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The photograph is from Wednesday night's riots in the Short Strand (the so called Titanic quarter). Maybe the guy chucking the petrol bomb will get a mural of his own one day.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Celebrating The Titanic
I have never understood why the city fathers in Belfast have been so eager to celebrate the Titanic in recent years. The fact that the Titanic was built in Belfast can't be something to boast about can it? Yet it seems to be. They've put up giant murals all over East Belfast and they're actively renaming that part of town as the Titanic Quarter. I'm not knocking the workers - my dad and my sister both worked in Harland and Wolff shipyard, but the fact that the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage with tremendous loss of life is surely not something to be bragging about.
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The photograph is from Wednesday night's riots in the Short Strand (the so called Titanic quarter). Maybe the guy chucking the petrol bomb will get a mural of his own one day.
...
The photograph is from Wednesday night's riots in the Short Strand (the so called Titanic quarter). Maybe the guy chucking the petrol bomb will get a mural of his own one day.
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26 comments:
Built in Belfast and captained by a man from my neck of the woods, Stoke-on-Trent. Oddly enough, they erected a statue to the Cap'n....thirty miles down the road in Lichfield. I suspect Stoke didn't feel particularly proud of him, regardless of his bravery and devotion to duty.
Although I bet most Stokies would rather have a statue of him than the modern art crap our council has squandered hundreds of thousands on in recent years.
Michael
The Titanic's sister ship the Britannic also sank. In 1916 it was a converted hospital ship when it struck a mine off Greece; when it was discovered that the famed water tight doors wouldnt close properly the order was given to abandon ship. Once again although they had plenty of notice there was significant loss of life (although not up there with the Titanic).
If the best thing my city can come up with is to be associated with these ships then its a sorry state of affairs.
More on the Britannic here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic
The Titanic Quarter? I guess they want to maximize this district's potential for being the subject of ironic/sarcastic commentary. This is what happens when property developers and city officials get their pointy heads together. In my hometown, Toronto, a smallish area on the fringes of downtown that's home to some brand new condo towers is suddenly being called The Library District. There is no library there. Never was. But one will be built there in about three years. Maybe. By the way, why is the kid rioting? Was he upset at not being seated at the Captain's table? See, it's happening already!
Maybe it's the same impulse that has people flocking to Civil War battlefields here every year. Or maybe they aren't really trying to capitalize on disaster, but on the slowly fading but still potent aura of Leonardo DiCaprio.
Or maybe it's just a way of clamping down other Belfast associations that tourists might still be afraid of. Of course, that guy with the petrol bomb really isn't helping.
The Poms celebrate Dunkirk while ignoring the fact that the reason the evacuation was necessary was a total flogging by the Germans. We celebrate Gallipoli, a complete disaster. They wrote poems about the Crimean campaign, which was really one breathtakingly stupid act after another. So perhaps Belfast isn't so out of line. But when will there be a Van Morrison quarter?
Don't worry, David--there are still three quarters left.
Cary
The kid was rioting because its the end of June, school's out and its not raining. Happens every year in Belfast. Its pathetic really.
Seana
Di Caprio brings us back to Whitey Bulger again doesnt he?
I cant bring myself to think of The Departed as anything other than Scorsese's worst film.
David
I dont really get the whole worship of Gallipoli thing to be honest. Was a nation forged at Gallipoli? Maybe the Turkish nation. Kemal Attaturk was the commanding general on the heights wasnt he?
And yes Dunkirk was a debacle that was very nearly a disaster.
David
And yeah Van Morrison was from that neck of the woods, so was CS Lewis.
The Narnia Quarter, The Madame George District...so much cooler.
I can't bring myself to think of it at all, since I didn't see it.
I liked hearing Lawrence O'Donnell refer to it as 'The DePawted' on the Last Word tonight. Turns out that he started out in the same neighborhood as Bulger. And it also turns out that he ended up living in the same Santa Monica neighborhood too. Which must feel a bit freaky. Although I'm just as glad he didn't get the reward money. He seems to be doing just fine.
Seana
The highlight for me was Martin Sheen's accent. Definitely the worst Boston accent in the history of motion pictures. Or perhaps Alec Baldwin's from the same picture. Or Jack Nicholson's. Or even Matt Damon's and he's from Boston.
I would have thought Baldwin might have been able to pull it off.
I mean, being something of a ham.
Seana
Baldwin wasn't bad but Mark Wahlberg stole that picture. He was great in it. He was so good he almost saved it. Almost.
Mark Wahlberg seems to be consistently underrated as an actor, perhaps due to his road to fame. He has an even more underrated brother, Donnie who did some very good work in the also underrated L.A. cop show, Boomtown.
The Departed was a comedy, wasn't it? Or some kind of satire like Starship Troopers? Certainly it wasn't meant to be serious. And another movie with only one woman kn the whole thing and no one really knows why she's there.
But I watched (some of) Casino tne other night and tnat's just an audio book set to pictures - also with just one woman...
Halifax makes a big deal out of the Titanic, too. And there's a big TV mini-series about the Titanic in production now, a Canada-Ireland co-production. We've got to get in on one of these, Adrian.
“Short Strand” is more than cool enough a name for any neighborhood.
Did Gordon Lightfoot ever write a song about a successful sailing? If he did, it was nowhere near as big a hit as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Hell, as a kid, I sang "It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down." (We invariably substituted "Uncles and aunts / Little children lost their pants" for "Husbands and wives / Little Children Lost Their Lives.")
Double hell, but did J.G. Ballard write a novel about a smooth, trouble-free car trup? Everybody loves a good disaster.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Seana
Reminds me of that other Baldwin who was in Homicide.
John
Yeah I really hated it. I especially hated it when the screenwriter tried to get political and added things about bussing etc. which were hastily tacked on. Absurd.
Peter
Maybe they should rename New Jersey the Hindenburg state.
The tone of the Belfast Titanic connection seems to be an attempt to celebrate the ship as an example of engineering excellence. I just dont buy it. It sunk on the very first go, thats not good.
I don't really remember Daniel Baldwin, though I did really like that show.
I don't know if any of you are going to like Katie Roiphe's analysis of Go the F(characters obscured by a moon)k to Sleep in Slate today, but I thought it also struck a note. Maybe I've just sold too many copies in the last few days.
Seana
I saw the article but I didnt read it. She seems like a bit of a lightweight to me. I could be wrong of course.
Well, I'm not all that crazy about the domestic aspect of Slate in general. But you might have to have been working in a bookstore over the last few days to see that this has turned into a cri de couer of the middle class and although amusing, it's also kind of disappointing in practice. I mean, it's a highly educated class that's responding to it and you have to think, they did know what they were signing up for, didn't they?
Seana, I don't think when it comes to kids anyone has any what they're really getting into ;)
I read the article in Slate, interesting ending. I've been reading a little about this "self-esteem" generation that have now become parents and I think part of this is that they aren't, "shitty-ass parents," they're just average. Sure, as you say, highly educated, but within that group they're all pretty much the same, living up to expectations and not really going beyond them. Which would be fine, but they expected to be so much more than average.
Still, I think it'll work out for them, the kids will get older and everyone will get more sleep and they'll stop being disappointed by being only average. At least that's what happened in my house ;).
Highly educated was probably overstating the case--I really meant that they aren't teen parents who haven't had any life experience.Privileged might be a better word.
And you're right, John, no one really has any idea of what they're getting into prior to any larger life experience. Certainly from outside the parenting role, I shouldn't be talking so much. I have been around enough of it, especially in Santa Cruz, to observe that it can be a very solipsistic enterprise.
But you're right, the kids will probably all turn out fine, and everyone will sleep more sooner or later.
For some reason I just had the impulse to look at the comments thread on Roiphe's article and let's just say that 'yuppie rage' is no longer supressed--it's just been redirected to Katie Roiphe.
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