Hollywood’s ‘Oirish’ jokes aren’t funny any more

Eight minutes was the length of time it took for Ireland’s hope of a big Oscars night to go up in smoke. That was how long we had to wait until thumpingly unfunny host Jimmy Kimmel got around to an Irish joke. “We have nominees from every corner of Dublin,” he said, radiating a blinding amber glow of self-satisfaction. “Five Irish actors are nominated tonight, which means the chances of a fight just went way up.”

The gag was of course dead on arrival – with American “talk shows” host, that can be taken for granted. It was also geographically imprecise given Paul Mescal is from Maynooth and Kerry Condon from Thurles – 91 miles from Dublin. But most of all it was a reminder of American comedy’s toe-curling inability to get with the times.

“Fighting Irish” is a stereotype that, in most of the world, faded away decades ago. Yet in America – and American comedy especially – there is that constant sense of having only just about left the 19th century.

It was the same the previous evening on Saturday Night Live. Here, a skit featured two actors portraying Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson speaking like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. “And they haven’t even started drinking yet,” quipped one of the presenters.

It turns out these were supposed to be “indecipherable” Irish accents. Of course, the only thing hard to understand was how anyone born later than 1870 could have considered this a joke. There is also the poor taste of cracking wise about Colin Farrell and alcohol, given his struggles with addiction and the fact he has been teetotal for 20 years.

None of these gags is slightly amusing. Are they offensive? Well, as any Irish person will tell you, constant allusions to what in the 19th century were racist tropes gets old.

Saturday Night Live, in particular, is a repeat offender. When Saoirse Ronan hosted  in 2017, she had to participate in a cringe-inducing skit about Aer Lingus. It featured dreadful accents and references to dogs, Aran jumpers and potatoes. The potato part is particularly rib-tickling because it references the collapse of the potato crop in the 19th century, which led to a million deaths. Hilarious: the next time a British star guest-hosts we can presumably look forward to zingers about the Peterloo Massacre and Jack the Ripper.

Ronan’s appearance did not go down well in what Americans would call the “old country” and she was later asked about it on Irish TV. “The show is a comedy show. It was a huge thing for me to go on. I am not anti Aer Lingus,” she stuttered, sounding as if she wanted the ground to swallow her.

This American assumption that they have permission to laugh at Irish people – in their faces, repeatedly – manifests in the strangest places. I recall attending a Dublin show by a critically acclaimed indie artist when she suddenly got carried away and said, “you people –you’re all drunks!” A chill descended among the gathered hipster-ati and she looked as if she was about to cry. American “comedy” had crashed into reality.

It surfaces in other, darker ways too. In 2015, five Irish students and an American student died when a balcony collapsed at an apartment in Berkley, California. Before the cause of the tragedy had been established, the New York Times – that mouthpiece of American liberalism – rushed into print a piece about Irish students on working holidays in the US, describing them as “not just a source of aspiration, but a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara”.

There it was – the drunken, fighting trope so beloved of Saturday Night Live and whoever writes Jimmy Kimmel’s anti-jokes. A half-hearted semi-apology ensued – the newspaper regretted “that readers believe The Times set out to blame the victims, which was never the intention”.

Later, it emerged that the balcony collapsed because contractors cut corners and because the building management company ignored red flags. American shoddiness led to the deaths – not “drunken partying” by young Irish people as implied by the New York Times.

Irish people cringed when Saoirse Ronan played along with Saturday Night Live. But more recently Irish actors have started to push back. Domhnall Gleeson took Stephen Colbert to task for jokes about the pronunciation of his name. And on the Oscar red carpet, Collin Farrell made a withering reference to “SNL from last night”. It wasn’t much – but perhaps the message will finally get through to Kimmel and other supposed comedians that we’re no longer in the 19th century and that Coney Island “ethnic gags” have passed their sell-by date.