Brooklyn Movie Sociology

The film Brooklyn tells the story of an Irish immigrant woman who falls in love with an Italian American. In the 1950s, intermarriage became more common between the two ethnicities. These unions were the result of overcoming a long history of hate and hostility between the Irish and Italian American immigrants. When Eilis attends a family dinner at her new Italian boyfriend’s house, Tony’s outspoken younger brother, Frankie, claims that his family doesn’t like the Irish. “So first of all I should say that we don’t like Irish people,” Frankie states. He continues to say, “That is a well known fact! A big gang of Irish beat Maurizio up and he had to have stitches. And because all the cops round here are Irish, nobody did anything about it.”

The Irish’s earlier arrival in New York gave them an edge in society over their Italian American counterparts. The first boom of Irish immigrants came to America in the 1840s due to the potato famine in Ireland. (4) This wave of immigrants led to Irish domination in New York, particularly in in the church, workforce, politics, law enforcement, and entertainment. Irish had established and were now in control of unions, civil service jobs and Catholic institutions. (1) Jumping forward to 1950s when Eilis immigrates to the U.S., the reader can see the affects of the earlier mass immigration from the 19th century. When Eilis is traveling back to America after visiting her mother in Ireland, she meets another young Irish girl on the deck of the boat. This is the young girl’s first time traveling to the U.S., and she says to Eilis, “People say that there’s so many Irish people there; it’s like home. Is that right?” Eilis assures her that “it is just like home.” (3; p.

Eilis doesn’t feel like she truly belongs in America until she meets Tony. She embraces her American identity when she finally admits she loves Tony back. When Eilis goes back to Ireland to visit her mother, she starts to fancy an Irish man, Jim. Jim is the easy choice, the love interest that would please her family the most. Ireland is also the easy choice for Eilis, and she starts to feel attached again. Just as Eilis creates this love triangle with Jim and Tony, she also creates one with Ireland and America. Her feeling gets so muddled that she confesses she isn’t sure she has a home anymore. She has to make choice between her two love interests, romantically and domestically. Once Eilis ultimately decides America is her home, she has fully embraced her American identity. She no longer wants to be “an Irish girl in Ireland”. She realized Tony is where home was; the U.S. is where her home was. As Eilis continued to adapt to the American culture, the more she was able to fall in love with Tony. Like thousands of other Irish-Italian couples that intermarried in the 1950s, Eilis and Tony put aside decades of “rooted resentment, mingled, blurred their social boundaries, and become one.”