As I’m sure everyone is very aware at this point, Adele has lost some
weight. In the past she’s often been cited as a ‘plus-size’ icon, an
inspiration to heavier women everywhere. And of course, she’s also been heavily
criticised for her appearance. “A little too fat”, was Karl Lagerfeld’s comment
after her appearance on the cover of Vogue in 2012; only one of thousands of
judgements she’s had to deal with throughout her career.
And now, naturally, people feel the need to address her new appearance.
With almost 250 thousand comments on her recent Instagram post at the time of
writing, ranging from “Talk about a glow up!” to “YOU LOOK SO UNHEALTHY!”,
people clearly have a lot of opinions on her ‘transformation’. But why does
celebrity weight loss, or indeed any kind of weight loss, engender such a
strong reaction? Why do we feel the need to speculate on a person’s life, their
health, the motivations for their actions, when they change the way they look?
Honestly, I think
the explosive response to Adele’s post says a lot more about society than it
does about the singer herself. We shouldn’t be talking about Adele right
now; we can’t know the exact reasons for her weight loss and, what’s more,
those reasons are absolutely none of our business unless she chooses to share
them. Which she hasn’t. What we should be talking about, however, is the
obsession our society seems to have with tying a person’s self-worth to their
size.
This can happen in a lot of different ways: people can be shamed for
being too big, too small, for changing, and a whole host of other things. They
can also be praised for the way their body looks, something which is often just
as damaging. When we make a big deal out of a person’s weight, we send them a
message that this is something which defines them, and the way other people see
them. At the end of the day, the people who can’t stop talking about Adele’s
weight loss are the kind of people who actually do let their
opinion of someone be determined by superficialities like appearance and body
type. And if social media right now is any evidence, most of us seem to be that
kind of people.
Anyone who has lost or gained a lot of weight over a short period will
tell you that it spurred on no shortage of speculation and gossiping. People
want your advice, they want to give you advice, they want to praise or
sympathise with or disapprove of you. Nine times out of ten, those comments
aren’t helpful, unless it’s already been made clear by the person in question
that they’re comfortable talking about their weight.
As a society, we have a tendency to assume that a person’s weight must
directly correlate to their identity in some way. When someone’s weight changes, we go crazy because of
some idea that we now need to change the way we look at them; they’re a
different person, after all. Well, here’s my opinion. They’re not. And unless
they personally decide that their weight makes up a big part of their identity,
it really has nothing to do with who they are. We should all stop wondering
about what Adele’s weight loss means for who she is and start thinking about
what our reactions to it mean for who we are.
Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine trial has only a 50% chance of success as the virus is disappearing so quickly in Britain, warns a professor co-leading the project.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, revealed in an interview with the Telegraph that an upcoming trial involving 10,000 volunteers may return “no result” owing to low transmission of the coronavirus in the community.
This comes days after pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced it would be ready to mass-produce the potential new vaccine from September. Meanwhile, the Government reached a deal with the company to pay for up to 100 million doses, with Business Secretary Alok Sharma adding in a press conference that 30 million of these could be available by September, should trials prove successful.
But as COVID-19 cases continue to fall in the UK, Professor Hill told the Telegraph that the research team are facing a potentially major setback, casting doubt on the feasibility of the September deadline: “It is a race, yes. But it’s not a race against the other guys. It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time.
“We said earlier in the year that there was an 80% chance of developing an effective vaccine by September. But at the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all.
“We’re in the bizarre position of wanting Covid to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining.”
According to the WHO, Oxford University is one of the 76 global contenders racing to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. The experimental vaccine, known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (or ZD1222), is one of only eight across the world that has started to test on humans, with researchers conducting an initial trial of more than 1000 volunteers in April when the virus was at its peak. The results of this first trial will be released in early June.
Of the 10,000 people recruited for the second trial, however, Professor Hill expects fewer than 50 people to become infected with the virus due to dwindling community transmission. If fewer than 20 people test positive, he warns the results may be of limited or no use.
“The first trial is going fine. We’re still in business, I can tell you that.
“But we’re not going to do what others have done – say we’ve got something good, but we’re not showing you yet. That’s just bonkers. You either disclose your results or you don’t.”
In the event that the next stage of trials proves successful, the U.K. “will be first to get access” to the vaccine, Sharma pledged at a government briefing.
Professor Hill stressed, however, that the University had secured “hardwired” assurances that wealthier countries would not have unfair priority access to the vaccine. This follows a US announcement that it would provide $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to fund the vaccine’s development.
“The reputational damage to the university would be enormous if we provided the vaccine only for the UK and US, and not for the rest of those countries of the world where it’s very likely that the pandemic will still be raging,” Hill said.
The team is one of many planning to conduct further trials in COVID-19 hotspots in other countries. They have already arranged trials in the US, and are currently in talks with other countries where virus transmission rates remain high.
Hill was keen to warn that despite vast international investment in the project, funding “doesn’t guarantee the result,” adding that “it could be nothing or could be great or somewhere in between.”
Various senior ministers in the British Government have also warned that there is “no guarantee” that a vaccine will be found, and that funding research into other drug treatments is equally vital to help combat the impact of the pandemic on the UK population.
Just as Helen possessed the face that launched a thousand ships, Orpheus, the legendary musician and poet, charmed a thousand hearts with his music.
“Orpheus with his luted made trees
And mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Even sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing, die.” (Shakespeare, Orpheus)
Alas, this ability to kill grief, in true Ancient Greek fashion of the cruelty of fate, did not extend to himself or his beloved. Upon losing his new wife, the beautiful and graceful Eurydice, to a nest of vipers, Orpheus ventured into the Underworld in a desperate attempt to get her back. His music charmed the coldest and darkest of hearts in Hades, who agreed to relinquish Eurydice from his realm upon one condition: that Orpheus did not look at her until reaching the sunlit earth. Unable to hear Eurydice’s footsteps behind him, Orpheus convinced himself that the gods had fooled him, as they so often did in their powerful and playful ways. Eurydice was in fact with him, although in the shape of a shade, as she was returning into the light to become a full woman again. Tragedy strikes, when only a few feet away from the exit, Orpheus loses his faith and turns to see Eurydice, losing her forever to Hades. The story has enchanted the imagination for thousands of years as such moving talent has been defeated, and such heroic love snatched away.
Roelandt Savery, Orpheus Charming the Animals with His
Music (1610)
Northern paintings haven been, for centuries, unjustly crystallised into many’s imagination as gloomy-coloured; so much so that Rembrandt’s painting has been erroneously named The Night Watch- age has been unkind; it had originally stunned with its bright sunlight. The delight in exuberant colours and exotic species (Rembrandt had a stuffed crocodile amongst his personal collection) has been given full expression in the life-long wanderer Savery’s painting. The elephant raises its trunk in symphony with the exalting tunes as the often beastly and savage lion stands transfixed. All in nature comes, bewitched and besotted.
Rodin, Orpheus and Eurydice (1893)
Eurydice, in her ghoulish, spectral form, floats behind Orpheus, reaching the underworld’s entrance. Orpheus, in a fateful moment, hesitates and loses confidence. An instant later, he will glimpse her, and Eurydice will vanish forever. Rodin captures a moment foreboding infinite tragedy. Yet both figures seem to levitate, forever in floating motion. One lingers gluttonously at this pause, wishing it would last forever.
Jacques Offenbach, Orpheus in the Underworld (1874 production in Paris)
Ever keen to mock, the Parisian stage turned the ancient legend into political satire. Liberally alluding to the lechery of Napoleon III’s court, Offenbach found his way out of financial difficulties with this box office hit by lampooning the ancient legend. In this, Orpheus is no longer the son of Apollo, but a buffoon of a rustic violin teacher, who is only too glad to have his wife abducted to the underworld. Alas, public opinion bullied him into trying to rescue Eurydice. Here, the gods are despicable, and promiscuity runs ripe in the divine and mortal alike.
Christoph Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762)
Hermes may have invented the lyre that was to enthrall generations in the Classical world and the Middle Ages, and gifted Apollo with the divine patronage of music; but Orpheus, the ultimate musician, perfected it. Gluck bid farewell to the overly complex music of opera seria and succeeded with a heart-rending score of sublime simplicity in both the music and drama. The score went on to influence major German operas subsequently, with variations on its plot- the underground rescue mission in which the hero is compelled to control and conceal his emotions- finding their ways in works such as Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Gluck concentrates on the madness and folly of love–eager to retrieve Eurydice and forbidden by the gods to either look at her or tell her what is going on (the latter condition an invention of Gluck’s), Orpheus encounters a panicked Eurydice who takes his refusal to even look at her as a sign that he no longer loved her. Orpheus eventually gives in to Eurydice’s mournful cries in an outburst of desire, only to lose her forever. The gods, cruel and omniscient as they are, know the fragility of love only too well. The lover is always greedy and made insecure by the tiniest’s coldness on the part of their beloved. Eurydice is depicted as a silly girl obsessed in love, and Orpheus, although less silly, cannot toughen his resolve in the face of her beseeching sorrow. Gluck poetically encapsulated Ovid’s verdict, “his sole fault was to love her.” There is truth in Plato’s worry that music is the most infectious form of communication, so much so that the political philosopher proposed to ban it in the training of his ideal city guardians. Here, one gets a taste of perhaps what Savery’s lucky animals got to enjoy- the supreme force of music penetrating every sinew in one’s body.
Jacques Cocteau, Orphée (1950)
The austerity in post-WWII Europe proves no hindrance to an artist’s creativity, at least, not for a virtuoso such as Cocteau. With an eclectic career spanning areas such as poetry, plays and visual art, Cocteau reimagines the vivacious world of gods and immortals. The beautiful Death falls in love with the terse, yet poetically gifted Orpheus. She secretly watches him in his sleep and even taking Eurydice just to create an opportune to meet Orpheus again. The story is just rich with deceit, the omnipotence and cruelty of the gods and destructive romance as any Ancient Greek tale. Here, the tragedy is that of an underling of the gods unable to pursue her romantic love and eventually sacrificing herself for it. Cocteau plays with the leitmotif of mirrors as gateways between earth and the underworld.
Igor Stravinsky, Orpheus (1948 score, picture of 2012 New York City Ballet performance)
Stravinsky composed the three tableaux for American choreographer George Balanchine’s neo-classical ballet. The score remains the most melodic of Stravinsky’s, profuse with usage of woodwinds. Stravinsky is perhaps best-known for his vibrant The Rite of Spring, as a scene in Yes, Prime Minister depicts the adviser remarking to the newly elected PM that if he wished to project change and hope in his first televised address, Stravinsky would be the go-to composer. However, in this, Stravinsky does completely without a percussion section, using predominately quite dynamics. He also gave an important role for the harp, paying tribute to Orpheus’ association to the lyre.
Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Sciamma’s lesbian period drama employs the myth of Orpheus to re-centre the female gaze. The two lovers know their time is soon up and the idea of a reunion far-fetched. The tormented lovers bid farewell to each other through a reinterpretation of Ovid’s tale–Orpheus is not mad or irrational, he chooses the memory of Eurydice. Perhaps Eurydice senses it, too–she calls out to Orpheus to glance back, retaining the souvenir of their love.
Throughout history, students have been feared as the archenemy of social and political order: from Paris to Cairo, we’ve revolutionised cultural norms, broken laws, and outraged our parents, be it through our language, our music or our way of dressing. So why does it seem like students are getting increasingly more… well, boring? Even the most eccentric outfits around Oxford are dressed down with a puffer jacket; “Champagne and Socialism” is the highlight of political activism for many of us and the tunes we listen to are great, but really nothing we do would inspire the same indignation that Elvis Presley unleashed 60 years ago.
The other day, I realised that I’d never talked much to my Dad about his time at university; apart from the fact that he studied Zoology and was pretty left-leaning, I didn’t know much about his student days. When he began talking about to his friends in squat houses that would spray graffiti in-between classes and to whom a monogamous relationship amounted to a moral crime, I found it hard to believe him: was this really the man who lists birdwatching as his most adventurous pastime nowadays? Well, at least he assured me these stories were just the observations of an innocent bystander…
While conformity and niceness were sinful fifty years ago, I am catching myself embracing the concept of being basic. I wear clothes I feel comfortable in, write the occasional angry political tweet to fulfil my duty as an active citizen and go wild when Mr. Brightside is played on the Bridge top floor for the third time. And honestly, I don’t think I’m missing out on too much: the reason things are considered “basic” are because they’re popular: why not trust crowd intelligence? I think if there’s one reason why the character of Mark Corrigan in “Peep Show” seems so relatable it’s that he’s mind-numbingly boring: “Brown for first course, white for pudding. Brown’s savoury, white’s the treat. ‘Course I’m the one who’s laughing because I actually love brown toast.”
Maybe we just don’t have much to rebel against anymore. In a way, we’ve come far as a society in that we can show up to a tutorial in ripped jeans to discuss civil rights and antifascism, and we can discuss our ideas with young, Labour-voting professors instead of ancient Oxford dons. But that makes it somewhat less appealing to stand up to the establishment. Sure, we have a long way to go: the planet is dying, and my mum still doesn’t “believe” in the concept of an open relationship. But in many ways, it feels like we aren’t all that different to real adults anymore.
The generation before us was also freer to do what they wanted. In a world where everything we do is recorded, put online and preserved for eternity, we’re much more reluctant to do something risky. In an economy where you could easily have a three-year gap in your CV and still build a successful career, taking out a few months to squat in a house, take psychedelics and listening to Bob Dylan sounded much more appealing than nowadays, when the unforgiving grinds of capitalism are in motion even before we graduate. Spring week in first year, summer internship in second year, grad scheme, Associate, Partner – you’ve made it. But there’s no time to suspend competition to discover who we really are, what we really want to do and if this whole thing is actually right for us.
Indeed, many of us cannot afford being eccentric. For centuries, being eccentric has been a sign of privilege: those who wore scandalous outfits and practised hedonism have almost exclusively been members of the upper classes. Proving that your social status won’t be diminished despite how you dress and what you smoke is the most impressive demonstration of immunity to social judgement imaginable; David Cameron, Boris Johnson and their friends at university were awful and reprehensible but certainly not boring. However, if a rich Eton boy puts his private parts in a dead pig’s mouth whilst on a cocaine binge, we consider it bizarre – if a lad from a working class background had engaged in the same behaviour at the time he would’ve probably found himself in a mental asylum or worse, in prison. Maybe we can be proud of the fact that we as students have grown diverse enough that most of us don’t enjoy these privileges anymore.
Should we dare to be more unconventional? Not for the sake of it, no. There’s a good reason to stand up for what you believe in and we shouldn’t be afraid to risk an odd look for it. However, there’s really no point in comparing who can set themselves apart from the masses most distinctly. One has to ask if those who judge others by labelling their tastes as “basic” and refuse to listen to Spotify artists with more than a million monthly listeners are really as individualistic as they claim to be. Quite easily, an ever-spiralling competition of who can show off the most niche personality can end up collapsing into everyone appearing the same. So why not scrap the whole game and dress, listen to, and buy what you like? After all, that’s what it’s all about: deciding for yourself and not letting others pressure you into choices you don’t want to make. And if that Pumpkin Spice Latte makes you less interesting to anyone, smile and take a big sip.
Your ex is messaging you, that one-night stand from Bridge is in your Insta DMs and you are struggling not to write an Oxlove for that person you’ve been crushing on since day one of lectures; it’s Covid-19 quarantine and we’re here to teach you how to keep it casual.
Casual dates, hook-ups, and flings are typical of many an Oxford student’s life. Yet all these things are currently under review in this strange world we are living in, and it can be difficult to see what that means for each of us still wanting to keep the thrills of a casual love life alive. It can be easy to be jealous of our friends who are in long-term stable relationships at this time, and who seem to have someone to cry with over Zoom. But I’m here to tell you that not all is lost, and if you play your cards right this lockdown could be the best thing for your love life.
Let’s start with the obvious: we aren’t going to be bumping into the love of our life whilst picking up some Linda McCartney sausages from Sainsbury’s any time soon, and sharing a smooch over a vodka lemonade and a cigarette in the bridge smoking area is a long way off. This means any connections we make during this time are likely to have to stay online for a while, and in fact many of these connections may only ever exist online. This can lead to the sad realisation that quarantine dating is going to be very shallow; for every person claiming to be more interested in personality over looks on Tinder, there are 10 more who make it very clear that if you aren’t the right combination of genes and chromosomes you’d have a better chance at asking The Queen to dinner. Another problem you will more than likely encounter is just how slow things can take to develop; a day of talking via messages can feel like weeks if that chat doesn’t flow, or worse they take an age to respond (more on that later). But once you embrace these pitfalls and realise that real-world dating can be just as shallow, cut-throat, slow and messy, you realise that you not seeing that awkward Tinder match in the Plush queue any time soon is actually a godsend.
So, let’s say you’ve tried Tinder or messaged that crush from last term and things seem to be going ok. But do they just see you as a mate? Someone to flirt with to pass the time? Or something more? This is where the art of the thirst trap comes in. Despite popular opinion, thirst traps don’t have to be at all revealing: just make sure you look your best however you wish to present yourself and the DMs will slide in. This is also useful if they are taking their sweet time to respond, a problem encountered by even the best of us I must confess. Many people would say drop it if someone takes a few days to read your message, and most of the time you should. Never double text (your dignity is worth more than that), but no one ever said your dignity was worth more than a stunner of an Insta pic and a flirty caption, did they? This kind of move can turn the 3-5 working day wait into a more Amazon Prime kind of response, i.e. faster than grease lightning.
Remember once the DMs roll in to keep it flirty. Nobody wants someone asking them how their lockdown day was, unless you have genuine concern someone may not be feeling their best. Newsflash – it was probably as boring as yours. That’s why you’re talking now: because you don’t have anything else to do, remember. This longer, more protracted period of flirty chat could be the best thing for your prospective love life as it could help build sexual tension and make that post-lockdown first date have more chemistry than the South Parks Road labs.
Now here’s where things start to get more complicated; it’s been almost 2 months of lockdown already and the chances are if you’re reading this article you are used to a fully fleshed out love life in non-Covid times. You may want to get intimate with the person or people you are having these completely wholesome quarantine chats with and are wondering what to do about it. The simple answer? Just ask. It’s 2020, consent is here to stay, as is owning your sexuality and who you are/ what you want to do. Don’t be embarrassed if they turn down the offer – it most likely isn’t you, but more own preference around such things, and that is perfectly valid– you can simply ask to keep speaking and keep it PG-13. If on the other hand they do agree to something more intimate, follow some basic ground rules: don’t show your face and make everything one view only– it could save you some hassle in the future. Or, if you want to keep things more wholesome, how about having a Zoom date or even a good old-fashioned phone call?
The key thing to remember is that this is your quarantine and however you want to spice it up is entirely valid. No one in the world has done this sort of lockdown before so no one can tell you how your efforts will end up.
The inability to feel validated is something many of us struggle with. We routinely identify certain parts of our lives that we are not satisfied with and are thus led to believe that we are not enough. Though the reasons for our dissatisfaction can be complex, diverse, and multi-faceted, I believe that the way in which we understand validation is central to the construction of a negative self-image. It is therefore vital that we alter this understanding in order to improve our own mental well-being and that of everyone around us.
It is important to state that what follows is my own perspective; the conclusions I reach are based on my own personal experiences and, as such, will not necessarily speak truth for everyone. However, when it comes to maintaining a stable mental health, learning about the coping mechanisms used by different people can be extremely useful. I therefore hope that by sharing my thoughts on validation, others who are struggling in a similar way might be helped.
Most people wish they could improve at least one aspect of their life; maybe they want to be better looking, or lose a bit of weight, improve their grades, get a promotion, and so on. We often want these things because it seems that in their absence we are not enough. In short, without these things we do not feel validated.
Validation is frequently seen as something that can be gained, lost, or never found. For many of us, it is dependent on our physical appearance which cannot always be changed. Or, our validation might be constructed through socio-economic status, a platform that can fall away as quickly as it is reached. It could also be something that we receive from other people, though this supply of validation may very easily be cut off.
Furthermore, when validation becomes synonymous with appearance, status, or other people, it is no longer perceived as something we either have or don’t have. Since we can always be subjectively more attractive, or of a better socio-economic standing, or held in a greater esteem by our peers, we can seemingly always acquire more validation, and it is thus easy to fall into a trap where we never feel validated enough.
However, validation is not something we obtain through meeting certain materialistic or bodily standards. Validation is unconditional; it is something everyone has, regardless of their circumstances, because all people are of equal worth. Simply put, validation is a state of mind. It is not earnt, sought, or proven, only realised. The trick is not to find validation, but to understand that you possessed it all along.
Obviously, attaining this state of mind is easier said than done, and there are no simple answers as to how it is done. Nonetheless the point remains, if you do not feel validated without something, you will not find validation with it. To quote Cool Runnings, “a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”
I would like to finish on a disclaimer. Whilst your validation should not be dependent on the completion of personal goals, this is not to say that achieving these goals won’t bring you happiness, or that pursuing them is wrong. Self-improvement – be it academic, physical, or material – is always to be encouraged. However, we must be careful to ensure that self-improvement does not become an exercise in determining self-worth as it can lead to us feeling invalid.
Svetlana Alexievich’s works are not an easy read. On the face of it, they are oral histories of the Second World War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Chernobyl disaster. Lucid, chilling accounts reveal how trauma and suffering are variously experienced, memorialized, and do not go forgotten. She does not speak for the individuals that have witnessed and experienced these calamities, but allows their fears, hopes and dreams to speak to the reader. “I’m writing a history of human feelings”, Alexievich states. Thus, various individuals of all walks of life whom she converses with become co-authors of this document, each contributing fragments of themselves and their pasts.
“I have written five books, but I feel that they are all one
book. A book about the history of a utopia.” Temporality and boundaries are two
constructs that mediate our understanding of the world. Yet these concepts are
always being reimagined and contested. Peace treaties for wars, the end of a
super-state, pensions and benefits paid out in the wake of a disaster: the
artifice of their finality is made evident by the close attention Alexievich
pays to the lingering effects of what state efforts cannot contain.
Authoritarian socialism, conscription for an unjust war, the failed paradigm of
modernization, are all scars on the body of “homo Sovieticus”. There is
a sense that the various anecdotes, jokes, obituaries, and memories that comprise
her books are presented “as-is”. Alexievich has expressed at times the
impotency of stylized representations or artistic form to record and document
human lives. Often, too much is lost. Memories are capricious and dissipate
quickly; shame or disbelief at what has happened to us are equally silencing.
Her choice of “a genre where human voices speak for themselves” seems like a
natural means to understanding the story of “one Soviet-Russian soul” across
multiple generations, borders, languages, and communities.
This “mélange of reportage and oral history” have their
antecedents in Fyodor Dostoevsky and Ales Adamovich, yet go beyond collating a
polyphony of voices to articulate a point. Behind the drama and pathos, lies an
awareness that each speaker remains grounded in the real world. “Human memory
interests me not at the level of information, but as one of the human
mysteries.” They assert independent, autonomous views, yet are inextricably
embedded in a web of human relationships – as we all are – fragile and rendered
asunder by forces seemingly beyond the control of any individual. The human
endurance of suffering is the common thread uniting her works.
Another notable theme that emerges is that of femininity.
Her first book, War’s Unwomanly Face, opens with her own childhood
memories from Belarus of the destruction of her family, from fighting at the
front to disease, famine, and brutal atrocities. “The world of war was the only
one familiar to us, and the people of war were the only people we knew.” War’s
Unwomanly Face is notable in focusing on the perspective of women, but
Alexievich makes clear that her approach has structural, not just thematic
roots. “The village of my post-war childhood was a village of women. I don’t
remember any men’s voices.” The production of documentary-prose affirms this
female version of history, and their right to participate in collective
memorialisation amidst male narratives. The dichotomy between men and women, of
warrior and supporter, military and domestic, crumbles.
Love – maternal love, romantic love, familial love – does not emerge in spite of war. It becomes all the more poignant, something further evident in Boys in Zinc, named for the coffins used to ship Soviet conscripts back to their families. As one mother related: “I was expecting him back home – he had one month left to serve. I bought shirts, a little scarf, shoes. And now they’re in the wardrobe. I’d have dressed him in them for his little grave … I’d have dressed him myself, but they didn’t allow us to open the coffin. If I could only have looked at my son, touched him … Did they find a uniform to fit him? What’s he wearing in there?”
Nonetheless, Alexievich emphasises that it is man too that initiates the collapse of super-structures. War or the end of the Soviet empire unravel with human action. Nuclear disaster however, intersects with nature, and seem to fundamentally warp ideas of reality and responsibility itself. Helplessness, even if not hopelessness, is evident in Chernobyl Prayer: “The world changed. The enemy changed. Death had new faces we had not known yet. Death could not be seen, could not be touched, it did not smell. Even words failed to tell about the people that were afraid of water, earth, flowers, trees. Because nothing like this had ever happened before.” Alexievich’s persistence in employing human testimony speaks to how Chernobyl was a tragedy rather than just a fact or phenomena. Books and records have a stronger duty of memory, not to simply log a history of events, but inner emotion and feelings: the juxtaposition between Alexievich’s various fragments from newspapers, journals, and ‘official publication’ and her testimonies, demonstrate Alexievich’s novel genre of both non-fiction and storytelling. Arkadii Filin, a Soviet liquidator, invokes imagery both alien-like and war-like: “We showed up in their yards like demons. They didn’t understand why we had to bury their gardens, rip up their garlic and cabbage when it looked like ordinary garlic and ordinary cabbage. The old women would cross themselves and say, ‘Boys, what is this – is it the end of the world?’”
Alexievich’s attention to historical and emotional veracity
should not obscure the literary merits of her own humanistic approach. “I love
the lone human voice. It is my greatest love and passion.” Her poetics are born
out of being a ‘human ear’, a willingness to set the stage for middle-aged
mechanics, female ex-snipers, policemen dying from Chernobyl’s fallout,
schoolchildren. They mourn departed relatives, recount their first kiss, and
relay their nightmares, fondly recalling as often as they are cursing the
Soviet motherland. The staggering diversity of human experiences she captures
prevents me from marshalling any single quote from her books to illustrate my
point.
Amidst these various calamities, her books speak to the persistence of love, hope, and the human spirit. Facts do not take priority over a universal language of emotion, because in her own words, “my interest in life is not the event as such, not war as such, not Chernobyl as such, not suicide as such. What I am interested in is what happens to the human being, what happens to it in our time. How does man behave and react. How much of the biological man is in him, how much of the man of his time, how much man of the man.”
A trigger warning is, according to the Oxford SU, an early indication that a topic that is to be discussed either in written material, or at a speaker event, or lecture is potentially distressing. This is not the same as a topic being offensive. Triggers are stimuli for people with mental health illnesses such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Warnings are also included in many events for sufferers of epilepsy – so why are they so controversial?
Recently,
the Oxford Student Council passed a motion to recommend that the University
look at its free speech policy to expand its definition of hate speech to
include gender identity, disability, and socio-economic status. The University
has rejected the recommendations, which also included trigger warnings on
reading lists. The SU’s announcement incited an angry response from academics
who argued that this would lead to a loss of control over academic texts,
especially ones that were compulsory to study. But are trigger warnings really
so subversive?
Opponents
of trigger warnings argue that they restrict freedom of speech and seek to
police debate. Supposedly, if you label a speaker event with a trigger warning
before the speech people will be discouraged from attending and this narrows
the scope of the discussion. Is it fair to label speakers in this way? A
warning about race-related content, for example, might carry the implication
that the speaker themselves is racist, and this could be a misleading
characterisation. It might hinder important debates on sensitive topics.
But
it is a leap to suggest that by putting a warning on something is equivalent to
stopping people from consuming it. Supporters of trigger warnings point out
that if a person with a mental health illness is triggered by a debate, then
the ensuing mental health crisis would stop them from participating at all. If
people want the discussion, if they think it is a meaningful debate to have,
rather than just a chance for controversial people to be controversial for no
worthwhile reason, then they will attend. The trigger warnings do not
necessarily stop participation, they make participants more informed.
Where
trigger warnings lead into content being banned, they become problematic, but
at this point, they are no longer fulfilling their purpose. It is important
that controversial topics and difficult historical texts are studied, so that
we can understand them in the context of their time and crucially, understand
why they are wrong. The fact that they should be studied, however, does not
mean that they should be forced down people’s throats without warning – it
should be recognised that these are offensive and upsetting subjects, and they
should therefore be handled sensitively.
Some
argue that trigger warnings are detrimental to mental health, and the recovery
of those with mental health illnesses. The ‘real world,’ they argue, is not
sensitive, and resilience should be built up while people are at university and
have a support network behind them. This is a misguided view, and it is founded
in the deep-rooted belief that mental health illnesses are somehow less
serious, even less real, than physical disabilities. In many cinemas, there are
now warnings for those with epilepsy – why is it that these trigger warnings,
that concern physical health, never receive the same criticism as those for
people with mental health illnesses?
The
argument that the real world is not sensitive is a pessimistic one. It isn’t sensitive–
but does that mean it could never be so? Are trigger warnings an easy way to
make life a little bit easier for the people who find it harder than others?
Advocating for a gentler handling of materials could be a first step towards
making Oxford more accessible to those with mental illnesses; a way of slowly
rebuilding confidence and resilience, rather than throwing people in at the
deep end.
There
is a dark side to trigger warnings, where they are used, not to mark materials
so that those that might be triggered can avoid them, but so that they can
actively seek them out. This is prevalent on Instagram, which has been
criticised for the role it has played in the suicides of teenage girls;
hashtags allowed them to access streams of self-harm and suicidal content.
However, in the more formal context of the university, labelling speaker events
and content like books and articles, it seems unlikely that this abuse of
trigger warnings could take place to the same extent.
At
the end of the day, if you really dislike trigger warnings, it is easy to
ignore them. Do you notice the warnings for strobe lighting whenever you walk
into a cinema? If it matters to you – if knowing what the general themes of the
event or text are before you engage with the material will make your life
easier, and make it less likely that you will suffer a mental health crisis,
then you will look for trigger warnings. If you are lucky enough not to need
them, you can simply ignore them.
My books lay open all these three short years, Had time at hand to sit and space to stretch, With pavement walks, contented times quite soft, In pairs with fingers closely wrapped around, We kiss our necks and ears and lips so oft, In Oxford, divinity I have seen, For beauty peered through my window at dawn, Her rosy cheeks, my curtains yet undrawn.
But break me with it – In service to my career My ‘career’ I know not – I thought was doing enough. Divinity was sufficient. Not sufficient Not a long shot That skill of yours put to market In the muted office, That soul – Keep me from business, Intern me not.
So luckless I tread to my working place, And broken thoughts bring me to concrete fells, A ruin where closed books all downwards face, Through windows bearing gruesome sights and bells Ringing for bygone ages as we bask In cool screen light and sit there pretending To thrive in the next lonely, thankless task, No kisses, only desperate spending.
But work now or then or else, the command of business master – Get me these things, Intern. I will get you my future And my cross.
In the days of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the US has become the new foreground of transmission. 475,000 Americans were infected, with 18,000 fatalities at the time of this writing. But for a ‘non-discriminating’ virus, it is clear that wealth matters.
During the pandemic, wealth inequality within the US has been painfully clear: here we see a widening divide between the middle class and lower classes, compared to upper class Americans. The majority of those who are directly affected by the pandemic belong to lower-wage and front-line service professions. Hence, it is worth investigating how wealth inequality has evolved in the US, and the levers that can change it.
US
income and wealth inequality has grown significantly in the last few decades.
According to think tanks, the share of total income received by middle class
households has fallen by 21% since 1971; the share of total income received by
upper-income households has increased by 19% during the same period.
It
should be mentioned that middle and lower-income families are more dependent on
home equity for their source of wealth. In addition, the responsibility of
businesses has shifted to one that is more shareholder oriented. In the 1970s,
the ‘shareholder commitment’ objective became increasingly popular. The result
was the share buy-back frenzy: corporations could now reduce the number of
shares in the market by buying them directly. What was once illegal became a common
practice which benefits shareholders.
Today,
the widely accepted understanding of corporate purpose is focused on a narrow
subset of US society. It is worth evaluating the current thinking around what
is ‘acceptable’ business behaviour. But, lasting change also requires deep
knowledge of the system’s current status quo: who the key players are, their
relative powers, and the levers needed to address each. This is where social
laboratories have come in. As wealth inequality has grown, social labs such as
The World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics have grown in number.
Such think-tanks offer the promise that by drawing together teams from
different sectors of society, they can address complex levers of change.
Another
tactic cited by academics and experts is to create more business accountability
by creating a link between business behaviour and public knowledge about how
businesses behave. The theory is that businesses will self-regulate when public
knowledge about business behaviour is made available and widely published. Such
policies seek to create accountability in a system where there is very little.
In
understanding something so complex as US wealth inequality, context matters. It
is important to take into account the US’s history and deep-rooted beliefs in a
free, capitalist system. Changing societal perceptions, business behaviour, and
laws will leave a lasting impact on the social landscape of the country. To
address them, Americans must reckon with their deepest convictions. With a
pandemic waging war on the country, rebuilding from within may not be far off.
