I GET into trouble whenever I suggest that U2 and their music are emblematic of Ireland. People believe this could only apply to music with uilleann pipes, bodhrans and tin whistles, and since U2 do not make much use of these, their "Irishness" is a mere happenstance of birth.
It is part of our national inferiority complex to believe that we can only be invaded we cannot invade. Therefore, a band as popular, creative and successful as U2 could only have originated here by accident. Since rock `n' roll is a world culture, it is something we can only receive, absorb, consume. It is not something we can generate, create or transmit. Above all, it could not be about us.
I have gone to some trouble to provide an alternative scenario, but people will see what they want to see, and hear what they want to listen to. And so, it is oddly appropriate that the release of the new U2 album Pop should all but coincide with the initiation of the Dunnes Tribunal, which will investigate the recent difficulties involving politicians. For in these two seemingly dissociated events resides an interesting insight into both Ireland and U2 which we might otherwise have conspired to miss.
One of the hidden themes which propel the U2 sensibility is an antagonism towards piety. The present U2 incarnation all trash and winks and flirtatious poses is a reaction to an early U2 incarnation, characterised by intensity and a high degree of sanctimoniousness.
This journey has been propelled in large part also by the conventional view of rock `n' roll on this side of the Atlantic. Although the American musical spectrum was more evenly divided, in British pop, the Devil always claimed the best tune smiths, leaving God with just Cliff and Dana for company.
The development of U2's later music has been forged and guided by a desire to reinvent conventional images of goodness and sanctity, to build a Trojan Horse of kitsch and make up in which to carry the flame of their core beliefs into the modern pop marketplace. Much is made of the ironic nature of U2's persona, but this is just a joke screen to obscure the reality that the band's core purpose is as solemn as ever.
THIS desire to jettison piety and redefine goodness is quintessentially Irish, for it derives directly from a similar struggle in the modern Irish psyche. One of the invisible legacies of Irish Catholicism is the corruption of our notions of goodness, not in the sense of making us bad but of making us incapable of simply being good without ostentation and accusation.
Irish Catholicism created an ethic which had more to do with the Pharisee in the front pew than the tax collector down the back. In Ireland, the "best" people were those who could most assiduously advertise their own virtue. Everything was for show. Like many of our complexes, this goes back to the Famine and its revolutionary aftermath.
In the absence of other forms of currency, morality and goodness became currencies of distinction, both between us and the outside world and among ourselves. We became incapable of imagining any version of goodness that was not pious, pofaced and deeply sanctimonious. This is true right up to the present moment, when we can, for example, understand fully that Mother Teresa is good, but have difficulty with Bob Geldof, who does the same kind of work but has long hair and uses swear words.
As a result of our historical experience, our society became infected with hidden sanctities and taboos which enabled hierarchies to emerge based on giving an impression of moral superiority. This enabled immoral things to be done in the name of right and legality, and caused the meaning of morality to become so contaminated that it could no longer be trusted. By vesting in a soutane, a wig, a suit, it was possible to define what was real and what was not. This allowed those who held the franchise on goodness to go into the others.
Although we have all but jettisoned institutional Catholicism, we have also managed to retain all of the complexes which it created in us. The false piety which arose out of post Famine Catholicism is now to be found in migrant forms in politics, the law, media, literature and even sport. Corrupted notions of goodness are used as weapons of war between people who truly haven't the faintest notion of the drama they are enacting.
BECAUSE we find it hard to tell the difference between spirituality and sanctity, goodness is a matter of the public relaying of agreed signals. Morality is something easily recognised. Integrity is acquired by virtue of accusing others of lacking it. In the absence of any more authentic set of differences, this pious charade is what drives Irish politics, deciding who will serve and who will govern.
The Dunnes Tribunal is a product of this sensibility. Like the Beef Tribunal before it, it is intended as a Show Trial, not to uncover wrongdoing but to conceal the pervasiveness of certain cultural patterns behind a smokescreen of earnest humbug. Of this tribunal, the following can be said with virtual certainty it will cost Irish taxpayers more money than any of us is capable of imagining it will generate almost unlimited volumes of hot air about standards, ethics and integrity it will make some lawyers even richer than they are already nothing good will come of it.
At the end of this tribunal, we will be no wiser than we already are about the identity of the "former prominent figure" who is alleged to have been given more than £1 million by Ben Dunne. Nobody will serve one day in prison or pay one penny in fines as a result of its work. Nobody will resign from office. Yet, for much of the coming months, we will be told on a daily basis that it is the most important thing going on.
Why? Because it is important for us to assert our goodness without having to identify what goodness might be. These occasional show trials allow us to give full vent to our need to accuse, and our associated need to give ourselves general absolution without penance. Existing concepts of morality and good are convenient, and for as long as there is someone to be accused we can feel good about our own virtue.
The political tribunal is a modern form of societal confession, in the sense that all accusation is a form of confession. Deep down we all know our society is corrupt to the core not just because of the occasional dropsy to a politician, but because it does not understand that goodness goes beyond the appearance or the assertion of virtue.
Part of what any artist does is reflect, often unconsciously, hidden forces which emerge in the work by virtue of a willingness to be truthful. U2's recent emphasis on the importance of not being earnest is both a reaction to the cultural conditions from which they emerged, and an attempt to find some alternative, but still functional impulse by which to move more truthfully onwards. We could go far if we listened more carefully to what they say.