THE women revolutionaries of the time were unrepresentative in having jobs or being wealthy and not needing jobs," said Joe Lee of Ireland's female militants of the early part of the century. So they were. Class was determining. The point does not invalidate gender studies but Hoodwinked, a three part documentary series debating women's roles in Irish society since the 1920s, might have stressed this crucial aspect more.
It is true, of course, as the opening episode Women And The Republic maintained, that de Valera's notion of the family and of the right roles for women within families, shaped the lives of most Irish women for about the first five decades of this State. The maintenance of the traditional status of women in the home, placing them at the centre of family morality, was central to Catholic teaching. With the politicians (especially Dev) and the clergy as salesmen, most Irish women bought the full deal.
Using a variety of talking heads, interspersed between brief clips of archive footage, Hoodwinked has a fast pace. However, while this bestows the benefit of liveliness, it also means that coherence is frequently sacrificed. The points being made are, generally, interesting. But often they seem unrelated, or, at any rate, not quite sufficiently related. A more rigorous narrative structure would make it seem less fragmented.
Still, much of the footage is splendid. The opening programme concentrated on the period between 1920 and 1940. We saw the marching women of Cumann na mBan and they looked formidable. Over film of Countess Markievicz, we heard her anti Treaty speech and her citing of her ideal of a `workers' republic". It was gritty stuff - even if Connie's retention of her title made the ideology appear not quite fully thought through.
The most disturbing part of the documentary, however, dealt with infanticide. Though society was simpler then at least in the sense of being less varied its cruelty ran deep. The emotional and social price of having a child outside marriage was so great that many women killed their babies sooner than face the opprobrium and abuse. Then there was the treatment of servant girls. Some were lucky - others were little better off than slaves.
It was the writer, Evelyn Conlon, who used the word "hoodwinked" to describe the role assigned to women in Dev's Ireland. She has a point and yet, the notion that women were primarily conned, duped, tricked into behaving as they did, suggests a desperately cynical project on behalf of the powers of the time - Dev and the Catholic church. It becomes a matter of perspective, of course. But if Dev - deluded or not genuinely believed in the advice he gave women, can he fairly be accused of hood winking?
Political activists, Louie O'Brien and Nora Harkin; the founder of the Irish Housewives' Association, Hilda Tweedy; a farmer's wife, Bridgid Wilkinson; archivist, Catriona Crowe; reproductive rights activist, Ruth Riddick; housewife and trade union activist, Kitty Ledden; academic, Aine Hyland; writer, Leland Bardwell; journalist, Fionnuala O'Connor and politicians, Mary O'Rourke and Alice Glenn were among the contributors to this opening episode.
Directed by Trish McAdam, Hoodwinked evokes a world which is largely gone. Yes, it was a patriarchal world which did define the limits of women's lives. But it was a patriarchal world which also defined the limits of most men's lives. Without question, women faced greater obstacles to freedom, but it is a matter of degree not of absolutes. To tell the tale as though it were a simple story of males dominating females is only a partial truth. A more real context demands that the most powerful dominating males be identified. Many of them were celibate.
Perhaps Irishwomen would have made quicker gains had most of the revolutionary women not backed the losing, antiTreaty side. Perhaps. In the next two weeks, Hoodwinked will screen episodes dealing with the roles of women from the 1940s to the 1970s and from the 1970s to the 1990s. Naturally, it will climax with the President, Mrs Mary Robinson, who, in terms of gender and ideology, certainly has been a notable change as Ireland's President. In terms of class, of course, it's business as usual - indeed, our head of state even exudes a suspiciously regal tinge of late.
FOR sheer ethics in your face documentaries, Witness is unique. This week's offering Appointment With Doctor Death reported on the work of Jack Kevorkian, the American doctor who has assisted in around 50 suicides. Kevorkian's work is so controversial that he wears a bulletproof vest when he's out and about. He is passionate about euthanasia, insisting that choosing the time and place of your own death is a basic human right.
It is clear that there is a market for Jack's service. He has invented an intravenous suicide machine. The person wishing to die must push the buttons - so that it's suicide, you see. Being homemade, the suicide machine has a sort of school science lab rawness about it. Given the opposition to Kevorkian and the fact that he's breaking one of the stronger taboos, it's unlikely that we'll see streamlined, mass produced versions of his killer apparatus.
Again, perspective is crucial in deciding on whether or not Jack is more Dr Kildare or Dr Mengele. At the start, this film seemed very supportive of Kevorkian and his work. But, by the end, some critical questions had been posed. A coroner said that not all the people Kevorkian helped to die were suffering from a disease. And Dawn Henslee recalled the "assisted" death of her mother, Linda, a multiple sclerosis victim. It was rather less than dignified.
For a start, it was inappropriately furtive. Fearing a crackdown by the law, Kevorkian arranged that the death should take place in a stranger's house at one o'clock in the morning. Linda was dropped on the sidewalk as she was being moved into the house. Then the machine didn't work properly. What was supposed to last for about 30 seconds, took eight minutes, during which time Linda kept saying "I love you, I love you" to her daughters. It was a nightmare.
What added real chill to this programme was the fact that it was dealing in applied, more than in theoretical, ethics. All of Kevorkian's patients must have their requests for assisted suicide videotaped. There they were unhappy, ill people, who had just had enough pain and hopelessness. The videos of them had, like Jack's suicide machine, a homemade quality. But seeing real people made the arguments of a different order from a purely theoretical debate about the ethics of euthanasia.
"Every immoral law must be disobeyed," insisted Kevorkian. It's an argument which is characteristic of ethical stormtroopers. It also indicates the active nature of Kevorkian's behaviour at least as much crusade as service. Mind you, given the formidable and dangerous opposition to euthanasia, it probably requires a driven character like Kevorkian to attempt it at all. "Vets are allowed to kill animals in pain. We have to suffer to sustain our myths," he says.
A messiah to some, a devil to others, Jack is blunt to everybody. Despite his interviews, it's still very difficult to know how much compassion motivates him. On the surface, at least, he seems too businesslike to be a bleeding heart. It is clear that he is driven by something more combative. Kevorkian is 68 now and it's impossible to say if his legacy will long survive his own death (natural or assisted). But euthanasia seems set to prevail as one of the 21st century's major ethical dilemmas.
BACK on RTE, black and white archive film from the Amharc Eireann newsreels featured in The Years Of Change. This fourth of six episodes was titled The Outside World. As ever, the old film retained a certain fascination. Assessing the impact of a nuclear bomb on Dublin, military types stood over a large map which suggested that Swords and Malahide, though they would be scorched, would survive. But, of Kinsealy, there would be no trace.
There was footage of Conor Cruise O'Brien returning from The Congo; of African and Asian students dancing in Dublin; of a premiere of Mutiny On The Bounty at the Adelphi and, of course, of John Kennedy's visit to Ireland in 1963. These were the early years of increasing contact with the outside world and many of the films are characterised by scenes of intensely curious onlookers, staring - half respectfully, half sceptically - at the performances of the prominent.
Unlike Hoodwinked, there is a jauntiness to some of the narration. That's fine, but it does remind you that, in spite of the arguments, a filmed record is the most accurate record. The form of words - in tone as well as in content - can be used to make any footage either central or just wallpaper. While we can clearly spot propaganda from another era, it's not always quite so easy to see beyond contemporary smugness.
Anyway, with two archive based, factual documentaries running on RTE at present, it's good to see that programme makers are making use of the national stock of old footage. Selecting and structuring information and opinion is the key though. And then there's tone. The blessing of the scooters (The Years Of Change Programme 1) for instance, could be used to illustrate a point about the tightness of the grip of the Catholic church.
Alternatively, it could be better used (as it was) as a piece of evocative whimsy. But the fact that in the late 1990s such documentaries are being made, makes the programmes themselves part of the historical record. Though a great deal of their content is second hand, their choice of footage, arrangement of themes . . . in short, their agendas, are fascinating. Funny though, how one era's sophistication becomes another's laughing stock.
FINALLY, Modern Times. Helen Richards's film, The End, was as blunt as Jack Kevorkian. Detailing less conventional ways of dealing with death - and the dead - it began with the £160 funeral arranged by Belfast man Anthony Weir for his Aunt Marcella. Mr Weir decided to use a cardboard coffin, which he decorated with wavy psychedelic motifs. Then he stuffed it with teddies and pillows before heading for the crematorium.
At the crematorium, Anthony delivered a funeral address. "Her happiest time," he said, "was a few years in London, but her mother prevailed on her to come back to stultifying Belfast. She hated her boring, badly paid, clerical work and poor conditions. She was the most intelligent and artistic member of her tribe but nobody saw it, or, if they did, they squashed it. When she died, she still had all her teeth."
If you believe that grim, dour, unrelenting realism is the most appropriate response to death, then Jack Kevorkian as doctor and Anthony Weir as orator, is the way to go. Both of them seemed obsessively anti hypocrisy. Curiously though, both of them seemed self obsessed too. Whatever rings their bells, it's not simple altruism.