We developed a code so that we can communicate with each other even in front of the others without them knowing what we are saying. When we turn our heads to the left it means ‘I love you more than anything in the world’ and when we turn our heads to the right it means ‘watch out, we’re in danger’ 

The Lobster

The 2015 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner The Lobster (2015) depicts a couple who fi nd themselves trapped between two dystopian worlds: the world of the forever-paired and the world of the foreveralone. Both escape the confi nes of an oppressive hotel which forces single guests to fi nd their life partner in only 45 days and turns the ‘unsuccessful’ into animals of their choosing. Their refuge lies in the nearby forests, and both become members of a community of singles who restrict physical contact and punish members who engage in any relationships which are not platonic. With an impressive cast including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and Léa Seydoux, The Lobster explores the bizarre concept of love and its unrealistic expectations.

Between the scenes of farcical comedy – where love is forced – and dark dystopian horror – where love is forbidden – the organic love between the Short-Sighted Woman and David is utterly sweet. Their love story which exists without expectation in a brutal nearfuture where expectations suppress and dominate true emotion is brave, unique and honest. David and the Short-Sighted Woman choose to listen to the same music and dance together, which becomes an adorable act of rebellion. For just one moment, we are able to see the possibility of a utopian world, created by two people in love with electronic music.

lang, which is itself a slang term, is something that we encounter every day without usually giving it a second thought. While we’ve all likely been delighted in the past by videos of things such as grandmas attempting to defi ne slang terms or compilations of texts from parents with misused acronyms, slang is not often a topic that provokes serious discussion, though perhaps it’s time that it should.

I’ve found that in England even more than in the US, slang is given a bad rap. But if we really think about it, what is so wrong with colouring our speech a little? Why do we fear vulgarity of language when humans by their very nature are somewhat vulgar? What does it mean for one phrase to be more appropriate than another, and appropriate with regard to what? Like so many other things that are arbitrarily criminalised or socially condemned, perhaps slang deserves some reconsideration.

It might be simplest to start off with a broad ‘why’ question, so here it goes. Why, when there are so many other more widely accepted ways of saying things, might a person resort to the use of slang?

Very simply, slang is useful. In certain forms of communication slang facilitates brevity, and its meanings are often able to achieve intricacies that standard language might not. For example, adding ‘innit’ to the end of a sentence might demonstrate a sense of inclusivity or deference to another person without adding uncomfortable formalities into the mix.

Slang is by no means a phenomenon new to the digital age. It is language in fl ux, and something that has been in use since the beginning of language itself. Though there is always some level of scoffing to be heard when new words that are considered too green are added into the English dictionary (I’m looking at you, ‘awesomesauce’), at some point all words were new.

There are often instances when the creation of new slang either goes unnoticed or is at its most obvious because the particular context in which it is used. When we look at poetry for example, it is considered perfectly acceptable and usually even clever for a writer to use shortened or slightly altered forms of words. It is well known by now that Shakespeare himself invented over a thousand words, including such seemingly innocuous examples as ‘fashionable’. Yet, if someone in pop culture today, whether in a song or in a grammatically careless comment, coins a new term, it is instantly deemed a betrayal of English (See DJ Khaled’s ‘bless up’ and the subsequent stream of corresponding hashtags).

Slang is also an effi cient means of selfexpression, as much as anything that we say out loud or in writing is explicitly revelatory of ourselves and our opinions. It allows us not only to identify with certain countries and regions, but also with certain social classes, age groups, career paths, and even smaller circles of friends.

Though people often are ridiculed for their accents when they go to other regions or unfamiliar social spaces, these very same accents and turns of phrase might be fl aunted proudly by their speakers within a home setting. Diff erences in language are used to navigate social situations in which the constituents of a group come from diverse backgrounds, and also to discover how each new person that we speak to relates to us personally, even if this is done subconsciously.

So then why might so many people be against the use what so far seems to be a useful social tool at best and a harmless aspect of banter at worst? Slang in certain instances throughout history has been perceived as something either dangerous or subversive to mainstream society. ‘Cockney’ English may have originated as a means for people in London to discuss criminal activity, and even today certain slang words are prohibited in Russian prisons. As much as it might be enticing to see regulations of slang as some form of real-life Orwellian Newspeak, I also doubt that such a thing is occurring, and instead would argue that such regulations would be impossible to enforce if they did not hold public support.

One might read this article and wonder what really is the point in thinking so much about something as trivial as slang. On the surface, I suppose it really doesn’t make that much difference within any given immediate situation whether someone chooses one word or another, or even whether they are told to choose one word over another. Where it might make a diff erence, however, is in cases where regulations are made either for or against slang.

When we think about the consequences of children and young adults being allowed to use slang in school, what comes to mind most is how that will aff ect their performance in testing and in their future careers. The problem with such regulations is that they eff ectively reinforce any pre-existing notions of what the use of slang says about the people who use it.

Regulations like these could be setting certain students up for failure in the future, since even if they do assimilate their speech to the school’s standards, they will have had far less exposure to and practice with ‘proper’ language than their peers might. At the very least, the regulations teach such students that their way of speaking and their parents’ and communities’ ways of speaking are incorrect or somehow less than. Perhaps this is a case in which the standards by which students are judged ought to be changed, rather than the students themselves.

In instances where communication is not hindered between a user and non-user of slang, why should anyone waste time policing something that might promote creativity of expression? In societies where it is hard enough to counter such things as hate speech, it seems unrealistic and fruitless to attempt to control non-standard – though harmless – speech.

A nice farmer wanted to sell his Christmas tree farm—a sprawling beauty with little green triangular forms popping from the ground like garden gnomes. It was too heavy and too messy. There was too much dirt, poop and little prickly needles. The trees were hefty and offended his aging back. He has neither the back power to scatter fertilizer across the plains, nor the brain power to sit in a chair all day in the freezing cold watching people spend hours choosing “the tree.” All the trees were identical. They literally looked exactly the same. Regardless, massive domestic arguments erupted from tree consumers; they stared at each tree like it was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics tablet.

Olive and Sabrina wanted to buy this Christmas tree farm.

They were centered around New York City (for the most part), and the Christmas tree farm was nestled in the wooded areas right outside, in a small town called “Annandale on Hudson,” where well-off people tend to buy their maple syrup from vendors at the weekend-ly West Brooklyn organic food market.

Olive and Sabrina discussed The Container Store, an organization emporium. The Container Store is the place you go to sort your life and soul. They have every kind of container ever invented in the history of mankind. They have containers for:

-food

-clothes

-knick-knacks

-tic-tacs

They have containers for containers, all placed in massive shelves that are definitely taller than the largest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen. The store is plastic-y and a bit fluorescent. It may remind you of a waiting room you would see in the Matrix.

The two discussed the farm while trying to buy milk at the store that does not sell milk. They only sell containers. Olive proposed the farm idea when passing an aisle of pink, skull shaped bowls. Olive has seen the plot of land with the white for sale sign a couple days before when she was driving into the city in her car 1970s milk truck-looking car. Olive’s milk truck likes to barrel down hills – she always hoped it would remain loyal to her and outflank gravity’s natural inclination. She wondered who had the authority to plant that for sale sign over the sprawling field of wild trees. She imagined a man in corduroy trousers planting his flag of ownership. His pants were tight in the calves but loose in the thighs. He wore a Dutch style-whaling hat and dragged a long, metal stick across the dirt, one that resembles the plastic cylinders they sell in aisle eight. She compartmentalized the thought and continued driving home. Olive grew up in a town outside of New York City filled with old, New England fisherman houses peering over the Hudson River. Olive enjoyed living there and commuting into the city. Her parents moved away when Olive was 20 and left a sticky note with lots of hearts so she wouldn’t feel abandoned. She didn’t feel like moving into New York with everyone else, so she stayed in her parent’s unfurnished home with a mattress on the floor and lots of empty water bottles because she got thirsty during the night. 

She meant to buy some bottles, there was an entire floor devoted to bottles above. They headed upstairs.

As they went up the escalator, passing rows of plastic, geometric shapes, Sabrina related why she wanted this Christmas tree farm.

1) She passed it on the way to Olive’s house a couple days before.

2) She liked the smell of pine as she biked too quickly down the hill.

She stopped pedaling and lightly put her hands on the brakes as to avoid the roots protruding out of the ground. The small trees popped out of the earth in nice, neat little lines. Their natural, triangular form was far more appealing than the Christmas trees she used to peruse at a Target department store in Mid-Western suburbs. Sabrina came from a place she coined “the suburban wasteland.” She was driven in a BMW SUV with her mother and her brother. In that life, they circled the parking lot and stopped in a space that was not occupied by another SUV. She recalled the neon lights of the department store, similar to the lights that presently peered down over aisles of plastic bottles. Piles of small, fabric snowmen from China welcomed them through automatic sliding doors. Sabrina’s mother wanted to buy a plastic Christmas tree because they do not cause a royal mess. Sabrina touched a plastic tree and liked how it felt against her palm so she turned around and started rubbing her back against it. It really felt quite nice, and she began to wonder if she could ask her mother to buy her a back scratcher. As she continued to scratch her back against the synthetic tree, a cute boy with a red Target vest asked her to please stop or leave. This really hurt Sabrina’s feelings. She grumbled and made her own tree out of red- construction paper once she arrived home.

By this point, Olive and Sabrina had a shopping cart filled with colorful containers. Olive had lots of re-usable plastic water bottles and boxes to store toiletries. They had cylinders, rectangles, diamonds and squares, all in a variety of colors, all to bring an order to things.

Sabrina wanted to buy the Christmas tree farm because:

1) She liked the order of it.

2) She liked how each tree stood next to the other in an organized line

3) It was satisfying. It made her feel in control of things.

Olive wanted the farm because:

1) she no longer had reasons to live outside of New York City. Here friends were there, her job was there, the only thing she has in the wooded “outside” was an old house with a mattress on the floor.

2) The Christmas tree farm would give her a purpose on the outside, she could hide away in a field of geometric trees and get her jeans stained brown by fertilizer.

3) It could be her fairy place away from the world where things really existed.        

They considered going into aisle five. That is where the largest, most prestigious containers are held. They are massive enough to keep a medium-sized Christmas tree actually, and they tower high into the store’s skies. The most majestically colored boxes are on the top—so to retrieve them you must use a very large metal rod. Sabrina thought she wanted one.

They span through aisle four and made a sharp U-turn into aisle five. They peered up into the heavens and saw the plastic squares towering over them. Sabrina reached out. She tried to pull one out but it refused to come down. She used the massive metal pole provided and tried to grab the blue one from the very top. It nudged in agreement but then the tower collapsed. The boxes went everywhere and created a sea of mayhem. A few startled people shrieked and a couple clerks rushed to aid.

There were boxes everywhere. Olive and Sabrina could barely run away. The manager scolded them. They pranced like fairies through the ocean of large containers. They left their shopping cart filled with things and never mentioned the Christmas tree farm again.  

India has wandering ascetics clad in saffron robes; mad streets full of motorbikes and auto-rickshaws; insane city skylines broken up by temple towers painted so colourfully, covered so wildly with sculptures that they look like opium dreams or a perfect Fauvist painting. It also has Domino’s, multiplexes and huge, soulless shopping centres. Coldplay’s new video for their collaboration with Beyoncé, ‘Hymn for the Weekend’, creates a hippy-era psychedelic vision from one very particular side to the infinite complex cultures of the subcontinent, an exoticising, orientalising, othering piece of rather seductive beauty.

The song itself is standard Coldplay stuff : Chris Martin’s trademark falsetto soars over melodic, heart-thudding synths, and danceable bass and drum lines pull you effortlessly through to the end. It’s Queen B, of course, who makes this song worth a listen: her vocals float in and out with the ethereality of a Symbolist poem or of incense drifting above the dawn rites of a riverside shrine.

There are a few wince-provoking moments, of course. Yoncé’s generically ‘Indian’, exotically ‘Bollywood’ hand dancing is just a bit embarrassing, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the religious festival of Holi being ornamentalised for a song, especially one with the refrain “I’m feeling drunk and high / So high, so high.” Let’s not forget, though, that it is a cultural and religious tradition to lace your Holi lassi with massive amounts of bhang (a potent preparation of cannabis leaves).

Questions of culture and religion aside, though, it doesn’t sit terribly well to have that refrain repeated over and again over visuals of children messing around or jumping into sacred bathing tanks. At best, this is just weird. At worst, it reinforces the aestheticising, dehumanising portrayal of these kids as no more than a pretty background to the Western singer. Needless to say, there are moments in this video that are worryingly reductive, borderline colonialist and a touch reminiscent of poverty porn. It is also worth noting the total absence of non-Hindu elements in this video’s image of India, something that’s a little uncomfortable given the context of the rise of Islamophobic Hindu nationalism.

This isn’t quite the trainwreck of exoticism – thank God – that accompanied ‘Princess of China’ or Major Lazer’s ‘Lean On’. In the video Chris Martin seems more like a wide-eyed, vaguely clueless tourist than anything else, and the subcontinent’s cultural richness somehow manages, quite gloriously, to break this caricature.

The sugar-coated pop psychedelia of Coldplay’s guitars and Beyoncé’s soulful vocals plays beautifully with the transcendental aesthetic they’ve formed from their tourism advert lucky dip of appropriation, and – to be frank – I just don’t know if I have the willpower not to be carried away by it.

Americana troubadour Ryley Walker’s psychedelic folk is more reminiscent of the sun-kissed fields of Woodstock circa 1969 than it is of England in February. Nonetheless, Walker is set to play Oxford for the first time on Thursday of Fifth Week.

Hailing from Rockford, Illinois, the singer-songwriter will play at The Bullingdon alongside folk legend, double-bassist Danny Thompson. Thompson has previously played with Nick Drake, Tim Buckley and Bert Jansch, marking him a pedigree of the folk scene. In turning his attention to 26-year-old Walker, who excitedly tells me that “the honour to play a whole set with Danny is overwhelming,” Thompson highlights the younger musician as one to take note of. And I beg we listen: these long-standing folkies know what they’re talking about.

At End of the Road Festival last year, I was surprised to see Walker first on the bill on a sunny Friday afternoon on one of the smaller stages. Walker writes to me as he waits to board a flight at an airport, his touring schedule constantly keeping him on the move. He reminisces about that late summer afternoon in a field with peacocks wandering around the site: “I remember driving a long way to get there from Amsterdam and immediately eating a giant sandwich when I got out of the van. The crowds and staff were lovely people. I had so much fun.”

In many ways, the setting of this performance seemed to encapsulate Walker’s sixties psychedelic-folk sound. His lush, soulful voice croons over warm guitar melodies on ‘Primrose Green,’ the title track from last year’s album which was ranked fourth in Uncut’s Albums of the Year 2015. Speaking of his record’s successes, Walker simply says, “People had a lot of nice things to say which got me around the world and a lot of free drinks”. He seems to embody the laid-back “it’s all about the music (and the booze)” vibe.

With materialistic, dirty, modern music festivals often seeming far away from Woodstock or the Isle of Wight Festival of 1969, it is intriguing to hear what such a down-to-earth musician, who seems at one with the folk ethos he has long been inspired by, thinks of current festival culture. “The right festival gig can be a smash, especially if lots of friends are playing. Both [gigs and festivals] have their ups and downs,” says Walker.

Again, we hear Walker’s expected ‘hippie’ attitude. But the Rockford native hasn’t played in Oxford before, and is just as thrilled about the idea of playing to a new crowd.

Walker enjoys a sweaty city club as much as he enjoys having rolling green hills as his backdrop. He’s a versatile performer wherever he goes and performs. Simply, he tells me, “I just like to play.”