Violent Men,Violent Land

Abstract

This paper considers how the physical landscape of Northern Ireland is used in film, television and novels to suggest that violence is part of the essential character of the Irish. I begin by discussing the way in which mural paint ings have become a key signifier of the threat of Republican violence. The paintings have come to stand in for the unseen gunmen themselves who are depicted as a product of the decaying urban fabric and represented by it. But the paintings are also used to redefine the working-class estates as ghettos, a term which helps to frame the context of the violence as other and distant from British political life. In contrast to the violence of the poor ghetto dwellers the middle classes are shown as responsible and law abiding. They are peaceful men and women living in the respectability of the suburban landscape.