HOWZAT

A few films, such as Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa and Paddy Breathnach’s Ailsa, have used noir as a stylistic template but little more. There have also been plenty of crime and gangster films, though they have opted either for exuberant comedy (such as Breathnach’s I Went Down) or to root themselves in true stories (The General, Veronica Guerin).

This tells its own story. Irish society was profoundly shocked by the murder of Veronica Guerin and the revelation that criminals such as Gilligan existed. But there is something cheap, almost exploitative, about the movies that have resulted, whatever their dramatic quality. By turning tragedy into entertainment they fail on two fronts: they neither live up to the integrity of the real lives they cannibalise, nor manage to come to grips with the psychological darkness at the core of our society.

This is where writers have the edge. In their imaginations they can go further, describing pain, fear and brutality that could never make it onto a cinema screen. Readers understand metaphor and exaggeration: they know not to take certain things too literally.

While we have moved beyond the idea that noir fiction must be intrinsically American, certain American qualities remain central to its identity. Stereotypical characters, such as the tough-talking male protagonist and the femme fatale with a heart of ice, are part of the worldwide language of noir.

Modern Ireland has an extra ingredient, however, born out of the violent collision between old and new. Here the new brutality has to contend with older, more atavistic, varieties of violence.

We decry the amorality of tiger Ireland and the loss of old certainties, yet we see a resemblance between the drug-addled teenage mugger and the corporate raider: neither has time for ordinary human empathy. Noir writers catch this point instinctively.

In one typical scenario, a corporate shark returns to Ireland in search of easy profits, but gets his comeuppance at the hands of the natives. Drawn by the smell of money, these crooks and chancers imagine that the Celtic tiger will be a soft touch. But that streak of nostalgia proves fatal: the new Ireland rips them to shreds.

Even as we bemoan the loss of the old decencies, though, we can’t stop ourselves from revealing a twisted pride in the new dispensation. We are perversely proud of our new-found ruthlessness. Some part of us sees the ugliness and violence as a component of the modernising package we have bought into, an unsavoury side effect of a vital progression. It’s horrible — and we hate to admit it — but affectless violence is something a modern city has to have. Without it, Dublin could still be a provincial backwater.

This deep ambiguity is where Irish noir derives its power, and it makes little difference whether the writers are Irish or American. Noir has its therapeutic side, but it is no comfort blanket. At its best it can peel back the layers of bluff, bluster and denial in which we swaddle our psyches.

And Irish noir has a unique power. It describes a violent clash of world-views, where the old primal brutality takes on the heartless modernity of the new order. There are no good guys here, only competing brands of badness and madness where practically everyone is dangerous to know.

Ultimately, apotropaic gestures don’t work: in the real world, they signify a neurotic retreat into magical thinking, a doomed belief in the efficacy of symbols. Irish noir won’t mend the chasm in society or make the fear go away, either. But it can assuage it by bringing it into the open, and that is the first step to health. Perhaps, by making us see our misplaced pride and our complicity in violence, it might even start to heal a few festering wounds.

No pain, no gain, as the catchphrase says. Or as John Cale sang: fear is a man’s best friend. In times like these, this makes for good advice — but only if we heed the noir lesson and try to understand where the fear is coming from.

Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs The Ugly American is published by Brandon Books