The Faculty of Music has announced the creation of the new Nigel Nettheim Scholarship for Schubert Studies, for one DPhil student joining in the 2026/27 academic year.
The scholarship is funded by Australian musicologist, Dr Nigel Nettheim, who has established the scholarship before his will comes into effect. He told Cherwell: “For about sixty years I have enthusiastically studied Schubert’s music. In an attempt to continue this work beyond my life I included a bequest in my will.”
Franz Schubert, an Austrian composer of the Romantic period, produced an enormous body of work during his short lifetime; as well as opera, symphonies, and chamber music, he is particularly well-known for his work in the Lieder genre, art songs typically written for one person accompanied by the piano. The DPhil student will explore Schubert’s extensive work to “throw new light onto his compositions”, following on from Dr Nettheim’s research.
Dr Nettheim told Cherwell that he was “first drawn to Schubert’s personal character via a biography. I then found, to my delight, that his music truly reflected that personal character”. Dr Nettheim hopes that the scholarship will allow “insight into how Schubert’s amazing mind worked. The main evidence is contained in his scores, whose comparative analysis can contribute to building up the sought-after picture of his otherwise-hidden mental activity”.
Dr Nettheim decided that Australia, his home country, “has many attractive features but it is probably less suited to this research than is, for instance, the UK. Hence the Oxford scholarship”.
The award will cover the full DPhil course fees at the Home rate and a living stipend for three years.
During their time in Oxford, the DPhil student will reside at Wadham College, an apt home for a music student due to its proximity to the Holywell Music Room and an active music-making culture amongst Wadham students.
Also available to the student will be the facilities in the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, where the Faculty of Music is housed. The incoming DPhil student will be able to make the most of the facilities and performance spaces, including practice rooms and a recital hall.
December saw the announcement of Netflix’s $72 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. What followed was a veritable moral panic amongst cinephiles, and I count myself as one of those who fear for the future of the theatrical release. I have therefore set out to better understand my loyalty towards the cinemas that have the nerve to charge £20 or more per ticket, and to dive deeper into the possible future complexion of the film industry.
I get the impression that the question of streaming as an existential threat to the cinema industry has become somewhat tedious. Is the movie theatre destined to keep bouncing back as a cultural pillar? And does the perpetual sink-or-swim narrative play a role in driving people to see a film on the silver screen? I for one am always convinced that my ticket purchase is going to single-handedly save cinema.
To avoid exaggerating, we ought to turn to what Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has said on the matter: “My pushback has been mostly in the fact of the long exclusive windows, which we don’t really think are that consumer-friendly.” You’ll have to forgive my scepticism about the altruistic capacity of the CEO of a company worth $413 billion, but I take issue with this statement. Firstly, if cinema ticket prices continue to increase, will anyone be able to justify trips to the cinema to see films that will be available for free (or at least, it feels that way) 30 days later? This is not an exaggeration: according to film blog Dark Horizons, theatrical windows now average a length of just 32 days. Furthermore, I worry about a future in which, after having established something of a monopoly on films available to watch on streaming, Netflix continues to price-gouge the consumer. This profiteering was made even more abundantly clear by the introduction of geographic limits to Netflix accounts. Considering this is the same company that once, on Valentine’s Day, tweeted: “Love is sharing a password”, you have to acknowledge the hypocrisy.
Another defence of the cinema worth exploring is its ability to bolster our attention spans in a culture increasingly dominated by short-form content. While the opportunity to pause a film and make a cup of tea is always appreciated when watching at home, the more general possibility of distraction, far less so. I don’t think the time has yet come for a full-scale “it’s those damn phones” moral panic, but we do need to think seriously about safeguarding a hobby that forces you to focus on one thing for a couple of hours. In the spirit of exemplarity, I hereby promise to resist the temptation to start drafting my Letterboxd review before the film has finished.
It may well be that we’re obsessing over new releases when the saving grace of cinemas lies in rereleases. Perhaps inspired by the Netflix model of a constantly changing catalogue, both chain and independent cinemas are increasing the number of classic films they show. Distributor Park Circus’ CEO Doug Davis cited research from Gower Street and Comscore which shows that box office returns in the UK for classic films grew by 133% in 2023 compared to the pre-pandemic average between 2017-2019. I can personally attest to the mental health benefits of going to see It’s a Wonderful Life the week before Christmas with a glass of white wine included in the ticket price.
The adventures of the film’s protagonist George Bailey also represent something fundamental and necessary about the cinema experience: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” The same can be said of going to see a movie, however terrible it turns out to be, amongst people you love. There’s joy to be found in sitting and laughing through a film rather than DNF-ing it on Netflix and choosing something else. The shared act of viewership provides something inexhaustibly exciting to the cinematic experience.
At its most extreme, this sense of communality can spark a wider cultural phenomenon of cinema-going. I think it’s possible that dressing up in a suit to watch the Minions movie reignited a love of cinema-going amongst at least a handful of teenage boys. I certainly don’t think either Barbie or Oppenheimer would have achieved such box-office returns if they had been released straight to streaming. This seems to suggest hope for the future of the movie theatre, and I certainly appreciate the whimsical and sentimental illusion of social unity that such trends create. I enjoyed crying through America Ferrara’s Barbie monologue about girlhood while sitting in a row filled with my girl friends. Sue me.
As it turns out, I’m not just rambling sentimentally. According to researchers at UCL, a shared social focus has been shown to have long-term benefits for our brain function, memory, focus, and productivity. As a true humanities student, I will point out that this benefit is artistic as well as scientific: if film, like all art, nourishes itself on its own œuvre, I don’t think we can afford to sever the association between the cinema and the film. Would Brief Encounter or La La Land achieve their desired effect if the protagonists were sat watching a film on the sofa? Would Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood look the same if Sharon Tate merely switched on the television to watch herself on screen?
You may have concluded that I am a Luddite, and you may well be right. I am certainly a hypocrite, who advocates for the necessity of multiple streaming service memberships while requesting that my dad includes me in our family plan. I can appreciate the choice and ease of streaming, and the ability to watch films that don’t make it to the Oxford Curzon, but nothing quite makes me feel as alive as when I leave the cinema and feel ever so slightly changed for the better by a good film. For the time being, the Academy shares my opinion, and only awards films that have some kind of theatrical release, but is this the last bastion of the movie theatre’s defence? Or have I merely been conditioned by the industry to respond to a non-existent perceived threat by spending my money at their cinemas? I suppose we’ll have to see (you at the movies).
Worcester College has elected Professor Santa Ono – the current Global President of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) and President of EIT Oxford – to a senior research fellowship.
A former biomedical researcher, Ono has previously served as President of the University of Michigan, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Cincinnati. A member of several academic bodies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he now also leads EIT – an Oxford-based commercial research organisation focusing on AI, clinical medicine, generative biology, and sustainable energy.
Regarding his election, Worcester told Cherwell: “Professor Ono’s stellar research career, his research plans and role at EIT Oxford, as well as his track record of university leadership and commitment to music, made him an excellent addition to the Worcester fellowship.”
Worcester added that Ono, as a research fellow, will “play a key role” in supporting the college’s “thriving research community”, contributing to its research strategy and wider academic life. Although Ono will not be based full-time in Oxford for the foreseeable future, the college said it is still “excited about the research and other insights that he will bring”.
Ono’s affiliation to both Worcester and EIT may also open further opportunities for “strong ties” between the two institutions, according to the College. EIT, founded by Oracle co-founder and centibillionaire Larry Ellison, has already launched several projects at the University, including a £118 million investment in AI vaccine research. However, there are indications that Ellison’s financial commitment to the Institute is being scaled back. Ono’s predecessor as EIT President, Sir John Bell, left his role in September after clashing with Ellison over his “downgraded vision” for the project.
Ono told Cherwell it is “an incredible honour” to be awarded the fellowship, and that he is “very much looking forward to getting to know the faculty, staff, and students there”. He added that the fellowship, alongside other connections between the EIT and wider university, “will only strengthen what I see as a powerful and genuinely synergistic relationship”.
Looking ahead, Ono told Cherwell: “I hope to have a positive impact by sharing my experiences with students, and by doing everything I can to support faculty at Worcester College and throughout the University.”
Oxford City Council approved their Local Plan to make Oxford a 15-minute city on 14th September 2022. In response, conspiracy theorists organised a mass protest. With some of the new traffic regulations now in place, it’s time for a deep dive into the conspiracist movement and its sunset legacy in Oxford.
When students stepped outside their colleges on 18th February 2023, a strange sight may have confronted them. They might’ve seen someone in the guise of Karl Schwab (head of the World Economic Forum) and another of Greta Thunberg wearing an East Berlin border guard uniform. Or maybe their attention was caught by people carrying placards reading “No to Subversion, Surveillance and Control!”, “There is NO climate emergency” and “15 Min City communism – we do NOT consent”. These were the scenes of a protest against the City Council’s proposed traffic policies aimed at alleviating the city’s chronic traffic issues; making Oxford more like a 15-minute city.
What is the conspiracy theory?
The 15-minute city was originally an urban planning concept devised by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Its aim was to have all key amenities accessible for residents within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. In Moreno’s own words, the driving force behind the concept was to “improve the quality of life for inhabitants”, ultimately “changing our traditional lifestyle based on long distances”. Oxford City Council endorsed this in their Local Plan of September 2022. When the council later introduced new traffic city controls in November 2022, conspiracy theorists conflated the two plans, fashioning the Council’s approach as a governmental ploy to restrict the freedom of movement – effectively, following the months of COVID-19 restrictions, a lockdown 2.0.
Professor Peter Knight, from Manchester University, has written extensively about conspiracy culture both in the United States and Europe. He told Cherwell that the conspiracy theory emerged at first from isolated blog posts by climate deniers. One online blogger wrote: “Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15-minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods. . .Under the new scheme, if residents want to leave their zone, they will need permission from the council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t.”
Following this, the theory was taken up by anti-lockdown activist groups and subsequently amplified by an existing web of conspiracy influencers. Knight explains: “Traffic control was reframed as a restriction of personal liberties. An existing network of anti-lockdown and anti-vaxx activists, as well as culture warriors tapping into conspiracist fears, pivoted towards traffic control schemes.” The BBC even reported that Emily Kerr, a member of Oxford City Council, was confronted by local residents about whether the measures were an attempt to curb personal freedom. Kerr said: “People have come up to me and said: is it true that we’re not going to be allowed out of our houses, that it’s going to be just like the coronavirus lockdown?”
It wasn’t all fringe conspiracy theorists though – the fear even got airtime in the House of Commons. Then Conservative MP Nick Fletcher called the 15-Minute City in February 2023 an “international socialist concept” during a parliamentary debate. According to Fletcher, the step threatened to “take away personal freedoms”.
Michael Barkun calls umbrella conspiracy theories “superconspiracies”. The 15-minute city conspiracy theories endorsed by those who protested in Oxford are part of a much larger paranoid narrative known as the Great Reset. The Great Reset was, in fact, the name given by the World Economic Forum to its agenda during COVID-19. It was a document setting out a new approach towards a fairer, greener version of capitalism. Conspiracy theorists saw it differently. To them, the Great Reset was a plan to use different forms of surveillance to keep people enslaved. For them, this included using technologies like digital cash, biometric facial recognition, and traffic cameras. During the pandemic, conspiracist ideas and protest became more widespread and that energy, Knight tells me, has been repurposed to new causes. Climate change is presented as a hoax intended, again, to keep the masses subservient.
It’s worth recognising that such concerns about the “globalist plots” are not just populist expressions of resentment but also a regurgitation of deeply held historical antisemitic myths about who secretly pulls the strings. Antisemitic conspiracy theories such as the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed to expose a Jewish global plot but were quickly revealed as fraudulent (and later plagiarised), still influence discourse on certain pockets of the internet. These tropes reared their head in the slogans of some of those at the Oxford 15-minute city protest, a worrying reminder how concerns over something as innocuous as traffic policy can be exploited by those with more sinister agendas.
The Protest
Tensions over the Oxford City Council’s decision came to a climax in February 2023. Conspiracists from all over the UK took to the streets of Oxford, chanting, carrying placards, and even livestreaming the event on their social media accounts. Annie Kelly, journalist and reporter at the protest, told Cherwell about what she observed on the day. On the one hand, she recalled the “lively, carnival atmosphere” and the “strong sense of community” between campaigners where “lots of people knew each other”. On the other hand, though, the protest was poisoned by aggression and polemic rhetoric. Kelly described a cameraman from the BBC who was heckled by protestors. They shouted: “Shame on you!” Members from Patriotic Alternative, the far-right group described by The Times in 2023 as “Britain’s largest far-right white supremacist movement”, were also present on the fringes of the protest.
Big names on the conspiracist scene appeared too. Piers Corbyn, the conspiracy theorist brother of Jeremy Corbyn, and Lawrence Fox, the ex-GB news host, were amongst those who took to the stage. The former proclaimed that all forms of traffic zoning have “the same aim” – “to control you, to cost you, and to con you into believing in the man-made climate change story”. He linked the new Oxford measures with those in London: “break ULEZ and break Sadiq Khan.” One of the most circulated videos online from the protest was that by Katie Hopkins, the right-wing culture warrior. In a video published on her YouTube, Hopkins speaks to the camera on her way to the protest. She appears incensed by the media who want to “smear the people who are going to protest locking down a city into fifteen-minute zones”. When at the protest itself, Hopkins films the supposedly high numbers of police, taking their presence as evidence that the council’s decision is about more than just traffic controls. She wonders if “they’re practicing for when there is a low traffic network and they have to catch criminals.”
The demographic
The divide on 18th February was, unlike so many of those in Oxford, not a tale of town versus gown. Both locals and members of the University were united by their absence at the protests. Some protesters showed frustration at this, feeling abandoned particularly by the students. One woman said to Kelly: “I had hoped that the students would come and support us.” Here we see the tension between the right and higher education that so dominates our politics today.
In fact, the vast majority of campaigners travelled into Oxford for the event; they neither lived in nor were from the city. Kelly said: “If it had of [sic] only been locals, it would have been a much smaller protest.” Out of all those whom Kelly interviewed, only two were from Oxford. They were “very much a rarity”, also anomalous for their lack of knowledge about or investment in the conspiracy theories driving the protests. One of these local women said to Kelly: “We’re not anti-COVID … We’re just nice normal people.” She even clarified to Kelly that she had gotten “all of [her] jabs”. As a mobile hairdresser, she opposed the congestion charge not because she thought it a ploy by the global cabal to subjugate humanity, but because of the impact it would have on her access to her clients.
Yet the political demographic of the protesters can be hard to decipher. It’s hard to pin down the varying politics of some of the conspiracy theorists. A concern over sovereignty can lean in different directions: national sovereignty can lean right, heightening tensions over immigration, for example, whereas bodily sovereignty can lean left, towards new age spiritualism. The political scientists William Callison and Quinn Slobodian call this ‘diagonalism’. They write: “Born in part from transformations in technology and communication, diagonalists tend to contest conventional monikers of left and right (while generally arcing toward far-right beliefs), to express ambivalence if not cynicism toward parliamentary politics, and to blend convictions about holism and even spirituality with a dogged discourse of individual liberties.” The author of Doppelganger, Naomi Klein, calls this situation “a conspiracy smoothie”. She laments how the “far right” have become bedfellows with the “far out” today.
What now?
Today, some of the much lamented traffic regulations are now in effect. They began on 29th October 2025 with a temporary five-pound daily charge for motorists driving at certain times without a permit. The tax applies to only six roads in Oxford, including Hythe Bridge Street, St Cross Road, St Clement’s Street, Thames Street, Marston Ferry Road, and Hollow Way. It seeks to both ease the city’s chronic congestion and help alleviate the climate crisis.
There has been some backlash to the new measures. Open Roads for Oxford is the main organisation leading this. Their concerns are rooted not in conspiracism but rather the economic efficacy of the scheme and, according to their website, “the disproportionate impact on particular groups, including vulnerable people”. In their view, the congestion charge threatens to impact workers in low-paid sectors who offer mobile services and therefore often rely on their own transport for their livelihoods. Consequently, Open Roads for Oxford issued a legal challenge to Oxfordshire City Council over the scheme on 7th October 2025. It was, however, rejected by the council on 4th November 2025.
Yet from the conspiracy theorist groups themselves, no protests have followed those that took place in February 2023. The movement has dispersed, morphed, and shifted focus. Kelly said: “The movement is still around but more diffused than it was a few years ago. . . There is still very much a community but without the animating force of something like COVID it has slightly loosened over the years.” Now, without the animating force of COVID, supporters have moved onto other “passion projects”; seemingly innocuous concerns about 15-minute cities can easily be radicalised and spun into a wider narrative about the “globalist agenda”. For some, according to Kelly, this entails “branching off into educational co-ops”. For others, this involves the endorsement of the anti-vaxx agenda. Though this ideology has a long history, it has been given new vitality by the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr. as US health secretary and his Make America Health Again campaign. Conspiracy theories always evolve. They are like a hydra – you can slay one head, only for two more to appear.And so, when you step out of your college on 18th February this year, the streets should be free of Karl Schwab and Greta Thunberg impersonators – providing there isn’t another global pandemic.
Let’s talk about our brain. Or what’s left of it after 37 seconds on TikTok, 2 hours of doomscrolling, and the kind of attention span where you literally need a Subway Surfers video playing in the corner just to read this article.
You were going to read this article, but you got distracted by a 3-minute video essay about which classic literature books are now red flags in dating. It’s fine. It’s now considered modern.
Our brains crave novelty, rewards, motion, a sense that something, anything, is happening.
So when it comes to education, sitting still and listening quietly has become hostile architecture for the brain.
Which is why the white horse of 21st-century pedagogy just clomped into frame: gamified learning. Also known as: what if school, but with a dopamine hit.
What Even Is Gamified Learning?
For the uninitiated, gamified learning is the practice of turning education into a game. Points, badges, levels, leaderboards, or math homework meet the Minecraft server. It’s like tricking your brain into thinking it’s having fun while secretly absorbing knowledge, like hiding broccoli under cheese.
The promise? Engagement, motivation, retention. The reality? Sometimes yes. Sometimes it’s just Candy Crush with a syllabus.
Attention Spans Are Melting – But Not in Games
Here’s the paradox: kids (and, let’s be honest, adults who eat Lunchables by choice) can’t sit through a 30-minute lecture without mentally peeling wallpaper. But they’ll hyperfocus for six hours straight to earn a virtual pickaxe made out of netherite. Why? Because games are engineered to hijack your reward system like it’s the Italian Job.
Gamified learning borrows that same psychological magic. Micro-goals, instant feedback, the illusion of control. It’s not cheating, but meeting the modern brain where it lives now: somewhere between a YouTube rabbit hole and a flashing XP bar.
Are We Teaching… or Just Entertaining?
Of course, critics will say: this isn’t education, it’s brainrot. And, okay, yes, when a spelling app offers you a badge for finishing five levels of word puzzles, that’s not exactly Socratic dialogue. But is it effective? Studies are starting to nod yes. Especially for subjects that typically make students want to chew drywall.
And let’s not pretend traditional learning was flawless. Rows of desks, monotone lectures, and the joyless tyranny of the overhead projector. Gamified systems might be silly, sure, but at least they try to care whether students are awake.
Some classrooms now teach logic gates using Redstone in Minecraft, letting kids build circuits and trapdoors instead of silently diagramming them on a worksheet. And when students spend their Minecoins gift card on a virtual cape or a creeper-themed classroom skin, it somehow feels more rewarding than that dusty “Student of the Week” certificate stapled to the wall since 1997.
Status: Complicated
Like any educational trend with a shiny interface and a TED Talk, gamified learning isn’t a one-size-fits-all fix. Sometimes it’s transformative, and sometimes it’s just digital stickers on a worksheet. But in an age where attention is the rarest commodity (somewhere between lithium and actual in-person conversation), maybe it’s worth giving XP points for trying.
At worst, it’s mildly cringey. At best, it’s the thing that helps a kid finally understand fractions – while collecting gems in a dungeon wearing a customisable hat.
So, can gamified learning save our crumbling, flickering attention spans? Maybe not completely. But it’s one of the few tools that doesn’t require dragging students back to the blackboard like it’s 1957. It meets them in their environment, offers them a quest, and maybe, just maybe, teaches them something before their next notification pings.
If you’ve been paying attention to fashion, culture, or the images plastering magazines and movies in the last few months, you’ll have noticed it already. Digicams hanging from wrists like accessories. Wired headphones peeking out of coat pockets. iPods, flip phones, scratched CDs, bulky MP3 players reappearing not as relics, but as aesthetic choices. The next trend, apparently, is “going analogue”.
Of course, no one means actually going analogue (at least not in the true sense of the word). Digital technology gives us speed, storage, and infinite access. But it has also reshaped how we pay attention to what we consume – and what we value. This isn’t a mass rejection of Wi-Fi or a return to VHS tapes and landlines. What’s being signalled instead is a desire for the feeling these things create: slowness, tactility, a sense of limitation. A softer relationship with technology that resists the hyper-optimised digital world. Like most trends, it’s framed visually first – grainy photos, boxy devices, imperfect sound– but beneath the aesthetic is something deeper.
Growing up, physical media was never foreign to me. CDs and radios weren’t dusty objects belonging solely to my parents; they were part of my everyday life. There was something grounding about choosing a CD, placing it into a player, listening through an album without skipping every 30 seconds.
But as I got older, the internet pulled me away from that world. Not because CDs felt obsolete, but because digital platforms offered something intoxicating: freedom. The ability to explore entire genres, cultures, and scenes instantly. Spotify felt like liberation – an endless library that allowed me to build my taste without borders. I didn’t abandon my CDs; I was drawn outward by possibility.
That balance shifted when I got to university. Time pressure changed everything. Between lectures, deadlines, and constant low-level exhaustion, convenience became king. Spotify began to compete with my CD collection in a way it never had before. Streaming won, not because it was better, but because it was faster. Music slipped into the background, filling silence while I walked between buildings or ate rushed lunches.
For a long time, the tension sat quietly at the back of my mind. I could feel that something in my relationship with music had shifted, but it remained vague, easy to ignore. I kept listening, kept saving songs, kept letting sound fill the gaps of my day.
Suddenly, the way I consumed music felt uncomfortably familiar. It mirrored how I scrolled through Reels or Shorts: fast, fragmented, disposable. My 100-hour “liked songs” playlist had swallowed thousands of hours of artistic labour, compressing it into background noise I barely registered.
What had once felt like liberation was exposed as false freedom: infinite choice repackaged by corporations into content streams optimised for algorithms, convenience, and profit. Albums and artists were flattened, and music – something I had once approached with curiosity and care – had become a filler. I wanted to slow down, to choose deliberately, to listen with intention again. I didn’t want to consume – I wanted to curate.
So, I dug out my old MP3 player. It had survived several failed attempts by a younger version of me to make it ‘cooler’. Its final form was a black case painted over with green nail polish and finished with a craft-pen-silver-trim. I started downloading music again. One album at a time. Choosing carefully. Listening fully.
This is where the distinction between consumption and curation becomes clear. In the last few years, minimalism encouraged us to shed physical possessions for the sake of simplicity – books replaced by e-readers, DVDs by Netflix, CDs by Spotify. But in exchanging objects for platforms, we inherited a different kind of excess. Subscriptions multiplied. Notifications accumulated. The clutter didn’t disappear; it just became invisible.
A consumer scrolls, absorbs, forgets. A curator chooses, maintains, and returns. Analogue systems naturally demand this care because they are finite. You can’t own infinite CDs. You can’t skip through every song ever recorded in seconds. Limitation, I realised, isn’t a flaw – it’s what makes engagement possible in the first place.
This logic doesn’t stop with music. Increasingly, news, political ideas, and cultural debates are encountered the same way songs are: through feeds, snippets, autoplay. Social media is now where many people learn what’s happening in the world. When information is delivered through systems designed to maximise engagement, we stop seeking it out and start absorbing whatever surfaces first.
Here, the difference between consumer and curator becomes more than a matter of taste – it becomes a matter of thought. Passive consumption is no longer harmless. Algorithms reward speed, outrage, and familiarity, not nuance or reflection. Over time, this flattens discourse and erodes our ability to think critically. When corporations quietly decide what we see, what repeats, and what disappears, control over ideas shifts away from people and into profit-driven systems.
As “going analogue” re-emerges as a cultural moment, I hope it’s more than surface-level-nostalgia dressed up as style. There’s irony in a trend that seeks to reduce consumption, eventually becoming another thing to consume, but that irony may be unavoidable. Even so, the impulse behind it feels sincere: a collective longing to slow down, to feel friction again, to resist the constant pull of the next thing.
That desire has reshaped how I move through online spaces, too. Not by abandoning them entirely, but by treating them with the same intention I relearned through music. Just as I chose albums over playlists, I stripped platforms back to their essentials – turning YouTube into a long-form-content library by removing Shorts, letting Instagram exist primarily as a place for messages rather than endless scroll. These weren’t grand gestures or declarations of disconnection, just small acts of resistance against systems built to dissolve attention.
In that sense, “going analogue” isn’t really about objects at all. It’s about boundaries. About deciding where attention begins and ends. Whether this impulse lasts or is eventually folded back into consumption is still uncertain. But even a brief return to deliberate use – a pause inside a culture built on infinite access – feels quietly radical.
Paris is internationally renowned as a hub of creativity, inspiring artistic pursuits throughout its history. Its many galleries, including the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, bear testament to its artistic credentials. Yet it is the Louvre that takes first place in global renown, with a firmly entrenched status as a ‘must-see’ on any trip to Paris. It was, in the end, the fear that we would be doing the city a disservice, as well as perhaps an inclination towards masochism, that led us to include a visit to the Louvre on our agenda.
In spite of recent events, the expected heightened security was nowhere evident, making one doubt if they’ve even got round to changing the video surveillance password yet. I wasn’t planning to pull an Arsène Lupin, but it’s nice to know that I could have if I’d wanted to. The apparent scarcity of museum staff in general meant that not only were vast swathes of the museum closed to the public, but there was no one to offer a guiding ball of string as we traced our way through the labyrinthine layout of the endless Ancient Greek section.
The Louvre has the dubious privilege of housing a vast treasury of objects, particularly antiquities taken from Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the Middle East. Yet the curators of such a wealth of alluring artefacts seem to have taken the bold creative decision to not curate them at all. Far from imposing any hint of organisational design, the approach was rather to indiscriminately pile every single object in the collection into unmarked display cabinets. The only reason that I was able to get anything out of the homogeneous stretches of ancient artefacts was because I already knew about them. When an Oxford education is a prerequisite to understanding exhibitions, what precise purpose is the museum serving?
Such a blatant refusal to explain the origin, design, or significance of these objects signifies more than indolence. It perpetuates the notion that art, and its comprehension, is the preserve of the elite – if you know, you know, and if you don’t know, we’re certainly not going to help you out.
Museums are, in their very conception, the only place where most people will be exposed to such recondite objects as Cycladic figurines and Persian bas-reliefs. It should not have to be spelled out that it is, therefore, their obligation to act as mediator, to translate the geographically and temporally inaccessible into the idiom of the present day. Yet the Louvre, in its refutation of accessibility, seems to follow the doctrine of Schopenhauer, that art must remain a sealed book to the dull masses. The majority of visitors, who missed the memo about the required pre-reading, will leave the museum no more enlightened about Ancient Egyptian society than when they entered. This approach exacerbates the issues caused by these objects’ contentious status: not only are they removed, often illegally, from their country of origin, they are not even dignified with a description. In the hands of curators, storied artefacts, interpretative keys to historical and cultural understanding, are reduced to lumps of metal and clay.
Putting aside the Mona Lisa, which is visible only momentarily, submerged behind an undulating barricade of iPhones, the keynote of the museum’s artistic programme appeared to be the spirit of French national pride. The highlights tour which formed the guiding principle of the map consisted mostly in portraits of French kings (ironically for a country that makes so much of its revolutions). You would never know that the Louvre housed such works as La Mort de Marat, Lady Macbeth Sleepwalking, and the paintings of Boucher. I found out that these were part of the collection only when I saw the postcard display in the giftshop. Not that I would have been able to fully appreciate them – the paintings were, for the most part, poorly lit and tersely labelled.
In the last month or so, the museum has sunk to even greater depths of incompetence with the unveiling of a new exhibition, the Galerie de cinq continents, with the avowed aim to “tell the story of humanity in all its diversity and richness”. The exhibition amounts to various figurines from disparate parts of the globe, primarily from Africa and Polynesia (unsurprisingly), sporadically dotted around in display cases like floating islands. The vast room, oppressively clinical in its blankness, was punctuated by vacuous paragraphs descanting on such profound topics as ‘belief’ and ‘authority’, the verbal glue inexpertly applied to manufacture a sense of coherence.
The main takeaway of the exhibition was the comprehensive failure to acknowledge France’s colonial past. Even where the origin of an object was specified, the legality of its acquisition was obfuscated by words like ‘collected’, as if it were an ASOS parcel. This laissez-faire approach was likewise applied to the display’s inclusion of actual human remains, with no attempt to contextualise or justify the curatorial choices. Its half-hearted effort to create a storybook tableau of global unity came across as patronising, and ultimately affirmed, rather than undermined, an implicit sense of colonial dominance. Bolstered by the perverse notion – maintained, it seems, primarily by those outside of France – that the Louvre stands as an enduring symbol of national pride, these artefacts are isolated from their contexts and co-opted as props in a farcical performance of Western superiority.
The oppressive crowds, the steep ticket prices, and the confusing layout all conspired to make the museum experience unbearable, even for the staunchest of French nationalists, and the immense shopping mall we had to get through before we could find the exit seemed to rub salt in the wound. The Louvre, like all the worst museums, is little more than a bulwark of outdated nationalism, a stain on the artistic pretensions of those who uphold it. In the end, its only beneficiary is the tourist trade, churning out an endless stream of Mona Lisa fridge magnets and pyramid keychains. Save your euros, and wait for the next revolution.
The 21st century has seen the rise of streaming services in both visual media and music, heralding the predominance of monthly fees over outright ownership. Although physical media has recently made a comeback through a surge in popularity of CDs and vinyl, their price has significantly increased since their original use. The cost of watching live performances has also drastically risen in recent years. Corporations such as Ticketmaster raise prices, with recent controversy over their ‘dynamic pricing’ system which inflated prices of Oasis tickets based on public demand.
Whilst music in the 21st century is instantly accessible through streaming platforms, this convenience has come at the cost of music’s perceived value. Rather than owning music, listeners now pay a relatively small subscription fee to access vast catalogues advert-free, with services such as Spotify and Apple Music dominating the market at £10.99 and £12.99 per month respectively, or just £5.99 for students. In contrast, physical formats such as vinyl, typically priced at £20 or more per record, alongside the expense of a turntable and speakers, require a far greater upfront investment that is often unrealistic for students amid the rising cost of living. However, the unprecedented affordability and accessibility of streaming undermines the price of music itself; for less than the cost of a single album per month, users gain access to almost all recorded music. As a result, the most pressing issue facing the industry is not that music is inaccessible, but that its value has been drastically reduced, leading to artists receiving minimal financial compensation for their work from streaming services. Thus artists often rely on sales of physical media and concert tickets in order to make a profit.
In comparison to the prices of physical media just under two decades ago, the sharp increase in costs is remarkable. The average price for a vinyl record was “$6-$10 fifteen years ago to $15-$30 now” according to Discogs. Naturally, inflation is in part responsible for this gulf, but the key driving factor in this price increase is due to increased consumer demand from those who wish to own their music outright or simply want to support their favourite artists. Looking even further back in time shows how much the price of records has increased. I have been lucky enough to have been given my parents’ collection of vinyl, some with price stickers still on the covers with costs of as little as 99p for David Bowie’s Hunky Dory.
Although previous generations often paid significant sums for new individual albums, even when accounting for inflation, their spending was tied directly to ownership and a clear valuation of music. By contrast, the contemporary streaming model offers near-unlimited access for a minimal monthly cost, fundamentally altering not only affordability but also to whom music culture is marketed and how its value is perceived. Vinyl’s resurgence has often been framed as a nostalgic or ‘premium’ experience, aimed at collectors rather than casual listeners. Limited pressings, coloured vinyl variants, and exclusive releases all drive prices higher, turning music into a luxury product rather than a shared cultural good. While this may benefit artists and independent record stores to some extent, it inevitably excludes those who simply cannot justify the cost, particularly students.
Streaming, while initially appearing to solve this problem, introduces its own barriers. Monthly subscriptions may seem affordable when compared to vinyl, but considering the growing number of digital services people tend to pay for films, television, or gaming, the cost quickly accumulates. For those with less disposable income such as students, even a £10 monthly fee can be difficult to prioritise, particularly when free tiers are increasingly limited by adverts, restricted features, or reduced audio quality. I remember using the free version of Spotify before shelling out some of my maintenance loan – I wouldn’t recommend it. What’s the point of having access to a range of music when there are adverts playing every 30 minutes and there’s no shuffle feature? Music becomes something you rent rather than own, and once payments stop, access disappears entirely.
There is also the question of artistic value. Streaming platforms pay artists notoriously low royalties, meaning that despite listeners paying more over time through subscriptions, the musicians themselves often see little financial benefit. This creates a system where consumers pay repeatedly, artists struggle to sustain careers, and large corporations reap the majority of the profit. In this sense, the ability to instantly stream music does not translate into meaningful support for music as an art form, since streaming profits rarely reach the artists whose work sustains these platforms. As of July 2025, Australian indie rock band ‘King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’ pulled their entire catalogue from Spotify, stating that “Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology. We just removed our music from the platform.” This points to the inherent injustice – Spotify is more interested in lining the pockets of its dubious executives than supporting the artists it benefits from.
As artists are receiving low royalties from streaming services, profit must be generated in other ways, for example in the sale of concert tickets. Live music has likewise become very inaccessible to many, making it more of a luxury than an ordinary pastime. Foreign artists also usually limit their tour dates in the UK to the same cities: London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow. In addition to the already high ticket prices, people living in certain areas of the country are prevented from seeing their favourite artists in person because of high travelling costs and the infrequency of performances in smaller cities. The Oxford music scene in particular is very limited, with larger artists usually performing only at the O2 Academy on Cowley Road. Given the wide range of potential venues in Oxford, from college bars to the variety of pubs across the city, shouldn’t artists aim to appeal to students in a more intimate setting, rather than perform to larger crowds?
Overall, while music in the 21st century has become easier than ever to access, this accessibility is often superficial. The shift from ownership to subscription-based consumption has lowered the immediate cost to listeners, but has simultaneously diminished the perceived value of music and the financial security of artists. At the same time, the rising cost of physical media and live performances has repositioned music as a premium or luxury experience, excluding many, particularly students, from meaningful participation. Rather than democratising music culture, contemporary systems increasingly prioritise corporate profit over artistic sustainability, raising important questions about who music is truly accessible to, and at what cost.
When we think about culture, our minds typically drift to fine art, theatre, classical music, and other longstanding traditions that have defined human creativity for centuries. But today, where technology and digital experiences are increasingly shaping how we live, could video games be the cultural cornerstone of future generations? Could they eventually replace traditional forms of culture, like literature or theatre, as the main creative outlet for a generation that grew up on iPads?
Video Games: An Emerging Cultural Force
Over the past few decades, video games have developed into more than just a form of entertainment. With complex narratives, beautiful visuals, and interactive experiences, games like The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 have shown how gaming can be as emotionally resonant as any film or book. And it’s not just the stories — the scale of these games and the ability to interact with a virtual world create an experience that passive mediums like theater or art simply can’t replicate.
Games like Fortnite are a prime example of how video games have become a cultural space in their own right. What started as a battle royale game has grown into a hangout. Players attend live concerts, watch in-game events, and hang out with friends, all within the game. It shows how video games are not just an entertainment medium, but a form of socialising, cultural expression, and even artistry.
The Shift in How We Connect and Share Culture
For the younger generation, video games have already become an essential part of culture. Platforms like Twitch, where people watch others play games and discuss them, or Discord communities, where players engage with each other around specific games or gaming culture, are integral to the social lives of millions. The ease of access to these platforms — often without leaving home — means that gaming has replaced other forms of interaction like going to the movies or attending theatre performances for many.
Look at how Fortnite has become an event space. Players are logging in to witness virtual concerts or spending their Fortnite gift card balance to participate in crossovers like Star Wars. These in-game events have taken on a cultural significance for players, much like a concert or a film premiere would for a moviegoer.
Gaming vs. Traditional Art Forms
Traditional forms of culture — fine art, theatre, and even literature — still play an important role, but video games are arguably where culture is shifting. Scorsese’s comments about the decline of cinema and the dominance of franchise-based films show how traditional art forms may not resonate with younger generations in the same way. People are not as interested in consuming content that’s static, such as movies or theater. They want experiences that feel dynamic and interactive.
In contrast, video games are inherently participatory. Players are active participants in the narrative, choosing outcomes and affecting the game world. This shift from passive observation to active participation is a key reason why video games are being embraced as the next cultural medium.
Can Video Games Replace Fine Art and Theater?
It’s hard to say whether video games will fully replace fine art or theatre, but they are undoubtedly becoming central to the cultural landscape. Games like Fortnite are transforming how the youngest generations socialise, and games like The Last of Us are pushing the boundaries of storytelling. For iPad kids, who grew up on brainrot content, video games may be the only art form that can keep up with their declining attention spans and hold any significant value.
With interactivity and personal engagement becoming the main focus, video games fit perfectly into the way people want to experience culture. For some, the best way to engage with art or entertainment is through an immersive, interactive world — and video games offer that.
The Growing Influence of Gaming
Video games are already changing how people engage with culture. They bring together elements of storytelling, socializing, and artistic expression that resonate deeply with today’s generation.
Video games are becoming a window into a new cultural landscape where the lines between entertainment, art, and social interaction continuously blur — and where even access to that culture is shaped by digital marketplaces like Eneba, where players casually pick up codes, credits, and game time the way previous generations bought movie tickets or CDs.
It’s that time of year again: the season in which we are inundated with a never-ending stream of lists ranking 2025’s top releases. Cherwell, however, will not attempt to tell you which films were the best. What follows instead is a list of less-discussed new releases that are still very much worth your time.
Mirrors No.3, dir. Christian Petzold
Laura (Paula Beer) escapes the car crash that kills her boyfriend, miraculously unscathed. A local woman, Betty (Barbara Auer), who witnesses the accident, takes her in while she recovers from the shock. As Laura continues to stay with Betty and her family, it becomes clear that something is strange about the nature of their connection.
The German auteur’s newest film premiered at the Quizaine des Cinéastes at Cannes, a section usually associated with the discovery of new filmmakers rather than veterans like Petzold. While Mirrors No.3 is simpler and smaller in scope than most of his other films, and was quickly labelled a “minor Petzold”,itremains a deliciously subtle and psychologically complex exploration of grief and identity. Paula Beer steals the show as usual, endlessly enigmatic and elusive in the lead role.
Mirrors No.3 was screened at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2025, and is scheduled for cinema release in Spring 2026.
Where to Land, dir. Hal Hartley
Where to Land follows Joseph Fulton (Bill Sage), a middle-aged filmmaker (a kind of Hartley alter ego), who suddenly decides he wants to work for his local cemetery. At the same time, he resolves to have his will drawn up. As a result, his girlfriend (Kim Taff) and niece (Katelyn Sparks) become convinced that he is dying. As the news spreads, neighbours, family members, and friends gather in his apartment to say goodbye.
American independent film legend Hal Hartley returns to the cinema with his first feature in over a decade.While decidedly weaker than some of his previous work, Where to Land is still infused with a charm and originality that puts much of recent indie American cinema to shame. Although not all of the cast are equally convincing at delivering his highly stylised dialogue, Hartley proves that he is still a master of the awkward comedy. Reflective and funny while remaining unpretentious, if nothing else, this surprisingly optimistic film will put a smile on your face.
With a tragically limited cinema release, you can rent the film directly from the director’s website.
In the Land of Brothers, dir. Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi
Divided into three parts spanning three decades, In the Land of Brothers follows a family of Afghan refugees in Iran and their struggle for integration.
The film boasts a series of very impressive performances from first-time actors, Mohammad Hosseini giving a particularly moving and nuanced turn as Mohammad. In the Land of Brothers sheds light on an underdiscussed issue through powerful vignettes each centred on a different facet of the struggle. Amirfazli and Ghasemi clearly get across their social and political message – the exploitation of Afghan refugees in Iran – while never allowing the characters to be purely defined by their suffering. This is a film which will not leave you unmoved.
The Blue Trail, dir. Gabriel Mascaro
In the near future, the Brazilian government commits anyone over 80 to isolation in a remote colony in an effort to increase the productivity of the working population. When the age limit is unexpectedly lowered, 77-year-old Tereza (Denise Weinberg) refuses to be taken away and escapes into the Amazon, beginning a journey of self-discovery.
At a time of great success for Brazilian cinema worldwide, Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trailhas been largely overlooked. The film takes a rare approach to old age, giving us an elderly protagonist whose narrative is not about death, illness, or the past, but is instead an unusual twist on the coming-of-age film. In Mascaro’s clever, funny, and moving new feature, Tereza is the driving force of the film, a woman still very much capable of desire, renewal, and hope for the future.
The Blue Trail was screened at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2025, and is scheduled for cinema release in April 2026.
Winter in Sokcho, dir. Koya Kamura
Based on Elisa Shua Dusapin’s eponymous novel, Kamura’s debut film follows Soo-Ha (Bella Kim), a recent graduate working at a small hotel in the town of Sokcho. The arrival of a French artist, Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem), at the guesthouse leads her to reevaluate her life and ask new questions about her estranged French father.
While far from being a perfect film, Kamura’s debut is definitely promising. Certain aspects of Yan’s tortured artist persona veer dangerously close to cliché, but a quietly stunning lead performance by Bella Kim earns the film its sincere, tender quality. The animated watercolour interludes, along with their sound design, are very affecting, as are the moments when Kamura’s visuals seem to capture something of Yan’s illustrations. These choices elevate the film above your run-of-the-mill narrative about feeling lost in your 20s.
Winter in Sokcho is currently streaming on MUBI.
On Falling, dir. Laura Carreira
Probably the most discussed film on the list, Laura Carreira’s feature-length debut follows Aurora (Joana Santos), a Portuguese immigrant working in an online shopping warehouse in Scotland. On top of her long working hours, Aurora’s job seems designed to minimise contact with other employees and she finds herself falling into an overwhelming loneliness.
Carreira renders the alienation and isolation forced upon Aurora by her dehumanising job heartbreakingly palpable. Joana Santos gives a brilliant performance as Aurora, at her best when conveying the character’s longing and repeated failure to achieve human connection. Given the growing power of corporations like Amazon, whose mistreatment of workers just like Aurora continues to go unchecked, this is an incredibly important and timely film.
On Falling is currently streaming on BFI Player and available to rent on Apple TV.
