the world is smothered by a plastic seal, everything vacuum-packed and ziplock-bagged, and my fingertips are crying out for love, crying out for the hot touch of papercuts and the tongue kisses we like to call splinters. the lines on my palm are joining up the dots between plastic gloves and your arms, telling themselves that these neoprene creases are as soft as the skin on the inside of your elbow.
face
eyes are everything to me; i am an eleven-year-old girl counting the seconds between stares, clicking the brown eyes box on the does your crush like you back buzzfeed quiz. your eyelashes flutter like fans, relieving my fever and reminding me what breezes used to feel like back when they were allowed. today the wind waits at bus shelters, hides behind terraced houses and sings the grass to sleep.
space
how we feel now must be the way that stars feel all their lives: always in sight of each other, always feeling each other’s presence, but kept apart by forces they can’t quite comprehend. we wish on streetlamps, watch them light up in constellations and follow them home, hoping to find a new face at the front door. but the lights are always the wrong shade of orange, and you are always looking down on me from another part of the sky.
The Faculty of Classics has announced that all exams, excluding Second Classical Language, will be run open book and will now exclude translation questions. Commentary and gobbet questions will remain in the open book questions. The Faculty of Classics plan to release further information about their FHS exams later this week.
This comes after an open letter penned by finalists set to take FHS Classics examinations which urged examiners to “commit to a finalized exam format” and encouraged a commitment to open book examinations by the faculty, citing the commitment by the Modern Languages and Oriental Studies faculties earlier in the academic year as an exemplar. The open letter has received 66 signatures from students so far.
Master’s exams conducted by the Faculty of Classics are also expected to take place online, although not all exams have been converted to open book. Some involving translation will be expected to be completed “without looking things up,” and will be remotely invigilated “in a relatively unobtrusive manner.” The communication noted that “it is not the case that all our Master’s exams will be ‘open-book’; each Faculty and each exam board makes its own arrangements.”
These changes have been made to both the Greats exams as well as joint schools examinations. This comes following the cancellation of first year Mods exams earlier this year, after an open letter calling the faculty to cancel exams received 90 signatories. The faculty have replaced Mods with a prelims-style exam at the end of Trinity, which also removes translation elements from text-based papers.
Image Credit: Lewis Clarke. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Finn Harries has come a long way since the days of uploading videos with his identical twin on the YouTube channel JacksGap. An architecture graduate from Parson’s School of Design, a Ted Talk and UN speechmaker, and most recently a student at Cambridge, Harries has made a deserving name for himself in the world of climate activism.
YouTubers have often receive a bad reputation – mostly, but not always, undeservedly. Accusations of needing a ‘real job’ or lacking talent have been thrown at the YouTube space for years. I was a little guilty of falling into this trap myself, thinking of the site as the realm of the chubby bunny challenge and controversy, and forgetting its possibility to empower young people with the skills necessary to enact change in their adult lives.
Finn and Jack have arguably been some of the most successful in evolving away from this type of YouTube content. This is not to say that their time on the platform in this capacity was unimportant; in fact, the opposite is true. Speaking to Harries, it was easy to see how he had transferred the charisma and presence which made the JacksGap channel so warm and authentic into powerful discussions about the climate crisis. Likewise, both brothers have used their design and video editing skills across a number of years as a powerful activism tool.
It was obvious as soon as he began to talk that Harries has been and continues to be on a consistent mission to educate himself about the climate. He spoke to me about one of his earliest exposure to the subject as an adult, while studying as an undergraduate at Parson’s School of Design, part of the “New School” in New York.
“When I first arrived in New York to study architecture I had somehow managed to put climate change, like most of us, to the back of my mind. However, as soon as I got there, I was exposed through my first class to literature on climate change. And it became personal, and for me this is the key. In the class I took in literally my second week, we were asked to think about designing a flood barrier for a city with rising sea levels.
“That to me was totally daunting and terrifying. If before this, climate was something that was abstract, that had something to do with polar bears and glaciers, it suddenly became tangible and real.”
After four years in New York, Harries moved back to London to study a postgraduate degree at the Architectural Association. However, compared to in Parson’s, he found little commitment to sustainability-minded projects: “What I experienced at the AA, and what I have little interest in doing, is fighting against the institution you’re paying to study at.
“At the AA, I would have one on one meetings with the director where I would have to push the agenda of climate, and it would often be debated and argued about, and to me this is just – we don’t have time to do that. We shouldn’t have to, especially in institutions of higher learning.
“I would go as far as to say it’s like trying to debate gravity – its just a fact right now.”
Harries left the AA, and is now in his first year studying an MPhil at Cambridge. The course has allowed him freedom to choose his own research proposal, and although he focuses specifically on design, he moves seamlessly across disciplines in our conversation.
“It starts with the understanding that humans are really good at creating stories. Perhaps the first person that exposed me to this was Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian who wrote Sapiens and Homo Deus. He argues that the success of humans to collaborate at such a large scale is the power of good stories. We can think of borders, nations, money, religion, time, even… all just stories that we tell ourselves which allow us to collaborate.
“If you start with Descartes, he says in his Methods on Discourse that humans are the masters and possessors of nature. He is one of the many people, Francis Bacon included, that started to think of humans as fundamentally separate from nature, intrinsically of a higher divinity than other natural beings.
“And in a way this is simplifying a very complex history, but if we bring it down to the foundational ideas that shaped our lives over the last couple of hundred years, then we can perhaps start to understand why we are at this point of severe crisis.
“The hypothesis is, in the research that I’m doing, if you can start to shift that story… because the other thing is, we can all agree in a way that it’s a false story – as in, we are nature, there is no reason or explanation to suggest that we are not nature, when we fundamentally are, and therefore we’re deeply interconnected in this web of natural ecosystems.”
Storytelling is central to Harries’ vision of climate activism, both in his research at Cambridge and in his latest digital project, Earthrise Studio. Finn acts as co-founder, along with brother Jack and his partner, Alice Aedy. Founded in July 2020, Finn tells me it wasn’t a lockdown project, however it seems it could not have come at a better time. Using seductive graphic design, something Jack and Finn have long been proficient at, Earthrise Studio’s Instagram aims to tackle in bitesize chunks some of the biggest questions our planet is faced with. Educational tools on social media, when we spend so much time indoors and online, have never had more of an impact on the kind of self-reflection and improvement that Earthrise encourages.
Image: Lily Betrand-Webb. Earthrise Studio founders: Jack Harries [left], Alice Aedy [centre], and Finn Harries [right].
The project places a large emphasis on tackling climate anxiety. When I asked Harries about dealing with climate anxiety, he described the issue as threefold. The first is acceptance: “We should absolutely have a sense of anxiety about the state of our future, because a. that shows we care, and b. it’s from that point that we can start to take action.”
His second point is one of self-care, and he emphasises that he can only speak from his personal experience: “These start to sound like clichés, but they’re not. Meditation and exercise and therapy are all three tools that I’ve actively used to allow me to work in this space without, you know, falling into a deep depression. I practice meditation every day and it’s the only reason I can, sort of, stay present and focus on what I’m doing. Self-care is 100% part of this work – you have to look after yourself.”
His final point about climate anxiety is much more conceptual: “It is a concept which I want to mention because it is the reason I applied for Cambridge, and it’s called the adaptive cycle, which is the name of my project currently. It’s an idea that’s really simple, but really profound, if you dwell on it.”
“So the best way to explain it is, before I came across this concept, if you asked me what the future looked like, I imagined a line, we were somewhere along the line, and at the end it was a really bleak fiery ball of hell, and it was daunting, you know, to be heading towards this future. In the concept which is called the adaptive cycle, it tries to create a theory of all natural ecosystems and civilisation as a series of growth and collapses, and it’s an infinite loop.
“And this is not the exception, it’s a rule, and this is what we see throughout history, throughout antiquity, is cultures, ecosystems, establish themselves, they grow rapidly, they use their resources, they conserve (something) and then they crash, they collapse – it’s a little bit scary, but they collapse, and then they have this amazing opportunity where they reorganise themselves, and they reinvent the way they work – Romans, Greeks, pine forests after a forest fire, there are a multitude of different examples.”
Harries describes Earthrise as a way to change the story of climate change, a story which has been skewed by certain corporate interests which benefit from the production of fossil fuels, and who have “actively worked to decrease the understanding of scientific literature to destabilise the trust in scientific bodies and to lessen the perception of danger.” Harries says: “Jack and I had previously built JacksGap and so we had learnt the power of engaging people and building a platform on social media – we had learnt the ups and downs of that – and we were really hungry to create a new one that was dedicated to this topic that we were really interested in.”
“The simple question posed by Earthrise, and one we are asking ourselves everyday, is how we tell a new story on the climate crisis that creates a sense of optimism, because we need optimism, we need hope, and imagination – to tackle this crisis and to not fall into apathy and despair.
“It’s this ongoing experiment, and we fail often at our own mission, because we get so caught up still in the data that can be so bleak, and you’re trying to find a balance between communicating the reality, and giving people all the information they need to understand the severity of the issue, and giving people hope and optimism, but not too much hope where people think ‘oh, it’s fine, we dont’ need to worry about it!’ – so it’s this strange balance.”
Harries was keen to emphasise a strong commitment on behalf of Earthrise to representation and truth: “Earthrise is an ongoing experiment to tell a better story around climate, one that’s specifically led by young people, by a diverse group of young people. So although it’s run by three white, privilieged individuals, it’s critical to us that we’re platforming different backgrounds and cultures, and we strive our best to do that. We’re self-improving, and self-checking on that.
“It’s important to us that the information we’re putting out there is fact-checked and well-sourced, so we have a team of people helping us with that, we have a researcher who’s on the project, and I think in this world of misinformation and post-truth, it’s super important to try to validate the information you’re putting out, especially on the web.”
We also spoke about the problems facing climate activism, especially on social media. Climate activists are often held to a kind-of all-or-nothing standard, evidenced by the public outcry whenever Greta Thunberg is pictured within two metres of a piece of plastic. I asked Harries how Earthrise aims to change this discourse.
“One of the early ‘stories’ that we would tell is that we’re all hypocrites, and we should and must start by accepting that. We find ourselves in a system in which we are all complicit in the destruction of our natural environment – it’s just our reality – so when we come to terms with that, it’s from there that we can start to take action.”
“If we had to have a movement of perfect environmentalists, who never sinned, we’d have a very small movement.”
“It’s a tricky narrative – to what extent can we use the excuse of hypocrisy to get away with our actions – and so there also must be a constant holding each other to account and checking back on yourself – could I have done that differently, is that in line with what I am preaching, so again it’s this ongoing process.”
“But I fundamentally believe it’s okay to be a hypocrite, because this is a systemic issue.”
Harries never saw the discussion around climate change as a binary, and throughout our conversation it was clear that he is constantly engaged in a self-dialogue about how best to tackle the climate crisis. He sat somewhere in the middle on most of the questions I asked, but not as someone who was uninformed or unwilling to come to a conclusion, but as someone who is – as we all are when it comes to climate change – grappling with a topic that is far beyond the scope of one individual. His ability to recognise this and yet not become overwhelmed or despairing is a testament to the time and dedication he has put into working in the climate industry.
‘Promising Young Woman’ burst into the headlines a few weeks ago over the controversy surrounding the language of a ‘Variety’ reviewer who last year, following the film’s preview at Cannes, wrote a piece which has fallen under scrutiny for its misogynistic, ageist undertones. Dennis Harvey’s claims that whilst Carey Mulligan as the lead is a ‘fine actress’ he could more easily see producer Margot Robbie in the lead, and that Mulligan wears her ‘pickup-bait gear like bad drag’. His later claim in The Guardian that he was shocked to be labelled a misogynist – “I’m a 60-year-old gay man. I don’t actually go around dwelling on the comparative hotnesses of young actresses, let alone writing about that.” Harvey can claim innocence over his remarks, but they contribute to a wider commentary on the ways in which we perceive female narratives that no amount of pleading innocence or lack of interest can wash away.
Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut centres around the life of Mulligan’s Cassie who, in the wake of a traumatic event in her past, is apathetic concerning her future, despite the promise of her early medical career. This film sensitively and delicately portrays the ways in which an act of violence can uproot our existence, and Cassie’s isolation from those around her is indicative of her inability to truly move on from this seismic event in her life. She cannot let it go, partly because there has been no repercussions on the part of those who committed the crimes, and without going into too much spoiler ridden details, she takes it upon herself not only to remind those who did the harm of their actions, but wider than that, to try and make the predatory men she encounters understand the weight of their actions. This is a film centred around female revenge. But what does that even look like?
Katie Mitchell when discussing the importance of female led narratives stated: “I think some part of one’s self is eroded if you’re always watching work made by men about male experiences” highlighting the frequency in which female narratives are often written by men. Films like Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ present a wronged woman intent on pursuing a violent course of action in order to bring justice to those who have wronged her. When discussing her reasoning behind the film, Fennell describes how she felt that many so called female vengeance plots felt unnatural and distinctly male – “Women just wouldn’t act like that” she argues, foregrounding how often female narratives are told still from a distinctly male point of view, even if they seem to be at first foregrounding a feminine perspective. And that is what ‘Promising Young Woman’ does so well, it presents a uniquely relatable narrative in terms which seem, for the most part, realistic. Cassie is not some male fantasy sex-kitten clad in lycra and wielding a sword, she is a broken woman brimming with frustration over a system which silences and smothers the voices of those who are abused by it. Her solitary quest to make a difference one sleazy male at a time is not centred around violence, or brutality, but an effort to make these men understand the weight of their actions, in a manner which foregrounds her own agency.
The film deliberately embraces a femininity which is refreshing, there is a celebration of bright colours, it leaves you with a sense of bubblegum pink that none of the darkest moments in the film can shift; the exuberant soundtrack featuring the likes of Charlie XCX, Paris Hilton and a spine-chilling instrumental of ‘Toxic’ foregrounds the feminine, celebrating girlishness in a way which is never belittling. Incidentally, I had no idea that Paris Hilton could be so catchy – be warned, her song ‘Stars Are Blind’ will be in your head for days after watching, it’s something that truly stays with you.
The performances in this film are so strong, Mulligan is phenomenal, truly doing justice to every side of this multi-faceted character, and she deserves every credit – without her strength of performance the film may have struggled to maintain believability in every aspect, but she is so watchable that the film comes together within her. In addition, Bo Burnham’s charismatic Ryan is so much fun to watch, and their chemistry is the emotional heart of the film, as we see Cassie struggle to allow herself to be vulnerable in the midst of her pain. This is a film which manages to elude categorisation, containing elements of so many genres that it leaves you with an overwhelming sense of having experienced Cassie’s struggles, in all their complexities, with the highs and lows of her quest for closure, proving that trauma narratives are not one thing, but contain multitudes.
The recent controversy surrounding the Golden Globes nominations, in particular the snubbing of Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking ‘I May Destroy You’ proves that we are a long way from equality, and that as a society we are still struggling to accept a variety of narratives that differ from the status quo. However films like ‘Promising Young Woman’ are proving that there is a ferocity to upcoming filmmakers who refuse to be boxed in by pre-existing labels and tropes which seek to reduce their creative capacity to a footnote in the demographic of cinema at large. How Hollywood responds to such unique and important narratives will dictate their ability to modernise; we need more films like this.
Amidst the pandemic, trying to attend school from home has proven to be quite the challenge. In light of this, the Oxford City Council has donated 50 laptops to a local project, Educate 200.
Educate 200 works with local IT provider Planet IT and The Oxford Academy to provide students with refurbished laptops. The City Council are hoping to donate over 200 laptops in total and are initially trying to check that these laptops are able to be refurbished and repurposed before distributing them to other schools in the city.
Planet IT have additionally committed to donating a Chromebook for every two laptops contributed in order to expand access and ease of online learning. The coronavirus pandemic has meant many students are having to share devices with multiple siblings or even with working parents. As a result, students’ education often suffers and they sometimes have to resort to using a phone for their schoolwork.
Since the start of the lockdown, laptop donation has been taking place across the country as a way to help pupils keep up with their education at home. The BBC’s Make a Difference Give a Laptop campaign has been leading the way, while locally initiatives such as Witney ALBS (Access to Learning Beyond School) and companies such as OX IT Solutions have also helped to tackle the issue in Oxfordshire.
Parts of Oxford are significantly disadvantaged with 10 out of the 83 total neighbourhoods forming part of the 20% most deprived areas in England. These problems are further exacerbated by the lack of technology and internet access, so laptops and tablets can help to tackle some of these structural barriers to education.
The Co-Founder and Managing Director of PlanetIT Sean Smith said: “We’re really grateful we’re able to help and utilise our client base. Hopefully this can be a sustainable solution for our local schools, the Council and Planet IT.”
Councillor Marie Tidball, the Cabinet Member for Supporting Local Communities, also added: “Too many children have already missed out on education in this pandemic because the government support has been too slow to reach those in need. We are fortunate to have a local business with the skills and local knowledge to help tackle the issue, but it shouldn’t be down to them. Our support for their Education 200 project means together we can fast-track laptops to those that need them, helping hundreds of students. In only a month since the government changed its schools policy to remote teaching, the Council, Planet IT and The Oxford Academy have worked quickly to address the technology gap. There is a lot more to be done, but we’re making progress and will continue to work with schools and young people to find new ways to support those students who have been the worst affected by the pandemic.”
The legendary critic Roger Ebert described film as a machine for building empathy. No other medium has the power to allow the viewer to walk in somebody else’s shoes or see the world through someone’s eyes with such totality. Every decision about where to direct the camera, when to cut a sequence, and how to dress a scene in both pre and post production can act as a vehicle to generate a deeper understanding of the lives of marginalised people.
Except, this potential is rarely used. Most mainstream films or television series are made from the same perspective, with the same gaze. Since most films are written and made by straight, white men who are not Disabled, they are written with a similar audience in mind.
This assumption of a default gaze extends to how Disabled people or those with chronic illnesses are viewed on screen. All too often, we exist not as people in our own right but as objects of inspiration for the non-Disabled viewer or other characters. We are held up as brave or admirable for simply living our lives while being Disabled. The audience is implicitly told to be grateful that they are ‘lucky’ enough to not be like us, and should live their life to the fullest out of gratitude that they are not limited by their bodies or minds.
This ‘inspiration porn’ does not come from a place of malice. Often it is a consequence of an attempt to show a positive portrayal of Disabled people. But ‘inspiration porn’ does nothing to help Disabled people, and can actually embed unhelpful ideas about our lives.
I agree with Roger Ebert’s characterisation of film as a machine for empathy. But empathy is too often conflated with sympathy. Pitying Disabled people doesn’t help us. Understanding how we experience the world, recognising that we cannot overcome it through force of will or a positive attitude, and reflecting that in your treatment of us, does.
Sound of Metal is a rare film which uses both the visual and audio aspects of cinema to force the viewer to empathise with its Disabled protagonist.
The film tells the story of Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a recovering addict and drummer in the soundcore band Blackgammon who is touring America with his bandmate and girlfriend of four years Lou (Olivia Cooke). Repeated exposure to crashing symbols and the eerie distorted soundscapes has taken its toll on Ruben’s hearing, which abruptly fails him.
It is a premise which could easily make for another maudlin addition to the annals of awards-bait disability dramas. However, the narrative and directorial decisions made by first-time narrative filmmaker Darius Marder subvert the conventional tropes associated with the genre to make a film which is not only genuinely empathetic towards its Disabled protagonist, but takes an approach to depicting disability which is rarely seen on screen.
It would be impossible to talk about Sound of Metal without mentioning its innovative sound design, which forces the viewer to experience Ruben’s hearing loss with him. The result is striking, capturing Ruben’s disorientation as the world around him dulls until it sounds like he is underwater, to an almost complete silence as Ruben’s perception alters. Sound designer Nicolas Becker used microphones 200 times as sensitive as the human ear to record the roar of Ahmed’s blood in his veins or the creak of tendons in his jaw, recreating the increased sensitivity some people have to the sounds of their own body when they begin to lose their hearing.
This effect is not used throughout the entirety of the film. Marder uses mid to wide shots to signal when we are witnessing an omniscient hearing perspective, and intimate over-the-shoulder angles and close ups when the film switches to Ruben’s perspective. This empathetic approach makes Sound of Metal less voyeuristic than films such as The Theory of Everything where disability is turned into a spectacle for the audience, and the Disabled person presented as something to be pitied and not understood.
Marder’s decision to depict disability as an identity and culture as valid as any other is especially poignant. In order to prevent him from falling back into self-destructive habits, Lou enrols Ruben into a sober house for Deaf addicts. The community is run by Joe (Paul Raci) according to the belief that it is not their hearing which needs to be cured but their attitude. The numerous scenes of Deaf people supporting each other and living fulfilled lives acts as a direct rebuttal of Ruben’s internalised belief that he needs to be able to hear to be happy, and thus the audiences preconceptions about how we Disabled people feel about our lives.
As a hearing person, it is not my place to criticise the precise presentation of Deafness and Deaf culture Sound of Metal depicts. The film wades the divisive debate within the Deaf community surrounding cochlear implants, which some Deaf people embrace and others view as an unwanted attempt to ‘cure’ them. The casting of hearing actors in the film’s two most prominent Deaf roles, especially Paul Raci, even drew criticism from other members of the cast. However, they were won over by the deep understanding of Deaf culture Raci had from growing up as the child of two Deaf adults.
The Deaf and Disabled communities are not monoliths. Deaf drummer Dame Evelyn Glennie commented that the film “doesn’t try to tell a story that every deaf person, or every person who is losing their hearing, will instantly relate to.” One film cannot depict every facet of a community’s identity or experience, the few films which tell the stories of Disable people despite this, are automatically held to a higher standard.
Watching Sound of Metal, I found myself feeling hopeful about what the future of disability on film could look like. I am sick of seeing films where disability is presented as an obstacle to get over. I am sick of seeing films where the viewer is supposed to pity the Disabled character because they are Disabled. I am sick of films where our very existence is presented as inspirational. Sound of Metal not only shows its audience that a Disabled life is still worth living, but allows them to develop a deep empathy with members of a community they may never have been exposed to. That should not be revolutionary, but it is.
