Oxford students jailbreak to Middle East
Oxford students participating last weekend in Jailbreak, a RAG-organised event, raised over £25,000 for charity, with two teams reaching the United Arab Emirates.
The event involved teams consisting of two or three students attempting to travel as far away from Oxford as possible in 36 hours, without spending any money. This year, 65 teams participated, collectively travelling a total of 60,000km. The average distance for each individual team was 915km.
R AG Events Officer and Jailbreak Team Leader Olivia Phelan told Cherwell, “Jailbreak has gone really well this year thanks to the great team working on it and all the participants. I was surprised at how well so many of the teams did, with the majority leaving the UK.”
OUSU President Louis Trup, one of those volunteering, commented, “This is the kind of thing that OUSU is all about, and I loved being involved, even if it meant sitting in the OUSU building at 6am on Sunday morning.”
The group that covered the most distance, Team GMT, travelled 5562.79km from Oxford, finishing in Sharjah Emirate, just 4.9km north-east of the runners-up in Dubai.
Max Hayward, one of the three members of Team GMT, explained, “We literally had no idea what we were doing on Friday night, so we got in touch with the CEO of lastminute.com because my teammate knows him a bit.
“He said he’d see what he could do but we weren’t expecting too much. We got a text a couple of hours later saying ‘Is Dubai alright?’ We were so excited. We were dancing around the room and we had a couple of celebratory shots.”
Commenting on those teams that pre-arranged travel prior to the event’s official start time, St. Cross postgraduate Mark Smith said, “I don’t think that’s in the spirit of it really.”
Relatively International ESTcape, another participating team, finished the weekend in Graz, Austria, after a spell of hitch-hiking.
Team member Sarah Shao told Cherwell, “We were so lucky. So much of it [hitchhiking] is about being in the right place at the right time. Standing there in the snow in Graz, it was nice to reflect on what we had been through.”
Wadham student Olivia Braddock, who ended up in Amsterdam, commented, “After we’ve finished University, we’re not going to remember writing an essay but we will remember something like this. I’d rather be an essay behind and do Jailbreak.”
Further Jailbreak stories relayed to Cherwell include students being given free plane tickets from the CEO of easyJet after correctly guessing his email address, undergraduates being given a ride on a private plane to the south of France, and a postgraduate student from Kellogg College reaching Berlin dressed as Tigger, despite being on crutches.
RAG President Molly Gilmartin said that the increased media coverage of Jailbreak this year indicated growing support for RAG’s work, remarking, “It is clear that people are sensing their personal responsibility to achieve positive impact and it is great that RAG can facilitate people raising huge amounts for charity which will achieve huge impact whilst also having a lot of fun.”
Sullivan could face more questions on alleged attempted rape
Update, May 2017: In response to the Victim’s Right to Review (VRR) request that this story refers to, the original decision not to prosecute and take no further action was upheld. As of June 2015 the case has been closed.
Ben Sullivan, who was arrested on suspicion of rape on May 7th of last year, but later released, could be questioned by police again after one of the students who originally accused him reportedly requested a Victims’ Right to Review.
Originally arrested with an accusation of rape and a further accusation of attempted rape, the then President of the Oxford Union was released without charge on bail. Six weeks later, the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided to take no further action in relation to the accusations of rape and attempted rape.
However, according to the CPS, one of the students, who claimed that Sullivan tried to rape her after they met in a nightclub, has lodged a Victims’ Right to Review, claiming that the original investigation was flawed.
A former member of the investigating team said to the Mirror, “The view of many of those working on the case at the time was that it was not thoroughly investigated. Some officers already had fixed opinions before we had the full facts.”
If the request for the review were to be granted, new and existing evidence would be scrutinised to establish if errors were made.
If any were found, the Crown Prosecution Service could order the Thames Valley Police to reopen the criminal case.
A CPS spokesman told Cherwell, “A request has been made through the CPS Victims’ Right to Review (VRR) scheme for a review of the no further action decision in this case.
“The VRR scheme gives victims the right to request a review of a CPS decision not to prosecute or to terminate criminal proceedings.”
The Crown Prosecution Service’s official guidelines for Victim Right to Review Scheme state that requests for reviews will only be considered for up to three months from the communication of the qualifying decision, and that any delay beyond this period will only be permitted “in exceptional circumstances taking into account the facts of the individual case”.
Ben Sullivan was not available for comment.
Why we clapped Marine Le Pen
In the last edition of the Cherwell, we were asked by a protestor why the members of the Oxford Union clapped Le Pen at her talk; not only is this question readily answerable without slanderously assuming that everyone doing so was a fascist sympathiser, it also appears to be the least important question of all in that night’s atmosphere of OUSU-endorsed intimidation and violence.
So, why did people clap at Le Pen? There are several plausible answers; firstly, some of us (myself included) were in fact clapping at the remarks of the speaker in the preceding impromptu debate on whether we should have sympathy for the protestors, the speaker in question condemning their absolutism and arrogance. Indeed, Le Pen’s arrival was so low-key that I and others, including the speaker, were totally unprepared for it until she was standing in front of us.
Quite apart from that, I would have clapped anyway, firstly out of relief that, despite the violent activities of the no-platformers, the event had managed to go ahead, and secondly out of simple decorum; had anyone in the chamber wanted to be rude and abusive regarding the event, they could have joined the mob outside, instead of having to face unjustified accusations of Nazism followed by threats to their physical safety from people breaching the security of the Union. I’m sure that the reasons presented provide answers closer to the truth as to why many clapped than the disgusting suggestion that they were fascist sympathisers.
Finally on this point, it is incredibly disingenuous for the writer to suggest that we supported Le Pen even by clapping. Firstly, the audience made it clear by their questioning – which was robust and piercing, especially from the President herself – that they did not. In fact, when a questioner reminded Ms. Le Pen that attendance did not equal support, the audience burst into applause. Of course, the writer could not have known this, being outside the chamber. Secondly, this surely shows that even those inside the Chamber cannot be justified in assuming that the clapping was a warm welcome, since that would require imputing into the minds of audience members what is frankly the least likely mindset.
With that question answered, perhaps we can turn to more pertinent ones. For a start, how does agreeing with Le Pen on one issue make you a fascist sympathiser, as the writer seems to imply? By that logic, any left-wing student who agrees with her that some industries must be kept out of the private sector, and that we should not be slaves to the market, is also a fascist. This is clearly nonsense.
More to the point, why on Earth did OUSU think it could represent the interests of students by taking a side on such a divisive issue, especially when so many students wanted to hear Le Pen speak (and not because they were fascist sympathisers), and by encouraging people to come to a violent protest which directly threatened other students’ safety? Why did Oxford students deride their fellow students as “Nazi scum” for wanting to listen? Why were OUSU sabs more interested in condemning Le Pen than the extremism in their midst which was threatening fellow students? And, once again, how is it anything but hypocritical to protest the ‘extremism’ of a figure we know little about, while flying flags of an ideology, Communism, under which many million people have been killed and countless more oppressed?
These are the questions to which we still have no answer, and I suspect they are a tad more important than slandering students for being polite. So, having answered the question of why I (and others) would have clapped for Le Pen, perhaps we can get some answers from the other side.
This article was written in response to James Elliott’s article ‘Did you clap Le Pen’s speech?’ which can be found here.
Super Fatigue! The homogenisation of superhero movies
Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No… it’s another superhero movie. With the announcement of Spiderman’s imminent integration into the ludicrously profitable Marvel cinematic universe, now seems as good a time as any to assess the state, or rather the prevalence, of the superhero movie. In fact, there are around 30 superhero movies, based on DC or Marvel comics, which are slated to arrive between now and 2020.
But why is the superhero market becoming so oversaturated? The simple answer is, as is usually the case in Hollywood, money. There are four superhero movies that have made over a billion dollars, and 2012’s The Avengers (entitled Avengers Assemble in the UK) still stands as the third highest grossing film of all time. The Marvel cinematic universe has in total grossed over $7 billion worldwide, and with the upcoming slate of phase 2 and phase 3 films in the pipeline at Disney, they show no signs of slowing their momentum.
But why has the superhero movie become such a cash cow? One answer is the economic concept of vertical integration. Superhero franchises such as X-Men, the Marvel cinematic universe or the elusive DC universe are composed of multiple franchises. The Marvel universe alone consists of the Iron Man series, the Thor series, the Captain America series and others that have either been launched or are set to launch across the next few years. Marvel has even crossed into television with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, which promise to rake in cash for years to come. The potential for profit from a team-up movie such as The Avengers, which can draw in fans of each character’s respective franchise, incentivises film studios to make bigger and more diverse spectacles out of a genre that has become the blockbuster tent-pole.
So why is oversaturation a problem, if there seems to be a reliable audience for these films? Well, first there is the homogenising effect of the multi-franchise universe approach. The Marvel movies are necessarily tonally indistinct from each other, so that it doesn’t seem odd when Iron Man and Thor duke it out on screen. Man of Steel, Warner Brothers’ misguided attempt to launch their own cinematic universe, suffers from a subdued gritty realism, supposed to accommodate the inclusion of Batman at a future date – a character that Warner Brothers is relying on to sell their cinematic universe in the follow up to Man of Steel which is, tellingly, titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The appeal of superhero movies is that they offer both spectacle and escapism. To be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, to be able to leap tall buildings with a single bound: the superhero movie is a kind of power fantasy, an escape from human frailty or vulnerability. But what do we escape from if every superhero movie is the same? Recent efforts to shake up the style and feel of these films, notably Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, are considered amongst the best of their franchises, and the gritty realistic take of Nolan’s Batman trilogy was enough to dislodge the sour taste of the campy Joel Schumacher films of the 1990s. But now, ‘gritty realist’ superhero movies and ‘fun spectacle’ seem to be the only two genres into which superhero movies fall.
Now that Kevin Feige will probably be producing every other movie coming out of Hollywood, the only question remaining is at what point will audience’s tire of the superhero genre? As of right now, the studios producing these films have no reason to change the formula, and will have no reason until they stop making money. But when they do need a change, they are lucky to be operating in a genre that has endless scope for reinvention, the recasting of young actors in the X-Men franchise standing testament to this.
For now however, superhero movies are going to stick with what works. Marvel will continue to produce movies that are tonally indistinct; DC will continue to replace the lead characters of their films with Batman and Sony will continue to reboot Spiderman. Well, maybe not everything works.
Broadchurch: against a sea of troubles
Over Christmas, one of British TV’s finest offerings returned to our screens. Following the sensational revelation of Danny Latimer’s killer (whose identity will not be mentioned in this article, though other spoilers may appear), Broadchurch has returned. Despite a certain continuity — DCI Alec Hardy continues to grimace a lot, the Latimer parents still have a rocky relationship, and everyone in the town seems to harbour dark histories or secrets — the new series has swung even further into the twin territories of emotional turmoil and sinister undertone.
What used to be essentially a police procedural has become a courtroom drama. It still looks gorgeous, with the same soft focus, picturesque framing and South Coast summer light that made the first series the best-shot British TV show of the last few years by a mile. House prices in the local area have shot up as seven million people each week sit down to watch a programme that is part crime drama, part Visit Devon advert. The acting, too, is masterful, as the cast continues to go from strength to strength. Nearly all the new characters are great, with particular mention going to Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s hardened defence lawyer and Charlotte Rampling’s sardonic prosecutorial equivalent, second only to the Latimer parents in terms of believability. Their backstories, as well as Eve Myles’ as Claire Ripley, continue to enthrall.
However, one gets the continued sense that the writers feel a constant need to beat the drama of each previous scene. It would be lovely if, just for a moment, everyone could please stop shouting. Almost every scene this series is packed full of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and whilst it does give the actors a lot with which to work, and a range of emotions to express (Olivia Coleman is especially good at this), the overall effect is to detract from the power of the series. If characters shout at each other in every single episode, then how do you go on to show when they’re really angry?Not all of the new characters are a success, either. Meera Syal is really, really annoying as the judge (who, for some reason, wears a barrister’s wig). When she tries to be authoritative and reserved, she comes across as smug and asinine.
Broadchurch is, perhaps, a bit high on its own success. The oh-so-clever parallels between the Broadchurch and Sandbrook cases are obvious — the dodgy fathers, the wives who may or may not have been accessories to the crime, DCI Hardy’s repeated infringements of the law retrospectively screwing up the prosecution; the list goes on. Not a single character can get away with just being normal, which is fine, apart from the fact that like the shouting, it diminishes the effect of everything else. Of course Sharon’s son is in prison. Of course she hates Jocelyn for failing to defend him. Of course he killed someone. Because it wouldn’t be Broadchurch if there weren’t tears and passions running high. It’s worrying that a show which was so real in its first instance is now in danger of jumping the shark.
Nonetheless, these criticisms are irrelevant in the face of the fact that every Monday night and the arrival of the next installment is so avidly awaited. We do still care intensely about the characters, and they do seem like real people. We’re moved by Beth Latimer’s intense sorrow, Hardy’s dogged determination to get a conviction, and Ellie Miller’s desperation for exoneration in the eyes of the town. They have almost as little control over events as we, the viewers, but still they continue to fight. This humanity is key to the continued appeal.
Review – Kingsman: The Secret Service
“I’ve had an epiphany,” cries the snapback-wearing Samuel L Jackson. Remember when Jules from Pulp Fiction decided to “walk the earth”? Turns out the walk finished on quite a low; Jules has been enjoying a career as a badly dressed, parody Bond villain. In this capacity, his second post-Pulp Fiction epiphany, involves culling the human race and thereby saving the planet from anthropogenic climate change. It’s the pretext for a story which, like Jackson’s character, can’t really decide how seriously it wants to take itself.
At one level, the answer is not at all. You can feel the glee of Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn as his characters balletically shoot, chop, and generally emaciate each other with escalating improbability. In this regard one of the most playful elements of the film is Colin Firth’s character: essentially Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones after a few karate lessons. Like Vaughn, you can tell he is loving it. Indeed, after a series of frankly ludicrous fight scenes, you start to think that perhaps this is an exorcism of his secret frustration for missing out on Bond. In one scene, he uses an umbrella to win a bar fight before sending the barman into an amnesia coma with a dart from his watch. Imagine a drunk Tarantino directing a hybrid sequel of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Men in Black.
The reason for the shenanigans is that Firth is a super secret agent in the employment of the Kingsmen. The Kingsmen are a shadowy apolitical agency that maintains world order without the burden of pesky democratic mandates and the like. Don’t worry though, their leader is Michael Caine, so it must be for the best. This agency dispatches our hero Eggsy, a teenager from a council estate, to an X-Men inspired countryside mansion to compete with other young would-be spies.
The training montage that follows makes up the backbone of the film. This is one of defects of the film because it doesn’t offer much beyond the usual Full Metal Jacket stuff. Admittedly the formula is reinvigorated when at one point the cast of the Riot Club seems to have got to the wrong set and make a cameo. Their contribution doesn’t amount to much beyond: “Oxford or Cambridge?” [observing Eggsy’s lack of tie] “ah must be Durham”.
This encounter with snobbery betrays the fact that at another level the film does take itself seriously. There is an undercurrent of social commentary on how social inequality stifles meritocracy. While this is very worthy, the film makes the point in an incredibly ham-fisted way. Eggsy’s backstory is as clichéd as the innumerable spy film references: single mother upbringing, involvement in crime, abusive stepfather, council estate misery et cetera. What is worrying is that unlike the spy references, this insulting (almost Daily Mail level) caricature is presented without a touch of irony.
This inconsistency in tone also reveals the odd political message. Outwardly, it is sterilized of any politics – Jackson’s zealous environmentalism is decidedly post-political, the Kingsmen are adamantly apolitical. Yet the context of inequality that ultimately drove Eggsy into this fantastical world is surely a political issue. And yet it is through Eggys’s triumphs in this apolitical world that the film makes good the political failings that placed him in such a situation in the first place. This fantastical resolution to a very real social problem effectively de-politicizes the quest for a solution. With such a message, is it any wonder our generation won’t vote?
The film is riddled with such inconsistencies in tone and message. At the level of a good night in, Vaughn’s clumsy vision mixes the cool of Bond, the excess of Tarantino and the naivety of Disney. Unsurprisingly it leaves a nasty aftertaste. Sadly in light of the hidden politics of the film, the sense that something is not quite right is a symptom not only of poor direction.
Vaughn, shows up the clichés, but ultimately delivers even bigger clichés, dangerous clichés. Most worryingly, it is the un-ironic depiction of the less well of and their salvation through the pseudo meritocracy of the upper class, which sticks out most. Vaughn gets away with this by constantly ironising the story with indicators that let us know, that he knows that its all tongue in cheek. This self-awareness has the effect of authenticating the clichés he chooses to leave unexposed.
This also explains the popularity of Vaughn’s work. Like Kick Ass before it, Kingsman navigates the cold uncertain world of postmodernity to deliver the easy stories and easy solutions that commercial cinema gave us before deconstruction. He achieves this by adopting the form of postmodern film as if he were not delivering the same old rubbish. Herein lies his popularity, packaging old and possibly even reactionary stories, under the veneer of self-aware authenticity .The most regrettable part of all this is that he has moved from the facile morality of Kick Ass to the social conservatism of Kingsman.
Where are they now: Sam Bailey
Cast your minds back to the not so distant past of December 2013. The X Factor is busy churning out yet another insipid Christmas number. This year’s quarry? Middle-aged mum Sam Bailey. Her humble origins as a prison officer and personable character won over the hearts of everyone idiotic enough to spend their hard earned cash on voting. Her cover of Demi Lovato’s ‘Skyscraper’ grabbed the 2013 Christmas Number One spot. The ex-cruise ship singer seemed to finally come out on top.
But since then? After her Number One 2014 album, The Power of Love, it’s been all quiet on the Bailey recording front. Well, other than supporting Beyoncé. A second single was announced, but quickly cancelled. Her label even rehashed the album for festive re-release (is that even a thing when the album was released in the same year?).
She continues to tour, appearing at Oxford New Theatre this weekend – but will she be just another one hit wonder? Only time will tell.
