Prods and Pom-Poms

posted by Gareth Higgins

Watching Ben Jones and Paul Hutchinson’s entertaining documentary ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ (available on DVD at a bargain price from Hooptedoodle Films) was a nostalgic experience. (Full disclosure: It’s set in my home town, and Paul and Ben are friends of mine. Second full disclosure: I think I’d like the film even if I didn’t like them.)

It gets both the urban desolation of an easily forgotten part of South Belfast and the craic of the culture just right – the struggle for recognition and desire to do something other than be passively entertained finding expression in that most unclichéd of dramatic conventions: a working class Protestant cheerleading squad preparing for their big day out in Scotland.

If you know northern Ireland, or have ever been around small-town amateur theatrics, then you’ll have a wry smile on your face as you watch – ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ humanizes people who are often either laughed at, ignored, or even feared by the liberal intelligentsia. The sense of identity that derives from a place and its people is palpable – the cold light of my city keeping people alert to the fact that Sandy Row is – whatever its challenges – home.

There is a sense of genuine drama as the squad makes the trip across the Irish Sea to the championships – theories about the social construction of reality and competition seem churlish when you see the excitement these kids have invested in the journey. When they get to Scotland – a promised land for Ulster Protestants, who, myself among them, often grow up feeling small, that we didn’t belong, and that things of ‘scale’ are none of our business; but sometimes in the sense of ‘anywhere but here’ – they perform to an apathetic audience, only there to see their own team play. But they give it all they’ve got; and, as their leader – a brilliant sketch of an indominatable northern Irish ‘weemin’ – says ‘They all smiled and they all enjoyed themselves, and that was the main thing’.

The parallels with the faux-militarism on display in northern Ireland’s marching organizations is not lost in ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’; nor is it overplayed. We’re just invited to observe an American phenomenon in an Ulster setting; to remember what it’s like to participate with others in seeking common goals, and how taking part matters more than winning. (‘You know what we’re like, we’ll just suck it up and get on wi’ it.’) The climax squeezes a lovely little human comedy with its share of tension into a series of speakerphone calls on a ferry; and the fact that the squad arrives back to the depressed Belfast night is more than countered by the human contentment that a day well-lived offers.

Where ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ universalizes its themes is in its subtle observation of the ordinariness at the heart of a much-maligned culture. These kids attend their cheerleading classes in a small heartland, surrounded by the commercial real estate encroachment of Belfast’s retail centre; beneath belligerent and depressing murals that seem threatening to anyone from outside, and presumably don’t exactly lift the spirits of residents. But they take part in the Belfast St Patrick’s Day parade – an unconventional and imaginative move for a Protestant group to make in recent years; they want people to know that, when it comes to bigotry and political entrenchment, ‘not everyone here is like that’; they love their wee patch of ground, and they’re proud of what they’re doing. People from this place have rarely been portrayed as human beings, if they’ve been portrayed at all. The way that the film promotes respectful dialogue about difference among human beings might feel grateful that ‘Prods and Pom-Poms’ exists.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 12:05 am. It is filed under Belfast, Blog, Directors, Documentaries, Gareth Higgins, Political cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.