remembering historical trauma in paul greengrass’s bloody sunday

Remembering Historical Trauma

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Remembering Historical Trauma in Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday

Aileen BlAney

Since the instigation of the peace process in Northern Ireland, issues relating to the commemoration of the political conflict there have moved to center stage in media, political, cultural and academic discourses. This essay locates the film Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, 2002) within the framework of a growing body of literature on historical trauma and memory studies in order to explicate the ways in which it discursively works through a historical event of traumatic mag-nitude. Analysis considers the films relationship to its historical referent, memorial activity at its contemporary moment of production, and generic modes of address specific to the docudrama.

A culTuRe of RemembRANce

on Sunday, 30 January 1972, the Northern Ireland civil Rights Associa-tion (NIcRA) organized a march through the bogside1 area of Derry city against internmentan initiative adopted in August 1971 on the part of the Northern Ireland government, with the full support of the british government, to imprison without trial individuals suspected of paramili-tary-related activities. The british army strongly opposed the march and prevented marchers from entering the city center. When young men began throwing objects at soldiers in William Street, members of the Parachute Regiment (Paras)an elite regiment of the british armymoved into the bogside in an arrest operation. During the next thirty minutes, british soldiers shot dead thirteen men, chiefly by single gunshots to the head and chest. The soldiers insisted that they had fired only after they them-selves had come under fire. Witness statements, however, contradicted the armys defense.

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Shortly after the atrocity, the british government established the Widgery Inquiry to investigate the exact sequence of events on the day. The Inquiry concluded without making a single conviction against a sol-dier or a commanding officer, and the english lord chief Justice, lord Widgery, described the loss of life as an unfortunate by-product of a vola-tile security situation. The Irish media quickly dubbed the inquiry the Widgery whitewash. for Irish nationalists and republicans, Widgerys commendation of the bravery and quick thinking of the Paras betrayed a blatant bias in favor of the british military. In a statement issued shortly after the event, major Hubert oNeill, then coroner of the inquest into the deaths on bloody Sunday, offered a remarkably different version of the event to that provided by Widgery. He stated:

This Sunday became known as bloody Sunday and bloody it was. It was quite unnecessary. It strikes me that the Army ran amok that day and shot without thinking what they were doing. They were shooting innocent people. These people may have been taking part in a march that was banned but that does not justify the troops coming in and firing live rounds indiscriminately. I would say without hesitation that it was sheer, unadulterated murder. It was murder.2

In the decades following bloody Sunday, the british establishment ignored successive appeals by friends and relatives of the victims for a fresh inquiry. In response to one such request in 1996, Prince charless private secretary replied by letter that it was necessary to move on, rather than dwell on past tragedies.3 In his book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth, Don mullan contends that at least three of the bloody Sunday victims were shot down at from Derrys city walls.4 According to mullan, if lord Widgery had considered this possibility during the Inquiry his report would have revealed that the soldiers were engaged not in self-defense but in sniper firing. In the light of ample new medical, ballistic and wit-ness evidence, on 29 January 1998 british Prime minister Tony blair, under pressure from the Irish government, announced that there would be a new inquiry into the events of bloody Sunday. The bloody Sunday Inquiryalso known as the Saville Inquirymarked the official revisiting of the afternoon of bloody Sunday on the part of the british state, and unlike the Widgery Inquiry, which overlooked substantial numbers of


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eyewitness accounts, it considered all of the testimoniesof both civilians and members of the british armyavailable to it. In total, the Inquiry interviewed and received statements from approximately 2,500 people, 922 of whom it called upon to give oral evidence.5

It is noteworthy that since the first IRA (Irish Republican Army) ceasefire in 1994, there has been an upsurge in both popular and finan-cial support of memorial and historical schemes in Northern Ireland. for example, the bloody Sunday Trust has campaigned for formal recognition of the bogside in Derry city as an area of unique historical significance and recommended the construction of the bogside History centre.6 While bloody Sunday has been commemorated annually in Derry since 1972, in the very early years parades choreographed by two main organizationsNIcRA and Sinn fein, the political wing of the IRAwere small-scale, local events drawing crowds of between 2,000 and 5,000.7 In 1975 the NIcRA marches were discontinued, and for the remainder of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Sinn fein operated as the primary coordina-tors of the march. During these years, bishop edward Daly consistently criticized Sinn fein for hijacking the annual commemoration. In a public statement in 1989, he stated: the dominant theme of many of these annual marches has been militant and pro-violence rather than anti-violence.8 Poor attendance figures reflect how the coincidence between the militant character of the Sinn fein marches with high levels of sectarian violence alienated large sections of the public. In contrast to the relative absence of popular support for these marches, sociologist brian conway identifies the 20th anniversary (1992), the 25th anniversary (1997), and the 30th anniversary (2002) of bloody Sunday as being of momentous importance owing to mass public participation in the commemorative marches, which in turn countered Sinn feins former monopoly of them. unlike the poor showings at the earlier marches, [a]n estimated 40,000 people attended the 30th anniversary commemoration, the best attended parade in recent Northern Irish history. conway attributes the alternative format of the march and the increase in popular support for it to important changes in the political landscape of Northern Irish society, namely the cessation of IRA activity in 1994.9 These changes have similarly provoked a rapid development of special-interest tourism in the bogside, and in other, par-ticularly urban, parts of Northern Ireland. The increased numbers visiting free Derry corner and the surrounding murals and availing of black cab

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Tours in belfast is exemplary of the extent to which the way the past is remembered has a lot to do with contemporary needs and issues, and of how presentism operates as a powerful mediator of the past.10

The exponential growth and investment in victims and survivors support agencies offers further evidence of the regeneration of historical consciousness in contemporary Northern Ireland. Documentary filmmaker cathal mclaughlin comments that since the IRA ceasefires, beginning in 1994, a number of such organizations have undertaken the recording of first-hand testimony as a means of addressing the traumas of the previ-ous quarter century of violence. Discussing an exemplary example of this type of activity, mclaughlin describes his collaboration with the West belfast-based Victims and Survivors Trust (VAST) in producing a short documentary in which survivors tell their stories, and in building an archive in the manner of the Shoah foundation. In common with other victims and survivors organizations, for whom the goal of educating the larger public of their suffering motivates their activities, mclaughlin conveys VASTs interest in making the documentary and building the archive for promotional purposes.11 In this regard, mclaughlin echoes a comment made by Jane leonard, of the Northern Ireland community Relations council, stating that victims do not need to be reminded of their own suffering, but do require the recognition of the wider public. likewise, members of VAST contend that they are interested in recording their nar-ratives not solely for the purposes of posterity but in order to tell their stories to the public, to be listened to, and to be acknowledged. In the context of a lack of judicial acknowledgement of their injuries and losses, despite public knowledge, organizations like VAST, which promote their own suffering, respond to a public lack of closure on the past.12

Visual artists have also contributed to a post-conflict remembrance culture. In one illustrative example, during three days in easter 1996, Hilary Gilligan, an art student at the university of ulster, chalked the names of 3,300 victims of the Troubles (a euphemism used to refer to the period of violent conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to the Good friday Agreement of 10 April 1998) on a pavement on Royal Avenue in central belfast.13 As she crouched over a pavement writing in chalk, Gilligan encouraged passers-by, including policemen, shoppers, and local business people, to offer their assistance in transcribing and remembering victims names. by enacting a performative gesture in a


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public space, the artist and passers-by collectively participated in a process of remembrance. While the Troubles were widely regarded as being taboo subject matter during the actual period when they took place, in the lead-up to the 30th anniversary of bloody Sunday in 2002 an unprecedented number of artists produced commemorative works aimed at both eliciting and constructing memory of the atrocity.14

The coincidence of these and other examples of cultural memory of the Troubles with the peace process, and its relative absence prior to this period, suggest that the representation of historical trauma as cultural memory is more indicative of contemporary than of historical concerns. miriam Hansen and michael Geyer describe a similar situation in the Ger-man context as a wave of remembrances of the Holocaust in the 1970s and 1980s, which, they argue, had less to do with the past than with a historical transformation of the present. for Hansen and Geyer, these new forms of remembrance are ineluctably tied to the electronic media and thus to a spectacularization of the past. 15

on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of bloody Sunday, the historical event was spectacularized for mainstream audiences in Northern Ireland and abroad with the production of two feature films, funded primarily by two major british television channels, channel 4 and ITV. The Granada-produced film Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, 2002) was a collaborative enterprise between filmmakers, members of the Derry community (who operated in a consultative capacity during the films pre-production stages, in addition to playing lead roles and com-prising the vast majority of extras used in the film), professional soldiers and actors.16 Similarly, the channel 4 film Sunday (charles mcDougall, 2002), written by acclaimed screenwriter Jimmy mcGovern, was produced after an intensive research period conducted primarily in the communi-ties concerned, and involved the community at the production stages.17 However, while Sunday was conceived and shown solely as a television drama, Bloody Sunday earned the distinction of being disqualified from the oscars, since its television transmission in Ireland and Great britain occurred in the same month as its uK theatrical premiere.18 Although its uS distributor Paramount classics appealed for leniency in consideration of the exceptional political and ethical reasons motivating the timing of its television transmission, the Academy refused to reconsider its ruling. meanwhile, the channel 4 team strongly criticized ITV for producing

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and planning to air a film simultaneous to theirs. channel 4 argued that this would threaten their commercial returns and dilute their share of media publicity. In reality, the films co-appearance on television schedules contributed to the scale and impact of the media event enacted by the films themselves, the ensuing studio discussions and the print medias responses.19 While both films are of exceptional cultural and political significance, this article focuses exclusively on the narrative and stylistic devices through which Bloody Sunday repositions bloody Sundaythe historical eventin the public imaginary and political discourse on the islands of Ireland and Great britain.

TeleVISuAl HISToRy

critical debate in the realms of media and film studies has attempted to untangle the respective negative and positive implications of the porosity between drama and documentary elements in popular historical works.20 owing to the docudramas overwhelming dependence on reenactments, proximate characters and situations, as compared to the standard docu-mentary, it occupies a slippery position along a fact-fiction continuum.21 However, from a positive perspective, owing to the narrative strategies and visual devices germane to the docudrama, it constitutes a labile mode of representing historical trauma. If it is considered that traumafrom a lacanian perspectiveresults from a missed encounter with the real, Bloody Sundays construction of what Alison landsberg terms prosthetic memory negotiates an encounter with the real, i.e. the traumatic event, for the benefit of the viewer. These reenactments, or prosthetic memo-riesbased on eyewitness accounts and filmed according to a television reportage styleinvite viewers to witness an event to which they were not necessarily privy. Alternatively, the reenactments provide viewers who have personal memories of the historical event with supplementary ones.22 Bloody Sunday mobilizes iconic imagery in a dramatic narrative populated by proximate characters, inviting informed viewers to revisit, and unin-formed viewers to witness, scenes from the past.

Although feature films and television dramas typically employ distinct visual and narrative conventions, both realms, as Robert Rosenstone points out, similarly mediate historical worlds through their common recourse


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to proximate characters, situations, images and metaphors.23 Similarly, John corner identifies three ways in which television drama more gener-ally mediates its subject matter: sophisticated knowledge management, realism, and strategic personalization.24 Bloody Sundays narrative and stylistic modes of addressing the historical event largely reflect the areas outlined by Rosenstone and corner. for example, knowledge manage-ment is evident in the profusion of proximate images and reenactments, which authentically reproduce iconic imagery and portray the known sequence of events associated with the afternoon of Sunday, 30 January 1972. meanwhile, proximate characters personalize some of the political issues at stake. Without counteracting the mimetic exactitude of numer-ous sequences to archival imagery, through which the film innovatively conveys the events televisuality or liveness, at times the film relies on the traditional dramatic and performance conventions of social realism to encourage the empathetic engagement of the viewer.

While discussions of a films sophisticated knowledge management invite consideration of its propaganda tendencies, in the context of this discussion of Bloody Sunday, the term encapsulates how the film performs an ethicopolitical functionthat of working through historical trauma. In a reworking of freuds argument that the absence of anxiety produces trauma, Dominick lacapra extols a type of discursive activity that recalls instances of historical injury in response to ethicopolitical factors. In a clinical context, Jean laplanche and J. b. Pontalis lucidly define how the process of working through or mourning enables the individual to confront repressed elements from the past and to halt the mechanisms of repeti-tion. While admitting that working through is itself a form of repetition, they argue that interpretive activity counters and cauterizes the harmful elements of such repetition.25 lacapra extrapolates the concept of work-ing through to a sociocultural context, describing it as a combination of critical historical investigation, ethicopolitical judgment, and social ritual through which, ideally, historiographical discourse could itself nurture a ritual dimension without sacrificing its critical strength, adding that it too might assist in some small way in facilitating warranted public processes of mourning.26 Arguably, reenactments in Bloody Sunday, performed by professional soldiers, actors and members of the Derry community, re-externalize scenes of violence, notably those recounted by eyewitnesses and preserved in archival imagery, as part of a broader commemorative or

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ritual revisiting of the event, which, in turn, discursively works through historical trauma associated with the atrocity.

for corner, popular formats include the personal realm to elicit a highly subjectivised and emphatic viewing position, making it more dif-ficult to get back to the objective distance necessary for assessment.27 Although corners comments refer specifically to nonfiction programming, his fear that a growing preoccupation with the entertainment value of serious journalism and the rapid infiltration of personalizing strategies in the broadcast media will lead to viewers being addressed more and more as consumers, as opposed to citizens, might be just as pertinent as wide-spread fears about television and films dumbing down of history. He warily considers the etymological ramifications of the collapsing together of previously distinct spheres of knowledge, commenting that few topics are currently receiving more research attention than the ways in which television variously constructs a personal nexus for construing public matters.28 However, although Bloody Sunday tidies up the matrix of political and historical forces circulating on the day by privileging certain narrative moments and characters, its cast of sympathetic, and less than sympathetic, characters do not automatically annul its analytical capacities. Potentially, dramatic personae act as indexes of political and historical issues that might be considered taboo, or as events the outer world have not yet come to terms with.29 certain characters therefore provide a pretext that allows issues that might otherwise be and remain unacknowledged to become subject to investigation.

In Bloody Sundays opening moments, two concurrent press con-ferences, punctuated by the frenetic clicking and flash photography of press cameras, discordantly intercut each other. one conference has been organized by NIcRA, the other, by the british army. An intertitle reads January 31 1971, a date that will resonate for a high number of viewers since it marked a watershed in Northern Irish historythe death knell of the civil rights movement and the rebirth of the IRA. The civil rights anthem We Shall overcome jars both acoustically and politically with the sound of military drums beating to the rhythm of the army press con-ference. Amid this din, the films two major protagonists Ivan cooper, a Social Democratic and labour Party (SDlP) mP and leading member of NIcRA, and General Robert ford, commander of land forces in Northern Irelandare presented. both characters embody the contrasting


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political persuasions of their historical counterparts, such that coopers heroization and fords vilification far exceed their dramatic functions and crystallize extradiegetic political and historical issues.

GeNeRAl (foRD) VIllAINy

following General fords infamous defense of the Paras actions on bloody Sunday during a widely disseminated television news interview on the evening of the atrocity, his face would have been reasonably familiar to audiences in different locations around the world at the time of the event. When the extent of the misinformation supplied by ford in his comments to television reporters emerged, even if the full extent of the armys miscon-duct would not be officially acknowledged until the forthcoming release of lord Savilles Report, for interested parties, particularly the nationalist population in Northern Ireland, his face personified the british militarys disregard for catholic life in Derry on that day and the states effort to cover up the armys responsibility for the loss of innocent life.

In the films reconstruction of a historic press conference organized by the british military on the morning of bloody Sunday, ford firmly articulates the british governments disapproval of the march. The unam-biguous warning that he issues to the nationalist community about the consequences of participating in the march sinisterly forewarns viewers of the impending casualties, especially those viewers with historical knowledge of the course of events on the day. The fictive fords dialogue clearly profits from the availability of transcripts and televised recordings of the real press conference, since it uncannily doubles the real speech delivered by ford. The grainy appearance of the film stockwhich approximates the picture quality of the original televised press conferenceand a highly convinc-ing performance by the actor playing ford similarly enhance the scenes credibility and fords unsympathetic portrayal. As the scene progresses, fords appeal is further decimated, and when he delivers a succession of clipped statements to a crowd of journalists attending the military press conference, he fails to convincingly justify either the deployment of british troops in Derry or the special enlistment of the Parachute Regimentan army force trained in highly aggressive tactics and deployed ordinarily in situations of acute conflicton the day in question. The dramatic irony

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of fords army rhetoric when he says that [t]he law is the law and must be respected, resonates strongly for the informed viewer, who needs no reminding of how flagrantly such law was in reality flouted.

At the time of Bloody Sundays release, there was a heightened degree of doubling, or double-voicing, at play between the film and its historical referent, since renewed criticisms of the real fords professional misconduct in sections of the print media chimed with his unsympathetic on-screen characterization.30 Prompted by disclosures made in the Saville Inquiry, one article reported: When one puts into this melange all of the differ-ent tensions, when one goes through the documents, one eventually sees that by mid-January, General ford had come to the conclusion that the stage had then been reached where the only solution was to shoot and to shoot-to-kill those persons who were involved in rioting.31 According to this analysis, the military hierarchy favored an aggressive, even mur-derous, policy in relation to the civil rights marchers in advance of event. extradiegetic criticisms of this nature double-voice the scene at army headquarters where ford rouses his men by ordering them to come down hard on the young Derry hooligans or, later, the scene where he arrives at the area adjacent to the bogside where groups of Paras are congregating and cheers them on: Go on 1 Para, go and get them, and good luck. At army headquarters, his conflation of the marchers with the IRA demon-strates his total disregard for the legitimacy and pacifist ethos of the civil rights movement. In a scene in which brigadier Patrick mclellan seeks a guarantee that the army take steps only if there is violence and only if there is a clear separation between [the] march proper and hooligans, ford responds to mclellans interjection by wondering aloud whether all the men have been issued with rubber bullets. Significantly, fords response to mclellans query extends beyond the scenes fictionalized setting, since it recalls real-life civilians, including children, who died from injuries inflicted by rubber bullets, both prior and subsequent to bloody Sunday.

Importantly, Bloody Sunday does not rely upon a humanistic narra-tive framework which by pathologizing unsympathetic characters would displace the states culpability in the event and reduce the complexity of historical injustices to the human foibles of a single character or group of characters. While the films narrative address negatively construes fords conduct, it does not attribute to him sole responsibility for the atrocity.


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In this way, its narrative enacts lacapras objective to articulate the relationship between history and psychoanalysis in a manner that does not eventuate in a dubious pathologizing of historical processes or personalities but instead links historical inquiry to explicit ethical and ethicopolitical concerns bearing on the present and future.32 When ford states that Downing Street has had enough during an army briefing, he implicates the british government in his military stratagems. As a broker for the british government, fords announcement presupposes his governments compliance with the military tactics adopted on that afternoon. Rather than being depicted as the sole architect of the atrocity, he functions as a discursive site, which accommodates allusions to the larger institutional fac-tors contributing to the states violence. edward Heath, the british prime minister at the time, frequently stated in public that his administration was fighting a propaganda war in Northern Ireland. In the film, ford invokes an infamous phrase of Heaths when he announces that winning the propaganda war is absolutely vital. Through parroting Heaths immortal line, he is enmeshed in a representative role for the british government, an administration that was determined to control the hearts and minds of its citizens in both Great britain and Northern Ireland. Notwithstanding the limits of dramatic narrative in representing matrices of institutional power, it is noteworthy that rather than commodiously vilifying General ford for dramatic purposes, his characterization, however imperfectly, alludes to british policy in relation to Northern Ireland.

Another character belonging to the british military ranksPrivate 027is based on the real Private 027 who acted as a radio operator in Derry on bloody Sunday and made serious allegations in the Saville Inquiry regarding the misconduct of his compatriots. He also disclosed one of the most contentious revelations of the Inquiry when he claimed that he was pressurized by his superiors to withhold information from lord Widgery. unlike other films in which Greengrass has been involved, such as his own United 93 (2006) and Pete Traviss Omagh (2004), where the inclusion of a sympathetic hijacker or bomber would be ethically inadmis-sible, Bloody Sundays narrative easily accommodates a sympathetic Para since there is no evidence to suggest that every member of the Parachute Regiment deployed on the day in question condoned and participated in shooting unarmed civilians.

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At different points of the film, the camera cuts to close-ups that privi-lege Private 027s face and frame his troubled expression, which contrasts strongly against those of other aggressive-looking Paras. Similarly, when certain other Paras are depicted shooting indiscriminately at civilians, his demeanor conveys his outright disgust at their behavior. Point-of-view shots from his perspective accompanied by an amplified sound track convey his perturbation as he observes the actions of his compatriots and listens to them spit out words steeped in anger and hatred. In an emotional state, Private 027 interrupts a group of Paras huddled together issuing invec-tives against the enemy and reminds them that the rioters are mere kids. After a Para returns from a killing spree boasting about how many targets he took out, Private 027, in a visibly distressed state, confronts him, I saw you shoot civies. I saw what happened. unconvincingly, the accused Para matter-of-factly retorts that he was returning fire at a gunman. by presenting alternating representations of the Paras, the film extends the range of its address and, in so doing, dramatizes the complexity of historical forces which culminated in the day of violence and avoids the more conventional device of the manichean narrative, which would have indiscriminately vilified all of the Parachute Regiment on active service on bloody Sunday.

cooPeR AND nAchTrAglichkEiT

The freudian concept nachtraglichkeit describes the influence of circum-stances at the moment of recollection upon the formation of personal memory. Susannah Radstone specifies how nachtraglichkeit defines the irreconcilability between psychoanalysis and theories and methods grounded in historical time, narrative and causation.33 Psychoanalyst Nicola King also confers considerable importance upon the theory of nachtraglichkeit. Drawing on lacapras formulation of the process, she contends that the idea that events might have turned out differently might still be capable of changing the subjects understanding of her life and her self.34 In addition to lamenting what verifiably happened in Derry on bloody Sunday, more radically, Bloody Sunday displays the deferred effects of later knowledge35 by presenting an alternative narrative to the official historical one. In this regard, it could be argued that the film, rather than adhering to strictly historiographical stipulations, enacts the process


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of nachtraglichkeit and self-consciously grafts concerns relevant to the moment of production, or recollection, onto the historical referent.

nachtraglichkeit can explain the portrayal of Ivan cooper, a local mP and peace activist. At the time of its release, Bloody Sunday attracted much criticism in the print media for historical inaccuracies, including the privileging of cooper at the expense of other members of NIcRA, notably journalist eamonn mccann and political activist bernadette Devlin, who, it was argued, were more central figures in NIcRA than cooper. While cooper was in reality a leading member of NIcRA, the narrative exaggerates his importance in order to satisfy a contemporary imperative to appeal to the two main communitiescatholic nationalists and Protestant unionistsin Northern Ireland. Richard Kelly, writing in the british film Institutes film magazine Sight and Sound, commended the narrative centrality accorded cooper, describing the films emphasis upon him as cannier than according attention to the firebrand figures of eamonn mccann and bernadette Devlin, who, it can be argued, in contemporary Northern Ireland, command minimum cross-community appeal.36 foregrounded as the primary protagonist, cooper both embodies the reality of intercommunal cooperation before the Troubles and pro-motes its desirability in a contemporary context. However, it is important to note that the narratives interdenominational appeal can be interpreted from at least two contrasting perspectives; arguably, coopers centrality is a more dramatically effective method of representing the nonsectarian character of NIcRA and extending the films appeal beyond its captive audience in the nationalist population of Northern Ireland; equally how-ever, the narratives practical excision of the firebrands mccann and Devlin could be construed negatively in terms of a politics of forgetting, or as a narrative inability to fully confront the event. The overall context of the film however, in which countless other scenes graphically display and work through historical trauma, suggests that its dramatization of cooper in the leading role does not construct a comfort zone as much as it enacts the process of nachtraglichkeit. from this angle, it reflects a generalized movement in contemporary Northern Ireland to promote intercommunal cooperation both in the spirit of reconciliation and in the interests of political pragmatism.

The civil rights movements campaigning efforts throughout the 1960s on behalf of catholics and Protestants aligned it with both com-

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munities and accentuated social class as the defining factor with regards to both social cohesion and disharmony at this historical juncture. A scene in which the camera barely succeeds in keeping apace with cooper as he strides confidently through Derrys inner city streets conveys nostalgia for a time when the civil rights movement was in full swing and intercommunal relations were not riven by sectarianism. by inserting cooper, a Protestant, in the bogside, a catholic enclave, the film elides a narrative emphasis, all too common in a great many other representations of the conflict, upon the polarization between catholic and Protestant communities. Greeted with handshakes at every turn, cooper appears unperturbed by the volatile security of an IRA-controlled area, which was, by and large, off limits to the security forces. His swiftness of step as he hurriedly moves through streets or shortcuts down a back alley conveys his familiarity with the ter-rain in which he has grown up. coopers integration in the community concerned is presented both aurally and visually: we watch him weave through streets, hear him warmly greeting locals, and, in turn, eavesdrop upon them returning cordialities.

In feature films set in Derry city that were produced during the Troubles, Protestant characters are rarely shown gracing terrain associated with the opposing catholic community, especially not in the manner in which cooper is portrayed. In a conversation at home with his parents, he good-humoredly alludes to their religious differences with their neighbors by jokingly commenting that he has an appointment with the catholic bishop, which he quickly changes to the cardinal, before his mother assists him by suggesting that he means the Pope. When, in a light-hearted exchange, two catholic women poke fun at him, asking if he has attended mass that morning, he quips back: a good Protestant like me? A small and almost insignificant exchange, especially from the point of view of viewers unaccustomed to the levels of sectarian hatred in contemporary Northern Ireland, this scene nonetheless effectively dramatizes the real-ity of positive, intercommunal relations before the Troubles and, at a stretch perhaps, their possibility in the present. In an eloquent phrasing of coopers narrative function, Kelly writes, cooper roves the bogside, glad-handing and trouble-shooting, joking with old ladies who invite him to mass, spreading the gospel of peaceful protest.37

The real-life celebrity status of actor James Nesbitt enhances his performance in the role of cooper, since Nesbitts popular public persona


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echoes the popularity enjoyed by cooper in Northern Ireland of the early 1970s.38 A household name across Great britain, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Nesbitts widespread popular appeal is emphatically not contingent upon his Protestant ulster identity, and consequently the double-voicing of the character he plays does not alienate viewers of an alternative, or no, sectarian persuasion. In a highly convincing, seem-ingly effortless performance, he realistically conveys the popularity of cooper, also a Northern Irish Protestant, across Protestant and catholic communities in Derry city. Nesbitts casting therefore marked an astute directorial choice since his real Protestant identity blends seamlessly with that of cooper on the levels of performance and reception. Indeed, the real cooper was even cross-examined in the Saville Inquiry in relation to his depiction in one of the films scenes, indicating the level of interchange between the real and fictive cooper. Despite Nesbitts efforts in exchanges with the print media to reconcile his criticisms of the british state with a non-triumphalist loyalty to his Protestant heritage, after Bloody Sundays release, elements in the unionist press reported Nesbitts betrayal of his community by participating in a film promoting republican propaganda; in a question and answer session following a screening of Bloody Sunday in the curzon Theatre in Soho, london, Nesbitts emphasis on the ideals of intercommunal reconciliation and cooperation symmetrically double his performance as cooper, who, in reality, especially in the period pre-ceding bloody Sunday, was one of the Protestant communitys strongest advocates of cross-community relations.39

PeRfoRmING AuTHeNTIcITy

on a whole, performance styles in Bloody Sunday create the impression of an unmediated reality. like fellow british directors Ken loach and mike leigh, Greengrass casts nonprofessional and professional actors alike, and improvises many of the films scenes to attain styles of performance that command the belief of the viewer. The casting of genuine soldiers further imbues the performance text with a sense of authenticity. The considerable advantages commanded by actual soldiers, compared to professional actors, are evident in the intense credibility of the scenes where they feature, aided, unquestionably, by their ability to model the

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simulated sequences showing army maneuvers from previous professional experiences. flickers of authenticity appear when real soldiers playing Paras enact facial expressions and perform gestures which come across as convincingly genuine.40 In the directors commentary on the Bloody Sunday DVD, Greengrass describes the casting of professional soldiers as one of the most important decisions made by the filmmaking team:

Weve all seen films with actors playing soldiers in them, and its very hard to get them, an actor to move/think/feel like a soldier. So when we decided to use real soldiers, people whod actually served in Northern Ireland, and had their own memories of the conflict, and had lost friends, it gave it a reality and it gave the whole piece an edge and for both these groups of young boys and those soldiers, at some level, I dont think it really was acting, it was a sort of, some quality of reliving it that gave this film an edge of authenticity that people respond to.41

These flickers of authenticity are especially evident in scenes, shot predominantly at mid-range, focusing exclusively on the Paras; in one such scene, amid the sound of overhead helicopters and crackling radios, lieutenant colonel Derek Wilford, the commanding officer of the first Parachute Regiment on bloody Sunday, briefs the Paras about the Derry terrain and the military approach to be adopted on that afternoon. He tells them: We want maximum aggression, we want a lot of arrests today, and if the shooting starts, were going to shoot back plenty of rounds. The soldiers facial reactions as they listen to Wilfords orders seem spontane-ous and unrehearsed, or in Greengrasss words they look like soldiers faces they dont look like actors. The bravado that they embody as a group combined with an individual Paras remonstrations to his comrades that they should do the business make the co proud of us, I want to show the brigade what Para one are made of, communicates a palpable sense of real soldiers getting, as Greengrass remarks in the directors com-mentary, psyched up for battle.

At the time of the films exhibition, the participation of real soldiers in the film was heavily publicized. Accompanying the screen presence emitted by real soldiers, such publicity persuades viewers, ideally, to believe in the accuracy of the reenactments. Similar to the appearance of


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relatives of victims or survivors themselves in crime and rescue programs, real soldiers in Bloody Sunday promise a guarantee of historical credibil-ity. other moments or flickers of authenticity are performed in scenes where soldiers were filmed without prior knowledge of how exactly a scene would unfold. In this way, the actors replay at least some of the confusion that would have been experienced by actual soldiers on the day who had no previous experience of intercepting a civilian march, and who were subject to poorly conceived instructions communicated via radio by their superiors. In one particular scene, representing the outbreak of shooting at the barricades on the edges of the bogside, the soldiers could embody a sense of confusion and enact events as they happened, owing to the fact that they improvised the scene without being informed in advance of its outcome. Subsequently, the soldiers reactions to the sounds of huge crowds approaching and of riots starting to break out are genuine since Greengrass had concealed from them the fact that the mise-en-scne had been rigged with hidden speakers for these purposes. Similarly, the soldiers were not briefed in advance of the content of radio conversations which many of them conducted during this scene, and as Greengrass observes in the DVD commentary, these directing decisions culminated in a scene which gives the impression of real soldiers responding to a live situation.

The real identity and criminal activities of Simon mann, who plays colonel Wilford, ghosts his performance in the film. A Special Air Service (SAS) veteran living in South Africa at the time of filming, his involvement in the project was a surprise to many who knew him. manns ambivalent attitude to the subjecthe indicated that he hoped to be able to defend the army while also admitting publicly that bloody Sunday was a cock-up42feebly announces his reluctance to condone british military action. coincidentally just after the films release, he was arrested on two charges: for allegedly conspiring to overthrow an African dictator, and for illegitimate business dealings concerning mercenary armies in South Africa. commentary in the media noted the coincidence between the disrepute brought upon both the actor and the character played by him in the film. Serendipitously, the films damning portrayal of colonel Wilford is somewhat authenticated by manns off-screen activities.

The mechanics of authenticity that operate at the level of performance in the film are equally evident in its photographic style. The color, framing

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and composition of sequences showing violent exchanges between angry protestors and army personnel are strongly reminiscent of the violent clashes captured on camera in still and moving images and which were disseminated in the media world wide. Richard Kilborn has commented on the role played by a staging device which provides the bridge back to the historical events the documentarist is seeking to reinvoke.43 Bloody Sunday realizes Kilborns comment insofar as shaky camera work and poor composition simulate the difficult shooting conditions at scenes of atrocity. Slavoj iek notes how the mass media responds to the public appetite for the reality effect in providing representations of factual stories:

The authentic twentieth-century passion for penetrating the Real Thing (ultimately the destructive void) through the cobweb of semblances which constitutes our reality thus culminates in the thrill of the Real as the ultimate effect, sought after from digitalized special effects, through reality TV and amateur pornography, up to snuff movies.44

The investment of Bloody Sunday in the thrill of the Real is visible in the extent to which its cinematography imitates a televisual aesthetic in order to authentically reproduce the Real or historical event. At the time of bloody Sunday, domestic and international audiences witnessed, at least partially, the atrocity on their television screens. In Bloody Sunday, digital, handheld cameras recording high-speed, televisual sequences as they closely monitor the Paras recreate the liveness of the historical event. Ironically, television cameras in the early 1970s would not have been sufficiently mobile to record such fast-paced scenes. Bloody Sunday fully avails of current advances in film equipment and post-production effects to replicate the look of dated, television news footage. for example, in addition to employing high-tech hand-held cameras, the films overall vintage appearance was enhanced during post-production; Giles livesey, senior colorist at the Digital film lab in london, describes how in order to maximize the films 1970s appearance he used stock footage of the time as a grade against which he altered the chemistry of the film through bleach bypass processing. He also corrected brightly colored clothing worn by extras, which was inharmonious with the dominant, shaded tones of many of the scenes and inconsistent with the muted color quality of television


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and photographic images belonging to the period.45 by using up-to-date post-production technology, Bloody Sunday artfully reproduces the image quality and color spectrum of old news footage.

Notwithstanding the possibility that the filming of a historical event and films about an event might entail its derealization, Bloody Sundays stylistic and narrative modes of address elicit historical memory in order to exercise viewers as parasocial participants rather than fictionalize them as such, and in this way, it attempts to extend political community.46 In other words, the film cues a documentary mode of engagement47 with regards to both informed viewersable to recognize the verisimilitude of its mise-en-scne and the historical accuracy of the narrativeand uninformed viewersfor whom certain stylistic devices signpost the reen-actment of a historical reality. Noting the profusion of televisual realities in the social world, corner argues that the separation out of the non-televisual aspects of political, social and private affairs is a good deal less easy than it might appear to be.48 This observation is reflected in the strategies adopted by Bloody Sunday. While it focalizes some scenes through a given characters perspective, at other points its impersonal news-vrit style aligns the viewer with a self-conscious television camera and thereby reconstructs the events televised unfolding, illustrating the centrality of mediatized culture to historical consciousness, and the relationship of TV coverage of bloody Sunday to its status as a historical event.

PRoSTHeTIc memoRy

marita Sturkens extensive writings about the relationship between the visual media and national, historical memory offer critical insight into the cultural significance of the verisimilitude displayed in Bloody Sundays reenactments and proximate archival images. She observes that cultural memory and history coalesce in instances of national remembrance: camera imagesphotographic, cinematic, televisual, documentary, and docudramaplay a vital role in the development of national meaning by creating a shared participation and experience in the nation.49 Through a film style that self-consciously mimics the look of found footage and reportage style of filming, Bloody Sunday presents itself as a counterfeit historical document, and thereby encourages the viewer to experience it as a cultural or prosthetic memory. Regardless of the lack of consensus as to

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the merits of prosthetic memoryfrom a negative perspective, it erases historical memory and sanitizes history,50 while more positively, it remem-bers a past that might have been suppressed by official historyBloody Sunday achieves the status of a cultural memory of the historical event by virtue of the proximity of its reenactments to known historical accounts, and the thrill of the real available at the level of its visual effects.

owing to the skillful synthesis of many of bloody Sundays most iconic images into the filmic narrative, informed and uninformed viewers alike should recognize that numerous scenes simulate actuality footage of the event. for both constituencies of viewers, Bloody Sundays news-vrit style replicates archival imagery and cues a special kind of viewing relation, even if important distinctions separate the kind of viewing relation experienced by an informed viewer from that of an uninformed viewer.51 In one reenactment, Bloody Sunday releases an archival image of one of the victimsbarney mcGuiganfrom its capture within the photographic frame and mobilizes the iconic image in an unfolding narrative. The image of mcGuigan, one of the most iconographic photographs of bloody Sunday, shows him waving a white handkerchief in an effort to reach an injured man, just moments before he himself was indiscriminately shot. Since the films reenactment of the moments leading up to and following mcGuigans famous gesture with the white handkerchief replicates relevant archival imagery in the public domain, iconic images of mcGuigan, for a community of informed viewers, ghost the actors appearance in the role and bolster the overall historical authority of the sequence. for uninformed viewers, the film style com-municates the scenes basis in history.

Sturkens explanation of how images of historical trauma operate in the uS context bears at least some relevance to how the narrative reen-actment of mcGuigans death aligns itself with the historical record as a means of discursively working through the circumstances surrounding his death:

Ironically, though, the image that allows the public to feel as though it participated in the event does not aid us in mourning. Rather, we invest it with a truth it cannot reveal. It is the reenactment, the re-playing, the fantasizing of the story that allow the mourning process to proceed and the event to acquire meaning.52


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Through replicating familiar images, dramatic reenactments bear an aura of facticity53 and generate a thanotic dose, or narrative imprint, of anxi-ety.54 Bloody Sunday solemnly alludes to the states culpability in the loss of life on bloody Sunday by explicitly showing the murder of mcGuigan by the Paras, a truth that the archival photograph of his body lying in a pool of his own blood cannot reveal (figure 1).

Indeed, in the wake of the historical event, images of bloody Sun-day swiftly acquired iconic dimensions, due, at least partly, to ubiquitous news coverage of the atrocity. In another context, the modern media has been criticized for its propensity to endlessly reproduce almost identical news stories, while doing little to augment viewers understanding of a given event or situation.55 from this perspective, the relay of repetitive arguments in news coverage is antithetical to the notion of discursively working through historical trauma. consequently, factual formats are often perceived as sacrificing ethical responsibility to work through the past in favor of fair and balanced reporting, at one extreme, or tabloid reporting, at the other.

Perhaps Bloody Sunday demonstrates how docudrama can compensate for some of the perceived shortcomings of investigative news journalism. A steady rise in the dramatization of political issues has provoked corners comment that [i]n britain, the united States and europe, dramatic recon-struction has been assimilated within many different genres to become an

fig. 1. Photograph of barney mcGuigans body eamon melaugh (cain.ulst.ac.uk/melaugh)

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accepted if sometimes controversial, component of public television.56 until the establishment of the Saville Inquiry, the Widgery Report was the official, albeit highly contested, account of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of thirteen civilians, and the wounding of a further thirteen, one of whom subsequently died, on bloody Sunday. critics of the report denounced it as a whitewash for its abject failure to investigate both the role played by the british government and the inexcusable comportment of its armed forces on the day. Against this background, the Saville Inquiry is of colossal importance to Northern Irelands population and historical record. Notwithstanding the Inquirys discursive weight, in certain regards, Bloody Sunday occupies a more pivotal position in debates pertaining to the historical memory of bloody Sunday. In contrast to the Saville Inquirys judicial goal of establishing a factual record of the sequence of events on the day in question, Bloody Sundays discursive energies work through the persistence of historical trauma in contemporary Northern Ireland.

NoTeS

1. The already fraught relations between the Royal ulster constabulary (Ruc) and nationalist residents of the bogside, a working-class residential area located just outside Derry city, were exacerbated in January and April 1969 when the Ruc entered the area to carry out wanton acts of destruction on property and persons. The bogside came to the attention of the international media in August 1969 when local residents built barricades encircling the area in the aim of cutting it off from the control of the Ruc, the ulster Special constabulary (b Specials) and later the british army. both the official IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the Provisional IRA commanded significant support in the area. This collision between the Ruca predominantly unionist police forceand the residents of the bogside, who were in the majority nationalist catholics, and key players in the civil Rights movement became known as the battle of the bogside. for the first time in a uK jurisdiction, the Ruc used cS gas, firing an estimated 1,091 canisters, and 14 grenades of gas into the bogside. In retaliation, local residents made petrol bombs by combining sugar, washing powder and petrol in empty bottles. After three days of fighting, the police withdrew from the area. from this point until mid-1972, in the area known as free Derry, the Irish republican-dominated Derry citizens Defence Association took over policing of the area from the Ruc.


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2. Quoted in bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972A Summary of main events, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/sum.htm (accessed 10 July 2007).

3. See bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972A chronology of events, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/chron.htm (accessed 10 July 2007)

4. Don mullan, Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth (Dublin, 2002).5. These figures are published on the official bloody Sunday Inquiry website,

http://www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org/index2.asp?p=1. The breakdown of those who gave evidence, according to the website, is as follows: civilian: 505; experts and forensic scientists: 9; media (including photographers): 49; military: 245; paramilitary or former paramilitary: 35; politicians and civil servants (including intelligence officers): 39; priests: 7; Ruc: 33 (accessed 22 June 2007).

6. The bloody Sunday Trust is a historical and educational commemorative project. See http://www.bloodysundaytrust.org/historycentre.htm (accessed 10 July 2007). Related memorial initiatives have occurred outside of Northern Ireland, for example the exhibition hidden Truths: Bloody Sunday 1972, curated by Trisha Ziff for the ucR/california museum of Photography in collaboration with the bloody Sunday Trust and Irish ethos, a group of Irish activists in los Angeles, 29 January5 march 2000. Ziff described the exhibition as part memorial, part social documentary, and part expressive response and as presenting photographs, painted portrait-banners produced by artists living and working in Derry, audio and video documentation, and mementos and personal possessions of the victims as means to convey a sense of the experiences of those involved in bloody Sunday. See http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/exhibitions/hidden/default.html (accessed 2 July 2007). The accompanying catalogue of the same name includes essays by scholars, peace activists, family members, eyewitnesses and songwriters.

7. brian conway, moving through Time and Space: Performing bodies in Derry, Northern Ireland, Journal of historical Sociology 20, no. 1/2 (march/June 2007): 107.

8. londonderry Sentinel, 31 Jan. 1989, 3.9. conway, moving through Time and Space, 118.10. Ibid.. The black cab Tours travel through, and offer a commentary on,

areas of belfast, including (but not limited to) those with a special association with the political conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to the Good friday Agreement of 10 April 1998. A typical tour would visit the following: the Shankill murals, falls Road murals, milltown cemetery, Stormount, bombay Street memorial Gardens, Queens university, city Hall, belfast castle.

11. cathal mclaughlin, Telling our Story: Recording Audiovisual Testimonies from Political conflict, in Ruth barton and Harvey obrien, eds., keeping it real: irish Film and Televison (london, 2004), 100. mclauglin describes VAST

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as a politically nonaligned organization which campaigns on issues of justice, and runs workshops for personal and socially therapeutic purposes (ibid.).

12. Ibid., 102, 107.13. A summary of Hilary Gilligans project along with other examples of com-

memorative art using alternative materials and techniques are described in Jane leonards report: memorials to the casualties of conflict: Northern Ireland 1969 to 1997, contained in the conflict Archive on the Internet (cAIN), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/commemoration/leonard/leonard97.htm (accessed 10 July 2007).

14. The cAIN Web Service identifies commemoration as one of the key issues relating to political conflict in Northern Ireland, and provides easily accessed and extensive information on this issue: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/index.html.

15. miriam Hansen and michael Geyer, German-Jewish memory and National consciousness, in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., holocaust remembrance: The Shapes of Memory (cambridge, mA, 1994), 183.

16. Bloody Sunday was co-produced by the filmmaking arm of the TV and media group Granada, Hells Kitchen and Portman film.

17. mcGovern also wrote the screenplay for mcDougalls hillsborough (1996), which looked at the disaster in a Sheffield football stadium in the uK in 1989 when 96 liverpool football club fans died in a human crush.

18. According to Academy rules, any film shown on television within six months of its theatrical release is deemed ineligible for consideration.

19. The print media were especially instrumental in identifying the discursive significance of the films as a television event. countless reviews performed a comparative analysis of the films and positioned their broadcast in relationship to the 30th anniversary of bloody Sunday.

20. Derek Paget, Hollywood Rules: The Radical Dispersal of Documentary, paper delivered at the Film & history biennial conference, Dallas, Texas, 812 November 2006.

21. Jane Roscoe and craig Hight, Faking it: Mock-Documentary and the Sub-version of Factuality (manchester, 2001), 4.

22. See Alison landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American remembrance in the Age of Mass culture (New york, 2004). She uses the term prosthetic memory interchangeably with that of the more commonly used cultural memory.

23. Robert A. Rosenstone, ed., revisioning history: Film and the construction of a new Past (Princeton, 1995), 7.

24. John corner, Television Form and Public Address (london, 1995), 4344.


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25. Jean laplanche and J. b. Pontalis, The language of Psycho-Analysis (lon-don, 1988), 48889.

26. Dominick lacapra, history, Theory, Trauma: representing the holocaust (Ithaca, Ny, 1994), 215.

27. corner, Television Form and Public Address, 37.28. Ibid.29. Derek Paget, no Other Way to Tell it: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television

(manchester, 1998), 169. Paget argues that although popular genre formats can make drama more accessible to audiences, the tidying-up of plots and composit-ing of characters demonstrate the incapacity of drama to accommodate to at least some of the complexities of real history and real sociology (ibid., 194).

30. Paul Willeman discusses doubling, or double-voicing, in the context of marlon brandos on-screen appearances. See his looks and Frictions: Essays in cultural Studies and Film Theory (london, 1994), 239.

31. This statement was made by Arthur Harvey Qc, who represented most of the bereaved families, as part of a deposition in which he stated that a premeditated shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland was conceived by high-ranking members of the british military in the weeks preceding bloody Sunday. The statement was reported in a section entitled Inquiry hears of killing policy claim, on bbc News online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/northern_ireland/1023341.stm (accessed 10 July 2007).

32. Dominick lacapra, history and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, Ny, 1998), 180.

33. Susannah Radstone, Screening Trauma: forrest Gump, film and memory, in idem, ed., Memory and Methodology (oxford, 2000), 8586.

34. Nicola King, Memory, narrative, identity: remembering the Self (edin-burgh, 2000), 23.

35. lacapra quoted in ibid., 23.36. Richard Kelly, review of Bloody Sunday, Sight & Sound, march 2002, http://

www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/1813 (accessed 10 July 2007).37. Ibid.38. James Nesbitt is a well-known actor in Ireland and the uK, in particular for

his role in the ITV drama cold Feet and for appearances on advertisements for the yellow Pages on uK television, which is broadcast across the Irish Republic.

39. This Q & A session is part of the special features on the Bloody Sunday DVD (Granada film, in association with The film council, Portman entertain-ment and bord Scannn na hireann, 2002).

40. Jane Roscoe, Real entertainment: New factual Hybrid Television, Media international Australia, no. 100 (Aug. 2001): 1314.

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41. Paul Greengrass speaking in Directors commentary, Bloody Sunday DVD.

42. Rory carroll and Jamie Wilson, Soldier of fortune, The guardian g2, 19 may 2005, 3.

43. Richard Kilborn, Staging the real: Factual Programming in the Age of Big Brother (manchester, 2003), 155.

44. Slavoj iek, Welcome to the Desert of the real (london, 2002), 12.45. The final stage of the films post-production was completed at the Digital

film lab in london. See http://www.digitalfilmlab.com/chestnut/phpbin/pagenew.php?lay=main,doc:PRoDucTIoN_PAGeHolDeR;art,article:41 (accessed 10 July 2007).

46. corner, Television Form and Public Address, 51, 52.47. Roscoe and Hight, Faking it, 23. 48. corner, Television Form and Public Address, 4.49. marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic,

and the Politics of remembering (berkeley, 1997), 24.50. Robert burgoyne, in Film nation: hollywood looks at US history (min-

neapolis, 1997), argues that representations of historical events erase organic memories and expresses concern over the propaganda effects such representations might entail.

51. John corner, Influence: The contested core of media Research, in James curran and michael Gurevitch eds., Mass Media and Society (london, 2000), 389.

52. Sturken, Tangled Memories, 24. 53. Kilborn, Staging the real, 154.54. eric Santner uses the phrase thanotic dose to describe how art can

produce anxiety in safe quantities so that an individual can work through the trauma without being overwhelmed by it. See his History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma, in Saul friedlnder, ed., Probing the limits of representation: nazism and the Final Solution (cambridge, mA, 1992), 14354.

55. Janet Walker, Trauma cinema: false memories and True experience, Screen 42, no. 2 (2001): 214.

56. corner, Television Form and Public Address, 94.

remembering historical trauma in paul greengrass’s bloody sunday

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