We’ve seen infantilized and emasculated characters throughout our discussion of films about the North of Ireland. How does the construction of Dan Starkey conform to or complicate such depictions? What other performances of masculinity and femininity to we see, and how do they align with character’s power and/or political convictions?
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Throughout the film, Starkey is presented as a child who cannot care of himself. He is being infantilized and feminized. Even though he is married, he does not have any responsibilities, drinks all the time, and gets yelled at by his boss for not doing his job. On top of this, for half of the film, he is dressed like a woman and multiple times is presented wearing clothing that belongs to other women like the black and white robe and the pink towel. The fact that he is married and is a magnet that attracts women quickly even when he does not behave like a grown man complicates the whole picture of him being infantilized. To add to this, the taxi driver is given some power over her husband. Since her husband does not work, she has to provide for the family and also take care of the chores.
Dan Starkey complicates and differs from some of the previous depictions of infantilized characters we’ve explored like Cal or Dill. Cal was someone who was constantly in survival mode. He was simply trying to make it to the next day with the eclectic set of problems he had to endure; the police, and protestant movement mostly. Dill was someone who had more agency than Cal, but still demonstrated a deep need for someone, anyone, to be present for a dependent emotional relationship. Dan is juvenile in his demenaor and his love of alcohol and shaggy clothing pepertuates this image all the more; however, he’s also grounded in a keen sense of duty to his column. He consistently demonstrates throughout the film that he’d endure any challenge to remove the lid on Michael Brinn’s plot. He risked his own life multiple times such as the scenes in the mail room and his confrontation with Pat Keegan, when he simply could’ve caved in to the location of the tape.
Pat Keegan fits the archetype of the IRA head hauncho we’ve seen previously: tall, fit, and constantly propped in a layer of dark color and imagery. He also has the same thirst for violence or insanity that gets associated with the IRA.
While Agness Brinn follows many of the conventions of the sweet, blonde, idyllic wife, Margaret fits a different type of femininity. Margaret kicks Dan out the second she finds out about the affair, and welcomes Margaret;s home by bashing her windows in with some dense potatoes. She also displays a more open agency of her sexuality, readily admitting to her countering Dan’s affair with her own, something we haven’t seen much of previously.
In the film Dan Starkey is shown to be infantilized in this film in certain scenes when he is being the one that is taken care of which aligns with this image of him being infantilized. In scenes such as when the nurse takes care of him, he is infantilized and shown to be a child when he is left at her home to rest and watch TV like a kid would do. Also from the beginning of the film he gets into trouble all the time and isn’t responsible with what he has to do which also aligns with this image of him acting like a child and showing how for his age he is immature. As for Femininity he dresses as a woman, which shows how he is feminized in this film and this proceeds to show how he embodies the femininity as he is left at the nurse’s house. In the film for femininity it is also clearly shown when he wears a pink towel in the nurse’s household and looks out the window which gives the impression that he is like a stay at home wife who awaits for her husband to get home.
Along with the fore-mentioned aspects of Dan’s infantile behavior we see more evidence in the setting and his behavior’s that are ingrained into his character. In the opening scene we are placed in a room where there are beer cans scattered across the floor and a floor bed, various memorabilia such as a lava lamp and mainly a sense that this room belongs to a idealic stereotype “stoner teen” from the 90’s. For a brief moment i had hard time believing a woman was in the bed with Dan due to the childlike and chaotic scene that was his room.