Cinematic Genre and the Irish Magdalene Laundries – Sandra Marie Costello

Описание: My proposed paper looks at contemporary Irish cinema as it seeks to deal with the national trauma of the Magdalene Laundries. I look at how Ireland visualises the darker elements of its own history in relation to these institutions under the influence of the State. State-endorsed narratives tend to relegate gendered institutionalisation to the past and render survivors' truth unknown. Seven feature films between 2002 and 2024 deal with this kind of incarceration and abuse. Genres of melodrama, horror and art cinema are employed to frame a world of intolerance, misogynistic control, confinement and loss. Melodrama highlights the emotional impact of the experience; horror conveys the irrepressible nature of trauma and art cinema highlights the difficulty of memory and sense making around these events.


I use the theories of Nicholas Mirzoeff; his term "visuality" is what he deems a ruling ideology which benefits the powerful in society. His opposing term "countervisuality" is an alternative way of seeing that challenges the status quo. I wish to analyse these films and genres in terms of their ability to present a "countervisual" perspective to challenge official State discourse.

I will first critically analyse two Magdalene Laundry melodramas from 2002: The Magdalene Sisters and Sinners. Although melodrama often deals with social issues, the formal fundamentals of melodrama are traditionally very restrictive and impose limitations on the material making the resulting product quite conservative.

I will secondly focus on found footage horror as I analyse the form's unique take on the trauma of the Magdalene Laundries. I will look at The Devil's Doorway from 2018 as my case study. Horror and found footage horror are examples of genres that have a unique ability to represent the uncontainable nature of trauma onscreen.

Finally, I will look at an example of an art film called Cellar Door (2018) that stands in opposition to mainstream cinema. The film presents the subjective point of view of an institutional female survivor suffering with dementia. By emphasising the inescapable effect of the past on the present, the film highlights the need to deal with our institutional past on a national level.

Mini-Biography

Sandra Marie Costello is a PhD candidate and Irish Research Council Scholar in Film & Screen Media at University College Cork under the supervision of Dr Barry Monahan. She has recently submitted her PhD dissertation titled "Cinema, Containment and Countervisuality: Irish Gendered Institutionalisation Framed by an Institutional Lens". Previous to this, she graduated with a BA International in English and Italian at NUI, Galway and went on to complete a Professional Diploma of Education at UCC. She also undertook a Masters in Film Studies at UCC where she completed a thesis titled "Ireland Interrupted: Repressive and Ideological Institutionalisation in Contemporary Irish Cinema." Her research interests include Irish Cinema, representations of institutions, women's studies, cultural memory and identity, sociology, Marxist theory, cinematic soundscapes and visual studies.