The Secret of Kells

Ashia R:

It’s #FamilyMovieNight, let’s live-recap The Secret of Kells (2009) with these picky children.

Since we loved Wolfwalkers, I have high hopes for this movie.

Right out the gate – our narrator starts by whispering about creation and colonization so the Earthquakes have to shut up and listen. YES.

“I have seen the dark man invading Ireland destroying homes, In search of gold.”

Oh. Um….hmm. Yeah that’s not… that’s not a charming metaphor.

And now this kid is going on about a magic book turning darkness into light.

So it’s like that then. Ugh, fine. I get this movie was made over a decade ago. Strap in, let’s reinforce tropes about how everything connected to darkness (esp people) are bad! (/sarcasm)

All this whispering was nice and mysterious and also confusing and hard to parse. So luckily things pick up quickly with an abrupt switch to a scene of a little boy on a wild goose chase. (Literally.)

And oh ho! He’s joined by a group of racially diverse…monks?

Most ‘historical’ movies set in Europe whitewash all the characters as if borders were closed until 1950. But the little boy (Brendan) is joined on the goose chase by Brother Tang, Brother Assoua, and Brother Leonardo – who are illustrated as East Asian-ish, African-ish, and Italian-ish.

I’m doubtful they’re voiced by #OwnVoices actors – but seeing characters of Asian, African, and Southern European descent in a historical movie set in northern Europe is refreshing.

This movie is moving fast and I was trying to see who the voice actors are (all white), so I’m gonna cheat and check Wikipedia on what the heck is going on:

“Set in 9th century Ireland, during the age of Viking expansion, the film’s protagonist is Brendan, a curious and brave boy living in the tightly knit Abbey of Kells under the care of his stern uncle, Abbot Cellach, who is obsessed with building a wall around the Abbey to prevent Viking attacks.”

Okay got it. We’re talking after the introduction of Christianity, but before the English invaded and colonized. But it’s like, also the basic formula of colonization to sneak in and normalize colonial culture by converting folks to Christianity first so I’m gonna call it ‘early indoctrination.’

Abbot Cellach, the Brendan’s stern uncle with a sexy accent, plans to #BuildAWall to either keep IN our keep OUT the pagans, crown-worshippers, and assorted heathens so he can convert them to Catholicism. I’m a little unclear. But he seems convicted that his border wall is the way to go.

Oh, not ‘crown-worshippers’, ‘worshippers of Crom’ – an indigenous pagan god. Cellach is your basic religiously intolerant bigot.

So this ‘dark’ nonsense seems like… a uniquely unnecessary metaphor for evil? We’re talking VIKINGS. Scandinavian melanin-deficient vikings, right? Am I misunderstanding? Even if they’re truly bloodthirsty and vicious, the metaphor of ‘dark men’ to describe white folks as bad is… it’s gross. It’s just so gross.

Moving on though, because I really wanted to like this movie.

As a gentler, more inclusive counter-character to Cellach, the famous Brother Aidan comes to town and everybody fanboys over him because he’s the creator of the Book of Iona. Which appears to be the only records and memories of Aidan’s history and people left over from the Viking attack he just fled (he’s the sole survivor I guess.)

Brother Aidan looks EXACTLY like Willie Nelson. So much that it’s just hard to shake the idea that this is not a cartoon Willie Nelson. Brother Willie recruits little Brendan to help him finish the Book of Iona.

Brendan is about to embark upon a classic cartoon movie white boy’s journey – follow in the footsteps of your hot bigot uncle or the footsteps of a genial Willie-Nelson-type mentor. Choosing between soft power and education and hard (literally, ‘cause walls) power. I guess.

(Or maybe not my brain is foggy perhaps I need to watch this a second time to know what’s going on).

Umm okay I spent too long trying to remember Willie Nelson’s name and kind of lost the plot for a while. And now for some reason Brendan is in a forest getting chased by wolves.

Awww Brendan’s making friends with a wolf walker! Or some type of fae. It’s hard to tell. She has rambunctious wolf-walker energy and I love her either way.

By the way we also get to meet Pangur Bán, a grouchy famous cat, and I appreciate his refusal to be our Cute Animal Sidekick. He clearly resents everything that is going on.

::: Gets distracted while reading about Pangur Bán) :::

Oh. OH. Brendan’s in the forest to get special berries for ink, so he can finish the Book of Iona. It’s fancy green ink. The fae is helping him and kinda/sorta leading him to break an ankle or two as they climb a giant tree.

Whaaaat Aisling just told Brendan her name and that’s VERY un-fae of her. She just gave it up?! No tricks?! She didn’t even say ‘you can call me’ she’s like straight up ‘this is my name.’

I mean like I get than Brendan lives in a bubble, so him giving up not just his name, but also Aidan’s is understandable (but foolish!) But Aisling must know better.

(I had to stop a moment and explain to R2 that you NEVER TELL A FAE YOUR NAME!!)

This is ‘don’t take candy from strangers who can eat you 101 – how have we not covered this.

((I am a bad Irish mom))

Q is telling our cat, Jimmy, how Pangur Bán is an outside cat and she has ticks and fleas and she’s ‘probably going to die soon.’ Yikes I might have gone a little overboard on explaining why we keep our cats indoors.

Our kitty-bears are an invasive species! An ecological disaster! But yes also ticks and fleas and getting run over by cars.

Although I guess Pangur Bán doesn’t have to worry about cars.

‘Cause it’s the 9th century.

Brendan is back at the abbey and my kids won’t shut up asking me why they can’t tell their names to the fae. Brother Willie Nelson is doing chemistry science with the green berries to make ink and I’m getting Sword in the Stone Merlin vibes, it’s very cozy and charming.

:: Pausing to explain to the kids why we don’t share our name with the fae, who the fae are, and answering random questions about fae that I’m only guessing at because resources on pre-colonial Irish cosmology and mythology were scarce growing up :::

Speaking of Sword in the Stone, this is a very dude-centric space. The only woman I’ve seen in this movie (other than Aisling) was a woman with no lines who finds a goose in her petticoats. Which I am okay with! An abbey full of men tracks as a place where it’s realistic that only men would hang out.

Although I do wonder if in the 9th century women truly had no roles as support workers? I don’t know how Christian abbeys work, but I do know women tend to inherit the invisible shit jobs in patriarchal systems.

(Literally. Cause it’s the 9th century. And I’m pretty sure Europe didn’t have plumbing at this point?)

Anyway – Aisling, the character representing Brendan’s connection to the earth, nature, and indigenous cosmology, represented as feminine tracks with what limited stuff I know about pre-colonial spirituality and gender.

With Catholic colonization introducing and overtaking Ireland with patriarchy, an abbey full of masculinity (both toxic and nontoxic) represents the culture Brendan is raised in.

With Brother Willie Nelson as our non-toxic masculine role model showing the path to connect back to indigenous roots – or at the very least, keeping an open mind and relying on knowledge as a tool, and uncle #BuildAWall showing a path to reinforcing patriarchy, defensiveness, and internalized colonization.

I was worried that might be a stretch. But yep – Brother Willie guides Brendan with education and an invitation to learn more and explore, Brother Bigot guides Brendan by locking him in a tower.

So that’s gender. But also notice the contrast in ages! Aisling presents as a young child (early Ireland), Brother Bigot is an arrogant man in young/middle age (early colonization), and Brother Willie is an older adult who we’d like to think is the representation of post-colonial / decolonized Ireland. I mean, one can hope.

Okay – Let’s get back into this ‘Turn the Darkness into Light’ nonsense. That old standby of dark=bad and light=good.

Aisling, as representation of ‘light’ is literally white with pale skin, white hair, green eyes, and kinda glows.

The ‘darkness,’ some sort of scary subterranean fae represented as a snake, is the ‘darkness’ and supposedly it’s bad, I guess. For…reasons?

We’re not getting a lot of info, but ‘darkness’ seems to be coming from both sides – the invading European Vikings and some sort of snake-fae who lives in a ‘cave of darkness.’

Ohhh, it’s Crom Cruach, that pagan god we learned about earlier. Aisling is like ‘don’t say his name!’

A-ha! So she DOES know about the name thing!

The snake as a representation is…confusing. If this snake was representing invaders, sure – Ireland literally doesn’t have snakes. So the only way snakes show up is if they come in with the vikings or assorted vicious pillagers. A snake representing an Indigenous god? Yeah no that makes no sense to me, what am I missing?

MONTAGE TIME! Brother Willie, Brendan, and our racially diverse team of mischief-makers are all working on the Book of Kells together in secret while Killjoy Uncle Cellach works on his border wall.

Okay there’s just too much going on here. First there was a goose chase (we’re still waiting for closure on what was going on there) then a wall, then a guy with a booka and a cat, then some berries, then a fae, then a snake fae, and now they’re talking about crystals and there’s just too many variables to follow)

Aaaand the crystal is the eye of Crom, so I guess we’re heading back into the cave soon! Luckily Brendan has a magic fae friend who can break him out of his locked tower room via astrally-projecting cat (this makes little sense but it’s a very pretty scene).