Irish Stereotypes

I wake up and open the curtains to another gloomy, rainy day. It is pouring outside which is nothing new. I walk outside with my rain jacket and umbrella and run into the local coffee shop. "Top o' the mornin' to ya!" says the little, red-headed man behind the counter as he hands me my order, knowing it by heart. I pass by a group of red-headed students, unable to tell who has the most freckles, and they are all wearing kilts and drinking beers. At almost every table in the coffee shop, there are Guinness beers on the tables. You would never be able to tell it's only 11 a.m.  I feel out of place with my brown hair and tan skin. I walk outside and see a rainbow in the sky. It's the third rainbow of the day!

After class, I walk to a local pub with my classmates in the pouring rain. I hear bagpipes and Irish music the entire way there. I look at the menu and there are three options: Mashed potatoes, Baked potatoes and Sweet potatoes. There is such a variety today! I go to order and I lay out my hand. The small leprechaun bartender climbs into the palm of my hand and I lift him up. After potatoes and beers, I'm ready to go back into the rain.

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After three months of living in Ireland and taking a glance at the title of this blog, I realized how wrong the stereotypes of Ireland are. That story is an exaggerated version of what people anticipate Ireland to be like. In reality, almost every Irish person has dark hair and no freckles. If it rains, it rains for 10-20 minutes and then the sun is back out. An Irish person said it best, "When have you EVER heard someone Irish say 'Top o' the mornin' to ya?'" I have seen one rainbow since being here and there are no leprechauns. The food here is mainly American. While they do offer mashed potatoes, french fries or "chips" are a lot more common. Drinking is also heavily exaggerated. Cork is a college town and while there are students going out every single night, I know the same thing happens in Baltimore.

There is a lot more to the Irish culture than drinking, potatoes and rain. Cork had a big festival dedicated to Jazz music where people came from all over Ireland to listen to the jazz artists. Certain pubs have live Irish music, with guitars and banjos, almost every night of the week. Sports are a huge factor of Irish culture as there are places packed watching football (soccer), Gaelic football, and hurling matches. Irish boys are raised to play one of these sports and they train nonstop, all of their lives. The Irish girls are very tan and wear a lot of make up. My friends and I have become friends with them while they do their make up in bathrooms at pubs because as soon as they hear our American accent, they want to talk all about the U.S. One Irish girl took a picture with me because she said it was the closest she would ever get to the Jersey Shore. They consider going to college a privilege, not a right, and they work hard to get there. The Irish culture and Ireland itself should not be categorized under the stereotypes that have been developed.

Movies vs. Reality

I've asked several Irish people about the movies filmed in Ireland and the response is always "They're shit".  They hate American movies that are supposedly Irish like P.S. I Love You and Leap Year.
Before coming abroad, I had dreamed about going to all of the places that I had seen in movies. I was eager to go to these places because famous actors and actresses were there and it looked so beautiful. I was positive that if the movie set took place there, it was going to be my favorite place. I was wrong. The Irish are right.

I watched scenes from movies that took place in Ireland, Rome and London like Harry Potter, the Lizzie McGuire Movie, and Leap Year.  Before going to the places where these movies were filmed, I re-watched them, just to make sure I remembered what it looked like.

I arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, one of the most famous places in Ireland, and the cliffs were breathtaking. A scene in one of the Harry Potter movies had been filmed here but it looked nothing like this in the movie.  The water hit the rocks thousands of feet below and a tiny castle sat on top of a cliff across from them.  The sky was bright blue, the grass was bright green and the place felt happy. I was confused. In Harry Potter, the waves were crashing against the rocks in fury.  The sky was gloomy and there was no castle.  There was no resemblance to what I was seeing in the Harry Potter scene.

Opposite the Cliffs of Moher

While driving around the Ring of Kerry, I stumbled upon a castle that is said to be in the movie Leap Year.  The castle looked a lot smaller than the one in the movie and the surrounding scenery did not look the same.  In the movie, Amy Adams has to climb a steep hill in the rain just to reach the castle.  Yet this castle was on level ground.  It was quaint and surrounded by a neighborhood.

In Rome, at the Trevi Fountain, Lizzie McGuire sings and puts on a concert while everyone cheers her on.  When I visited the Trevi Fountain, hundreds of tourists were taking pictures and throwing coins into the fountain.

At King's Cross in London, Harry Potter's Platform 9 3/4 stands where Harry has to run through a brick wall to get to the Hogwarts train.  Rather than seeing a sign for the platform inbetween 9 and 10, outside of the train platforms on a wall is a simple plaque for tourists that says Platform 9 3/4.

After visiting many of these places, I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't like the movie.  I learned that many of the scenes had been animated using a computer and they were not real.  They used these places as a starting point and changed them.  The real places, however, were so much better than the movie scenes.  Seeing these places in person was more beautiful than what any computer could make up.  They were real.  These places became my favorite places because of their true beauty, not because they were messed with to look like something else in a movie with celebrities.