Description
The 2024 film Kneecap links questions of sustainable peace, post-conflict resolution, linguistic rights, and intergenerational trauma through the (Irish) medium of hip-hop, drug use, and recreational violence. Blending the real and the representational, the film centres on the three members of the hip-hop band Kneecap and their efforts to gain fame, while also highlighting everyday issues of culture, identity, and politics in Belfast. Our paper exploring these interconnections proceeds in four parts: 1) a précis of the film, a discussion of its use of sound, symbols, and space, and overviews of its characters; 2) a visual, sonic, and narrative analysis of the film’s representation of identity politics associated with the ‘ceasefire generation’ in the North of Ireland (focusing on class, gender, sectarianism, and drug use); 3) an exploration of how the Troubles still haunt the North of Ireland while remaining somewhat (sexually) fetishised; 4) contextualisation of the Irish language as a tool of political agency that binds and divides its speakers to/from each other, the British state, and the Republic of Ireland. In addition to the film itself, we analyse paratexts produced by the band, many of which focus on specific places and space in Belfast and beyond.
