Upon John’s suggestion, I went to see Kneecap yesterday. I had never heard of it, but from the trailer and review John showed me it looked very interesting. It is a semi-fictional account of a band in Northern Ireland which performs rap/hip hop in Gaelic. They do so to ‘keep the language alive’.

As I rode the bus home last night, I remember thinking to myself that to write any kind of thorough review or exploration of Kneecap would inevitably have to go into the vast, complex history of Ireland. To be honest I didn’t find the film unproblematic: it seemed to me to emphasise Irish victimhood. That is, it went out of it’s way to depict how bad the British were, and how great the young rappers were in fighting against oppression. According to the film, the UK police are nothing but blundering, violent thugs. In reality, the central protagonists are two able bodied, white, straight young men born after the troubles. Their contention that trauma and hardship could somehow be inherited from their parents or ancestors struck me as abjectly idiotic. They, and the film itself, seemed to want to rebel, when they had nothing to rebel against; they were not being oppressed, nobody was trying to eliminate their language. It’s a common trait these days: everyone claims to be an activist, even the most privileged people in society.

It’s slight one-sidedness aside, Kneecap is definitely worth a watch. It’s an exploration of an area of our culture we see very little of. The fact that the events it depicts are more or less true make it even more interesting. I just wish it was slightly more balanced.