It is commonly said that in order to love another, one must love themselves. In fact, loving one-self is somewhat viewed as a prerequisite to becoming involved in romantic relationships.
As someone who has struggled for unending years with eating disorders and depression, accompanied with the typical low self-esteem and self-hatred, this approach to relationships scared me. Although I once could not see a life past twenty, the thought of growing old without anyone to hold, simultaneously frightened me. In retrospect, the thought probably conjured fearful emotions because I viewed it as a manifestation of my isolation. Yet, as a malnourished sixteen-year-old, I lacked such insight and simply knew that dying alone felt miserable.
Thus, a question that chipped at me constantly was whether I could love someone else, when I definitely knew I did not love myself. Could I be in a relationship when I had suffered from a slew of mental health issues, let alone while possessing the baggage of untreated mental illness? The answer is complicated, as most dilemmas of life can be described.
At one point, I considered myself an exception to the above-mentioned maxim. Though I did not love myself, my heart was full of love to give to another. On one hand, my compassion, empathy and warmth are traits that I value within myself. I realised these traits are key to a healthy relationship. However, I believed, or rather deluded myself into believing, that my possession of these attributes meant I was adequately prepared for relationships, even though I was struggling with my own inner battles (and losing).
With the deadly combination of a fear of loneliness, untreated mental illness and a big heart, I rushed into far too many relationships. Only in hindsight did I realise that I was probably too emotionally immature for the commitment that accompanies relationships. I was probably wearing rose-tinted glasses, thinking that the right relationship could “cure” my mental illness; love was to be my remedy where all other medications failed. There is a sad truth that underlies the idiom that hindsight is 20/20; there are times where I wish I could broach the wall dividing the past and present, to prevent myself from making certain decisions.
Regardless, the inability to change the past has equipped my present self with profound lessons about love and mental illness, which I hope to anecdotally share here. First, untreated mental illness results in unhealthy attachment styles, usually either avoidant or anxious. I found myself continuously falling into the latter type of attachment style. A mental illness, whether because of stigma or because of the innate vulnerability that accompanies it, is often suffered silently. When dating, you learn more about your partner and indulge in each-others vulnerability. Trust blooms. There reaches a point where you may feel comfortable disclosing your plights with your mental health. However, when that mental illness is untreated, sharing such a private aspect of your life becomes an unduly monumental step. I felt like I had tied myself to my partner. How could this person leave when I had just shared my deepest darkest secret? From here, it is a slippery slope into dependency, an inattention to the other’s mental health and a lack of boundaries. Untreated mental illness can be consuming, and when that is shared with another, it can be difficult to stop it from engulfing and suffocating them too.
Second, dating with an untreated mental illness is ridden with insecurity. This is when it dawned upon me why people say you must love yourself before you can love another. I was so anxious to lose the person who knew all about my dark secrets, that I convinced myself that they would inevitably leave. Every other person was prettier, smarter, funnier and more caring than me. Of course, they would seem so to me, when I considered myself the equivalent of damaged goods. My insecurity inspired volatility; I would shower partners in affection in an attempt to hold onto them, then turn cold when I had fooled myself into thinking they would leave any minute.
Upon learning these two lessons, I had to swallow a hard pill: mental illness can unknowingly transform you into a toxic partner. As you cling onto the other person as the only source of light in the darkness of mental illness, they become drained of their independence. With each boundary that is crossed, each vile insult that is uttered out of insecurity and each moment offloading mental illness onto another, I grew more toxic without ever knowing it.
These relationships, unsurprisingly, came to an end. With each failed relationship, it became easier to paint a dreadful self-portrait and picture one-self as undeserving of love. It is hard to assure yourself otherwise when such a perception is confirmed by years of mental illness. However, untreated mental illness often does not make you a bad person. Usually, it just means that you have the tendencies of a bad partner. It is difficult to prevent the negative influences of mental illness from spilling into your relationships, romantic or otherwise, when you do not have the resources to self-regulate and help yourself.
Finally, coming to the question posed towards the beginning; can one love when they have a mental illness? While reflecting during my rustication, I realised the answer is positive. Nonetheless, there is fine print that needs to be read before entering the dating world. Dating with a mental illness requires one to take an active approach to improving their awareness and general mental well-being. Mental health issues should not remain untreated, full stop. However, a romantic relationship and an untreated mental illness is a match made in hell, for all the above-mentioned reasons. Only with an active attitude of self-improvement can one avoid falling victim to the unique pitfalls of dating while managing a mental illness.
On the other hand, I have personally found that there is no need to feel “cured” of mental illness. Sometimes, it can feel like one can never free themselves of their mental health issues, even if they have been stifled into remission. There is a life-long vigilance that needs to be taken to your own mental health, that those who are not neurodivergent do not need to possess; your memory has unhealthy coping mechanisms stored away in a dark cabinet that can be unleashed and wreak havoc like Pandora’s box.
Crucially, loving yourself can be tricky when mental illness distorts one’s perception of themselves. However, challenging this poisonous hallucinogen that our brain feeds itself, through seeking (often professional) help for your mental health can create contentment. The effects of mental illness become clearer to your trained eye. You can spot how your mental illness manipulates your own actions, and those of others. With this deeper awareness that comes from working on being in-tune with one-self, and partnered with other healthy attitudes towards relationships, dating while having a mental illness is certainly possible.
A better love-guru maxim for those handling mental health issues would be that you cannot love another, if you do not want and do not put effort into loving yourself.
“Once upon a dinner time…no that’s cringey, don’t use that. I’ll disown you.”
Tea, dinner, munch, whatever you call it, is better when it’s shared – no matter how cringey it is to admit. Some of the best conversations of my uni life have been over a communal munch – some of my hardest laughs too. In fact, it’s where that classy one liner up top came from.
We eat here like I’d eat with my family at home – just without the dinner table and with the cutlery – and every single time the first question to come about is: oh my god, how did you make this?
So, here’s how I make it.
The first layer of flavour of all Indian cooking will always be dried spices cooked in oil. It can sometimes be poured on top of the dish after it has finished cooking but making it the foundation means that the flavours will infuse into the dish – especially into the ras (sauce). In Gujarati, we call this spice base the vaghar; in Hindi-Urdu, tadka. (N.B. everything italicised will be in Gujarati, because that’s the language my mum taught me the kitchen in.)
Take 2tsp of oil on a medium flame and add ½ tsp of mustard seeds before covering the pot. If you have curry leaves, toss in a few here. Wait till the seeds start popping before uncovering to add some asafoetida and ½ tsp of cumin seeds. You have about 30 seconds before it all burns, so you’ll want to move quickly here and throw in your green chilli, ginger and garlic paste. If you’re cooking with onions, add them now and cook them off.
Bhindha nu saak – fried okra
Once you’ve finished the vaghar, throw in the bhinda (okra) and season with salt, red chilli powder, cumin powder and turmeric. Keep mixing on a low heat until the slime is cooked off and the okra are left soft. When they’re half cooked, add in some tomato puree for colour. When they’re three-quarters cooked, add in a shot of lemon juice.
Chana nu saak – chickpea ‘curry’
It’s the same routine here too – vaghar, tomato tin and seasoning. Cook off the tomatoes for around 7 minutes, until it has bubbled all the way through before throwing in some canned chickpeas. Cook off until the chickpeas are soft, before adding lemon juice and kasuri methi (fenugreek).
Daar – lentil stew
If we were to be making a daar, which is also a huge crowd winner, we’d start with the same vaghar, tomato tin and seasoning before mixing in some already cooked lentils. To save time, I always pressure cook my lentils – cooking time varies between the types. The cheapest red lentils from Tesco (we look out for our bank accounts here) take 6 minutes in a pressure cooker with a 1:3 ratio of lentil to water.
Laccha Parotha – Layered Flatbread
Now we’ve got the mains, we need something to serve it with. Rice is a staple in Indian cuisine, we always back it up with some kind of flatbread.
Like all flatbreads, we start by kneading a dough from wheat flour, salt, oil, and water before leaving it to stand for half an hour. Then, make fist-sized dough balls – and make sure they’re all even.
Take one dough ball into your rolling board, dust it with flour and roll it into a thin disc about 8 inches in diameter before applying some oil onto the surface and sprinkling some more flour on top. From the top edge, start pleating the disc. Roll the pleated dough into a tight circle, flatten it straight down and start rolling it out again.
Once it’s evenly rolled, it’s ready for the tawa (frying pan). Keeping it on medium heat, put the parotha on the tawa to cook the first side, before flipping it after around 7 seconds. This second side should cook completely before you flip it over to the first again. Here, the parotha will rise with some air pockets, which you can gently press down on before removing from the tawa and layering them in some margarine, butter or ghee.
Pista Halvo – Pistachio Dessert
This one might be on the spenny side, so make sure you’re up for the commitment.
Take 1 cup of shelled pistachios and soak them in boiling water for 30 minutes before draining and finely chopping or blending them. Take ¾ cup of semolina into a bowl and mix in the sliced pistachios.
Melt 1 cup of sugar in some water (with vanilla extract if you want to be extra boujee) and gradually pour the hot syrup into the mix while consistently stirring it until it thickens enough to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
Let it cool completely before flipping the bowl onto a chopping board to cut it into pieces and garnish with additional chopped nuts.
Keri nu ras (Mango Pulp) – or Mango Lassi (Mango smoothie)
Peel the mangos and chop them into pieces before blending them into a smooth paste and sieving the mixture – or pick up a kesar mango pulp tin that’s already done it for you. Mix in a can of coconut milk, some cardamom and nutmeg and mix to blend and infuse.
Oxford and Southampton universities are looking for volunteers to trial Molnupiravir, a potential treatment for COVID-19. The trial is being led by Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Science, partnered with the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research).
The antiviral drug Molnupiravir (brand name Lagevrio) prevents the virus from spreading and growing. The drug interferes with the Coronavirus’ genetic code, affecting its ability to replicate. As a result of it not being able to multiply, the virus levels in the body remain low. Therefore, the severity of cases and symptoms are reduced. The pill’s ability to treat infections, and reduce symptoms in high-risk cases, could be critical to nationwide progress in combating the virus.
The drug is the first of its kind to be approved for further trials for COVID-19 treatment. It is a small, oral antiviral drug which can be taken at home. The course requires four tablets to be taken twice a day over five days.
Analysis of the interim ‘Phase 3 MOVe-OUT’ trials published in ‘The New England Journal of Medicine’ reveal that ‘Molnupiravir’ proved effective in reducing COVID-19 symptoms if taken within 5 days of their onset. Further investigation by Merck and Ridgeback reveals the risk of hospitalisation was reduced by around 50% in those who took Molnupiravir compared to the placebo.
These trials have so far revealed no major safety concerns. The only people whom it is not recommended for are those in pregnancy or breastfeeding. Hence, if the results of further trials are similarly favourable, Merck hopes to be able to administer 10 million people with the drug course by January 2022.
The results of the first volunteers in these more recent trials are promising. In some cases, symptoms have reduced within 48 hours of the pill being taken. Volunteers have commended its ease and efficiency. Side effects are minor; headaches, dizziness, diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting only affect 1 in 100 people who take the drug.
Five days ago it was reported by the BBC that 8000 recently diagnosed volunteers are already taking part in the current trials, yet more are needed. It is estimated that 10,600 will need to be recruited in total. Volunteers must prove they currently have COVID-19 through a PCR or lateral flow, alongside symptoms which have lasted a minimum of five days. The search is for those over 50, or for 18-49 year olds with underlying health conditions. According to trial results, the most common risk factors for COVID-19 which this drug will be authorised for are obesity, older age over 60, and diabetes mellitus.
Whilst this drug is key in combating COVID-19, it does not replace vaccinations. The push for vaccinations and boosters nationally continues.
Well it’s been more of the same filth in the Union, but John Evelyn did promise that this week’s entry would be a little less raunchy. So, wild tales of the sexual deviance of committee will have to wait for another day. John Evelyn knows a few people who will be happy about that. Instead, we turn to the second most important thing in the Union: politics, ugh.
But with elections just two weeks away things are hotting up for our lovely hacks. The Univ Queen’s crown has been slowly slipping, as after finally finding a rather Rad(ley) final officer candidate, disaster struck as he had a change of heart. The Garbage Collectors are now digging deeper and deeper into the bin, checking each piece of trash again and again to see if it could make a good officer candidate. Rumour has it a particularly stinky Fish carcass has been inspected somewhere around 8 times.
After a slow start to their hacking, forgetting to host any dead library bops or attend any Hayek not-sex parties, Connect 2.0 have launched themselves into the game with a huge play on the pages of this very publication. John Evelyn can confirm that with the assemblage of Union hacks and student journalism we are now officially at the very centre of hell.
Secretary’s committee is always a fun place to hang out in the weeks before an election, as senior hacks attempt to convince junior hacks that, no, it is really worth going into you social capital overdraft to earn the honour of sitting in endless meetings all Monday. Here too, it’s been more bad luck for the Univ Queen, with the LMH Enforcer going full Clyde Barrow and snatching her only seccie. Rumour has it he has found his Bonnie somewhere on seccies committee.
Meanwhile, the Ultimate Bromance has had to make the crushing decision to have one half pull out of the contest, as their love was too strong to bear competing with each other. This term has seen the usual number of spiritual awakenings on secretary’s committee, as most choose not to run on. John Evelyn hears there are some cushy appointed positions from which to collect great gossip, if anyone is interested.
Internal communications and financial documents reveal how the Michaelmas Term 2021 Law Society President appointed his friends to influential positions, tried to amend the constitution to allow appointments until graduation, and splashed out on a lavish, cancelled ball. Many hours of conversation with high-ranking members and exclusive access to internal papers paint a picture of a society wracked by power struggles and struggling to administer itself, exacerbated by what members of the executive told Cherwell was a £50,000 loss on the ball cancelled at the end of last term.
The president, of Christ Church, first won election to the presidency in Hilary Term 2021. Serving as president-elect throughout Trinity Term 2021, he became president at the end of that term. The handover was messy; the bank account of the Law Society was still in the name of a long-gone student, leading Lloyds to finally block the issuance of a new card. A new signatory was eventually found in Marcus Smith*, a friend of the President, as the President himself had a non-British phone number which precluded his participation. Smith had previously resigned in TT21 under the threat of impeachment, as the then President tried removing him for dereliction of duty and misconduct. Smith told Cherwell, “I had a strenuous [sic] personal relationship with the President TT21, I stepped down for personal reasons and it is entirely misleading to suggest that this was because I felt that I would be impeached and removed.”
The Friends
Smith was appointed Secretary for MT21. Additionally the role of Treasurer was also filled by Smith, whom the President had appointed to fill the position in an acting capacity. The position of the Treasurer is an elected one while Smith had been chosen by the President despite resigning in the previous term. As acting Treasurer and signatory, Smith had sole control within the society over the bank account which contained the Law Society budget, amounting to tens of thousands of pounds.
This was not the only appointment of close friends. Enrico Pelganta, also of Christ Church and President of the Hayek Society, was another close friend of the President. He had originally been appointed IT officer. This position is necessary to enable further promotion, as other positions require experience on committee. Pelganta told Cherwell, “my appointment as IT Officer was perfectly constitutional. I have gone above and beyond during my involvement with the Law Society: I personally had in several occasions to stretch my capability to ensure the well–running of the society affairs, without any sort of gain from my side.” However, on the 28th of October, at 00:27, the President messaged the executive committee declaring that he was “hereby appointing Enrico advisor to the President”, a role which did not previously exist. Another member of the society responded: “It’s the tendency for mid-party drunk appointments for me [crying laughing emoji].” The President and Pelganta deny that the President was inebriated at the time. Pelganta would later feature in some of the largest expenditures made by the Law Society that term.
A screenshot from a chat in which Pelganta’s appointment was announced.
The President had now managed to appoint two of his friends to powerful positions within the society. According to the constitution, the Vice-President, which is an elected position, alongside the rest of the committee, can exercise a restraining force. In reality, the Vice-President had resigned, claiming that she could not work with the President and his friends, and the rest of the committee almost never met, despite section 4.1 of the constitution prescribing biweekly gatherings.
By now, the President had almost unfettered control over one of the largest and – crucially – wealthiest student societies. According to one high-ranking member of the executive committee during that term, the President managed to raise over £150,000 from law firms. According to a member who spoke to Cherwell, this was an exceptionally successful round of fundraising. The President also decided to amend the constitution in a way that could have enabled him to assert control over the society for many terms to come.
The Faux pas
The first notice some on the committee received of the Presidents’ attempt to rewrite the constitution was the arrival of the proposed amendments in their inboxes. As President, he had unilaterally commissioned a constitutional review from his associate and fellow student Christopher Collins, and scheduled the meeting for the 14th of November without communicating the amendments until the 13th of November. Collins justified his proposed amendments on the grounds that they would “increase transparency and accountability”.
Cherwell has seen these proposed amendments, which provided for the creation of an Advisory Board, whose members would be appointed by the incumbent executive committee, which at the time was dominated by the President and his friends. This new body, consisting of a Treasurer, a Returning Officer and a Deputy Returning Officer, would be ultimately responsible for the running of the society and its financial affairs. The only term limit imposed on these appointed positions was graduation. The Advisory Board also had the power to overturn the impeachment of any member through an appeals process. This raised the prospect of the President being able to wield considerable influence within the society over a period far in excess of his presidential term. Through friends on the Advisory Board, and with possibly himself as Returning Officer, he could have controlled access to the committee and supervised the discussion on the society’s administrative and financial affairs.
The constitutional amendments also explicitly excluded any appointments not made by the executive committee from forming part of the new body. This meant that the current Returning Officer and HT21 President, Svetoslav ‘Svet’ Karagueorguiev, would not sit on the Advisory Board. However, his successor, appointed by the executive committee, would.
The President told Cherwell that, “upon becoming President, I immediately realised severe structural shortcomings were present in the society. I brought in Mr Collins as an external consultant who had significant relevant experience relating to constitutional matters. Mr Collins acted purely as an advisor and had no decision-making capacity, which was left, as stipulated by the constitution, to members of the committee.”
Cherwell has been told that Collins “expressed reservations” about whether the proposals would be accepted by the committee.
The President’s actions kicked off a brief but messy constitutional crisis. The meeting that the Presiden had called was cancelled by the Returning Officer. Karagueorguiev took this course due to “the complete non-responsiveness from the executive committee about the location of their proposed meeting and their failure to notify of the proposed measures to be discussed”.
Labelling the meeting unconstitutional and citing fears that the short notice would artificially decrease voter turnout, he further directed committee members to “disregard the draft constitutional changes sent out… by Christopher Collins, who is neither a member of the committee nor authorised to advise the Society in any meaningful way.”
The President responded later that day by postponing the meeting in order to “ensure the highest possible turnout and a transparent and fair discussion of the proposed changes”. Somewhat chastened by Karagueorguiev, he stated that “At the same time, I would like to inform you that the “decision” of the Returning Officer, … to cancel the meeting is ultra vires [beyond their authority] as the Constitution does not equip the Returning Officer with the power to make such a ruling, and therefore [sic] ineffective.”
Arista Lai, a former President of the Law Society, waded into the controversy. She expressed concern over the handling of the affair, noting a series of issues with both the scheduling of the meeting and the proposed constitutional changes. Initially, Lai observed that communications concerning the meeting called to discuss the constitutional amendments were not sent out within the required seven days’ notice. In her email to the committee, she then proceeded to pick apart the proposals and the review process.
She wrote “Who is Christopher Collins?… The constitution does not provide for a “consultation” to be unilaterally called by Exec without notifying anybody”. Lai continued, “How can somebody who “never had any formal role within Lawsoc” have any right or capability or knowledge to rewrite our constitution? And if he was advised by Exec, then it is not an independent perspective at all.”
Lai also highlighted the unconstitutional actions of the President, condemning the attempted side-lining of Karagueorguiev, who was the “final interpreter of the constitution”, as well as drawing attention back to Smith’s appointment, saying he “should not even have been appointed to Exec after having quit (under threat of impeachment) before fulfilling his first and only term on committee”. Labelling the proposal for an Advisory Board as “profoundly undemocratic”, Lai stated that it was the opposite of increasing “transparency and impartiality”. In a similar vein, she said “the proposals… that allow the appointed RO and Treasurer to continue in office for the rest of their student life are entirely ungrounded and would mean that the current Exec who appoint the inaugural Advisory Board will have significant influence, and the Treasurer [Smith] will have access to Lawsoc funds, for a looooong time.”
Smith told Cherwell,”I was appointed Secretary based on my past administrative experience and I believe this was entirely appropriate for the president to do. There is no requirement to have served a full term to be Secretary and there is no requirement to not have resigned previously.”
Faced with this criticism, the President climbed down in an email sent the following day. In the email, he disavowed the constitutional changes, encouraging the committee “to disregard the draft that was shared with you”. He apologised for his “conduct” and conceded that “the meeting was rightly and validly cancelled by Svet.” Eventually, that plan was put on hold. But less than two weeks after this internal crisis, the committee would find itself faced with another, public, debacle.
The Flowers
On the 27th of November in Michaelmas Term, 2021, the Law Society sent out an email to ticket holders announcing the cancellation of the termly ball due to be held the very next day. The reason given was ‘major unsurmountable logistical issues.’ These complications are still affecting society today.
A source closely involved with the planning of the ball told Cherwell that despite previously having had difficulties processing payments, the MT21 executive pushed ahead with the event. After they were unable to transfer funds to the ball’s venue, they reached out to Hogan Lovells, the law firm sponsoring the event, the day before the ball. The firm accepted the request that they pay the deposit for the Natural History Museum. A representative from Hogan Lovells clarified that they made this payment on an exceptional basis and did not play a role in any discussions over the cancellation, telling Cherwell: “As in previous years, the firm paid the sponsorship funds directly to the Law Society in good time ahead of the event. The firm was alerted the day before the event that the Law Society were having difficulties in transferring funds to the venue, and required some assistance. The firm kindly offered to step in and paid the sums required directly to the venue. Unfortunately, we were later informed that, due to some administrative hurdles, the event was unable to go ahead despite everyone’s best efforts. We understand that the ball has been rearranged and the firm’s sponsorship funds are being put towards this new event as a continuation of our support.” The last-minute cancellation of the ball, due to what the President has described to Cherwell as “unforeseen circumstances,” lost the society approximately £50,000, a figure confirmed to Cherwell by multiple members of the previous and current executive. It was too late to retrieve many of the deposits made on what was going to be an incredibly lavish ball.
Invoice from Gail Smith showing £6,208.08 spent on flowers for the ball.
Cherwell has seen an invoice for just one of the lost deposits, from a business called Gail Smith, for a total fee of £6,208.08 invoiced to Pelganta’s account. Gail Smith, it turns out, is a florist.
Over £6,000 in flowers is just one of a variety of transactions that went into the ball’s planning, and various invoices are linked to different members of the society. This is not a unique event; many financial dealings have involved reimbursements to personal accounts from the law society account, complicating the current executive committee’s ability to get an accurate picture of the society’s transaction history – a complex web of personal invoices and large transfers.
After months, would-be ball goers had yet to receive refunds. Oxfesses began to surface, all voicing upset at the cancellation and lack of refunds. On one of these anonymous Oxfesses, which was complaining about both the lack of refunds and the lack of events happening for the first few weeks of Hilary, the current president responded: “I’m sorry about the lack of in-person events, but unfortunately the past Exec has failed to pass ANY financial information onto me, which means I have 0 money to process your refunds or put down deposits for drinks, socials, or other networking events.”
In addition, Scharff-Hansen did not receive a list of students who required refunds until the 2nd of February. This, coupled with the current executive committee’s complete lack of access to the bank account until well into Hilary Term, made the process of refunding students nearly impossible in a timely fashion. Some students are still waiting for refunds.
Causing further frustration, payments for tickets to the ball were not all processed in the same way. Tickets were distributed to Law Society members via QPay, a platform for ticketing on university campuses. While QPay has a convenient refund option, some refunds apparently have not gone through. More notably, some students never bought tickets through QPay at all, but informally via bank transfer directly into the society’s bank account. The list Scharff-Hansen received did not include students who had bought tickets in this way.
Some students have approached the current executive committee to have a refund processed through bank transfer, as they purchased their tickets as ‘a friend of Bartek,’ as one of ‘Bartek’s exec invitees,’ or as a result of being on top of the President’s ‘informal waiting list.’ At this stage, refunds are currently being issued after the temporary standstill in the society’s financial liquidity. The current committee has sent out a google form allowing students to explain how they paid for their ticket, and consequently how they want to be refunded.
The Finances
Both the Michaelmas Term executive and the current executive for Hilary Term have confirmed that the bank account was handed over (albeit in a delayed manner) to the current executive with over £50,000 in it. The signatories on the account include the current vice president of the society, Darian Murray-Griffiths, and former Secretary and acting Treasurer Marcus Smith.
The official handover was completed by Smith and Murray-Griffiths on the 30th of January, which fell at the end of week 2 of Hilary Term. In an email explaining this delay, Smith told Scharff-Hansen, Murray-Griffith, the President, and current President-Elect Geoffrey Cheng, that he had not been seeing messages from Scharff-Hansen in his Facebook Messenger inbox. Cherwell has seen these messages, which date from the 11th of December to the 19th of January, with approximately a dozen messages from Scharff-Hansen left unread by Smith.
Smith explained in the handover email, seen by Cherwell, that, in total, he had requested three authentication cards from Lloyds Bank. The first two only arrived after Smith had already left Oxford at the end of Michaelmas Term, and were rendered invalid by the request of a third card, which arrived in Week 1 of Hilary Term. The PIN arrived early in Week 2. Ultimately, the email emphasised that until the end of Week 2, it was not possible for Smith to have handed the bank account over earlier.
The lack of funds available to the current executive committee put a cap on not just Michaelmas ball refunds, but also on outstanding fees owed to entertainment companies Merlin Entertainment and Curzon from the Trinity Term ball, which had been postponed to the beginning of Michaelmas term following an extension of COVID-19 restrictions. The society was issued a Level 2 Collection Notice for an outstanding fee of £2,687 from Merlin Entertainment. This type of notice comes after several unsuccessful attempts to settle the outstanding balance. The email, which has been seen by Cherwell, was sent on the 19th of January, which is during Week 1 of Hilary term. When Scharff-Hansen replied explaining that she was unable to pay for a lack of access to the account, Merlin Entertainment responded saying the fee had been settled. A later look at the transaction history revealed that Smith had paid the amount from the Lloyds account, as he was still active on the account despite no longer having any involvement with the society. Smith told Cherwell that he intends to be removed as a signatory at the earliest possible time.
The Law Society would pay for expenditures by transferring large reimbursements to personal accounts of committee members; Cherwell found upwards of £20,000 transferred to Smith’s personal account and £6,000 transferred to Pelganta’s personal account. Cherwell has seen invoices showing that both Smith and Pelganta have been able to account for the full sums of the transfers, through receipts for ball related transactions, other society events, reimbursements to other students for Law Society related expenses, and money transferred back into the society’s bank account. Smith told Cherwell that, “the desperate state of lack of access to the bank account meant that we had to rely on emergency measures such as this.”
The transaction history also revealed that £2,172.96 was transferred into the personal account of Christopher Collins, who performed the review of the society’s constitution. Cherwell has seen receipts that prove Collins used the total amount to pay for two Law Society events: Burritos & Mojitos at The Alchemist, and a dinner with a law firm at Malmaison, despite Collins not being involved with the Law Society. Collins said that he was approached by the President after problems with the society’s ‘frozen’ bank account, putting Collins in the ‘uncomfortable position’ of paying for two events.
Two events paid for by Collins, for which he was reimbursed from the Law Society’s account.
Scharff-Hansen is currently in touch with a team of accountants who are going through the transaction history looking for any anomalies. If there are any personal transactions that cannot be accounted for, the current executive committee has been encouraged by a representative from the Oxford University Clubs Office to either pursue a civil claim, or contact the police.
Despite this, former President and Returning Officer Svetoslav Karagueorguiev told Cherwell that Scharff-Hansen “has been leading by example and restoring the Society to its former position. Most recently, she is working on all the ball refunds which are in no way her fault and it is a shame she has had her term overshadowed by the negative impacts of the previous administration.” In a response, the MT President told Cherwell that the above “allegations” made to Cherwell “are wholly false and defamatory. They are politically motivated in order to deflect from the incompetence of the current Law Society executive. I, and the former executive of the Oxford Law Society, reserve the right to legal recourse should these false and defamatory allegations be published.”
In the wake of a series of recent experiments, European scientists are now closer than ever to recreating nuclear fusion, which powers the Sun and the stars, on Earth.
The Joint European Torus (JET), a magnetically confined plasma physics experiment sited in Oxfordshire, has witnessed a breakthrough in its 40-year old endeavour to extract nuclear fusion energy by forcing together two forms of hydrogen.
The energy output produced by JET may not be massive, but it provides strong support for the conviction that nuclear fusion can be replicated on our planet successfully via a particular machine. In the words of Dr. Joe Milnes, the head of operations at the JET reactor lab, “The JET experiments put us a step closer to fusion power. We’ve demonstrated that we can create a mini star inside of our machine and hold it there for five seconds and get high performance, which really takes us into a new realm.”
The energy output generated by JET’s recent experiments is more than double what was produced through similar efforts in 1997.
The JET breakthrough gives hope for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) experiment conducted at the moment in France – an internationally led endeavour projected to become the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in the world by 2025. The experiment aims to recreate the fusion processes of the Sun.
Operating on the principle that energy is released through squeezing together atomic nuclei instead of separating them, fusion is produced in the Sun’s core through enormous gravitational pressure. Given the significantly lower pressure sustained on Earth, temperatures of more than 100 million Celsius are necessary to achieve fusion. Since no materials can resist contact with such high temperatures, scientists have designed a heated gas, or plasma, that is held within a magnetic field.
Efforts to produce fusion on Earth are particularly urgent at this juncture where the need for carbon-free energy is greater than ever. Fusion-based power plants would generate no greenhouse gases and only small amounts of radioactive waste.
There is, however, skepticism as to whether the recent breakthroughs into the production of fusion will result in its commercialisation imminently. As BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos notes, “Fusion is not a solution to get us to 2050 net zero. This is a solution to power society in the second half of this century.”
Another obstacle to fusion production in the immediate future is the fact that lab fusion reactions consume more energy than they produce. JET can no longer operate because its electromagnets tend to get too hot, while ITER will need to rely on internally cooled magnets.
This challenge can be overcome in the future by scaling up the plasmas used, but this will take time, concerted efforts, and long-term commitment. Around 300 scientists or so are working for JET at the moment, while the EUROfusion consortium, partnered with ITER, consists of around 5,000 experts. Around a quarter of the scientists working for JET are at the early stages of their careers. As Dr. Athina Kappatou has pointed out, “Fusion takes a long time, it is complex, it is difficult. This is why we have to ensure that from one generation to the next, there are the scientists, there are the engineers and the technical staff who can take things forward.”
Apart from technical hindrances, Brexit poses another challenge to getting as many countries on board as possible. The UK may still be a member of EUROfusion, but it will need to affiliate itself with certain EU science programmes to get fully involved in ITER. It has been unable to do so thus far as a result of disputes over trading arrangements post Brexit.
The world is watching as the promise of a nuclear fusion future looms closer. It is likely that JET will be decommissioned after 2023, while ITER is planning on commencing its plasma experiments around 2025.
Christ Church has re-purchased a book that its students clubbed together to buy for the college in 1587. The 1570 edition of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie was the first English translation of the work. It was donated by a group of nine scholars after they received their Master of Arts degrees in the late 16th century. Christ Church Library then sold it in the 18th century because they already had a copy of the tome.
The names of the nine graduates who bought the book were written on the title page. Among them are James Calfhilll, later headmaster of Durham Grammar School, Edmund Gwyn, later Vicar of Market Lavington and grandfather of Nell Gwynn, actress and mistress to Charles II, and George Limiter, civil servant and solicitor to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.
Christ Church was the first Oxford college to encourage recent graduates to donate money or books to the library. This system became more widespread in the 17th century. Often, wealthier colleges could afford to uniformly rebind some books with college binding, seen through the many uniform 18-19th-century re-bindings at the Queen’s College. Meanwhile, some colleges were more reliant on individual donations, in whatever bound form they came. This is evident from the rare books collection at Hertford College library, which exhibits the generous individual responses to a 17th-century call out for book donations.
Many of their bindings were quite personalised, such as the proud red leather label with gold tooling, spelling ‘Martha Moor 1700’, on the calfskin leather of an edition of WholeDuty of Man necessary for all families and the stamps of initials “R.C.” and then ‘R.H” on the possibly 16th-century binding of Libri Prophetarvm.
Other donors to college libraries sought to represent their book ownership through symbolic means, with Magdalen home to various armorial bindings. These include Magd. R.3.19, a fifteenth-century golden-brown leather calfskin-bound Psalmes of David in meetre, featuring gold-tooled double-fillet borders with floral and leafy stamps and the arms of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of James I. Sometimes the colleges themselves have left ownership marks on their books. A late-twentieth-century librarian at Lady Margaret Hall is responsible for all of the rare books having marker pen catalogue numbers on their spines and many heavily covered in black tape as repairs.
Gabriel Sewell, Christ Church College Librarian, said: “The purchase of the book sheds light on the early history of Christ Church Library and the study of material culture as well as supporting research into the history of mathematics at the college, in Oxford and further afield.
“It was important for Christ Church to be able to bring the book ‘home’ as it is a rare example of a book donated by a group of students when the college was still a relatively new foundation.
“The book is a link to the College’s history and to the students who gave funds to buy the book in 1587.
“The book has been catalogued and is ready to be accessed by members of the University and the wider community in our Special Collections reading room.
“Christ Church is very keen to make its rare books and manuscript collections as accessible as possible and encourages anybody with an interest in using our collections for research, teaching or enjoyment to get in touch.”
Christ Church also suggests that the donation may shed light on maths teaching at the college, with the fact that they donated a vernacular version perhaps indicative that the donors felt that it was time the College started teaching mathematics in the vernacular, rather than in Latin. Having gone through various private collections and a spell in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, Christ Church has bought the book back using donations from the Friends of the National Libraries, Dr Fiona Hollands and Ethan Berman. The College intends for the book to be available for research and public engagement.
Image: Christ Church library in the early 19th century / public domain
When coming to Taiwan in September 2021 for my year abroad, I never expected to be taken back to the debate raging in Oxford over the legacy of the Cecil John Rhodes statue at Oriel College. As someone who participated in a demonstration earlier that summer, chanting “Rhodes must fall” outside of Oriel, I did not anticipate that Taiwan and its public spaces would be facing the same issues that we face back in the UK. Yet, on my first visit to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall 中正紀念堂in central Taipei, I quickly realised that the fierce debate around statues also exists in Taiwan.
To many in the West, it may come as a surprise that Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 is seen as a controversial figure in Taiwan. As a fervent anti-communist, who fought against Mao Zedong 毛澤東 and the Communist party – eventually losing and fleeing to the island of Taiwan – he is praised in the West for his stand against communism as well as his earlier fight against the Japanese during World War II. It may also come as a surprise that this debate around his legacy stands outside of the divide between those who seek a reunification with mainland China, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and those who want an independent democratic Taiwan. In reality, the percentage of Taiwanese who seek to be ruled by the CCP is so low that it could hardly shape this debate.
Instead, this is a debate over the legacy of Chiang’s government as well as that of his son Chiang Ching-Kuo 蔣經國. Chiang is controversial for the implementation of oppressive martial law, as well as for violent activities such as those of the 228 Incident in 1947. The 228 Incident took place at a point of high tensions between the government and civilians. Government officials were seen as corrupt and ineffective. Improper regulation of the economy led to an economic slump. Taiwanese veterans that served under the Japanese were unable to find employment, forming the undercurrent of resentment towards the Taiwanese government.
The strict language policy also raised tensions; at the time of the reunification with mainland China, 75% of Taiwanese people spoke Japanese, yet, within a year, Japanese language newspapers were banned. The main form of information was therefore made less accessible to Taiwanese people. Taiwanese people were also faced with the stigma of being labelled traitors given their level of assimilation with the Japanese. The incident itself started when agents of the State Monopoly Bureau arrested a woman selling cigarettes illegally. When she demanded the return of her cigarettes, she was struck by one of the officers. The surrounding crowd was outraged, and they confronted the agents. As the civilians fled, one of the agents shot a civilian, who later died of his wounds. This started a national movement of protests. The crackdown on the movement led to the deaths of up to 18,000 Taiwanese and ended with the implementation of martial law.
While Taiwan has been hailed recently as the most democratic nation in East Asia, this was not always the case. When Chiang’s government relocated to Taiwan, he implemented martial law and ran an authoritarian government – which, like many others, murdered and disappeared their own citizens. Martial law was active in Taiwan from May 1949 all the way until July 1987. During this period of oppressive rule, there was no freedom of assembly, the press was restricted, and the government had the right to arrest anyone who voiced any opposition to the government. In addition, no political parties were allowed to be formed outside of the Kuomintang (KMT – the republican party) 國民黨, the Chinese Youth Party, and the China Democratic Socialist Party. The latter two were closely linked ideologically with the KMT. The period of martial law coincides with the period known as the White Terror. During this period, the government made use of their secret police – the Taiwan Garrison Command – to crack down on civilians and in some cases executed them extrajudicially. Up to 4,000 people were killed and there were 29,000 cases of political persecution. There are now musuems dedicated to the White Terror and the 228 incident across the island, including the 228 Memorial Park in the heart of Taipei.
It was in this context that Chiang’s statues were erected. Chiang sought to enhance the legitimacy of the KMT’s rule of the island during his presidency, in the face of it being viewed as colonial rule by some.With the takeover of government by the KMT from the Japanese, the Taiwanese people began to be ruled by ‘their own people’ rather than a foreign people. Yet, the KMT viewed the Taiwanese as different to mainland Chinese, creating a divide between those who came from mainland China – waishengren 外省人 – and the Taiwanese who lived in Taiwan before 1945 – benshengren 本省人.This difference in treatment between the two peoples has meant that the KMT rule has sometimes been seen as colonial, as the KMT did not see the benshengren as compatriots. In order to legitimise KMT rule, he enacted a series of “de-Japanification” 去日本化 and “re-Sinification” 再中國化 policies. Re-Sinification lasted from the 1950s for nearly four decades until the 1990s.
As part of the re-Sinification, the government started to erect statues of Chiang across Taiwan in order to portray him as a strong leader. This occurred throughout his own presidency and that of his son Chiang-Ching-Kuo. During Chiang-Ching-Kuo’s presidency, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall was built, and a massive bronze statue of Chiang was installed. Jeremy E. Taylor, Associate Professor in Modern Asian History at the University of Nottingham, argued in 2006 that the aim of this as well as the naming of main roads and districts in cities was ultimately to connect Chiang with the history of Taiwan as well as engrain him into the society. By constructing these statues and promoting a traditional Chinese style of architecture, which can also be seen in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Chiang aimed to reconnect the national history and collective memories of the “old Republic of China” established in the mainland with the “new Republic of China” established in Taiwan. This is why the debate around the Chiang Kai-shek statues remains so important. The question is: should someone with such a controversial legacy be engrained into Taiwan and its society?
Like the statues debate in the West, the divide between the two sides of the argument falls along political lines. However, rather than adhering to the typical political divide of left and right, the debate centres on the pan-Blue 泛藍 and pan-Green 泛綠 divides. The pan-Blue 泛藍 grouping mainly takes the form of the KMT; they largely oppose the removal of Chiang statues, as they hold a more positive attitude towards him. Some politicians in the pan-Blue coalition even believe that, without Chiang, Taiwan and some parts of the mainland might still be colonised by Japan. Therefore, they consider Chiang a hero for all from a Chinese ethnic group 民族的救星. The pan-Green 泛綠 is the other political force. They mainly come in the form of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) 民進黨. They tend to view Chiang as a murderer and unworthy of people’s respect, and support the removal or dismantling of Chiang’s statues.
Chiang’s reputation began to change significantly under the first DPP pan-Green administration from 2000 to 2008. This was the first government not run by the KMT after the transition to democracy allowed people to vote directly for the president in 1996. Under the rule of President Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁, the DPP government sought to change completely the image of Chiang and the political narratives surrounding him. This led to them reconstructing him as a terrible, authoritarian leader and in some cases straightforwardly as a murderer. Since they viewed the remnants of Chiang’s rule, such as schools, roads, and infrastructure under his name, as reminders of the authoritarian, oppressive rule the people of Taiwan suffered under, they tried to eliminate or remove Chiang’s link to them. As a result, Chen and his government enacted a set of policies which Charles Musgrove, Professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, labels as qujianghua 去蔣化 or “de-Chiang-Kai-shek-ification”, allowing for the renaming of many roads and removal of his statues. The most clear example of this was seen in 2007 when Chen’s government changed the name of theChiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, which includes the largest statue of Chiang in Taiwan, to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall 國立台灣民主紀念館, and the name of the surrounding square to Liberty Square 自由廣場. However, the effectiveness of this is questionable, as the nearby Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station is still called Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station or 中正紀念堂站.
Chen’s policy of qujianghua encouraged many of his fellow DPP party members to join the campaign arguing for the removal of Chiang’s statues as well as any heritage symbolising him from schools, public spaces, and cityscapes. Like in the West, university students were one of the main groups who enthusiastically participated in the political movement to remove Chiang Kai-shek statues. From 2000 onwards, it is estimated that Taiwanese university students organised dozens of student-run movements calling for Chiang’s statues to be destroyed or removed from their campuses. Nevertheless, given the vastly differing views on Chiang Kai-shek and his legacy, each university experiences different amounts of conflict.
After the DPP won the 2016 election, Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of Taiwan, set the aim of “achieving transitional justice” 落實轉型正義 as one of her top five goals. Following her election, Tsai set up the “Transitional Justice Commission” 促進轉型正義委員會 in 2018. One of the main tasks of the commission was to address the issue of statues of Chiang Kai-shek. According to the Transnational Justice Commission, in 2018 there were still 1, 083 Chiang Kai-shek statues in Taiwan. Many of them were located on school and university campuses.
‘Fallism’ – campaigns for something or someone, often a statue of an ethically questionable figure, to fall – remains a contentious issue in Taiwan today. Many people, like in the West, view the removal of important statues as an erasure of history. Tsai Ing-wen and her DPP government face the challenge of enacting their aim of achieving transitional justice whilst accounting for differing views on fallism so as to not alienate any potential voters. Yet, young people largely hold negative views of Chiang Kai-shek, so even if Chiang Kai-shek statues and his legacy in general manage to survive Tsai’s administration, it is hard to see a future in Taiwan where they remain so prominent as the debate continues to rage.
My introduction to Cherwell was reading a Features article, just after I’d received my UCAS offer. It was a well-written expose on Oxford’s secret drinking societies. One section of that article caught my eye; a reference to how the infamous Piers Gaveston society had started selling ‘reduced price access tickets’ to its balls.
Access, outreach, support, opportunities. Oxford’s new buzzwords – and rightfully so. Nobody can deny the success of schemes like UNIQ, Opportunity Oxford and Target Oxbridge. I certainly can’t – if it wasn’t for the opportunities the week-long UNIQ residential gave me, I wouldn’t be writing these words today. I wouldn’t be at Oxford at all. This institution needs to be open to the world, not a closed-off cesspit.
But those ‘reduced-price access tickets’ did little to allay the same fears I’d felt before my UNIQ residential, in that they continued the same imbalances and inequalities UNIQ had tried to prove didn’t exist. Access and outreach are being commodified in box-ticking exercises, without attention being given to why such access schemes are necessary at all. Oxford’s access schemes prove that the University is changing, but the students it attracts are still stuck in their archaic past, drenched in privilege and faux-exclusivity.
The success of schemes like UNIQ and The Sutton Trust’s residentials is that they don’t just make the information regarding access available, but they enable a holistic experience of Universities, just like we have as Oxford students. There is a limit to this, however. The most recent pre-pandemic figures available online indicate that UNIQ accepts somewhere around 1500 students to attend in-person, with more invited to an online programme. Yet Oxford normally has upwards of 3,300 undergraduate places per year; with just 1 in 18 of these being a UNIQ graduate. The scheme is increasing opportunities, absolutely; but it is limited by its size and funding.
This might be addressed by Colleges taking on their own access work, but the majority of such schemes fall into the pitfall of simply making the information available – meaning they are simply not as effective as more holistic University experiences at inspiring people to apply. YouTube videos – like those released by Jesus College – are informative but limited. They often don’t offer a student’s perspective – instead focussing on how an academic perceives the admissions process. Their ‘natural’ audience is small, so they rely on clickbait titles and atrocious thumbnails. If they don’t indulge in such practice – as my own College‘s YouTube channel proves – then much of the engagement is from alumni disagreeing with the direction their ex-College has taken. Don’t believe me? Just check out the comments on Hertford College’s 2030 Masterplan video.
Such videos don’t reach the desired audience; appealing to those who want to know about Oxford as an institution, rather than Oxford as a potential university. Their comments are filled with questions from those looking to affirm that they have ‘Oxford intelligence’, and not what the reality of studying here is.
It hasn’t always been this way, though. Hertford – my college – pioneered a revolutionary scheme in the 1960s to address the imbalance in Oxford admissions. Neil Tanner – then Hertford’s Tutor for Admissions – would visit schools that had never sent anybody to Oxford. He would interview those selected by the school’s senior leadership – those that actually understood the pupils. He would interview these pupils early, without an admissions test, and give them an offer to study at Hertford if they got two ‘E’ A Level grades. Hertford would shoot to the very top of the Norrington Table as a result. Ironically, the scheme was killed by the standardisation of admissions across the University – the very same standardisation that would eventually spawn UNIQ.
This historic approach addresses all of my concerns about ‘modern outreach’. It isn’t a Piers Gav-style box ticking exercise, as Tanner himself knew the difficulties faced by disadvantaged students in accessing higher education, having himself received a scholarship to Cambridge. It didn’t just make information available, as they connected directly and personally to the students in question. It didn’t require an active search for information about Oxford, as word of the scheme was spread by teachers; those that truly understood their pupils.
As a (occasional) history student, I’m not a fan of the cliché that we should look to the past to learn for the future. There are eminently more practical, useful applications for history. But this scheme is worthy of modern emulation, bringing ‘reach’ back into outreach.
I’m not trying to talk current access schemes down – instead I’d love to see them expand. Everybody who has a chance of studying here should be aware that they have that chance. I wasn’t aware; a teacher had to email and tell me to apply to UNIQ. How many more potential students will be denied all the opportunities of Oxford simply because they weren’t aware of them?
I fear that it will come down to us, as students, to do the heavy lifting. Studytubers (as much as I dislike the term) offer a realistic and personal take on applying to Oxford, drastically better than the corporate style currently shared by Colleges. Social media is a powerful tool to share the personal stories of applicants – just look to @humans_of_Oxford_University.
I’m proud that I arrived at Oxford having benefited from its access schemes. I’m just worried that there will be countless more ignorant teenagers like me, denied opportunities through no fault of their own.
A lot of old movies are boring. That admission may cost me my credibility as a film nerd, but it’s true. Even though I’ll complain about how modern movies are formulaic and overburdened with action scenes, I’m not always in the mood to watch something slow, old-fashioned and in black and white. But there are classic films that even my limited attention span can wholeheartedly enjoy, and very high on that list are the horror movies of Val Lewton.
Chances are that you’ve not heard of Lewton before. He was never very famous, and the beginnings of his filmmaking career were hardly promising. In 1942, he signed on to produce horror movies for the studio RKO Pictures, with his superiors setting three requirements. The first rule was that each film’s budget had to be under $150,000, or approximately $2,520,000 adjusted for inflation; for comparison, Investopedia estimates that an average movie’s budget is currently around 65 million dollars. The second rule was that each film had to be under 75 minutes long. The third was that his superiors would supply the titles—lurid, dramatic ones like I Walked With A Zombie and The Curse of the Cat People—leaving Lewton to develop them into full stories.
I Walked With A Zombie, Lewton’s second movie for RKO Pictures, is a good example of how Lewton made this system work. Working with up-and-coming director Jacques Tourneur, Lewton and his writers created a story about a nurse employed by the Hollands, a wealthy family in the Caribbean, and her discovery that the invalid woman she cares for may be a mindless zombie cursed by a family member. It’s well-paced and full of intriguing twists, not wasting any of its short 70-minute running time.
The movie’s horror is built on implication and uncertainty—the titular zombie may merely be a sick woman, but other scenes imply the reality of the supernatural. And the film’s conclusion, intercutting between a ceremony to destroy the zombie and a character’s efforts to put the woman out of her misery, is ambiguous and eerie in the best way.
But beyond its atmosphere of doubt, what makes this movie scary? Well, it’s a cliche, but the real monster of the story is humanity. The Hollands grew rich from slavery, and a slave ship’s figurehead—depicting a man shot through with arrows—proudly adorns their gardens. Instead of depicting Caribbean voodoo as evil, the film reveals that its ceremonies are manipulated by one of the Hollands, masquerading as a voodoo priest to convince islanders to embrace modern medicine, a plot point highlighting the morally ambiguous power dynamics of colonialism. The film concludes with a character plucking an arrow out of the slave ship’s figurehead and using it to free the zombie from living death, a literal but still effective symbol connecting the story’s conflicts to a real history of violence.
It’s not a perfect story—the film’s brevity leaves some characters underdeveloped, and Black and Caribbean characters are confined to the background—but its thought-provoking themes are characteristic of the movies Lewton produced. Cat People, for instance, explores contemporary attitudes towards marriage and female sexuality, and builds some truly tense scenes out of a female character’s sense of isolation when alone at night, while its loose sequel, Curse of the Cat People, explores threats lurking within an idyllic neighbourhood—mental illness, parental neglect and hints of the supernatural.
If you ask a film nerd like me what they think about modern blockbusters, you’ll probably get lectured about how, even when studios bother to hire innovative directors, their vision either gets ignored by higher-ups, or ends up dividing audiences. Even Marvel’s box-office dominance was recently shaken by the mixed reception to Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, whose unusual storytelling choices polarized viewers. But despite these limitations, there are directors who’ve made blockbusters and started franchises, and still layer in emotional complexity and thematic nuance. Just look at Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, or the Wachowski sisters’ Matrix series, or even contemporary horror filmmakers like Mike Flanagan.
Maybe that’s why I like Val Lewton’s work so much. I admire the craft behind his movies, their efficient storytelling and eerie visuals, but what lingers in my mind is how Lewton challenged the boundaries his studio set. His films are a reminder that directors have always worked to be creative even within difficult circumstances—and that, with some effort and a lot of luck, they’ll continue doing just that.
