“We’re doing it for peace alright, Mary. A piece of that fine Protestant ass”: Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls and Identity Formation of Teenage Catholic Girls during the 1990s Northern Irish Troubles

Abstract

[eng] This paper examines how Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls (2018, 2019) portrays the identitybuilding process of teenage girls during the 1990s Northern Irish Troubles. Representations of this conflict typically centre on male characters, often ignoring the experience of females. McGee focuses on the lesser-heard voice of teenage girls, using humour to keep the show light-hearted. Specifically, it portrays the female protagonists’ identity-building process in juxtaposition with the context, a society divided along political and religious lines, permeated with Catholicism and British colonialism. The aim is to demonstrate the complexities of identity formation during adolescence, particularly when influenced by conflict. Therefore, different instances of how the Troubles affect the female protagonists’ identities are displayed, expressing their perception of events intertwined with their relationships to the various agents in the conflict: Protestants, the English and obviously their own Catholic community. Dialogues from seasons one and two will be examined to argue that the girls’ teenage troubles are juxtaposed to the Troubles, and at times overrule the expected concerns caused by such a context, creating a tension that affects the protagonists’ identity formation.