Singing in the Rain: The Irish-Themed Film Musical and Schlager’s Hibernian Moment

Abstract

Genre has not played a very extensive role within Irish film studies, with to date just one edited volume (McIlroy, 2007) dedicated to the topic of genre and Irish cinema. However, as McIlroy’s book makes clear, an orientation towards genre allows for the study of cinema beyond a narrowly constituted canon. It also enables scholars to view cinematic texts as interrelated groups of texts that build upon and correlate with one another rather than simply as single, stand-alone representational artefacts with which to indulge one’s hermeneutic musings. An emphasis upon genre also illuminates two of cinema’s naturally opposing elements in relation to form: its often quasi-universal generic structure and its extensive and organic cultural hybridity that allows for cultural borrowings.