Banshiite of Diminshiren

Still not funny...

Can Oscar noms be revoked?  And do I really want to talk about this?  Really?  No, not really, but I think it's my duty as an Irish citizen to do so, even though I still have not visited the "old sod."  And based on pretty much any movie set in Ireland, WHY THE FECK would I want to?  And apparently now, TV commercials and Superbowl events, by proxy.  And this bizarre would be sequel to that fun-fest, wearin' o' the green movie "comedy" and/or musical: The Leprechauns of Limerick--err--ah, oh--I mean; The Banshees of Inisherin.  And again, I must ask, how is that movie considered a comedy?  And I also must ask, is this series of commercials a comedy?  I've got a lot of things to ask; and ask I will...
But first how about link to my original blog wherein I waxed critical about said filmed entertainment, heretofore to be referred to as: BOI.  As in, "Hey Boi, you call this funny?"www.christopherfreidy.com/blog/sorry-boys-i-want-my-money-back-again

So, this is how Irish I am.  All my grandparents were all born there.  I have citizenship.  I have an Irish passport.  I have a museum worthy Irish sized penis ;)  My mother took Irish step-dancing classes in her middle-age before Lord of the Dance entered the lexicon.  I think Michael Flatley, Celtic Thunder and Celtic Woman are all corny as shite.  I avoid any rom-com or really any movie set in Ireland on principle.  There are a lot more instruments in Ireland than the fiddle. I typically find Irish actors annoying, with few exceptions (you know who you are).  My first serious boyfriend was Irish.  From Ireland.  Here he is, back in the day:

When I took this picture, we were no longer "boyfriends" but we were still good friends.  He was a lovely person.  Sweet as pie.  We're out of touch now; as I can't find any presence of him on social media; but I did run into him fairly recently in Boston.  I took this picture of him in the summer of 1988.  I know it was the summer of 1988 because we'd gone to see Married to the Mob that day and that's when that movie came out. August, actually. It's funny the things you remember.* And I suppose we must chalk this up to good old synchronicity, because that movie dealt heavily in stereotypes, which we are going to discuss here.  But, you know, stereotypes in a fun way!
Which brings us to...

That was the first iteration of Mr. Charms.  Here's a typical commercial from when I was a kid:

The Blue Diamonds were a relatively new add at the time, and I think the first.  1975ish?  God, I'm old.  But ya know, I don't feel old.  I'm pretty much the same person I was probably before 1975 even!  I have the mind of a child.  But that's for another blog.  Speaking of children...
Okay, so in BOI, Barry Keoghan plays "Dominic Kearney."  Although he's never named as such, I think we're to assume he's essaying "The Village Idiot.'  Or, "The Village Eedgit" as they might say back on the old sod.  Now, is "idiot" an acceptable term nowadays for people like Dominic?  I don't know.  I'll have to do a little research.  In the meantime, let's watch some scenes of the Village Idiot from David Lean's Ryan's Daughter!

This 1970 film was a moderate success; but it did produce a hit song!  Here's Liza Minnelli singing it as only she could:

And yes, I've seen Ryan's Daughter.  In it's original run.  When I was five years old.  All three hours of it at the Camp Lejeune Drive-In; and I do remember quite a lot of it.  As an adult cinephile, I really should revisit it.  And more synchronicity: it was filmed mostly in Dingle, Ireland, where I set most of the scenes in Ireland in my screenplay HEARTFIGHT.  Why?  Well, I thought the name was funny and afforded the story some humor; I didn't know Ryan's Daughter was filmed there;  but here we are.  Here's another clip-packet, showcasing the stunning imagery.  If I'm not mistaken, it was the last film of the Golden Age of Hollywood that was filmed in 70 millimeter...

So, I looked up the correct terms for people who might be labelled a "Village Idiot."  The preferred term nowadays is: "individual with an intellectual disability" / "intellectual disability."  I also found a list of prior terms that were in many cases "official" that are now considered "stigmatizing."  Here's a link to the article, if you're interested:​ ndcpd.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2023/02/History-of-Stigmatizing-Names-2016.pdf

But doesn't any term that is applied to people that are what other people don't want to be; come to be "stigmatized."  Or, what's the word I'm looking for?  I'm having a senior brain flatulence incidence.  "Derogatory."  I think that's the word I'm looking for.  
RESET ALERT * RETHINK ALERT * BACK-UP, REVERSE THAT ALERT!
So often I approach my own thinking from a humorous point of view.  And so often, that impulse drives me forward towards more serious thinking.  Like, do I really give a feck about Squarespace's advertising campaign for the Superbowl?  No.  Not really.  And yet, there it is.  I've seen it and my initial response is the typical Irish response; particularly when it comes to stereotypical depictions of the Irish.  It's kind of an ironic chuckle and a dismissal of the "Well, I'm jest goin' too let that little aspersion roll off me back like Guinness offa spit-shined bar top," reaction.  We Irish don't care.  We don't care about the constant depictions of our people as big drinkers if not fall down drunks.  We don't care about the usual characterizations of our being stupid.  Or bloodthirsty.  Or charmingly melancholic.  We could care less that our society is often depicted as having Village Idiots like that's a real thing and practically an official title.  Why, we actually elect the Village Idiot.  We nominate them.  We have Village Idiot Pageants; often sending Ireland's leading Village Idiot to things like the Miss Universe Contest.  Ireland never wins; but we're too stupid to care!
But are we?
I'm not sure.  Maybe we should ask Barry Keoghan.  And I'm not here to trash Mr. Keoghan; but he was the star of the commercial (and it wasn't just one commercial, it was entire junket of media material featuring the BOI homage).  He did get paid to do it.  Got paid to play a Village Idiot.  Even amping up the idiocy of the character for the commercials.  Mr. Keoghan is Irish, natch.  Born and raised on the old sod.  So, I guess that makes it okay that he's kind of doing blackface as Irishface; which maybe we should call, Greenface?  Yes, I like that:
GREENFACE (TM/REG./PAT.PEND/ALL RIGHTS RESERVED). 
​And maybe as humorous as we Irish think it is, maybe the time has come to rethink the whole charming, drunken, stupid leprechaun thing.
So, this is what I propose.  I'm going to split this discussion into two blogs.  This first one will be the "serious" part; and then the second one will be the "fun/funny" part.  You know, the gay part!

*I have no recall as to how John hurt his leg.  Did he fall off a ladder?

Back to Mr. Keoghan.
Let me just be honest.  Do I like Mr. Keoghan as a performer?  Well, I can't say I don't.  But I also can't say I do.  He has thus far made a career out of playing extremely strange, off-putting, weird, menacing and altogether creepy young men.  Now, as such, he's been a rousing success; but I would like to see him change things up a bit; perhaps by playing, oh I don't know, anyone who doesn't drink bathtub butt-water, hump gravesites and get molested by his creepy dad.  Like, actual dad.  Not "daddy."  Father.  Although, I must say, I really enjoyed when he examined Colin Farrell's armpits!  I'm still not sure what the feck this scene was in the movie for; but I'm not gonna say it didn't make me tingle in certain ways.  Oh, wait a second...wasn't he playing a sixteen year-old?  Whoopsie...my bad!  Colin's pits is what made me tingle...let's get that straight, right now, for feck's sake, ya eedgit!  And let's have a look-see!

See, now i really love falling down these rabbit holes; that is, the one's that are enjoyable and not full of weirdos trying to feck with your life.  I think it's about finding how much things really are connected as you dig deeper into things; and yes, I know it's a cliche; but I find it kind of wondrous!  So, the man who played the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter, "Michael," was John Mills:

Mr. Mills, who is English, won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1970 for that performance.  He, it turns out, is the father of Juliet and Hayley Mills.  Hayley, as you may recall, played Susan and Sharon, the identical twins in the original version of The Parent Trap.  Their mother in that movie was played by the famously Irish Maureen O'Hara. One of my all time favorite movies.  Let's take a look!

Hayley's real life sister, Juliet, is married to Maxwell Caulfield.  They were clients of a bank my husband used to work for.  Maxwell's movie debut was with Michelle Pfeiffer in her movie debut: Grease 2.  Grease 2 and Grease, were both Paramount flicks.  I worked at Paramount with Linda Correa, whose favorite movie was Grease. Michelle Pfeiffer was in Married to the Mob, the movie I saw with my Irish pal...and so on...and so on...

And that brings us directly back to TV commercials.
You know what I find ironic?  No?  Well, I'll tell you.  I find it ironic that the one award that is bestowed in this country and it's subsequent awards ceremony (and that's an assumption; I'm not even really sure there is one) that is not televised to the general public, are the Clios.  I suppose the major function of the mysterious Clio Awards is to bestow stauettes of excellence to advertisers and the commercials they concoct for primarily TV and/or visual media (motion). In other words, awards for TV commercials; those little 30, 15 and sometimes 60 second "spots" that we are exposed to some...hmmmm...how many could it possibly be?

Wow.  I had no idea.  Doesn't it seem as though commercials just appear out of the blue?  It's really the commercials that all the money is poured into but the industry doesn't really want us to know how they go about things.  But today, through the magic of the interwebmachine, we can find out.  For example, we can find out how the Squarespace BOI commercials package came about by reading an article from AdAge, online!

Well, that is, if you want to pay the paywall.  What does AdWeek have to say?  Well, you can read this brief article by Ms. Lucinda Southern, in full, via this link:
www.adweek.com/creativity/super-bowl-squarespace-irish/

But I must point out this quote pull:

No!  Of course we don't care.  The Irish don't deserve our care.  The Irish are stupid, drunken dolts, remember?  They can't even play their instruments. Who gives a feck about the Irish?  Not even the Irish, apparently; the eedgits!
One of the shorter "commercialettes", I suppose we could call it, I found particularly...well...horrid.  It's called "The Piper."  Let's take a look:

Not only  is this like stomach-churningly offensive; it is bad advertising.  The point is lost.  Am I wrong?  So the idea is that a website makes an undertaking "real."  So, is "the piper" supposed to find a website in order to learn how to play or is he supposed to build a website in order to find people to give lessons to?  Based on the image on the laptop, it seems to be the latter (option 2...I feckin' hate former and latter).  So if it is...then why can't he already play the pipes?
Thusly, I think we need some answers from Squarespace "CCO" (apparently they have an "in-house" ad agency) Mr. David Lee; answers I'm not sure we get in the OG article, as I feckin' refuse to pay feckin' AdWeek in order to read one article. Here's Mr. Lee:

Looks like a super hip dude!  Let's hear what he has to say...about what he does...

So, Mr. Lee is apparently the head honcho at Squarespace Advertising; so, I think we can reasonably assert that he is ultimately responsible for the Squarespace "A Tale As Old As Websites" campaign.  So therefore, I think we can reasonably put forth some queries, quandries and conundrums for this quorum of one.  Now, I don't actually expect answers from Mr. Lee, although he is certainly welcome and encouraged to respond to this (there is a "comments" section on these blogs); I will be posing more hypothetical questions.  A dialectical of the mind, if you will.  You get it.
Mr. Lee is a Canadian.
Oh, before we go on, you might like to read my saucy take on Canada here (for FULL DISCLOSURAL purposes):​www.christopherfreidy.com/blog/no-canada

And he's Korean.  There are like tons of articles and interviews with him.  I kept hitting paywalls.  Maybe you'll have better luck.  Here's one from AdWeek or AdAge or AdWhut?:

The more I learn about you, Mr. Lee; the more surprised, if not shocked, I become that you created this abysmal ad campaign.  It seems the antithesis of everything I can glean about you from headlines and quote pulls.  Okay, let me run this up the flagpole and see if you salute, as they say in the ad game...
All kidding and levity aside.
The Banshees of Inisherin, which I feel we can all agree is the basis of your ad campaing, was set in 1923.  What was going on in Korea in 1923?  Well, from my research, not a lot of good.  About as much fun as it must've been in Ireland. Let's transpose the Tale as Old as Laptops or Websites or whatever it's called scenario, to early 20th century Korea.  Already sounds like a bad idea, doesn't it?

​EXT. BARREN FIELD -DAY
The camera pans across the depressing mud-gray mud where two Korean farmers are attempting to plow their field with a crude construction of sticks:

And I'm just going to stop right there; because there is simply no way to make this humorous.  To even try to.  And I wouldn't want to.
I mean, I just have to ask, Mr. Lee; did you even see The Banshees of Inishiren?  And you might say, oh, well, the entire thing was some kind of allegory about the Irish Civil War; it wasn't mean to be taken literally.  And I might say, well, sure.  Okay.  But you do realize that Barry Keoghan's character was sexually molested by his own father who was also a drunk, right?  And I might say, sure, the picture was full of high falutin' metaphor; but I might also say that if one might, as I did, take the endeavor at face value; I might wonder why a movie wherein a man cuts off his own fingers to torment his friend for no reason is a comedy.  And by the way, do you know why The Bear is considered a comedy, because I sure can't figure it out.  Maybe I'm missing something.  Maybe I'm missing something with your commercials.
Nah.
No.  The commercials are utterly mean spirited and that's what I dislike most about them.
But Chris, you might say, don't you think you're overreacting?  It's just a commercial.  And I might say: "But is it though?"  I might even forgive the crummy portrayl of my people.  I might even have been somewhat amused if Mr. Keoghan had been directed to rein in the brain-deadedness with a little charm.  A little less passive-aggressive nastiness.  Why is he throwing things at people?  Why is he destroying property?  Do you know how much it would've cost to reglaze a window of that size in 1923 Ireland?  Neither do I; but I'm sure the people depicted in the commercial would've been hard pressed to even find newspaper to stuff the hole with. I guess they might've used mud.  Or goose dung.  Or donkey shite.  Is the man dancing in the background of "The Piper" spot the back-up Village Idiot?  It seems really easy to get nominated for awards for playing Village Idiots.  I hope both he and Mr. Keoghan get nominated for Clios! for Best Supporting Village Idiot and Best Supporting, Supporting Village Idiot!
​Why weren't Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in it?  I mean, you must've had to get some kind of permission or thumbs up from the writer-director of the movie, Mr. McDonagh.  Did he sign off on this?  What about Disney, whose film it ultimately is?  They were okay with it?  Yeah, they gave us Darby O'Gill and the Little People, so they probably were fine with it.  But DOGATLP did have the fine, strapping, upstanding Irishman Sean Connery! And who knew Sean Connery could sing!??!

Oh, right.  He couldn't.  And he's Scottish.
Feckin' shite.

Please see: Breaking Ad: A Roundtable Discussion, for the fun part!

CFR   2/12/25
ADDENDUM:
Or could he?