Eve Golden Woods · @EveGoldenWoods
2nd Jun 2015 from TwitLonger
Ok. So. Donald Fuck and Yeats and Ireland and Dublin.
All the background pictures are Dublin, for a start. I recognise a few of them. This isn't just a game using Yeats, it's a game set in Dublin, written by someone who grew up there.
That completely recontextualises the Yeats. Every Irish writer, every Irish artist since Yeats has been writing against him. Yeats defines Irish culture in almost every possible way. He founded Ireland's most famous theatre, he was part of the cultural revolution that led to actual revolution and independence, he helped to preserve and generate interest in Irish mythology. He didn't do any of this alone, but he was one of the central figures of that period of Irish history. He was even on our money at one point (btw the old Irish money was beautiful, I'm so sad it's gone). So for Donald Fuck to be using Yeats isn't some kind of random cultural debris, it's the direct contrast of his own work with one of the most celebrated literary figures in Irish history. The words of Yeats' poem are contrasted with their own presentation - in white text on a photographic background with rough art and discordant music, the farthest thing possible from the measured, beautiful, Celtic grandeur that Yeats imagined for Ireland. The photographs reinforce that. The second image is of the canal near Charlemont (I think), which is actually quite beautiful, and is referenced in another famous poem by another Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh. However the picture Donald Fuck uses shows a grey sky, late autumn with the leaves dull and brown over the green grass, the water of the canal flat and lifeless. His photograph resists any investment of beauty, taking what the poets made glorious and rendering it dull and mundane once more, as he experiences it on a day to day basis.
From there we move to St Stephen's Green, right in the centre of Dublin. One of the city's most famous parks is there, clipped out of the frame for roadworks and shabby looking houses. Here, against the backdrop of some of Dublin's most expensive real estate, the narrator mentions places he dreamed of living: outer planets, ocean temples, and Ballyfermot. Ballyfermot, unlike the others, is a realistic place to live, and the joke is how unlikely it is that anyone would place it in a list of dream locations. It's a working class Dublin neighbourhood with little in the way of culture or beauty, neglected by the government for wealthier areas of Dublin.
As the narration moves from the Yeats poem to the narrator's experiences we get references to "alien" Americana. That's completely familiar to me: modern Irish culture is almost drowned out by the glut of globalisation, American-made shows and TV smothering the modern Irish experience. Against that, older figures like Yeats seem even more overwhelmingly mythological, entrenched in the collective Irish consciousness in a way that no modern Irish culture can be.
I think there's a very deep sense in the game of this double alienation. Alienation from the beautiful grandeur of Yeats, and alienation from modern pop culture which pretends to be universal while reflecting a very narrow Irish experience.