One of the hardest things about living in Australia is not being able to reach the gorgeous cache of Irish phrases in daily life to explain exactly what I mean. As George Bernard Shaw said about the Brits and the Yanks, we too are “two countries separated by a common language”. This is because in both our cases we took the language foisted on us by colonisation and renovated it into our much more improved local dialects. The only problem is there are no direct translations for phrases like “YEEEOOOWWW”.
A guttural rip from the back of the throat often heard three pints deep in appreciation of a particularly good sports game or off the back of a tin whistle solo in a trad session. Interpreting it into stodgy dictionary words takes all the good out of it. It’s an involuntary feeling of joy that seems to burst up from the stomach and push out though the mouth.
That’s what we heard when Say Nothing star Anthony Boyle collected his Rising Star trophy at the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards. But before he let out the “YEEOOWW” that was heard across the island of Ireland he echoed the high-impact speech on class his cast-mate Lola Petticrew had delivered.
[ Iftas: Small Things Like These beats Kneecap to win best film awardOpens in new window ]
“The arts are not a prerequisite for the privileged few, nor are they a playground for the intelligentsia; the arts are for everyone and failure to include everyone diminishes us all,” he said.
Unpaid or poorly paid entry-level creative jobs are subsidised by wealthy parents
Relationships even between the best and tenderhearted can still fail
The people who really care about you shouldn’t abandon you over tricky conversations
His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better
Anyone from a working-class community working in the arts or media or entertainment will have a story about walking into a workplace and being the only person from their background. Funny anecdotes like explaining to someone that actually not everyone knows how to ski or that you can’t work for “exposure” for six months because you need to be paid money. But mainly because the age-old recipe for comedy is tragedy plus time.
The reasons why working-class people find themselves locked out of these spaces are too many to list. But the main one I can see is the way early-career creatives are gaslit into thinking they should not be paid. Prestige industries such as journalism, media, music, the arts and even academia demand that people trying to break into them must “serve their time” in low or no salaried positions. To freelance, to teach casually, to subsist off bits of unstable work to sustain them until they’ve proved themselves worthy to be paid. Until they’ve made their big break.
The people in charge make you feel like it’s déclassé to expect to trade your labour for time. Don’t you know how lucky you are to be exploited? There are hundreds more behind you willing to take your place.
By requiring young people “to do their time” without proper pay, you are not getting the best and brightest who make it. You end up instead with those who had the means to tough it out. Those with family support or a subsidised flat or family friend who can get them a job if this whole “acting/writing/film-making” thing doesn’t work out.
The reality is that unpaid or poorly paid entry-level creative industry jobs are subsidised by middle and upper class parents. It’s a devastating rite of passage for any working-class person who has had to work harder and fight past more barriers to get a seat at the table to learn that although they might have secured the same job as others at the office, it doesn’t mean they’re on the same playing field. People who know they can still get a mortgage on a low and unsteady wage can stay in creative industries longer and with more devotion.
I have turned down prestigious writing opportunities because I do not have the money to be poor. I found myself explaining to a very smart boss that no, I could not quit my day job to write something for them that would have amounted to less than the dole per week. Their dumbfounded response was “Can’t you live in one of your boyfriend’s family’s properties?” Maybe in their world that was a reasonable and smart course of action to take. But I do not have Medici-like benefactors. Most of the people I know don’t have a spare room, never mind a spare house.
Working-class people cannot afford a bohemian period of decades of low-paying, fleeting work because they are not cushioned by cash. It’s not often we get the likes of Kneecap or Say Nothing at film awards, working-class stories told by working-class people, succeeding against all the odds. But when we do, we’ll give the deep, primal “YEEEOOOWW” they deserve.
