Thursday 30th April 2026
Blog Page 416

Review: ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ – A Portrait of Theatre in the Digital Age?

Eleanor Zhang
-
0
Review: ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ – A Portrait of Theatre in the Digital Age?

I still remember the feeling of being invited to a play that day in March. For months I’ve been wandering around Berlin and visiting local theatres with closed doors, now more abandoned than most international airports. I still hold tickets to Timothée Chalamet’s planned West End debut last April, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s play last June, at Old Vic and Savoy respectively, both of which have not housed a live audience for more than a year. Buying a ticket for The Picture of Dorian Gray, a production Oxford Playhouse is part of, felt like squeezing out a big blob of sunscreen and smearing it all over your face, amidst a once-in-a-blue-moon monsoon season that doesn’t know when to end. 

But the moment I clicked on the play button on my laptop screen, with my friend’s face propped up next to mine in tiny Zoom squares, I started to doubt whether I was expecting more stage light from the luminaires than there actually is. The show is a modern take on Oscar Wilde’s cautionary tale of vice and vanity, putting in the place of an oil portrait of this century’s static and moving pictures on social media platforms: Dorian Gray (Fionn Whitehead), a second-year English student, starts a YouTube channel during the pandemic. Alongside vlogging, he also dabbles into the trade of individual charm and persona for mass praise and affection, on Instagram as well as less public domains like Grindr. With Gray being his own portrait painter, Basil Hallward (Russell Tovey) in the alternative tale only offers the final touches to the picture: with his geeky expertise, he gives Dorian a filter software that exonerates the influencer’s face on the internet from blemishes, so that he’s not only spared from ageing but also absolved of marks left by late-night raves and substance abuse, measures of quick pleasures that often prove crueller to the look and health of today’s young people than time.

The Henry Wotton played by Alfred Enoch is probably the character that strays the least away from his Victorian prototype: dressed in flamboyant three-piece on camera, and bare-chested in embroidered morning gown in bed, he is every bit the upper-class diva who, when expertly flirting with Dorian over video calls, displays his curving fingers and slender wrists in front of the camera without showing his face, handling the young man single-handedly. At a dinner party arranged for upcoming socialites by Lady Narborough (Joanna Lumley), a celebrity from the old generation who is more grounded in reality stays well connected and respected despite her inexperience with her laptop’s front camera, and stands in stark contrast to her phone-addicted juniors — Dorian meets aspiring young actress Sibyl Vane (Emma McDonald), who enters drama competitions on stage, but is equally attuned to performative self-presentation on Instagram, using social media’s expansive exposure to her advantage by posting her renderings of famous theatre speeches, as well as live-streaming her dramatic readings of famous book extracts, with costumes and make-up all in place. As Dorian dives deeper into his chaotic lifestyle of drugs and online hookups, his moral standards slacken whilst his online image remains intact and flawless, boding the eventual collapse of his physical and mental health.

The famous Wilde opus is in no lack of adaptations, as the numerous previous attempts span across cinema, theatre, literature, radio, and television, ranging all the way from silent films in the early 20th century to a Korean musical five years ago. But few are the adaptations forced to adapt. The Lawrence Batley Theatre’s Henry Filloux-Bennett, together with director Tamara Harvey, already experimented with digital format by putting Jonathan Coe’s crime novel What a Carve Up! on the virtual stage last year during the first lockdown. But even back then, with resources from three theatres, the word “theatre” itself never took the central stage: the ticket website was honest with the lack of a live performance, and mentioned instead an assembly of each cast member’s sections recorded in isolation, comparing the production to a “Netflix crime documentary”. Even Harvey herself hesitates to confine its storytelling form in the show’s program, and only loosely defines it as something that “isn’t theater, isn’t telly and isn’t radio — that is entirely its own thing.”

What’s noteworthy this time round, however, is the characters’ own resistance to the theatrical form within the show. Designed as an interview conducted by a nameless face on a video call (Stephen Fry), the visual narrative reminds less of a whodunnit on stage, and more of two filmed vampire stories that also put characters in the interviewee’s chair: the cinema adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Taika Waititi’s faux documentary series What We Do in the Shadows.

Similar to what happens in these two screen productions, the characters themselves in The Picture are as aware of the ongoing filming process as the audience. This is not only made visible by the lighting and sound equipment lying around within the frame but also the characters’ spontaneous interactions with an amorphous presence behind the camera: Lady Narborough fidgets in her seat and adjusts her facial expressions as she confronts the front light; and Henry, more aggressive in his approach to the lense’s intrusion, at one point interrupts the interview and attempts to leave the spotlight, refusing to rewatch Sibyl’s live suicide. Under the watching eyes of a film crew, the characters are flustered and unsettled in their on-stage reality, on their own turf, like endangered polar bears struggling to stay afloat on melting ice floes.

Acting aside, characters’ storylines also bear symbolic function to hint at theatre’s waning strength as a medium. Sibyl, the girl who’s inured to the performance of an online version of herself, and is not only comfortable with — but seeking comfort from — the rising amount of anonymous attention she gains with each post and livestream, gets stage fright in front of a theatre audience and forgets her lines from the most famous of Shakespeare monologues; the protagonist Dorian, who excels at nurturing and maintaining an immaculate appearance in his videos and pictures, feels the need to hide his face behind a mask when walking on the street, afraid for the outside world to see his imperfections, to witness the gradual failure of his one-man show, afraid that signs of the disorder in his real life will eventually encroach on his online profile. The profusion of liberty, of means to prepare, rehearse, and repair if anything goes wrong, seems to have spoiled the latest generation of drama enthusiasts portrayed in the show; and what grants them the opportunity to polish what they present seems to have crippled them in return, eventually distancing them from the real stage, the real audience – and perhaps even the real art.

And what does this realisation leave us with The Picture of Dorian Gray? Seeing that it has the freedom of doing multiple takes for each movement and spoken line; of dissecting a live stage performance into footages that can be selected and further embellished; of editing them together in any order one would like; of not having to arrange the cast’s schedules and instead only needing the asynchronically recorded clips — the holistic quality of the spatial-temporal framework provided by a theatre, a venue dedicated to its eponymous art form, is stabbed and broken into pieces, like the Dorian Grays and their respective portraits, be it a social media account or an actual painting.

Like the portrait tapping into the existence of its sitter in the original Wilde story, so is this year’s Dorian sucked into his online ego. And, like cinema, will theatre too be swallowed by the increasingly prevalent streaming platforms? And once it’s done, will it be rendered more fragile and fleeting by the new format, forever preserved on the net but not promised to be lasting? The question is no less frightening than Wilde’s gothic tale, which probably explains why I don’t feel warned by Dorian’s tragic death this time, but instead by his smashed phone screen at the end.

Image credit: Roland REUMOND from Pixabay 

Intermedial connections: Reimagining music in literature

Jimmy Brewer
-
0
Intermedial connections: Reimagining music in literature

‘Shearing began to rock; a smile broke over his ecstatic face; he began to rock in the piano seat, back and forth, slowly at first, then the beat went up, and he began rocking fast, his left foot jumped up with every beat, his neck began to rock crookedly, he brought his face down to the keys, he pushed his hair back, his combed hair dissolved, he began to sweat.’

This is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Its frenzied, unpolished language accelerates, crescendos, soars: it is a fabulous evocation of what it is like to play and hear music. Yet music and literature are vastly different. Music exists as a series of organised moments, each one heard as a continuation of the preceding – it has an inherent velocity absent from literature. It is a challenge to incorporate one meaningfully into the other; at its most compelling, literature involving music captures a feeling associated with the music, rather than attempting to convey the music itself. No amount of repetitive, alliterative or fricative language will ever turn words on the page into song – rhythm and sound alone do nothing without meaning or imagery or concept.

Because of this, music in literature must fulfil a role distinct from the act of listening to music. Reading the quote from On the Road makes me feel exhilarated, but not, I would say, in the same way that I would feel exhilarated if I was there, in a grubby American night club hearing George Shearing, jazz pianist, hammer out his brilliance. I have no idea what that is like! But the book successfully captures a spontaneity and drive that is exciting in itself.

‘With a slow rhythm it led him first here, then there, then elsewhere, towards a happiness that was noble, unintelligible and precise.’

While Kerouac looks at spontaneity, Marcel Proust’s novel, In Search of Lost Time, dwells on the power of memory. At a Parisian soirée, socialite M Swann overhears an exquisite musical phrase that ‘opened his soul so much wider, the way smells of certain roses circulating in the damp evening air have the property of dilating our nostrils’. Perhaps because of this intoxicating effect, when he hears the phrase later in the presence of his lover, Odette, its context shifts and becomes intertwined with her. The phrase is a ‘protective goddess, a confidante of his love’. When Swann’s affair with Odette is consumed by his obsessive jealousy, the phrase ‘warned him how fragile’ his moments of happiness with her were.

It is the effect, rather than the nature, of the music that is the focus here. The music does not change, but Swann does each time he hears it, and projects new meaning onto it. The incorporation of the music into the text works so well because, like in On the Road, it is preoccupied with how the music influences the listener. While there is some explicit description of the music itself (‘the mass of the piano part all at once struggling to rise in a liquid swell’), the phrase is more memorable as a catalyst for strong emotion.

‘They were possessed by the spirit of the drums’

One of my favourite parts of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, is a ferociously intense public wrestling scene. It buzzes with an ever-moving pulse, choreographed by the beating of drums. They rise with the intensity of the fighting, and older men ‘remembered the days when they wrestled to its intoxicating rhythm‘. As the climax of the episode is reached and the two ‘leaders of the teams’ begin their fight, the atmosphere reaches a fever pitch and the drummers’ ‘frantic rhythm was no longer a mere disembodied sound but the very heart-beat of the people’.

The drums are visceral; you draw from previous experience of percussion – the vibration felt in the chest at the beat of a drum – to make the scene more tangible. Kerouac and Proust both described how their music affected an individual – George Shearing ‘began to sweat’ to the ‘beat’, while the phrase ‘opened the soul’ of M Swann. But Achebe’s music is more global: the drums are ‘the very heartbeat of the people’, drawing them together in the shared experience of sound – a collectivity which lends the scene vivacity and movement.

In each of these three books the music incorporated serves a bigger idea: kinetic excitement in On the Road, fraught emotion in In Search of Lost Time and fiery combat in Things Fall Apart. ‘Music oft hath such a charm/To make bad good, and good provoke to harm’ says the Bard in Measure for Measure – but this leaves so much unsaid; music ‘oft hath the charm’ to conjure any emotion: euphoric peaks and melancholy lows. Through the lens of literature, we see music sculpt the lives of those around it, and maybe feel a little of that ourselves.

Image Credit: State Library Of Queensland via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Half Brit No Brit

Nupur Patel
-
0
Half Brit No Brit

CW: Discussion of racism and racist language

I’m a Londoner,

I grew up on concrete blocks opposite  the KFC And my parents’ off-licence around the corner.

We were dropped over a high brick wall to dodge detention.

We rode our scooters outside our dingy flat.

I played with your daughters at school.

Dressed in pigtails and light blue summer dresses.

We hopscotched our way through Maths and English lessons,

Ate free bangers and mash in the hall at lunchtime.

Sang at the top of our lungs each praising a different God in His stain-glassed house

Every Wednesday.

At secondary school, we drifted in and out of our homes,

For sleepovers and indoor dance shows.

While you sang hymns and tales of water and wine

We lit lamps and made rangoli, feasted with our hands,

You didn’t understand. Did you care to? 

Mum and dad told us we were like you,

You one of us.

But I knew.

How could we be the same when you already made us so different? 

… Bloody foreigners, Nasty immigrants, The Other… 

Not ‘normal’ enough, not white enough,

Never good enough, hardly British enough.

When you see it many times on TV, hear it on the radio, on the streets, 

You start to believe it.

It’s a ticking time bomb, and in the middle of the night I dream

That sure enough I’m as good as gone.

No more breaths on British soil,

I’ll be out. Just like the others.

Thrown back to a ‘home country’ that I know like

The North Pole.

Isn’t that what pushed our Windrush victims,

To their early graves?

Taxpayers, integrators,

Lovers, peacemakers,

Thrown to the wolves.

Why do they hate me? Why do they hate us ‘darkies’?

Because my parents wanted a better life?

Why do they chew us up and spit us out once they’re done?

Once we’ve made their beds and cleaned their floors.

‘Get out!’, ‘Not one of us!’ ‘Go back to where you came from!’

We sweep your streets, we sell you food,

We care for your  sick families and suffer ourselves in pandemics. 

We serve you, 

Behind cashiers and counters.

I hear you loudly in your echo chamber: ‘We’re in the most tolerant land of them all’

But the least racist is still racist.

And I’ve felt it:

Paki, Brownie, Curry Muncher.

Brown Bitch. Sensitive soul. Angry brown woman.

Funny, huh?

Would you still be laughing

At the thought of my ancestors picking cotton and tea leaves for peanuts?

I grew up on food, music, art

And the blood and tears of my great great grandparents.

When it suits you, I’m barely a half-Brit, really a no-Brit,

The daughter of filthy immigrants.

The scrub who can “go back home”.

But home is here.

For you, it’s anywhere but here.

Am I still a Londoner, who grew up on concrete blocks?

Image Credits to the Author.

EXCLUSIVE: Lewis Goodall, Jim Pickard and more to speak at Oxford University Media Society

Sasha Mills
-
0
EXCLUSIVE: Lewis Goodall, Jim Pickard and more to speak at Oxford University Media Society

Lewis Goodall, the policy editor at BBC Newsnight, will be speaking at Oxford University Media Society this term, alongside other speakers including Julia Chatterley of CNN and Rianna Croxford of BBC Investigations. The society will also be hosting panels, including a TikTok panel with Business Insider journalist Paige Leskin and a Sex and the Media Panel featuring adult film director Erika Lust, alongside a panel with Gabriel Pogrund and Jim Pickard, who will be shedding light on the Greensill scandal. Cherwell will also be hosting a collaborative panel with OUMS on ‘Reporting Across Borders’ with Sunday Times Chief Foreign Correspondent Christina Lamb. 

Joe Stonor, President of OUMS, told Cherwell: “Term cards are notoriously a test of nerves but I’m incredibly glad that we have such a strong and topical term card to present to our members. I’m most excited to be hosting a discussion with Gabriel Pogrund and Jim Pickard, the journalists who have led the charge in bringing arguably the biggest story of the year, the Greensill affair and the subsequent revelations of government sleaze, to light. Lewis Goodall in Week 7 is another highlight, as well as a couple of panels that are an exciting progression from the type of events that OUMS usually hosts.”

Agata Hodur, Head of Events at OUMS, told Cherwell: “We’re really proud of this term card and the committee has worked hard to get a fantastic range of events. The online format has meant we can offer a diverse term card to members with exciting events focused both on new media and current affairs. I hope that members enjoy the discussions in The Comments Section, and I am holding my fingers crossed that events later in term may be run in person.”

Eddie Michael, Head of Marketing at OUMS, told Cherwell: “It’s lining up to be a great term at Media Soc, the events team has secured some great speakers as always and put together some very interesting talks. Especially looking forward to seeing how Joe tackles the Sex and the Media panel!”

Hope Nicholson, OUMS Secretary, told Cherwell: “I’m most excited about the non-orthodox media events such as the panels on the rise of TikTok and the depiction of sex in the media.”

You can see the full term card below:

Image Credit: edk7 / CC BY-SA 2.0 

Don’t just do something, sit there

Ruth Whiteside
-
0
Don’t just do something, sit there

For those readers who have not heard anything about mindfulness, this may only be because you have surrounded yourself with people respectful enough, that they do not preach to you about their enthusiasms. Mindfulness has grown into such a craze, that we all probably know someone who is into it. Many of us have discussed mindfulness at some point, perhaps through the beloved student practice of ill-informed posturing about its “role in modern society”. Nevertheless, the preachers for mindfulness in these conversations probably do have some good points.

Mindfulness is about cultivating present moment awareness, with a sense of friendship and compassion for yourself and others. But am I not always present and aware? Well, in one sense, yes. We all live in the present and are responsive to things that happen. People talk to us, we get asked to do things, and we occasionally have to run to avoid getting hit by cars.

But in another sense, much of the time, we are not very present. We have a brain that lets us process past events so that we can learn from them, and imagine future events so that we can prepare for them. This involves moving our attention to and from memories of the past and projections of the future. So far, so good. It seems our brains are helping us. So why would we benefit from mindfulness making us more aware of the present?

Well, sometimes our brain takes us out of the present too much, in a way that becomes unhelpful. We obsessively repeat painful, awkward, or embarrassing memories in our own heads; instead of carefully imagining the future to anticipate problems, we constantly spike our levels of fear and anxiety about all the potential difficulties that could arise there. In times like these, we have a brain in overdrive, and mindfulness offers to calm these sorts of over-active minds.

So, one benefit of mindfulness is making us more present. Formal mindfulness involves short or long exercises which ask us to concentrate on our breathing, senses, or different parts of our body. This refocuses our mind and teaches it to be more in tune with what is unfolding in our present.

Another benefit of mindfulness is that it teaches us to be compassionate with ourselves and others. Here we are talking about Westernised mindfulness, which was conceived by John Kabat Zinn in the 1980s as a strategy for supporting those slipping through the gaps in the American healthcare system. Yet the practice of mindfulness comes from ancient religious and cultural traditions, since it is central to the practice of Buddhism.

Westernised mindfulness originated from forms of mindfulness that were an integral part of a holistic theory as to how we should live our lives. This is why mindfulness contains themes of self-compassion and compassion for others. This compassion is cultivated in different ways through mindfulness practice. One way is through specific mindfulness meditations that overtly focus on the cultivation of compassion. More generally, self-compassion is an element that is worked into all mindfulness, because it infuses how we aim to relate to ourselves in meditation.

Now, the case for mindfulness for Oxford students. Mindfulness correlates with a reduction in stress, as well as an increase in academic performance. In a study published this year, a group of pre-clinical medical students took part in a mindfulness course and experienced a reduction in stress that lasted six months compared to the control group. The group also experienced a short-term increase in scholarly success through high exam performance. The conductors of the study hypothesised that these improvements in academic performance could have lasted longer if the course had been followed up by more regular mindfulness classes.

It must be noted, however, that mindfulness is not for everyone. Some studies have highlighted the effects mindfulness can have in terms of depersonalisation and the possible incompatibility of mindfulness with some personalities and approaches. Still, there is ample research to show that mindfulness is beneficial for a large number of people, so if you have not considered giving it a go, maybe you ought to. To highlight only the benefits explored in this article, mindfulness is correlated with greater presence of mind, higher levels of compassion, reduction in stress and enhanced academic performance. There are many more benefits, and very plausibly you may be one of the people for whom mindfulness has profoundly positive effects.

There are many opportunities for engaging in mindfulness, but the best way to learn how to do it safely and well is to take classes or a course, so look out for subsidised classes being offered by colleges. If that doesn’t apply to you, there are also many helpful podcasts that offer short and useful introductions. The Oxford Mindfulness Centre has a ‘resources’ section on their website for young people, donothing.uk, which is a good place to start.

Happy Stress-busting! 

Image license can be found here.

“The state has declared a war on youth”: Student journalism is under attack in Russia

David Saveliev
-
0
“The state has declared a war on youth”: Student journalism is under attack in Russia

On the morning of the 14th of April in Moscow, the doors of four student journalists’ homes were unceremoniously kicked in and the students hauled off for an interrogation. Their crime? A three-minute-long video covering a state campaign of intimidation of student activists and calling for a peaceful protest. The now-deleted video posited that “the state has declared a war on youth, but we are youth and we will win!” 

DOXA is a Moscow-based, student-run publication that covers academia in Russia and elsewhere. Since their establishment in 2017, the magazine grew into a prominent publication. The word “doxa” comes from Greek, meaning “opinion”. On their website, the DOXA team centers its mission around “forming an independent critical opinion on the issues of contemporary academia”. 

But DOXA’s opinions are no longer tolerated by the Russian state: the apartments of the four editors were raided, friends and family interrogated, all electronic devices confiscated. All four were slapped with two months of house arrest during which they are not allowed to interact with anyone other than their lawyers. The court proceedings are ongoing, and the journalists might face up to three years in prison. 

The DOXA case is extremely important for the future of the Russian opposition, especially for students and journalists. As Pavel Nikulin, a Moscow-based researcher and journalist put it to me, “this is a signal to all of us.” The Russian state is on the offensive against journalists and students but it is not alone. Neighbouring Belarus engaged in draconian repressions against its media and students, and even democratic european nations are on a march against dissenters. French parliament only dropped a controversial law against recording police officers after enormous protests. The UK government’s proposed Police, Crimes, Sentencing and Courts bill is threatening to make protesting extremely difficult — the list goes on. In the world where protesters, press and even the youth are under attack, cases like that of DOXA deserve global attention. 

DOXA has a history of confrontations with the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin institutions. In 2019, for a series of articles some connected to the anti-Kremlin protests, it was stripped of its status as a student publication of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, losing any funding and administrative support it enjoyed as a university society. German Nechaev, an editor at DOXA, told me that the magazine was never supposed to take up the mantle of an opposition media. However, the DOXA team felt that “politics are an inalienable part of student life so we couldn’t avoid it.” 

In the video that prompted the arrests, DOXA called upon students to ignore the threats of their academic superiors who were attempting to illegally deter students from attending anti-Kremlin protests. The Kremlin has long utilised school teachers, professors and administrative staff as tools for scaring young people away from the opposition movement. Students who dare to speak up against the Kremlin publicly might risk detentions, grade deflation, or even expulsion from universities. For instance, in February, the Astrakhan State University expelled three students, explicitly citing their involvement in anti-Kremlin protests. 

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Russian youth has always been important — students and youth historically have been at the forefront of social change in Russia. They were on the frontlines in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and later youth communities became a breeding ground for dissent in the Soviet times. Today, according to polls, millennials often constitute the bulk of anti-Kremlin protests, united by the common desire for change. As a young protester, who chose to be identified as Maria out of fear of arrest, told me during the winter protests in Moscow — “Us, young people, we all want change, we can no longer support this regime.”

DOXA has been instrumental in the Russian youth’s struggle for democracy. Not only it covered protests (something that many in the Russian media are cautious of doing) but it routinely exposed the corruption and abuse rampant in the Russian educational structures. As Russian universities are closely tied to the state, DOXA investigations often end up targeting pro-Kremlin politicians; in 2020, DOXA ran a bombshell piece detailing how government officials reserve spots for their children in prestigious universities. 

While the DOXA case might have been intended to scare the students ahead of mass protests, the state’s “war on youth” did little to prevent millennials from protesting, The most recent rallies on April 21 the percentage of young people marching on the streets did not decrease relative to earlier protests, according to data from sociologist Alexandra Arkhipova. The DOXA team that remains free is not losing hope either, as they continue their work despite fear of further repressions. 

As German Nechaev, the DOXA editor, told me: “publicity is our best defence. For now we will continue to work as normal.” Indeed, publicity and donations might now be DOXA’s best chance at survival. A guide to helping DOXA, translated into multiple languages, is at https://doxajournal.ru/statement. The donations are used to maintain the website and support the editors under house arrest, so that DOXA may continue to fight for independent student journalism, may continue to fight against fear. 

Few days ago I spoke to a young activist who chose to identify as Vera out of fear for her safety. After attending opposition protests she along with her fellow students was scolded and forced to publically plead for forgiveness by her university’s administration. But she, like the DOXA team and like many Russian students, remains defiant: “we can and we must continue engaging in politics. [The state’s] threats only tell us that [its functionaries] are scared.”

Photo: Anna Holina // Afisha Daily.

EXCLUSIVE: Oxford India, Hindu, and South Asian Societies Launch Fundraiser for COVID-19 Relief in India

Matthew Schaffel
-
0
EXCLUSIVE: Oxford India, Hindu, and South Asian Societies Launch Fundraiser for COVID-19 Relief in India

Three Oxford societies have launched a fundraiser in response to the worsening COVID-19 crisis in India. The Oxford India Society, Oxford Hindu Society, and Oxford South Asian Society are aiming to raise £10,000 over ten days to help local and national organisations in the country.

The societies have issued a joint statement on their charity effort: “The consequences of the coronavirus pandemic have made themselves felt in all areas of the world, but the situation in India is emblematic of this disruption. Caught between the threshold of its populated developing urban centres and its overburdened rural infrastructure, the pandemic has placed an unseen level of stress on India’s financial, medical and social framework.  Cases are rising at an unprecedented rate, with the daily number of new cases crossing 350,000, breaking records of single-tallies even during the first wave. In April, alone, India reported more than 5 million new cases, and more than 50,000 deaths, the majority of which were preventable.”

“The lack of availability of oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and essential medicines for critically ill patients has overburdened India’s healthcare system. The state has been unable to handle the full capacity of the crisis, and individuals and local organisations (funded through mutual aid efforts) have stepped in. It is necessary for the international community, whether a part of the Indian diaspora or not, to come together and provide as much aid as possible to help the nation tackle this crisis.”

“We strongly urge all members of the Oxford community to join us in supporting Indian charities who are seeking to alleviate and manage the burden on the healthcare system. Our aim is to raise £10,000 over the next ten days. At the conclusion of the fundraiser, we will be donating the money to local organisations and charities that are providing immediate on-the-ground relief in the worst hit parts of the country.”

Anvee Bhutani, President of the Oxford India Society, said: “The situation in India is a humanitarian crisis and one that requires immediate direct aid to prevent mass loss of life. We in the UK are privileged with our access to a reliable and efficient nationalised healthcare system, but this unfortunately is far from the reality in other places around the world. We are calling on the Oxford community with the hope that we’ll be able to join in support and solidarity to provide aid to India during this difficult time.”

Suyesha Dutta, President of the Oxford South Asian Society, added: “Having voluntarily immersed myself in the COVID relief effort virtually in Delhi, I’ve witnessed the catastrophe that has engulfed India. There is a critical shortage of hospital beds, ICUs, ventilators, oxygen, plasma, and medicines. It has often been the case that by the time I find a lead for a patient, they have passed on. This is an emergency with no end in sight.”

Aditya Dabral, President of the Hindu Society said: “All of us at HUMSoc are deeply upset and worried by the reemerging COVID crisis in India. We hope that this fundraiser will go some way in alleviating the plight faced by so many, and encourage all members of the Oxford community to donate however much they can in the service of a crucial cause. It can and will make a meaningful difference.”

You can donate to the fundraiser here.

I know which side my bread is buttered!

Isobel Sanders
-
0
I know which side my bread is buttered!

‘Why don’t we have salty butter?’, my naive, eleven year old self asked my mother one day. Looks of consternation flew across the kitchen, my mother’s eyes pleading my father to answer this one. ‘Because we just don’t’ came the reply, hostile and no-nonsense, as though I was at risk of being instantly excommunicated for even thinking about salty butter. 

Of course, I’m exaggerating, but it is an unavoidable fact that butter is not just butter! There is a web of social implications behind the pat sitting in the top shelf of your fridge door. That is, if you have butter at all, and not marge, a whole other bag of historical worms. In the States, margarine production started in 1875. In the beginning, it was made from a primary product of beef fat, a far cry from today’s Flora or Stork. Within ten years just under half of all states (24 in total) had laws restricting the sale of this dairy substitute. Why? Well, that’s the thing – it was economically damaging to the dairy industry. Cue bootlegged margarine passing between States. 

Margarine nowadays is very much a beef-free affair, made from plant oils. What’s more, if you look carefully at your packet of Flora, you may notice that you can no longer ask someone to ‘Pass the marge!’ – it is, in fact, a spread! What defines a spread, I hear you ask? Less than 80% fat, hence why spreads are marketed as healthy alternatives to butter. And, so long as it hasn’t had to be smuggled across a border, it is at least two times (if not three) cheaper than butter. Many Modernist writers rail against margarine as poor-man’s fare lacking in nutrition:

Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they feel it. Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution.

Joyce, Ulysses

During WWII margarine took up its place in the middle-class pantry, and was a handy vector for getting vitamins A & D into a malnourished populace. Today it lurks there unwanted, the cuckoo in the bread-spread nest. This situation was again made more complicated with the advent of mainstream veganism. Plant-based diets are often viewed as the preserve of the moneyed, whose wallets can stretch to avocado on sourdough toast and oat milk chia puddings with goji berry and almond butter. So maybe we’re due a soar in spread shares? 

Let’s get back to butter and the real question – to salt or not to salt? Well, again, it’s not clearcut. Nine years on from that unworldly query, I now realise that unsalted butter is one of those middle-class markers. There may be a historical reason for this. In the past, salt was added to butter to preserve it. Butter is essentially churned cream. Those with more milk than they needed, the rich, had a constant supply of butter hence no need to salt it. Nowadays we have fridges, but salted butter still lasts longer and so is cheaper. 

But that’s not it. The hidden reason is that the middle-classes are willing to pay for their unsalted privilege. Perhaps the answer lies in how we use it? It’s undeniable that for the platonic toast, melted salty butter steals the show. However, when it comes to cooking with the stuff, the ready-salted nature takes away control. Completely unsuitable for certain cakes and breads, and off the table for the sodium-conscious savoury cook, salty butter loses ground. And it is the middle-classes that make dinner from scratch the most. 

For full recipe, head to @cherwelloxford or @greens_and_grains

Why am I musing this now? I’m currently on my year abroad in France, where it’s a matter of geography. If you’re Breton or Normand, salty butter is your building block for everything. Everywhere else, it depends on personal taste. So here not only am I free from familial expectations on the butter-front, but I’m also cut off from any subconscious cultural pull towards unsalted butter in Tesco. I’ve embraced it to such an extent that I haven’t, dare I say it, bought unsalted butter once in France. 

I’m not ready to go mono-buttered with my fridge drawer, either. There are definitely some instances where unsalted butter is god. However, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of dishes that are better made with salted butter rather than unsalted and a pinch of salt. Cooking shallots and mushrooms this way is infinitely better – tossed with cooked spaghetti and a grind of pepper and now we’re really talking. Salted butter in sweet treats is also no hardship. Chocolate and salt go well together, why not take out the element of chance and use salted butter? 

So yes, for now I’m singing the praises of salted butter. Perhaps I’ll be converted to olive oil once in Italy, the next step of my year abroad. But let’s see how long it takes me to be re-educated once back in Blighty… 

Oat-so-lovely: exploring the overnight craze

Matthew Prudham
-
0
Oat-so-lovely: exploring the overnight craze

If you follow any food blogs or channels on social media, you may have noticed the breakfast trend sweeping Instagram and Tiktok: overnight oats. But what is it that’s driving this craze, and how is it supplanting traditional breakfasts and holding its own against fitness food brands such as Huel?

Quite simply, in my opinion, because it tastes good. Unlike breakfast cereals, which can often feel repetitive and boring – especially if you’re facing down a bowl of Corn Flakes in a rush – there’s something distinctively attractive about overnight oats. Perhaps this is due to the process behind it: preparation the night before, measuring out your oats and dousing them with milk and flavourings – whether this be cinnamon and mixed spice (my current favourite), cocoa powder, peanut butter. The possibilities are endless, and range across a spectrum of nutrition levels!

You can also add in a wide variety of fruit and veg – with my favoured “carrot cake” style oats including some grated carrot and a handful of sultanas, though I have seen friends swear by grated courgette (I have not dared to try this yet!). Such are the possibilities for experimentation, and the endless ensuing variation, all stemming from a simple combination of oats, milk or water and a pinch of salt, that it can sometimes leave me gazing at the aisles in Tesco wondering what could spice up my oats even further. This prevents the old shtick of ‘boredom with breakfast’ that one may get if having porridge, for example, for countless days on end – if you’re tired of your current flavour, it only takes a little change to switch things up.

Moreover, unlike Huel and even some breakfast cereals, it’s something that seems definitively appetising and affordable. A 1kg bag of oats costs between 75p-£1, and that’ll last you two to three weeks; compare that to the £1.10 per meal cost of Huel, or the average price of £3 for a decent size box of cereal (which will inevitably go way faster than the suggested serving time), then you’re saving a lot of cash. Sure, it may seem like it’s a new fad born from the Waitrose-shopping elite, but it’s surprisingly affordable. This is enhanced by the fact that I’m using scales to measure out my oats – something that I’ve never considered when throwing cereal into a bowl.

Overnight oats also improve the start of your day. There’s no better feeling than waking up, dragging yourself out of bed, and treating yourself to a damn good breakfast which you prepared the night before. Unlike with other great breakfasts like scrambled eggs or pancakes, there’s little to no extra preparation involved (only adding in extra toppings) as the fridge has done all the work for you, and the only cleaning up that’s needed is just soaking your bowl after eating, prepping it for the next day.

There is, however, a danger. Just as it is possible to add too much milk to your Weetabix, leaving it to become a sludgy, unappetising mess, one can add too little or too much to your oats. Waking up to a failed jar is not the one, an anti-climax after opening the fridge door with so much expectation. But, though this may occur once or twice as you get started with making overnight oats, the more experience you get, the less often that disaster occurs. Of course, you can always put some more oats or more milk in, go back to sleep for an hour or so, and the problem may have resolved itself.

Whatever your diet (gluten-free, vegan, non-dairy), overnight oats are available for you. Just get your oats, your soaking liquid of choice (any milk or water will do), and a pinch of salt, and have a browse of the thousands of recipes, blogs, vlogs and TikToks about it. I do provide a word of warning – your friends may get tired of you mentioning it. But for the best start to the day? I think a few broken friendships are worth it.

Is the drinks industry chugging sustainability initiatives?

Mia Clement
-
0
Is the drinks industry chugging sustainability initiatives?

In February 2020, the drinks industry scored a poor 4.8 out of 10 for sustainability in the inaugural Drinks Industry Sustainability Index Trends Report 2020, published by Magners producer C&C Group and Footprint intelligence. The report recognised the fact that businesses were rethinking packaging, transportation, and wastage with sustainability in mind, but found there had been no great lengths of change in the industry. The drinks industry can require highly intense energy input for the processing of fruits or grains and distilling processes. According to the report’s findings, only 50% of glass containers were recycled in the drinks industry, with bars and restaurants sending 200,000 tonnes of glass to landfill each year. Meanwhile, growing concern for sustainability and plastic pollution within the industry has resulted in the fivefold increase in sales of water in cans. 

The issue of ethical consumption and ‘think before you buy’ can be starkly seen in the plastic versus canned drinks debate. According to a citizen survey, conducted by the Waste and Resources Action Programme and the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment in 2019, over half of UK consumers agree that they are less concerned about packaging, including plastics, if their council collects it for recycling. While bottles are one of the most readily collected plastic items – and can be recycled with relative ease – their reprocessing actually does little to benefit the environment long-term. According to, the EU-supported industry consultant group, Zero Waste Europe, Mechanical recycling, which describes the shredding and melting down of used plastic into flake-like grains to be sold on to manufacturers, “is kicking the problem of plastic waste into the long grass”.

This is largely down to the open-loop nature of the plastic recycling process, or as it is better termed, the ‘downcycling’ process. Contrary to popular belief, plastic bottles are rarely used to make more bottles or plastic packaging which, according to a 2017 report from CNBC, means that nearly every drink we buy is packaged in new plastic. It finds that major soft drinks companies only source approximately seven per cent of their plastic from recycled materials. The chemical fibres in plastic bottles and objects, made from the polymer strain PET, considerably weaken when the product is recycled, and are usually turned into items such as carpets, fleece-lined clothing, jumpers, jackets, and sleeping bags. In the making of these goods, various other non-recyclable elements are added, meaning the products are likely to end up in landfill, alongside the 700,000 tonnes of textiles that are thrown away each year in the UK. Further, it remains widely unknown that most of what we throw into our recycling bin never gets reprocessed, because only 2 out of the 7 common plastic varieties are widely recycled (Repurpose Global). Plastic recycling, in most instances, merely delays the inevitable landfill.

Plastic recycling, in most instances, merely delays the inevitable landfill. 

A new proposition for the use of aluminium cans promises higher levels of recycling and may be the best replacement for plastic when it comes to beverage packaging. Recycled within a true closed-loop system, aluminium retains its quality each time it is reprocessed, meaning cans are able to be transformed back into themselves an infinite number of times. Unlike plastic bottles, the average rate of recycled content in European aluminium beverage packaging is 47%.

However, there are still downsides associated with the use of cans: aluminium is extracted from bauxite ore, which is strip-mined and incredibly destructive to the natural environment, leaving toxic ‘tailings’, and is highly energy intensive to refine. Roughly speaking, it takes nearly 15 times the amount of energy to produce new aluminium than it does to produce new glass. Even if you take into account the amount of recycled material used in a can, the contrast of energy used in production between a bottle and a can is vast. 

The WWF reports that 8 million tonnes of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year and 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs. Yet plastic still remains the modern world’s packaging material of choice: roughly a third of the 350 megatonnes produced globally is used in packaging. According to a European Commission study, PET bottles and their lids are some of the most commonly found items among ocean debris.However,  as public perception shifts, and the issue gets pushed up the political agenda, the blame cannot be solely placed on the consumer. Instead, the corporations and systems we live in must change. Endless capitalist growth and consumption provides high demand for cheap and harmful options like plastic packaging. Individual action is important; we must always push for change and advocate for what we want to happen. However, corporations must implement the changes we want to see and take the next steps into cultivating  a sustainable production line.

This is a complex issue involving individual action, consumption, business, and industry.  What is needed to protect our environment, and promote a future where nature becomes a significant focus, is systemic change. Systems change when sustainable products become accessible to everyone, policy change and legislation ensuring that all socioeconomic groups can acquire a variety of green items. Advocacy for reducing plastic pollution has forced the drinks industry to change production materials, now we must keep on pushing. While the Covid-19 pandemic has put a temporary stop to mass campaigning on the streets, it has also given a new urgency to the warnings that destroying the environment threatens us all. We cannot continue to be unspecific about the action required to address the climate crisis. At some point, we will have to move from a position of simply calling for action to setting out our vision of how we could get to a post-climate-crisis world.

Artwork by Mia Clement 

1...415416417...2,581Page 416 of 2,581

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established 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

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by Jamie Ashley