Waters’ Woeful Wanderings
September 8, 2008
General Simon McGarr 5
- 9:19 PM John Waters only two generations from the Famine. His father born in 1904.
- 9:20 PM Meanwhile, the Guinness family seem not to have struggled too much.
- 9:21 PM I would complain about Waters much more, only for the danger of becoming indelibly associated with him in the minds of others.
- 9:22 PM I am only three generations from the famine then. Sometimes, I can actually feel the hunger. But then I have a sandwich and it goes away.
- 9:24 PM The lovely Jasmine Guinness tours the dusty books to check up on the family doings.
- 9:26 PM Eddie Hobbs ancestor involved in butter export. Could have fed all the families of Mayo on butter for all those years.
- 9:26 PM The richer you are, the more family records you are likely to have.
- 9:26 PM Hers come printed in lovely books.
- 9:26 PM Presumably most Irish family histories jotted on hankerchiefs and then burnt.
- 9:28 PM Eddie Hobbs surprised his family goes as far back as the Famine. Leads me to wonder at what point in history he thought the family sprang into existence fully formed.
- 9:31 PM These family history programmes are worrying. You’ll always end up finding out that your supposed grandfather was his own uncle. Shunned by all right thinking members of your extended family forever more.
- 9:32 PM Poor old John Waters has already had his grandfather revealed as a probable social welfare fraudster.
- 9:32 PM Who is Jasmine Guinness anyway? Apart, of course from the important thing, which is that she’s a Guinness.
- 9:34 PM Sarah Silverman has a joke about her ancestry. Family were Sephardic Jews, overrun by the Golden Horde. “So I’m part Mongolian Rapist”
- 9:34 PM Jasmine pointing out how hard times in Ireland were when she was small, then immediately shows us a picture of her and her pony.
- 9:37 PM Waters now intoning the historical documents. Camera pans up to show him with bobbly cravat. Completely unable to pay attention to sombre roll call of the dead. Feel bad.
- 9:38 PM Now sitting in silence. Contemplating. Or drifting off to sleep. Hard to tell.
- 9:39 PM Waters is very fond of his voice. He thinks its soulful. It isn’t. It the voice bad performance poets use to recite their work.
- 9:39 PM Black and white, ticking clock, Waters staring into space. RTE really, really wants us to know that this is an important and serious moment. Immediately followed by ad for Meatloaf talking to Gerry Ryan.
- 9:43 PM Watching Colgate ad. Is remineralising really a word?
- 9:44 PM A bit creeped out by the old man/blond woman ad for Greehouse Gasses.
- 9:46 PM And we’re back! We’re with the Hobbs’. Turns out the buttery ancestor was a landlord by the time of his retirement. Owned 20 houses. Eddie sees himself in this. Serious moment marked by another trip to B&W.
- 9:48 PM Non-Guinness side of the family much more interesting for Jasmine, and her mum who’s along for the ride.
- 9:51 PM Waters ancestral land on edge of bog. Again, the serious message of desperation and historical misery undermined by Waters clothing choice. Now obsessed by street derelict bobble-less bobble hat.
- 9:54 PM Chasing the Casey family- the non-Hunt ball attending half of Jasmine’s family- to a farm in Tyrone, NI.|
- 9:57 PM Family squeaked though general doom. Emotional intensity indicated by B&W and added film-y crackles. The contemporary documents carry the real emotional weight.
- 9:58 PM Rather unreasonably, narrator wants Waters family story to have ‘closure’. Bad news for John.
- 9:59 PM Waters realises that really his story is the story of Ireland.
- 10:03 PM Hobbs standing in the mass famine grave in Cork, covered in daffodils. Thankfully allowed to deliver his endpiece in colour.
- 10:04 PM Ends. Mood immediately ruined by grotesque Kathryn Thomas Lotto ad shouting at us.
- 10:06 PM It is possible that these ads are in fact part of the preceding program. A coda, to show us how far, for good or for ill, we have come. Possible, but unlikely.
5 Comments
Meanwhile, the Guinness family seem not to have struggled too much.
Yes, funny about that. And will they be adding the revealing little factoid that ‘no Catholics need apply’ was in effect at Guiness’s (the National Drink, dontcha know?) until the latter part of the last century? Oh, well.
And, “fellow citizens” of Cork who were starving??? Universal suffrage for the grubby Catholic masses was still some way off at this point – and after the Land War. “Fellow” citizens my arse.
You have blogged. Leave my presence immediately.
RE: 9.39, part 1.
The Waters voice is also the voice of much earnest radio essay reading & radio drama. It’s impossible to listen to such pseudo-gravitas without pissing oneself laughing and/or wanting to punch the speaker in the nads.
Luckily visiting Americans spared me from having to watch Water’s waterisms.
However, Simon’s recounting of it has taught me two things.
1) Simon’s TV remote is broken beyond repair.
2) I need a tardis and a big bag of spud plague… and a shovel for whacking things… and an alibi… do the sums.
[…] an experiment. I started it after a few tries on Tuppenceworth. Here’s the first outing- a drifting solitary meander around John Waters. Hardly a liveblog at all- I’m on my own, talking to myself. Or Fergal may have joined in too. […]