Upon reading the premise for Sav Sood and Alex Rawnsley’s new BT Studio musical Songs of the Silenced, one could be forgiven for thinking that this ground was slightly too well-trodden. In this cabaret-style series of solo performances by eleven well-known women from Greek mythology, the influence of historical revisionism musicals such as Hamilton and especially Six is never far from view, nor are the echoes of similar recent cultural attempts to ‘give voice’ to the women of antiquity (including Madeline Miller’s Circe, which the show namedrops).
However, in the maelstrom of reinterpretations of misunderstood Homeric women and Greek tragedy revivals, the show’s lyrics stand out for consistently centring the core themes and questions asked by the ancient texts themselves — perhaps the most striking engagement with antiquity is the choice to include a Muse (Rawnsley), an ambiguous piano-playing figure who is variably a suitor, therapist, or mere musical accompanist to our heroines.
In the songs themselves, there is the Iliad’s central question of whether a glorious death is preferable to a long and uneventful life, captured by Thetis (Eliza Niblett), belting in anguish as she resigns herself to her son Achilles’ death; later, a comic duet between the Oresteia’s dysfunctional mother and daughter Clytemnestra and Electra (Lara Bulloch) explores to what extent revenge can be justified (the cast and crew also deserve praise for their adaptability — Rawnsley stepped in as Clytemnestra due to the original actor’s illness, which occasioned a nifty comic device implying Electra’s matricide had already occurred). Furthermore, given how often this particular genre resorts to exploring how women have been oppressed historically, it was refreshing to see Sood and Rawnsley write about mythological women who achieved happiness — Atalanta (Sood) enters a loving marriage with a man who is her equal, and Eurydice (Bulloch) sings poignantly yet not regretfully of the ‘golden times’ she had with Orpheus, in a folk-influenced number which laudably differentiates itself from the music of Hadestown.
In the uninspiring space of the BT Studio, set designers Alfie Carter and Ellie Moriuchi excel at creating the ambience of a cabaret show, through an abundance of red velvet and a distressed dressing table poised in the corner as though about to be used by a singer before her grand performance. This effort is mirrored both by Catherine Allport’s costumes (lots of flowing, jewel-hued maxi dresses which manage to evoke both Classical Greece and the Prohibition era), and by Sood and Rawnsley’s compositions. The score makes room for the brash belting we’ve come to expect from contemporary musical theatre, but also for Circe (Leah O’Grady) as a sultry jazz alto, and for an unexpected, unhinged comic soprano take on Medea’s (Eleanor Bogie) regrets about killing her children.
In light of the laudable decision to write female roles both with a wide range of stories and for a variety of voice types, it is regrettable that there are rare moments where Sood and Rawnsley forget the uniqueness of their subjects in favour of writing a certain ‘type’ of song. Perhaps the most meaningful line in Penelope’s (Sood) number (‘faithfulness in women is just pragmatism’) only comes in her spoken dialogue with the Muse after a generic loneliness ballad, while Helen’s (Niblett) lyrics focus excessively on her role as a pawn of the goddess Aphrodite, without ever really questioning if Helen actually had any agency in leaving her home and marriage with Paris. However, while there are minor concerns about potentially simplistic interpretations of mythology, the show on the whole provides an excellent and varied musical introduction to some central questions surrounding women in ancient literature.
The Ancient Greeks created the mosaic, using pebbles. The Romans imitated them, using smaller and more colourful pebbles. Fluminense FC animated the mosaic, using people and placards.
Fluminense FC are one of Rio de Janeiro’s 4 biggest clubs. They are a club of innovation. Some of the best players to have risen through the youth ranks at Fluminense’s Xerém academy include Richarlison, Thiago Silva, and Marcelo. Kayky, another one of their youth products, has recently joined Manchester City.
Fluminense’s success in innovation may be more prolific off the pitch- or rather, just off its side.
Among its various self-professed invention is the coinage of the Brazilian-Portuguese word for fan. The poet Coelho Netto referred to the Fluminense’s early 1900s female supporters, who would dress overly fashionably, as torcedoras because the women anxiously “torciam” (would twist and pull) their gloves from their hands as they watched the men play football. “While the men play, the women twist,” he wrote.
Yet, the mosaic, in the form of a tifo fan display, is probably Fluminense FC’s greatest creation. Mosaico displays involve coloured placards being placed on every seat for supporters to lift over their heads, so as to create a large image or message that covers a whole stand. As the revered writer and journalist Mario Filho wrote in his 1947 book “O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro” (The Black Man in Brazilian Football), this tradition was born at the Maracanã in a Fla-Flu match between Fluminense and Flamengo:
“The Fluminense fans wanted to be better than the Flamengo fans using confetti, streamers, balloons, and coloured inflatables. Each Fluminense fan would find on their seat a small bag of confetti, a packet of streamers, and a balloon, which were either green, white or red. Everything was well organised, with the stands split into three sections: red balloons were set down on the right side, white balloons down the middle, and green balloons on the left side.
(…)
“Each Fluminense fan would blow up their respective balloons, hold their confetti, and grab their streamers, waiting for their cue. There would be one prompt to throw the confetti, another to throw the streamers, and another to lift their balloons at head height. Very beautiful: it looked like a huge Fluminense flag, made out of several balloons.”
Like during Carnival, where various Escolas de Samba (Samba Schools) compete against each other for the best display of music and dance, the various Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) contest in a tussle of pyrotechnics, songs and crowd tifos, complementing the competitive fixture occurring on the pitch. As Mario Filho tells it, Fluminense’s fan-mosaic meant that Fluminense had easily beaten Flamengo off the pitch, thanks to their miraculous mosaico display. A spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor, one of Fluminense’s Torcidas Organizadas (fan groups) who have taken charge of organising the club’s crowd displays at the Maracanã, told me that each “festa” they create today “justifies the greatness of our tradition”.
‘Festa’ directly translates as ‘party’ or ‘celebration’, but the word more specifically captures the image of a thousand colourful people dancing together to the sounds of surdo drums and cuícas. So, underneath the surface of floating pieces of coloured paper are multitudes of fans dancing, chanting and jumping in a relentless attempt to mute the opposition fans’ voices. Each is partaking in a ritual that has survived generations.
The ambition of the fan group is to “maintain symbolic traditions” and, at the same time, to “always look to innovate”. If this balance is struck, Mobilização Tricolor produce crowd displays that “are always spectacular, magical, as if the football being played on the pitch and the festas in the stands merge into one”.
Since the beginning of the century Fluminense has become the first Brazilian club to create a “3D mosaico”, which happened before Ronaldinho’s first game for the club in 2015, and the first club in the world to create a pyrotechnics-mosaico, which occurred when they spelt out “FLUMINENSE” in the 2008 Libertadores final against LDU.
The spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor told me how they go about coming up with new ideas: “We think as a group on what we are going to do, with the focus always being on creating an event which would be unprecedented. We struggle with the restrictions imposed on us, such as the Maracanã’s rules, the financial restrictions, bureaucratic restrictions or the weather conditions, which end up affecting some of our plans which then do not go ahead.”
Mobilizacao Tricolor’s long list demonstrates just how difficult it is for them to organise mosaics. Yet, above all, the declining number of supporters since the turn of the century has made the challenge of creating mosaics all the more challenging for Mobilização Tricolor. Brazil has the world’s worst ticket price to wage level ratios, making it the most expensive place in the world for fans to watch football. Brazilian clubs’ recent financial turmoil is just an earmark of the country’s failing economy, with Fluminense’s debt piling up to RS$649 million. There has also been serial negligence by the league’s main broadcasters. TV Globo, the country’s free-to-air television network, often chooses to push back kick off times to as late as 10pm, protecting the viewing times of its ever-popular novelas (soap operas).
There is now some mention of clubs forming a breakaway league, given the series of administrative and financial errors in the last 20 years. It could be a detrimental prospect for traditional Brazilian football fans looking for cheap match tickets- not to mention the moderately recent modernisation of the Maracanã, which has also emphatically repelled some other traditional supporters from attending fixtures.
There’s also the fact that Fluminense have under-performed since their last Brasileirão win in 2012. Winning less, inevitably, means smaller attendances, as the spokesperson explained to me. The spokesperson explained to me how the group looks to mobilise the club’s fanbase and encourage attendance: “Whenever we organise these actions,” he added, “we look to pick games which have some appeal- the festa we create in the stands can be the extra fuel for our players. Or, [it might be the case that] the advert we put out for some organised action will spread among fans in such a way that they will come down to the stadium in order to get behind it.”
The most recent blow to Fluminense’s low attendances has inevitably been the pandemic. Upon the return of domestic Brazilian football in the first leg of the state championship final between Fluminense and Flamengo, albeit behind closed doors, Mobilizacao Tricolor produced another historic mosaico. By covering the seats with green, white and garnet-red flags to spell out #ÉPeloFlu, they relocated the festa one would normally find beneath the surface of the mosaico to the online world.
There are fewer and fewer signs of optimism for fans in Brazil, and also for fans across the world. The mosaico display is arguably but one symbol for football’s international gentrification. Nowadays, it would not be uncommon for club owners and event organisers to create inauthentic, tone-deaf crowd mosaicsas a method to enhance the overall corporate spectator experience. While Brazilian football has fallen well behind in financial terms, and thus struggled to retain the traditions of a genuinely authentic match experience, the hypothetical possibility of catching up with Europe is just as unappealing. The current political and economic climate in Brazil will unquestionably test the durability of Fluminense’s traditions of festivity and celebration, of its mosaico.
Regardless, Mobilização Tricolor constantly plans ahead to the future. The group is hopeful that Fluminense’s innovative mosaico traditions will survive. when I asked what it would be like to have all fans back in the stadium, without any capacity limits, the spokesperson for Mobilização Tricolor promised me one thing: that it would be “enormous, like Fluminense is”.
Image courtesy of Mobilizaçao Tricolor. / Translations my own.
Netflix’s popular and influential show Sex Education has received great acclaim for its honest portrayal of sexual interactions between secondary school teens. However, its depiction of friendship, though not the focal point of the show, should be investigated.
Sex Education shows a wide range of platonic relationships from the constance, hilarity and comfort of Otis and Eric to the stoic, lack of emotion in the Mean Girls-esque group, the Untouchables. Though the programme’s characters and their friendships are loveable, Sex Education’s portrayal of platonicism often lacks the realism with which they present sex and realtionships.
The drama’s most enduring friendship, between Otis and Eric, is vivacious and greatly energises the show. The combination of Otis’ relaxed and mellow demeanor with Eric’s brightness and warmth makes for a heartwarming and comic duo. However, its narrative lacks complexity: the friends do not argue, and any tension is resolved quickly. Such lack of conflict arguably presents Otis and Eric’s friendship as an ideal platonic model, rather than a reflection of real life. Yet even the finest of friendships include disagreements, which Otis and Eric seem to lack in the show’s third season.
On the other hand, the friendship of Cal and Jackson demonstrates complexity and unresolved tension in Sex Education. Romantic feeling is intertwined with friendship which blurs boundaries and represents the murky waters between romantic and platonic love, echoed by Jackson: “I don’t really have friends that I’ve been with like that”. Sex Education uses these characters to present relationships as a complex spectrum between romance and friendship which results in miscommunication and discomfort: not all friendships are pristine and devoid of awkwardness, a feeling which Cal and Jackson’s relationship captures accurately.
The unresolved tension and overriding sense of awkwardness between Cal and Jackson is unalike to Sex Education’s other friendships. Tension in Sex Education is resolved in a model sense with conversations often resembling Maeve and Aimee’s at the close of the third season:
Maeve: “I’ve been an absolute arse”
Aimee: “Me too. Steve, hold the cakes”
Maeve: “I’m so sorry. You’re right”
The resolution of tension in this style is replicated throughout the season. Characters are written to give each other space, show understanding and a willing to improve their behaviour: it is almost as if spats between the characters have been written and resolved by a psychotherapist. Though this may seem to be a model way of resolving tension, it is unlike real life and not on par to the realistic depictions of sex in the show. Though Sex Education focuses heavily on the real life benefits of therapy and communication, communication between its characters are distant from real life.
COP26 has brought forth a multitude of images which embody the climate crisis: koalas clinging to rescue workers in Australian forest fires, polar bears stranded and solitary on drifting icebergs, the intrepid youth of today bearing placards whilst throwing scorn at inactive governments. We are surrounded by these images in the press, so much so that we become passive to nature’s plea for help. We partake in a kind of environmentally destructive voyeurism as these images become part out our everyday, inducing inertia and inducing global warming above the critical 1.5 degrees to a matter of inevitability. Jolly, I know.
The omnipresence of warning images represents what the climate crisis looks like, but I ask, what does the climate crisis sound like? Would the presence of sound to describe the climate crisis reduce the emotional distance between us and the increasingly critical issues we face? Would sound remind us that, unlike images, the climate crisis is ongoing and not frozen in time in faraway nations?
Does the climate crisis sound like abstractly associated protest music expressing concern about the state of the world? The cover art to Weyes Blood’s album, Titanic Rising, depicts the artist submerged in a bedroom, a subtle reminder of indiscriminately rising sea levels. “Something to Believe” reflects a nihilistic hopelessness and a need to care for larger, more existential worldly issues – “Give me something I can see/ Something bigger and louder than the voices in me”. Weyes Blood demonstrates a well-known sense of resignment to pressing issues in the lyrics of “Something to Believe”: ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising but we are looking on, uncaring.
Childish Gambino’s “Feels like Summer” and The 1975’s “Love It If We Made It” both express climate concern through a masked naivety. Gambino begins with a classic tone of summer nostalgia which is soon subverted by creeping anxieties around “Men who made machines that want what they decide/ Parents tryna tell their children please slow down/ Slow down”. The 1975 similarly put their popular, happy-go-lucky style to use – it becomes paradoxical with their lyrics which go on to address xenophobia, Trumpism and climate change.
Surely the climate crisis is not expressed by implicit lyrics which appeal to listener subjectivities and interpretation? One would point to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” as a classic and explicit message which foreshadows a climate catastrophe. Mitchell expresses a similar nihilism to her modern counterparts: upbeat guitar riffs are compounded with her heady vocal quality which work to create a raw dialectic between artificial capitalism and the natural world, reflected in the song’s lyrics. “Big Yellow Taxi” is the sound of a woman who has given up, resigned to the fates of the future; “Oh, it always seems to go/ You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”.
Whilst artists seem resigned to oncoming threat, the need for action is best vocalised by its leaders. Greta Thunberg, the face of the Friday’s for Future movement, expresses her anxieties over music in The 1975’s nominal track which opens their two most recent albums. The speech, in which Thunberg encourages her listeners to rebel, is sampled over the band’s archetypical, synthetic piano textures. Compelling as Thunberg’s speech is, it is out of place in an album: in an age of shuffling and skipping music, along with a decrease in album popularity, the speech goes underappreciated. Compared with the album’s more popular tracks, it has received a third of Spotify streams. It seems listeners do not wish to be preached to – for many, music offers an escape from existential worries rather than an embodiment of them.
Whilst music is a powerful expression of climate anxieties, sound can be harnessed to show the truly worrying realities of human impact on the planet. David Attenborough’s interaction with the Australian lyre bird depicts the terrifyingly real dominance of humankind in all aspects of the natural world. The lyre bird can mimic the sound of other bird calls and forest noises to attract a mate – yet exposure to camera shutters and chainsaws means it replicates these sounds which have predominated its environment with a shocking accuracy. The creeping presence of artificiality in the lyre bird’s call demonstrates the defilement of the natural world – delightful melodies turn to the sinister sound of human destruction in an unpleasant paradox. However, as shocking and disturbing as the changing call of the lyre bird is, it does not induce or persuade action against deforestation. It merely acts as a depressing reminder of human detriment of natural environments. Perhaps if the lyre bird yelled “write to your MP!” repeatedly we may have some hope of change.
The call of the lyre bird is an explicitly depressing depiction of humankind’s impact on the planet, yet much media representing the climate crisis uses sound in a more optimistic fashion. Cosmo Sheldrake’s album, Wake Up Calls, uses samples from endangered British birds, interwoven with synthesised sounds to raise awareness for the threat they face. He creates rich soundscapes of nature which celebrates the potential diversity of British woodlands, whilst also acting as a poignant reminder of local endangerments: Sheldrakes demonstrates that, just as the ice caps are melting and coral reefs are dying, so are our local ecosystems.
Just as the climate crisis cannot be defined by one image, it cannot be defined by one sound. Rather, we hear a polyphonic cry for help from local and global ecosystems and environments, which is voiced by concerned cultural figureheads. All we need to do is listen and act.
In a previous Cherwell column, I wrote that cinematographers manipulate an audiences’ viewpoint. If that is the case, then editors are the Thanos to the cinematographer’s Red Skull. Editors create a story out of disparate scenes; they create meaning and cohesion using random points in characters’ lives. To put it very bluntly, editors make a film. They decide every shot to use, how long to hold it, where to cut it, and all these small decisions add up to create moods, genres, themes, and opinions about characters. You might have seen YouTube comedy videos that use various clips of scenes – each assembled differently – to make different genres. You might have also seen the 2004 film Ghost Cat: dually advertised as a drama and a family film. They share the same principle: the use of editing to inform the film’s creative style. However, the layman only really notices editing when it goes wrong. So, in reverse, we are going to focus on when it’s bad (so we can know when it’s good). Let’s look at Suicide Squad.
Part of an editor’s job is technical: to simply make the movie and the story easy to watch. The opening of Suicide Squad contradicts this. The spinning logo slowly focuses into a landscape and your attention is with the horizon: but in the bottom right hand of the screen, a location text in a dark and difficult to read font flashes up, only to then be swallowed up by the equally dark landscape. The best case scenario here is that you can read quickly and have no problem with dark colours, and your eyes have to move frantically to get all the information. However, the worst case is that you missed the text, potentially the landscape as well, and you’re immediately frustrated and lost: not the best 10 second introduction to a film. The next cut is to prison walls – and as you attempt to read the wall, a truck drives past, completely obstructing your view. The first few minutes of a film are incredibly important in setting the scene and the tone: the editor should be making this information easy to access, but in Suicide Squad it feels difficult. How the audience’s eyes will track across the screen always requires thought to avoid being frantic and tasking. The audience’s experience should always come first.
Another major technical issue is the cutting in the film. Part of the skill of a great editor is knowing when and where to cut scenes. It’s not as simple as letting the audience see everything; our brains are hardwired to make connections and often editors use this to fill in the gaps between cuts. For example: if you see me dropping an apple, and then see it hitting the ground, you don’t need to see it falling. But, sometimes in Suicide Squad, they either leave too much or too little to the imagination: leaving the audience not quite sure of how characters got there. In the film’s final battle scene with Enchantress, the audience is left guessing where on earth she disappeared to after she was stabbed. Film cutting is also an eminently practical element which can drastically impact how we respond to scary or sad moments. When Enchantress takes over June for the final time, we cut to hearing what happened over the phone to Waller, rather than seeing the action. All suspense is lost in the cut. Equally, after the death of Diablo, we cut to the villain (Enchantress) before the rest of the squad. Deaths in films are obviously supposed to be sad, but often I find the reaction of loved ones to be the truly emotional moments. The shot of Enchantress prior to the shot of the Suicide Squad loses the emotional momentum built up by the death. Going ‘death-friends-villain’ in a sequence is often the more successful one, as the death will cause shock and sadness. Such sadness can then be heightened by the friend’s reaction, only to then be broken by the villain. It means the audience has time to process the death, and potentially feel angrier towards the villain. Sure: it’s not a hard and fast rule, but it is a technique which works time and time again.
These technical faults are not the making of a bad film alone. For at least the first 40 minutes the film feels like an extended trailer or introduction. Even though it ostensibly introduces all these characters, we actually find out very little about them or the story we are watching. The substance is lacking, which means the ‘found family’ theme the producers attempt is incredibly weak. The characters have barely spent any actual time with each other on screen interacting, so the audience feels very little emotional investment in them or their relationships with each other. The editors were seemingly stuck between giving too little backstory to some characters – like Deadshot and Harley Quinn – at the expense of so-so character backstory for the others. Editors are meant to utilise the hours of footage at their disposal to make a story with themes and messages: in this regard, Suicide Squad really falls flat. They certainly try to create a theme of grey morality, with the line between ‘bad guy’ and ‘good guy’ blurred. However, in my notes I took while watching the movie, I wrote ‘it feels like a waffling essay that never gets to the point’. It left me with an overall apathetic feeling about the characters and the plot. Impressively, the injustice in the film failed to move me at all. In film, it’s all about setups and payoffs (establishing an idea and then fulfilling that idea), and an editor’s job is to put both in the film for the audience. With Suicide Squad, scenes are consistently lacking at least one part of it, leading to a very frustrating and boring film.
John Gilroy, the editor of Suicide Squad, is a BAFTA award winning editor. Sometimes projects go wrong (the time pressures faced by the producers of Suicide Squad were widely reported) and editors can’t fix a bad film. However, it’s worthwhile to examine his errors in Suicide Squad to learn from them.
Editors rarely get the same recognition as other jobs do in filmmaking. Because the profession is seen as a ‘technical’ rather than ‘creative’ job, it is further down the hierarchy of filmmaking roles, despite its importance to any film. Women were not often able to break into the ‘creative’ roles of filmmaking, so they often became editors: granting opportunities to shape film history and express their creativity. For the first ever Academy Award for editing in 1934, Anne Bauchens was nominated for Cleopatra, and in 1940 she won for North West Mounted Police. It took until the 1970s for a woman to be nominated for the directing Oscar and 2009 for a woman to win it.
Editing is a vital yet quiet part of filmmaking and its history. It should receive some recognition and understanding for making films, breaking films and giving a creative space to women during a period in which their opportunities for creativity were limited.
Out of the Blue, an Oxford University a cappella group, has released its Christmas charity single for 2021. This year, the group is supporting Helen & Douglas House with the release of their version of Elton John’s Step Into Christmas.
The arrangement of this year’s single was put together by the group’s musical director, Dec Foster, who said: “It has been such a difficult period for everyone in so many different ways, which made it feel amazing to get back to doing what we love.”
President of Out of the Blue, Darren Yang, told Cherwell: “After considering several options, the energy and sheer glee of Elton John’s Christmas tune seemed like the obvious choice. Step Into Christmas lends itself to shifts in tone and mood in the verses, but always has the vibrant chorus to return to, and we hope that this shines through in our music video!”
He explained that there are essentially five parts to every music video release: song rehearsal, learning the choreography, recording the audio, filming shots for the video, and putting the audio and visuals together. Darren said that the visuals were filmed mainly at New College in one day. “It was approaching 0°C that day, so we were absolutely freezing in between takes”, he said, but added: “All-in-all, putting together this year’s video was a blast!”
Helen & Douglas House, an Oxford based hospice charity, provides care and support for children and young adults with life-limiting illnesses and relies almost entirely on public donations. The a cappella group donates all its profits to the charity which they have proudly been supporting for the last fifteen years and have raised over £100,000 during this time. Speaking to Cherwell, Yang said that the group regularly visits the hospice during term time to sing to the families and staff.
Clare Periton, Chief Executive of Helen & Douglas House told Cherwell: “We would like to say a huge thank you to Out of the Blue for their continued support for our charity through bringing out songs to raise money for our charity. It has been a tough 18 months for everyone but particularly local families with terminally ill children who have needed our help more than ever.
“The money raised from this year’s Christmas single could fund our bereavement support to help families who have lost a child and need our help during the festive season. This would not be possible without amazing supporters like Out of the Blue.”
CW: Islamophobia, homophobia, antisemitism/ The Holocaust
In a video posted on November the 30th, reminiscent of Charles de Gaulle’s 1965 campaign broadcast, Eric Zemmour launched his long-awaited presidential campaign; both deliver their speech in a hyperbolic dramatic tone, in front of a library, not looking at the camera. Indeed, this 8/ how Zemmour wishes to be perceived: as the saviour of France from its current situation, in a similar manner that General De Gaulle saved France from Nazi occupation. Below the surface however, Zemmour’s political ideologies is one of division, intolerance and discrimination, and his mere candidacy is a testimony of France’s fragile political landscape and its descent into populist demagogy. To fully understand the danger that Zemmour poses, it is important to understand how he has become a potential future president, having started as an outsider in the French world of politics.
His career originated in journalism, where he has built his success on making himself known as an outrageous figure, thriving whenever he was at the heart of controversies. Eric Zemmour has been convicted of incitement to racial and religious hatred in the past for comments he made on TV, saying that “Muslims have their own Civil Code, called the Quran”, implying that they do not adhere to the French rule of law. In fact, he is currently facing charges that are brought against him for incitement to racial hatred, after he said of unaccompanied child migrants on TV last year: “They’re thieves, they’re murderers, they’re rapists, that’s all they are. We must send them back.”
Just a few months ago in September, Zemmour reiterated his favourite creed, that the practice of Islam is not compatible with French values. According to him, “Muslims need distance themselves from Islam and have a more ‘Christian’ practice of their religion.” Furthermore, he has again and again, on TV and in his writing, advocated for a name-change for all holders of a Muslim name, and he has declared his intentions to enforce this if he is elected president in April 2020. For now, this extreme measure has been received with more humour than horror in France, where several “Zemmour Name-Changing Generator” have popped up on the internet following his campaign launch.
What is to be taken with less humour, however, is the hatred that Zemmour inspires and the division he causes, even though he is still far from ascending to the presidency. Zemmour has subscribed to the Islamophobic French Conspiracy theory of the “Grand Remplacement” (Big Replacement), which sees radical Islamism taking over the country, taking away France’s secularity and democracy. The violent rioting that took place during his first campaign meeting perhaps stands as a first manifestation of the unrest triggered by his persona. It is unlikely that his presence is going to be any less divisive as the presidential election approaches.
The failure of Emmanuel Macron and his predecessors to unite the country and to raise the living standards of the French, including the successive crises during his tenure, have led many French to look for solutions by turning to the extremities of the political spectrum. France is still amongst the European countries with the highest unemployment rate (8%), and poverty has been on the rise in the last decade (with 14% of the population living in relative poverty). The “Yellow Vest” protests at the beginning of Macron’s presidency have shown the difficult social and financial situation in which many French find themselves, and their loss of faith in the country’s political system and institutions. The pandemic, and the inevitable economic disaster it created, only exacerbates the economic and financial inequalities.
Furthermore, Zemmour’s support might come from elsewhere. Many of the many right-wing voters who formerly believed in Marine Le Pen might now look towards Zemmour after she and her father proved unsuccessful in acceding to the presidency. This might be Zemmour’s best chance at winning the election: obtaining sufficient votes from the traditional far-right voters and from deceived centrist voters.
Nevertheless, Zemmour’s populism isn’t new and doesn’t differ much from the ideologies of populists before him, in France and abroad. Like Le Pen, he has identified Islam as a scapegoat for all of France’s ills, or similarly to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rhetoric, Zemmour promises to bring back times that never existed. Indeed, in his campaign clip, Zemmour attempts to position himself in the line of rulers such as Napoleon and General de Gaulle and tries to tap into the French people’s pride by mentioning literary figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo. However, he seems to forget that all three authors lived and worked in exile, threatened, and censored by the French government, and that their ideas of enlightenment, equality, and freedom most certainly go against his promotion of hatred, fear, and intolerance. Ironically, Voltaire’s famous quote from his Questions sur les miracles, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”, appears to be a cynical and fateful warning against Zemmour.
Zemmour’s Islamophobia is by no means the only matter for controversy. His homophobia is also well known amongst the French public, as his multiple utterances about LGBT+ rights have shown. In 2019 for example, Zemmour expressed his belief on TV that homosexuality “is a matter of choice”. Furthermore, as aforementioned, his approach to history is at best clumsy, but at worse it is insulting. Whilst he holds the General de Gaulle in high regards, he also repeatedly defended De Gaulle’s antagonist Philippe Pétain, who, while in charge of Vichy France during World War II, tightly collaborated with the Nazis – especially helping Hitler pursuing his Jewish Genocide. Pétain is nowadays known as one of the worst traitors in France’s history.
If racism, homophobia, and misuses of history make Zemmour fit the mould of the typical populist, his professional and educational background does not. Indeed, unlike most populist leaders in our age of “outsiderism”, Zemmour’s education at one of the country’s best universities, “Science Po”, his contributions to the mainstream newspaper “Le Figaro” and his presence on national TV are all factors that makes him a high profile of the French elite, which can work in his favour as the campaign unfolds. Furthermore, the notoriety he acquired through the many polemics that surround his name, gives him an important headstart, since he doesn’t need to introduce himself nor what he stands for. This is why his opponents should see him as a serious threat because the world does not need another populist leader who was at first only seen as a “fringe candidate”.
His campaign, whether successful or not, already shows us that France is divided at its core. Whoever the next president is, they will face the enormous challenge of uniting the country, a task which perhaps will be harder for Zemmour than anyone else.
When Georgi Pramatarov goes down the stairs, his hands move unconsciously. His knees bend and straighten back up as he completes the motion for a shot at the basket. Though there is no basket, and though there is no ball, he does this ten times, before continuing down to the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t just take these imaginary shots on the stairs. Throughout his day, every day, he’ll randomly perform this movement, and won’t think twice about it.
It is unfortunate that he has not had the chance to make these shots with a real ball on a real court very much this season. He is injured and has been for a while. A few days before Varsity last year, he went for an offensive rebound in late-game garbage time in a friendly against Oxford’s freshmen team. He fell on someone’s leg and landed himself with a grade two ankle injury. Assigning injuries ‘grades’ seems to add some gravitas, and indeed this was not a small deal. Georgi has played a bit this term, but his minutes have had to be managed, and the last game I watched against Nottingham he had to sit out.
That game itself was distinctly indistinct. It could never live up to the theatrics of the previous Brookes game. And that is the way my term with the Blues ended — not with a bang but a whimper. In a cold gym late at night, they started slow and eventually showed their quality. This is not a new arc. It’s the story of most games this term, because the Blues are better conditioned than other teams, and are just better. As the scrappy first quarters fade from memory, the other teams tire, and the sample size of minutes grows for superior quality to show itself amid the natural randomness.
Against Nottingham, the Blues took their usual lead and the game leaked away like a broken tap. Jamie, the coach, took the opportunity to give some less-favoured players some minutes as the time wound down. With six minutes to go, it was 84-52. In the remaining time, Oxford scored two and Nottingham scored nineteen. It was a reminder of the difference the starting players make, as they sat, watching, on the bench, for those last moments.
The real final game of term was on the road. A few years ago, Oxford University Sport would pay for the basketball team to travel in a coach with a driver. Now, one of the players or the coaches is expected to drive everyone in a van. And nobody’s passed the test yet. The Blues did make it to Lincoln though, driven in separate cars, some by coaches, some by players. They had lunch, warmed up, and won, comfortably. Guess what? The first quarter was tight, and eventually, well you know the rest. But I am glad to be told that Georgi starred, scoring 11 points in limited minutes.
As routine as these wins have become, this run of form is totally not routine. The Blues’ start to this season has been literally perfect. They are top of their division. They’re still in the Midlands Cup. They’re still in the Oxford Basketball Association cup. They still have a shot at Varsity. Their record of 10-0 is historic. It’s the best start to a season since the 90s (more specifically, 1998-99, when Oxford won the national championship). Bill, the club president, and Jamie both spoke in interviews earlier in this series about a transformation taking place. The results cannot currently be denied.
Georgi has seen the change up front. He watched the club decline. He was there for the 2017-18 season, when the Blues had the mirror-image record to this current season: a 0-10 record in the league. And now he’s here for the present revival. He tells me of a new, more ambitious culture. He reminds me of the new, shiny kits that Bill and Jamie also love to talk about.
For Georgi, however, his increased connection to this team and this club is also part of a personal journey. The ankle injury he has is one he has had before. Its severity is heightened by that past incident. He has been told that if it happens for a third time, that will be the end of his playing days. When I ask what that would mean to him, he cringes slightly in anticipation of the earnestness he’s about to display. He says, “it would be a huge loss.”
OUBbC player and PhD student Georgi Pramatarov. Credit: Mansoor Ahmed
He is 6’5”, so naturally was encouraged into basketball from early in high school in Bulgaria. At school, he did not have time to take part in many proper games. His expression of his competitive side came instead through various maths and science tournaments. When that education led him to Oxford as an undergrad computer scientist in 2014, he did not make the Blues. He was a bench player for the Twos. It’s been a long road to his current status as one of the two Blues captains.
But although he only started playing for the Blues when he came back for a PhD, he says that in those two years in industry before he decided to rejoin academia for that PhD in 2020, he deeply missed Oxford basketball. That’s when he realised how much it now meant to him: “the whole atmosphere — the team, the practices, the games, the fact that you put on the uniform, the fact that you have to execute perfectly in order to win.”
Georgi is not alone in this feeling. He is not the only one taking ten shots as he walks down the stairs. Rather, he is a useful case study in the commitment to the sport that is mirrored throughout the team. It provides a good deal of the rhythm of these guys’ lives, because it takes a lot of time. In Oxford, if you commit, in a serious way, to some big society or some sport or editing a student newspaper or running a JCR, etc, then there is not a lot of room, along with work, for much else. So it better matter. Well, you better feel it matters.
I have been encouraged to end this series on a note of vindication — to say that my pushing for this series has been justified by the Blues’ success, to say that basketball is not some marginal sport but instead merits great prominence. I’m not sure that that’s quite right. It is true that OUBbC is currently flourishing. Both men’s and women’s Blues are winning with ease. It does seem fair to say that OU Sport should make sure these winning teams have courts with adequate heating and spectator seating, scoreboards that don’t break mid-match, and a mode of transport for away games that doesn’t require the point guard to learn how to drive a van.
On the other hand, Oxford basketball remains a small community. Of course, its constituent members are heavily invested. For Jamie, it’s his career. For Bill and the rest of the players, as said above, it takes up the greater portion of their non-work time. It’s worth noting, for example, that an away game, like that against Lincoln, usually takes up a whole day. It’s also a sport they love, and generally have been playing for years.
For these reasons, the low-level drama that goes on is imbued with great significance. The struggle for game minutes has a quiet intensity. Akin Akinlabi and Rocco Lofinmakin-Dutta have been the successful ones this term in fighting their way into the roster of more-featured players. Others remain yet to prove their worth, to the frustration of some. On the administrative level, the reaction by Jamie and Bill to the cock-ups stated above, like the scoreboard mishap, is of fairly serious grievance.
There is an indirect connection here to other parts of the Oxford landscape — to some of the excesses of Union political fights, OUCA internecine warfare, and other minor Oxfess squabbling. Everyone is attached to their own small communities, and treats them more seriously than an outsider might understand. What’s special, however, about competitive sport, and basketball in particular, is that even if all the extra varnish is stripped away, the dramatisation is, in part, natural.
Basketball in particular because of its enforced speed and its aesthetic edge. The 24-second shot clock ensures that dizzying, end-to-end pace so that every minute there’s at least a couple of failures or mini-successes. In aesthetic terms, there’s the quick passes, the endless movement and choreography, the dancing drives through a packed defence, and the still air as all eyes turn to the ball mid-shot and assess its trajectory.
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a person should be able to fly. Yet a good basketball player jumping towards the hoop makes one question that. And it makes one instinctively see a narrative, as the intentions of all players are so continuously manifest in their movements, and the obstacles between them and fulfilling those intentions are visually clear, be it a tall defender or simply the trigonometrical requirements for a floating shot to drop effortlessly through the net.
In short, there is a lot to commend taking an interest in the Oxford Blues. Constructing narratives and character-arcs in their games is not difficult. They play a genuinely beautiful sport, and they are a group that is going somewhere. It’s a shame to end things here, when either way, something worth reporting is going to happen. Either (and this is admittedly less interesting) the Blues will eventually lose, and I wonder what that will feel like after such sustained success. Alternatively, they might just keep on winning. Jamie has indeed raised the possibility of the unimaginable ‘perfect season’. But, as I am sure he would concede, talk of that currently is a bit premature.
For now, it is time for everyone involved in this flurry of training, playing, complaining and cheering, to take a break. Oxford time tends to tick faster than most. In the sleepy and weirdly unconnected world of vac life, the mind adjusts uncannily quickly to a slower pace. Within a week, term time seems pretty distant.
When these players return, after a rest, this article series will no longer be part of mythologising their journey. But if they can pick up where they left off, if the Blues can keep winning, and keep making history, there is little else they should need to feel satisfied with how things are going in their little community. And a story will continue to brew by the hoops on Iffley Road.
CW: This is a mildly comedic column written by a drag queen agony aunt. It is not for the faint hearted, and contains sensitive topics which may cause distress to some readers.
Your favourite IBS-ridden drag-ony aunt has been giving you life advice all term. Like Nanny McPhee, Aunt Rusty has been here to help with your pillow talk problems, insecurity issues, and debaucherous debacles. She’s been dishing out important life advice five hundred words at a time; all because if you lot end up in the Warneford, no one will come to her shows. You’ve been guaranteed complete anonymity, unless she needed to use your trauma for blackmailing. Happens shockingly often. When you need her but do not want her, she shall be there; but when you want her but do not need her, she will be elbow deep in your father. Go back to your therapist – I know it’s above her paygrade, but she needs something to kill the time.
Rusty Kate will back in Hilary to help you solve your love troubles! If you would want Aunt Rusty’s help, submit your question here.
CW: This is a mildly comedic column written by a drag queen agony aunt. It is not for the faint hearted, and contains sensitive topics which may cause distress to some readers.
Your favourite drag-ony aunt that drag-ony can’t is back! Aunt Rusty is here to help with your mummy, daddy, and zaddy issues. She’s dishing out important life advice five hundred words at a time, all out of the goodness of her heart (and the fact that there’s not much else to do in the Warneford).
Remember to submit your questions through the link on the Cherwell Facebook page or @rustykatedrag’s Instagram – you’re guaranteed complete anonymity. Unless you’re being fucking stupid, in which case you will be doxed.
Right, onto the issues your mother wasn’t listening to during your bi-weekly Facetime calls…
My boyfriend decided to break up with me midway through sex on the first day of meeting after a long-distance relationship over summer vac. I had some doubts about long-distance but he always reassured me to the contrary, only to dump me abruptly in lieu of an emotional reunion after being physically apart for so long. Should I forgive him and how do I move on from this?
That’s not really a sensible question dear – he broke up with you! It’s done! You’re over! Capeesh? At least you got a goodbye shag! Would you rather he did it over text? What do you expect? Granted, mid-way through sex isn’t a great way to break it to you, but clearly it was on his mind and stopping him from finishing. Maybe you should think about yourself and why he felt the need to break up with you. There’s nothing to forgive, you just need to forget and move the fuck on. Find a man on tinder, have a few rebounds, and for god’s sake, don’t catch feelings again. It only ends badly.
Alternatively, ask the much more sensible question of how you get revenge. I know there’s a petrol shortage, but a short cab to his house (with a stop at the nearest petrol station) is sure to send him the message you want. Just make sure he’s home at the time.
Dear Rusty, I need help getting over a m*n. We were really good friends, but then we got with each other. I feel like we’ve been circling around something for a while, but apparently he thinks we’re both over it. I’m watching him dick around with other girls but can’t seem to stop wanting his. What do?
Revenge is best served hot and sticky. Shag around, get the clap, then fuck his brother. Work your way around his social circle to ensure that he, and everyone he knows, will be itching to high heaven for the next two to four weeks. Maybe even bribe the GUM clinic nurse to give him the wrong bum injection – make sure that BOTH his cheeks are sore. If you want full shock value, become his mother’s lesbian lover. Be the step-mother he never wanted, and become more intimate with the place he came from than he could ever know. And if that sounds like too much work, just start a rumour that he’s got a piss kink.
How do I convince my boyfriend to wash his balls? Every time I go down on him I have to restrain myself from gagging at the smell!
Oh grow up, it all adds to the flavour. The French would scrape off whatever’s on top and spread it on a cracker – count yourself lucky.
