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To fall in love in just ‘One Day’: Review

By
Josie Thornton
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Credit: Netflix

I can clearly remember watching Normal People in 2020. The world outside my bedroom window had been turned inside out by the coronavirus, and within just a week my school days had been brought to an abrupt end. Days became strange: I missed the friends and family I could no longer see in person, and I worried about the future. Normal People seemed to perfectly respond to my longings and doubts. Not only stylishly paired back, beautifully sound-tracked and thoughtfully acted, the series spoke about love in its most vulnerable form. Sad but beautiful, it promised that human connections would be strong enough to withstand the battles of real life. 

Fast forward four years and I am in Spain, scrolling through Netflix for something to watch. The first thing I come across is the recent adaptation of David Nicholls’ bestselling novel One Day. A massive fan of Nicholls’ books, which capture the blunders and pains of adolescence with irresistible warmth, One Day is the only book of his I have not read. The 2011 adaptation felt underdeveloped, with Anne Hathaway’s attempts at a Northern accent a constant distraction from the chemistry of the central relationship. After watching the trailer for the new series, however, I was quickly convinced to give it a go, and within the space of just one afternoon – let alone one day – I had fallen swiftly and surely in love. 

The first episode opens with the musings of Philip Larkin: ‘Where can we live but days?’. Thus begins the series of fourteen half-hour episodes that tell the story of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley – one a moneyed socialite, the other a nerdy Northerner – who meet at their graduation ball in Edinburgh in 1988. We revisit the two friends on the same day for twenty years: July 15th, St Swithin’s. If it rains today, so they say, a wet summer will follow. And so with Dexter and Emma, the events of just one day will have the power to forecast the rest of their lives.

Much like Normal People, the cinematography is beautiful: we are taken through the sun kissed streets of Rome; up and down the hills of Edinburgh; into Parisian bistros and onto Grecian beaches. There are oranges and pinks following Dex and Em wherever they go; in their happiest of highs, or their loneliest of lows. The acting is deeply thoughtful, with the fresh-faced leads Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod rendering the two characters utterly heartbreaking, even when behaving their worst. Be warned: the world of One Day is not all sunshine and romance. Be prepared to shout at the screen in frustration; to hate Dexter for one small moment, only to cry with him the next. 

Perhaps the series’ greatest triumph is the soundtrack, which guides viewers from the House of Love days of the late 80s, into the 90s of groups like The Charlatans, Blur, and Suede, and ends in the early 2000s with Badly Drawn Boy. While hints to the year of each episode are made visually and in the dialogue – Emma bets that she will never own a mobile phone, and Dexter’s blaring blue blazer, quiffed hair and single earring absolutely scream the 80s – it is the music that sustains the story’s chronology. The carefully composed soundtrack makes Dexter and Emma’s relationship universal with songs revealing our ongoing preoccupation with affairs of the heart, whether it’s 1968 and Irma Thomas is singing ‘Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)’, or 1996 with Longpigs confessing ‘the love that I’ve clung to / more often than I’ve let it show’. 

One Day, like Normal People, has touched me in a way that very few other programmes have. Perhaps it is the moment in which we come across these shows that gives them their extraordinary power and meaning. On my year abroad, far from the familiarity of home and the comfort of friends, One Day does not feel like a romance so much as a fierce affirmation of the power of love and friendship to endure change, traverse distance and survive setbacks. To watch this show as a student on the cusp of graduation equally lends it a certain magic: it helps to know that the chains formed of our todays will tether us to our tomorrows. Emma reads a line from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, proclaiming that ‘it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been’.


One Day defies the boundaries of the romantic. It is a story as much about struggling to hold onto love as about being lucky enough to find it; about the times we lose as much as the times that we win; and most importantly of all, it is a reminder that there is little in this world that compares to the feeling of loving and being loved by our friends.

The man of the moment: Review of Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin

By
Hassan Akram
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Image Credit: Chatham House/ CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

It was less than two years ago that a pair of journalists had the bad fortune of writing a biography subtitled The Inside Story of the Unexpected Rise of Liz Truss. Possibly with this consideration in mind, Tom Baldwin, author of Keir Starmer: The Biography, has chosen as unboastful a title as possible. This book will not go down in history as the definitive life of Starmer. It has a strong election-campaign flavour; the structure is jumpy and unchronological; and, besides, the only complete biographies are posthumous. All the same, there are enough fresh insights here about the mind and life of our next Prime Minister for it to be essential reading.

Baldwin does his best to humanise Starmer and to deflate the view of him as “Mr Boring”. Friends, family, colleagues and exes all give their perspectives on him. As with any biography of a public figure, the accounts of Starmer’s youth and his often grief-filled personal life will evoke sympathy even in his most hostile critics. He is a man deeply committed to his family, who “cries on… shoulders at funerals”, and whose mother died days before he became an MP. The overall picture of him also benefits from little facets of character, like the football mania which has given him a determination to win at all costs. 

Starmer was a born Labourite. He was named after Keir Hardie; his father was a manual worker who “detested Thatcher”; and, as a sixth-former at the time of the 1979 election, he debated Labour politics against Tory classmates. One of his friends remarked offhand that he was a “future Labour prime minister”. In 1985, when he arrived at St Edmund Hall as a postgraduate, he was suspicious of Oxford’s traditions, and spent all of his time studying. He was only mentioned once in the Oxford Labour Club’s newspaper. 

In 1987, Starmer entered the legal profession, and took up his first case defending a shoplifter by asking “Isn’t all property theft?” (Though, as Baldwin is keen to remind us, “None of this should be taken to mean… that he is reverting to some sort of Marxist ideology”). Starmer was also a keen advocate of human rights and some of his greatest hits as a lawyer include co-authoring a 1,500-page tome on human rights in Africa, and working voluntarily to save Commonwealth prisoners from the death penalty. He also gained a reputation for taking “things a little bit to heart when he feels an injustice has happened. Later, in Parliament, colleagues would again remark on this “genuine instinct for justice”. In 2003, he marched against the Iraq War, maintaining, however, that the invasion was carried out in good faith. Between 2008 and 2013 he had a distinguished career as Director of Public Prosecutions. Baldwin details a few of his most important cases, but the controversial decision to ignore “double jeopardy” and prosecute Stephen Lawrence’s murderers must be Starmer’s finest accomplishment.

Yet after his election to Parliament in 2015, cracks began to appear in this rosy man of integrity. Before he had even arrived in the House of Commons he was being tipped as a possible party leader, though he did not stand, and Jeremy Corbyn won instead. Starmer says now that he knew Corbyn wouldn’t last long as party leader. Indeed, Starmer was so troubled by reports of Labour antisemitism under Corbyn that he almost considered resigning over them. He didn’t resign, of course, and, aside from his own testimony, there is conflicting evidence as to how he really felt at the time. What is certain is that he knew leaving the shadow cabinet would damage his chances of becoming party leader “should a vacancy arise”. 

When he did become Labour leader in 2020, he had two main goals. In rooting out antisemitism, he has succeeded commendably. In removing factionalism, however, his approach has been completely wrongheaded. He has scrapped almost every Labour flagship policy and has adopted as many Conservative ones. It is interesting that he should aim to “return Labour to the service of working-class people” by vowing, for instance, to retain the two-child benefit cap. The overall result has been a widespread sense that the Labour Party no longer stands for anything. 

Starmer is obviously imitating the New Labour playbook, though between him and Tony Blair there is one difference. The old joke about Blair, which was true enough, was that he didn’t believe in anything – but at least he believed in not believing in anything. Long before becoming party leader, Blair was saying that Labour needed to pragmatise and shift itself nearer to the centre-ground in politics. Starmer, on the other hand, has within three years mutated from Corbynism to Blairism. He is worse than a chameleon. The expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn, who was in the Labour Party while Starmer was in the cradle, was emblematic of this ideological shift; and even Baldwin seems tacitly to regret Corbyn’s mistreatment. 

Some have praised Starmer for his “pragmatism” – pragmatism being Latin for the suppression of all left-wingers who disagree with you. It has been overshadowed by the tabloid media’s more trivial smears about Currygate and Mr Boring, but there is definitely a draconian streak in Starmer. In Milton Keynes, a prospective Labour candidate was blocked from standing for Parliament after liking a Tweet that called Starmer a “prat”. In 2021, most likely in order to bolster his own support base, Starmer created new rules for party leadership candidacy, which, if they had been in effect a year earlier, would have disqualified all candidates but himself. His real core – the driven footballer who “hates losing” – is growing more and more visible behind that “man of integrity” persona. How else has the human rights lawyer with a keen sense of justice ended up (“accidentally”) calling for water and energy to be cut off from Gaza?

At one point in the book, someone quotes the maxim: “All political careers end in failure.” In the current context a similar saying is relevant: political leaders always fall for the same reason that they originally rise. There is an obvious truth in this. For example, David Cameron came to power by suppressing the Eurosceptics and extremists in his party, and was ultimately brought down by them. If Starmer does become Prime Minister, he will have done so by expunging an entire ideological wing of his party; and it is very likely that, one day, when his career does end in failure, it will be the Labour left who bring him down.

Taiwan’s 2024 Elections: What Taiwan can teach the UK about democracy

By
Rebecca Gardner
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It’s 8am in Taipei, on the 24th November 2022. This morning as I walk to class, negotiating my way around the noodle carts and motorbikes parked half-way out into the pavement, I am stopped at the crossroads by a local election candidate, brandishing a loudspeaker in one hand and a foam finger pointer in the other. A couple of campaign volunteers lean out of their retro-fitted pick-up truck, handing morning commuters leaflets and badges with a manga-style drawing of their candidate giving a big thumbs up: “讚! zan!”, or “great!” in Mandarin. As I flip the badge over between my fingers, I can’t help but compare the festive scene to our elections back home in the UK. What would my MP look like manga-style on a badge? 

Throughout my year living in Taipei, I was repeatedly struck by the vibrancy of Taiwanese political culture. As a fledgling democracy caught between the US and China, it is perhaps not surprising that people here take voting so seriously. But what caught my attention most was how politicians, like my local candidate, were always out on the streets and listening to their constituents. Coming from the UK, where it often feels like politicians are chronically disengaged from their voters, watching Taiwanese democracy in action was as bittersweet as it was inspiring. 

Just over a year later, Taiwan’s 2024 presidential elections this January saw a series of “firsts”: Taiwan’s voters elected current vice-president Lai Ching-te as president, winning the Democratic People’s Party (DPP) a historically unprecedented third term in office. Joining his party in parliament is also the island’s first openly LGBTQ+ legislator. Most crucially, despite the presidential victory, major DPP losses in the district elections means Taiwan faces a hung parliament for the first time since 2008. Having reached 8 seats in the Legislative Yuan, political newcomer Ko Wen-je and his party the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) will now become a gatekeeper to passing legislation, with both the KMT and DPP vying for an alliance with him. One thing is for certain – Taiwanese politics will look very different in the coming years, and the world will be watching.  

The 2024 calendar is full of significant elections, but many have pointed to Taiwan’s election as critically important. Just across the Taiwan Strait is the People’s Republic of China, which states that the self-governing island is an “inseparable” part of its territory. On the other hand, after more than seventy years of self-rule, Taiwan increasingly sees itself as an independent entity, with a unique blend of cultures, a democratic government, and its own national identity. Amidst tense US-China relations, fears of war and its potential global impacts have been splashed across frontpages worldwide. 

But this narrative Western media tells us of Taiwan, a story of clashing egos and superpowers staking their claims, has blinded much of the world to a simple fact – Taiwan isn’t just a prize piece on a giant geopolitical chessboard; it is home to 23 million people. Whilst the world watched anxiously to see if voters would swing towards the “pro-China” Nationalist Party (KMT) or forge on behind the “pro-Independence” DPP, Taiwanese people were focussed on their own priorities:  low wages, high house prices, and social security – in short, the policies that affect people’s everyday lives. To fully grasp the results of this election, and the implications it may have diplomatically, we must dig beneath sensationalist rhetoric and understand what it is like to live as a Taiwanese person in 2024. 

So how can we understand these results? Party affiliation in Taiwan has long been dominated by identity. The KMT’s base are immigrants from Mainland China and their descendants, who maintain a strong sense of “Chinese” identity. On the other hand, the DPP has its roots in the Taiwanese democracy movement. Touting progressive values, its supporters have been younger and prefer to identify as “Taiwanese”. Although the “identity question” undoubtedly still plays a role in voter decision making – many younger, Taiwanese-identifying voters would be hard-pressed to vote for the KMT – the growing misalignment between the district vote and the presidential vote, as well as the increase in votes for the TPP, reflects how many young voters are prioritising economic policy, and seeking a change in the dynamics driving Taiwanese politics.   

Since no party won a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan, governance over the next four years will indeed look very different. Despite clinging on to the presidency, the DPP has not entirely managed to escape the “curse” of a third term in government. Serious losses in the district elections have left them with 50 seats to the KMT’s 51. That means passing legislation for both parties will hinge on their ability to strike a deal with the TPP led by Ko Wen-je. Having achieved eight seats in the Legislative Yuan, Ko may be the biggest winner of this year’s election. Many young Taiwanese in the high-tech sector were driven away from the DPP by rising house prices and falling wages, and drawn to Ko’s promise of finding a middle-ground on cross-strait relations. As the centre of gravity for his party-cum-social movement, Ko will play the role of “Kingmaker”, with both the DPP and KMT in with a chance of courting him on a policy-by-policy basis. Ko has history with both parties – he even attempted to form a joint ticket with the KMT last November – so which party he will choose to collaborate with remains up in the air. 

The biggest risk for Taiwanese democracy is a weak government. For the past eight years, the DPP majority has been able to push through legislation with relatively little difficulty. Now, effective governance will depend on cross-party collaboration. Voters will recall with trepidation Taiwan’s last divided government in 2008, overshadowed by hostile inter-party relations. However, Taiwan watchers have pointed to important social reforms, such as gender equality legislation, that came out of this period. More negotiation on core issues could lead to novel solutions and consensus forming. How the main parties communicate with each other over the next few months, and whether the TPP can maintain its independence as a “Third Front”, will give crucial clues as to the likelihood of this scenario. 

With the threat of Chinese intervention, voters have also had a choice to make about which party they believe offers the best strategy for maintaining the status quo. The KMT prioritises warmer cross-strait relations, playing to domestic concerns of job losses following a suspension of favourable trade conditions by the Mainland in December. DPP supporters believe the party’s strategy of strengthening ties with the US and global democratic community offers the best deterrent against military intervention. Lai’s election promises a continuation of his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen’s diplomatic policy and is evidence that many voters support Taiwan taking a more prominent role on the world stage. 

Last week the US senate had passed a $95 billion aid package, including $4.3 billion earmarked for the defence of Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region. This example of all-to-rare bipartisan collaboration is encouraging news for Lai, who sees the US-Taiwan security partnership as crucial for maintaining the island’s freedom.

But Lai is not without his critics, and anti-American sentiment is on the rise. TSMC, Taiwan’s world-class semiconductor chip manufacturers, made a recent decision to establish a factory in the US, which drew accusations that the US was seeking to “hollow out Taiwan”. Moreover, as the DPP refuses to accept the 1992 Consensus, which states that there is only “one China”, it is likely Beijing will continue to refuse to communicate with a DPP administration. Under these circumstances, it is hard to see how Lai will fulfil his commitment to developing cross-strait relations. 

It is important to beware of sensationalist articles about Lai. It is true that he was not China’s favoured candidate – the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attacked Lai as a “destroyer of peace” and claim that Lai and the DPP “do not represent mainstream public opinion on the island”. When it comes to talking about Taiwan’s international status, wording is crucial, and in the past Lai has been more provocative on the subject than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen. Particularly, Lai’s 2017 comments in which he described himself as “a pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence” crossed Beijing’s red-line of advocating for the formal declaration of the island’s independence. However, on the campaign trail Lai has stuck to Tsai’s formula, treading a line of ambiguity to insist that there is no need to declare independence since Taiwan is “already an independent sovereign state named The Republic of China, Taiwan”. This, too, is testament to the culture of listening in Taiwanese politics. Surveys show most Taiwanese people want to maintain the status-quo with China, and as a representative of the whole nation Lai has committed to govern by majority public opinion, whatever his own views may be. 

What we do know is that Lai’s election does not immediately increase the risk of conflict with the PRC. Beijing’s response so far has been measured, simply reiterating their position that the results: “will not change the basic fact that Taiwan is part of China and there is only one China in the world.” Amid record youth unemployment, high inflation and corruption in the army, Beijing’s priority over the near future is to maintain external stability amid economic headwinds domestically. A split government will be a big reassurance to Xi, as decisions on cross-strait policy and military spending will likely hit a stalemate in the Legislative Yuan. That’s not to say Beijing won’t be keeping up its pressure on the island. All-out military intervention might be off the cards, but a foreign policy dispute could provide Xi a welcome distraction from China’s internal dilemmas. 

As we reflect on these elections, we can of course learn a lot about the current social and political trends at play in Taiwan, from growing disillusionment with the 2 major political parties to the focus on day to day issues. But for me, the real lessons to be learned go beyond the results, and instead come from Taiwanese democracy as a whole. For sure, politics in Taiwan is not perfect; online misinformation, hyper-partisanism, and distrust of the political establishment have emerged here as they have in all modern democracies. However, Taiwanese people’s commitment to the democratic process, with a 72% turnout rate, stands in stark opposition to the US and the UK. Looking back to when I frequently saw candidates out on the streets, it occurs to me that it is precisely politicians’ commitment to being amongst their voters that makes politics feel more participative there. If you saw your representative chatting to voters on your street corner, you would probably be more inclined to think they were in touch with local issues too. There is a lot for UK politicians to take away from how the Taiwanese do democracy. Maybe it’s time for some manga-style Starmer badges?

A Press Morning at Yoko Ono’s ‘MUSIC OF THE MIND’ Exhibition

By
Taya Neilson
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A mother and a child crouched in front of a white boat in a white room. The boat has blue writing on it. The girl is writing on the boat.
Image Credit: Taya Neilson

(Image credit: Taya Neilson)

‘Soon there will be no need for artists, since people will start to write their own instructions or exchange them and paint’ (Letter to Ivan Karp from Yoko Ono, 1965)

Tracing seven decades of Yoko Ono’s multidisciplinary approach to art, the exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND is a celebration of her interactive and often radical work. As such, a symphony of sounds struck me upon first entering the main gallery room of the exhibition at the Tate Modern. Her ‘Music of the Mind’ was very much present and alive. The general buzz amongst visitors, the projection of Ono’s films onto the gallery walls and her voice added a dimension of musical performance to the exhibition, contrasting the traditional silence expected in art galleries.

The usual compelling force to remain quiet within the art gallery was thus removed; visitors did not stare at the work created by Ono in silence for a prolonged period of time or awkwardly shuffle to the side to make room for the next observer, their brows stern as they inspected the pieces on display. Instead, visitors were constantly mobile and vocal as they moved from one interactive piece to the next. The gallery space itself did not provide an atmosphere of silence, but rather upon observation, isolated moments of contemplation and quietness were evident amongst the bustling scene in the room.

Ono’s installation Add Colour (Refugee Boat) is an example of how viewers interacted with her work to create their own collaborative art. It started as an all-white boat in an all-white room and, as the day progressed, it became a mural adorned with blue messages. Visitors expressed their own thoughts regarding the ongoing refugee crisis present today in contemporary society through the medium of art as they responded to Ono’s instructions that ‘Just blue like the ocean’ they should contribute their own hopes and beliefs in blue and white. The collaborative creation of this piece, therefore, reflects on the ability to make a significant impact through collective action. Yet, alone in that very room was a little girl, clasping a pen marker bigger than her hand. The girl was not aware of the messages written across the walls or the press that stood to the side of the room, but rather she was circling the white boat, deciding where to make her mark. It soon became apparent that she was finding the perfect place to write Ono’s name. An act of commemoration occurred at that very moment and the artist herself became part of the collective wall of messages encapsulating human agency and joint-responsibility.

Another two men participated in the White Chess Set—a game consisting of white chess pieces and the instruction ‘play as long as you can remember where all your pieces are’. They avidly leant forward to observe the game unfolding, so focused and unfettered by their fellow visitors walking past. First released in 1966, White Chess Set demonstrates Ono’s anti-war stance, making the interactive element of her piece extremely significant. As the chess pieces are indistinguishable, Ono’s modifications encourage the players to collaborate in order to establish a truce between them. She wanted her art to engage its viewers, feeling it necessary to directly communicate the importance of world peace to her fellow activists and neighbours.

In May 1971, Ono revealed how she believed anyone could be an artist and that, in her view, paintings went through a life transformation when people engaged directly with them.1 This explains the presence of Ono’s ‘instruction pieces’ throughout the exhibition. A particular moment caught the attention of the room during the press morning: a sudden banging as a girl engaged with Ono’s piece Painting to Hammer a Nail. As soon as the loud clamour was heard, photographers clustered around this spontaneous performance. The girl not only became an artist in her own right, hammering a nail into the blank canvas as instructed by Ono, but she also simultaneously became part of the art, as photographs were taken capturing this event.

(Image credit: Taya Neilson)

By instructing others to add to her work, rather than merely repeating it, Ono noted in 2001 that she felt like she was representing the whole artistic community and releasing herself from her position amongst an elite group of artists. The exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, therefore, cleverly relates Ono’s artwork to her world views. Rather than taking the position of the ‘elite’ artist, Ono removes the hierarchy established between the artist and viewer through her instructions. Her collaborative artwork and performances were thus created to reflect on the importance of collective activism and agency in order to campaign for world peace and social justice.

  1. Yoko Ono, What is the relationship between The World and The Artist? (May 1971). Available at: https://www.imaginepeace.com/archives/2622. ↩︎

Brasenose and St Peter’s hit by power outages

By
Éilis Mathur
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Image Credit: Andrew Ratto

Brasenose, St Peter’s and the Oxford Union have faced power outages in the last week due to technical faults at a local power station. Students at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe and St Peter’s College have expressed their frustration with having to deal with loss of internet connectivity and electricity. 

On the morning of Tuesday 27 February, there was a blackout at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe due to problems with the local electricity network run by Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE). Students also reported many other problems with electricity in the past weeks.

The Frewin Annexe houses second year undergraduates at Brasenose College who were left for several hours without any electricity. A student told Cherwell: “it’s so annoying we literally get stuck inside Frewin and our food is going off because of the fridges.”

Brasenose encouraged students to make use of other facilities within the main site, such as the bar and JCR while the College and SSE worked to resolve the issue quickly. Students were also offered free teas and coffee as compensation for the outages. 

St Peter’s College main site, including offices, student rooms and libraries, have also experienced a series of power outages over the last three weeks. Since Sunday 11 February, there have been many on-and-off power cuts, with the longest outage lasting for approximately ten hours on Monday 26 February. 

St Peter’s College told Cherwell the issue was not due to college infrastructure or maintenance provision failures but rather “due to technical issues with the local power transformer and substation, which is located on College property but owned and managed by the electric company.” In an attempt to provide a temporary solution, a generator has been installed by SSE. 

The College has communicated with students during these outages and has tried to “continue to provide hot food at scheduled meal times whenever possible” despite kitchens losing electricity during these power cuts. 

The Oxford Union was also closed temporarily on Tuesday morning due to the power outages. A student told Cherwell that the order of election candidates on the ballot were decided by picking out names out of a shoe instead of the usual digital lottery system.

SSE is currently working on a permanent solution for these power outages while the affected colleges are trying to maintain communication and provide support for their students. 

A review: How good is Oxford at sport?

By
Rebecca Pearson
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Image Credit Alison Day via Flickr

There is no doubt that Oxford University is primarily known for its academic status. The spectres of its famous historical, literary and political figures, that seep even into the naming of college rooms, sustains a long and recognised history of academic prominence. It is easy to see how Oxford is upheld, in its own right, by a status that falls outside of sporting recognition and prowess, despite its similarly long standing record of sporting achievement. With the iconic measure of the Oxford Blues awards signalling individual sporting talent and excellence, how good is Oxford at sport, really? 

In 2021, Derek Pringle sighted the end of first-class university cricket. After Covid-19 had rattled the progression of students advancing from home clubs to university setups, gaps in the standard of performance-level university games began to show. Despite Oxford and Cambridge’s cricket matches once being considered first-class games, the ECB decided to revoke this privilege in 2021, leading to an uncertain image about the integrity of university-level cricket and the prestige of being part of the Blues system. The ECB’s decision reveals a perceived issue from the sport’s board about how professional cricket should be categorised. However, every sport and every university has a bigger picture, beyond the decisions from sporting boards and university sport decision-makers, so how can we begin to form an image of sport at Oxford?

Speaking to a member of the Oxford Men’s Rugby first-team, sport at Oxford offers a unique experience to move through a highly pressured academic environment whilst training with others and taking on the diverse sporting opportunities that Oxford’s network offers: 

“There’s a really really good culture in the [rugby] club where we all work for each other and work hard, particularly as we’re all under quite a lot of academic pressure […] we really come together at training, lock in, and have a good time. […] More than just the rugby, I’ve got such a good group of friends from Oxford and it feels like I’ve been here for ages.”

Back in October 2023, it was announced that the Oxford versus Cambridge Varsity Matches would be moved away from Twickenham stadium after 100 years, instead moving to Saracens’ StoneX stadium. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) put the decision down to economic sustainability; they were struggling to sell out even a third of its 82,000 seat stadium. However, despite the controversy around moving the match away from the home of rugby, there is a growing sense that the move will bring a better crowd engagement, eliciting a positive move towards cultivating a closer atmosphere between fans and their teams: 

“changing [the stadium venue] will open up a lot more opportunities, and I think it will be a really really good event – I implore as many people to buy tickets as possible.” 

With so much of sport’s longevity, especially within university set-ups, resting on student enjoyment, spectatorship and cultivating social events that centre around watching good university rivalries and competition, the change in stadiums has been seen as a forward-thinking move that should support the growth of Oxford’s rugby culture. 

Oxford holds a unique position in its sporting endeavours. Compared to other top universities, like Exeter, Nottingham and Loughborough, all of which are consistently marketed with sport as large part of their university brand-image, Oxford is more likely to be stereotyped as a home for academia and rowing. Whilst rowing is certainly a cornerstone of Oxford’s sporting image, the 81 university sports clubs and 200 college clubs that make up Oxford’s sporting network offer more opportunities to get involved – an aspect that cultivates an enjoyment for sport and progression, alongside offering performance setups.

So, why is Oxford’s image still firmly rooted in its academic interests? Cultivating a sporting university image has much to do with student perception and celebrating student-athlete achievements. Dissecting Oxford’s sports-marketing provision reveals some gaps in its promotion of Oxford’s sporting events, successes and opportunities through individual club’s social media pages. Success feeds off of traction and interest, perhaps exposing social media as an area that Oxford’s sport clubs are still yet to push.

At the highest level of Oxford’s sports clubs, there is also still friction created by funding loops and the disparity in some men’s and women’s teams’ opportunities. The strong uptake in sport at a college-level is often separated from the uptake at a university level, with much of the student participation relying on bottom-up volunteering from student coaches, rather than a trickle-down of University-wide funding for sporting initiatives. This separation can also be seen at a higher level where, for example in Oxford’s Men’s and Women’s Rugby teams, there is sometimes a disparity between the team’s abilities to acquire funding from external sponsorships that would unlock further training and competition opportunities. There becomes a hard balance to strike between University funding interests, sporting opportunities, promotion and inclusion, whilst recognising that Oxford unquestionably pushes rowing and, during its history, 283 Oxford students have gone on to represent Great Britain in the Olympic games. In the bigger picture, Oxford is very much good at sport. 

With such a pressured focus on academic attainment, sport at Oxford offers a unique opportunity to balance academic interests with sporting enjoyment, community and success. Whilst funding capacity is something that all universities are facing, it seems that, in the first instance, Oxford’s sporting achievements merely need more promotion. Just how good Oxford is at sport rests a lot on perception, so perhaps it just needs some of us to shout about it.

 

Examining western attitudes to apartheid

By
Hamzah Sheikh
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“I am the grandchild of Nelson Mandela” is a common expression amongst social justice activists from South Africa. The recent case brought by the country against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is inextricably linked to its past fight for justice and decolonisation. For many, the case is a moral beacon which challenges the Western hegemony over global politics – but what can South Africa’s history teach us about the present?

In South Africa, apartheid began in 1948. At the time, many white South Africans (‘Afrikaners’) felt that white domination was being threatened by an increasing number of black migrant workers in the country’s industrial centres; the ruling minority insisted that there should be a market for employment in which non-whites could not compete. The solution was a legislative effort to extend segregation, which had so far been the social custom, through a parliament in which non-whites could not vote. Apartheid was the legislative part of a system that exploited black labour and concentrated money and power in the hands of the white elite. 

By 1964, 3 million white South Africans controlled the affairs of 11 million black Africans, 1.5 million persons of mixed blood and half a million Asians. By the beginning of the 1980s, South Africa had the highest wealth inequality in the world, with 40 per cent of the population earning just 6 percent of the national income. 

Looking through the archives of The New York Times between 1960-80, there are a few key ways in which apartheid was allowed to persist until the start of the 21st century. 

The first was clever marketing. Afrikaners considered their rule as akin to an objective tribunal, like the Supreme Court. The United Party, although not in favour of apartheid, argued that the role of the white government was to stand “above partisan passion and…defend minority rights, however transiently unpopular, from an excessive ‘democracy’ of a thrusting majority”. This was compounded by open fearmongering about what ‘black rule’ could mean for the country. In 1977, the Foreign Minister of Apartheid South Africa travelled to the United States to lobby Congressmen, businessmen and Senators against supporting ‘one-man, one-vote’, the slogan used by the anti-apartheid movement. The same slogan used by the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s, he said, would bring “violence, bloodshed and eventual destruction of the white population”.

The next was an obsession with discussing the way in which apartheid would end and detracting from the vile racism and inherent violence of white minority rule. In 1986, four years before the negotiations to end apartheid, a New York Times opinion writer wrote: “None but the glib can foresee an easy, painless transition…oppression has gone on so long that even those most patient of people, South African blacks, are now smouldering with bitterness.”

The idea that apartheid could only be dismantled through excessive violence allowed many to continue supporting the status quo, even as increasing state violence was required to maintain the apartheid regime. When 7,000 black protesters rose up in opposition to the ‘pass-book’, a government ID that defined your rights according to your race, police fired indiscriminately into the crowd and killed 69 people. UMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the paramilitary arm of the African National Congress (ANC), was formed in the wake of this atrocity, now known as the Sharpeville massacre.

Pervading this discussion were racist narratives that suggested that black Africans were not ready to be given sovereignty and that they were too tribal, or inherently violent, to form stable societies. Many colonial enterprises relied on similar notions of stewardship, which gave Europeans the right to control African affairs. An opinion article in The New York Times in 1962 entitled ‘Africa Struggles with Democracy’ repeats long-cited ideas about the backwards, tribalistic people of the continent. Seemingly legitimate concerns about the rise of ‘strong man’ rule even suggested that Africans were somehow predisposed to it: “Now, having become the masters, they seem to many Western observers to be surrendering their new powers just as fast as they can, not to the white overlords, but to their own black leaders.”

Absent from this discussion was the fact that the white holders of power had, for the past four hundred years, undermined the rule of law and effectively precluded the formation of stable African societies. The apartheid government regularly stoked racial tensions to preserve its power, even to the end of its rule. 

The final way the apartheid regime clung to power was to exaggerate claims of a greater evil. For many in the West, the “inhumanity of the South African system, its perverse racism, was a lesser evil” than the spectre of communism. The apartheid government, and its powerful allies in the United States and the United Kingdom, considered the ANC a terrorist organisation sympathetic to communism. After the United Nations published a report advocating for the establishment of a ‘non-racial democracy’, South Africa accused it of bias for drawing on sources which it considered “communist-infiltrated or controlled”.

In 1952, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for ‘statutory communism’. He would later face charges of ‘high treason’ and ‘conspiracy to violently overthrow the government’; the latter led to his famous imprisonment on Robben Island. In 2005, 11 years after apartheid was lifted, I had the honour of meeting him. Yet, he remained on the United States terror watchlist until 2008.

It is in this spirit that one should view the moral leadership of South Africa at the ICJ. In the words of Chief Albert Lutuli, a former President-General of the ANC: “Our history is one of opposition to domination, of protest and refusal to submit to tyranny.” The struggle for national rights in South Africa has a 300-year-old history. It continues today, as economic and social apartheid is dismantled in South Africa and it challenges Western imperialism.

Decolonisation is not an easy endeavour, but history shows that it is inevitable.

Zone of Interest – Review

By
Kate Bunn
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Image Credits: PerSona77 via Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

In the first chapter of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel The Zone of Interest,  Golo Thomsen, a Nazi soldier, describes the passing of a lorry revealing its ‘cargo’ to the newly arrived French inmates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. To Thomsen, it’s ‘nothing more than a day’s natural wastage from KL1, on its way to KL2. But of course our Parisians let out a great whimpering howl’. His euphemisms are obvious, yet they are emblematic of the culture of ‘seeing without seeing’ that cast its shadow over the National Socialist period in Germany. Jonathan Glazer’s recent film adaptation of the novel captures this same atmosphere of avoidance, but does so through its visual language rather than through Amis’ sardonic prose. Their shared title, ‘The Zone of Interest’, was the commonly used term which euphemistically referred to the restricted zone surrounding the death camp. It is emblematic of the industrial levels of mass murder that the Nazis committed: reducing human suffering to numbers, and human life to ‘cargo’.

Glazer does not ease us into this horrific world. The first two minutes of the film show only a blank, black screen paired with Mika Levi’s deafening and sparse score. There is no narrative exposition: we are thrown headfirst into the daily life of the Höss family. Rudolf Höss, the patriarch and longest serving Auschwitz Kommandant, and his wife, Hedwig, live in a sizeable house and share a garden wall with the death camp. We watch them care for their children, entertain guests, and be attended to by servants. The servants are most likely prisoners whose one wrong move could result in them being sent back over the wall. They are mostly treated as an invisible nuisance by the Höss family, yet on one occasion, following the early departure of her mother, Hedwig threatens death upon the servant girl as easily as scolding her for burning toast.

Hedwig is perhaps the most interesting character of the film, brilliantly portrayed by actress Sandra Hüller. There is something infantile about her, and though she spouts Nazi rhetoric more than her husband, there is a sense that she does not really understand the words she says, or perhaps she has regressed in an effort to distance herself from them. When her mother visits, Hedwig takes her on a tour of the garden, and jokingly brags at one point that she has been nicknamed the ‘Queen of Auschwitz’. Her garden, like her nickname, is an effort to make light of the atrocities being committed, yet the foundations, the very soil, are inseparable from death. In one scene, a prisoner tills ash into the ground; death becomes the fertiliser for Hedwig’s lush, green Eden. Nonetheless, Hedwig’s sincere or feigned ignorance allow her to be fiercely proud of the life she and her husband have built.

Rudolf Höss’ feelings towards his ‘job’ are more ambivalent. He cares deeply for animals and his children. He takes his boots off before he goes upstairs. He is as childlike as his wife, teasing her from his separate, single bed about her French perfume. The only hint that he feels any guilt comes towards the end of the film. He is relocated to Oranienburg near Berlin, and after attending a party, calls Hedwig and recounts pondering how long it would take to gas the ballroom. It is the film’s most direct allusion to the atrocities he has committed, and, though earlier his doctor had found him to be physically healthy, he begins gagging in the stairwell. The film then abruptly cuts to the modern day as cleaners sweep the gas chambers and wipe down the ovens for imminently arriving tourists. The irony of cleaning these spaces to make them more ‘palatable’ for modern day tourists is as contradictory as Hedwig’s garden of death. The film is less about the ‘banality of evil’, but rather the sanitization of it.

The Zone of Interest ultimately ends as it begins, with the same black screen and deafening audio. There are other instances of these Nazi flag-coloured scenes throughout the film. As the sounds of gunshots fill the garden in one scene, Glazer redirects us to a close-up of a flower that dissolves into a bright red block of colour. In another scene, Glazer films the white sky above Auschwitz accompanied by the sounds of children crying. These more abstract scenes, along with the folkloric atmosphere of the scenes where a Polish girl plants apples for the inmates, were the most moving. Their simplicity forcing us to reflect – forcing us to reflect on the possibility of our own evil.

The Oxford Fashion Gala is Back!

By
Eden Kilgour
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Image credit: Oxford Fashion Gala

You heard it here first! After an incredible sold-out 2023 show, The Oxford Fashion Gala is back for 2024, so get the date in your diary (W3 TT24!), because after speaking to the OFG President, David Akanji, and Creative Director Zaira Christa, we’re convinced that it won’t be one to miss. 

In case you haven’t heard, The Oxford Fashion Gala is an annual fashion showcase, celebrating creativity and fashion design which is so often overlooked at Oxford, which, this year, is focused around the theme A Voyage in Ascent. This year’s Gala is in support of Oxford Mutual Aid, a not-for-profit company which is working towards reducing homelessness in Oxford. To give our readers an exclusive insight (!), Cherwell spoke to the team themselves to get all the hottest on their vision for the upcoming OFG, and we can assure you they didn’t disappoint!

It appears that we’re in good hands, with the multi-talented OFG President himself – David Akinja – a second-year medic at Oriel, who explored his motivations for applying for the role as rooted in his experience completing a Foundation Course at UAL, where he focused his Final Major Project around the evolution of the UK black fashion scene and its impact on current trends. David is intrigued by fashion, being at the “forefront of [his] creative endeavours” as an extension of sculpture and 3D art, and is excited to share this creativity through his Presidency! 

The brilliant Zaira Christa, second-year music student at Somerville and OFG Creative Director outlined her motivations as based around bringing her own experience in the fashion industry to Oxford, being her self-titled brand ‘Zaira Christa’, which launched in September 2022 and first took to the runway in London Fashion Week 2023.

The theme, ‘A Voyage in Ascent’, is adapted from Issey Miyake’s SS22 collection A Voyage in Descent. This collection is a representation of a journey into the abyss, whereby the looks play with fluid, dynamic and lightweight fabrics, combined with flowing curves, glossy textures and intense colours to represent a progression into the deep sea, from the silence and peace which come with entry into the water, to the discovery of new creatures and sensations as the voyage continues. The team explored their fascination with, and subsequent adaptation of this collection with their initial attraction to “celestial” ideas and the stark contrast of such with “depths … and darkness”. David told Cherwell that “upon more research, I came across Miyake’s SS22 collection, … which made me think that would be a nice spin to put on it … instead of descending downwards, let’s take that and spin it and bring everything upwards”. The OFG team is keen to “give designers a good breadth to take the theme and push it in any direction … so it becomes a more celebratory event where designers have their own creative vision and they are free to explore any avenue”. Contrast appears to be an element the team is excited to work with, as Zaira explored the development of her original “lunar eclipse” idea, where the “guests would dress in black so the designers would have the freedom to design in any colour”, which was built on by the team’s focus on “celestial bodies, and spiritual ascent as well as literal ascent”. 

The OFG team plans to make the celebration of who the designers and models are a priority this year, with a production of a catalogue of looks with bios of each designer, and spaces for them to discuss their ideas and thoughts, to contextualise the garments and bring them to life. Zaira emphasises their focus on a “space of creative expression… with a celebration of fashion and art for both designers and guests”. 

However, the Gala itself isn’t solely about the expression of artistry, as David delves deeper into their focus on sustainability, stating the team’s pledge to “align ourselves with brands that are ethical and … work well with the environment, … adamantly steer[ing] away from retail”, despite its potential economic benefits. The team “values integrity … as a society”, and is encouraging upcycling, emphasising to designers that “you don’t need to go out and buy yards and yards of fabric to create a look! … The resurrection of clothing is an avenue we’re really trying to push designers to go down”. 

Perhaps the most exciting element of The Oxford Fashion Gala, however, is that you can get involved! The call-out for both models and designers is open now on their Instagram, @theoxfordfashiongala! With no experience required, this is the perfect opportunity to channel your creativity, as either a designer or model, as David emphasises his desire to decrease gate-keeping of the industry, and increase inclusivity in the event, calling for “everyone to have fun, and enjoy themselves through fashion”.

Image Credit: Oxford Fashion Gala

Dynamic, Chaotic and Physical: Review of Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis

By
Kiaya Phillips
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Frantic Assembly takes on a new challenge, taking a decades old Kafka novel, The Metamorphosis, and putting it to the stage in their signature physical theatre style.

The set consisted of a singular room where nearly all the action takes place, with minimal furnishings: a bed, wardrobe, armchair, mirror and bedside table. The structure of the room itself was deliberately unnerving, painted a dirty grey wash of colour, and no angle of the ceilings and walls was straight as one would expect – making everything feel off kilter, much like the action of the play itself. 

A pivotal moment in the novel that I was waiting for, curious how they would choose to stage it, is the transformation of Gregor into a bug. We see Frantic Assembly’s physical style shine here with Felipe Pacheco as Gregor, using the set and props around him to show the stages of his uncomfortable transition. He starts by fighting against the bedsheets he is wrapped up in, then contorting himself around objects of furniture in the room, in an inhumane fashion, then finishing by dramatically using around five or six chairs bundled up on his arms and legs and splaying the legs of the chairs out emulating the legs of a bug itself. I was expecting them to take a traditional route of some dramatic costume change to indicate the transformation, but instead the focus is instead on the way the actor moves differently and the reaction by the other characters. Felipe climbs on the eves of the walls and hangs upside down by the light cord that hangs from the centre of the ceiling, all in a frantic, transformative fashion. The other character’s chaos in the scene also adds to the offputting nature of the transformation; we are made to feel as disturbed and confused as they do. 

Sometimes, however, the acting felt a bit too farcical and over the top for me. I can appreciate that Frantic Assembly have a certain style of acting they prescribe to, and this piece was no different. But the acting pales in comparison to their production of Othello at the Lyric I saw just a few months ago. Specifically, the acting of Mr and Mrs Samsa made moments that could have been impactful more comical instead. For instance, we get a monologue from Mrs Samsa in the latter half of the play when she goes into Gregor’s childhood, her experience with infertility, how this resulted in her infidelity, and more broad reflections on her marriage to Mr Samsa. The big moment, however, felt a bit tainted by the irritating accent she chose to put on, and the dramatic facial expressions that just didn’t seem to fit with the speech. 

However, the relationship between Gregor and Grete had emotional depth and both Felipe and Hannah Sinclair Robinson (Grete) worked well acting and, more importantly, reacting to each other. We see his care for her in his support of her musical aspirations, and we see her support for him after he is transformed, Grete being the only one that bug Gregor will allow to see and tend to him. There was also character growth from Grete from her childlike, reserved state at the start, to shows of defiance, then her climatic explosion, and then her ultimate submission to her role as daughter and more broadly a woman of society. However, it’s an unfortunate conclusion for their relationship, when Grete concedes to her parents’ wishes and assists in Gregor’s murder. 

Kafka’s themes of alienation and isolation that thread through the novella were explored in the theatrical characterisation of Gregor in the play, enhanced by the group’s physical theatre, including lifts, climbing the walls, and fight scenes. All of which warrant appreciation as it cannot be an easy task to do what those actors do with their bodies. I did feel empathy for Gregor in the play, though I think this could be pushed and explored further by the actors. Like all of Frantic Assembly’s works the play was unarguably dynamic and drew the attention of everyone in the audience, though this should not be in replacement of other essential theatrical elements – it was certainly lacking in other areas for me. Ultimately the play dynamic and eye-catching, and certainly a fun – and chaotic – two hours of my life.

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