Sense of self, Sense of Place The Landscape of Urban Violence in "Love/Hate"

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Publiée : Nov 9, 2020
DOI : https://doi.org/10.34929/imaginaires.vi22.10

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Flore Coulouma
Université Paris-Nanterre

Résumé

The Irish TV series Love/Hate (RTE one, 2010-present) is set in Dublin, and its violent “gangland” plotline inspired Guardian reviewer Marc Lawson to call it the “Irish The Wire”, placing it firmly within an American tradition of television production. Like The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008), Love/Hate raises issues of place, space, and identity in a post-industrialised, globalised city. The series is rooted in the specific place of Dublin and part of a broader tradition concerned with urban narratives in the late capitalist era. Love/Hate focuses on a small group of characters and differs in that regard from its American counterpart: The Wire is an explicit portrait of Baltimore in which the proliferating characters constitute the social, economic and political landscape of the city. Love/Hate writer Stuart Carolan, on the other hand, cites his fascination with “gangland”, rather than an interest in the city, as his inspiration. Nevertheless, the series offers a striking portrait of Dublin, urban space and nature woven into its story of gang violence.

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Coulouma, F. (2020). Sense of self, Sense of Place: The Landscape of Urban Violence in "Love/Hate". Imaginaires, (22), 130-143. https://doi.org/10.34929/imaginaires.vi22.10
Numéro
No 22 (2019): How Popular Culture Travels
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Articles
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Biographie de l'auteur

Flore Coulouma, Université Paris-Nanterre

Flore Coulouma is an associate professor in English at Université Paris Nanterre, France. Her book Diglossia and the Linguistic Turn: Flann O’Brien’s Philosophy of Language (Dalkey Archive Press, 2015) addresses linguistic colonialism in 20th century Ireland and the “question of language” in Flann O’Brien’s satirical work. She is the editor of New Perspectives on Irish TV Series: Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen (Peter Lang, 2016), and she writes on contemporary Irish and American literature and on American and Irish television series. Her current research focuses on ecocriticism and the representation of social and environmental justice in contemporary discourse and literature.