall of the cranberries you can set you ate it at the early 90s fish Murder She Wrote still on the TV pretty regularly everybody’s Marcus’s yesyes building personality of this teenage girl’s bedroom very quickly through the posters lining the walls dressy [ __ ] pajamas mmm-hmm that tells you something about glass status just osya and possibly something to do with not super wealthy but not her either total cars at about the one minute moment coming on as if it said gable wall graffiti murals alright so that they were roughly 107 ish mark that’s when the family dynamic opening and it’s already character saying Aaron and or Allah because Allah is on the screen right now and medium close-up would you say licking a spoon tonight taking a really big spoon already looking like a space cadet not caring about the world around it yeah she’s been caught on reading her cousins diary she said like Burroughs what we’d say back at that time where I grew up in Belfast and Aaron it’s it’s a very clear she’s got aspirations of being a Raider she’s interested in certain areas of culture which she thinks they’re probably very sophisticated so you’re already getting these markers of their personal holiday is so roughly the same age also with aura here in the screen you’ve got the bay a bay and out of focus background doesn’t feature much in the series other than to just be a thing which Erin’s parents carry or Evan preoccupied with yeah and something for the grandfather’s day but yeah it’s something probably to do with this even your generation because these teenagers have known the conflict their whole lives by the time that baby is aware of things she’s gonna be part of that first group of kids who are growing up properly in peacetime because this is roughly 1994 and by the time she’s aware of stuff going on it’s gonna be post agreement yeah so it might be that the baby’s there as standing for what each of these actors and actresses the age they would actually have been mm-hmm at this point if they had been alive at all some of them are my age nearly right people yeah so they’re actually probably feely playing people who are a little bit older than them at the time because I was a boy so 1994 I turned 10 at the end of that year so I was at the end of primary school so I was a few years younger than them but they’re about 15 16 here this is a GCSE a year mother I’m you this where was that cousin drop or Allah says what’s the Paran occurs between cousins so it establishes they’re not sisters or cousins but they live together she says sure what’s para dick is between cousins at roughly the one minute 17 mark yeah family dynamics we’ve got it open a night to Aaron’s parents it’s me care very quickly or does our niece marries a matriarch because Aaron goes there mother there are lots of these little inserts there’s a little shop of the baby he just wants a meeting with a gleeful look on her face looking at the person behind the camera operator the baby’s own parent but establishing the keys there she’s part of this too even though she’s not communicating and think about detailed set dressing they’d be sitting on a baby chair that’s clearly the one used for all those years picked up and fixed there’s this toy in the program which is the toy we all had when we were kids this is no plastic that you put on some plastic so you’ve got cultural reference within two minutes as well so this is a time when Macaulay Culkin’s regularly in the news and he’s so very young and this idea of children’s rights becoming a thing and the parents gone must believe you absolutely nonsense so that’s how I recent desiiva knows there’s a parents for whom the order of rights it means civilized isn’t it yeah they’re fighting just to be equal in the whole of society yeah never mind they’re teenagers yes rights for the adults it’s not rights for the kids at this point okay so the family dynamics being oddly insulated from the outside world that’s the thing about this scene isn’t it particularly in what’s about to happen when the bombs again so we’ve got no stablish or about Marion Jerry’s relationship she’s very much in control she’s very much a voice of power in this house Jerry hasn’t really had a word and yet he’s played by tommy Tiernan he looks quite harangues and he’s very much a part of a loving family but he is the receiver of a lot of stuff he doesn’t get to transmit very often so a say so we haven’t really heard him speak yet and that’s important as well as his accent is gonna be important we first watch this I know for you it felt a little bit like being at home again and I see a little bit because yeah but for me it was like okay I’m really quite significantly having to recalibrate here because I can understand them but it just takes going fast a bit of an effort this is this and more like this vid I we talk at home yeah so it just takes you a minute Macaulay Culkin is the first time they met we’re gonna get this format of joke again in about five minutes where Claire’s raising money for a wee African fella and everyone gets it kind of confused and they think that he’s from Bali Buffet but also this is an important establish sure that this is a Catholic family so we’ve heard the Bogside established that they’re on the west bank that they’re a Catholic from like you’re getting a lot of those Ulster colloquialisms as Isles so they’re Shane Williams rather than children which is more of an Ulster Scots saying actually and they do have top skirts on it this Catholic school yeah but no Tartans exist well outside Scotland yeah but it’s a Celtic thing yeah come back just a few seconds see their skirts are quite short a lot of the Catholics goes back home we’d have had very long skirts this silly fun thing of fine I won’t see Macaulay Culkin the comedy that comes over just a mother an adult not understand and a cultural reference Aaron pretending that it’s some sort of nestle that she can’t physically see Macaulay but yeah it’s easier to do that than explain this is where we learned that it’s the end of summer there’s listening they can’t get to school it’s this oscillation between family dynamics really particular family dynamics and stuff that’s specific to pre-agreement trouble zero mrs. Peyser I mean it’s hard to tell which year is at ninety three years at ninety four it blurs the time a little bit but it is pre ceasefire so which would say it’s 93 but some of the cultural references such it and ninety four so it’s quite blurred and you know memory is quite a blurry thing so that’s okay but yeah it’s interesting here because this is actually kind of how it was was that it was a inconvenience or something like this happen and whereas it’s not like what’s going on you know like conflicts and violent acts become so normalized that it’s both this is inconvenient my day because you’ll get Aunt Sarah coming in in a minute mounish can’t go and get her fake town done because of this bomb on the bridge and of course this is we should know the name of this bridge if written about it so many times but it’s a specific bridge you’re talking about which is quite well known and it’s featured in quite a lot of artwork actually because well what’s the bridge it’s both a connector and a divider and you put a bomb on something that’s supposed to connect it becomes a division it becomes something you can’t access the other side of anymore so it’s about the inconvenience it’s about race the first day back to school and they come it doesn’t immobilize them but it just means they Rick it’s gonna be different and then you get this you just clicked ahead to the shot of the television screen and we’ve got real archive footage this is gonna punctuate the whole series as well as there is gonna be the reality of this because this is very much a comedy and it’s fiction but it’s bedded into something that’s very very real and really did happen every time we pause on these little inserts we’ve got set dressing amazingness so this is not just a television that was posed don’t really pay attention to for a couple minutes it’s really period it’s got that bulging cathode ray tube screen this is a television for me it is you know this is an old-fashioned push buttons for the channels and of course only the first four of them are actually ever used yeah and they’re all or night and you can see them they’re worn out five six seven er still clear and one two three four one especially is really worn so this is a real prop they’ve got and then on top of it you got a tiny little figurine of a monk and some other glass yeah you say it’s fairly crass and if you look at some of their decor as well because I remember sharing this quite a lot where you’ve got a border in the middle of the wall and the wallpaper so you’ve got the stripes at the bottom vertical stripes you’ve got a border and then you’ve got the top but it’ll be something else it’s quite ornate and it’s the idea of working-class people trying to look a bit more grand than they are because we had that in our houses you know when I was growing up we had that sort of thing for a while as pedestrian you’ve got things that don’t match curtains are quite awful and don’t match anything and you just see this quite fiddly and it’s quite quick but this is an old house it’s been lived in for a long this is all decor and furnishings from a long time ago this is old in the 90s type stuff sister lived in hi there we gonna get the Grampa Joe conflict setup Joe and Jerry finally here Jerry’s baked here today southern the yes silly ater amongst this group of highly fraught people and also the kind of malcolm in the middle’ figure the one who’s the most same and there’s later episodes where even he becomes a figure of fun but at the moment he’s the same one we’re about to hear grandpa jokes a wouldn’t you leave my daughter alone and he goes because we’ve been married but essentially so Tommy turns from this ice Terrell and O’Neal and Ian McElhinney who’s bang her father they’re both from Belfast they’re supposed to be from Derry and it’s interesting because the ideas that they’re all in this together they would all want a united Ireland but there’s just animosity in put your house for Jerry I think just because he’s married as daughter you know there’s not a brother so he’s an insider and an outsider at the same time he isn’t one of them because this is the thing about identity over there is the choice and the north are different whether you’re an Irish Catholic a nationalist but from the north you’re different from the southerners you different from people from the Republic or in the Free State as would say where I grew up yeah it reminds me of a thing which is quite common in the east coast of Canada is really common for people in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to regard themselves as Scottish hmm as distinct from people who are from New England in the States who regard themselves as quite Irish and this whole we’re really Scottish we do Scottish this thing means they’re a Scottish cultural festivals in these mountain provinces in eastern Canada and if Scott’s go there they find those I was baffled about the type of Scottish mnestheus Canadians are regarding themselves as being linked with because it’s completely foreign to them so this this urge to link up is nice to link up with a fantasy of what you think there but this is actually an island that the spread apart and at this point let’s say less and about 75 years before yeah so this is an interesting difference they share an island they a very small line and onion there’s just cultural divergence this happens within the 20th century it’s just you’ve gotten so much loaded information and one screen with just the shot we’re looking at at the moment I mean actually there’s really interesting details because there’s Canada in the background isn’t it is that John F Kennedy were talking your Nasus seem so yeah their family has Irish heritage so that’s quite an Shin that such it’s and politically in a very interesting place is that Jesus or who’s that one that looks like a spaceman Jesus it does let’s go it’s about shine and of course the the mandatory starburst so Bay’s yeah you’ve got yeah all this study furnishings you’ve got the baby stuff strewn around you’ve got quite neat things old furniture jewels very better than in his seat that’s specifically his fate of his rocking chair it’s got us blankets on us that’s his area of the house and so there’s quite a lot already gone on there so before we get to Sarah this animosity between Joe and Jerry playing
there’s all these little opportunities to put local quail isms and so there’s Harry saying because we love each other and then I thought echoes of a very good book you know what you gain is an Ulster Scots word and it means vomit yeah and then you get Sarah coming in who is Euler’s mother and that’s established and this tiny exchange again their personalities are very clear the daughters of space cadet Sarah the mum is we got it frozen on the bit where she’s just taken all his breakfast from her thinking that all I was giving her her breakfast but no it was just that all it was holding him in such weather it looked like an awareness obscured by a wall but you can just a bite sear going right stick with food and food is very important or Allah as we will find out throughout the series but Sarah is you know she’s got full makeup on she’s got her hair and like a massive top bun he’s got it in rows as well yeah and she’s not yet dressed so she’s not dresses in her nightie and her dress and going which like again crass fancy I’m gonna coin that class she’s got her red nails done to perfection you know so there’s details in this it’s very clear that she’s a lady a pleasure she’s not normally up early in the morning and of course it’s not yet been stated why it is that she and her daughter or living with her sister I don’t think that’s ever establish is it it just seems to be that’s what share this house yeah so this shades of people being crammed into tenements designed only for one family but only shades of it because there’s no indication of all I ever having had a dad yes I mean like Sarah just reproduced spontaneously and created all it and that’s why she’s a spacer yeah it’s never gonna into but I mean as we’re going to find with James there’s a Yeshe around abortion being illegal and criminalized there’s every possibility that Sarah’s got pregnant quite young she might not even know who the father is something’s happened it could be any kind of thing you could let your mind wander and imagine various no it’s B yeah it’s just something underpinning I think in this episode about the lack of access to appropriate health care in certain scenarios if there’s crisis fragments a it could be the sort of thing really all have grown up together they’ve all lived in this house together because it was probably the safest thing to say so you’ve got little inserts as well of politician it’s responding to the bomb and importantly you’ve got John him MP on the screen and John Hume see he was Scop I think I mean he was one of the key figures in the peace process so that’s quite a significant little insert there of actual footage of him responding to an incident yeah and it states that he’s the SDLP leader Dean O’Banion I really do think for a while social moniker Jackson was really struggling to put on a daring accident because it just looks like she’s fighting the words the way she moves her mouth but of course what she’s doing is she’s just exaggerating some of the oddities of it and also she knows that she’s funny face and therefore really going for it with how much she moves her mouth when she talks makes it generally quite funny so and the bid y’all ready I mean that would kill anyone just to say that would holiday situation these are there but also she’s going through the motions of her mom’s quite scary Mary you’re quite scary lady and she’s having a good are we rebellions because she’s a good girl you know she’s not a bad girl Aaron’s not a bad girl and so I’m gonna go with a little push back against the man the man being sister Michael and her mother yes this is very much a matriarchal set up we’ve got here interesting the the men are all quite wishy-washy it’s right the whole series that we’ve seen so far that’s the women runnin the place best expressed through James’s looking around at the school and realizes that it’s an all-girls school but he’s somehow been permitted to attend that would that look of batter Battlement on his face Jerry pass no it’s been that’s quite scary because this is of course again a time when it is not illegal to hate your children and it’s just this hint of threat whether Mary actually smacked Aaron with the wooden spoon because my mother was like this is oil or we were growing up it was just the look that she would give you underway she would say some fun that was enough about 355 we get to meet play at the road Weidman her denim jacket to express her her individuality individuality individuality so so far we’ve got two of two three so far at thirties blonde quite good girl and Claire’s got her blazer on unnoticed and was thanks to space Claire was her name Nicola Coughlin okay she’s my thank you tonight sir she’s quite a physically compact person tiny she’s hardly stretched she’s got wide right meaning that you know sticker a blazer and then a jockey so one of those wide plastic headband so we a lot of us used to have her hair so it’s back in a ponytail she’s got quite a thick fringe or bangs you might say North America this headband that’s holding back some of her hair as well before here you’re seeing her and this is Anna’s aim so she’s in a medium shot but it’s Anna’s aim hence the impression that there’s virtually no you’ve got this flattened straight beyond her in the negative space now you got her jitter and around while she’s waiting because she can say er she’s nervous with this jacket on and that’s a bit of it with Aaron as well as I’m gonna do this and I’m determined and even though I’m terrified you know that this is what’s coming there in her voice and then you get the same thoughts being performed in Claire’s actions before they actually turn up and we’re gonna get the I’m expressing my individuality joke again aren’t we because Claire’s gonna say I’m not going to be individual and on my own yeah sure aren’t I there’s a kind of questions principle so how you respond to people in this cuz so just wanted to acknowledge that she’d understood that it was the first day of school we see it’s just the cadence of hi we speak because we do these reinforcers and we tend to ask a question that’s not expect now so so very often we’ll go okay her yeah and you’re not actually yeah not necessarily expect and it’s just part of the hello because we have to emphasize for hello and acknowledging that you’re in our presence and that’s why you’ll hear the habit of I did that swords because it’s actually more of a rhythm thing putting emphasis on some fun yeah it’s a tag I think is a linguistic term for it so about four sixteen we are into the we shop threaten the news agents and as packed full of the school kids you’ve got things like the miniature ticklers attention actually I’m gonna look at this side up of the show because we haven’t really stopped on this before it’s just rammed full of stuff and no particular order it’s really crap all plastic in see the syrups to go on the ice creams everything’s just right there’s no sneeze cover or anything it’s not very hygienic these we don’t pass hygiene saunders today it’s all the neon colored stickers and little bits of cards and starships stuck on thanks for prices it’s hot like bouncy balls juggling balls it’s like a pirate’s Cutlass okay fancy try stuff ii ugh and sizable tears a child and their secondary noses and the pic of max okay nothing gardener when I pick my girls up from school there’s a sweet shop directly opposite the school and like 200 kids pile into the sweet shop and to create a kind of queuing system and I don’t think kids necessarily need to have masses of sugar the instant they get out of school but such is our culture that the kids and sweets have this really tight relationship the first shot is with a player with her head bent over sweet very quickly within this level so we’ve moved on and we’re getting this expansion oh Claire as a character she’s seen this fast with you beer but she’s clearly already hungry but you get a sense of she wants to be socially aware she cares about because this is a time when on the TV all you would see was news items and quite intensive adverts about Commons and Ethiopia about natural disasters things we going on in a lot of different countries but the way it’s delivered here and the way people understand it here it’s Africa as a homogenous blob of space with dark people and a and especially where I grew up because we didn’t see anybody with dark skin for a very long time this is a very very white part of the world that we’re talking about so you only really saw dark skin on the television and I think a lot of people probably like Clara she would associate people dark skin as people who are suffering and in need of help and she’s very concerned very good-naturedly trying to do something about that and probably that are on on her life should realize that there’s something a bit more cynical about all this charity stuff but already you’re getting this kernel of this is someone who cares about people’s rights about people’s access to basic needs which is very important in developing her care because she turns out to be the we lesbian no just a lesbian just about cinematography how to focus elements make shots interesting yeah it’s a general principle with cinematography is try and keep as little of the shot in focus as possible I’ve had several moments when it’s over-the-shoulder stuff that we’ve got someone out of focus in the foreground we’ve had Erin out of focus before now we’ve got Claire out of focus as Erin’s about to say yet another one of Lisa McGee’s Northern Irish isms which you say to me about three times a day the way that social Monica Jackson acts she acts like somebody who’s just newly inhabited a fifteen year olds body which most fifteen year olds have they’ve only just newly inhabited this because this green up of the face this is part of how we communicate over there today looking does it really mean it’s just like wait I’ve cut yourself on you because the tone of voice comes so much from the top and the way screw your face you can see where you’ve paused that Chase squinting her eyes and her meit’s a bit pursed and so that’s skeptical face you know it’s what there’s a sort of turn of revulsion it’s very physical it’s a very physical way of communicating of speaking so much of this bacon comes from the gestures that you’re doing with not just your hands but your face and are you with Chuck your body and that sort of thing as well what got me is that she can’t make eye contact maybe she’s looking skeptical and she’s looking just breathing but look at the way her eyes are moving and that thing right at the end of that shirt which it kind of looks really uncomfortable and her body and lips down this this is somebody who’s really drawing on her own experience of being about 15 Danis from Genesis Asia a bit of a psychopath as a bit of comedy about Northern Ireland within the first six minutes it has stalked the dramatis personae with Psychopaths but you already have all of these adults who cannot cope with these teenagers because they’re melters the waves of talk get everything because they’re trying to be so grown-up and serious and I’ll catch yourself on you do know what you’re talking about none of them know we’re talking and there’s actually being fired a mature but she still you know in all their mates are probably thinking well maybe I should care about that stuff but I’m just seeing a jerk the intergenerational conflict bit of it it’s trying to get us all to go I remember when I felt the world did not understand me because I was a new type of human except that of course every other person my own age was also the same new type so we were bonding over the fact that we were the essentially rival species to our parents generation but they’re differently it’s really fascinating because every generation comes along and you go gee think I wasn’t Matias before but there’s been such tremendous cultural shifts between say the seventies in the 90s when the previous generation was very aged say 20 years before in the seven days the world has changed very much and actually the adults have been throughout our hell because they’ve been through the whole of the conflicts from an early age these kids have come along and they’re really just becoming aware of it as its they don’t know yet but it’s coming to an end but it’s established and it’s normal and it’s actually less chaotic it’s more organized night it’s had two decades of being chaotic it’s organized and it’s just everyday life and that’s the world I came into was that was just how things were which is very weird for me over here because there aren’t things like this happening all the time are not strange but also things are changing culturally and technologically so rapidly at this point when I was their age I had the earliest mobile phones that you could buy reasonably cheap mmm-hmm that’s how much that changed by the end of that decades by just a few years after that they don’t have mobile phones by the end of that decade I did have a mobile phone that’s the thing that really struck me when we first saw this was it constantly shouting its historical specificity and I suppose the main reason to do that is because it’s pre ceasefire and pre agreement it’s saying all this counts as the past that’s the watershed that the minds in the past in the present and in Causton are always making up when these words were but there’s a case to be made that that definitely counts as a water Aaron’s first crush Monica laughter at nothing Orla just like some mountain stuff so Aaron encounter with David Don Lane the boy she could has a crush on you get really well-established that Aaron has a complete to work whether she wants to be super cool but she’s not a cool person not that Murder She Wrote is not cool and Angela Lansbury obviously as the queen but David Donnelly he’s roughly there eh maybe a year or two older he’s clearly not school anymore he’s putting up a poster for his DJ stuff he’s kind of one of those dates who when you’re Aaron he is the King [ __ ] and actually when you’re arya joking laughs you go he’s a waster he’s a nobody who thinks he is something and he’s not really he’s just this slightly older lad creepily hanging around outside of a shop that children are shopping in they go disco and smoking and licking cool but really he’s gone nothing today anyway doesn’t even have a way of lighting the rolled up something that he’s smoking this probably just a normal cigarette designed to look like something that’s not a cigarette we’ve got the best interesting me in terms of directional continuity it kind of looks like right here they have just come out of that shot but actually this is like a mile away yeah I mean no to me it looks like no they’ve walked her a bit and they’ve got to this other location where the old old sir buses are yeah well these are the old ones I mean when grandiose addresses so you’ve got Claire and Aaron haven’t played a serious team Jerell conversation and or alert actin like crying yeah she’s flying like she’s sick a seven-year-old and the background and there will be a little bit later when she says that she just loves her little fingers yeah as if again like someone who’s just realised that she has fingers now you hear Michelle before you see her know that she’s just seen a Tarantino film so she’s f no blind and all over the place so we’ve got Jamie Neely O’Donnell I think it’s important that you hear her before you see her not says so much about her surely personality and it’s perfect that she doesn’t name the film what Ned of that film being something whose title she might remember completely yeah it’s just the film with awesome content though I’m sure you’ll all see so she says she’s got out of pirate Pauline when we watch this the first time when we’ve decided that it was probably pop fiction I’m collection came I I think quite late in 94 I mean if you’re gonna be specific about dates but it’s probably this is a film that’s I didn’t céntimos and somebody’s taped it and the cinema or something like that you know it’s one of these really nasty pirate copies or something and that she has that kind of relationship with her down or she’ll watch of the night violin and Michelle’s look she has a different look to the rest of them because I mean Oren has got quite curly hair but Michelle really treats her hair and brings the curls out she’s got that wet look she’s got the wet look yeah she’s got her up and sister way that’s cause she’s got massive hoop earrings she carries herself and a very she’s very physical in a way that she moves she dances towards them as if she’s body Poppins it’s like she’s pre-empting Beyonce no mercy oh she’s got that kind of attitude she’s very sure of herself so she got this member of the gang who is because you’ve got least read the works basically already well two dorks in the space cadet then you’ve got Michelle and it’s so hard to know why she even hangs over them because she always he think she’s cooler that maybe that’s she’s killer by association or maybe she is just like them but she’s acting this character this is her coin and we’re about to have the funniest line of the entire episode absolutely check who’s talking who owns that fellow so it’s quite distressed I do what I quite liked though is that there’s this mirroring in is such a common striking I remember one of the simplest piece of scholarship I ever read about a film was one that just pointed out that hey look if you just look at all the main characters in Braveheart you’ve got four father-son pairs and the entire film is about these father-son pairs where the mother is completely absent tell things clearly therefore about patrilineage in some way and as you like it again it’s about brothers lots and lots of conflict between brothers and as you like it and there it goes cousins yeah the two sets of cousins each harvest ray and stay now make and I suppose what’s happening right now is in this particular shop that we’re looking at where all is saying I see making that funny noise errand and they’re both looking oddly at James they’re having these two cousins who have conflict realizing that the differences between them are nothing compared to the difference between Michelle and James yeah and also their group of four is suddenly a five without warning so this group afford that it’s established for us is suddenly a five so you get to meet James is about 702 so we got 30 seconds of Michelle before we get James he’s just standing there in the background he’s in London she has a step back so that he can even like the way he’s so this is still in New Orleans and James we Dylan who tweeted gee I think he retweeted me one time so James is clutching his bike strap quite nervously I mean he’s signing up right Annie sucking around he takes Phegley bewildered but it’s the way his hands are clutching the backstrap are quite telling he’s quite scared I mean he’s got this ferocious cousin who’s overpowering him and it’s a together women overpowering the men yes I remember first listening to this going I think I may need to rewatch this bit because she doesn’t say my aunty Kathy she says Manta Kathy like it’s one word Monty Manta Kathy works yeah I know we wouldn’t words together it’s just the very particular way that she says it she barely says that I in my so it’s Manta command me aunty it’s like it’s a title for someone me aunty professor doctor me aunty anyway / James answered a traumatized by finding out that he was supposed to be an abortion yeah I suppose we’re gonna put that on the second bomb scape it’s not a bomb scare because there’s actually a bomb on the bridge even before that we’ve had know that she’s there and there’s guys feeding the sign and so the third one is people can’t get abortions here and have been able to in the rest of the United Kingdom since 1967 yeah so for over 20 years at this point yeah so and again it’s just a very normal thing as people are having to travel they sort out of crisis pregnancy mostly to London thinking about just order and James as their cousins and these are cousins who do not have fathers and become part of this extenders nuclear family and each of these households because James becomes abandoned there by his mother yeah we don’t even meet her until the second series and I lose Sarah lives in the same house as earlier Mary is practically or as mum because she’s the matriarch of that home and as base case even Sarah’s mother and their mother is dead the fact that Mary’s got all of ready for school rather than Sarah getting her own daughter although really cool that’s James the son will become a surrogate mother to him in spite of saying that when she looks at him she feels pure hatred alright so about 7 12 we get the abortion moment especially in this community that accent really does mean the oppressor it’s the voice of the soldiers getting on the bus there is a massive tension this is an example of where the character of James is probably more Irish and will have been brought up Catholic and would be more Irish than somebody like me who was born and brought up any spot fast in a unionist Protestant background and always considered to be British well at home and so he goes there and he see English colonial oppressor I come here and I’m made to feel Irish the identity tension that you’ve got here Our Lady immaculate college name is school maybe we should look that up adveniat regnum yeah that’s gonna be a joke nice card of on the crest adveniat regnum to may your kingdom come thy will be done so yeah it’s just a line from the Latin version of the Lord’s Prayer Second Vatican Council 90 there’s much we’ll get into the Second Vatican Council I don’t know what that piece of music called but it’s used in pop fiction again these popular culture connections yes music selections that people appear to be sweating the popular music after time it’s soaked into the area around them and love it is film references to you that’s important because movie references film culture is so embedded over there it’s so hard to explain but it’s a highly referential culture a big public party because it’s never really had much of its own industry in creating films so everything’s imported mostly from America it’s a very sunny literate place because even people who wouldn’t really read and stuff they might be really into movies during the conflict especially I mean a lot of the cinemas got bombed and fired and you arson attacks and stuff but there were probably more sentiments per capita their pre troubles then you know there’s maybe a higher concentration and elsewhere in the UK I think don’t be something that they can’t aim to probe a little bit yeah it’s highly sunny lettera people would have nearly whole conversations just reference and films or quoting from films and stuff but interesting here at the same time as that means it’s been played and they’re walking through to boss their head and words back Michels hand like the EF on and this is Benton a style set Castle is somebody who is your EF on their date here have one representative you get to be catalog here a Doge order you could back to the Yvonne Leone and then eventually the next time you say we shall have your stuff for you and Michelle is an agent for the Yvonne so she’s got these sidelines as a bit like midnight nurse both because everybody else is just going to school she’s working she’s hustling already and we’re about to get a bit of fantastic visual comedy fingers are funny fingers are just so many funny things falling over and people doing odd things with their fingers that show that these are not very good for what we use them for
wiggling her own finger at her top lip just gotta get a time here so we very quickly there Michelle has a confrontation with a brand new first year whose sister is described as big Monday from upper six it’s old years of school years that I can understand not these newfangled years he’s knowing that don’t understand and you know they think because their first years well Michelle things because they’re fifty years they could just make the wee one smooth she’s all nice and no trousers so you’re establishing that you’re establish and that Erin and Claire do not approve of any of these actions because of the close up insects of them and Erin is really pressed up against Michelle neo sank retreat retreat where they would have needed to have shot at about seven times to get all the coverage because you can’t stick all the cameras in and get coverage at the same time when you’ve got two positions that you get you never do two main counters from and then lots of shots of the other characters all freaking out it’s generally quite interesting cinematography in part because of how up in people’s faces you are and then boom we switched to another drone shot of the bus moving now this is another bit of okay seems over now we’re having yes music and this has happened four times already we’re going scenes over scenes over sings oh yeah music I think we’re also being told that something bigger than a transition between things has happened because that’s the end of the team building mmm-hmm yeah we’ve got the Avengers Assemble noise yeah and we also have the seed of the conflict which is going to structure the middle babe yeah we’re just going to get them into detention which is when a bad thing happens which leads to the climax of day absolutely and this is an important shot as us another aerial show that’s going backwards this time it’s surveilling high because they’re having to find alternative route to school their skills obviously not in this city or it’s in a different part of the city that they’ve had to go a long way around to get around this bomb scare at shows you high close to every rural environment the cities are everything’s so green around them everything’s yields I’d really love to know specific locations like what bridge exactly really talking about and what road is this on this country road that they’re on because I’d really be interested to know hi aware of and I would say it’s probably the directors or location scouts or a team effort here on finding where these spaces are because I wonder how aware of video installations by the likes of Alito heard a they are who is an artist who comes from Derry and has made a lot of his work that’s about the conflicts and these kinds of transitory spaces in and around the city you can see there’s new River but that’s about it that’s all we can get F its location and if that is County Derry that we’re in that would be the foil but I don’t know for sure I bet that might even be a field rather than a river that’s unclear it is crayon can scrape far up so this cluster II conflict on the bastion of them is Africans we’re probably gonna have Jamie shut up by Michelle again join army checkpoint I’m sorry country teams probably first time I’ve ever seen a gun thoroughly on and michelle phan faces soldiers sorry to spent 946 so they’re not arched Michelle’s turned on James is having her freak right I mean does this perfect shot Michelle looking like hidden soldier but in the foreground slightly her focus certain Monica Jackson yawning because she knows she has a hairiest mouth we’ve got an estoppel sure as well for Michelle is she at least worth a seems to be sexually aware she has an event sexuality our first shot of the interior visco that’s the tenth soilless its purchase is not all i do you presumably that’s this staff that’s the male symbol and that’s sister Jacqueline trundle he’s under nine days trundling along and all the sisters have male I love about it it’s just an oddity of life which nobody even Jamie doesn’t go with wet white get together for assembly and fake assembly room whatever it is I’ve got a just quickly work out exactly what the time is when they arrive at school and this was found in a school that’s in Belfast a lot of its and nothing is Hunter High schol äj– I’ve written down his gin it’s that Jen will find out Danny I think there’s a girl that five word combination is one of the most sinister combinations you can use it has come – yeah well it’s a surveillance culture these are kids that actually that was something meant to say earlier with Grandpa Joe was this Arab so empty holds over Jerry I’ve got people looking and it you know it’s this idea that everybody is under surveillance within own community and this is something the convict very much dead was it would turn people against their own because everybody was watching everybody else it’s very much a surveillance culture or the has been my whole life and so you got Jenni as a prefect and I suppose she’s this archetype oh there’s always at least one who is the absolute goody two-shoes post they’re paired prefect she’s got the piece back Bad’s and normal she’s quite prissy to go her hair and a long plat a little pretty bow yeah Alice band with a bow and a long ponytail that’s a plot of course yeah she’s about this physically the smartest person yeah yeah she’s the most dapper looking even though they’re all wearing the same thing but of course you do slightly individual things within it they’re people who look just uncomfortable I don’t hate from either people like Michelle who will open the collar up on this shirt do that wide tie to make it look a bit disheveled and they’ve got all are not even wearing the little jumper that goes over the time she’s got she just looks like he’s lost a fight with her own school uniform that morning anyway that’s already set the trend that Michelle’s gonna consistently get them into some type of trouble and then it’s then they’re gonna do anything wrong it’ll just be Michelle doing stuff
sister Michael focus ranek Tony Tony makes big table it begins we noticed that if somehow managed to get drawing ice under the stage as well this is how theatrical this lie I used to be but she’s just described is sexual assault presumably just because he was male we know there’s no implication that he was English you know it’s the male thing rather than English thing that system that he was English but the difference is he was good reckon yeah and so it’s a slur on James nobody’s gonna be interested in him because none of them think he’ll of the road and he very much and Jim very much they are a dairy girl he is one of the dairy girls so you’ve got this thing of Abdullah’s for your protection but actually it makes him so vulnerable pointing him eyes and naming him getting him to identify himself scaring the bejesus out of them but also it gives you an extra hint of the way Michelle talks at Tasha’s like her character more the way she says things it’s another colloquialism is to describe somebody as a right or to describe the act of right and as being sexual know so if somebody is a right they’re attractive they’re sexy if you’re dry writing somebody it’s you’re dry humping them we had listen have about seven instances of women dominating yeah almost forty men so far and mr. Mullen affair is the last of these it’s really fascinating because this is a place where women legally so today you’re trapped in abusive relationships have no legal rights they have no right to any sort of protection nowhere to go you know there’s women’s II it can help but really there’s nothing and place to protect people who are stuck in abusive relationships and this is painting a picture of women being very aggressive which of course absolutely does happen more often than we would think but it really turns to tables quite a bit in a way it’s imagining the world where women are a much more dominant than they are but also girls of this age ferocious I think that the joke is left so long as well but I was a 22 minute 30 second episode we meet James always exactly the seven minute mark and then it’s only revealed at the what seems to be the 13 ish minute mark that now that he’s the only boy in a hitherto all-girls school he’s the first ever boy to go to the point and that this weird exceptions been made to protect him from it’s actually pro-vitamin much more danger because actually it’d be easier for him have used gettin beaten up every day this is absolute torture well he’s picked rates for the next couple of seasons because it’s the psychological torture and then as transpires in this episode he’s all I to go to the toy so there’s just a lack of basic human rights with him so it’s quite fast then just in this shot here where we’ve already got the non-diegetic music starting again this is clearly the scene ending shot that says something is about to happen everyone’s crossing themselves and it seems to be James’s thing I mean it’s the situation where a bunch of kids are being treated as a religious congregation even though they you know they’re kids I’ve got the wherewithal to work out whether this religion might have any accuracy at all but he’s been brought up in it too just on another island it’s just instinctively doing all this Catholic stuff so that seems to be his one anchor he looks actually is they’re calling you English but he probably does at least in part think of himself as Irish Catholic because of this moment and because that’s where we will have had a break and so this is the beginning of what I’ve called the stressy conversation 13
I think it’s risk right now as well with sister Michaels introduction at the assembly is the beginning of her first monologue I suppose it’s not really a dialogue you get little denty this is gonna be a sweet lovely nun and then she very quickly becomes a Sarah Burke and a bit cruel this is amazing Carrie yeah she’s really incredible that’s sure well mix Amy Turner I think it might be a bedtime this is what structurally I’ve denoted as the actual centerpiece of the episode even though we’re past the halfway mark now there’s only eight minutes left of 22 but it’s the Ella been structured around that odd break for channel 4 yeah I passed the halfway mark and I bring I suppose the reason I’ve called this the middle of the episode even though it’s not actually the middle is day this is the closest to the school day because we’ve got lots of getting up getting to school bus journey conflict stuff in advance of the morning assembly bubble bath okay finally now we’ve got the school day and this appears to be a stretchy conversation happening in a break time and then the next set of things that are gonna happen take them to sister Michael’s office and then boom suddenly it’s after school and they’re in detention and so you know there’s a school day this is it for the entire school day these conflicts continue to boil away the starving Michelle basically abusing James and has got them all into this horrible situation with four of them have done absolutely nothing and yet they’re getting blamed for having done something anyway interesting little extra bit of art on the wall there because it’s just a clock face but some reason it’s got a cross underneath it it’s gonna be a close
you’ve been listening to audio-visual culture shows me Paula Blair and Andrey she’ll this episode was recorded and edited by Paula Blair and the music is common ground by air tone licensed under creative commons attribution 3.0 and available for download from ccmixter org if you like the show and find its content useful and interesting please help cover production and distribution costs by donating to PayPal dotted slash Pei Blair Gore libera PACOM /p EA Blair episodes are released every other wedyn stay please read share and subscribe on your chosen listening platform as this helps others shine the show for more information visit audio-visual culture wordpress calm and follow av cultures and twitter and facebook thanks for listening and catch you next time
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