In last week’s issue of Cherwell, we stated that ‘President’s Drinks at the Oxford Union will start charging members for entry, it was decided at Standing Committee this week.’ We are happy to clarify that the motion passed during 2nd week’s Standing Committee was one passed in principle, rather than in practice. As such, there are no current plans to charge for entry to President’s Drinks. Cherwell is also happy to note that the Oxford Union did not have the opportunity to formally respond to this article before publication.
Blog Page 1914
Bernard hasn’t lost any Sharpeness
The man whose historical fiction has made him one of the twenty best-selling authors of the past decade remains bluntly modest. For Bernard Cornwell, writing remains a job like any other – his first books were written so that he could continue living in the US without a Green Card, and he claims to be unconcerned with writing ‘literature’ as opposed to “keeping people up at night”. He’s emphatic in reminding people that he is not a historian, and is particularly riled by dons who take issue with the occasional fictional embellishment.
Instead, he describes his preference for historical settings as being motivated by a long-held love of an older generation of historical novelists – C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series looms large, along with the novels of George McDonald Fraser. He even goes so far as to conclude that this was a given at birth: in describing meeting his mother for the first time, he talks of “[walking] into her flat in Basingstoke: everywhere you looked, there were historical novels. I think it’s that gene which came straight down.”
Discussion of his upbringing, however, reveals a more complicated picture than that childhood love of Hornblower may suggest. His adopted parents were members of the Peculiar People, an obscure Christian sect highly influenced by seventeenth century dissenters. “If you had dropped my adopted father into the world of the Pilgrim Fathers he would have been totally at home. They had exactly the same beliefs.”
Yet when Cornwell tells me that his childhood was spent “surrounded by history”, he is referring not to this world but to the Essex village in which he grew up: “I absolutely loved it,” he says, going on to describe the treasured artefacts kept in the local church. History “was a refuge from the Peculiar People. Although I did think later on that it was unusual to have been brought up in a 17th Century mindset.”
The Peculiar People were also pacifists, contrasting neatly with Cornwell’s obvious love for – and knowledge of – military history. Although he admits to being bored with its often “Roman numeral”-heavy approach, an ongoing fascination with what he describes as “soldiers and soldiering” appears to run through his life. He once considered joining the army, and spent several years working for the BBC in Northern Ireland “at the height of the Troubles”.
I ask whether experiencing conflict personally influenced him when he turned to writing. “I’m sure it has. I can remember writing a bomb going off in one of the books, and remembering what it looks like, what it feels like… To watch any bomb going off is a horrible, horrible experience.” When writing battle scenes, he says he feels as if he were leading an imaginary camera crew, reacting to events as they happen. “The point of view is very often the point of view of a character. And I guess that does come from working in the Troubles. You do think in terms of camera angles.”
Beyond this, however, Cornwell claims to view the Troubles in very different terms from the more distant conflicts which have formed the backbone of his writing – the Napoleonic era of the Sharpe series, or the American Revolutionary period of his current novel The Fort. He says that many of these have preoccupied him since childhood, though there are exceptions. Agincourt grew purely from a fascination with “the whole archer thing, the whole longbow thing”. His confidence in new subjects appears relatively undimmed: he ends the interview by stating confidently his desire to “do a Tudor novel.” I mention that that the Tudors seem currently in vogue. He agrees, adding “ah, but I have an idea…”
The Notorious L.I.T: burn these books
How to talk to a liberal (if you must) –Ann Coulter
Right wing journalist and author, Ann Coulter, airs views which really never needed to be aired, such as her forward-thinking response to 9/11: “I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever!” The real problem with this book is the response it receives from its readership, who are either right wingers looking to confirm their political views or left wingers looking to do exactly the same. One choice comment on Amazon reveals a lot about her readers: “the American Leftist, or, as he calls himself (to better hide his goatish hooves and curling horns) the “Liberal”, is a tireless enemy of freedom.” Anyone currently wondering what his definition of freedom might be, is not alone…
The Sea
–John Banville
Beautiful prose, a remarkable density of poetic allusion, and comprehensively boring. Every other adjective sends you to the dictionary, which would debilitate the narrative thrust, if indeed there was one. An ageing art historian with too much time for reflection (a la The Untouchable, a la Shroud) returns to the Irish coastline of his childhood holidays to escape his wife’s death and his own oppressing intimations of mortality. He recalls his obsession with a more wealthy family who also holidayed there. He constructs a mythology for them of Alexandrian intricacy. Not much else happens. Banville is a wonderful novelist, but in The Sea his talent is reduced to a sterile narcissism. This novel won him the Man Booker prize, though, so what do we know?
The Twilight Saga
–Stephanie Meyer
Vampires. Who cares? Who wants to read about vampires as an analogy for Christian dogmatism and no sex before marriage? Who can write a book so bad that even Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, men who make women’s knickers wet with a look, cannot even save the film adaptations? The answer is of course Stephanie Meyer. The writing is so bad, it’s comical and quite frankly if you’re older than twelve, not of the female persuasion and enjoy what is essentially tripe on a page then you need to do some serious soul-searching. Don’t ever read this book, don’t ever read any of these books, don’t even watch the film because you’ll regret it, more than William Hague regrets his dalliances with his young aides.
The Da Vinci Code
–Dan Brown
There is so much to say about Dan Brown’s awfulness and so much that has already been said. Given that his prose struggles to reach a key stage 2 standard, his success has to be seen as one of the most astonishing things to happen in the last 100 years. Screw colour tv, screw sliced bread, screw the internet; none of these achievements are anywhere near as extraordinary as those of Mr. Brown, who has the eloquence of a slightly retarded pot-belly pig and the wit of a near-blind cat. There are so many lines to choose from in order to demonstrate the fact but this is a personal favourite, showing a complete lack of understanding for the English language: “The Knights Templar were warriors,” Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space. Awful.
Atlas Shrugged
–Ayn Rand
Atlas may have shrugged – but so did most of the critics. A monumental book, by which we mean it is the size of a small plinth and colossally dull. Perhaps it is a historical misfortune. At a time when American literature was probing the fault lines in the capitalist dream, a paean to that system was distinctly off-key. This may explain the revival in the novel’s popularity since the recession. Bankers needed some reassurance from a sacred text; it is a telling indictment that they resorted to this stolid, undemanding page-turner. “Who is John Galt?” asks the first sentence of the book. Don’t waste your time finding out.
Rich colleges enjoy more academic success
Students at richer Oxford colleges are more likely to succeed academically than those at poorer colleges, Cherwell can reveal this week. Cherwell’s findings show that there is a positive correlation between college wealth and academic success, as measured by the Norrington table. The top four places in the Norrington table are taken by colleges which each have an endowment of over £100 million while the bottom three have endowments of under £30 million. St John’s is Oxford’s richest College and has an endowment of £331,575,000 and ranks an average of 3rd in the Norrington Table.
Marta Szczerba, a third year student from St John’s, explained why she thought St John’s wealth translated into academic success. Szczerba said, “The correlation between academic performance and wealth of the college can be explained in two ways. Firstly, higher-ability students are attracted to St John’s College, as they know of the extensive college financial support and wonderful facilities. Secondly, the grants, new gym, subsidised hall and generous JCR provisions ensure that students are happier, translating into less welfare problems and higher academic attainment.”
The College gives £270 in book grants to each undergraduate student every year and offers a ‘College Society Asia Travel Scholarship’ that pays for a month-long all expenses paid trip around Asia to one student per year. Faise McClelland, this year’s Asia Travel Scholar, reported that, “College paid for me to travel to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand and arranged for me to stay with high profile alumni.” “I feel it really helped me engage with some of the issues I’d addressed whilst studying economics.”
Another student added, “John’s wealth allows it to employ a high number of fellows and tutors that promote a strong academic environment. It also allows it to support students through a generous academic grant.” “There is already a scheme whereby some of the richer college pay into a fund which gets redistributed. John’s pay a large amount into this scheme.”
Regent’s Park, a Permament Private Hall without an endowment, does not appear on the Norrington Table. JCR President, James Fox, disagreed that college wealth was a cause of academic success. He said, “Regent’s teaching does not suffer at all (from a lack of endowment)£ If it does have an impact, it is merely on such luxuries as book and travel grants, but never to the detriment of core tutorial teaching.”
These huge disparities in wealth have lead some students to suggest that poorer colleges are unable to spend the money needed to attract the very brightest students. Adrian Hogan, a second year Geography student at Christ Church, said, “I guess some colleges have more of a reputation for academic performance, so consistently get hard working students applying to them. It becomes self reinforcing.” Brasenose College JCR President, Paul Gladwell, also agreed that brighter students would be attracted to colleges who could spend more money on admissions.
Magdalen College came top in the 2010 Norrington table, and has an endowment of almost £140 million. Andy James, a third year Law student at the College, claimed that the college’s wealth filtered through into many aspects of college life. “It certainly helps having a 120 000 book library and the beautiful surroundings of Magdalen.” “However, we work very hard, and I don’t think our academic success should be attributed to the college’s wealth.” Worcester College, which is the most academically successful given its wealth, averaged 16th on the Norrington table, despite having the third smallest endowment.
Julien Anai-Isaac, Worcester College JCR President, said, “I think that there is a good working ethos which is fostered by the community feel. This allows the College to do as well as it does. Worcester provides accommodation for almost all of its undergraduates which only adds to this. ” Anai-Isaac also claimed that a good college environment can count for more in terms of academic achievement, than wealth.
The study revealed that neither a 24 hour library nor a generous book grant has any apparent impact on a college’s Norrington Score. The amount taken off battels for academic scholarships or the cost of accommodation per term do not either. Jonathan Hinder, JCR President for Merton, suggested that the emphasis should be on the link between academic success and welfare provision, rather that overall wealth. He said, “I am not in a position to comment on any link between wealth and performance, but I believe welfare provision and academic excellence to be very much related.” “I don’t think it is any coincidence that two of the best-performing colleges over recent years, Merton and St John’s, have two of the best welfare systems in Oxford.”
Students have expressed their concern that the disparities in colleges’ wealth could create a two tier system. Kirsten Macfarlane, an English student at Lincoln said, “It worries me that the richest colleges are continually out-performing the poorest colleges.” “At Lincoln we receive a grant of up to £80 for books, which for an English student isn’t a lot, whereas at St John’s all students are given over £200.” When asked about why wealthier colleges outperformed their poorer peers academically the University declined to comment.
Why humanity needs the humanities
There’s been a torrent of news over the past few weeks concerning the allotment of funding for the humanities at universities on both sides of the Atlantic. While budget cuts are certainly at the front of students’ minds in Britain, financial hardship forcing the State University of New York at Albany to eliminate its French department alongside programs in Italian, Latin, classics, and theatre sparked outcry in the United States over the supposedly imminent death of humanities.
In today’s world, with pushes for technological progress seeming to override all other concerns, the hard sciences are considered good investments, with the majority of humanities subjects correspondingly brushed aside as subjects that only those with extra time or money can afford to spend their days absorbed in. Why pore over literature or immerse oneself in a foreign language, when if you’re going to become a computer scientist, you’ll just be able to use an automatic translator or read someone else’s summary on the internet? Has it never occurred to people who spout this sort of argument that it might be nice to form one’s own opinions about these subjects?
Those who contend that the study of history is useless would do well to heed the oft-repeated warning that history tends to repeat itself. Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst form of government – except, of course, for all the others that have been tried. It’s all well and good to argue that of course the enlightened world knows that democracy is good, but if we stop teaching history to children, eventually no one’s going to remember that all sorts of utopian experiments ultimately failed, and our mechanically-taught descendants are going to fall into traps whose cycles have at this time been hampered because of our recognition of historical patterns.
But to sacrifice a humanities education would be to the detriment not only of the United States or of Britain, but to the world at large. The ability to reel off the elements of the periodic table on demand, or solve complex abstract equations, is certainly necessary to some careers and may even be an increasingly useful type of skill. However, learning these skills in a vacuum would produce a world full of scientists who cannot carry on a conversation about anything outside their specialty, who have trouble relating to others and are unable to think in cross-cultural contexts. To avoid this, continued study of the humanities is essential.
Not quite so straight forward
For a city that’s supposedly full of young, liberal and intelligent people, there is an awful lot of casual bigotry in Oxford. Oxford is the ninth gayest city in the UK – perhaps this is true in terms of population percentages, but not in terms of a ‘scene’. Admittedly it is a million times better than my one-horse home town in North Yorkshire where the gay scene comprised of myself and my then girlfriend, but for a city this large (and this LGBT) you’d expect more than a collection of one specified club night, two pubs and one actual club.
Despite Oxford being generally liberal and open-minded, it’s often seen as acceptable to ask trans people the condition of their genitalia (even in the gay community), to refuse to acknowledge the existence of bisexuality or to invade people’s relationships with foolish questions. By all means, I love people asking for advice on how to be tactful in dealing with their newly out friend, or questioning what the Q stands for in LGBTQ (that would be Queer or Questioning) or even wanting to know what is encompassed by the enigmatic term “Trans”. But why, seriously why, would you ask how lesbians have sex?
Sure, I can understand the mystery locked within a same-sex relationship, especially if you haven’t met many gay people before, but I wouldn’t ask a perfect stranger to describe their bedroom dynamic. The answer I would most like to give is probably to insult the sex life of the person asking by claiming that however we do it, it’s better than theirs. What I actually say is something like “the same as a straight couple” which seems to confuse the asker more. Once I was told that I would remain a virgin as long as I remained a lesbian because lesbian sex doesn’t count. This entirely depends on your definition of sex, I grant you, but it still rattles my cage.
Another pain in the neck is the frequent “Which one of you is the man?” Neither. This question seems especially pointed when one party has short hair (as I do). Although many straight- and feminine- girls have short hair, as I am gay, my short hair obviously indicates that I see myself as the man in the relationship. The fact that a lesbian is a woman attracted to other women is enough to tell you that no men are involved.
This leads me to the third ridiculous request from men; that you and your partner will have a threesome with them. My girlfriend and I once experienced this in Clems where two guys shouted “THREESOME” at us. I couldn’t tell if the problem was that neither of them could count (as I suspect) or that I had misunderstood what exact configuration of three people they were wanting. I see the vague logic in the idea of a threesome; some women are bisexual and so might actually be attracted to the man asking as well as to their girlfriend. However, even if someone is bisexual, what are the chances that they also have an open relationship in which they accept offers of sex from men they’ve never met? This huge assumption that all bisexuals are either confused or just promiscuous is extremely misguided.
These question quibbles are not Oxford-specific but this is the place where I have experienced them. In terms of being out in Oxford, until recently I would say that I’m lucky to live in such a welcoming community. After recent hate crimes and physical violence towards out gay men I do worry that people aren’t taking homophobia and transphobia seriously. Massive steps have been made to eradicate homophobia and to protect the rights of the LGBT community, but when LGBT people are still at risk of violence and ignorance, there’s still more that needs to be done. Violence is an extreme form of discrimination against the community but ignorant comments can be equally damaging.
I saw recently the word ‘gay’ being used in connection with being “anti-lad”. Does this mean that being gay is the opposite of being a “lad”? To be gay should not mean that you are seen as inferior. “That’s so gay” also causes problems. The phrase not only assumes that being gay is something which can be likened to being rubbish or stupid, but is also used so frequently that people have begun to ignore the connotations that are still hurtful. It’s all very well to say that we have equal rights, but when the word describing a person’s sexuality, and part of their identity, is used to say that a film was particularly shit, I think a lesson is still to be learnt.
Saying this, I have found the experience of being out in Oxford a pleasant one. I was originally my own secret homophobe who gave funny looks to the LGBTsoc stall at Freshers’ Fair and asked the LGBTQ rep to stay away from me in public. Within a few months I was husting for a position on the LGBTsoc committee and telling anyone who would listen – including the Principal of St. Hilda’s – how proud I was to be gay. There’s something extremely liberating about accepting yourself and forcing others to accept it too.
Intoxficated
‘There’s nought so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.’ Byron.
This week we’re talking about what is perhaps my favourite of the spirits, Rum. I should declare an interest: I live in the Caribbean, where it pretty much is the only thing drunk. I drink it, when at home on the verandah, like a whisky or brandy – aged and in a balloon glass, or alternatively if ‘liming’ (Trinidadian slang for ‘hanging out’) with soda or coconut water. Rum and Soda is the classic: it’s invigorating and energetic, and cuts straight through the heat of the tropical sun. Note that I’m talking about gold rum here, Mount Gay being the most commercially available example. White rums like Bacardi are too sweet and have little flavour. Dark or ‘navy’ rum is so disgusting that it beggars belief – it’s like drinking tar with added caramel and Tabasco. No, what I’m talking about, and what all rum aficionados are talking about when they mention rum is gold rum, and the aged stuff at that.
This article got me feeling slightly homesick, so I went down to the Grog Shop, a Jericho landmark. They had a selection of about six rums, all about the £15 mark and, as I write this, I’m sipping away at some Mount Gay ‘Eclipse.’ I’m a little disappointed actually: it’s very smooth but a little insipid. Of course, it’s their basic range (I’d recommend Mount Gay XO) and goes wonderfully with club soda, but it doesn’t have the depths, complexity or the lingering languidness of a first class rum. That’s what I’m hoping people will get from this. I’m hoping people will see a good aged rum as a match to a fine single malt or X.O. cognac. It’s much cheaper too. Our standard, everyday brands at home are the Guatemalan Ron Zacapa 15 year old, the Guyanese El Dorado 15 year old, and the Jamaican 21 year old Appleton Estate. The latter two should be fairly available at a good off-license, so please do keep your eyes peeled – you’re in for a treat.
Creaming Spires
So, anal sex. The ‘apotheosis’ of intercourse, according to Russell Brand. The thing that your boyfriend wants more than a First in Physics. But why? What is the enduring appeal for men to travel up the dirt track, if you’ll pardon the expression? Girls have a less favourable relationship towards it, I find. If you ask a group of girls at hall tonight whether they enjoy it in the annus horriblis I would bet you that, they’ll look at you with apparent unmitigated disgust, probably leaving their Black Forest Gateau untouched, and profess complete horror. This is understandable. When my friend succumbed to the tabooed temptation, her boyfriend filmed it and showed everyone in sixth form.
Now, I think we can all agree, no one wants their bum hole on film, no matter what’s going into it. Myself? I have something of an ambivalent relationship with the Nastiest of the Nasty, something akin to the Freudian ‘uncanny’, you could say, an attraction and a repulsion, a cognitive dissonance, in that I feel in my heart that essentially it is a bit gross – it is, after all is said and done, your ‘poo shoot’ as my ex boyfriend charmingly referred to it – yet it is this very taboo that makes me, at the end of a night out, quite want to do it. Oh dear. Perhaps this is a massive overshare, even for an ‘anonymous’ column (or it would be anonymous if the boyf didn’t keep telling everyone).
A friend came to visit recently, and she admitted that, for her, the bum holio is a one way street. Fair enough, you’d think. But no. I drunkenly insisted on encouraging her to try the wonders of the hallowed poo shoot, but to use ‘a lot of lube, because only a fool goes to brown town without it’. Cringe. Incidentally, though, I would also advise first-timers to be drunk, otherwise the physical reality may dawn on you mid-act, and the last thing you want is to be tense. You know what I mean.
I bet there’s far more tabooed activity going on in Oxbridge than any other university. When you’re working to the best of your ability, the pride and joy of your parents at home, while balancing multiple social and extracurricular activities (and probably a bit of volunteering) you want to do something a bit, well, nasty. And sometimes a calorie overload at Hassans just doesn’t cut it. Though I wouldn’t indulge in the Nastiest Nasty after a Hassan’s unless you wash your own sheets, I can otherwise only imagine the dystopian nightmare that your unwitting scout would confront as she pulled back your regulation orange duvet. Now that is nasty.
But anyway, give it a go. See if it shakes those essay blues (insert something ‘browns’ joke here). My friend texted me this morning, ‘Were going to do bum last night but got too drunk and fell asleep’. Rookie error.
Hips don’t lie
The psychological and physical cabinet of curiosities that is Desmond Morris (both his mind and home) was to greet me last Thursday. I was somewhat apprehensive about interviewing what one could happily refer to as the world expert on body language, for obvious reasons. Yet within ten minutes of meeting Desmond Morris, his bubbling enthusiasm, wit and joie de vivre had dissolved any such paranoid notions. His memory is an overpopulated stage of actors and scenes from a fascinating life, his house a venerable melting pot in which is condensed an extravaganza of books and paintings (many being his own creations), oozing exotic artefacts from every pore – with even more exotic stories behind them. Even when seated, I realised the world of Desmond Morris is never stationary – our discussion was continually punctuated by lively demonstrations of the gestures he described.
The juxtaposition of such a diverse collection of objects and facts in Morris’ house and mind reflects his original background as a Surrealist artist. As a member of the British surrealist movement, he exhibited from very early on in his professional life, sharing his first London exhibition with Joan Miro. Through an unfortunate case of bad timing, surrealism was effectively ‘shut down’ in this country, and it dawned on him that his living would have to come from another means. He thus pursued his other love (that of animals) through a successful career as a scientist. Yet he never stopped painting. He still produces vast quantities of work, has written a surrealist manifesto ‘just for fun’, and last year sold his ‘Magnum Opus’ in London – a triptych with the dimensions of Bosch’s Garden Of Early Delights, where all his surreal biomorphic figures come together for a grand ‘gathering.’
Near the end of his popular television series in the 50s (‘Zoo time’), having mastered the self-admittedly contradictory art of ‘simplification without distortion’, he became something of a public figure and moved increasingly towards the study of the human animal, publishing the controversial book ‘The Naked Ape’. Morris removed the blinkers cast over our eyes by habit, using his highly developed skills of zoological observation to observe and analyse the human species, with spectacular results. The book was a rip-roaring success and became an international best-seller (selling upwards of 10 million copies and translated into 23 languages) that was to change our paradigm of human life as we know it.
Having accomplished fame, travel was next on the list. Persuaded to ‘see more of the world’ by his wife and friends, the Morris Odyssey began. He has now exceeded his childhood aim of visiting 100 countries, which started with a journey around 30 to create a global ‘gesture map,’ revealing fascinating links between gestures and cultural history. Not that body language isn’t subject to modification – he recounts the history of the ‘Aloha’ greeting he received (a sort of sideways ‘phone’ hand signal ‘waggled at you’) upon reaching Hawaii. Its origin was something of a mystery. It turns out to have been adopted by the Hawaiians from the ‘let’s get a drink’ sign they observed from Spanish sailors as this imitated pouring a bottle of drink into their mouths. Mistranslations in gestures are not always so happily received – he discovered that in Germany the ‘crazy’ signal of circling a finger next to one’s head can get you arrested. Indeed, having been troubled by both the KGB and the Mafia through his travels, it seems Morris had undertaken a rather risky business.
Following a mini-tour of lucky charms collected during these travels, our conversation moves into the mysterious realms of human superstition. Morris muses on the sometimes unbelievable series of rituals undertaken by many individuals, particularly those with ‘high risk’ professions – footballers being a case in point: ‘there’s one (English) goalkeeper who had 33 things he had to do before a match.’ As with body language, we often don’t know the exact reasons underlying our behaviour. ‘Do you know why you’re wearing earrings?’ he asks me. It turns out earrings are a result of an ancient practice to ‘distract’ evil spirits from entering the body through the ears. He draws a parallel to the use of ‘Sheela-na-Gigs’ – rather risqué stone carvings of women placed over churches, whose parted legs ‘distracted the devil’ (one used to feature on the Norman clock tower on Cornmarket Street). The Maltese devised a slightly more sophisticated diversion tactic in the form of two clocks, with one telling the wrong time, to confuse and distract evil spirits.
Body language often reflects more about a person than they intend to give away, especially to the observant eye of the zoologist. Some are easily spotted – the nose itch of a liar (YouTube the Clinton trial to see this one in action). Fascinatingly, scratching the back of the head is a sign of concealed aggression, (thankfully) hiding the basic urge to deliver an overarm blow during everyday conversation. Others are more subtle. Morris recalls being asked to film a show on body language. Displaying a duo of identical photographs of a woman, he asked the men in the audience which ‘twin’ they would choose to spend the night with. The audience gasped as they realised that 90% put their hands up for the same picture. The explanation? ‘Pupil enlargement.’
Morris elucidates the true impulse behind the lovers gaze: ‘in actual fact they are checking pupil dilation in the other person, a sign of attraction, and we are unconsciously aware of this.’ He then went a step further: ‘we were very naughty, and went to the flat of one of the researchers to take a photograph of her boyfriend.’ Fitted with a ‘pupilometer,’ the researcher was shown a series of pictures: a landscape (elicited no response), a rubbish site (reduced the pupils to a pinprick), a fit movie star (showed evident enlargement), and finally the photograph of her boyfriend – at which point ‘the pupil just exploded!’
After a discussion of the origins of smiling, Morris notes ‘you’ll never see a Japanese girl laugh without holding her hand over her mouth.’ Morris puts down the extreme degree of control over body language by the ‘inscrutable oriental’ to their strong military history. With a strong level of self-discipline, it appears a degree of control over body language is possible. Morris recalls undertaking fieldwork at the World Poker Championships: ‘I saw a man win a million dollars and there wasn’t a flicker of expression on his face. He was a statue. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, he was presented with a mountain of cash by two armed guards and actually had to walk across the room, and wait a few minutes, and only then did he give a subtle jerk of the forefinger into the air.’
Another case of ‘training’ in body language emerged in Morris’ travels to a Geisha house. ‘I was sitting there thinking, why do I feel so good? There’s no sex involved! How are they doing it?’ He explains that Geisha’s are in effect being paid for body language: ‘they’re trained in a whole range of tiny, subtle details. You’re exposed to a series of subordinations and acts of submissiveness. It’s impossible to resist, it swirls a man’s ego without him knowing why.’ We agree that a Geisha’s guide to flirting would be a feminist’s nightmare. Subordination however is no long term aphrodisiac: ‘A Belgian friend called me up the other day, and asked me an old-fashioned Hugh Heffner question: ‘What gives a woman sex appeal?” Morris is decisive in his belief that rather than looking for a fashion model (‘exquisitely, outrageously beautiful women actually frighten a man’), most men are quite simply after someone who is physically and intellectually at their level, ‘who is not going to be submissive and subordinate as ultimately that’s boring.’
This brings us to a topic Morris evidently feels strongly about: ‘Women should run politics. Men are very bad at it – they keep mucking it up, getting greedy, going to war. Men are a disaster! They don’t have the natural precaution and multitasking abilities of the female.’ In primeval times, Morris explains, the male and female totally relied on each other. This was lost with the process of urbanisation which unequivocally favoured men. Morris is keen to emphasise that our natural habitat is certainly not the ‘human zoo’ of city life, which is to blame for much ‘unnatural’ human behaviour – the horrors of domestic abuse being a case in point. ‘You can’t say let’s go back to village life, you have to get more clever about organising city life and the way people live.’ Morris notes the amazing propensity we have developed to ignore and avoid each other. ‘It’s a modern invention that people don’t want to be intimate with strangers, for millions of years we lived in small tribes where everybody knew everybody. The natural thing to do would be to greet everybody when walking down the street, but this just isn’t practical. So we make them into non-persons, we’ve developed a switch-off.’ The exception to the rule being Moscow – where Morris recounts movement along the street seemed to occur via the process of bumping into one another – ‘maybe it’s just too cold to bother,’ he chuckles.
Despite all this, humans are certainly not shy about self-advertisement. Cross-cultural studies searching for what humans find truly beautiful reveal frustratingly mundane results. For every tribe that found thinness sexy, another favoured the chubby; for every community that considered large boobs to be attractive, another favoured a more subtle cleavage; even a preference for white teeth is not universal – ‘some societies find blackened teeth extremely attractive.’ The only three characteristics considered universally irresistible were clear skin, youth, and health.
Another form of self-advertisement is dancing. Morris again bubbles over with anecdotes from his travels, from the ‘contrived dances’ of Eastern Europe which act out stories of milkmaids and young men to the ‘exquisite art form’ of flamenco dancing. ‘There is another kind of dancing which is, to put it crudely, pre-copulatory’ – in other words a vertical expression of the horizontal.
He nonetheless puts the pleasure of clubbing down to an experience of ‘vertiginous pleasure,’ the same joy we get from other tension-releasing ‘flowing movements’ such as swimming or bouncing on a trampoline. It appears efforts to control human bodily expressions can often backfire: in Ireland the Catholic church ‘thought it too erotic to allow waving of arms and hips around. All movement is from below the hips, giving a curiously erotic quality,’ he giggles, ‘because of its restraint, it’s almost as if they are prisoners – a case of bondage dancing as if the top part is bound and can’t express itself.’ Morris endearingly describes ‘his kind of dancing’ as that seen on a visit to Christmas Island, where all dancing was done whilst seated.
It is impossible not to believe Morris when he says ‘I really love humans’. Having dedicated much of his working life to observing and analysing their behaviour, he remains wildly enamoured by the species. He notes that his ability to switch between the objective and subjective is exercised and strengthened through his second life as an artist. His library encompasses a similar degree of compartmentalism – physically divided into his two cerebral roles. Although taking on many qualities of a library himself, a cabinet of curiosities is certainly a more apt description.
He has an upcoming exhibition in Oxford this December, continues to write and paint and is still one of the most interesting naked apes around.
In the closet
It should go without saying that nothing looks worse than effort, and that to appear scrupulously attired bespeaks an earnestness in preparation even more tiresome to behold than to deploy. Not only this, but the expectations thus created are needlessly high, waving the fastidious flag for all to see and inevitably despair. Already we are too tired to finish this paragraph without assistance, fittingly, from Oscar Wilde: ‘To have done it was nothing, but to make people think one had done it was a triumph.’
The truth in these observations is told by the great many who tack too far in the opposite direction, trying to remain calm but often failing even to remain casual, slipping instead into carelessness. At the extreme one finds the curious case of the intentionally careless, an utterly bemusing state, which makes no sense when written and even less when put into sartorial effect.
When in doubt, defer to someone with a keener eye than thee, who is signally concerned with the features of attractive male dress, having personal experience of both its features and its fit. To wit, the best shopping assistance comes from the gay male associate, and if this is not provided by the shop you should feel free to bring your own, a practice known in some parts as BYOG. A passable alternative is the attractive female associate, but help from any other quarter is easily more trouble than its worth.
When it comes time to compose an outfit from your closet – now appropriately curated – bear in mind that most sartorial offences come in threes: matching belt, shoes and bag; or shirt, tie, and pocket square. Try to think in terms of exceptions or surprises, such as, ‘Surprise! Pink and orange work better than you think’, while maintaining a sense of proportion by confining your exclamations to one part of your outfit, perhaps the furnishings for an otherwise simple suit. The main thing is not to banish all thought of coordination, but to treat this as an afterthought, leaving you that much closer to the sartorial vanguard, almost by accident.