Almost twenty years after his first retrospective Warhol in 2002, Andy Warhol is now showing at the Tate Modern. The prolific artist is best known as the leading figure for Pop Art, the art movement that explored the relationship between commercialism, celebrity culture and art-making. And now, online gallery-goers and iPlayer watchers can admire Andy Warhol’s work from the comfort of their laptops.
Curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran add more than just ‘Andy’ to the exhibition. The exhibition includes work never before seen in the UK, as well as twenty-five works from his Ladies and Gentlemen series: portraits of Black and Latinx drag queens and trans women which are shown for the first time in thirty years. Muir and Moran treat Warhol’s work confidently, knowing all too well that, from the soup cans to the screen prints, “Everyone owns Warhol… Warhol became and still is a big brand.” Through his work and biography, they show us the Andy behind the Andy Warhol.
The exhibition opens with Warhol’s childhood biography. Born in 1928 as Andrew Warhola, he grew up in Pittsburgh with Slovakian parents, attending Catholic church and taking art classes at the local museum. Moving to New York at the age of twenty-one, he become a commercial illustrator, notably dropping the ‘a’ from his surname and introducing us to the Andy Warhol, the artist. Works from his first exhibitions – line drawings of young men – are the first nod to Warhol’s queer identity, showcased in the exhibition.
Sleep, the second room in the gallery, projects a five-hour video of poet John Giorno, an ex-lover of Warhol, sleeping. Giorno on video becomes a kind of futuristic painting, recalling the behind-the-scenes of a life drawing class. Andy Warhol’s genius is turning the mundane into art. We see boxes of soap turned into sculpture. Silver clouds and silver, helium-filled balloons fill room 5 – they are, as he once described them, “paintings that float”. Warhol’s playfulness is as ripe as the sombre notes in the show. This is most notably so in room 7, The Shooting, where his work is shown in the factory in Union Square. Here, Valerie Solanas, a writer who had worked with Warhol before, shot him, damaging his internal organs.
Naturally, the exhibition draws on the colourful pop art era and Warhol’s relationship with celebrity, but we are also shown his engagement with other sources, such as the powerful prints of Da Vinci’s Last Supper and his work with music and film through Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a recreation of his multimedia shows of the same name. We seamlessly move from silk-screen prints of Elvis Presley, to prints of skulls, to the Ladies and Gentlemen series – a personal favourite. Warhol’s brush strokes on top of screen prints bring a 3D element to his works; their smiles are bright; you get the sense that you are watching these women and drag queens yourself, posing live at a photo shoot.
Andy Warhol at the Tate beautifully explores the interacting themes and experiences of celebrity, religion, queerness and death which all played a part in the work of Warhol. Key to his appeal is how he makes everyone and everything he touches celebrated, novel and remembered. We see this more than ever in this retrospective.
Take Tate Modern’s tour of their Andy Warhol exhibition on their website and watch ‘Museums in Quarantine: Warhol’ on BBC iPlayer.
Stone, unmoved Let me talk to you Stone, cold Let me cross your threshold Stone, hard Let me see you breathe
The curtains open And so does the heart’s treasure trove When the morning sun beams And the reflection in the mirror is unique – We’re alive and beyond comparison
Stone, why do you frown so? It’s your own insistence that you should never know Anything other than being a stone
Stone, why, you don’t stand for anything And you lie for nothing Gambling with everything
Your form is familiar, stone Far from unknown I think I saw you in a history book With all the blood you took And a smile on your face But you do love, don’t you, the human race?
When I threw you against the wall you didn’t break When tears strolled from my cheek to yours you didn’t quake Cold in winter, warm in summer Not a singer nor a hummer You sneeze when you’re well and work when you’re sick You gaze longingly at hell and power’s a kick Stone Stone Stone Occupying every throne
Stone, you discuss me Stone, you disgust me Stones don’t fly, they’re tethered to the ground Every time you’re looked for, nowhere to be found
But time has changed, I no longer feel the same. You had your chance, we must take aim. To tear open the bulging breast And wrench free the stone from inside the chest. To toss it into the furnace where now It may know the heat of social love and bow Its head in Shame.
“It is a divine precedent/you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!”
A silvery brand sways from my neck, and whispers truths grown old; still I find myself running with my legs pressed shut, led by a ghostly smile printed on my small oblivion, the way to new Jerusalem. The poet’s choice chimes sweeter than cowardice, so let me clutch at fragile nothings, not slip sudden down insincere glass I’d drink a thousand mediocre perhapses, trace paradise with crooked floorboards and woeful stains. Ask me again, how my hunt progresses, as long as I know you feast on the paltry spoils – so will we walk unremarkable streets, and love them? These are dusk-addled plans, arresting only in their foolishness. Food for fuckwits, enchanting missteps –
So the masks are sloughed off, and my heart stretches a shining ladder, reaches – – does the body bind me here, in old wallpaper and new longing? Or do I dwell in fabricated grace? Hypocrisy creeps, as the night seals itself up over coarse red rooves and the rooks tear open old yearning, grown stale. Did I stare too long above the traitorous tracks, as you, beautiful place, flew away? If I had turned my head and seen my infancy approach, Would you have come back to me? and if I seek you now, in the quagmire, God knows you will have changed.
How ridiculous we are. Fuck it, swallow these sobs like rum; I’ve faith in somewhere, and cast my visions – lurid in the sky, and violent, fragile as a clandestine glass; stronger than its contents. Still the sun breaks, bleeds away, devours my conjecture; I don’t know if life will disappoint us, and I clutch tight the infant dream and as Ingrid, I grow sick on wondering
Upon descending at Oxford railway station with my dad at the start of Freshers’ Week and waiting almost fifteen minutes in the queue for a taxi, an old white driver finally pulled up. When it was our turn to get in, I had already opened the door, he said to me with the most reassuring voice and a smile, “sorry, love, I can’t take you in,”and drove off a few metres down the road without explanation. I nodded politely, not putting much thought into it but only five minutes later, a white family standing nearby, with the same amount of luggage, appeared to hail a taxi and the same driver came out of his car and welcomed them with open arms.
“I think the driver was being racist to us,” my dad said in a hushed voice. He too had studied in the UK for his undergraduate degree on a scholarship nearly 30 years ago, and I imagine he was a lot more familiar with the more subtle forms of racism that people of colour and foreigners would face. I begin to imagine how much has (or has not) changed within the past three decades. At the time I was too stunned to even process what happened, but it took a while to slowly come to terms that I got refused for a taxi merely because I was wearing a hijab. For this, I will remember my first day at Oxford until the day I die.
During the Spring Vac when I finally returned home, I was excited to show my mum the official college photo from matriculation, with everyone all lined up and dressed in sub fusc. Her immediate reaction was not something I expected, although I had secretly thought of the same thing when I first saw the photo. “Wow, you can very easily count the number of POC in here,” she said, a mixture of worry and shock on her face. I did not know how to respond. Granted, a white parent would nevertheless be unlikely to realise this when looking at a matriculation photo – and that, in itself, is racial privilege.
While I have never personally had insults hurled at me or anything aggressive of the like, the racism I experience on a constant basis appears in much more subtle forms. Microaggressions, like more overt expressions of discrimination, can have significant long-lasting psychological effects, and sometimes take us longer to realise because we often doubt the validity of our experiences. To an extent, we even make excuses for the subtle racism we continue to face, thinking that people are allowed to get away with it merely because they don’t know any better.
Apart from getting stared at suspiciously at another event (probably because I was wearing a hijab), and having people steal curious glances at me whenever the word ‘Islam’ is mentioned in public, I am also frequently told by well-meaning people that “your English is so good!” This has happened more times than I can remember. While I understand that their statement comes from good intentions, it nevertheless reflects an unacknowledged ignorance and perhaps even a subconscious belief in the ‘backwardness of the other’. I do not expect people to know that nearly all the schools in my country had, at one point, ran a bilingual syllabus, and that we were all taught English from a very young age. But at the very least, I did think that people would no longer hold on to stereotypical fascinations of a foreigner being able to converse fluently in one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
Both my grandfathers went to British-run schools in colonial Malay villages, despite not coming from well-off backgrounds, because it was just the norm of their time, and they still speak fluent English today. Having to overhear arguments in defence of Empire in casual, non-academic conversation, while knowing that my ancestors were tormented by the British administration, and that my country still suffers from the socioeconomic and racial repercussions of colonialism today, also remains an unhealed wound – but I shall leave this discussion for another day.
Dear reader, if my English was not “good”, I would not have even thought of applying to Oxford for a History degree. (Have you even seen what the admissions tests look like?). Yet, on a similar note, there have also been occasions when I asked people to repeat what they said because I couldn’t hear what they were saying, not because I didn’t understand the words they were using, but instead got brushed off and told, “sorry, I forgot English isn’t your first language,” before they hastily changed the topic of conversation. Again, perhaps genuinely well-meaning, but terribly executed, because it comes off as hugely patronising.
Other occasions also include my bank card never arriving to my pigeonhole, and having to call them multiple times for weeks on end, when apparently halfway into Michaelmas I discovered that they had already sent multiple cards which got delivered under the miscellaneous, unidentified surname inbox at the porters’ lodge, because the banks had gotten my surname wrong the whole time. While I had filled in the forms with my name and surname being exactly like the official one on my passport, most of my mail had been delivered to “Dania Aryf” instead, and because of this, I have now made the habit of checking both my own pigeonhole and the miscellaneous inbox every time, in case I miss out on anything important. I like to believe that this had never been a systematic error on their part, but rather, banks refusing to account for the fact that there are multiple names which are different to Western convention.
Sometime over the Winter Vac, I stayed with a friend in London, and my family from Malaysia also came to visit, with most of our time spent outside of Oxford. However, on the day we decided to drop by, I thought of showing them around my college, but we were brutally dismissed by the porters. I showed them my Bod Card as proof that I was a student and insisted that I only wanted to take them around the main quad because my family had never been to my college before, being fully aware that we were not allowed to enter the student accommodation. But the porters still blatantly refused even five minutes of a tour, arguing that visitors were not allowed during the vac, and I can’t help but feel that this would not have happened to a white, British family.
After getting elected as the Ethnic Minorities Officer for my college JCR, there were moments when I did contemplate whether the roles of equalities officers were merely an add-on for the sake of performative political correctness. I feared of being the only POC on the committee, and did not want to be seen as a “token minority”. But other instances in Oxford also include the unsettling thought of things so ingrained into our student culture – such as crewdates – and while I have nothing against them, the idea of having them in a curry house nevertheless seems a lot like cultural appropriation to me. I would even go as far as arguing that it normalises and even encourages being rowdy in public as socially acceptable as long as it takes place in an “exotic restaurant.” I have also overheard casual conversations about a white and black actress being compared and hearing one of them joke that “it’s not my fault that she [white actress] has better skincare,” which was genuinely shocking. But alas, these are only a few out of many other microaggressions that I can think of from the top of my head.
While the university likes to portray itself as diverse and accepting, recent events regarding the Union and the Christ Church JCR (to name only a few from a never-ending list), not to mention Rhodes’ prominent position on the High Street, have made many realise that this continues to remain otherwise. Oxford’s recent statement that it “opposes racism on all forms” is hugely vague and disappointing, yet nevertheless characteristic and even somewhat expected of the university. Its failure to engage with the issues of anti-blackness surrounding current affairs (both outside and within the university) is ultimately telling. And even if the university claims to improve policies and promote change, the impact of these systemic changes can never fully be experienced until there is radical reform within the culture of racist elitism among its community, and by more aggressively improving access to students from Black and diverse backgrounds.
Until we all collectively work against Oxford’s access problem, learn to call out complicity and ignorance, alongside normalising these difficult, uncomfortable conversations, I am afraid that my experience will remain merely one of many similar stories from students of colour.
Upon first entering the gallery I was struck by the sheer scale of Unzueta’s sculptural centrepiece – a huge felt chain, draping down from the roof like some sort of ancient industrial relic, dwarfing everything else around it. Upon moving closer, it became clear that this must have been a painstaking piece to create, as a hovering text-bubble pops into existence to inform me that it is no less than 9 meters long, constructed out of ethically sourced materials, and created entirely by hand. This exhibition of course, like so many right now, is exclusively presented in virtual reality.
Nevertheless, the exhibition experience was far from ruined. The initial room and sight of the chain was still awe-inspiring, and while rotating the camera at the base of the sculpture didn’t quite have the same feel to it, I still managed to get a good sense of perspective. The amount of physical labour I imagine it took to create this monolithic piece, on-site, was enough to make my lockdown-addled muscles cringe. This, I think, is the reaction Unzueta wanted.
From the felt sculptures of the first room to the huge site-specific murals scattered throughout the gallery space, Tools for Life has an emphasis on physicality and labour which shadows the exhibition from start to finish. Throughout, Unzueta actively invites us to recognise the physical nuances in her work which point to her labour-intensive process’. She sensitively considers the politics of production with her sustainably sourced materials, and unwavering physical reminders of the craft and human labour which goes into producing even the most mundane looking objects.
This is all supplemented by a stroke of conceptual genius. Unzueta created a series of outfits, inspired by the traditional clothes of industrial workers, and modelled them, in true artistic fashion, as ‘living sculptures.’ On the opening night of the exhibition, the gallery staff wore these specially tailored outfits while on their shift, bringing the ‘sculptures’ to life, animating all of the issues Unzueta deals with right before the visitor’s eyes. This was perhaps my favourite aspect of the exhibition. It at once highlights the gallery staff’s own labour, as well as the site of Modern art Oxford as a post-industrial space. The staff, for one night, had their efforts publicly recognised, all while becoming spectres of Modern art Oxford’s own industrial past as we are encouraged to see workers, not staff, wandering around on the night. Unzueta reminds us that Oxford, past and present was built on labouring bodies and working people.
However, moving through the exhibition, past the industrial sculptures, and the workers’ outfits, I couldn’t help but feel that this powerful reminder was starting to become… lost. The images of industry, of workers, and the poignant reminders of omnipresent labour gave way to a final room full of abstract drawings, which derived their aesthetics rather obviously from biological forms and repeating geometric shapes. A far cry from the focus on industry which drove the exhibition thus far.
While these drawings were certainly more beautiful than the industrial-looking works, bringing to mind such artists as Rennie Mackintosh and Hilma af Klint, for all their beauty they lacked the message, the political sentiments, which gave the exhibition vitality. The focus dramatically shifted from the labouring bodies of industry to that purely of the artist. However, what was lost in political engagement was made up for by pure beauty alone. This final room was filled with perfect pastel abstractions, floating above wooden blocks, and washed with natural colours. While seemingly having no aesthetic message aside from their own attractiveness, their unique names at least gave them some character. Each drawing’s title was constructed out of the months, years, and cities Unzueta created the drawings in – allowing us insight into just how time-intensive these pieces were. This alone, redeemed my interest a more than a little. Unzueta’s surrender to simplicity, time, and natural materials sets it apart from the mass-produced and increasingly complex commodities found on the likes of Amazon, Asos, or Tesco. Unzueta reinforces the value of simplicity. A valuable insight, although not quite as striking as her earlier sentiments.
While these works were certainly not as powerful as the rest of the exhibition, and (call me cynical) seemed to have commodification in mind, overall I am really glad they were included. If nothing else, they gave me something truly stunning to look at. It didn’t distract from the exhibition’s narrative on labour, so why criticise it? Artist’s labour should be rewarded too, and without ‘sellable’ artwork politically inclined artists such as Unzueta wouldn’t be able to survive. During a time when the country has recently ground to a halt, and some people are just now beginning to return to work, Unzueta’s art seems more relevant than ever. Whether intentional or not, it still manages to form an important commentary on recognising labour and the intrinsic human effort which goes into all forms of production, and on recognising the input of everyone working difficult and thankless jobs just to keep things running. I would certainly encourage everyone with a computer to ‘visit’ this exhibition, it really is quite eye-opening.
“Like smoke
blown to heaven on the wings of the wind, our country, our conquered country,
perishes. Its palaces are overrun by the fierce flames and the murderous spear.”
These words, from The Trojan Women, found a new
home in the British Museum’s exhibition on Troy. Translated from Greek into
Arabic and produced by a cast of Syrian refugees, the tale was retold as Queens
of Syria. Pushed to the brink by their circumstances, these women are
forced to rebuild their lives and repossess the narrative. The exhibition aimed
to highlight the brutality of Trojan War, and its legacy in popular culture. Queens
of Syria seemed perfect. The British Museum tried to use it to draw focus to
the horrors of war. Instead, that focus was firmly placed on them. The director
of the piece, Zoe Lafferty, published an open letter condemning the
exhibition’s sponsor before it even opened. The British Museum was once again
under fire for their infamous partnership with British Petroleum.
British Petroleum (BP) is
a multi-billion-dollar company specialising in the extraction and refinement of
oil and natural gas. Founded in 1908 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the company
rapidly expanded from its base in Persia, subsuming smaller oil companies that
previously held monopolies in former Ottoman polities with the help of the
British government. In 1935 Persia became Iran, and Anglo-Persian became
Anglo-Iranian. The name changed, but their stranglehold over the nation’s oil
continued. By the end of the Second World War the company’s growth rate
completely outstripped Iran’s. Nationalist sentiment was blossoming
throughout the Middle East, and Iranian nationalism soon took hold in the form
of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
Mossadegh was appointed as
Prime Minister by the Shah in 1951. While Iran hadn’t been formally colonised,
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) held complete control over the oil-based
economy, and was Iranian in name only. Mossadegh considered it an unwelcome symbol
of Britain’s iron grip over Iran’s economy; one of his first actions in office
was its nationalisation. Britain’s revenge was swift, forcing other oil
companies to implement an oil embargo on Iran and lodging complaints with both
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Security Council. The ICJ
found it had no jurisdiction over the case, and the Security Council refused to
act. Regardless, the UK’s actions on BP’s behalf plunged Iran into a recession
that soon manifested in political unrest. With a helping hand from the CIA’s
‘Operation Ajax’ and MI6’s ‘Operation Boot’, Mossadegh fell from power in 1953
in a coup d’état. AIOC was now firmly entrenched in Iran, owning 40% of shares
in the coalition of foreign oil companies that now controlled Iran’s refineries.
So, why the history
lesson? For the answer, check the BP website. Their own rundown of BP’s
illustrious history tells the same story in very different terms. It describes
the process of “evacuating staff and their families” in 1951, presenting BP as
an innocent victim of Iran’s nationalisation. “Mobs in the street demanded the
Prime Minister’s resignation”, it claims, ignoring that these ‘mobs’ were
actually CIA thugs. It proudly notes that “the Iranian economy was in ruins”,
suggesting that this ‘organic’ loss of revenue was at the root of their
decision to “accept a new partnership proposal.” This revisionism is
essentially propaganda that aims to make the company’s history more palatable
to potential share-holders and investors. The website, however, is only the tip
of the iceberg of a PR strategy that has seen BP sponsor some of the most
prestigious cultural institutions in the United Kingdom.
“BP,” says its website, “believes that access to arts and culture helps to build a more inspired and creative society.” As such, they have been building links with cultural institutions across the UK for the past 50 years. In 2016 this long-term “strategy” manifested in a five-year investment of £7.5 million shared between the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The latter severed its ties to BP in 2019. The British Museum runs an annual ‘BP exhibition’, with recent titles including I am Ashurbanipal and Indigenous Australia. This money ostensibly allows exhibitions that might not be able to attract funding to go ahead, enabling the British public to engage with art and culture. BP uses this sponsorship to paint a picture of an engaged, socially-responsible company with a corporate strategy that extends beyond profit into cultural development. However, as their beneficiaries would undoubtedly remind them, art is subjective. Not everyone agrees with BP’s self-portrait.
This artistic disagreement has manifested in real-life protests. The 13-foot Trojan Horse that creaked into the courtyard of the British Museum on the 9th February was a reminder to the institution of the danger of trusting gifts. An icon of deception, many activists consider it a more accurate portrayal of BP’s patronage. The statue served as the figurehead of a 3-day “BP Must Fall” protest that saw 1600 activists occupy the British Museum, which is no stranger to protests. This one, the latest planned by activists from ‘BP or not BP’, was far bigger than previous actions.
Formed in response to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) partnership with BP in 2012, ‘BP or not BP’ is a protest organisation that aims to sever ties between British cultural organisations and oil companies. It has been responsible for 59 actions, including a ‘stolen goods tour’ of the British Museum led by Aboriginal activist Rodney Kelly and a ‘living statue’ protest at a private function for BP members. The February protest saw lectures on decolonisation, an “unsanctioned art exhibition” called Momentum, and an occupation of the museum’s courtyard. All this took place in the shadow of the Trojan Horse, which contained activists who slept in its body to prevent it from being removed during the night.
This kind of action has worked in the past. The RSC terminated its contract with BP two years early, largely as a result of the group’s actions. The Science Museum cut ties with Shell in 2015; Tate Modern did the same to BP in 2017. Protesters from ‘Liberate Tate’ also forced the gallery to reveal that BP’s funding provided less than 0.5% of their annual income, undermining the argument that BP’s money was somehow ‘necessary’ for the continuation of these artistic projects. BP’s website claims that it has “enabled over 4.2 million visitors to attend a festival, an exhibition, display or activity” at the British Museum since 1996. While this may sound like an impressive contribution, it is a drop in the ocean for an institution that receives an average of 6.3 million visitors per year. The 2016 BP sponsorship deal only accounts for around 0.3% of the British Museum’s annual income. Activists see this as an unfair exchange: BP gets to boost its public image in exchange for almost negligible contributions to these institutions.
They call this ‘artwashing’: a process in which companies and governments sponsor artistic and cultural endeavours in order to create a veneer of social engagement that deflects and distracts from criticism. It is one of the buzzwords of international protest against corporate sponsorship and gentrification from Los Angeles to London, but it is not their only issue. There is also a concern that companies like BP might seek to influence exhibitions with the same end goal in mind. Shell attempted this at the Science Museum in 2015, trying to put pressure on the Museum to avoid a discussion that would show Shell in a negative light. In this specific avenue, however, concerns about BP have proved unfounded. This ‘artwashing’ is simply another arm of BP’s overarching aim: public exoneration.
The size of protests
against BP’s sponsorship of the British Museum has grown at great cost to the
institution. Ahdaf Soueif resigned from the Board of Trustees in July 2019,
citing BP’s sponsorship as a key motive. Her explanation, published by the
London Review of Books, perfectly summarises what activists long suspected: “The
public relations value that the museum gives to BP is unique, but the
sum of money BP gives the museum is not unattainable elsewhere.” Even
artists whose work has been used as part of exhibition have criticised the
museum. Zoe Lafferty’s open letter questions why the British Museum
“inexplicably” continues its partnership with BP, emphasising the “impossible
position” her team was in, having already agreed to allow the use of her work.
Two months after the
February protests I spoke to Sal. H, a member of ‘BP or not BP’. BP continues
to sponsor the British museum. Asked
whether she thought their protest had been successful, she responded with a question:
“what would success look like for us as an organisation? You could say it was
divestment. You could say it was the return of all the stolen goods. What would
those gains mean? My personal angle on it is that the British Museum and its
sponsorship exists as a perfect way for us to illustrate and point out the long
legacy of colonialism and the continued oppression of people who have suffered
colonialism.” Their protests are opportunities to platform activists from
around the world. ‘BP Must Fall’ saw people from Kurdistan, West Papua, and
Mexico give talks on the colonial history of the British Museum and the impact
of BPs actions on indigenous populations across the globe. Divestment is not
the only goal: raising awareness and sparking discussion in the media are also
critical. The end result of all this is consistent, negative press for the
British Museum. The question at the heart of the debate seems simple: if being
sponsored by BP means huge protests and high-profile resignations for a minimal
return, why not just drop them?
Soueif frames the
partnership’s continuation as an attempt not to “alienate a section of the
business community.” In Sal’s opinion, however, it runs deeper than a simple
monetary relationship: it reflects the British Museum’s own status as an icon
of colonialism and exploitation. The board of directors are “very happy to
invite BP to private views and functions”, implying the existence of a
political link that would explain the relationship. Each person suggests a
different motive and without conjecture it’s impossible to give a coherent
argument for the British museum to continue the partnership. Despite this, the
relationship continues.
The entrenched nature of
BP’s sponsorship has forced ‘BP or not BP’ to get creative. The group’s main concern
is that BP is misrepresenting themselves through their sponsorship. Although
the easiest way to stop that misrepresentation is to terminate the partnership,
if the group can engage the public’s imagination then BP fails anyway. The
longer the British Museum retains BP as a partner, the larger the protests will
get. Every protest is another opportunity for activists to grab the attention
of the media and undermine BP’s narrative, preventing BP from achieving its
goal anyway.
While ‘BP or not BP’ has enjoyed successful
protests, they are still a long way from this level of public engagement. In
addition to this, protest has just become a lot more difficult. The 20th April
marked the 10-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed
11 rig workers. This would usually be marked by a huge protest, but ‘BP or not
BP?’ was forced to commemorate the tragedy with an online protest. Around 100
activists took part in their video protest, with “thousands… posting to mark
the day.” Their protest coincided with the moment oil values went negative
in the USA for the first time in history in a huge blow for the oil industry.
Some activists, however, see this as a nightmare scenario: cheaper fuel is far
more attractive than expensive, green alternatives. The pandemic has also
created more fundamental issues for the group, whose future online actions are
“up in the air” as they grapple with the key question: can you justify
campaigning against sponsorship deals while cultural institutions haemorrhage
money?
Covid-19 may have disarmed activist groups, but there is still hope for ‘BP or not BP’. Global demand for oil is plunging by millions of barrels a day due to the pandemic and BP’s contract with the British Museum expires next year. Whether the British Museum continues that partnership is a separate matter. “We’ll see,” Sal concedes, “it would look very bad if they renewed it.” BP has also committed to becoming a net-zero emissions company by 2050. Perhaps they mean it. Or perhaps this is another Trojan Horse. When I asked if she was cynical about BP’s promises, there was a hint of humour in her response. “Towards a profit-making organisation at the mercy of their stakeholders?” She grins. “Definitely.”
In popular media, cults are often
the object of morbid curiosity, in the same category as serial killers,
celebrity breakdowns, and the scandalous exploits of polygamous big cat
enthusiasts. In 2018, Netflix’s Wild Wild Country shocked viewers with
the story of the Rajneeshpuram commune, who took over a small town in Oregon in
order to pursue their twin passions of meditation and bioterrorism. Many of
Louis Theroux’s most watched documentaries deal with insular and extremist
cult-like organisations, including the Westboro Baptist Church, the Church of
Scientology, and white supremacist communities in the deep South. Our
fascination with cults is partly due to the fact that they are, by definition,
closed to outsiders. An advertising campaign launched by the Church of
Scientology in 2018 ran the tantalising tagline uninitiated, ‘The only thing
more interesting than what you’ve heard is what you haven’t’. In denying access
to their inner workings, cults appeal to our desire to see behind closed doors.
These
organisations also stand in stark contrast to the values of individualism and
liberty that pervade Western capitalist society. In a cult, the individual is
subsumed by the collective, voluntarily submitting to the will of a
self-appointed authority figure (though coercive and manipulative tactics are
often used). They give up personal freedoms, donating their property and wealth
to the organisation, and cutting themselves off from family and friends. Perhaps
what interests us is the question of what cults might offer in return – what is
it that makes the loss of one’s individuality seem like a worthwhile trade off?
It certainly suggests an all-consuming, unshakeable conviction in one’s cause,
far exceeding the average person’s most sincerely held political or religious
beliefs. Many of the most notorious cults of the last century have secured
their place in history through extreme, and often violent, displays of devotion;
the airstrip shootings and mass suicide committed by the People’s Temple
Agricultural Project in 1978 constituted the greatest loss of American life
until the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001. On the tape recording taken at the final
meeting of the commune, Jim Jones can be heard calling his followers to commit
revolutionary suicide, framing voluntary, dignified death as the ultimate
rejection of capitalism. The ubiquity of the phrase ‘to drink the Kool-Aide’ is
a testament to the cultural impact of the Jonestown massacre; it refers to the
grape flavoured drink, laced with poison, that the residents were coerced into
ingesting. But the People’s Temple were not unique in their act of
self-annihilation. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate Cult died in an act
of mass suicide, believing it would allow them to board an alien spaceship, and
the Solar Templar Cult reached a death toll of 74 in a series of suicides between
1994 and 1997. To an outsider, it is difficult to understand how ordinary people
could be convinced to behave in such apparently irrational, self-destructive
ways in the name of their beliefs.
Religious
cults give rise to questions about when a religious movement becomes something
more sinister. According to the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion &
Public Life, 84% of the 2010 world population were religiously affiliated. What
is it that sets groups such as the Solar Templar and the Rajneeshpuram commune from
the billions of faithful worldwide? Part of the difficulty in drawing a clear
distinction is that ‘cult’ is generally used as pejorative term. It implies
that the organisation in question is harmful, either to its members, the
outside world, or both, and that it is guilty of coercion and brainwashing. To
call a movement a cult is to delegitimise it, suggesting that it is not a
respectable religion. Just as those accused of heresy during the Middle Ages
did not identify themselves as ‘heretics’, cults rarely seem to regard
themselves as such. For instance, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday
Saints has often been called a cult by critics, whilst members of the faith
consider themselves the true inheritors of the Apostolic tradition. It is for
this reason that the term ‘New Religious Movement’ is used in academic
discourse when referring to faith groups founded during the past few centuries.
However, this categorisation doesn’t fully account for the distinction that
many will intuitively make between a legitimate religion and what they perceive
as a cult. The term includes Heaven’s Gate and Satanism alongside mainstream
religious movements such as Conservative Judaism, and various Buddhist groups.
So-called cults do have a lot in common with mainstream religion. Most
religions call on members to make sacrifices in the name of their faith, be it
Catholics abstaining from meat on Fridays, or Muslims fasting during the
sunlight hours of Ramadan. People of faith might undergo initiation rituals
such as baptism and wear distinguishing clothes to identify themselves as a
member of a particular community who all share a single belief system. Monasteries
are rarely considered cults, despite the fact that their members give up
private property, live in ascetic communes, and devote their entire lives to
God. Is it, then, just a matter of degree? The Church of Scientology is
criticised for its practice of gathering collateral on its members, requiring
them to give up deeply personal information, but Catholics regularly confide in
Priests through the sacrament of confession. Perhaps a movement is classed as a
cult when it imposes too many rules, becomes too rigidly
hierarchical, or requires too much devotion to its leaders. Giving up
chocolate for Lent is an act of self-denying sacrifice, as is committing
suicide in order to placate an extra-terrestrial overlord, but one is rather
more extreme than the other. The average parishioner might put some money in
the collection pot at the Priest’s behest but would probably raise an eyebrow
if asked to assassinate a member of Congress. The boundaries become even
blurrier when considering the origins of mainstream religions; almost every
major religion began as a small community following the teachings of a
charismatic leader. Their beliefs were often extreme and self-destructive:
early Christianity actively encouraged martyrdom, calling the faithful to
rejoice in their gruesome executions rather than renounce Christ. A group that
looked anything like Jesus’ disciples in the 21st century would
surely be called a cult by outsiders; certainly, the gospels claim that Jesus
was considered dangerous by his contemporaries and denounced as a blasphemer by
Jewish authorities.
The criteria
most commonly used to distinguish religions from cults is the organisation’s
methods of recruiting and retaining members. Cults tend to have charismatic
leaders, offer a transformative path to self-improvement, and manipulate
recruits using tactics such as love-bombing (overwhelming potential members
with a friendly and communal atmosphere). The content of a cult’s belief system
might be very similar to that of a mainstream religion, but it is the way in
which it communicates those beliefs and persuades members to adhere to them that
renders cults harmful. These are certainly useful criteria which allow those
targeted by dangerous new religious movements to identify them as such.
However, it is also worth asking if there is anything in the structure of a
movement’s belief system that contributes to the perception that it is a cult,
separate from either its specific contents, or the ways in which it imparts its
teachings. This is a matter of epistemology. The testimonies of former cult
members suggest that many leave, not because they are disturbed by the
manipulative recruitment methods, or the restrictive rules and regulations, but
because they realise that they cannot justify their belief systems.
Megan
Phelps-Roper, a former member of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, sheds
light on this phenomenon. Westboro is best known for its controversial practice
of picketing soldier’s funerals, holding inflammatory placards with slogans
such as ‘God hates fags’, and ‘America is doomed’. They believe that we should
thank God for all of his judgements, including the deaths of soldiers, and
atrocities such as 9/11. They fulfil most of the criteria used to identify
cults: they were founded by Fred Phelps, who acted as a charismatic leader
until his death in 2014, they live communally, and they condemn the outside
world. Born into Westboro as the granddaughter of its founder, Megan
Phelps-Roper spent most of her life attending the pickets and played an active
role in the running of the Church. She personally wrote the lyrics to some of
their bizarre pop parodies, adapting Lady Gaga songs to convey homophobic and
apocalyptic teachings. She went on to run the Church’s social media, becoming
particularly active on Twitter. In her memoir, Unfollow (2019), she
explains that it was her activity on Twitter that eventually convinced her to
leave Westboro in 2012; In the process of defending the Church’s teachings
online, she found herself engaged in debate with users who sincerely wanted to
understand where she was coming from and explain to her why they disagreed. She
was used to hostility from the outside world – the pickets attracted angry
counter-protests and even violent attacks – but the people she met on Twitter
made her realise that not everybody who opposed her faith did so out of blind
hatred. In a conversation with one user, she learnt that there were different
translations of the Bible, she went on to study Hebrew in order to read the
text more objectively. She attributes her rejection of the Church to those who
compassionately exposed her to the inconsistencies in her beliefs. While
acknowledging that the rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church is harmful to
many, Phelps-Roper is a vehement advocate of free speech. She argues that
censoring discourse on social media and in public will prevent people like her
from escaping indoctrination. Any attempts to censor the views of the Westboro
Baptist Church would only serve to confirm their belief that the outside world is
against them. In turn, this would further convince them of their status as the
chosen ones: ‘And everyone will hate you because you are my followers’ (Matt
13:13).
Megan
Phelps-Roper’s account reveals that it is not only the way in which religious
movements recruit and retain members that make them cults, but also the
structure of their belief systems. In most mainstream religions, knowledge is
derived from a variety of sources: scripture, along with scholarly
interpretation of it, philosophy, and the decisions of appointed religious
leaders, amongst others. For example, the Jewish Talmud records Rabbinical
interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, locating authority in the scholarly
writings of the learned. Mainstream Christian denominations derive their
beliefs from the Bible, but also from the works of the theologians who have
interpreted it throughout Church history. Whilst faith plays a significant role
in all religious movements, those that could be called ‘moderate’ tend to hold
their teachings to a standard of reason and consistency, at the same time
acknowledging that not every mystery can be understood.
By contrast,
the teachings of cult-like movements appear to be legitimised almost entirely
through charismatic authority, a term coined by the sociologist Max Weber. A
leader, or group of leaders, who claim to be imbued with superior spirituality,
purporting to be the sole source of truth. Megan Phelps-Roper describes the increasingly
contradictory practices that became more and more difficult to justify biblically.
During a potentially ruinous lawsuit, Fred Phelps ordered church members to
prostrate themselves and pray for the deaths of those prosecuting them. Whilst
this is clearly incompatible with Jesus’ instruction to love your enemies, it
became part of the group’s practice because their leader had declared it
righteous. In a cult, knowledge is not acquired from scripture, scholarship, or
critical reason, but from a charismatic figure who claims to have privileged
access to the divine. This is consistent with the tendency of cults to
discourage members from questioning their beliefs and their condemnation of the
outside world.
In her
bestselling memoire, Educated (2018), Tara Westover gives a
similar account. She tells the story of her upbringing in a cult-like family in
rural Idaho, in which her father acted as the charismatic authority. They were
fundamentalist Mormon survivalists, dedicating their lives to apocalypse
preparation, converting their money into gold, and stockpiling supplies. They
were actively opposed to scientific research as a source of knowledge, refusing
to take their children to hospital even when they sustained horrendous injuries
at the family junkyard. Westover’s mother acted as an unlicensed midwife in the
fundamentalist community, taking up new age healing practices as an alternative
to scientific medicine. The children were home schooled, receiving little to no
formal education, instead helping their father with manual labour. Despite these
circumstances, Westover was accepted to Brigham Young University. Her memoir is
a love letter to education and academia, recounting the effect her studies had
on the way she viewed her family’s beliefs. In a psychology class, she realised
that her father’s paranoia and erratic behaviour were symptoms of bipolar
disorder, shedding light on his obsession with the imminent apocalypse and his
fear of the outside world. She was awarded a Gates Scholarship, allowing her to
study at Cambridge, where she went on to earn a master’s degree and doctorate
in intellectual history. Much as Phelps-Roper came to doubt her extremist
beliefs by realising that her family’s understanding of the Bible was one
amongst many, Westover writes that her interest in historiography was a
catalyst for her changing perspective. She began to question the distorted
version of history she had learned from her parents and understand the way in
which her family had manipulated her own memories of abuse through continuous
gaslighting; the idea that there could be opposing interpretations of the past
gave her the tools she needed to deconstruct the rigid beliefs she had grown up
with.
Accounts such as these offer an interesting insight into the structure of cult belief systems. A mainstream Christian might share the belief that Jesus died to save humanity with a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. However, their reason for believing it is likely to be different. In a cult, doctrine takes its authority from those who claim to be spiritually enlightened in some way. Such a leader can make contradictory statements and dismiss any appeals to reason without losing credibility. Megan Phelps-Roper emphasises this in her account of the Church, describing their beliefs as ‘infallible’. But there is still a grey area when it comes to distinguishing cult from religion. All religious belief could be described as infallible to a degree. Religions tend to consider faith a virtue that should be able to withstand doubt, and criticisms of religion often target its tendencies to explain away the inexplicable by positing the unknowable will of a deity. Most religions did rely on charismatic authority in their early days and Scripture is usually considered as revelation, so religious teachings are hardly scientific. However, it is the movements that have engaged with new scholarship and philosophy that have endured over time, and not those that have rejected it.
When meeting someone new in Oxford, students are most likely to ask “what college do you go to?” and “what course do you do?” In response to this, I inform people that I attend Regent’s Park College. Normally, I don’t even give them time to look at me in a perplexed manner as they try to figure out if I actually go to the same University as them or if I’m just making up a random name. I am quick to assure them in a bumbling fashion that ‘I know they have never heard of it, it’s very small, I mean technically it’s not a college it’s a private hall.’ To this, the most frequent question to follow is what life is like in a private hall and what similarities and differences can be found between private halls and colleges in Oxford.
A permanent private hall (PPH) is an educational institution associated with The University of Oxford, but which is also affiliated with a Christian denomination. These have existed in Oxford since 1221. In 1918 a statute was put in place by the University allowing these non-profit private halls to become permanent features of the University.
There are six PPHs in total in Oxford, of which five admit undergraduate students. The largest PPH is the one that I attend, Regent’s Park College, which has around two-hundred students. A common misconception surrounding PPHs is that they exclusively admit postgraduate students. This is simply not true; of Regent’s students, fifty-seven percent of the hall’s population are undergraduates.
There is a lot of confusion surrounding the nature of PPHs for those who don’t know of or interact with people who are part of them. As a result of this, PPHs have grown to have something of a mythical status in several Oxford circles. In particular, many people I come across seem to think that because we are not an official college, we have fewer regulations to follow, as a result of which we become something of a cult. This goes hand in hand with another misconception I often receive, that PPHs are made up exclusively of people of faith.
Myth Busting
Whilst colleges are managed and run autonomously, a PPH is governed mostly by a specific Christian denomination and is managed under the license of a charitable organisation or religious order. Regent’s Park College is associated with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Wycliffe Hall with the Church of England and St Benet’s Hall with Roman Catholicism (of the Benedictine order). As a consequence of the religious nature of PPHs, they attract theologians as tutors, who will, in turn, attract students interested in theology, resulting in a higher intake of student’s reading Theological Studies or Combined Honours with Theology. Whilst it is common that religious people choose to study theology, being religious is certainly not a prerequisite of reading the subject. A recent online poll of Regent’s Park College asked whether the students of the college would describe themselves as ‘religious’. To this, 64% said that they would not, out of a sample of forty-four people. Although the sample size may not be representative of the college more widely, the results indicate that the branding of Regent’s as a ‘religious’ institution does not in any way mean that the individual members of the institution are religious themselves.
On average, the University of Oxford takes sixty-four undergraduate students a year to read Theology and Religion, Philosophy and Theology and Religion and Oriental Studies. In my year at Regent’s, nine people attend these courses. Other PPHs like Wycliffe Hall, however, offer exclusively theology qualifications. Relative to their size and in comparison with other colleges, there is a sizable proportion of students studying Theology or an honours degree associated with Theological Studies in PPHs. That being said, Benet’s and Regent’s do not only offer Theological Studies, they also welcome many humanities students to make up the rest of the student body.
Another prominent misconception associated with PPHs is their cult culture. The first thing that I heard about St Benet’s Hall was that on the first day of Michaelmas term, all of the freshers had bags wrapped around their heads and were taken and thrown in the Cherwell. I believed this up until third week when I met a Benet’s fresher who informed me, to my sincere relief, that no such activity happened at all. My own college, Regent’s Park, is also home to a number of cultish rumours, particularly surrounding “Regent’s Rabbits”, the all-female drinking society. During my first few weeks at Oxford, people from other colleges would often ask me whether I was part of this notorious and mysterious group. At first, I did not know what it was, but the rumours that I had heard about it were, in all honesty, pretty dodgy. But as I became more and more involved in life at Regent’s, I discovered that the notoriety of the group is far from deserved, the Rabbits are simply a collection of lovely girls who meet every week for a crew date wearing rabbit ears and who host the odd drinking event throughout the year. Whilst the rumours about PPH ‘cults’ are amusing, they are also flagrantly false.
A College Like Any Other
A lot of individuals hear ‘hall’ and immediately assume that PPHs are halls of residence. This usually results in people pitying us for not being able to experience the collegiate system in all its finery. This pity is misguided. PPHs are the same as colleges in most regards. We have a Junior Common Room with a President and committee which has weekly meetings to discuss issues and proposals, particularly relating to the distribution of finances and budgeting. Our dining hall serves meals three times a day, although a lot of people do self-cater, with our kitchens being comparatively better supplied than many other colleges. The dining hall is used on Friday evenings to serve our Formal Dinners. Three times a term the social secretary will organise a bop that manages to get everyone out, wearing ridiculous outfits and drinking from our dangerously cheap college bar (even people who are usually only seen in lower main kitchens at four in the morning). Traditionally, our bops consist of dancing to Blur’s ‘Park Life’ on the sticky floor of our JCR with the tattered brown leather sofas pushed to one side, before inevitably pouring out to Plush. Our bar itself is rated as one of the best college bars in Oxford, famous for its innovative cocktail combinations and cheap prices. Like any other college, we also have our own unique customs and traditions. A particular favourite of mine is ‘Pope’s’. This is when once a term an individual wearing an oversized Pope hat leads an invasion of Arzoo’s. The difference between life in a college and life in a PPH is often not as pronounced as people think.
The College Complex
However, for students and tutors who have what we refer to as a ‘college complex’, the prestige associated with collegiate status is difficult to cast aside. An inspiration to most PPH attendees is the success stories of college conversions; Former PPHs such as Mansfield College and St Peter’s College managed to gain collegiate status in 1995 and 1961 respectively. However, the most compelling reason that people want Regent’s to be made into a college is because of its financial implications. All colleges are financially autonomous corporations that run themselves, with their students and staff belonging to the greater body of the University which acts as the central government independent of internal affairs. The College Contribution Scheme (CCS) requires colleges that have a taxable asset amounting to £45m or more to fund the poorer colleges in the form of grants. Between 2016-17, thirty-eight percent of the CCS funding came from Christ Church, All Soul’s and St John’s. PPHs, without the status of a college, are not permitted access to these grants. In February 2019 an article was produced by Cherwell that documented the JCR motion passed by Regent’s Park’s JCR President William Robinson, which proposed the inclusion of PPHs in the CCS scheme. His argument rested on the fact that he did not “know how [the council] could possibly justify excluding literally the poorest institutions and the poorest student bodies in Oxford” from the scheme just because they were labelled as PPHs and not as colleges. I interviewed our now former President and he informed me that despite the passing of the motion, Regent’s have still not been given access to the scheme. His disappointment was clear, arguing that “the hypocrisy of a scheme that sets out to assist less financially fortunate colleges is plain to see in Regent’s exclusion, given that we have an endowment less than half the size of even the poorest college, but cannot access the scheme due to the hall’s PPH status.”
The value of PPHs
Many individuals, particularly in the PPH community, voice how unfair it is that their university experience differs significantly from that of wealthy colleges. Whilst PPHs have a lot in common with colleges at Oxford, areas of student life such as sport, travel grants and college counselling are all much more inaccessible for students who are studying at PPHs. For instance, Regent’s JCR spent the majority of last year trying to raise enough money to buy a new projector from several different sources. The projector was seen as something the JCR needed to function effectively and run meetings. A richer college may not have thought twice about funding such a vital piece of equipment, but for Regent’s, the process took much longer. The Regent’s Park endowment is currently at £5.4 million. To be able to apply to be a college, Regent’s Park would have to have a similar endowment of the poorest college in Oxford, Harris Manchester, who have assets worth £14.1 million. For a PPH like St. Benet’s Hall, the number is even further away, as they have assets totalling just £146,000. The road to becoming a college looks as if it will be a long one.
Are PPHs something that should be left in the past or do they still have a place in our University? Some feel as though the purpose of PPHs is no longer relevant in a modern context, that they are colleges in everything but in their the name and, therefore, deserve the same status and the same benefits that colleges have access to. Whilst Regent’s lack of wealth and lack of diverse subjects certainly play a part in why it has not yet moved towards collegiate status, the key reason is surely the college’s reluctance to renounce its affiliation with the Baptist Church. The PPH is involved in ordaining members of the Church to Priesthood and receive funding and guidance from the church body, activities which would have to cease if they were to become a college. Some feel that it is a fundamental part of the essence of Regent’s. This is why many, particularly those in the Senior Common Room, are extremely hesitant to push for collegiate status. Regent’s current working principle, Reverend Doctor Richard Ellis, argued in a Cherwell article released way back in 2010 that whilst “a college exists more in the mainstream of university life than a PPH, and has access to more resources”, “a PPH may want to preserve elements of its distinct ethos and this might be difficult as a college”. The views of the younger undergraduate student body who felt alienated from parts of college life were simply not being included in the discussion.
The future of Regent’s, and other PPHs alike, should involve more autonomy and a strengthening of ties with the University. This would, inevitably, require Regent’s to move away from its religious associations. Little progress has been made in this regard and talks will undoubtedly continue for a very long time. But for the time being, it seems that I will have to keep on answering the inevitable onslaught of questions whenever I confess to studying at a Permanent Private Hall.
Not the animal, of course, but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s seminal
1981 musical and the 2019 film adaptation. I spent money on tickets to see the
latter – twice. As if the 119 minutes I spent oscillating between varying
states of horror and shame as grotesque Lovecraftian CGI felines writhed around
on the screen in front of me wasn’t enough, I did it all over again. I can only
compare the experience to that of watching a snuff film. I felt dirty – but I
loved every second of it.
My love for Cats has spiralled into quite the fixation. Bustopher Jones, the Cat About Town, is living in my head rent free. I will admit that I have asked the Plush DJ to play ‘Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat’ on more than one occasion. I weep as I realise this year’s Jellicle Ball has probably been cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic. I could go on, but this has all the marks of an obsession, and an unhealthy one at that.
It brings me great joy to know that I’m not the only one afflicted by such a disease. The catastrophic failure (no pun intended) of this ice cream headache of film has meant that it’s on the way to achieving cult status. It is one of the most divisive musicals of all time, having run for twenty-one years on the West End and eighteen on Broadway despite it being slammed as – to put it simply – just plain weird. Although a complete critical and financial flop, the film’s release has spawned a new fan base; it’s a camp, hallucinogenic car crash, which is exactly why we love it.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show bombed at the box office upon its first release in 1975. Almost five decades later, it has come to be synonymous with the phrase “cult classic”. Like Cats, it reeks of camp and schlocky excess, and it only seems to grow more popular as the years go by. Midnight showings where raucous audiences dress up in their corseted finery, throw toilet roll and rice at the screen and sometimes act along to the entire film have become the norm, to the point at which the thought of a screening devoid of audience participation seems rather unsettling.
I can only hope that Cats achieves the same honour. Just weeks after its first release, independent cinemas started to hold “rowdy screenings” of the film, which saw (usually inebriated) audiences somehow belting out ‘Memory’, albeit while somehow screaming in abject terror at the same time. If the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t completely ravaged cinemas in fifty years’ time, perhaps Cats will still be considered one of these quintessential “midnight movies”.
Of all the quite horrendous musicals I’ve enjoyed over the last few years, Cats seems to shine brighter than the rest. It was one of the most notorious cinematic flops of recent memory – and everyone was talking about it. All being well, it will ascend to the Heaviside Layer to be reborn as a cult classic. And once we are reunited with our beloved cinemas, we can let its memory live again.
Coriolanus is set in the early stages of the Roman republic, in the midst of plebeian revolts for grain. Caius Marcius (Tom Hiddleston), nicknamed ‘Coriolanus’ in the course of the play, is a capable and inspiring warrior. He almost single-handedly wins the war against the Volsces, defeating their general, Aufidius (Hadley Fraser). Acclaimed as a hero, Coriolanus is encouraged to run for consul, one of the most important political roles in Rome. But what made Coriolanus such a great soldier – his unwavering pride, his direct, to-the-point speeches – are his fatal flaws as a politician. He is too arrogant, ‘too absolute’: this causes his downfall, leading him to join the Volsces and revolt against Rome.
Coriolanus is a brutal play, with physical fights and visually violent images, such as Hiddleston being drenched in blood for a good part of the play. Rourke gives it a very militaristic and grave tone, creating conflict in different ways throughout. At first, the play is very action-focused, and, as it gets more political, it gradually shifts on power plays to sustain tension, getting at the most personal and intimate point in the end. Some moments relieve the gravity of this harrowing play, but they are not many. They mostly come from Menenius (Mark Gatiss), a father figure for Coriolanus, witty and diplomatic, who shows great emotional depth and political acumen.
This production explores extremely well how it is not his lack of empathy for the lower classes that makes Coriolanus such a bad politician, but his inability to hide it. Pretence is unnatural to him, and he alienates common people by stating what he thinks: he despises them. Far from being a comically bad villain, he is not alone in his contempt for the lower classes: in reality, nobody cares. These aristocrats – even the tribunes, elected to represent the plebs – mock and disrespect the plebeians, and then manipulate them to obtain power. And on their part, the people follow through with the manipulation of the moment almost unquestioningly. Thus, Coriolanus offers an incredibly bleak portrayal of democracy, politics, and power, and it is not difficult to relate it to our contemporary world.
But the human element is always present in this grandiose tragedy about power and the corruption that derives from it. Hiddleston shows us a Coriolanus that is full of contradictions, but also has some genuinely good personal qualities. Coriolanus does not get to deliver as many monologues or soliloquies as other Shakespearean characters, so we can only guess and project our own convictions, but it would be too easy to cast him off as a villain. His intimate, delicate familial connections are constantly shown and explored. In the end, Coriolanus is confronted with a Roman matron (Jacqueline Boatswain), his wife (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), his mother (Deborah Findlay), and his son (Joe Willis), begging him to stop the Volsces’ army. They are deeply emotional scenes, that do not suffer from a drastic tonal change – affection and love between these characters had been shown many times before. A wonderful Findlay, who is a joy to watch in every scene she is in, is every bit as prideful and determined as her fictional son. And Hiddleston’s interactions with his on-scene son and wife are a sweet, quiet performance of love and conflicted emotions.
Osborne’s scenography is simple, with a wall in the background, covered in graffiti that represent the people’s thoughts and needs of the time. The stage is very rarely empty, starting out with a painted red square in the middle of it and some chairs. Such a bare set gives the play a gritty, almost urban feeling. This, with the use of strong whites, blacks, and reds, accompanied the brutal tones of the play quite effectively. More puzzling were the costume choices, with a weird blend between modern and ancient. If it tried to make the connection between our world and theirs more obvious, it was very unsubtle; if not, it is difficult to find another purpose for such choice, other than a bizarre fashion statement.
Coriolanus is a great play, intense and direct in its critique at those in power, but also subtly touching with its portrayal of family and personal relationships.
