Mayo Rose critical of RTÉ documentary

COUNTY WINNER The Mayo Rose of Tralee for 2016, Fionna McDarby was presented with a bouquet of flowers by last year’s winner, Síochfreadh Ní LachnΡin. Fionna was critical of some aspects of the Rose selection in Tralee last month. Pic: Event Capture

Ciara Galvin

MAYO Rose Fionna McDarby has described the final filming process for RTÉ’s Rose of Tralee documentary as a ‘form of psychological abuse’.
Fionna, a Health Psychologist and Assistant Psychologist who represented her county along with 64 other Roses in Tralee a month ago, has said that the festival was ‘one of the best experiences of my life’. However, the Ballinrobe woman has criticised the way in which she and fellow roses were treated during the filming of the final selection process on the Sunday before the live RTÉ show, last month.
The ‘Road to the Dome’, a fly on the wall documentary, followed the roses during their ‘Rose Tour’ in the lead up to the live shows and finished with the selection process which saw Fionna and 32 other roses being told they did not make it to the final.
She compared the filming process on the Sunday morning to a ‘firing squad’ with a camera being pointed in roses’ faces.
The Ballinrobe native explained to The Mayo News that a briefing took place the night before the selection process and didn’t finish until midnight.
“We were told that our phones would be taken off us at 6am the next morning, that we needed to be fully dressed and ready for filming by 6.30am and that for the selection we would be split into four separate groups and that only two of those groups would go through to the live televised nights on RTÉ,”  said the 25 year-old.

Heavy eyes and empty stomachs
Fionna went on to explain that what actually ensued that morning was a lot more ‘complex and hostile’.
The documentary shows each woman being given a white or red rose denoting the room they must go to, to learn their fate.
“What wasn’t shown in the documentary was the 30 minutes we all spent in the two separate rooms staring down the barrel of a camera lens under strict orders from the documentary crew that we were not to avert our gaze away from the camera so that they could get their shots for this section of the show,” said Fionna, adding that the request was followed by a threat from the crew that if they didn’t follow the orders, the whole lengthy process would begin again.
“With heavy eyes and empty stomachs this was not something that we wanted to happen and so we stood there in silence like statues, while the documentary crew continued to aggressively threaten what might happen to us should we disobey any of their directives.”
Speaking with a background in psychology and with colleagues in the discipline, Fionna said that cutting communication with loved ones as their phones were taken off them, having them up in the early hours of the morning after a week of ‘minimal sleep’ and lining the roses up was ‘disorientating and just plain wrong’.
She described the treatment of one rose who was in a distressed state and having a panic attack as ‘morally indefensible’.
“Preventing one of the roses, who was clearly in a highly distressed state and having a panic attack, from leaving the room, while simultaneously trying to shove a camera in her face, was morally indefensible and disturbing to witness,” added Fionna.

‘Emotional vulnerability’
Fionna said it appeared that the documentary crew were focused on exploiting the emotional vulnerability of the situation for the benefit of their “documentary”.
She believed that the Rose of Tralee committee were ‘genuinely sorry for what happened on Sunday morning’ but that they should have known better.
Despite her negative experiences with the filming of the documentary, Fionna spoke passionately about the Rose of Tralee festival and defended it against the ‘lovely girls competition’ tagline.
“It’s not only a celebration of modern day Irish women but it also is a reflection of the contemporary women that thrive in today’s society and what she can achieve...They are well educated, many are professionals but most importantly they are typical of the woman that exist in today’s Ireland. I think it is important to have a festival that showcases this, especially when we live in an Ireland where there continues to be a gender pay gap, where woman are still faced with promotional glass ceilings and where men continue to dominate in managerial positions.”
She concluded, “To say the festival is out-dated is to say that the women who partake in it are out-dated and if a rose studying to become an aeronautical engineer, or a rose calling for a referendum on the eight amendment is out-dated then maybe I am just ‘a lovely girl’ after all.”