Ireland, New York and the Irish image in American popular culture, 1890-1960

A study of the dichotomy between perceptions and meanings that circumstances in the United States and in Ireland have created about the word 'Irish' in the first half of the twentieth century. It compares the evolution of the image of a country and its people with the historical reality. It explores the roots of ethnic labeling, analyses how a consumer society integrates ethnicity, and considers the transnational implications of the widespread adoption of ethnic symbols as visual cues in the marketplace.; Two historical phenomena are critical to the frequent tension between image and reality: the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 with all the image-making incumbent upon establishing political legitimacy, and an Irish stock population in New York City that was one of the largest ethnic concentrations in the United States. Ireland exported a new 'official' definition of 'Irish' through diplomacy, the promotion of trade goods, and the development of tourism. But for many generations of Irish in America, an older construction retained a powerful nostalgic appeal and an immediacy of recognition. Thus, emigrants from an independent, post-colonial Ireland in the 1920s and again in the 1950s encountered a hybrid image--a sometimes dim, sometimes garish reflection--of themselves current in American popular culture.; New York City, the media capital of America, is the most significant stage on which Irish image and reality met and were negotiated. The average American received an impression of Ireland and the Irish (including those living in the United States) that was disseminated from New York and whose influence was both pervasive and lucrative. The sentimental symbolism of the color green, shamrocks, and St. Patrick's Day drew on, then attentuated a folk culture based on Ireland's long tradition of emigration to the United States since the eighteenth century. It was this image--in newspapers, magazines, radio, newsreels and motion pictures as well as on greeting cards, records, sheet music, novelties, the stage and in the classroom--that was successfully marketed as 'Irish' to consumers with only a rudimentary knowledge of contemporary Ireland. By mid-century, Ireland itself could no longer ignore the economic potential of its American commercial image.