humorous history?

Chaos on the Emerald Isle 

In my Sunday-caused laziness I was absentmindedly scrolling through Instagram on my phone this afternoon, when a picture of the Famine Memorial in Dublin caught my eye. An Irish blogger had posted it in order to encourage people to sign an online petition. Like 9,000 other people she seemed to be really upset about what was going on and that made me curious.

What I found out was that Channel 4, a British television broadcaster, has made plans to launch a new comedy series named ‘Hungry’, based on the Irish potato famine.

The Great Famine

Before talking about the current issue, I would like to give you some short background information. It’s only the main facts of the great famine, which might help you to understand people’s anger a bit better.

Potatoes have always been the staple diet of the Irish (nowadays more frequently appearing in the form of fries). When crop failures afflicted the country, which, back then, formed a part of the British Empire, the base of their diet was suddenly gone. Ireland didn’t cultivate enormous amounts of crop, but the crop they had could have saved the lives of a large number of people. It could’ve done so, if they hadn’t been forced to export the only nourishments left to their ‘caring’ neighbours, the English.

The time between 1846 and 1849 reduced the number of inhabitants from 8,5 million to six million people. Most of them died and those who could afford it emigrated, mostly to the USA. Today the Irish population still makes up a quarter of the people living in Massachusetts, even they were not always received with open arms in the states. Irish had the ‘right’ skin colour, but were often treated as if they had a black skin.

The Dublin Famine Memorial

Too serious to be humorous? 

People are not only angry about the project in general, but also about the plans to make it a ‘New Shameless’, also referred to as ‘Shameless in famine Ireland’. Shameless is another British TV series, which tells the story of a wasteful alcoholic and his family.

The main character of the British Shameless

One of those who are strongly opposing the project is the Dublin Councillor David McGuinness. He wants people to show solidarity with their ancestors, giving the example that a Jewish person would never dare to make a comedy of the mass extermination of their ancestors by the Nazis. McGuinness adds that a television outlet starting such a project can only be a British one. This, once again, introduces the question whether there will entirely be peace between the two nations one day.

The author of the sitcom defends his project against all the criticism it already has to face, despite not even having been aired, by saying that Ireland has always been good at black humour. Well, black humour can be entertaining to some extent, but I agree with the 9,000 people who think that in this case it’s inappropriate. There are some topics that should only be shown in a historical context. Might be less amusing, but respect for these historical events shouldn’t disappear completely.