My
latest piece of published work is a chapter in an edited collection called Narratives of Place in Literature and Film.
Edited by Steven Allen and Kirsten Mollegaard the fifteen chapters look at vast
array of narratives of place: urban, rural, non-places, and so on.
My
chapter focuses on three films directed by Desmond Davis which were written by
Irish novelist Edna O'Brien: Girl With
Green Eyes (1964), I Was Happy Here (1966)
and The Country Girls (1984). Allen and Mollegaard introduce my work:
‘Matthew Kerry’s chapter focuses on three feature films in which
urban spaces play significant roles… These films, which were created by film
director Desmond Davis in collaboration with Irish novelist Edna O’Brien, frame
their stories of burgeoning female sexuality and eventual disillusionment in a
series of contrasting environments that contextualize regional and national
identity. The films (and O’Brien’s novels that the films are based on) not only
explore gendered spatialities, but also examine notions of belonging and
displacement, memory and history, violence and oppression. Kerry explores the
films’ industrial, historical, and social contexts in order to analyse what the
films reveal about gendered places and changing identities for Irish women in
the mid-to-late twentieth century. Kerry’s chapter highlights the many social
strictures and patriarchal norms Irish women faced when they left their homes
in the country to work in the big city, or when they left Ireland to work in
the United Kingdom. He discusses how rural and urban spaces, as well as the
confined spaces of home, structure the women’s perceptions of themselves, often
under the yoke of a nationalist agenda where their struggle to achieve sexual
and freedom is weighed against the haunting presence of Catholicism and the
motherland. Davis’ films and O’Brien’s novels show how women’s agency and
determination can liberate and empower them, even in places dominated by
patriarchal discourses’ (Allen and Mollegaard, 2019: 97 – 98).
This
will most likely be the last piece of academic film writing I do. The chapter
has turned out well, but as I completed it I did wonder to myself if I have anything
new to say in terms of film theory. I'll be working on another textbook though, so watch this space...
Kerry,
Matthew, ‘The Country, the City, the Sea, and Girls with Green Eyes’ in Allen,
Steven, and Kirsten Mollegaard, 2019, Narratives
of Place in Literature and Film, London: Routledge.
