Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Blog Page 3

Review: ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’

By
Ralph Whitworth
-

I walked into the Wyndham Theatre’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill half-expecting a night at the London Theatre like any other. Beer in hand, I filed in with my family to the gorgeously decorated auditorium and sat watching the stage with the rest of the buzzing crowd, waiting for the show to begin. Initially, there wasn’t much to note- the set is a sparsely furnished wooden room, almost grey in colour, remarkable only in its plainness. The initial action was somewhat slow-paced as well. Brian Cox of Succession fame plays James Tyrone, an ageing Irish-American actor and property developer, with Patricia Clarkson as his wife Mary – recently recovered from an unnamed illness – and Anthony Boyle and Daryl McCormack as his two unruly sons. We’re initially presented with a rather pleasant family set-up, with acting that didn’t stand out – I found Clarkson’s performance in particular rather clunky, though, as later events were to show, this was entirely deliberate on her part.

Image Credit: Thomas Berg / CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Wikimedia Commons

It takes time for the plot to unravel in this extremely long play – a three hours and ten minutes run time, with a single interval of only fifteen – but unravel it steadily does. In a series of sinister underhand comments and hints of suspicion and suggestion, O’Neill’s masterful script slowly opens the lid on how fearsomely dysfunctional this seemingly-innocuous family really is. Mary’s recent illness is slowly revealed to have actually been a period of crippling morphine addiction, and Clarkson’s jittery and unsteady portrayal of her at the start is symptomatic of its recent resurgence. Younger son Edmund, played by Boyle, does not have a mere cold, but is likely suffering from consumption as a result of his heavy drinking lifestyle (his depressing story definitely discouraged me from getting another beer in the second half…). Older son James, played by McCormack, is a wayward alcoholic who spends much of his time in brothels, and Brian Cox gives a stunning performance as the elder Tyrone whose ungenerous and unsympathetic character is partly to blame for his family’s ills. The play is long, and slow-paced in the first half, but never boring. With each subtle reveal the tension mounts and mounts, aided heartily by the high-strung performances of all the actors. A perfect storm is clearly brewing – one which finally breaks in the second half.

O’Neill is known to be heavily influenced by Shakespeare, and this is clearly evident in his portrayal of bitter drunken arguments and moments of deep emotional pathos which punctuate the last two acts of this play. They are relentless and they are devastating. I found particularly powerful the conversations between Boyle and McCormack, offering a gut-wrenching portrayal of the simultaneous beauty and destructiveness of familial love. Boyle, McCormack and Cox all offered spellbinding performances in this half, wrought with passion and heightened emotion. But particularly memorable was Clarkson, whose depiction of a mother slowly losing herself in the grip of morphine was absolutely heart shattering. Thankfully, comedy relief is at points offered by an enjoyable performance from the maid Cathleen, recognisable from Derry Girls. All in all, the eventual ending left me emotionally squeezed dry. I truly understood the power of catharsis then – it was so overwhelming as to actually be refreshing upon its close.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is not an easy play to watch. At times, it is in fact, excruciating. It is not fun, it is not hopeful, and it is totally unrelenting. But it is masterfully written and masterfully acted from all parties, and I left it somehow feeling better about myself. For a Shakespearean inspired tragedy rewritten for the modern era, I would advise you to look no further. Though maybe mentally prepare yourself for the emotional rollercoaster…

‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ runs at the Wyndham Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London until 8th June. This play contains themes of alcoholism and drug addiction.

WaterTok, Stanley cups and the half-empty glass of consumerism

By
Evelyn Power
-

We all need to drink more water. A 1998 New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center survey of 3003 Americans found that 75% of those interviewed were ‘chronically dehydrated’ — a condition apparently characterised by fatigue, memory loss, irritability, and anxiety. It is no wonder that, according to a Cherwell poll, 78% of Oxford students claim they are ‘trying to drink more water.’ 

Conventional wisdom prescribes that each person drink eight glasses (or two litres) of water a day; an amount so difficult to maintain that it has spawned countless industries bent on supporting our apparent need for endless hydration, and demanded the writing of NHS guidelines and Healthline articles on how to force ourselves to drink more. The internet is full of information on the seemingly exponential benefits of excessive hydration; according to TikTok ‘hydration experts’, drinking more water can clear your skin, heal eczema and flush toxins from your organs . Water consumption is no longer a fulfilment of the biological need of thirst, but an endeavour to be a more attractive, healthier, happier, better version of yourself. 

But is this true? 

I reached out to Dr. Tamara Hew-Butler, a Professor of Sports Science at Wade State University, who explained that, “most people do not need to be drinking 8 glasses of water a day. The amount of water you need to be consuming is dependent on a lot of things, like your weight or the climate you’re in. We also get a lot of our daily water and minerals from the food we eat.” When I push her on the seeming necessity of driving oneself to drink when not thirsty, she explains that “the gene for thirst is one of the oldest and best evolved in the human body. It is probably the best marker for when you need to be drinking water.” On the possibility of  health benefits from drinking too much water, she explains that “it can help prevent UTIs, if you have a history of UTIs, or help prevent kidney stones, if you have a history of kidney stones. Apart from that, the only thing your body is doing with that excess water is peeing it out.” 

Yet, despite this evidence, myths surrounding hydration still abound. In fact, water has long been linked both to ideals not only about health, but purity and goodness; see the ostensible healing qualities of Roman Baths, the historical folk medicine of healing wells, even the symbolic purification of baptism. As the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh explains, at different points of history water has been touted as a cure to “all manner of ailments – from smallpox, to gout and indigestion.”  Hew–Butler traces the provenance and endurance of these ideals to the fact that water is “readily available, and necessary for life. There also aren’t any real dangers from drinking more water, unless you take it to extremes.” There is almost a common-sense element to the promotion of over-hydration — drinking enough water is crucial to health — what harm could come from drinking more?

However, it would be remiss to chalk our modern take on hydration to simple medical misconception. In truth, it is a highly profitable marketing scheme which helps to fuel some high-value industries. As Hew-Butler explains, “these commercial conceptions of ‘hydration’ are really very recent— I first noticed it in Gatorade marketing campaigns in the 90s, then with plastic bottled mineral water in the 2000s.” The academics and research of hydration are therefore saturated with the corporate interests that they support; the Cornell Medical Centre’s findings on hydration — which, as you may remember, stated that 75% of adults are chronically dehydrated — were funded by the International Bottled Water Association. Their subjects’ ostensible ‘dehydration’ was not determined by medical testing, but by, as Hew Butler outlines, asking if they ‘drank at least 8 glasses of water a day,’ and declaring them dehydrated if they did not. When I tried to find their research for myself, I first saw it linked on a website selling flavoured water supplements. 

Stoking fears about dehydration translates directly into real-world profits. As of 2023, the bottled water industry was valued at £2.1 billion in the UK alone — 20 years ago, influencers photographed themselves with Fiji Water, sleekly packaged bottles of water which boasted high contents of ostensibly healthy minerals. As concerns about plastic pollution grew in the public consciousness, fueled by the release of studies finding microplastics in plastic water bottles, the commercial focus shifted towards the development and marketing of reusable water bottles. Contrary to their claims towards sustainability, these bottles arrive in noticeable trends, and develop into fashion statements of their own — you might remember the seemingly ubiquitous Chillis bottles (and ensuing knockoffs) of the later 2010s, the gallon-sized Hydromates, with their (vaguely threatening) printed encouragements of ‘KEEP DRINKING’, as endorsed by celebrities like Kendall Jenner, or the relentlessly marketed Airup bottles, which promise to flavour water (and therefore encourage its consumption) with ‘scent technology’. Of course, you would be entirely forgiven for not remembering any of these bottles; as with all trends, they have all experienced a brief craze of visibility before their inevitable, ever-swifter replacement with the next bottle on the market. 

The current water bottle du jour, however, has raised a little more controversy. Priced at £45, the Stanley Quencher cup is a 1.2 litre tumblr manufactured by Stanley, a brand of previously utilitarian water bottles, which touted its products as construction site essentials. Their shift in advertising has paid off; CNBC estimates Stanley made over $750m last year, compared with an average of $70m a year before 2020. Perhaps the most useful tool in Stanley’s rebranding has been the social media zeitgeist that surrounded them. They have quickly become a mainstay of ‘WaterTok’, a TikTok subculture populated by well-hydrated (mostly) women — Stanley Cups are their weapon of choice against the spectre of dehydration. Under the #WaterTok Hashtag, you can find countless videos of its members making their ‘water of the day’, filling their cups with multiple flavouring packets and sugar-free syrups in order to produce moderately off-putting concoctions such as ‘Birthday Cake’ and ‘Mermaid’ flavoured water. Any use of flavouring is, of course, entirely justified as a means towards the ultimate end of ‘drinking more water’. WaterTok’s cultural prominence, (and therefore the ensuing backlash against it) was precipitated in early 2024 by Stanley’s collaboration with Starbucks to release a limited-edition pitcher, resulting in fatalistic and purge-style video clips of well-manicured American women tussling over the cups in outlets of Target, the American retailer. The videos were quickly followed by backlash from social and conventional media alike, of varying legitimacy. It is true that the flash-marketing and mass-collection (many WaterTokers boast huge, multi-coloured collections of Stanley Cups) of ostensibly sustainable products does undercut the environmental benefits of their production — yet the conversation around WaterTok has been  (true to general internet form) one of mockery, rather than discussion.

Much of this ridicule is notably gendered. On the 28th of January 2024, the sketch show Saturday Night Live released their ‘Big Dumb Cups’ sketch, in which members of the show’s cast sport thick Southern accents, blonde wigs, vacant stares, and, of course, Stanley Cups. The Stanley Cup, therefore, seems to have grown from a simple product to a shorthand for a type of person; to mock the bottle is to mock the buyer. The surrounding discourse is, of course, entirely aware of this — one comment lauded the sketch for having “Absolutely NAILED this type of woman!”, while others discuss how they are “slaying the white mormon mom!”. Each snide aside locates the cups’ users within a distinct societal archetype, one profiled as white, lower-middle class, Christian (somehow?), and, of course, female. Mockery of the cups, therefore, manifests not only as a reaction to the consumerism they represent, but as an excuse to mock the ‘type’ of woman to whom they are attributed, an outlet for internet users to purge themselves of their (apparent) vitriol for blonde Mormon mothers of three. 

When viewed through the lens of the gendered ridicule it enables, the scale of the backlash generated by the cups begins to make more sense. J. B. MacKinnon, author of The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Gives Us a Better Life and a Greener World, characterises these flurries of outrage as “finger-wagging”; the consumer frenzy surrounding Stanley Cups seems to be facing disproportionate criticism compared to its relatively insignificant impact on the environment, compared to, say, the ever-churning behemoth of Fast fashion or the massive emissions produced by commercial air travel. 

It is not only the trend’s detractors who use the cups as a marker of identity; like many products peddled to consumers, they inhabit the cultural zeitgeist as more than just a water bottle, but as a declaration of values. This, of course, is not only unique to water bottles; consumption, in recent years, has equated to its own form of communication. Products have increasingly become coveted, not for what they do, but for what they mean.  A friend of mine who bought a Stanley claimed she was motivated partly by seeing “so many people on socials” with them, and the hope that it would push her to do “cute aesthetic work with it.” 

As far as purchases go, the cups are clearly aspirational; Hew-Butler described them as a “symbol of health”, a sign that their user is drinking their water, taking care of the environment, consuming in the marketing-approved right way. My friend largely attributed her Stanley Cup purchase to the fact that she felt it would “help [her] to drink more water”; and when water is falsely equated to health, attractiveness, and happiness, there is more to drinking more water than simply drinking more water. It is not only a reach for self-betterment, but, in the cases of cups like the Stanley, a public communication of this reach. 

Hew-Butler’s summary of the over-marketing of hydration is simple; in her words, “to be told you need to drink more water is to force you into thinking that you need something that you really don’t.” Perhaps this is what is so objectionable about the overconsumption of Stanley cups — there is something bleakly metaphorical in the  whole cycle of buying a bottle that you do not need to own, in order to force yourself to drink water that you do not need to drink. Certainly, when Hew-Butler explains that “people are constantly sipping, so they are never really thirsty, and so they think their thirst is ‘broken’, and they feel like they should be drinking even more,” I am struck for a moment by the utter futility of the scene she describes. 

On the flip side of water’s commodification lie its consumers, for whom thirst is characterised as an endless, cavernous need. It is insatiable, even in the face of all the products sold to help sate it; you cannot quench a thirst that you do not feel, and you can never have enough of something you never really needed at all.

Artwork by Oliver Ray

Film around the world – Turkey’s Atıf Yılmaz

By
Ali Sezgin
-
Richard Ha / CC by 2.0 DEED via Flickr

Atıf Yılmaz was a Turkish film director. Until his death in 2006, he was extremely prolific and directed films across every decade of Turkish cinema starting in the 1950s. He directed more than a hundred films in total – I’ll write about two of them.

Two of the films he made during the Yeşilçam Era (the name given to what is usually considered the ‘golden age’ of Turkish cinema between the 1960s and the ‘70s) were Kibar Feyzo and Selvi Boylum, Al Yazmalım both of which were released in 1978.

Kibar Feyzo (‘kibar’ means ‘kind’ or ‘polite’) is a comedy film. It stars Kemal Sunal, who is probably the best-known Turkish comedian. Kibar Feyzo may be the funniest film I’ve ever seen, although most of its comedy is derived from the ridiculously clever wordplay that I’m not sure a non-native speaker would comprehend. At any rate, if you’re not Turkish and have decided to watch this film, you’ll still find it funny and have a good time. You might just not laugh at every other sentence like I did.

Kibar Feyzo’s cinematography is drenched in sunlight. It has a bombastically light-hearted soundtrack and a very cheerful cast of characters. Everything about it is jolly, or so it would seem. Kibar Feyzo is about a poor villager returning to his home village after military service. He is Feyzo, and he is determined to marry Gülo, the girl he loves. However, he is forced to come up with an enormous sum of money to appease Gülo’s father and receive her hand in marriage. Penniless, Feyzo sets out to secure every bit of money he can, and funny shenanigans start happening from there.  

However, Kibar Feyzo is also about domestic violence, corruption, ethnic persecution, the exploitation of workers, misogyny, police brutality, and so on. It’s one of my favourite comedies, a brilliant exercise in dark humour. Across its 83-minute runtime, its satire and over-abundance of jokes never gets boring. You might find yourself so caught up in Feyzo’s amazingly humorous voice-over that by the end of the film, you’ll forget that you are watching a flashback. In this last scene at the police station, Feyzo delivers such an abruptly devastating final line that suddenly the film isn’t so funny anymore. Why is he there? I’ll let you find that out.

Selvi Boylum, Al Yazmalım, Yılmaz’s other 1978 feature, is best known internationally with the title The Girl with the Red Scarf. I dare not write down its very lengthy literal translation lest I incur the wrath of the Cherwell Editor Team. Unlike Feyzo, this film doesn’t pretend to disguise itself as a comedy. It is a sad – yet very engaging – story of a woman named Asya, who falls in love with a man named İlyas, has a child with him, and promptly gets cheated on. Asya is in an inconvenient situation: her family has disowned her because she married someone not of their choosing, so she can’t go back there. She has a son now whom she must take care of, so she can’t just take the bus to the big city and hope to find work and a place to stay. This is where a third party enters her story: another man, who teaches her the actual definition of love, or she teaches it to both men – I don’t know, the last twenty minutes of this is very emotionally intense. Another great thing about Girl with the Red Scarf is that it has the best theme song I’ve ever heard. I listen to it most days. This is a much better-known film in Turkey than Feyzo, which is my personal favourite. 

These are two of the four feature films Yılmaz directed in 1978. Feyzo was banned for ten years before it became a cult classic, and Girl with the Red Scarf is now hailed as one of the masterpieces of Turkish cinema. I’d say both of them deserve the latter’s treatment, and so do many other films of his.

Delayed New College accommodation which forced students into hotels officially opens

By
Emily Henson
-
Image Credit: Will Pryce via New College

New College’s Gradel Quad has officially opened after month-long delays. The Quad, opened by Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Irene Tracey, was built to provide college accommodation for the majority of third-year students at New College. However, construction delays left students living in a hotel for Michaelmas term. The hotel, four miles from the City Centre, left students with long daily commutes, and an incident involving an escort was reported by a student. 

Speaking to Cherwell, a New College student said: “Living in Gradel Quad has been a great experience so far. Having recently injured myself it’s been amazing to have disabled-friendly accommodation so close to college.” Another New College student said: “it’s brilliant to have the third years integrated as a part of the college community.”

The opening was attended by the Lord Mayor, Lubna Arshad, and key donor, Chris Gradel. It marks New College becoming the latest in a string of colleges to assure accommodation for nearly all undergraduates. Speaking at the opening, New College Warden, Miles Young, said:  “We are immensely grateful to Chris Gradel as the foundation donor of this project. It allows us to house 94 third-year students in college, releasing pressure on the Oxford housing market.”

Although the majority of residents moved in at the beginning of Hilary term, the opening was delayed to allow for the completion of New Warham House. Parts of the development were opposed by Mansfield College, who argued that the tower on New Warham House impedes the privacy of Mansfield students, as it overlooks their residential quad. The accommodation includes student flats with kitchens and accessible rooms.

The buildings were designed by David Kohn as was described by Historic England “one of the very few instances where contemporary design can be considered genuinely outstanding”. 

Young has said: “We are thrilled that, as novel and as original as they are, these buildings already feel like an intrinsic part of student life at New College. Even though there’s still a little more work to do, they’ve already shown their usefulness.”


The Christ Church Picture Gallery: Review

By
William Acharyya
-
Image Credit: PDM 1.0 DEED via Collections - GetArchive

Oxford proudly boasts, undoubtedly, one of the best cultural scenes of any city in the United Kingdom. From the Ashmolean to the Natural History Museum there is no shortage of ways to spend an afternoon soaking up centuries of history; all without spending a penny. There is, however, a lesser-known and equally exciting place which few students (or tourists) have yet to discover. 

The Christ Church Picture Gallery has free entry for Oxford students. It offers a chance to view one of the most impressive college art collections, with pieces spanning the 14th to 18th centuries, beautifully displayed in a semi-subterranean gallery designed by Sir Phillip Powell and Hidalgo Moya. Tucked away in the back of the college, it is easy to miss the gallery as visitors must enter through Canterbury Gate, opposite Oriel and, from there, signs guide you to the entrance. 

The gallery comprises three distinct rooms that guide visitors through the spaces, beginning with the earliest works. Some of the most captivating pieces are a number of fragments extracted from Scenes of the Lives of Hermits, a sprawling work of the Tuscan and Florentine Schools created c.1440-1450. Composed of tempera on panel this work is a prime example of the more you look, the more you see. There are countless figures depicted, each illustrating various stories and allegories from the Bible. Amongst them, it is possible to spot monks, saints, and comically reptilian devil figures, which have maintained their brilliant detail and colour despite being almost six hundred years old.  

As you progress through to the second room of the gallery, prepare to be struck by perhaps the most spectacular, and maybe grotesque, painting in the collection at Christ Church, Annibale Carracci’s The Butcher’s Shop (c.1583). The painting is monumental in scale at almost 2×3 metres and it depicts the interior of a butcher’s shop with two butchers, possibly the artist’s brother Agostino Carracci and cousin Ludovico Carracci. The Carracci family were influential in the rejection of the Mannerist style and were crucial in altering the course of Italian art. The importance of direct observation from nature, as stressed by Carracci is reflected in The Butcher’s Shop where he  employs a limited palette of earthen colours instead of the brilliant unnatural hues associated with the prevailing Mannerist style. The painting is also of note for its depiction of tradesmen in a dignified, ceremonious demeanour which is distinguishable from earlier satirical everyday subjects.. The Butcher’s Shop takes pride of place in its current spot in within the gallery, yet for a long time the painting was hung in the college kitchen before it was recognised for its artistic value in the 20th century

Filippino Lippi’s The Wounded Centaur (late 15th century) continues the evolutionary trajectory seen in Renaissance art. Lippi, a close associate of Botticelli, belonged to a cohort of Florentine artists who pioneered innovative approaches to painting. Notably, the painting devotes significant attention to the background, featuring caves and reflections in the sea. This reflects a newfound interest in depicting geological formations, a departure from the typical focus of Renaissance painting on the primary subject. Moreover, Lippi’s rendition of the story diverges from the traditional narrative found in Fasti Book V by Ovid. In Ovid’s telling of the story the centaur Chiron sustains a fatal wound while examining the poisoned arrows of Hercules, tainted by the venom of the mythological Hydra. In Lippi’s version, the centaur is shown inspecting not the arrows of Hercules but the quiver of Cupid, which is perhaps the artist’s warning to the viewer about the dangers of love.

The gallery not only plays host to impressive pieces on canvas but also on paper. Amongst the collection are works by well-known artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci. Few national museums can claim to house works by such giants of Renaissance drawing. For this reason, amongst the many others, it is surprising how few students that I have spoken to have given this hidden gem of a gallery a visit. If you find yourself wondering what to do this Trinity, the Christ Church Picture Gallery is open Thursday to Monday and entrance is completely free for members of the University, where tickets can be booked online.

Coffeesmith – the paw-fect café?

By
Theo Mama-Kahn
-
Image credit: Bex Walton/CC by 2.0 via Flickr

I can’t think of many better ways to be welcomed into a café than with a wall of dog photos. Luckily, customers at Coffeesmith are treated to just that. 

This charming independent café is tucked away in the Golden Cross shopping arcade, which is adjacent to the Covered Market and accessible from Cornmarket Street. Its location is ideal: simultaneously tucked away in a quiet area and close to the city centre. 

Its unique selling point? Its dog-friendliness. Although not immediately useful to Oxford students, this did positively influence my opinion of the café before even entering. Customers are first greeted with a wall of polaroids of very cute dogs, labelled with their names, which I confess that I spent an embarrassing amount of time examining. Pets are not only tolerated here, but taken good care of – Coffeesmith offers dog treats.

I was greeted by the friendly baristas and took a seat by the window. There were tables outside in the arcade, which I hope to return and make use of when the weather warms up. I visited at lunchtime, and despite the relatively limited menu – consisting of toast, bagels, and grilled sandwiches – Coffeesmith is one of those places which may have few options, but executes each of them very well. I also caught a glimpse of a wide array of sweet treats at the counter which looked varied and interesting.

I opted for the avocado toast, which cost £8.20, and – trying to convince myself that summer has arrived despite the 12oC forecast – an iced americano, which was rather reasonably priced at £3.30. Though I’m no connoisseur, I was able to recognise that the coffee was great. It’s a goal of mine to visit as many independent cafés as possible in Oxford, and I can confidently say that this coffee ranks highly.

My avocado toast arrived before long; the two pieces of sourdough were topped with a surprisingly generous amount of sliced avocado, and sprinkled with spicy and salty seasoning. I was expecting something akin to the boring, hardly seasoned avocado toast I make for myself at home, but Coffeesmith’s take on that modern classic opened my eyes to its potential. The subtle hint of the olive oil used to toast the bread combined with the seasoning to infuse the well-ripened avocado with flavour, a welcome addition to an ingredient which can be somewhat bland if not prepared well. Overall, I was really pleased and pleasantly surprised with my choice, and I recommend it highly to those both new to and familiar with the dish.

I was also lucky enough to be able to try a bite of another toast option, which was topped with smoked chicken, rocket, sun-dried tomatoes, and – the star of the show – pesto aioli. Once again, this classic combination was taken to new heights and I found the alternative creamier texture for the pesto taste to be a triumph. I would seriously recommend this too – perhaps to those who consider avocado toast too basic a choice.

All in all, I was thoroughly pleased by my visit to Coffeesmith. If I had to find one gripe with it, it would be that my phone was not able to connect to the internet when I was inside, so it may not be the ideal location for your academic work. But for dates, lunches, brunches, or an afternoon coffee, it’s the perfect spot – whether or not you have a dog to bring along.

Christ Church Picture Gallery recovers stolen painting

By
Enrique Normand Velarde
-
Image Credit: Daniel Stick

One of the three paintings stolen from Christ Church Picture Gallery during a high-profile heist in March 2020 was returned, according to a joint press conference held by the Christ Church Picture Gallery and Thames Valley Police on 19 April. 

The landscape painting, A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan by the baroque Italian master Salvator Rosa, is once again on display in its original place in the Gallery. 

Police in Romania were contacted by a man who possessed the painting. The same man also previously sold the other two artworks stolen from the gallery, which are currently understood to be somewhere in Europe. Romanian authorities have not arrested the contact and are treating him as a witness. 

After police recovered the painting, it was temporarily safeguarded in the National Gallery of Art in Bucharest. The official handover of the artwork to the gallery’s curator, Jacqueline Thalmann and Detective Chief Inspector (DCI), James Mather, of Thames Valley Police took place in the Romanian capital on 26 March. 

“We have harvested a large amount of forensic material from the painting when we recovered it in Bucharest”, DCI Mather said in a recent video statement.

“I’m really hopeful that the forensic opportunities combined with the ongoing investigations … provide good opportunity and good line of inquiry in relation to the burglary and the recovery of the further two paintings.” 

No additional information on the exact whereabouts of the other paintings has been released. 

Anthony van Dyck’s Soldier on Horseback and Annibale Caracci’s A Boy Drinking were two of the most valuable and significant pieces in the picture gallery’s collections.

Two frames remain hanging empty in the gallery “as a symbol of hope for their return.” The total estimated value of the heist was £10 million and the heist was one of the highest value art thefts in British history. 

DCI Mather stated that the man in Romania who had sold on the remaining stolen artwork, did so “not realizing their significance.”

Following recent developments, Thames Valley Police issued a fresh appeal for any information on the missing works.

EDI report reveals only one in three Oxford academics are women

By
Roy Shinar Cohen
-
Image Credit: Daniel Stick

The new University equality and diversity report shows women make up only one in three Oxford academics. The workforce is significantly more diverse in the younger age groups, with growth in both ethnic and gender diversity being notably slower amongst older employees.

The University of Oxford has published its annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) report for 2022-2023. The reports, prepared by the University’s Equality and Diversity Unit (EDU), have been published since 2016, and are rooted in the transparency requirements of the 2010 Equality Act. Data of this sort was first released ten years ago. 

Among its findings, it shows that the proportion of women diminishes as the ranking of academic positions increases. Regarding professors, in 2023, 28% were women, but among less senior positions their share was higher (over a third of Associate Professors). Ten years ago, the share of women across the University’s staff was 49%, however, only one in four of the academic staff were women.

Similar trends follow in ethnic diversity. Change among the University’s lower-level and younger staff is happening faster than at higher levels. Between 2014 and 2023 there has been an increase of only 3% and 4% in the share of black and minority ethnicity (BME) professors and academics respectively. Yet, among researchers, there has been an increase of 10%. It should be noted that, according to the 2023 EDI report, researchers are younger than academics: nearly 40% of researchers are under the age of 40, compared to 21% of academics. 

Oxford University has far more diversity amongst its younger employees. For employees under 30, women made up at least half of the workforce in each department, at some points representing up to two thirds. Yet, when it comes to older age groups, gender inequality grows substantially. Female academics are half of the under-30 group, approximately 40% of academics aged 30-49, approximately 30% of academics aged 50-64, and only 20% of those aged 65 or more. 

Men used to go to war – now they DJ

By
Zaynab Ravat
-

Why are so many people becoming DJs? This recent obsession has taken the world – and now Oxford – by storm. Love it or hate it, everyone is doing it (or knows someone who is) which begs the question, why?

The term DJ, meaning ‘Disk Jockey’, originates from vinyl mixing on turntables, however with the digitisation of music, DJing now emblematises the act of innovating music in a live setting, connecting tracks and audiences in real time. Technological development means that brand new decks can be bought for as little as £100. Although these are smaller and simpler, as their price would suggest, they still provide decent reward and are vastly more accessible for aspiring DJs.

Technology has also changed the way we listen to music. MTV and YouTube have become relics, replaced by the growth of streaming services such as Spotify and Soundcloud, alongside social media platforms like TikTok combining music and content. This shift away from visual medium has helped broaden the genres we listen to, as the pop music of A-List performers with the highest video production budgets no longer dominate the charts. Eclectic playlists shifting from the giant music studios to more niche scenes have become commonplace and trendy. Independent artists are in the best age to be noticed. People who start off making music from their bedrooms – think PinkPantheress who uses GarageBand – are now selling out venues across the globe. Stories like these become inspirations for a new generation of aspiring musicians, but with this influx to an already oversaturated market, it is easy to fade into a blur of newcomers.

But what if you are in your twenties, passionate about music and keen to get your own content out there, but you lack traditional musical talent? You never learnt to play an instrument and you can’t sing to save your life. Whilst this used to be a huge barrier, you can master Rekordbox and a Pioneer mixer in a fraction of the time and price of an instrument, and work with pre existing tracks to connect your taste to your audience.

In the past, DJs’ collaborations with pop artists were generally the most significant way of propelling them into the mainstream. Thinking back to the 2010s, DJs like Marshmello and DJ Khaled were collaborating with the most famous names – Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber. Let’s not forget Faded by Alan Walker which was heard on every high street on the planet, featuring the Norwegian singer Iselin Solheim, who is of course a lot more obscure than the previous mentioned – yet the song skyrocketed. This suggests that it was less about the status of who they were collaborating with, and more about the familiarity and trendy structure that a pop singer could provide, pushing a song onto the mainstream radar.

Nowadays, we are seeing more and more DJs reaching fame for their solo projects. DJs are no longer a hoard of middle aged scruffy men, broken up by faceless enigmas like Marshmello, or awkward nerds like Skrillex. TikTok has propelled a less conventional wave of DJs to fame. Peggy Gou, for example, shot to fame with (It Goes Like) Nanana which essentially became the song of summer 2023, and her immersion into the sphere of fashion has also made her a distinguishable and chic personality. Now sporting almost twelve million monthly listeners on Spotify, she is one of the most highly regarded DJs of this year, paving the way for female DJs in this grossly male-dominated sphere. In particular, the jungle-esque soundscapes of Nia Archives revitalised the genre, earning her multiple awards, and Jayda G’s gorgeous house track Both of Us was nominated for a Grammy.

For those interested in music, DJing has become a viable hobby to impress your friends with at house parties or for taking some ostentatious Instagram photos behind the decks (guilty!). As always, with every trend venturing into the mainstream, its popularity is accompanied by its fair share of hate. I am sure we have all joked that ‘men used to go to war, now they DJ’, or vowed to never fall victim to this epidemic, but like it or not – its rise is inescapable, and I don’t think it is close to dying down soon. In fact, I think it is only growing, but rather than being cynical, I am excited for what new music is to come.

Matchstick Cats

By
Matthew Unwin
-
Image Credits: "Dr Tugwell and Farmer" by Library of Congress/ dr-tugwell-and-farmer-of-dust-bowl-area-in-texas-panhandle-presidents-report.jpg/ CC BY SA 4.0

Mark and Trev were surrounded on the bed of the truck by old wooden beams and bits of furniture – debris of a life that wasn’t theirs – and had positioned themselves amongst this so that they were looking backwards, watching the road unfurl behind the vehicle. Trev always insisted on facing backwards rather than ahead: he spent most of his life looking backwards, now, spent most of his life reliving old memories, on some subconscious level aware that they were slipping away from him all the time.

Forty miles to California.

As they bounced along the road, whilst Mark stared out at the featureless mountains in the distance, Trev was reliving an event that occurred sixty-four years ago in a kitchen in Oklahoma. He had become again that six-year-old boy smelling freshly baked bread and watching his mum slice a piece off for him to taste. Memories like these would float up from the depths of his mind randomly. He couldn’t control when they came, and the rest of the time he couldn’t access them, like a dark veil had drifted over them, so when they did come, he clung to them and wrung them dry, sucked the marrow from them, took in every detail. With the passage of time, the details of these memories had become worn and faded like an old photo. He focused hard, trying to remember the smell of the bread, the items on the kitchen counter, what was playing on the radio, his mother’s face. He was trying desperately to will himself into the scene –

–and then the sound of the truck bounding over a pothole distracted him from the memory, and he forgot what he was thinking about. As quickly as it had surfaced, the moment was lost again.

He turned to Mark. ‘Where we going to?’

‘California.’

‘Why we going there?’

‘You said there was work there – remember?’

‘Oh, okay.’

‘I don’t know where we’re going after.’

‘What you mean “where after”? There is no “after”. If I said we’re going to California, then we’re going to California. I must have known where we was headed back then.’

‘You said the same thing about Elk City, and we kept going on after that.’ Mark paused. ‘Do you even know where we started from?’

‘Course I do,’ Trev said, ‘Tulsa.’

‘Nah, we didn’t start in Tulsa,’ Mark shook his head. ‘Your memory’s gettin’ worse.’ He looked back out at the hills.

When Mark looked back, he saw that Trev was already lost again in some distant memory. The old man’s clothes hung over him, caked in dust and dirt. 

Only thing he remembers clearly now is the road, Mark thought. An endless road. The place names blur together for him. He doesn’t remember the journey beginning. He probably can’t imagine it ending neither. His world’s a reel of road, endlessly unfurling in front of his eyes, never stopping.

I could ditch him at the next town, he thought. They’d been all over the country. Tulsa. St Louis. Atlantic city. Santa Fe. Pueblo. 

Can’t stay on the road much longer, he thought. No person can live like this, constantly shifting from one place to another, all in the hope that they’d find work. Even work picking cotton, that would have been enough. But they never did find anything. Yes, Mark thought, I could bow out at the next city, settle down, find something. Won’t be much, but there’ll be something. Trev’ll continue on, probably, and he’ll be fine.

But then when he looked back, he noticed Trev’s overcoat had come undone at the top and was beginning to slip down over his shoulders. Trev had fallen asleep, completely oblivious. 

Mark leant over and buttoned the coat back up. Only after it was done up did he return to staring out over the side of the truck at the unspooling road.

1234...2,416Page 3 of 2,416

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, founded in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2024 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy