Sunday 10th May 2026
Blog Page 419

Rethinking the Oscars

Aram Masharqa
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Rethinking the Oscars

With cinemas closed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it is no surprise that many typical filmgoers haven’t seen the nominated films this year. However, as Stephen King asked in 2020, “How many of the older, whiter contingent actually saw Harriet, about Harriet Tubman, or The Last Black Man in San Francisco? Just asking the question.” We have no guarantee the Academy voters watch every nominated film.

Previous Oscar winners have often been predictable. The IMDb keywords with the highest correlation with nominations are “family tragedy”, “whistleblower”, “Pulitzer Prize source”, “physical therapy”, “domestic servant”, and “Watergate”. Hence the array of nominations for The Post (2017), a film about investigative journalism, or Marriage Story (2019), evidently a ‘family tragedy’.

The films themselves certainly merit success, yet at the same time they are films that are perfect examples of ‘Oscar Bait’. Both films were released towards the end of the year (December 2017, November 2019); both had a limited theatrical release to begin with; both featured a star-studded cast. The only risk taken by nominating Marriage Story was that it was a Netflix Original, and even then, the family storyline clearly shows a cushioned risk at most.

Conversely, we find that films with the keywords ‘black independent film’ are amongst the least likely to be nominated (Slate, 2014). When the main characters are black in a nominated film, the plot usually involves slavery, or a fight for freedom/against white supremacists – see BlacKKKlansman (2018), or this year’s very own Judas and the Black Messiah (2021). When a ‘black independent film’ won Best Picture (Moonlight, 2016), there was media outcry about La La Land being snubbed. It’s clear that the films that receive nominations and awards are the ones that reinforce preconceived, structural ideas. If the Academy’s decisions challenge the status quo they are criticised. Although many supported their choice in 2016, we simply cannot ignore the volume of the voices against it.

Naturally, as in any area of culture, there is such a wealth of originality, talent, and creativity that it can be helpful to designate certain works as ‘exceptional’ or ‘outstanding’. If not to congratulate their merit, then to direct audiences to films they may have otherwise missed. Indeed, the Academy Awards themselves state their role: ‘we recognize and uphold excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences, inspire imagination, and connect the world through the medium of motion pictures’.

Whilst they do often recognise talent in the film industry, I can’t help but feel as though the only ‘imagination’ they inspire is the imaginative marketing choices producers make. Given Parasite (2019) was the first non-English language film to win best picture, can we really say the ceremony “connect[s] the world”?

The Oscars, especially in a year like this, can be useful. When we’re all stuck watching the same three sitcoms on Netflix, it can be helpful to have a list of films that are guaranteed to be well-made, gripping, and moving. Nevertheless, we must always remain critical. We must keep in mind that the Oscars are just another fallible source.

Image credit: PrayItNoPhotography via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Stop worrying about antiheroines when the real evil is still at large

Eleanor Zhang
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Stop worrying about antiheroines when the real evil is still at large

CW: sexual violence, suicide

Mere months after the release of Promising Young Woman, the news of Sarah Everard’s murder emerged. In the following days, there was content in many young women’s social media feeds reminding them of things they’d known for a long time. That they’ve been thinking of every night’s walk home alone as a gamble. That they assume taking a cab home instead could mean abduction. That before taking the bus instead of cab, they ready themselves for drunk men’s slurred flirtations and stumbling grabs and that, once something untoward happens, they now also have to hesitate before calling the police, knowing a predator was once among the assumed rescuers. 

This newly emerged concern stemming from distrust of authority’s ability to enforce justice, makes the rise and fall of Emerald Fennell’s neon-clad avenger even more poignant. The story starts off with a typical college rape incident where Cassie’s best friend Nina, a promising medical student, was drunk and sexually assaulted by her male peers at a party. In the crime’s aftermath, Cassie witnesses Nina’s struggle with shame, trauma and humiliation, while their school and legal system fail to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators. This led to her friend’s suicide and the end of Cassie’s own academic pursuits, urging her instead into a routine of late-night performances in bars and clubs, where she’d bait men into initiating nonconsensual sex by pretending to be drunk, just to scare them by revealing her sobriety. It is important to note that Cassie doesn’t troll and kill for fun, but is forced to take justice into her own hands. 

If films like Promising are indeed “vicious daydreaming” and “fantasies” that “explore unpleasant sentiments and desires”, as accused by one comment piece on The Telegraph, how does one account for the eerie déjà vus? According to the numbers provided by Office for National Statistics, of victims who reported the perpetrator was a stranger, the majority (64%) reported that they themselves were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the assault, making what happens to Nina in the film a representative scenario. Even the police’s response of not prosecuting on the ground of lacking evidence is paralleled in the records: among the reported cases of sexual assault, only 39% percent of them saw the perpetrators arrested by police. In 19% of the cases, the police took no action. 

More unsettling is the realisation that the practice of initiating sex with drunk girls has been a long-standing trope in reality as well as on screen, deployed in many well-known comedy films as the ultimate solution for horny single men. 2007’s Superbad, for example, features three high-schoolers and their tenacity in finding enough booze to inebriate a crush. Although the film gives me the creeps whenever I think of it, one review by New York Times raves about “a tickly, funny tale of three teenage boys revved up by their surging, churning, flooding hormones”. These narratives in cinema about men preying on and hurting women are not only chronically tolerated but, like A Streetcar Named Desire and its domestic abuser, celebrated as cult classics. However, the moment a woman attempts violence towards men, voices start rattling on about the poisonous effects violent women on screen could have on future generations of girls. What girls need to see is not a perennially beaten woman, but a woman that finds a way to fight back when no one — not their husbands, nor society, nor law and order — can protect them. 

Antiheroines are not a new invention. In the 90s, Buffy opened a generation’s eyes to an abundance of combativeness condensed in a small physique, and Tarantino’s Bride in the early noughties that swung blade at her murderous ex-boss. On the pages there was Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, a Bluebeard tale ending on a mother decapitating her daughter’s beastly husband, and Edmund Cooper’s Who Needs Men? featuring a determined Madam Exterminator that makes it her mission to annihilate the last of the surviving men hiding in Scotland. Yet even the characters that seem unconquerable in their own stories could easily fall victim to objectification and sexualisation by the male audience and readers, in a society where men would claim a penchant for “feisty women”, and readily pay for a dominatrix’s service. Hence the irony in one of the red flags for problematic men my female friends and I joke about, that one should never date the boy if he has a Kill Bill poster on his bedroom wall.

The rise of antiheroines stresses essentially the same thing every wave of feminist movement attempts to accentuate, that a woman’s refusal to be suppressed and abused by patriarchy is always less threatening, when what they’re rebelling against is still prevalent. Every time a Sarah Everard is murdered in our midst, it becomes evident again that, although our society is exposed to Fleabag’s sass and scenes of Killing Eve’s Villanelle stabbing away at her next assignment, it’s still far from granting every woman walking down a dark lane the same level of respect — let alone fear — those fictional she-warriors evoke. 

That is not to say that antiheroines should take a break from flourishing in the post-Me-Too culture. To quote Wonder Woman’s creator William Moulton Marston: “Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.” It’s important to introduce young women to the likes of Cassie, despite her not being real, as what happens on the training ground of cinema could channel encouragement just as palpably. I personally felt grateful for having known her, as I borrowed her move against scornful onlookers and stared back at my accosters one afternoon, and felt triumphant when they retreated their gaze. That same evening, Emerald Fennell won Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars. And for the first time in a long time, I felt proud and hopeful for being a woman.

Image credit: Sharon Mollerus via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – what’s all the hype?

Richard Li
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Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – what’s all the hype?

NFTs are a blockchain based technology that have garnered a lot of hype and news coverage in recent months by technology enthusiasts and investors alike. The NBA is using them to sell highlight videos. Artists are using them to sell digital works. Musicians are using them to retain royalties. Twitter’s CEO is even using them to sell tweets.

But what actually is an NFT, and what does it do? NFT stands for non-fungible token, and is, in short, a unit of data stored on a blockchain that certifies a digital asset to be authentic or unique and thus not interchangeable. This is as opposed to a fungible token, such as US dollars or Bitcoin, where, for example, there is no way to distinguish one specific dollar from another in your bank account – they are all grouped together. Simply, a blockchain is a digital ledger that allows transfers of ownership to be recorded in a way that is irreversible, such as when you transfer money to someone else – most NFTs use the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs can be used to represent many different types of digital files, such as photos, audio, or even videos. However, access to a copy of the original file is not restricted to just the owner of the NFT – anyone can easily obtain a copy, as the NFT just provides proof of ownership.

This might sound very strange, but consider the following: the original copy of a famous artists’ work, such as Guernica by Picasso, is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is despite the fact that there are many extremely accurate replica paintings of it available for a few hundred dollars (a tiny fraction of the original price). Proponents of NFTs argue that this shows that the vast majority of the value of an original piece of art is derived from the artists’ so-called “signature” on the work, rather than the work itself. For example, recently Christie’s auction house sold its first piece of NFT-linked digital art, which was by the digital artist Beeple. It ended up commanding a staggering winning bid of $69 million! While this may sound ludicrous as you can download an exact copy of the image on your computer for free, NFT fans maintain this is no surprise.

A key advantage of NFTs is that its extremely easy for anyone to create one. All you have to do is create an account on an NFT marketplace website such as OpenSea or Rarible (which are kind of like eBays for NFTs), upload a picture or other digital item, and put it up for auction. An artist can even create storefronts and collections of their art on the website to mimic a traditional art gallery or museum. You can also choose whether to “mint” just a single unique piece, or multiple copies. Moreover, an artist can choose to set a commission for subsequent future sales. This means that if the original buyer resells the NFT to a second buyer, or the second to a third, the original artist still continues to be paid (for example, 10% of every sale price). This means if a piece of art significantly increases in value over coming years, the original artist will still be able to benefit from this.

All of this has predictably led to a gold-rush style frenzy in recent months. New wannabe artists are emerging and churning out new NFTs at record pace, and wealthy investors are snapping them up in the hopes they explode in value in the future. The overall NFT market tripled in 2020, reaching more than $250 million. Sceptics argue there is a massive crash imminent, as NFTs are still a very niche market and thus do not warrant the very lofty valuations some of them currently hold. Furthermore, NFT transactions have attracted increased environmental criticism. Like cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the computation-heavy processes required to mine and run proof-of-work blockchains require massive amounts of energy that are contributing to global warming and pollution. It should be noted, however, that solutions such as switching to a proof-of-stake blockchain (e.g. Ethereum 2.0), which do not require these computational processes, are currently in the works and aim to solve many of these carbon emissions concerns. While we may not see NFTs in the National Art Gallery any time soon, they are an exciting innovation in the world of art and collectibles, and open up that world to all sorts of previously unexplored talent.

Image credit: Marco Verch via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

India: why are COVID cases rising?

Anthony Shorrocks
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India: why are COVID cases rising?

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently exploding in India at a horrifying rate. Records are being broken with each day that passes – over 300,000 cases have been officially reported every day for the past week, accompanying roughly 2500 deaths a day for a total of 210,000 deaths since the pandemic began in the country. 

Graph courtesy of Our World in Data.

However, shockingly, many public health experts suggest the actual number of cases and deaths could be as much as 4-5 times higher, putting deaths in the millions – evidence for this is the mismatch between the government reported deaths and the actual deaths registered at crematoria and burial grounds. 

But what caused this catastrophe? Despite India’s poor health infrastructure, low government assistance and high population in comparison with western counterparts such as the United States, it managed to successfully manage and flatten the first wave of coronavirus in 2020 in quite an admirable fashion while countries such as the United Kingdom were dealing with second and third waves.  

However, in 2021, India’s luck took a turn for the worse. The earlier victory in 2020, together with an element of strong Indian nationalism, led to a surge in false confidence that the country would be spared a second or third wave. Epidemiologists and other experts in the country suggested that herd immunity had already come into effect. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others claimed victory against the virus and held huge election rallies where they did not wear masks. Perhaps the worst super-spreader event of all was the Kumbh Mela, where as many as 2.5 million Hindu pilgrims gathered at the Ganges River with little regard to social distancing – the virus was carried back to hometowns and villages by thousands of these returning pilgrims.

Importantly, vaccine hoarding from countries like the UK has also been significant. Recently, a Downing Street aide tested positive following travel to India, prompting alarmist headlines about new variants. More troublingly, he was allegedly told to get more Indian-manufactured doses of vaccines, at a time when the Indian government – for reasons now distressingly obvious – was seeking to hold back many of the doses it was previously exporting in their millions, many actually intended for developing countries. Last but not least, more virulent mutations of the virus emerged from countries such as the United Kingdom, as well as from within India itself.

The outbreak is showing no signs of stopping or slowing – in fact, it is accelerating. Hospitals across the country are being completely overwhelmed, and many are simply being left to die on the sidewalk as there aren’t nearly enough ICU beds, ventilators, and oxygen tanks to accommodate them. This has led to a black market emerging, where vendors are price gouging desperate relatives and friends of those dying from the virus for as much as 20 times the market value of items such as oxygen tanks and tablets. These kinds of prices represent the life savings of many Indians.   

A group of Oxbridge societies is fundraising in aid of the current situation in India. You can donate here.

The absurdity of adult animation

Maebh Howell
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The absurdity of adult animation

We’ve all, I’m sure, spent time scrolling listlessly through Netflix, trying to find something to watch: sometimes succeeding, sometimes not.  This was when I first stumbled across Bojack Horseman.  The colourful thumbnail, showing a smiling horse, seemed to suggest I had stumbled across the children’s section, or that my brother had, once again, been using my account. But the adult age restriction suggested otherwise.

The show, which premiered in 2014, was already in its third series by the time I started watching it. I sped through the first few episodes, drawn in by the quick pacing, catchy character design, and the question of why these talking animals were coexisting with humans, no questions asked.

Whilst initially receiving mixed reviews, with the first series having a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the following series received scores in the high 90s, with series 2 and 3 receiving scores of 100%. Evidently there is some appeal to this tragicomic series, but how much is tied up to its cartoon form?

It is the absurdity of the cartoon form, in its sometimes weird and wonderful approach to life, that I believe facilitates its appeal. We’re all introduced to cartoons as children, and it is the form’s bright, nonsensical attitude towards storytelling that appeals to children, with one BBC article examining the impact of the ‘attention-grabbing features’ such as ‘colour, brightness and movement’ on the ‘primitive visual system’ of children.  Furthermore, the same article highlights how children ‘process information’ differently to us, leading to our perception of what may be ‘highly engaging’ for them, to be ‘weird’ for us.

But this still doesn’t explain the enduring appeal of animation for adults. Perhaps it’s nostalgia, our sense of longing for a simpler time, when all the problems of the world could be solved within the confines of a thirty-minute time slot. But with adult cartoons such as Big Mouth, a show which revels in discomfort and awkwardness, the focus seems to be on a perversion of our expectations of the genre. Like puberty, Big Mouth is unexpected, shocking, and sometimes downright dirty, and scenes such as the one where Jay impregnates a pillow seem less nostalgic than just pure weird — even absurd.

With the host of adult animation on streaming services, the demand is evident. I propose that we start considering animation as the art form it is: one that allows for the pushing of boundaries and the creation of beautiful nonsense. There’s something quite lovely about the way that Big Mouth, for example, conceptualises the ‘hormone monsters’, using them to personify all the weirdness of puberty. Yet, the whole concept would not have worked within a regular sitcom format, with real actors and a reliance on CGI or costumes creating a weird divide between the real and the fantasy.  The brilliance of shows like Big Mouth is that creatures such as the hormone monsters are as concrete within the show as any other character, their absurdity integrated into the show’s very fabric.  

In Bojack Horseman, reality is similarly forsaken, with the art form of animation pushed to its limit; whilst most episodes follow Bojack’s life, others are complete abstractions of reality, following a drug binge, for example. My favourite episode is in a similar vein, following the character of Diane and her struggles with depression. The episode diverts from the usual animation style, using black and white line drawings, with squiggles and crossings-out, to mirror Diane’s mental state. This change in art-style resonated with my own struggles with depression and taking antidepressants far more than any other television show. Diane’s depression becomes part of the animation style itself, her whole worldview reduced to black and white drawings which, even then, seem out of her control.  It was a refreshing take on mental illness, something so often romanticised within the media; just picture the countless TV shows or films which show beautiful women crying under duvet covers. I can say with certainty that I have never looked that beautiful or made-up during the throes of a depressive episode.  

There’s a certain fluidity to animation too. Diane’s character, as a result of her depression, puts on weight, but this is something that is never commented on. With a traditional show format, an actress would have to don a fat suit (something which feels more mocking than sympathetic to real struggles) or would have to make constant comments about her weight à la Bridget Jones, who was, if anything, skinnier than the average woman. The way that Diane’s weight gain and depression is presented is beautiful; her weight gain is a part of the essence of her character, a simple fact that is never remedied or drawn attention to in an overt way.   

Bojack Horseman’s animation allows its initial relative innocence (look, it’s a talking horse!) to lead to an exploration of much darker themes.  Although in episode one Bojack says that all anyone wants in life is to “watch a show about good, likeable people who love each other”, the art of animation provides room for much, much more. 

Image credit: Festival Annecy / Mike Hollingsworth via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

 

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn, Jackie Weaver and more to speak at the Oxford Union

Sasha Mills
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EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn, Jackie Weaver and more to speak at the Oxford Union

Jeremy Corbyn, Jackie Weaver, and Jed Mercurio will be amongst the line-up of this term’s speakers at The Oxford Union, alongside other speakers including designer Diane Von Furstenberg, former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, and Alayo Akinkugbe, founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt. Events will take place online until the 17th May when the Union hopes to organise some socially distanced in-person speaker events.

Corbyn is the former leader of the Labour party and was temporarily suspended after stating that he believed the issue of antisemitism in the party had been “dramatically overstated,” although he has since been reinstated to a role as an independent MP. Jackie Weaver made headlines after her appearance in the viral Handforth Parish Council Zoom meeting, during which she kicked off one of the councillors and was told to “read the standing orders.” 

Further speakers in the line-up include Professor Julian Stallabras, art historian and curator, British athlete Dwain Chambers, and Soma Sara, who founded Everyone’s Invited, an online movement seeking to eradicate rape culture. Speakers that are still to be confirmed include Mamma Mia! star Lily James, supermodel, actress and filmmaker Lily Cole, Michael Eavis, dairy farmer and creator of the Glastonbury Festival, and footballer Virgil van Dijk. 

The Union will also be hosting a range of panel events, including ‘This House Would Abolish the Monarchy,’ which will feature, amongst others, British Military Commander Lieutenant General Arundell David Leakey alongside curator Anne Pasternack. Other panels include ‘This House Believes Veganism is the Only Ethical Choice,’ ‘This House Believes We Must Urgently Rewrite History,’ and ‘This House Believes the European Project is Doomed to Fail.’ 

Adam Roble, President of the Oxford Union, told Cherwell: “It has been an absolute honour to work on this term-card, and I hope members will find that there is something for everyone in it. Being the first black President of the 21st century coupled with being an access member of the Union, accessibility and the ensuring of a welcoming yet relevant space for absolutely all of its members is at the core of what has driven the nature of this termcard. This is something that will always be one of my highest priorities. 

“When I ran I made several pledges to the members, from holding a review into the Union’s diversity to hosting a varied range of socials. Ultimately actions speak volume and I hope this termcard demonstrates a Union that hosts the conversations that matter, and yet ignites independent thought across the membership.”

“After a busy term of eight debates, several speakers events a week and a hugely exciting calendar of more social events than ever before, I hope that we will all be able to look back in 8th week on this term with pride. I hope that we will all see a Union getting closer to what it ought to be. A place for debate, inclusion, and crucially joy. A huge thank you to the committee for building this termcard. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you all.”

Image Credit: Jeremy Corbyn / CC BY 2.0

Counselling demand rose 86% over long vacation

Charlie Hancock
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Counselling demand rose 86% over long vacation

CW: Sexual assault, rape, mental health

Data released from Oxford University’s Student Welfare and Support Services has revealed that demand for its services rose during the 2019-20 academic year. The number of students registered with the Disability Advisory service also rose, continuing a trend observed in preceding years. The Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service also saw an increase in demand, with the majority of users being female undergraduates.

Demand for counselling rose by 8%, meaning 13% of the student population used the service during the academic year. The Counselling Service saw significant differences in patterns of use compared to pre-pandemic years, as more students requested support during vacation periods. The residency requirement for accessing counselling was suspended over the 2020 summer vacation. During that time, demand for counselling rose by 86% compared to the previous year, and the demand for support over the vacation as a whole rose by 41%. The report said the increase “reflects the increase in student distress and dysfunction as the pandemic continued, creating longer term detrimental effects on mental health and wellbeing”. 

26.4% of referrals to the Counselling Service were for anxiety. A further 20.8% of students requested support for “depression, mood change or disorder”, and 9% for “academic needs”. The average waiting time between a student requesting support and attending their first appointment remained at 8.9 working days, the same as the year before. The percentage of students who were seen within 5 days rose from 36.5% to over 40% over the same time period.

However, waiting times fluctuated dramatically during the year, peaking at 16 days at the end of Michaelmas. Reduced demand during Trinity term brought the average waiting time down. The report cautioned that if the availability of counselling resources was not increased, “long waits will soon be the norm”, causing some students to have to wait until the following term to attend an appointment.

The Disability Advisory Service (DAS) also saw an increase in demand of 12%, bringing the percentage of the student population registered with the service to 21.4% (5280 people). The average proportion of students registered with a Disability Advisory Service across the higher education sector is 14.6%.

The largest proportion of students registered with the DAS are those reporting Mental Health difficulties (29%). Students reporting Specific Learning Disorders, such as dyslexia and ADHD, made up the next largest group at 25%. This reflects broader patterns across the higher education sector.

Female students were over-represented among DAS users. While they make up around 40% of the student population, over 50% of registered DAS users were female according to their “legal sex”. Students who identified their ethnicity as “white” were also over-represented, making up 72% of total DAS users while comprising 65.5% of the University population.

Students from Asian backgrounds were the most under-represented among the ethic demographics recorded. 19.5% of students identify as Asian, compared only 10.8% of DAS users.

The DAS report noted that the practices adopted by the University during the transition to remote learning created opportunities for improving the accessibility of teaching for disabled students. For example, the increased use of lecture capture and captioning, while being useful for all students, has “disproportionate benefit to disabled students”. In addition, the report said the move to remote assessments and diversifying assessment practices is more “accessible and inclusive of disabled students’ needs”.

Demand for support from the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service also increased, this time by 12% compared to the previous year. Two-thirds of students seen by the service were undergraduates. Undergraduates were most likely to report rape or sexual assault, which made up 54.2% of cases. Postgraduates were more likely to report stalking (20.7%) and abuse within relationships (10.3%). 

‘Serious sexual crimes’, which include rape, sexual assault and stalking accounted for 60.8% of cases. Rape and sexual assault the most common incidents reported to the service, making up 50.6% of the total caseload. 26% of cases concerned experiences “external to the University”, including historic cases. The majority of people accused in reports to the service were male, with 41.1% of accused parties being identified as students at Oxford University. Of the 10.1% of accusations which were towards staff, all were reported by postgraduate students.

The report acknowledged that the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service was “disappointed not to make progress” on reducing waiting times as a result of increased demand and insufficient resources. The average length of time between first contacting the service and a student’s first appointment was eight working days. The report highlighted that the waiting time acted as a barrier to students accessing support, and added they hoped to see students within two working days “as standard”.

Gillian Hamnett, Director of Student Welfare and Support Services, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all of our lives including those of University students. Although these statistics reflect only the first few months of lockdown, the impact of the crisis is clear to see, particularly in the increased demand for counselling support outside of term time. We are proud to have been and continue to be able to provide lifelines to our students at such a time of crisis, including 24 hour online mental health support through the Togetherall platform. Supporting the wellbeing, safety and mental health of our student-body is a responsibility that we take very seriously all year round, and not just during timetabled teaching.

“At Oxford we are working hard to remove the barriers that disabled students face, and while we know there is more to do, the DAS approach to learning has inclusive teaching at its heart which means it is becoming easier for all students to access their teaching and learning.

“2020 was an incredibly difficult year, and the University is mindful that the pandemic is not the only event that may have affected our students’ wellbeing, particularly the killing of George Floyd and the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. We are working to provide Student Welfare and Support Services that are both accessible and beneficial to students of all backgrounds and ethnicities, so that regardless of their experience all students are able to find the right support they need”.

Oxford Nightline is open 8pm-8am, every night during term time, for anyone who’s struggling to cope and provides a safe space to talk where calls are completely confidential. You can call them on 01865 270 270, or chat at oxfordnighline.org. You can also contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by calling 166 123 or emailing [email protected].


Image: Steve Evans/ NC-BY-NC 2.0 via flickr.com

“Oxford is wilfully complicit in a system which destroys lives”: societies respond to OCJC report

Charlie Hancock
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“Oxford is wilfully complicit in a system which destroys lives”: societies respond to OCJC report

A report from the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign detailing the University’s ties with the fossil fuel industry has been criticised by student societies and climate organisations. Many emphasised the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on people of colour.

The report found that the University had received over £100 million in donations and research grants from the fossil fuel industry since 2015. This included a donation of £100 million from INEOS, a British-owned chemicals manufacturer. The Saïd Business School was the largest recipient of donations and funding from fossil fuel companies, followed by the Engineering and Earth Sciences departments.

Disarm Oxford, Oxford Climate Society, Oxford University Amnesty International Society, and Melanin. shared the report on Facebook, urging their supporters to read it. “Climate Justice is Racial Justice. The University must stop receiving money from fossil fuel industries now”, read Melanin.’s post.

Common Ground, a student led organisation bringing attention of the University’s colonial past, said: “Climate justice is racial justice, and the university cannot claim to be a ‘climate leader’ or ‘anti-racist’ whilst still having such extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry”.

Oxford Migrant Solidarity said: “Oxford is wilfully complicit in a system which destroys lives and represents gross injustice towards people of colour across the globe.”

Oxford Worker Justice, a “student-based” campaign for “solidarity between workers and students at the university”, said: “If you were in any doubt about what Oxf*rd really cares about, read this. Acceptable answers include: money, climate destruction, injustice for racialised peoples, migrants, women, workers and on and on”.

Elliott Cocker, the Environment and Ethics officer in the St John’s College JCR, told Cherwell: “My college [St John’s] has so far retained its large stakes in Shell and BP, arguing it will use its ownership to push for change within the companies; this report will further undermine student confidence in this strategy by highlighting its failure to leverage an end to their funding of harmful research even within Oxford”.

Oxford University told Cherwell: “The University of Oxford safeguards the independence of its teaching and research programmes, regardless of the nature of their funding. Those donating money or sponsoring programmes at the University have no influence over how academics carry out their research or what conclusions they reach. Researchers publish the results of their work whether the results are seen to be critical or favourable by industry or governments.”

“Partnerships with industry allow the University to apply its knowledge to real challenges of pressing global concern, with funding often going directly into research into climate-related issues and renewables”.

St John’s College has been contacted for comment.

Image: Patrick Hendry via unsplash.com

Launch of new student well-being guide

Jill Cushen
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Launch of new student well-being guide

In an effort to help students navigate the pressures and uncertainties of university life, Mystudenthalls.com has launched ‘Student well-being: a guide to building better mental health in university’. The guide was created to help students manage their wellbeing and mental health, and the added challenges brought on by the pandemic. 

In the guide, Dr Dominique Thompson, GP and young people’s mental health expert, explores key issues affecting students such as loneliness, financial wellbeing, social media, alcohol, academic performance and student living. The practical guide aims to address the topics which are key stressors for students during the pandemic and offers advice and tips as well as further resources to help them deal with these issues. 

Research has shown that higher numbers of students have felt lonely living under lockdown with 44% of those aged 18-24 saying they have experienced loneliness. There has also been an increase in alcohol consumption among young adults. The guide offers methods of dealing with the feeling of loneliness, managing alcohol intake in a healthy way and coping with the effects of social media on our emotions. 

After a year of disruption to academic life, Dr Thompson also advises students “to focus less on what has been missed, and more on what has been gained that can be brought to the workplace alongside their academic achievements”. 

The guide also looks at student life after the pandemic and considers that some students will find “reintegrating especially challenging” and “not everyone will want to leap into living, working, and partying together at the same speed” once restrictions are lifted. 

Dr Thompson has been a student GP for 17 years and specialises in mental health and wellbeing. She has launched her own student wellbeing consultancy, Buzz Consulting, and is the author of four mental health books for students.  

She told Cherwell: “If [students] are concerned about alcohol (lots of people, not just students have ’self medicated’ their anxiety with alcohol this year) or if they find flatmates stressful, I hope they will turn to the guide and search for the answers we have suggested, to ease their worry. They can also share the guide with friends, or family members might want to send it to students they know. It will be useful for all students, not just those who are stressed or anxious!” 

She added: “As with all my work I very much hope this guide will reduce anxiety and uncertainty, reassure students that they are not alone in facing these issues, and most importantly that there is always something they can do to help themselves and someone to talk to if it’s all a bit much.”

Image Credit: Lawrence OP / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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

Eleanor Zhang
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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 

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