Wednesday, May 14, 2025
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Review: Corpus Christi

Magdalena Kościółek
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Review: Corpus Christi

Once in a while you want to remain in your seat after the closing credits appear – you find yourself unable to simply get up and go back to your daily life. The movies that leave you in this state have such power that you cannot be indifferent to them, mindlessly indulging in the entertainment they nonetheless offer. The Polish nominee for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film Corpus Christi (2019) is indeed one of these films. 

It is the story of twenty-year old Daniel who is kept in a detention centre because of his criminal past. Soon, due to a coincidence, he is mistaken for a priest and is asked to replace the vicar of a small town for a short period of time. He becomes the spiritual leader of this local community, which was recently broken by a tragedy the year before. Implausible as it may seem, the plot is inspired by true events that occurred in Poland in 2011. 

Corpus Christi is incredibly multifaceted, and true pleasure can be found in exploring the different dimensions of possible interpretations. The deliberate avoidance of explicit conclusions and stereotypes facilitates these explorations, and makes the film equally appealing to religious people and atheists alike. This is because on the one hand Corpus Christi is about religion, more specifically, Catholicism, in a modern iteration, but on the other, it constitutes a parable about good and evil, a tale of redemption, and an account of adolescence. Polish viewers will certainly find that the film offers insightful commentary on the provincial life, but the movie by no means needs to be considered in this specific national context. 

The director, Jan Komasa does a great deal of work to look at Catholicism with honesty, without prejudices and one-sidedness. The movie does not constitute an uncritical celebration but neither does it offer a total condemnation. The characters are very complex. For example, Daniel is more of a coach than a priest. He may not know the technicalities of theology, but he does speak to people from the bottom of his heart. His words are fierce and he knows how important and difficult forgiveness is, partly because of his own past. Throughout the movie, it is easy to forget about Daniel’s criminal record, which, once reminded, only intensifies the film’s messaging around the dualism of human nature. 

All of this would not be possible without a brilliant script from twenty-eight-year-old Mateusz Pacewicz. The seriousness of the issues with which Corpus Christi is preoccupied is balanced with many humorous dialogues and one-liners that prevent the movie from becoming too “heavy”. As to the director, Corpus Christi is quite different from director Jan Komasa’s previous works, especially in terms of means of expression, but it certainly gives us hope for his future work.

Last but not least, Corpus Christi is a concerto of outstanding acting performances. Bartosz Bielenia, playing Daniel, literally hypnotises with his intense gaze. His experience is visible in the way he operates his body, fully aware of his distinctive physiognomy and taking full advantage of it. He perfectly embodies every role his character takes on – a hooligan from a detention centre, a charismatic priest, and, most of all, a lost young man. 

Bielenia’s performance is complemented by an excellent group of supporting characters. Aleksandra Konieczna, playing a sexton whose way of looking at the world is deeply entwined with her faith, does not disappoint. She strikes just the right balance between exaggeration and understatement; every single grimace in her performance is significant. Her daughter, played by Eliza Rycembel, manages to manifest a natural youthfulness in the role even while maintaining her character’s complexity. Other actors, such as Tomasz Ziętek as Daniel’s friend from the detention centre and Łukasz Simlat as another priest, succeed in portraying the full depth of their characters, irrespective of the screen time they have been given. 

The Church, apart from its meaning as an institution, is also, very simply, a body of believers. Corpus Christi is all about these believers, these humans, and their complicated problems and choices. To that end, the film has a lot to offer to every viewer and is well worth watching. 

Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

Abigail Howe
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Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

It seems like there’s enough drama happening in the real world to justify dark theatres and empty stages. The Edinburgh Fringe has been cancelled, Broadway is in its longest-ever closure, and there won’t even be any experimental student theatre in the Burton-Taylor Studio next term. While many major theatres are releasing recordings of their shows, this isn’t an option for typical student productions – especially for those which were due to perform in Trinity. Instead, there’s been a slew of cancellations and postponements.

But, as I was scrolling sluggishly through my Facebook feed, I saw something shocking – auditions being advertised! Highly complex investigate journalism showed that these auditions were for a virtual production of Richard II, produced by Not the Way Forward Productions. I was curious to know more, so (virtually) sat down with the director, Dorothy McDowell, to (virtually) discuss creativity in a time of crisis, the appeal of Shakespeare and the joy of quizzes!

Dorothy McDowell is a second-year English student at Keble. Previously, she’s directed Measure for Measure and she’s the current President of the Keble O’Reilly.  At the moment, she’s directing Richard II, which will be available for free as a virtual show from 5-8 May. More information can be found here.

What gave you the idea of doing a virtual production?

I mentioned it as a joke to Juliet (the show’s producer) when we began to realize that our Trinity show probably wasn’t going to happen, and the more I thought about it the more I liked it – it’s nice to be able to make something that’s genuinely responsive to the situation you are living in. We had to move pretty quickly to make sure we were ready to rehearse when lockdown started. We were keen to do the majority of the work when the tightest restrictions were in place so we could give everyone involved something fun to do.

Was there a significant difference between looking at filmed auditions and the in-person ones which are more typical for Oxford productions?

It was a bit odd, but only in that it wasn’t something I’d done before. In fact, I hope it might have made the audition process a bit easier for the actors because they didn’t have to worry about getting their performance right first time (or having two strange women staring at them for 10 minutes).

Why did you choose Shakespeare (and specifically Richard II)? Why is Shakespeare appealing to creatives so much now?

I think the answer to why so many people are reaching for Shakespeare right now is, in part, a very boring one: he’s one of the few playwrights that basically every theatre-minded person has a good working knowledge of. A bit more poetically, there is also something very reassuring about plays that are 400 years old. They are so far removed from the situation you find yourself in that they act as a welcome distraction; and they come with a sense of ‘well, these things have survived several plagues and a couple of world wars; I suppose I can make it through this’.

As to why I chose Richard II: I’ve loved it for years – it’s always been in the back of my mind as something I’d like to direct, but I’d never come up with an interpretation strong enough to justify it. I stumbled upon it when I was trying to think of a show to do in an online format. I’d decided I wanted to make a show about ‘choice’, because I think the thing that makes the situation we’re all in at the moment scary is the fact that we don’t have anychoice about what happens next. Besides, I’d just been put in a position of not having any choice over the kind of show I was going to make (it had to be online), so I felt I had to acknowledge that in the show itself. Richard popped into my head and I realized that it’s all about choice – it’s about people being forced to pick a side in a civil war; and about other people causing that civil war by stealing money and raising armies and then claiming that they didn’t have any choice in the matter. The irony of Henry Bolingbroke standing outside Flint Castle with 3000 French soldiers explaining that ‘well, I didn’t actually want to invade, but, honestly, what other logical choice was there?’ is oddly fitting. As I’ve been rather irritatingly repeating in all of my marketing copy: this isn’t the way I’d choose to tell this story; but it isn’t the story that any of the characters would choose to have told about them either.

From looking at your auditions event, the genders of characters have clearly been switched even before casting. Why is this and what effect do you think it’ll have on your production?

I always do majority-female shows, for all kinds of reasons. A lot of student directors will tell you that the number of female-identifying actors auditioning for shows significantly outnumbers the number of male-identifying ones, but any play written before 2000 is almost guaranteed to have far more parts for men, which is unfair. Having a majority female cast also makes it easier to convince the audience that they are listening to a story that they haven’t heard before. One of the most famous speeches in Richard II is ‘let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings’; it’s a page of meditation on what it means to be a king, and probably one of the most quoted bits of Shakespeare. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a page on what it means to be a Queen. We’re rehearsing that scene in a few days: I’ll have heard it then. I also just love putting powerful women onstage – Richard II is full of Queens, usurpers and political fixers; people who hold everyone else’s future in their hands. Women that other people are scared of are such a rarity onstage and I think they’re great: so much fun to play, and so much fun to watch. I understand why the question has to be asked, but I find it a strange one to answer: ‘why are you putting on a show where all of the interesting characters are men?’ is really the one that needs asking.

Marketing will have to be innovative – you can’t put posters up in the JCR anymore! Is there anything we should be looking out for?

Quizzes. Soooo many quizzes. If our play is about choice, we want to give our audience as much choice as possible. Get a warring noble to align yourself with or roast your mates on a tag yourself – we’ve got loads of option-based marketing lined up for you! (I have remembered to say: follow us on Facebook @notthewayforward so my marketing manager doesn’t kill me).

Lots of directors have had their Trinity projects cancelled or delayed – do you have any advice for how they can remain encouraged or even attempt to transfer their work to the digital realm?

I wish I was wise enough to be able to give other people advice. I have a theory that it’s almost easier to be creative within sets of restrictions, because when you have to work out how to get round something you come up with things you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise – I don’t know if that’s exactly helpful, but maybe it’s encouraging?

Can museums be decolonised? The restitution question

Annabelle Grigg
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Can museums be decolonised? The restitution question

The first step of reckoning with our colonial past is recognising its remaining presence. Every aspect of modern life is informed by the spoils of imperialism from the architecture that surrounds us to the languages spoken across the globe. The next step of decolonisation is much trickier: what are we to do with cultural institutions that embody the most aggressive and destructive parts of Europe’s history? Museums fall into this category. Their formation and proliferation in the eighteenth century paralleled the building of empires and the rise of nationalism. They are stocked with looted objects from colonial and ethnographic missions. Is it enough to just acknowledge that imperialism was (and still is) imperative to the museum, or should we be more proactive, following a policy of restitution?

Some progress has been made. Arts Council England recently published government-backed guidance for museums on repatriation; Macron commissioned a report pushing for the permanent return of looted items during French colonial occupation of sub-Saharan Africa; and curators are becoming more sensitive to the past of museums as pressure has mounted from protest movements like #RhodesMustFall. But I would argue it is not just what fills museums that make them problematic – rather, the function and concept of the museum are still rooted in a colonial way of seeing the world.

Museums decontextualize objects from their original conditions and reframe them on their own terms, which are often bound to colonial ideologies. This is simply unavoidable in the process of curation. Objects must be ordered and, if done chronologically, they risk perpetuating the pervasive myth of a nation’s teleological progress forward. Items looted by Napoleon like the Horse of Saint Mark went from a triumphal public procession straight into the Louvre, and the museum became a trophy box for war spoils. If categorised by function rather than geography, distinct cultural objects are collapsed into one – Portuguese pots are equated with Malaysian crockery, incorrectly portraying their original intention. Museums give cultural objects an aesthetic and artistic function, and lived social practices, beliefs, and identities infused in them are changed to foreign peculiarities for Western eyes. In Oxford’s own Pitt Rivers Museum, items are given blanket labels such as ‘animal forms in art’ that completely distort their makers’ intention. Essentially, there is always some kind of destruction in the act of collecting itself, and new meaning is inevitably created.

These issues are amplified when considering cultural value assigned to museums. Most public museums are in capital cities at the heart of town, with dominating architectural features. Consider the National Gallery’s huge pillars, lions, and dramatic steps – all of this signifies to the public that museums are places to be venerated rather than critically analysed. Most public museums mimic Greek and Roman temples, from the Glyptothek in Munich to the National Gallery in Sydney. Chosen for their beauty and glory, Carol Duncan has also noted that this rational form is also an expression of Enlightenment values, of secular truths being the basis of knowledge. Museums are seen then as places of objective knowledge and glory; however, they will always present information in a subjective and skewed way.

Is it enough, then, to simply return looted objects when the museum space remains problematic? For obvious reasons, I am not advocating for the wholesale dismantling of museums. The power of the museum space has resulted in it also becoming a crucial space for the creation of national collective memory and even definitions of citizenships, often positively: for example, recent efforts to include more representations of members of the BAME community in the Tate Collection. If the museum has such power to represent, I wonder if emptying museums of colonial goods could result in the end of discussions of imperialism and prevent proper reckoning with our past.

Wherever and whenever possible, it is crucial for museums to repatriate stolen goods, and to continue to find new ways to do so. Manchester Museum’s livestreams of ‘handover’ ceremonies of looted goods shows how museums can transcend geographical boundaries and improve current dialogues with those who suffered at the hands of the empire. However, this should not be seen as the end of museum decolonisation when it is clear Europe’s past is so ingrained in the museum’s history, function, and structure.

Rather, museums should also try to utilise their cultural value to begin new dialogues about colonialism. Some have already started this – the Victoria and Albert museum’s 2001 exhibition “Mixed Messages” engaged with the role of the museum in the British Empire and attempted to present the contradictions of colonialism by juxtaposing the perspective of the colonised and coloniser. This could be taken further by revamping the arrangement of museums. Elizabeth Edward notes that museums privilege sight over other senses and that this in itself reflects a ‘Western hierarchy of senses’ imposed on cultural objects. When objects cannot be returned, using more interactive and multi-sensual display methods is a creative way for museums to try and address their ethnocentricity. I suspect that arguments about art restitution will continue and rightly so. What both sides of the debate seem to miss, however, is that repatriation is only the start of decolonising museums and that the entire museum space must be critically considered.

Now is a Time for Politics

Edward Rhys Jones
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Now is a Time for Politics

There was little outrage when on 30th March 2020 Hungary effectively declared itself a dictatorship. Parliament was dissolved, rule by decree established, journalists accused of interfering with the ‘successful protection’ of the public could be jailed. The new law has no expiry date.

I have written before about Hungary’s state-sponsored Holocaust distortion, and even last year in speaking with young people in Budapest I felt as though the entire system of government was in a chokehold. I wondered what Viktor Orbán’s next break would be.

This was not in the British news headlines. It was scarcely present in Western European or American media. I would like to think that at any other time this would be towards the top of the international headlines, but because there is an ongoing pandemic, it is as if everyone has forgotten that democratic government and proportional crisis response are not mutually exclusive. Orbán has been let off.

Hungary is still shocking for being so close to home. Accusations levelled at China back in February of projecting political image as a priority were met by unsurprised shrugs; the slow, callous response of the American president has come as a surprise to nobody. But wherever human rights and civil liberties are a question on the lips of journalists and observers, the answer is already tending towards authoritarianism.

In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte has given himself the power to silence ‘fake news’. Israel has used coronavirus to grind its judicial system to a halt at the same time as Benjamin Netanyahu faces charges of corruption. In India, protests against anti-Muslim citizenship laws have also been halted. Serbia has arrested opposition activists on the grounds of breaking isolation rules. In Japan, Representative Mio Sugita of the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party has suggested that Covid-19 measures should not be extended to foreign residents.

History does not repeat itself. When, on Twitter, the news about Hungary was being discussed, comparisons to the Reichstag fire, that created the atmosphere of national crisis that brought the Nazis to power, felt cheap. Coronavirus is not a political act. That is not to say that coronavirus can not also be a catalyst; in its chaos it, too, can be an enemy of human rights and the rule of law.

We are living through an extraordinary global health crisis, in which our first priority must be to protect the lives of everyone at greater risk: older people and those with underlying health conditions, health workers, homeless people, and refugees. Almost unfathomable numbers have died, and many more will. Yet, there is no political ‘off’ switch: tempting as it might be, we must not forget that decisions being made in response to Covid-19 are done so within a political paradigm.

I have heard people describe what we are all living through with a tempered optimism. Perhaps we will emerge from this crisis with a newfound understanding that we never really needed that much commercial aviation, or perhaps with a well-funded NHS. Maybe I am a pessimist, nevertheless there is an obvious need to prepare for the worst, and history hints that this could be an unprecedented global shift towards authoritarianism and isolationism.

There are autocrats, like Orbán, who will simply continue to use Covid-19 to further their frightening political agendas, but even more frightening is the idea that, owing to the crisis, the world will take a break from scrutinising coronavirus-era power. Even here in the UK, I hear the attitude that an idea of ‘national unity’ is the most powerful way of navigating our way through this crisis – and that scares me.  If there ever was a time to take a close look at the actions of the government and law enforcement, now would be it. Well-formulated and democratically enacted policy will solve the coronavirus crisis – lurch towards authoritarianism will not. Simple as it might be, it is worth repeating: for the health of civil liberty, democracy and freedom for many years after Covid-19, we need to be paying attention right now.

Image by Annika Haas via Flickr

Oxford It Happens Here launches “Letters from Survivors”

Emily Reed
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Oxford It Happens Here launches “Letters from Survivors”

CW: Sexual Violence

Oxford’s It Happens Here Student Union campaign, which raises awareness about sexual harassment and violence in Oxford University, launched a new platform today called “Letters from Survivors”.

The new platform aims to give a voice to survivors of sexual violence and harassment, functioning as a “place where they can express their feelings and experiences openly and without judgement, and know that they will be acknowledged and believed” writes the group.

The platform welcomes named and anonymous contribution, as well as submissions from allies. Content will include profiles and stories about experiences and recovery, interviews, opinion pieces, personal essays, illustration, fiction and photography.

“Letters from Survivors” joins the Campaign’s other activism, which includes a photo campaign and vigil for survivors in Sexual Violence Awareness Week during Hilary. The platform will add to their termly open discussions as a way for Oxford students to voice experiences of sexual violence.

A Facebook group has been launched today titled “Letters from Survivors” and a website is launching by Sunday of 0th Week.  

Vice-Chancellor criticises global COVID-19 response

Florine Lips
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Vice-Chancellor criticises global COVID-19 response

The Vice-Chancellor has criticised the response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the international community. In a post uploaded to the University’s “Coronavirus Research” page, she described the absence of a united global response as “one of the very many disheartening aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic”, noting that neither the G7 nor the G20 were able to fashion a unified response. The WHO, she added, has been the “only international institution in evidence throughout the crisis.”

She went on to note the stark inequality between COVID-19 relief funding for wealthier countries and for developing countries, describing the money allocated towards developing countries as “derisory”. Referring back to previous epidemics, such as the 2002-04 SARS epidemic or the Ebola crisis, she wrote that warnings of the past were largely ignored by global institutions. “That this pandemic occurred at all, of course,” she wrote, “reflects a failure of international institutions and national governments too.” Bill Gates’ 2015 TED talk entitled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready” should also have served as a warning, she observed, in which he outlined the need to match the money spent on pandemic relief to that allocated towards nuclear deterrence.

Moving on from the shortcomings of international institutions such as the G7 and G20, she noted that “far below the haute politique of international relations, there are global institutions in the trenched that are working to find a vaccine, develop effective therapeutics and use technology to design treatments and expedite mass production. They are working together with colleagues from around the world, including the global south. They are, of course, universities.”

Oxford labs, she wrote, are “buzzing” as scientists and technicians engage in Coronavirus related research. Along with Oxford-based study, the University also has teams around the world, such as in Thailand, Vietnam and Kenya, who are collaborating with local researchers to “build local capacity and to understand and to counter respiratory and other diseases.”

She highlighted the research being carried out by teams in Oxford, such as at the Jenner Institute, where a team led by Professor Sarah Gilbert have identified a non-replicating viral vector candidate, for which GMP manufacturing is in progress. It is soon to become an international effort, and is aiming to be effective in humans by late June. Another Oxford researcher, Professor Peter Horby, who led the University’s work in response to both the SARS and Ebola epidemic, has been collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the China Centre for Disease Control throughout the pandemic.

Overseas medics are also mentioned, such as a team in Thailand, led by Professor Nick Day, who are conducting large-scale multinational clinical trials. Oxford academics in Kenya, working at the KEMRI-Wellcome site, are one of only three sites in the country where COVID-19 testing is taking place. Programme capacity had been building for many years in Kenya, as a result of which many are now being run by Kenyan scientists.

She noted that “it is the bringing together of people from different nationalities, different perspectives, different disciplines with a shared commitment to translate the academic research of the university for the betterment of society that is leading the way in the global response to COVID-19.” However, she concluded that, despite the efforts of universities, it is still imperative that global institutions provide a unified approach to stop the spread of the virus. She wrote: “We know that this will not be the last pandemic. We need effective international institutions, supported by governments with the wealth to do so, to ensure that the next time we are prepared.”

Image Credit to Brian Deegan. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Better to burn out or fade away? The crafting of musical legacy

Annabelle Grigg
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Better to burn out or fade away? The crafting of musical legacy

Crafting a respected legacy is difficult to achieve in the music industry, and relevance is even harder for artists to maintain. The dominance of streaming in modern music consumption favours the catchy single over conceptual albums, though the latter are usually the key to critical acclaim. ‘Cancel culture’ (the internet’s form of group shaming) sets a shelf-life on popularity. The link between youth and pop culture has always made ageing a difficult inevitability for musicians but is acutely present now the constantly evolving realm of social media has become the frontline for advertising. Essentially, the internet’s ability to rapidly build up and tear down musicians gives the old saying ‘It is better to burn out than fade away’ new meaning.

And perhaps it is better to burn out instead of slowly fading away. Passion for anything is difficult to sustain and made especially hard when musical success comes with the baggage of media scrutiny. Justin Bieber’s recent return to the industry after abruptly cancelling his tour dates in 2015 leaves one wondering if his legacy would have been better preserved, albeit by its infamy, if he had left his fans wanting more. His return came alongside a new documentary and a tightly run publicity campaign. Yet when Changes did arrive, it was mostly panned by critics, judged as riding the wave of R&B’s current popularity with little originality and predictably labelled a cash-grab. Bieber’s call on TikTok for his fans to create content for his new Chipotle-sponsored single, ‘Yummy’, was mocked by Gen Z and boomers collectively on Twitter.

I am not going to try to defend Justin Bieber’s recent album and rather transparent marketing techniques. However, some criticism directed at Changes orbited around the fact that its subject matter – settling into marriage – was not nearly as exciting as that of his previous works like Purpose, which dealt with the crushing effect of fame on his mental health. Though valid, such criticism touches upon a pervasive theme in the creative sphere present before the dawn of the Internet: the myth that the creation of the best art is an unsustainable and painful process that comes at the expense of the creator. As Matty Healy of The 1975 quipped, “It’s so much sexier if artists are in pain, but it can be really, really destructive”.[1] YouTube videos of him crying onstage at the height of his heroin addiction and the epoch of his commercial success are filled with comments discussing his ‘tragic beauty’.

The toxicity of this is self-evident, but the aphorism ‘it is better to burn out than fade away’ is widely accepted, despite the fact it insidiously feeds the same narrative. Burning equates to destruction. Yet the destructive substance abuse burn-out legends like Hendrix, Winehouse, or Cobain struggled with is still framed as a necessary ingredient to their creative work. Kurt Cobain’s drug addiction, tumultuous relationship, and eventual suicide are as important to Nirvana’s legacy as ‘Come as You Are’ ’s opening guitar riff. It is painfully clear that musicians’ publicly displayed personal lives can be as formative to their status as their music. In Cobain’s suicide note he penned the phrase ‘‘It is better to burn out than fade away”, quoting Neil Young’s 1979 song ‘Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black)’.

Cobain, however, misconstrued Young’s lyrics. He had actually been trying to reach out to Cobain at the time to encourage him only to play when he felt like it. There are countless examples of musicians who have faded away from the spotlight in a dignified manner or maintained a modified form of fame as ‘nostalgia acts’, like Elton John, The Cure, or Paul McCartney. Yet, there remains a morbid obsession with posthumous glorification in pop culture, fuelled by consumers of music more than by the musicians themselves.

This is because the beneficiary of the ‘burn out or fade away’ doctrine is the audience, never the performer. To burn out is to be a visual spectacle, and a star’s cataclysmic rise and fall is exciting to watch. But measuring an artist based on public reception creates countless other ethical problems in the music industry. What is an artist to do when their image is no longer palatable to the public? Madonna was originally praised for embracing her sexuality when young and conventionally attractive. As she has aged, Madonna’s attempt to continue to utilise her sexuality has been shunned. She is now framed as an aged, embarrassing has-been. A study by Marketing Professor Jeetendr Sehdev at the University of Southern California found such efforts were described as ‘desperate’ and three in five said her image was ‘embarrassing’[2]. If we continue to validate the ‘better to burn out than fade away’ mantra, we continue to consider relevance the yardstick of success despite its being bound up with some of the most toxic traits of our society, such as ageism and sexism. Taylor Swift is only thirty, but acutely aware and anxious of this, stating in her 2020 documentary “I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being myself”, because “female artists I know of have to remake themselves, like, 20 times more than male artists”.[3]

I mentioned earlier that musicians can fade out of their career peaks peacefully. However, this seems easier for men, whose behaviour is permissible until much later in their lives whilst the same would be framed as outrageous if continued by the opposite sex. Though most agree Morrissey’s current political stances are outdated at best and blatantly racist at worst, his musical legacy with The Smiths remains relatively intact. Mick Jagger is still widely considered a sex icon, and details of his salacious private life are praised rather than ridiculed. There are few, if any, females comparable to these men.

It is incredibly difficult for creative industries to shake the enduring ‘better to burn out’ myth. Creatives’ use of emotion in art makes their private lives feel more open to us than in other careers. When this art is the product of pain, it is even harder to praise it without implicitly validating the context of its creation. To be a musician you have to consider audience response, and though relevance is evidently problematic, it is quite obviously the only route to commercial success. Thus, though it’s clear it is not better for musicians to burn out, it remains obscure how we can disentangle this belief from our collective understanding of the creative process and of the music industry.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/11/matt-healy-the-1975-pretentious-not-apologising-interview

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/madonna-has-now-become-toxic-figure-for-millennials-academics-say-a6952711.html

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/10/interesting-reinvention-taylor-swift-celebrities

Violence on the Frontline: the changing public perception of the NHS

Emily Passmore
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Violence on the Frontline: the changing public perception of the NHS

NHS staff are on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic – and therefore at the forefront of the public imagination. Whilst the success of initiatives such as Clap for our Carers seems to suggest widespread support and respect for health workers, there have been reports of physical and verbal abuse against NHS staff across the country. These range from racial abuse, to staff being spat on, to doctors being punched whilst treating COVID-19 patients.

The assault of NHS workers is far from a new phenomenon. The most recent annual NHS staff survey revealed that 14.5% of staff had experienced physical violence from patients, their relatives or the public – that means an average of over 200 violent attacks a day. But where does this hostility towards those risking their own health to save lives come from?

Some attacks seem to be motivated by fear; since lockdown measures have been put into place, community nurses have reported being called “disease spreaders” whilst attempting to do their jobs. Receiving treatment for a disease as potentially deadly as COVID-19 would undoubtedly be a harrowing experience, with the stress bringing out the worst in some. But directing this stress at health workers, the very people working to combat the virus, makes little sense. Instead, it suggests a lack of respect for the essential work performed by healthcare workers.

Rather than being viewed as humans executing a difficult and often emotionally harrowing job under pressure, some seem to view NHS workers as simply a cog within the sprawling healthcare system. They become invisible, taken for granted until needed. Anger at the system – for example, misplaced anger that allowing nurses to continue carefully performing their much-needed duties means there are “disease spreaders” in the community (a grossly inaccurate view – the nurses themselves are at the greatest risk of infection) – is directed towards individual workers.

This view does not have to manifest itself through direct violence. The continuous underfunding of the NHS, meaning workers are increasingly underpaid and overworked, also suggests a blindness to the fact that healthcare is provided by people, not automatons. This does not necessarily mean healthcare is viewed as non-essential. In fact, it can sometimes seem that healthcare is viewed as so essential that is taken for granted that someone must provide it, and thus the person who eventually ends up providing it loses their individuality. They are nominally respected for filling the position but offered little renumeration or empathy for the actual effort their job requires.

It is possible that in the aftermath of the pandemic, this could change. However, it is far from guaranteed. When asked if nurses deserved to be paid more in the future, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, replied that “Everybody wants to support our nurses right now and I’m sure there will be a time to debate things like that. At the moment, the thing we’re working on is how to get through this”. Whilst this does seem to express support for the notion of increased pay, there is no concrete commitment even to a review of wages in the future. The work of nurses is seen as so essential that their material needs must be put on hold for the greater good of the nation.  

This line of thought seems to lead towards a far more positive perception of NHS workers that still ignores their humanity. Health workers are placed on a pedestal, their work viewed as selfless and invaluable. Yet their requests for better working conditions or better pay are ignored. Support is offered only on the terms of those offering support. This also allows for the deaths of health workers to be glorified as noble and heroic, without acknowledging the fact that many could be prevented if hospitals could afford and obtain the correct protective equipment.

The pandemic has not created these perceptions, it has simply brought them more starkly into focus. However, it also provides the opportunity for them to change. Daily briefings from Downing Street see key members of the cabinet speaking alongside medical experts that many would never have heard of before the pandemic. After one of these briefings launched a drive to recruit volunteers to help the NHS, over 500,000 people signed up within a day.

For vast swathes of the population, health workers are no longer faceless and invisible, nor is their work taken for granted. But we are in extraordinary times. A true shift in the perception of healthcare workers would be accompanied by a significant improvement in pay and working conditions. Professing support while failing to implement or support such measures simply allows the belittling of healthcare work to continue in a new, ‘progressive’ guise.

Review: The English Game

Conor Reeves
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Review: The English Game

Despite what social media analytics might suggest, Tiger King was not the only Netflix Original series released last month. The English Game, created and directed by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes and with a conspicuous lack of big cats, was released on the same day but has been wholly and understandably overshadowed in its pursuit of viral success.

The British period drama, which focuses on the development of football in 19th century Britain, follows a number of characters on both sides of the amateurism vs. professionalism debate which emerged in many sports in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It very roughly follows true events, as it sees Fergus ‘Fergie’ Suter, and his friend and fellow footballer Jimmy Love, move from their Scottish club, Partick, to the Lancashire team Darwen, becoming some of the first professional football players. The pair, alongside their boss, hope to help the mill-based team become the first working class team to win the Football Association Cup, hitherto dominated by gentlemen. These gentlemen are – quelle surprise – not particularly pleased with this challenge and feel threatened by the professionalisation of ‘their’ game, thus moving to ban the participation of players who are paid to play.

The series isn’t bad. It’s certainly enjoyable, but it promises so much more than it delivers. Its constituent parts appear to provide a recipe for inevitable success, with its award-winning director, cast of familiar faces, fascinating social, cultural, and political historical backdrop and, above all, a central theme focusing on the development of the greatest game ever played – football. Perhaps, however, this privileged starting position was the cause of its deficiencies. The English Game has all the hallmarks of a project designed to capitalise on the reputation of the director, profiting from his oft-trotted, though admittedly popular, Posh ‘n’ Not theme.

The cast all put in good, solid performances, but they’re hamstrung by average writing, which necessitates their characters erring on the verge of becoming parodies of themselves. Fellows does not delve into the complex lives of the working classes in the small Lancashire town in which the series is largely set, or indeed the lives of the Old Etonians with which they’re unsubtly contrasted, but rather falls back on unimaginative, painting-by-numbers-style period drama clichés. From the outset, we are confronted with the arrogant toffs who are entitled snobs, complete with the charming young son who can never live up to his father’s expectations, and with the hard-working, salt of the earth northern mill workers, variously presented as happy-go-lucky or angry. There is a little more depth of character afforded to Kinaird and Suter, with the former suddenly abandoning his long-term and institutionally-bred arrogance in order to become the champion of the working class football movement and the latter battling between the pull of his heart and pocket. But again, they exist within such a cliched plot that character development can be predicted at every turn, and much of the nuance is lost.

Historically, The English Game is less than impressive. Much of the real history is simplified for the sake of the plot, and the chronology is a little askew in various, unimportant aspects, but almost all of these misdemeanours can be forgiven. This is not a documentary, after all, and the plot isn’t obviously undermined by the ways in which the production fails to represent the historical reality faithfully. Visually, the series is pleasing, and there are satisfying nods to the tactical development of the game, alongside representations of the incredibly physical nature of the 19th century game, which often saw the practice of ‘hacking’ employed as a tactical decision. Again, whilst the treatment of upper-class women is largely reduced to gossiping and following their husbands to and from the dinner table, the series does present Kinaird’s wife, Alma, as an influential character in Arthur’s life, and alludes to the social activism with which many upper-class women were concerned during the period.

Despite the criticism which has been fairly levelled at the series, the overall viewing experience is good enough. I wasn’t left overwhelmed at the spectacle I’d seen, desperate to watch it again; nor was I scrambling to tell my friends to watch it. Despite the sometimes-painful stereotypes, historical flaws and clichéd subplots, The English Game does provide 270 minutes of useful ‘bingeable’ Netflix fodder that is particularly welcome during this period of football-free isolation.

Love, sex and psychedelics in 70s San Francisco

Charlotte Hall
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Love, sex and psychedelics in 70s San Francisco

Pride. Sex. Psychedelics.

The words spring to mind quickly when thinking of San Francisco in the seventies. Between the tail end of an active hippy movement and a ferociously blossoming gay scene, this is where the suburban sensibilities of the American middle classes were reborn again in the form of LSD tabs and ethereal clouds of pure thought. Sex seemed like the central axis of the world. The sexual revolution defied the traditional limitations set on sexual and romantic freedoms. For the first time, it seemed, homosexuality, masturbation, contraception, pre-marital sex, pornography and more were all in common discussion. Sex was political. Sex was radical. Sex was, above all, diametrically opposed to the dry dreams of domestic stability idealised by the conservative press. The cups of tea left on the counter for a late-rising second half, syncing schedules and platonic morning hugs, one would think, belonged to another plane of reality altogether. Certainly, in this world of acid trips, politicised sex and fearless activism, domesticity would seem a little out of place.

This at least was the message pushed by the media at the time. They hystericised activist groups and the (mostly well-meaning) hippy communes into anti-Christian ‘sex cults’ and ‘hidden drug orgies’ and prophesied the ‘corruption of family values’. But the dichotomy they play on, between domestic stability and sexual or passionate love, is actually an ancient one. The literary canon has been at it for centuries.

Throughout poetic history there is a sustained theme, especially in the body of work by straight male poets. Love is presented as an urge to physically pursue, worship and chase the, generally female and voiceless, love interest. At the same time, in both literature and culture, waning sexual appetite is equated to waning love. There are very few poets who wax lyrical about the subsidence of quick, passionate nights into slow, intimate, but impotent, mornings. The implicit suggestion is that sexual desire and a wish for domestic stability are in some way opposed.

According to the seventies press, then, it ought to be all the more surprising that the poet to break this dichotomy should have risen from the depths of San Francisco’s sex clubs. Thom Gunn openly took his inspiration from popper-driven open-air orgies; party drugs, one-night stands and gay club culture was all fair game. He also took inspiration from his long-term polygamous relationships and the domestic functionality of the housemates he lived with for over thirty years. His poetry centres specifically on the gay experience and seventies SF; he moves intimately from the inner workings of sex clubs to the enlightening – and the darker sides – of recreational drugs. But he also often imbues his poetry with the kind of communitarian, familiar spirit of hippy communes. His flatmates, to him, were family. He valued the kind of dry, domestic love that grows out of long-term relationships. His poem ‘The Hug’ centres specifically on that experience: 

It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
      Or braced, to mine,
    And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
    Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
    I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace. 

Joshua Weiner, a close heterosexual friend of Thom’s, describes how “in his life and in his work he [showed] how pleasure and eroticism and domestic stability were, for him, a seamless continuum.” In the essay At the Barriers, Weiner muses on the constraints prescribed especially to straight male poets in love poetry. The antithetical presentation of eroticism and pleasure to domestic stability traps them in the kind of poetic tropes that seem to make it near-to impossible to write the kind of poetry Gunn does. Cue castration anxieties and fears of sterility and empty love. He stresses too the importance of Gunn’s communal living situation too; his constant flatmates provided him much of the domestic stability that the revolving door of lovers could often not, taking turns to cook and clean on a solid rota for thirty-three years. But there is an implicit suggestion that Gunn’s homosexuality frees him somewhat from these constraints. Here, his friend sheepishly underplays Gunn’s revolutionary spirit.

Because looking at queer literary history too more often than not reveals the same tropes as the canonical tendency above. The love interests of Wilde, Mackworth Dolben, Garcia Lorca are, unnamed and ungendered, the objects of a love all the more sexually charged in nature for the difficulty in their fulfilment and the criminality of their attraction to them. Love is expressed – maybe even disguised – through traditionally heterosexual tropes of uneven power dynamics; the pursuer and the pursued, the possessor and the possessed.

Perhaps this parallel happened out of an urge to validate a sexual attraction that was considered a perversion punishable by law. Perhaps it was an act of quiet subversion by using tropes otherwise so unquestioningly applied to heterosexual couplings. Either way, it seems, Weiner was wrong. These static roles ascribed to love poetry were not limited to heterosexual poets.

Which means: Gunn was, even in the radical era he lived in, a true exception. After the seventies, both on the liberal and the conservative side, the ‘acid age’ was dismissed as a drug-hazed misadventure. But San Francisco in the Seventies saw the boundaries of what counted as ‘family’, as ‘love’, as ‘relationships’ radically challenged by ‘alternative’ ways of living. Gunn embodied, and continued to embody the spirit of that era, both in his life and his work.

What I think Gunn really teaches us is this: there is just as much poetic force in the kinds of love that do not conform to traditional tropes of poetry. Be they heterosexual or homosexual, monogamous or polyamorous, sexual or asexual, none of them have to take up those roles. We need to start forging, and appreciating, the roles that lie outside these simplistic dichotomies.

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