Thursday 28th August 2025
Blog Page 504

Season Zine – Championing Women in the football-fashion conversation.

Abigail Hodges
-
0
Season Zine – Championing Women in the football-fashion conversation.

Season Zine is the publication leading the conversation around a series of modern day economic, political and social discussions regarding the relationship between fashion and football. The publication focuses on exposing the unseen members of the football world; not only women but also the LGBTQIA community, the BAME community, the new generations and old. It’s about understanding the lived experience of each and every person that is involved in the football narrative, for Season shows how football (which is ingrained in our national psyche and culture) can act as a tool for connection between various groups of people in society and touch on topics ranging from issues of national emergency such as the climate crisis (see Issue 7) to issues of local importance. Season Zine seeks to elevate and champion underrepresented groups that are a complete part of the overall picture.

Felicia Pennant, Editor and Chief of Season, has an incredibly rich and diverse understanding of the fashion industry. In creating this magazine Pennant seamlessly blends a deep love for fashion with a personal engagement in football, and its underrepresented female fan base. In doing so Season Zine represents the ‘fashion-football connection’. 

In the Sports Bar in Clapham I meet with Felicia to get to understand how Season Zine came about, and to elucidate its true message. I seek to uncover how Pennent’s experience as an avid Chelsea Fan, alongside her deep understanding of the fashion industry, spurred her to set up Season in an attempt to highlight the importance a relationship which is present between women, football and the fashion world.

How did Season Zine all begin?

The idea behind season is to counter the modern male, pale and frankly, stale football culture. And so, I sought to create a Woman’s football zine that champions women first. This is for fans, women that play, but also, importantly, women that do not. For the majority of women that are in football do not play and we do not want to limit or isolate those women. 

Is the magazine just for women?

No. The reason the magazine has a neutral name is that I didn’t not want to isolate men. There are lots of great, supportive men involved behind the scenes who support womens football – but there just isn’t the representation for women. (See ‘He for She’ Issue Five). Currently, it is not a fair battle of the sexes in football, it is just men. We want to empower women to come and do things and give them to room to play. 

Why football, why now?

Football can be used as a lens to talk about different issues in society. Period poverty for instance. There is a great campaign in Scotland for provide sanitary products for all clubs, highlighting a major issue in society in general. This is an example of a wider conversation that can be made accessible through the lens of football. And more than that, we highlight issues of sustainability, climate change, extinction rebellion, Israel, Veganism, beauty, Qatar and Nigerian football kit! Are people in Nigeria benefitting that their countries shirt is a comical item? Football lets people think about things slightly differently. Season looks at how all these things can be linked to football. Yes football is a sport, but its so much more than that. It is linked to nationalism, and links people to where they come from. You may not call yourself a football fan but if you are proud of England, you’re into football. I’m interested to see if Brexit has an effect. But yes, as you can see, through football we are given a lens, and a gateway because we have a unifying principle in that we are all experiencing the same thing. It is just a different way of thinking about it. 

Can you tell us the story of how you yourself got into football?

I was Twelve and watching Euros 2004. Greece were a massive underdog in the finals, with Portugal being the far and beyond favorites to win. I loved the Soap Opera of it all. It is a constant drama. Chelsea is my nearest team and I wanted that drama all the time. I am one of three daughters to my Dad, and I went to him and said, “Dad I want to follow football”. It became our thing. And then… we just kept winning. In football there are so many highs, so many heart breaks. I’m really emotionally attached. And it’s crazy to me that what I am moaning about in football can mean nothing to someone else. That annoyance when we don’t do well. That joy when the ban gets lifted. I mean I love going to the club shop and just looking at our trophies. 

Who is your biggest idol in terms of Chelsea?

Its hard to say just one, but I met Frank recently and I love him. I didn’t want to sound super uncool, how do you tell someone how much you love them without coming off weird? But come on its Lampard – What a legend! I was gutted when he went to City, and so sad when he scored against us. My Dad was like “he should of missed it on purpose”. But I guess they can’t do that, right? Chelsea became an identity. I am thatfriend, I need to watch it! I mean, I even had blue in my hair when they won the champions league. I just had a feeling. 

And Women’s football? How did you come to it through your engagement with the Chelsea Men’s team?

That I came onto later. I support Chelsea, and my team win. They do well. With the men’s team, I was like “I am not going to get a Jersey till they win”. And there were so many years of almost, of being out played, of ‘John Terry Slips’, and then we won! 

Anyway, I wrote my thesis on ‘Suits, shoots, and metro sexuality’ to explore ideas of masculinity in football and how footballers are portrayed in fashion shoots. In assessing that I spent some time at GQ and gained access to Conde Nast archives. I was looking at people such as Héctor Bellerín and a couple of footballers who have great style. Players have been more experimental, check out Dominique calmer – The Everton players are on it!  So, fashion had this great place in football, fashion capitalises on the fame of football. But there were no women in it – beyond being a WAG. I mean there was one great shoot of Tim Moore and Bobby Moore. But beyond that, there just was not a trail for women. If you googled women in football, you just come up with “sexiest World Cup album”. This is such a minority view of women in football. Oh, and there really was not anyone of colour. I felt really unrepresented. And as a woman who is into football, why am I being underrepresented?

Is this why you started Season, to represent women like you, real women who are into football and its surrounding culture?

So, in 2016 I started Season, I don’t want ‘Sexiest fans’ to be the only image when you google women’s football. Through Season I have met so many women that were into football. These women are creative, and doing great things. We have a different way of doing things at Season. I had seen ‘Girl Fanzine’ by Jackie, who was photographing women going to games. But this is still only a certain type of women. Not everyone can afford to go to games and access is difficult. It is so expensive, and so I knew that so much more could be done.

Why is Season Zine different from similar publications?

I love the creative editorial approach. This was something that you can see in Green Soccer Journal. James (Roper) had a Burberry background. It was the same cross-section. Season is a zine because its fan made “by fans for fans”, but my background is magazines. I know we live in the internet age, but with print, something stays forever.  With season, you can touch it. It is a physical thing. And I have worked at so many magazines, so I knew what I wanted to achieve. I am qualified journalist who loves fashion. And I have worked at every element of fashion; behind the seasons, at fashion week, fashion selling, marketing, PR… you name it. I am always trying to be diverse, and I think that is so important in having a broad view. And all that experience pools into Season. This is a fashion-football connection. 

So how are we defining this, as someone who studies fashion? Is football-fashion in terms of trend setting, or do we mean design?

Niome (Accardi) who works for different sportswear brands would say that “football fashion doesn’t just mean kits”. Before it was definitely lead by men, but football is a way for people to connect. There are footballers modelling sportswear of course, for example for JW Anderson or Woox couture, but Fashion references football a lot too – look at the catwalks, the Jerseys, the typography, the community aspect. At least one show a month will reference football in some way. Trends are being influenced by players. However, before it was definitely lead by men. But look at Megan Rapinoe or Leah Cathrine Williamson, female football needs to utilise this! It is about showing what there already is to be seen, so that we can talk about the fact that there is so much more than can be done.

Are England leading the story?

No. What are the English players doing? They have won so many world titles, I mean if England had not won the world cup we would be having different conversations right now. But I think its plateaued, and I think that we need to reenergise. I want to showcase people that stand for something. Players in England are not clear about what they stand for, but take a look at say, Megan Lapino. She tells you, “I am gay”, “Fuck trump”, “I have purple hair”, “I love it”. It needs to be clear. If more players could do this we would have a different market and different space here. Take a look at American culture. The sports culture looks at what the winners have to say. It is not that they have a more open culture but there is more investment in America. In womens football in Britain we need to push for renewed investment and individuality.

What is your major current conversation?

Sustainability. Climate change is real so how can we make womens football sustainable? What about plastic, veganism and Extinction Rebellion and ? There are so many football jerseys every season and so much fashion waste. There are many different avenues to explore and delve into. We ourselves are a bi-annual issue and we want to look at soothing that is timely and going to last. We want to look at how football can be used as a tool to help with inequalities. (See issue 7)

What about the future? What do the next five years look like for Season?

I have one aim: keep it going. It is not easy to self publish, and beyond the physical stuff we want to keep telling stories, fashion-football-stories. We want to continue to celebrate and empower women in football by asking the key important, and uncomfortable, questions. Although women are more visible it can still be narrow, what about the women in their 40s / 50s / 60s? What about me? I am Thirty in 2021! Everything is geared for the future but lets include all groups in that future. So yes, we want to keep telling the stories, to hold people to account, and to have an individual and an international outlet. We have a network beyond our team now, and so Season is a platform to showcase this conversation. It is an authentic record of the moment in time that we are in.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Responding to Iran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Louis Kill-Brown
-
0
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Responding to Iran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Between 2016 and 2017 the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office provided consular assistance to over 23,000 British citizens caught-up in trouble abroad; in any given year some 6,000 of those will find themselves imprisoned. Thousands of these Britons will have travelled overseas to countries with unfamiliar, often conservative laws and marked cultural differences only to find themselves in police custody and often held in dire conditions. In the vast majority of cases, this is a result of either genuine ignorance or a deliberate disrespect for local law, or of universally criminal behaviour that would just as likely have landed them in a cell at home. None of this applies to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Nazanin’s arrest had as much to do with EU sanction negotiations, Cold War-era politics and the perennial arrogance of Western foreign policy as the now Oxford-educated Sandra Gregory’s infamous imprisonment in Thailand had to do with drug trafficking. In other words, the 41-year old British-Iranian is a political prisoner, plain and simple. This is a truth that even the British government—whether through strategy or lack of impetus—refused to outwardly recognise until 2019, when she was finally granted diplomatic protection. This status—distinct from diplomatic immunity—represents a legal recognition that her imprisonment had little to do with the individual and everything to do with her nationality. It effectively acknowledges her a chess piece in a geopolitical game.

Her story is well-known: a dual Iranian-British citizen, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Tehran in 2016 whilst boarding a flight home to London, following a visit to her parents with her infant daughter. After a show-trial before a secretive and highly politicised Iranian court she was falsely accused of espionage and condemned to five years in the city’s infamous Evin prison. As ever, there is more to the story: the 41-year old’s detainment is embroiled both in current geopolitical events and in the history of UK-Iran relations.

In recent years, this relationship could have been described somewhat optimistically as fraught. The primary sore point (of many) is predictable: money. In 1971 the United Kingdom entered into a major arms deal with pre-revolutionary Iran, receiving £450 million in payments for military equipment produced by British firms. The vast majority of that equipment never arrived. Politically, the reason is fairly simple: Iran’s regime changed in the hugely consequential revolution of 1979 and Thatcher’s Conservative government treated the Gulf state’s new hard-left leadership with suspicion and—perhaps more pertinently—so too did the Carter administration in the US. In a move that smarted as much of derisive colonial arrogance as it did of dodgy phone-shop dealings, the Iron Lady’s government pulled the plug on the order, sold the remaining equipment to Iran’s regional nemesis, Iraq, and—crucially for Nazanin’s story—kept the money.

Fast forward several armed conflicts in the Gulf, a 2002 arbitration ruling in Iran’s favour and numerous disastrous Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Royal Navy clashes and—as of March 2020—the debt remains unpaid. The UK government paid the balance into a court-supervised, frozen account following the 2002 ruling, but refused to transfer it on to the Iranian government, citing now long-standing financial sanctions imposed on the Republic of Iran by the EU. Just months before Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest in 2016, the Gulf nation established a seemingly effective precedent of ‘hostage diplomacy’ in order to attenuate a similar financial dispute with the US, successfully extracting a $400 million debt from the Obama administration, flown to Tehran in cash the day before the release of 5 similarly arbitrarily held American citizens.

With that in mind, the wood beyond the trees of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detainment, and that of four other British-Iranians like her, begins to come into sight. The problem in Iran’s recourse to what is effectively ‘hostage diplomacy,’ however, is that EU sanctions had frozen Iranian assets in Europe and banned the transfer of funds, meaning that, until recently, both Downing Street’s hands and its purse strings were tied. Events have accelerated in recent weeks and along with Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s temporary release on house-arrest, we have seen this week’s hearing of Iran’s debt case in the UK court of appeal, the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 within Iran, the politically explosive assassination of Qasem Soleimani and, of course, the UK’s exit from the European Union.

At the most basic human level, we can all sympathise with the 41-year old’s horrific experiences: prolonged separation from her family, severe trauma, physical mistreatment and her exposure to the coronavirus, all whilst living under dire conditions in the Iranian prison system. Yet this story is likely to end the way it began, with Nazanin as a person being far less important to the Iranian regime than Nazanin as a valuable piece in a geopolitical jigsaw puzzle. Ultimately, politics imprisoned her, and it will be politics that allows her to return home.

Indeed, if she does return home, the UK government will need to consider what lessons can be learned here. Rightly or wrongly, principle almost always plays second fiddle to pragmatism in geopolitics and it is likely that, following Nazanin’s return home, relations between Tehran and London would improve. This seems unavoidable given the general desire in Whitehall to avoid a return to 2011-15, a period defined by closed embassies and diplomatic radio silence between the two countries. With that said, the Iranian government has demonstrated a nefarious disrespect for the distinction between the personal and the political. Tehran has illustrated time and again that it is willing to prey on individuals in order to hit at foreign governments. International Relations theorists often speak in terms of Idealism and Realism: it is a reality that political dealings with Iran have the capacity to put individual British citizens—especially those with dual citizenship—in serious jeopardy. Wrong though that may be, government must accept this, be realistic and place the safety of individuals at the heart of its policy making.

But again, in real terms, what does that actually mean? In the first instance, policy on Iran must be preventative, it must mitigate the risk to individuals: the UK’s debt must be settled, in some form, as a matter of priority. Any ongoing dispute of this kind clearly poses a real and demonstrable threat to British citizens travelling in Iran. The Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, has suggested that this might be achieved by providing the equivalent sum in humanitarian aid. If agreed, this solution would contribute to the wellbeing of both Iranians and Britons alike, but Brexit seriously undermines of the UK’s use of EU sanctions to justify excluding cash payments, so whether or not Tehran would look kindly on any quid pro quo aid arrangement seems uncertain.

Failing prevention, however, looking across the channel to Emmanuel Macron’s government may provide solutions: through a combination of leveraging her influence in mediating US-Iran talks and an agreed prisoner swap, France—which has no outstanding debt to Iran—was able to secure the release of Sciences Po’s Professor Fariba Adelkhah within just nine months. Tehran offered London a similar arrangement for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s last year, but to no avail. Prisoner exchanges such as this, although some may voice moral objections, are the only proven way of successfully mitigating Iranian aggression towards individuals. In principle, prisoner exchanges with Iran would mean operating on Tehran’s diplomatic and moral plain, by employing individuals as devices in bilateral political games. But once a political prisoner has been taken, such principles surely should bow to the pressing reality of the situation.

In real terms, if we are to avoid further cases like Nazanin’s, government must put idealistic principles aside—prisoner exchanges speak to Tehran in a language it understands. Like many of those 6,000 Britons who find themselves imprisoned overseas each year, the UK government must, when dealing with countries like Iran, be more willing put its own values aside and conform in the interests of safety.

Friday Favourite: War and Peace

Elba Victoria Slámečkova
-
0
Friday Favourite: War and Peace

In this Coronavirus season, existing dystopian novels have suddenly become “prophetic”. The world may be grinding to a standstill, but Generation COVID can’t while away that time with the same “aimless dissipation” and extravagances that our post-war predecessors did. It’s a lot harder to love in the time of Corona, and a look at the pasta shelves of the nation’s supermarkets reveals that the phrase “Hunger Games” is hitting closer to home than anyone would like. How are we to pass the time, and tear our eyes away from the constant morale-breaking news that does nothing but feed us the same information several times a day?

The answer is reading. To some, the thought of reading will be hard to stomach after eight weeks of study. For others, reading for pleasure may be a welcome relief. Even then, the thought of reading for pleasure can feel too indulgent, when surely we should be revising for next term. But these are extraordinary times, and we have no idea what the next few months will bring. So, as we embark on what is already a generous vacation, and look forward indefinitely to the prospects of self-isolation and social distancing, I think if we’re going to commit to anything, it might as well be a good novel. Times like these call for more than a desultory pastime, so cast away the pool-side paperback, and pick up the life-changing experience that is Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. 

To read Tolstoy’s classic is to be thrust into moments of life and to be absorbed in a reality so vivid that it feels almost like your own. In fact, when I look back on the summer after my final secondary school exams, I think of it as “the summer I read War and Peace.” We were inseparable – I read on the sofa, in bed, at my desk, carried it to various parks, Monaco, the Italian Alps, and barely had strength to hold it on the beach when I was struck by serious illness. I found myself invested in and identifying with so many of the characters, despite the novel taking place two centuries ago. 

The spiritual and intellectual journey of Pierre Bezukhov from confused debauchee to prisoner and finally wise family-man is particularly touching, as is Natasha Rostova’s enduring vitality or Princess Marya’s obsequious meekness, which made me cheer her on towards the happy ending she deserved. The most poignant moment for me is when Prince Andrei learns what ‘divine love’ is, and finally realises that even under the most extreme conditions he can love all humans indiscriminately, even Anatole Kuragin. 

In reading the novel I not only experienced the beauty of the transient everyday, with its infinite moments of fleeting emotion, but also I saw something greater – individual life as part of the universal web of history and humanity. And that is the kind of living into which readers of great literature have the privilege to be immersed – life heightened beyond ordinary comprehension.

And when it was over, I felt numb, like I’d lost a friend.

If it is your first time reading it, you really ought to go from cover to cover and let the whole effect wash over you, though of course some will be more taken by the eventful domestic lives of the Rostovs, and others intrigued by what really happened at the battle of Borodino. Indeed, War and Peace has immense historical value as well as literary, for Tolstoy himself was a meticulous historian, to which much of the novel and his research for it attests.

Don’t be intimidated by the size and weight of the novel – read it in little chunks; there is no need for it to be burdensome if you regularly devote reasonable amounts of time. Nor should it interfere with your studies, and it can take you through all six weeks or more if you wish. I loved the Peaver and Volokhonsky English translation, which conveys the simple, homely eloquence of Tolstoy’s style, but any decent one in your native language will suffice, although the original Russian is of course preferable if you are lucky enough to speak the language. 

In short – read it. Or read it again. It is a gift that keeps on giving, and one that we could definitely use at a time when we are so paralysed that it feels so hard to just live. And if I learnt anything reading this novel, it is that you really can live through literature. We will get through this pandemic. And until then, know that every cloud has a silver lining – just ask War and Peace.

Feeling inspired? War and Peace can be read for free on Project Gutenberg and is available on Audible. The writer Yiyun Li has also started a virtual book club – Tolstoy Together – aiming to finish War and Peace during the period of isolation, as a community of like-minded people. You can check it out here.

Review: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Charles Pidgeon
-
0
Review: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Ned Kelly (born in 1854, died on the gallows in 1880) is the ultimate Australian anti-hero. As ubiquitous Down Under as Robin Hood is in the UK or Billy the Kid is in the States, Kelly has a vivid life story, a legendary status, and a long history of cultural representations. Justin Kurzel’s new film, The True History of the Kelly Gang, does not sit passively within the long legacy of Kelly mythology. Instead, it suggests that we’ve reached a point in the myth’s life-cycle that calls for questioning and agitation. In other words, it was the queerest, most hypermasculine depiction of Aussie folk lore I’ve ever seen.

The way that the Kelly gang use the traditional Australian ideals of “mateship” (“You’re my brother”) to both support each other and push each other to violent and angry actions is disturbing precisely because it epitomises a particular strain of virile homosociality. Tipping towards homoeroticism, aggression, and unconditional love, the film’s portrayal of masculinity is vivid and knotty. Most striking is George Mackay’s Kelly. Emphasising the boyishness of Kelly (he was only 25 years old when he was hung on the gallows), this version of Ned is wild and frenetic. 

With the way the story traces Ned’s rise, the film feels more like a bildungsroman than a folktale, complete with the difficult pangs and pains that arise from growing up in poverty and isolation in the bush. However, for all of its youthful punk iconography, my worry is that the film gnaws at something without quite knowing what it wants to do with it. I fear that maybe, rather than being intentionally directionless, the film lost a bit of direction.

There is a full battery of words that I find myself reaching for: coarse, raw, dirty, wild, rough, violent—the list goes on. These risk falling into the slightly hackneyed register of terms used for art house films; slightly too adjacent to the overused “gritty”. So instead, I will speak about the version of Kelly I held walking into the cinema, and the version of Kelly that arose before me on screen. 

In year 5 of primary school, we did a term on the Australian Gold rush of the late 19th century. We played a classroom game where you were assigned characters on the goldfields and tried to seek a fortune. In the second last week of the game, the principal of our school dressed up as a bushranger and “robbed” all our gold. We were delighted – it was one of the stand out moments of the year.

In the year of university I did in Australia, I was in an original Ned Kelly musical. It was filled with folk ballads and pub songs and the sort of baroque pathos of Les Mis. It glorified the Ned Kelly that my primary school principal also represented: traditionally masculine, true blue, and, well, a bit of a hero.

Kurzel’s film knows the crowded legacy within which it is operating. Depictions of the Kelly mythos are omnipresent in Australia, and have a long history on screen. In fact, the history of film itself is born with Kelly: the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register lists the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang, as the world’s first full-length narrative feature film. 

Like the fictionalised book by Peter Carey that the film is based on, Kurzels film chooses to sidestep the most popular and well-known elements of the Kelly myth. The famous bank robbery is one very brief component of a larger psychodrama. It eschews the idea of a good bloke Australian lumberjack with a metal helmet and a penchant for robbing banks. These ideas of Kelly all feel “safe”, simply through their repetition and folkloric quality: they are artefacts of a time that is not ours.

In contrast, The True History of the Kelly Gang, with its striking set pieces, becomes a fantasia, defying the genre of “historical film” in order to speak to our current moment. The scene of the metropolitan Australian gentry – all bedecked in elaborate dress and candlelight, watching a semi-nude Kelly bare-knuckle boxing – is electric. Mackay’s performance is nothing short of astounding, with all its boyish, scrappy, sinewy angst. And it’s here, when the film pits the tough rural life of early white Australia against the debauchery of the transplanted British governing class, that the film is at its most compelling.

This British governing class is searingly portrayed by Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick. He has a mild-mannered yet dangerous sort of masculinity. He draws power from being soft-spoken and civil while threatening to kill people. He sits on a lush sofa, completely naked apart from garters, smoking a cigar and conversing casually with Kelly in a 19th century rural Australian brothel. It’s this edge of sordidness, pressed into a form of mannerism and gentility, that is so interesting. He portrays an alternate form of masculinity that draws power from a dangerous edge of surety underneath the politeness and sociability.

In this, The True History of the Kelly Gang gives a more nuanced depiction of “frontier” Australia than is normally seen: it was not just mateship, lawlessness and struggling to survive, there was also a form of decadence that can only arise within the context of huge wealth disparity. Within this framing, the “punk” drive of the film gains credence. At the film’s climax, it shows four scrawny, boyish mates wearing sheer lace dresses, covered in soot and blood, and clutching guns as they fight The System. In moments like this, the film knows that it is iconic. It shows a sort of youthful, harsh masculinity, that has a tang of something almost rabid to it. 

As a result, the film feels fresh and subversive, though it does, at times, become too obvious that this subversion was the whole point. I liked what Kurzel’s film did, I like having seen it, and I like thinking about it — but I find it hard to ascertain whether or not I actually enjoyed watching it. It was tense, relentless, and hyperviolent, which is not my ideal when it comes to enjoyable film experiences. And yet, I will say that since having seen the film, I have found myself desperate to unpack its dense imagery, constantly attempting to pin down what this rich psychodrama means for contemporary Australia and how we think about our past. 

Oxford City Council promises hotel rooms to homeless amid coronavirus outbreak

Isabella Colletta
-
0
Oxford City Council promises hotel rooms to homeless amid coronavirus outbreak

Oxford City Council has pledged additional support for rough sleepers amidst the COVID-19 outbreak.

The City Council announced on Wednesday that it intended to provide hotel rooms for up to 100 people to support those either sleeping on the street or in communal hostel spaces.

So far, 21 hotel rooms have been secured by the council for Oxford’s homeless population. In a plea to hotels and other organisations for help with accommodation demands, Councillor Linda Smith said: “Nobody should have to sleep rough in Oxford and we’re working with outreach, supported housing and day services to protect vulnerable people on our streets and in supported housing from the coronavirus.”

A further 60 beds are being urgently sought through a range of options to provide self-contained accommodation for the entirety of Oxford’s homeless population.

These new measures follow Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement of a nation-wide lockdown in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Last week the Communities Secretary announced a £3.2 million emergency fund to assist Britain’s rough sleepers to self-isolate and protect them from the spread of coronavirus. Oxford City Council has secured up to £32,250 from the government’s nationwide fund to cover the cost of supporting Oxford City’s homeless population.

Support includes self-contained accommodation, a measure which came into force over the weekend when the Council activated severe weather emergency protocol (SWEP) to open emergency beds for rough sleepers following the Met Office’s forecast of sub-zero temperatures.

The City Council have stated their intention to move from communal shelter schemes, such as the Floyd’s Row Centre which partially opened earlier this year, to self-contained spaces to accommodate homeless people currently sleeping on the streets or in shared accommodation.

As part of these measures, Oxford Street Population Outreach Team (OxSPOT) has closed its assessment service in Bonn Square to allow for a stronger outreach presence on the streets, providing rough sleepers with information on the symptoms of COVID-19 and advice of steps to take if individuals believe they have the virus.

The City Council have further announced that they will be working with The Porch day centre to provide daytime support for rough sleepers in self-contained accommodation. In line with the government’s social distancing measures, these day services are planned to include a mobile service to deliver meals and essential supplies for rough sleepers.

The symbiosis of high and pop culture

Aditi Arora
-
0
The symbiosis of high and pop culture

Engrained in the very notion of ‘popular culture’ is an implication that it is a base derivative of ‘high culture’ – but does this opinion remain valid, or, important, in contemporary society?

The early 21st Century has seen the popularisation of dance dramas, with exemplars including the Step Up (2006) American movie series and BBC Film’s release of StreetDance 3D in 2010, offering storylines centred around the physical space where students attending prestigious ballet schools interact with those of the same generation whose dancing was cultivated in the alleyways of deprived suburban districts. In both films, it is not merely the street dancers who must conform to the disciplines of ballet, but the ballet dancers must also accommodate the contrasting rhythms of Hip-Hop music.

During his headlining act at Glastonbury last year, Stormzy devoted approximately two minutes of his set to a pair of impeccable ballet dancers. In the backdrop was a projection of statements highlighting the significant development in the industry: ballet shoes are now made to match different skin tones. It celebrated the ballet world for its progression. It is a world which is, no matter how slowly, gradually moving away from the exclusivity so resonant of ‘high’ culture. In all of these aforementioned instances, ‘popular’ culture and ‘high’ culture are explored through their amalgamation rather than their dichotomy.

Equally, musicians are increasingly experimenting with the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘high’ culture. In 2017, music composer Tokio Myers gained critically acclaimed fame when he won Britain’s Got Talent. He stunned both the judges and audience from his very first audition through his captivating rendition of Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” which was followed by a piano and dubstep composition of Ed Sheeran’s “Bloodstream”. Interestingly, the composition did not elevate to a climax culminating in Debussy’s piece, but rather, Debussy’s piece was used to introduce the familiarity of one of Britain’s most famous pop music icons. This is not to suppose that Tokio Myers presented the French composer’s piece as inferior, but that he actively acknowledged how music from classical (‘high’) genres, could be complimented by music from pop (‘popular’) genres. Tokio Myers put Claude Debussy and Ed Sheeran on one stage, in one piece.

However, it is not just different genres which interact: popular music is also engrossed in the subject matter associated with high culture. In the same year as Tokio Myers’ debut, award-winning, Grime artist Dave appropriated BBC’s live studio debate Question Time and used it as the title for his politically driven single released in 2017. Within the single, Dave imitates the discourse characteristic of the BBC political debates, opening with the refrain “A question for the new Prime Minister”. In approximately seven minutes, Dave questions the opposing political leaders, the crippled NHS, and the response to Grenfell. Dave inherits a political register, taking it from the formality of a BBC televised debate to the accessible platform of Spotify which, in turn, ignited a whirlwind of responses through inspired listeners’ Twitter threads. Indeed, the content conventional to mediums of high culture are now increasingly informed by their discussion in more accessible forums – a discussion which a large proportion of the general public are now invited to participate in, rather than being shunned for a lack of understanding.

In terms of literature, we have seen how a modern and popular adaptation of classical mythology can bring an author global success. Typically, the subjects of Classics, Latin and Greek do not make much of an appearance on the comprehensive state school syllabus, but Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise means that children are given the opportunity to experience the riveting tales of Classical periods through other forms.

In no way am I suggesting the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘high’ culture no longer exists, but what I do intend to show, is that the notion of popular culture as a base derivative seems outdated and reductive. You can look to any medium of art and see how the popular holds great influence over the high. Its platforms mean that art forms and subject matter which were once confined to the exclusive bracketing of high culture are now increasingly accessible. The relationship between the two cultures is less hierarchical and more symbiotic. One thing is for sure, the high aspect of culture is no longer so out of reach.

I’m watching ‘YOU’

Cora Wilson
-
0
I’m watching ‘YOU’

When its second series aired in December 2019, the Netflix hit YOU managed to take trashy TV to new levels. Complete with sex, violence, dubious acting, it’s guaranteed to fulfil your very wildest binge-watching dreams. However, public reception of the show has highlighted a cultural issue that transcends its frivolous content: why is it that our society romanticises dangerous misogynists as legitimate love interests?

For those who haven’t experienced the compulsive pleasure of watching the show yet, here’s a quick summary. Joe Goldberg is a serial stalker, a seemingly ordinary man who falls obsessively in love with his female victims and then proceeds to do absolutely anything to have and keep them. In the first series his muse is a vapid poetry student named Beck who he murders in the final episode, before moving on to the unfortunately named Love in series two, while he is simultaneously pursued by a vengeful girlfriend from his past who he buried alive in the woods after she attempted to leave him. Joe Goldberg is, in short, a monster.

But on social media something strange started to happen. Many people began professing their attraction to Joe. In some cases, the tone was jovial, “kidnap me pls x”, wrote one viewer in reference to the show’s main character. However, other messages seemed disturbingly genuine, with another tweeting, “Said this already but @PennBadgley is breaking my heart once again as Joe. What is it about him?”.

Penn Badgley, who plays Joe, has recognised and engaged with this unnerving phenomenon extensively since the show came to prominence. Badgley is keen to remind these viewers (predominantly young women) that Joe is – news-flash – a lying, stalking, murdering creep who hides women’s underwear and the teeth of their ex-boyfriends in cubby holes around his apartment. Perturbed by the audience response to his character, Badgley commented, “He’s not actually a person who needs somebody who loves him. He’s a murderer. He’s a sociopath. He’s abusive. He’s delusional. And he’s self-obsessed.”   

Joe may be a particularly striking example of our romanticization of the troubled and abusive protagonist, but what is more disturbing is the subtler romanticization of problematic characters that we tend to take for granted when we consume fiction.

A few years ago, it was Twilight’s Edward Cullen that had young people wishing they too had a murderous 120-year-old boyfriend who would break into their home in the middle of the night and gaze furiously at them while they slept. Emotionally and, at times on the precipice of being physically abusive, Edward Cullen is a prime example of how coercive control is veiled as admirable protectiveness. What made matters worse is that the author of the series, Stephanie Meyer, wasn’t trying to produce a thought-provoking antihero. On the contrary, she was aiming to create a commercially desirable romantic lead, playing into the mindset of yet another generation of girls who associated male dominion with true love. No wonder that it was only after the books rose to fame that Meyer recognised, “I think there are many feminists who would say that I am not a feminist”.

And the trope not exclusive to, nor even more popular within, modern popular culture. The orthodox literary canon is rife with abusive yet romantically desirable men, perhaps nowhere more so than in gothic literature. Take, for example, the heroes written by the Brontë sisters. Charlotte Brontë’s Mr Rochester is the type of guy who thinks it’s morally justified to lock up a female love interest in a confined space if and when he deems her out of her right mind: the only difference between him and YOU’s Joe Goldberg, is that Joe chooses a soundproof glass box rather than an attic as his prison. Often described as a proto-feminist work, readers have long been baffled by Jane Eyre’s ending, which sees Jane marry the ghastly individual who dehumanised his last wife for so many years.

And the problem doesn’t just lie in the literature itself. Subsequent adaptations of Jane Eyre, and indeed of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, tend to cast Mr Rochester and Heathcliff respectively as conventionally attractive, relatively young men, whose problematic behaviour is often acted more like troubled angst than abuse. The way in which these texts are retold needs to change radically in order to break the dangerous cycle of romanticising the abuser.

Another important question to ask is whether the idolisation of abusive love interests applies to male characters alone. Recently, Phoebe Waller Bridge’s ingenious Killing Eve came to our screens, and along with it, came the demand for a radical reassessment of female love interests and the ethics of attraction in fiction. Villanelle is a psychopathic murderess for hire, over whom the other main character, Eve Polastri, develops an intellectual obsession that quickly takes on a personal and sexual dimension. Swathes of viewers, like those of YOU, have confessed to the strange attraction they feel towards the Villanelle and a fascination about her relationship with Eve.

The difference, however, between Villanelle and comparable male abusers, is that Villanelle could never be confused for a hero: as her name suggests, she is a villain through and through, and thus her abuse and cruelty are never veiled in the guise of protectiveness or extreme compassion. Moreover, when people describe their attraction for a character like Villanelle, the language used is not that of romanticization but fetishization. As hard as Waller-Bridge tried to avoid writing a series that panders to the male gaze, the predominant attitude of male viewers appears to be one of prurient fascination in the abnormality of Villanelle’s sexuality as a departure from the traditional female love interest. Unlike Joe Goldberg, Edward Cullen and Mr Rochester, Villanelle is the antithesis of the norms we associate with her gender in the relationship dynamic.

YOU, for all its triviality, sheds light on what we consider acceptable behaviour by male characters in fiction. By taking common abusive tropes to their extreme, the show may ultimately serve a beneficial social purpose: teaching us to question why, time and time again, we tend to find abusive behaviour by men not only normal but attractive.

(Non)Traditional Casting

Laila Ujayli
-
0
(Non)Traditional Casting

When you imagine an eccentric Dickens character or an armored knight of Arthurian legend, you probably don’t picture an ethnically Indian man. Dev Patel proves that you probably should. On theater screens now, Patel shines as the titular character in The Personal History of David Copperfield, based on the classic by Charles Dickens. He also wields a sword with utter ease in the first trailer for The Green Knight, David Lowery’s adaptation of a popular Arthurian poem where Patel stars as Sir Gawain. By casting Patel as classic British literary characters, both adaptations have enlivened debates about the merits and perils of nontraditional casting. But how “nontraditional” is Dev Patel’s casting, really?  

Within a preliminary conception of “nontraditional,” Patel’s casting as David Copperfield and Sir Gawain certainly qualifies. Often referred to (problematically) as “color-blind casting,” nontraditional casting involves employing an actor irrespective of their ethnicity, skin color, or gender. Distinguished from whitewashing, nontraditional casting typically refers to instances where actors of color are chosen for roles initially imagined for white actors. Even beyond the choice of Dev Patel, The Personal History of David Copperfield is a great contemporary example. Many major supporting characters are also cast nontraditionally, like Benedict Wong as Mr. Wickfield and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Mrs. Steerforth. And the film demonstrates just how successful this casting method can be – the delightful ensemble’s infectious humor and chemistry earned the film a BAFTA nomination for Best Cast. 

Consequently, Dev Patel’s disruption of the typical, all-white ensembles of British period pieces can be viewed as thrillingly progressive. And if The Green Knight is anywhere as good as The Personal History of David Copperfield, the success of that nontraditional choice opens work opportunities for other actors of color within film adaptations of classics, in the same way those roles have been opened on the theatre stage (take, for example, Ruth Negga as Hamlet or the entire cast of Broadway sensation, Hamilton). 

However, a closer look at the Dev Patel example in particular disrupts the simplicity of this traditional versus nontraditional binary. After all, the imagined whiteness of both David Copperfield and Sir Gawain stems from these characters’ Britishness. And Dev Patel is British. 

Contrary to a filmography that largely casts him as a character born in India (Slumdog Millionaire, two Best Exotic Marigold Hotels, Hotel Mubai) and thrust into white spaces (The Man Who Knew Infinity, Lion), Dev Patel was born and educated in a London borough. He first visited India to film Slumdog Millionaire, and often speaks about how he uses his projects in India to help him better understand his own heritage and identity. So while his casting as David Copperfield and Sir Gawain causes furor due to his Indian ethnicity, his unimpeachable Britishness conversely makes him the target of criticism whenever he is cast in a role intended for an Indian-born actor. 

In one interview, Patel expressed his frustration with such critics, saying, “I get flak sometimes because people will say, ‘Why aren’t they giving these roles to a real Indian?’ I wonder, what does that even mean? The only way I can converse with my grandparents is in Gujarati. Does that make me real enough? Or am I only allowed to witness the moments of prejudice and racism going through airports? Is that the only bit that I’m allowed of the culture?” 

Turning that question towards the other side of Patel’s identity, what bit of British culture is Patel allowed? Does being born and raised in London make him “real” enough to play British characters? 

To conclusively define Patel’s David Copperfield and Sir Gawain as “nontraditional” seems to imply that the characters’ whiteness supersedes their Britishness. That implication feels like a disservice to both works. Much of Dickens’ writing is grounded in a critique of wealth inequality and classicism within British society. And while his work has universal appeal, it is also uniquely, contextually resonant. Additionally, the Arthurian legends are right up alongside Charles Dickens, Harry Potter, and the Queen’s corgis as aggressively British cultural exports. David Copperfield and Sir Gawain are thus undeniably British characters, played by a British actor. In that light, Dav Patel’s casting is about as traditional as it gets. 

Of course, casting is not so simple. Film is a visual medium. A seeing audience will always note an actor’s skin color and ethnic background – which is why the Actors’ Equity Association resists the term “color-blind” casting. Consequently, Dev Patel is trapped within the current traditional versus nontraditional casting paradigm. To some, he’s too British for Indian roles. To others, he’s too Indian for British roles. It’s the age-old dilemma of second-generation immigrants – a suitably oxymoronic description for an often-oxymoronic experience that I (a Syrian-American) and others share. 

So rather than be caught in a simplistic debate between the merits of traditional or nontraditional casting, Dev Patel invites us to engage in a more wholesale reimagining of casting in film. Maybe instead of overvaluing skin color and thus uplifting a singular, ethnic identity as “British,” film casting should actually represent the diversity of ethnicities, cultures, and identities in modern British society. After all, if teachers ask students to celebrate these classics as part of British culture, British children should be represented in their visual adaptations – regardless of their ethnic background. As Patel says of Copperfield, “I’m from North West London, and the idea that we’ve spun a version of this film that allows kids from there to find a face they can relate to is really exciting.” So while Dev Patel’s casting is considered nontraditional now, maybe it shouldn’t be. 

Besides being great films, The Personal History of David Copperfield and The Green Knight have an additional opportunity to serve as sites to explore, debate, and discuss belonging, othering, and the place of second-generation immigrants. Film harnesses the fullest extent of its political and historical power as a medium when it can foster these debates, learn from them, and ultimately better represent the audiences on the other side of the screen. To this end, The Personal History of David Copperfield is a resounding success. And The Green Knight is also another step in the right direction. All hail, Dev Patel. 

Review: Four Tet’s ‘Sixteen Oceans’

Fred Waine
-
0
Review: Four Tet’s ‘Sixteen Oceans’

Few genres of music (jazz excluded, perhaps) are more able to capture the intricacy of human movement and physicality than dance music. The opening tracks of Four Tet’s latest album do just that, reminding us why the UK producer has become such a celebrated live act. On ‘School’, Kieran Hebden masterfully constructs melodies that extend, protract, reach out like limbs before collapsing back in on themselves, while ‘Baby’ is sensual and intimate, a chopped vocal sample (courtesy of who else but, er, Ellie Goulding) laid naked over a fragmented beat. Yet these indubitable dance bangers also have a certain naivety, evident as ‘Baby’ breaks down into a naturalistic idyll of tentative synth and birdsong. The simplicity of one’s surroundings is a recurrent point of reference for Kieran’s new material.

Sixteen Oceans is the latest in a steady stream of album releases from Four Tet. While perhaps not worthy of the label ‘prolific’, Kieran has maintained an astounding level of consistency over 20+ years as a musician, his work equally experimental and emotionally resonant enough for him to have become a household name amongst critics and ravers alike. Sixteen Oceans is both virtuosic and breathtakingly simple, offering a timely musing on youth, nature, and growth; here, each of the sixteen tracks is an ocean, something for the listener to traverse, to contemplate, to immerse themselves in.

The pace slows on the next pair of tracks. The titles of ‘Teenage Birdsong’ and ‘Romantics’ both evoke the purity and innocence of youth, and the music has a dreamy, stripped-back quality, largely thanks to Kieran’s penchant for acoustic instrumentation. ‘Teenage Birdsong’ pairs a rolling breakbeat with a panpipe solo before fading out in a drowsy rallentando. ‘Romantics’ is lullaby-esque: washed-out synth, bubble-gum vocals, and plucked strings mingle with the unmistakable chimes of a musical box. Kieran’s approach here is deliberately simplistic; the tape-loop beat could easily have been lifted straight from Portishead’s Dummy.

Yet this dreamy style of arrangement is far less effective on ‘Love Salad’, which seems to sink too far into the ambience. Different melodies and layers do emerge from the track’s muffled, submerged beat over its 7-minute duration, but all too quickly they cower away and withdraw again. It’s a ponderous track, at times more like an iPhone alarm tone than any striking form of dance music. Something resembling a payoff does eventually arrive, but ‘Love Salad’ (as with some of Sixteen Oceans’ other more reserved moments) lacks the sort of visceral attack seen in the work of emerging UK producers such as Loraine James and Kelly Lee Owens.

Fortunately, ‘Insect Near Piha Beach’ offers an upshift in tempo, clicking into gear with a more rave-oriented beat and decisive arrangement. Jagged hi-hats underpin breathy vocal samples and a repeated raga motif which shimmers before dissipating into kaleidoscopic fragments. The track’s more hallucinatory qualities provide one of the most ecstatic moments on the album. Listening, you can imagine yourself stumbling out of a beachside party, hand in hand with a loved one. The sun rises over the water. The endorphins flow.

‘Something in the Sadness’ is a slower burn but sustains the emotional momentum of the previous track. Twinkling, winking synth pads fuse with stabs that have all the texture of a bowed cello string: only the thudding bass drum keeps the whole track from falling apart. Careful layering of sounds here gives a greater sense of contemplation and introspection, which also comes across on several of the ‘interlude’ tracks that appear throughout Sixteen Oceans. While some of these are fairly nondescript and contribute little to the flow of the album, instrumentals such as ‘ISTM’ are beautifully fragile; here, the birdsong motif returns, intersected by moody piano. ‘Bubbles at Overlook 25th March 2019’ feels meaningful too, with Kieran observing the ephemerality of his surroundings. We hear the bubbles swell into life and burst almost immediately, their existence necessarily fleeting.

Sixteen Oceans takes us back to nature, reminding us of a simpler state of being. We’re repeatedly transported by recordings of birds chirping or of leaves rustling underfoot; ‘4T Recordings’ gives the impression of spectating the dawn chorus from behind a wall of glass. Four Tet draws us out of the chaos and anxiety of our minds, giving us a brief, soothing moment of serenity which is all the more precious given the current state of isolation so many of us find ourselves in, stuck inside and left to battle with our own thoughts as we are. Kieran himself communicates through his Instagram that “it’s a relief…that I released an album at this time that I made to have a peaceful mood. Music helps me cope with everything.”

The final track on the album is perhaps the best, ‘Mama Teaches Sanskrit’ being a tribute to a 5000-year-old language and to Kieran’s Indian family heritage – something of a sister track to ‘Ba Teaches Yoga’ on 2013’s Beautiful Rewind. The resonating synths again seem childlike: sensitive, curious, eager. The mother’s voice enters, warm and lyrical, followed by an infant’s sing-song imitations. It’s an interaction which symbolises the purity of childhood, of a fresh, inquisitive mind starting to learn from its environment – perhaps the time where a human life comes closest to emulating the simplicity of nature. Four Tet has become a master of capturing such moments. At times, this is an album which seems to speak the language of human existence itself.

Remote Teaching Is No Good Quick Fix

Guy Dabby-Joory
-
0
Remote Teaching Is No Good Quick Fix

With every new email from vice and pro-vice chancellors, it looks like Oxford is planning to provide undergraduates with Trinity Term’s full workload and exams, but remotely. While the logistics of how this would work thus far remain undecided, the University’s final decision will face many challenges.

The coronavirus outbreak will inevitably affect the physical health of students.  A significant percentage are likely to contract the illness, forcing many students to miss multiple exams or assignments, and that’s far from the worst-case scenario. Remote learning may also negatively affect the mental wellbeing of many students. The typical full workload will likely still be demanded but without any of the welfare programmes which Oxford offers, or the social life which can make the workload tolerable. Furthermore, remote examinations rely on every student having access to a computer with an internet connection, in a silent room. This is, of course, impossible for many students.

In my view, Oxford has two options. The first: cancelling Trinity entirely and continuing from where we left off in Michaelmas 2020. Exams could be taken during Michaelmas rather than Trinity in the future, with the academic year beginning in January rather than October. This would have the positive future effect of allowing Oxford to interview and to make offers after A-Level results are announced in August, rather than making conditional offers in January. Conditional offers are currently based upon unreliable predicted grades, meaning the University must estimate how many students will miss their grades.

Option 1 would also provide finalists with more time to revise ( they would be able to study during the long summer vacation rather than the Easter vacation) and allow all those with end-of-year exams the opportunity to enjoy sunny Trinity term with slightly less stress. This change would, however, need be carried out in conjunction with other British universities in addition to UCAS, in order to bring timings in sync. Despite this, such a change would make sense in the long-run and the current outbreak is a great opportunity to switch from the old calendar to the new.

It may be overly optimistic to assume that university will be able to resume in time for Michaelmas. An Imperial College study suggests that the outbreak may continue for up to eighteen months, with a second wave of the virus possible in the winter. If this outbreak follows the expected trend, the economy will all but shut down, and there will not be much of a jobs market waiting for finalists.

The issues with remote teaching will only be perpetuated over time. As such, it may be sensible for the University to go for option 2: something similar to a group rustication, where studies are suspended for a year and then Trinity 2021 picks up from where Hilary Term 2020 left off. Group rustication would be the default option, with students perhaps choosing to opt-out due to a good reason, based upon the likelihood of the pandemic continuing. This option may be difficult to decide upon now, but Oxford choosing option 2 would certainly set a good precedent for other universities to do the same, and it may be necessary given the projected span of coronavirus. Either way, both of the above options are better than the remote teaching and examining which is currently planned. The University should at least consider them, even if they may seem inconvenient in the short term.

1...503504505...2,519Page 504 of 2,519

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

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

Website by James Ashley