Dramatic irony is the tired old cry of ‘it’s behind you’ in a pantomime; it’s Romeo stabbing himself needlessly next to his sleeping lover; it’s even that rather irritating individual who insists on telling you what happens in the next act in a loud voice – most likely whilst gorging himself on some godawful greasy snack at the dramatic climax.
The fact that the audience knows something the characters don’t seems problematic; the audience can no longer enjoy discovering new information through the plot. However, dramatic irony cranks up the tension more effectively than telling an English tutor that you quite enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, actually. This is because knowing vital information about the play makes us all the more anxious about those on stage – wanting to shout ‘it’s a trap!’ or ‘he’s lying!’ to dramatic characters who are in the dark. Think about horror films; you sit on the edge of your seat, ready to jump at any moment, biting your nails as the attractive/minority/unnamed peripheral character does something very, very stupid. The audience already knows what will happen; it is this that creates the tension in the first place.
Dramatic irony is employed in almost every play written in the English language: from Jonson’s Volpone to Stoppard’s The Real Thing. The effect created by dramatic irony is different in each case. In Volpone, the audience are titillated by the possibility of Volpone’s discovery, and simply await comedic downfall. In Stoppard’s play, the audience is subjected to something much less light-hearted, waiting for the imminent discovery of an affair and the destruction of two marriages. In both plays though, the audience’s attention is focused on how and when these things will happen.
This focus on the how and the why was of huge importance to Brecht. To convey the political and social messages of his plays, he wanted the audience to think critically about what was happening on stage. To prevent them being overly drawn into the plot, placards would be placed at the front of the stage stating the name and location of the scene; there would also usually be narration at the beginning of a scene stating exactly what would happen.
Dramatic irony extends the notion of art mirroring life; it isn’t only present on the stage. Dramatic irony in the theatre works on the same principles as it does in real life; tension stems from being privy to information that someone else is not. Perhaps it really is true that ‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.’ Then again, perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps you know something I don’t.By Ryan Hocking
Old Stagers: Dramatic Irony
Last Orders for binge drinking
by Joe Wellington Picture this: it’s a Thursday evening and overcooking my latest tutorial assignment has left precious little pre-drinking time. However, not all is lost. By cranking the usual drinking games up a notch (downing vodka shots to the sound of Pendulum’s ‘Blood Sugar’) I find myself in a perilously drunken manner in good time to make The Bridge before it gets full.Abandoning my bike outside The Bridge, after undertaking what can only be described as a suicidal journey, I find myself in the queue. I am in such an intoxicated state that I no longer see the world as it is, but as a series of long exposure photographs with long streaks of light occasionally attracting my attention. No problem; I’ll just flash the Bod card whilst trying to stare vaguely at the ground.
After 45 minutes I was out, to the sound of the familiar phrase ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ My only crime? Throwing a tray of drinks onto the floor for no apparent reason.I’m not bothered. One of my good friends has also been evicted, and we start to walk back, bumping into another college mate on the way. The next thing I know, we are all stripping off our clothes before plunging into the surging Castle Mill Stream, to the astonishment of onlookers.
Someone cleverly took our clothes, and so whilst stumbling naked up Hythe Bridge street we are stopped by the police. I decide that I’m not up for a night in the cells and so make a dash for it, eventually jumping back into the raging river in a last ditch attempt to lose the police. ‘Genius,’ I remember thinking.Things start to spiral out of control and before long I’ve got a number of officers chasing me along the bank throwing life buoys at me. Then, with a surge of white water, I am swept under a bridge, where there is no space to breathe between the rushing river and the bottom of the bridge. Whilst trapped under the bridge, with my life hanging in the balance, I experienced life changing thoughts. Only then, when I was close to death, did I realise how utterly stupid everything I had done in the last few hours had been. Luckily I survived, and was taken to hospital with hypothermia.Now, let me evaluate the whole story, in light of the dangers of binge drinking. Firstly I would like to say how underrated the danger of binge drinking is. When totally drunk you are not in control of your actions, and your judgement can rarely be further from reality. University lifestyle is a dangerous one, in that to some students it is normal to go out two or three nights a week and get completely legless. This is a serious health risk. I’m not talking about liver damage – although this will result eventually – but rather the risk we pose to ourselves and each other when in this state. Clubs and societies really can be disastrous too, often encouraging or even forcing binge drinking through peer pressure. Freshers’ initiations (which are banned in some universities) are particularly dangerous, where entry to the club or society is only gained after the subject has drank themselves into a stupor.I’m not calling for any of these activities to be banned, but for them to be undertaken in moderation. In some ways, I’m glad that I received this treacherous wake-up call because it has shown me the error of my ways; it’s great fun to go out, have a few drinks and perhaps once in a while get drunk. But not to the point where you lose control of body and mind (as I did), and certainly not to the point where the pleasant evening out rapidly transforms into a survival situation.
Joe Wellington is a Physics student at LMH.
Seeing the Light
Stone Gods emerge from The Darkness I have failed you. I am sorry. You lent me the Dictaphone and everything, and I let you down. This is Cherwell, and so you want something post-modern and ironic, or at the very least scathing and cynical. But all my pretensions to critical greatness have been jeopardised by the fact that provincial little me has been charmed senseless. In my defence, Stone Gods are no ordinary band: they used to be The Darkness (before the lead singer left, and Toby MacFarlaine arrived). So their charisma has been honed on TV presenters and proper celebrities. Can you blame me for liking them? Backstage at the Carling Academy (evidently not refurbished when the rest was) they have a small fridge containing their rider: apples, hummus, “about 8 types of cheese”, Stella, and both colours of wine. According to Dan Hawkins, they ‘had some mangetout turn up too once’. This can’t be rock and roll – they’re too nice. This generosity of spirit apparently extends even to each other: they collaborate on songs, the four of them ‘sitting around with acoustic guitars’. MacFarlaine describes it as ‘like that game you play when you’re a kid: you draw the head of the monster, and fold it over and pass it on’. The analogy isn’t borne out by the music: the songs are tightly structured and tidy. They are also catchy. This is fortunate, because there are exactly 3 minutes of the new album available on MySpace, and they are headlining the show. Evidently, they’ve got a bit of a way with words – conversation moves from Pavlovian conditioning to raspberry pavlova. And then onto Kanye West (“nice sunglasses” according to Edwards), Joe’s Café on Cowley Road (‘brilliant’), and the relative merits of buying a pig or buying a pigskin hat from Reign. MacFarlaine and Hawkins are local boys: if you want to make a pilgrimage (more original than stalking Thom Yorke), MacFarlaine used to live at 526 Banbury Road. The band have been enjoying meeting their new fans – including a 52-year old lady-rocker, who assured them she’d still be head-banging at 101, and a small entourage which escorted the drummer to Boots the Chemists (I am assured he wanted to go). On stage they not only thank us for coming, but apologise for a song called “Magdalene Street”, because it’s named after a street in Norwich which is pronounced all wrong (Biblical rather than Oxonian pronunciation). Attempting to regain some journalistic objectivity, I took a discerning friend to the gig, planning to hijack his critical opinion and present it as my own. Unfortunately, he liked them too. He said they sounded original. And the downside of liking something (apart from embarrassing myself dancing like a muppet and witnessing my beautiful sarcasm wither under the onslaught of niceness) is that you want it to like you back. I don’t really have anything to offer them – when I ask what they would have liked as gifts MacFarlaine says he wants a Pembroke scarf. Oh, and Dan Hawkins would like a trophy wife. So here’s the pitch: he’s vegetarian, would have liked to have studied anthropology at uni, and if there’s any justice in this world, he’s going to be in a famous band.by Emma Butterfield
Brasenose come close to Cuppers upset
Magdalen 23 – 22 Brasenose It was almost the upset of the season. Brasenose had finished at the very bottom of the fourth division and looked an easy opponent for a Magdalen side more used to playing Keble than Hertford. However, league positions can be deceptive; particularly when it comes to college sport. Brasenose have struggled to get a full side out all year, and on the one occasion that they did they put over 100 points on Merton/ Mansfield. In the minutes before kickoff, Magdalen remained blissfully unaware of this fact, and their relaxed attitude was evident from the first minute. From the moment the match began, Brasenose looked to have more initiative going forward. They were willing to attack from within their own 22, and with skilful fly-half Andre de Haes pulling the strings they were instantly threatening. When an early period of pressure saw forward Riou Benson go over on the right, de Haes easily converted to put his side seven ahead. This score seemed to shatter the fragile confidence of a Magdalen side that had been relegated the week before, and they looked shaky in defence and impotent in attack for the rest of the half. Even their usual strength, their forward pack, was nullified by a far stronger Brasenose unit which included Blues prop Olly Tomaszczyk. When six-year Brasenose rugby veteran and newly qualified ‘Dr’ Philip Duggleby raced over in the left corner, it seemed as though Magdalen were the struggling fourth division side. The addition of a penalty before half time left the score 0-17, and it seemed as though this could be a fantastic Cuppers upset. Things continued to get worse after half time for the favourites, with Blues Rugby League player Pete Forster joining League President George Smibert in the centres for Brasenose, and they were both involved in a fantastic probing attack that involved the entire backline. Minutes later, a fourth Brasenose try in the corner by flying winger A. Kang seemed to seal the game for them, with the conversion putting them twenty two points clear. However, the fairytale ending was not to be; while it was clear that Brasenose thought the game was won, Magdalen dug in and by sheer force of will turned the game around. Fringe Blues player da Costa, playing at flyhalf for Magdalen, finally started to impose himself at the match and, as the game went into the final quarter, the home team managed to score their first try. Although the conversion was missed, they came back and scored again in the same corner. The pressure was beginning to tell on a Brasenose team that had given their all, and where in the first half passes had stuck, suddenly simple ball went to ground and mistakes were made. Some huge hits from Tomaszczyk and his teammates could not prevent a third try, this time coming from a mistake at the back of the lineout that allowed Obi Agbim to storm over. The BNC side suddenly looked as though all of the fight had gone out of them, and that they could not believe how quickly their lead was slipping away. The final minutes of the game seemed inevitable; a fourth try for Magdalen made the score 20-22, followed by a dubious penalty for a high tackle on the BNC 10-metre line. As the kick sailed over, the relief amongst the Magdalen players and supporters was palpable. They had avoided what would have been a humiliating defeat at the hands of a BNC side that must feel confident of a solid run in the Plate, not to mention hopeful of success in the league next year.
by Jack Marsh
Student Soapbox
by Katharine Halls I’m always wary of so-called experts enlightening us with new discoveries about gender differences, especially when it looks remarkably like the received wisdom we’ve been hearing for years. Women are caring, men are aggressive; that kind of thing. I’m somewhat sceptical of Helen Fisher’s claims about gender in the business world, presented during her talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Managers, says Fisher, have to realise that men and women act differently. Deborah Cameron, the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication and a specialist in language and gender studies, spoke recently at a WomCam (OUSU Womens’ Campaign) event about her new book on communication between the sexes. She noted that the vast majority of the so-called knowledge we have about the way the sexes think and communicate is pure myth. Remember that statistic about women speaking on average 20,000 words a day, and men uttering a mere 7,000? It came from a Christian pamphlet about marriage. Meanwhile, a 2005 investigation by the psychologist Janet S. Hyde concluded that the variation in verbal ability and behaviour between men and women was negligible. The BBC assure us, though, that ‘What Ms Fisher says is not psychobabble.’ Research shows that film scripts written by women are more complex than those written by men. Right. I wonder, too, why Fisher is so keen to declare she’s not a feminist given that the inequality in the business world, with women holding just 3% of executive directorships, is quite so startling. She’s keen to advance the status of women, apparently, but heaven forfend she consider examining the power structures that keep women oppressed in business. Women aren’t less successful because managers haven’t noticed how good we are at ‘web thinking.’ They’re less successful because the system is sexist. Women are still taken less seriously in the professional sphere than men; we’re still expected to be mothers and wives as well as career women; we’re still routinely objectified in the mainstream media.Facile gender determinism of Fisher’s variety doesn’t help anyone: it reinforces the same old stereotypes and does more to hold women back than it does to help them. Not that it’s very useful for men either – Cameron cites in her book an interview with a call centre manager who admitted his team sometimes ‘select women because they are women rather than because of something they’ve particularly shown in the interview,’ his assumption being that women are better at communicating with customers. She points out that women often stay in low-paid entry-level jobs because bosses feel they can’t afford to take their skills away from the front line. So, thanks for your advice, Ms Fisher, but if you’re serious about improving women’s status in the business world let’s forget women’s ‘preference for flat hierarchies’ and instead talk about equal pay.
Katharine Halls is WomCam co-chair.
Editorial
It’s not often that Education Guardian has something nice to say about Oxford. The O-word is usually whipped out to make a lazy jibe about dundering complacency and backward-facing movement, in contrast to both the material richness of the American universities and the worthy inclusiveness of the ex-polys.But this week, for once, figures released by the Office for Fair Access are cause for (restrained) self-congratulation in Wellington Square. Oxford was shown to have met its targets for bursary spending, one of only four universities to have done so. Cambridge took the brunt of the criticism in the media’s reporting of the figures, racking up the largest total underspend: £855,000, fifteen percent of its ear-marked budget.So Oxford’s achievement, of meeting its target by spending more than a third of its new income from top-up fees on student bursaries, is to be applauded. In total the central University spent over £1.8m on student bursaries in 2006-07. If top-up fees continue to be used in this way—to tax those who can afford an education and subsidise those who can’t—they will be doing their job. Current first- and second-years might register a small comfort, as they slide £3,000 further into the red each year, from the knowledge that Oxford will spend over a grand of that on redistributive bursaries for fellow students.This presents a genuine opportunity for Oxford to shake off some of its remaining stigma that continues to stubbornly cling on. There is hard evidence of their commitment to widening access, and it must be used to show bright school children that they don’t just talk the talk. The Oxford Opportunity Bursaries have been been the subject of a significant publicity campaign, including adverts in national newspapers. This has clearly paid off in their relatively high take-up rate.
The University needs to take this momentum to drive the point home that an Oxford education is, at least for European nationals, no more expensive than any other university; indeed, it is very possibly cheaper. Offa’s figures do not take into account individual college spending on bursaries (which is largely responsible for decentralised Cambridge’s poor showing, before we descend into schadenfraude).Clearly there is still much work to be done, as shown by the annual battle over rent negotiation that is beginning in JCRs all over the city. But these figures reflect the University’s first stab at handling a new and difficult government policy and, with a bit of luck, they could mark a turning point in its reputation both in Oxford and beyond.
The Local: Martha Rowsell at The Jericho Tavern
The Local: Martha Rowsell at The Jericho TavernMartha Rowsell’s favourite venue was a retro clothes shop back home in Brighton. ‘I was surrounded by all these dresses from the 1930’s. It was really quiet, and the woman who owned the shop had make homemade cakes and coffee and stuff. Everyone was packed in amongst the clothes and there were only about twenty people there, so it was really nice and intimate.’
Perhaps that’s how you’d describe Martha’s sound when I saw her at the Jericho Tavern – ‘nice and intimate’. In her second year at Brasenose, she plays alone, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. Her set in support of indie outfit The Vice was pretty varied, ranging from the mellow and romantic to the more ebullient. Much of her writing comes from her own experience as a student. ‘It always makes me worried that if I wasn’t a student, and was a full-time musician, I wouldn’t have enough material!’ Does it qualify as procrastination, I wonder? ‘The guitar’s in my room, I’ll write a song – anything to avoid writing the essay! My favourite song of my own is always the one I’ve recently written; the latest one is about the noises the radiator makes in my room.’
I ask her about what Oxford has to offer for budding musicians, and after some positives, she offers me a horror story. ‘I got offered a festival by a guy in a music shop. He said it was just half an hours bike ride out by Abingdon.’ This ‘festival’ turned out to consist of a few drunken punters in a field watching her and another band. ‘The stage was a plank of wood, like a pallet. It was pissing down. In the end we all drank and chatted, but it was pretty weird!’
Martha sees her life as split between the two pressures of studying and performing. ‘Half the time I’m doing a degree, half the time it’s music’. And where does she hope it will it take her? ‘Carolina, Tennessee, Jacksonville,’ she answers, jokily. ‘I’d like to be a musician. I want to play as much as possible. If I get a job out of it, that’s brilliant, but if I don’t I’ll still love it.’by Nick Coxon
Donkey’s Years / Desert of the Real
Oxford and Cambridge are home, not only to dreaming spires, but also to aspiring drama. Donkeys’ Years is firmly fixed in college. It follows the return of a group of college friends, coming back twenty-five years to catch up and revisit their old haunts. As you’re escorted by a ‘college porter’ past the mocked-up college façade to take your seat, you may wonder why you are here. After all, your real college is much more, well, real. But this charming, witty play will sweep you along, reminding you why you sit up till the small hours writing essays, why you dash desperately from class to lecture, why you love Oxford in the first place.
The characters certainly ring true to my college experience. They’re all here: the popular one who became a minister; the miserable one, still carping about the deficiencies of the college; the one you always thought was gay, but never had the courage to ask, and whose dog collar seems both shocking, and somehow just right. And the girl who married the wrong man, still hoping for a quick drink and a catch –up with the one who got away.
Maanas Jain plays Headingly, a junior minister, perfectly evoking a politician with chummy confidence and slight desperation, while Holly Midwinter-Porter captures the haughtiness and insecurity of Lady Driver with a beautifully balanced and funny, performance. Jain and Dom Conte as a successful surgeon are wonderful from the moment they enter, evoking the stumbling awkwardness of two old friends meeting for the first time in years, and from the beginning the action and the dialogue are snappy and titillating.
The protagonists find the sherry and their half-submerged student selves getting the better of their adult personas. Lady Driver’s assertion ‘I’m an entirely different sort of person now’ is not nearly as true as she thinks, or wishes. This is not so much a regression as a recognition that we never really move on. James Phillips’ Quine, who missed his opportunity to live in college the first time round, and is keen to get a second chance now. As he reminds us, while the world outside may provide you with kids, fame and fortune, the best years of your life happen behind these sandstone walls and dreaming spires.
Desert of the Real is an unfocused but passionate new piece of student theatre. It mixes familiar Oxfordisms (KA, QI Bar etc.) with specific Middle Eastern terms. Set both in Oxford and Iraq, the play follows the fortunes of a student couple, Nick and Alice, when Alice decides to travel to Iraq. We are thrown in medias res, and it takes a while to appreciate the eccentric Eastern characters who intermingle with typical Oxford types.
The writing captures the tone and idiosyncrasies of Iraqi and Israeli English but tends towards the turgid at points. Even Oxford students don’t regularly philosophize with this intensity, an intensity that would make Montaigne blush. Yet there are some beautifully balanced scenes, notably when Alice, excellently portrayed as a student looking for a cause, breaks down somewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan. She sits by the roadside with the driver, who, between reflectively spitting and cursing the engine, reveals the difficulties inherent in being an ordinary man in modern Iraq. Based on Ben Judah’s experiences in Iraq, this scene palpitates with tension and an undercurrent of strained humanity and concealed violence.
The scenes in Oxford are immediately livened up through the arrival of James Kingston as Ibrahim al-Ansar. Kingston not only captures the bravado of al-Ansar, but also the mystery and danger. His accent, and that of James Schneider as Dr. Regev, may seem incongruous at first, but their shrewdness is brought out by sensitive writing and performance.
The play hides scene changes using news clips, and as all hell begins to break loose, the suspense mounts. Lacking though is a sense of humanity, of hope. We see shadowy and complex politic movements run through a very fast-paced piece of drama, but do not have enough sense of the people involved. As the apocalypse nears, political posturing overwhelms the concerns of the human heart.By Tim Sherwin
Rainbow Messiah
Ranjit Majundar visits Peter Tatchell, the man who arrested Mugabe I had no apprehensions about approaching the highly secure abode of the country’s best known human rights’ activist. He had shown a reassuring level of enthusiasm about speaking to a student newspaper and every time I had spoken with him I was struck by his politeness and easy charm – a far cry, it would seem, from the man the Daily Mail once called a ‘Homosexual Terrorist.’ But this derogatory title had been given to Tatchell twelve years before, at a time when he was the thorn in the side of political and religious bigots and all manner of hypocritical closet queens. His peaceful though direct approach, while inspiring to many, also proved particularly provocative to others. Despite his laudable aims, some felt that Tatchell’s tactics were too aggressive, and even those who shared his sexual preferences reflected at times that he did more harm than good for their cause. Yet attitudes towards Tatchell changed dramatically after his courageous citizen’s arrest of Robert Mugabe in Brussels in 2001, in which Tatchell suffered senseless beating at the hands of Mugabe’s bodyguards. His bravery rightly earned him the praise of a generation whose human rights had long been suppressed. When in March 2001 the Daily Mail declared Tatchell ‘Heroic…..an example to us all,’ it was clear how far attitudes had changed.
Having left the Labour Party in 2004, Peter Tatchell joined the Greens. He is currently a prominent member of the Green Left, which he describes as ‘an inner grouping within the party which has a particular focus on social justice.’ From this platform, he hopes to defeat former Cabinet Minister Andrew Smith in Oxford East at the next General Election. According to Tatchell, Andrew Smith is not simply a high profile candidate parachuted into a potentially winnable seat in Oxford with no interest in local issues. Quite the reverse. Although the election could be up to three years away, Smith is already living in Oxford for half the week. Tatchell is keen to confront an opponent whose ideas he finds so disagreeable. Smith supported the Iraq War, ID Cards, Foundation Hospitals and student top-up fees. Labour won the seat with only a thousand votes to spare from the Liberal Democrats – could Tatchell split the vote and keep Smith in Parliament? ‘I might,’ Tatchell acknowledged, but he thinks not, summoning a scribbled graph to show me how he might capture the seat. That victory is even conceivable is testament to his heavyweight presence on the ticket. Since the Greens polled only 1800 votes in 2005, they would have no chance of winning Oxford East without Tatchell.
We know what Tatchell contributes to the Greens, but what do they add to him? Surely the growing awareness of green issues within the three major parties has marginalised the Greens, reducing them to the level of a pressure group? Is this just a ‘Greenwash’? But Tatchell cites the adherence of the two main parties to nuclear power as an indication that their immersion in green issues is not authentic. The Greens, by contrast, are strongly opposed to nuclear power. ‘It will cost £50bn to decommission and dispose of the waste from existing nuclear power stations – Just think how that money could be better used.’ Tatchell argues that for the same cost, and within the same time frame, equivalent concentrated solar power stations could be built in North Africa. We then discuss the Green Party’s ambitions for a more ethical United Kingdom – what might it be like? ‘It’s absolutely obvious [that] we’ve got to do something to stop traffic pollution and in so doing we’re going to have healthier and happier people.’ How can this be effected? ‘Reduce car journeys, move to cleaner fuels and hybrid cars, and plant more trees along roads to absorb toxic emissions. Make walking safer and more pleasant by widening pavements – make cities look and feel beautiful.’ That’s the vision, but what about the policies? ‘Labour plans to waste over £70 billion on Trident, ID cards, road building and nuclear power stations. The Greens would invest this money in energy conservation, renewable power, affordable green housing, and cheaper, faster public transport.’ They also favour a more creative approach to taxation, where the focus is shifted from taxing employment and production, to taxing waste and consumption. Thus under the Greens, those guilty of ecological violations will pay and the ethical will prosper. Except if you’re wealthy – they propose to introduce a tax rate of 60% for all earnings over £100,000. According to Peter, ‘people aren’t going to mind.’ The policies of high taxation are reminiscent of the terrible times for Britain in the 1970s – how then are Tatchell’s policies any different? Tatchell claims that he wants to create a ‘socialism infused with a Green perspective and updated to the 21st Century.’ He wants public services ‘run by the public for the public. We all gain if we live in a more caring, equitable society.’ Likewise, he feels we should be less materialistic, less consumerist, less interested in celebrity. I admire Tatchell’s Utopian vision of society, but I am less than convinced that it is attainable in reality. Do people really want to be told that their lives are wrong? That their pleasures are worthless?
I enquired how the Green Party could encourage better human stewardship of the world without recourse to apocalyptic language. ‘Climate change is the biggest threat to global security, peace, health and economic prosperity. But we mustn’t be disempowered by a sense of doom, gloom and helplessness. The Green Party is motivated by the optimism that we can take the necessary steps to avert climate disaster and ensure our future as a green and pleasant land.’ A positive note to end on. I wish him luck.
Video: 3rd Week Blues Football
Reaction from 3 Oxford Blues footballers, Alex Toogood, Matthew Rigby, and Nik Baker, on their 3-1 win over Bedfordshire University. by Jack Pitt-Brooke and Ben Williams
