{"id":893,"date":"2023-04-16T20:13:13","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T00:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/?p=893"},"modified":"2023-04-16T21:49:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T01:49:42","slug":"the-informer-the-social-climber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/2023\/04\/16\/the-informer-the-social-climber\/","title":{"rendered":"The Informer, The Social Climber"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the movie The Informer<\/em>, around minute 53:00 after Gypo and Mulligan crash an upper-class party, the woman in charge says, \u201cYou\u2019ll get no drink here you, social climber. Why don\u2019t you go back to the gutter where you belong?\u201d The fact that we are able to hear this line spoken aloud in the film allows the audience to pick up on the long pause between \u201cyou\u201d and \u201csocial climber,\u201d right where the comma is located. The woman thinks for a second about the best way to insult him, clearly believing that he belongs \u201cin the gutter.\u201d In this way, \u201csocial climber\u201d is used as an intentionally offensive term, which was interesting to me because of how this is so drastically different from America, in which \u201cthe American dream\u201d is all about making your own way in the world and successfully \u201crising to the top\u201d in a capitalist society. Even American elites tend to recognize that trying to climb the social ladder is honorable, while in Ireland this is looked down upon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this way, the movie highlights a difference between the Black Atlantic and the Green Atlantic, and the way that Irish culture changed once making the journey to America. As we saw in stories like Moon and the Mars<\/em>, the Irish who moved to America were very entrepreneurial and tried to climb the social ladder to survive, because this was culturally viewed as a good thing in the United States. As we saw in Daniel O\u2019Connell\u2019s address, the Irish also assimilated into American society by upholding slavery as well. O\u2019Connell chastised these Irish in his letter, saying that they were ignoring their original Irish values. All of these instances of shifts in Irish culture call to mind my argument in my conference paper, in which the Black and Green Atlantic changes with each generation, and looks different with each new wave of children that are being raised in a completely different environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 responses to “The Informer, The Social Climber”<\/h2>\n\n
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    Lola<\/div>\n\n\n
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    motoole<\/div>\n\n\n
    April 16, 2023<\/a><\/time><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    This is a really great point to make. I agree that Daniel O’Connell’s address to the Irish Repeal Association of Cincinnati is really applicable to the behavior we see in the novel and film. While social climbing was a way for the Irish to become white in America, it was not tolerated in Ireland to bring down others for your own social and economic gain. I think this film really represents the change in social values that occurred across the Green Atlantic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In the movie The Informer, around minute 53:00 after Gypo and Mulligan crash an upper-class party, the woman in charge says, \u201cYou\u2019ll get no drink here you, social climber. Why don\u2019t you go back to the gutter where you belong?\u201d The fact that we are able to hear this line spoken aloud in the film … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “The Informer, The Social Climber”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4447,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blackandgreenatlantic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}