St Patrick's Night At Aras An Uachtarain - RTE 1
The Corrs - The Right Time - RTE 1, Tuesday
Over Ireland - RTE 1, Monday
Let's Talk - BBC 1, Tuesday
The Lives Of Our Time - BBC 1, Wednesday
Lilting in lilac, the President, Mrs McAleese spoke about "the spiritual and cultural renaissance that seems to be capturing Ireland"; "the great Irish global family"; "building up family, community and nation"; "celebrating excellence" and, of course, "bridge-building". Since Mary Robinson's successful PR presidency cast Aras an Uachtarain as a kind of State fulcrum of Irish culture - not politics - official versions of what we are (or, more specifically, official versions of what the establishment wants to believe we believe we are) have been meticulously managed.
St Patrick's Night At Aras An Uachtarain was such a gig. In this decade, the presidency has sought themes and presidents have projected themselves as cultural commissars. An air of formal informality has been cultivated. Pitched at a point between preserving traditional deference and creating an unceremonious sense of "inclusiveness", the 1990s presidency is a balancing act. Like Riverdance, which is essentially Feis Mor meets The Rockettes, the presidency is now regularly packaged as The Discreet Charms Of The Bourgeoisie meets The Plain People Of Ireland.
There is, by definition (with the President in the role of patron) a patronising aspect to this combination. Examples of "bridge-building", the central theme of this latest lark in the park, included a group playing bodhrans and lambeg drums together; a priest on a fiddle accompanying a vicar on a flute; Ronan Keating (how many of him can there be?) singing a seannos version of Cat Stevens's Father And Son. In themselves these were, depending on individual tastes, fine. But they were not to be seen and heard just for their own sakes. They were symbols, carefully created symbols, designed, like all art in the service of the state, to carry a message.
Perhaps it is the unavoidability of being conscious of the message-carrying which makes it impossible to watch these State events without considering their agendas. Few could object to "bridgebuilding" (though some have objected to the bridge-builder), given the hopes for the peace talks. But tailoring art to fit political and cultural agendas is risky because freedom of expression, if coralled, is not free any more.
Consider the scene at the Aras. Mary Kennedy introduced the President, Mrs McAleese. The ambience oozed oldworld, drawing-room grandeur. You would not have been surprised to see an overdressed bloke carry in a pyramid of Ferrero Rocher ("Oh madame, with this bridge-building, you are spoiling us'`). Then the President spoke. She said nothing offensive or galling - but nothing inspirational either. Instead, like her predecessor, she resorted to cliches and buzz-words, remarkable really for their empty worthiness.
Maybe that is what is expected nowadays of a president. Certainly, we saw the reactions whenever Mary Robinson said anything genuinely meaningful. In a largely ceremonial and powerless role, perhaps we should not be surprised that its argot reflects its castrated condition. But it is always a disappointment to see PR caked on so heavily that the President is as much a performer as the artists invited to entertain us. Image counts, of course, but much of the image emitted by the presidency in the 1990s is more Jacqueline than John Kennedy.
So, we get versions of Camelot on the Liffey. The individual singers, poets and musicians invited to perform (at least, we don't - yet - have anything as tyrannical as royal "command" performances) naturally do so. But all the poetry at inaugural speeches and "appropriate" music on our national holiday whiffs of appropriation. Devoid of serious political power, the presidency has forged its own kind of cultural politics. On the night that was in it, this was hardly a surprise. But the Camelot ambience and format seemed designed to suggest a spurious gentility - hardly our most representative national characteristic.
Immediately preceding the Aras gig, RTE screened The Corrs - The Right Time. As homage to American ambassador, Jean Kennedy Smith, this was remarkable. Apparently Mrs Kennedy Smith first saw the band gigging in Whelan's pub in Dublin. She promptly invited them to Boston. Later, following the group's first gig in the National Stadium, we saw them meeting Kennedy Smith backstage. Later still, when The Corrs played on the JFK aircraft carrier, Kennedy Smith was present, as she was at Croke Park when the band sang before an American football game.
It was difficult not to think that Dermot Morgan would have penned a suitable song: Thank You Very Much, Mrs Kennedy Smith. But the documentary proved there's more to The Corrs's success than having an influential patron in the park. Sure, they can play, but make-up and legs and rig-outs that look like underwear attract punters too. In a sense then, The Corrs are Spice Girls for the broadsheet market. They certainly have been studiously packaged.
Strange, considering that they can sing, can play and look well, that they've been successful. It goes against all the traditional wisdom regarding pop. But The Corrs have always seemed to have too thin a body of work behind them to justify the status projected about them. Then again, popular music critics are better informed to make such judgments. But it certainly seems that way. Manager John Hughes admitted that he has "a 10year plan" for the band (part of which, presumably, included this documentary).
It's not as if the manufactured hype necessarily outweighs their talent, whatever about their body of work. But time and again, throughout this film, you were conscious of the PR machinery attempting to manipulate public perception of the band. From Dundalk to New Yawk is a bit of a journey, generally taken via local pubs, juvenile dances, small gigs, bigger gigs, radio and TV exposure. But The Corrs appeared to be marketed, pretty much from the off, as the finished article.
From rehearsing in a bedroom, they were straight on to Malibu Beach. Along with Jean Kennedy Smith, record producer David Foster was cast as their other most influential fan. "Only Phil Collins works harder," he said, thereby inflicting a crushing defeat on the work ethic. Written and narrated by the usually reliable, often excellent Dick (Water- ways) Warner, this one was somewhere between promotional video and television documentary. Slo-mo and close-ups of The Corrs' smiley faces at the finish tipped it towards old-fashioned MTV.
After The Corrs and the Aras gig, you'd wonder if St Patrick, or, at any rate, the RTE St Patrick, is the patron saint of PR. On Monday, Over Ireland was a genuinely spectacular aerial tour of the country. Over mountain ridges, which looked like the exposed ribs of the land; frothy seas nibbling at huge cliffs; defiant islands; cities, towns and farmed countryside, the photography was a coffeetable book turned to motion pictures. Splendid stuff, really . . . but then, again, there was the script.
Clearly with an eye on the international market, this co-production was scripted by John O'Donoghue. The tone was that of the old cinema travelogue: anodyne, cliched, mock-conversational, a form which nowadays finds annual expression in Eurovision Song Contest links describing the wonders of the host country. Aiming at diverse markets, some loss of edge is not surprising. But this script, also abusing poetry, did to words what elevator muzak does to music.
Still, even if the lighter-than-air script made you think that it would have been better just to use an instrumental soundtrack (with a few captions), the pictures were glorious. The Blaskets, the Skelligs, Newgrange, Glendalough, Croagh Patrick, the cliffs of Slieve League, the Reeks . . . the landscape shone through the drivel - although it was made to fight at times.
"But Dubliners' wit and repartee leave as little bitterness as you'll find at the bottom of a glass of Guinness," said the voiceover at one stage. "In Ireland the past is ever present," it had said earlier. Bord Failte has specialised in this sort of guff for years and all tourism boards propagate the language of advertising. But the aerial pictures of this, quite beautiful, country deserved better in a documentary aired to coincide with our national holiday. This was not a script for beautiful Ireland. Instead it was a script for that vile notion, Ireland Inc.
The BBC attempted something a little more substantial for St Patrick's Day. Gathering together Irish and Irish-Americans of nationalist and unionist opinions, Let's Talk asked them what sort of involvement the US ought to have in deciding the future of the North. David Dunseith presented the programme from Washington. But in spite of a strong cast, in which Monica McWilliams was perhaps the most impressive, the discussion never really took fire.
There was one glorious moment when Dunseith remarked that "President Clinton has been bending a few ears" (which adds a new dimension to the idea of trophy conquests). But when it came to the nitty-gritty, there was little new on offer. At this stage in the process, concerned parties are wary of showing too much of their hands. Tellingly, though, most American contributions focused on the "economic well-being" of the North. Expect the American-style reverence for money to continue to grow even in the land where "the past is ever present".
Finally, The Lives Of Our Time, the oral history of the North in the 20th century, reached the 1950s and 1960s. Electricity, household appliances, television, free health care, condoms, the Pill, cancer, showbands and civil rights were recalled. Haldane Mitchell remembered Omagh before widespread plumbing. Sewage went directly into the river but floods regularly carried excrement back into people's houses.
The early civil rights marches and 1969's pogroms in Belfast were remembered too. Put in the context of ordinary people's lives, they seemed more grounded in real history than do accounts which focus exclusively on the powerbrokers of the period. Footage of Bombay Street in flames, shown to the tune of Baby Blue, gave a Rock 'n' Roll Years feel. In a week when so much presentation and scripting lashed on the PR, even Baby Blue evoked a sense of 1969 Belfast, of real Ireland, that saccharine St Patrick's Day programmes never will.