Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Blog Page 516

The Ghost of Sanders Past: Jil Sander A/W 2020 in Review

Alec Holt
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The Ghost of Sanders Past: Jil Sander A/W 2020 in Review

Since the initial departure of its peerless founder and namesake in 2000, Jil Sander has spent much of the last two decades wrangling with its sense of identity. Erratic financial performances led to several changes in ownership and not one but two messianic returns to the label for Sander herself in 2003 and 2012. The latter came at the end of a seven-year spell with Raf Simons at the helm which had represented something approaching creative stability but had seen the brand headed in a direction increasingly divergent from that restrained minimalism upon which Sander had first built it. Nobody, it seemed, could quite fill her immaculately crafted shoes.

Yet an onlooker could be forgiven for detecting in their Autumn/Winter 2020 menswear show a ghost of collections past. Put on at Florence’s Pitti Uomo, for which they were this season’s guest designer, the vaulted refectory of the magnificent Santa Maria Novella served as a timelessly beautiful setting for some equally age-defying clothes. Heaped mounds of marigolds suffused the scene with an obstinately glowing warmth, not so much a pop of colour as a bath of it, a forecast of the tone-blocked looks which would take to the runway.

The looks: love letters to the most luxurious of creams, the most all-enveloping of blacks, the ruddiest of browns. It’s this mastery over the muted pallet which first strikes you about the collection, a hallmark of classic Jil Sander style; squint and you could still appreciate the impossibly pleasing tonal interplay of every outfit. To do so, however, would be to deprive yourself of feasts of texture, lustrous lapels and crisp cotton and pristine leather. The aesthetics are unimpeachable, the cuts tailored but never stiff. The slouchy suiting is on trend but unmistakeably Jil, with enormous turn-up cuffs piling on to chunky-soled shoes, while the more conventional formalwear is paired with eyeletted hiking boots and vast, blanket-like scarves to throw off the silhouette. The scarves and towering overcoats swallow up those modelling them but never look suffocating, the outfits maintaining a sharp, elongated shape. And indeed, length is a mainstay of the collection, much of the outerwear projecting down to the ankles and the knits to the mid-thigh. Scarves are thrust vertically over the shoulder to draw the eye downwards, but the volume of the pieces ensures that no look ever risks feeling flat or two-dimensional. Razor-straight cuts come off warm and wearable.

There are glinting details in amongst the neutral swathes, too; pearlescent ornaments tied around collars resemble a tastefully minimalist take on the Wild Western style bolo ties the likes of Prada have recently put out in the wake of  Old Town Road-inspired country mayhem, while studded reflective baubles lend some of the latter half of the collection a shot of futurism. Almost every look is accompanied by an eminently practical, unobtrusive, but unfailingly desirable bag, none of which ever feel like anything but an extension of the outfit itself.

Therein lies the triumph of this collection. As much as individual pieces are mixed and matched and used in multiple outfits, the overarching aesthetic vision is so unwavering and so consummately realised that each look gives off the impression of having been visualised as one complete, inseparable unit, while at the same time almost any item in the collection could be paired with any other and produce the same effect. You could build a wardrobe out of these clothes and never look back nor worry about being on trend. For Jil Sander devotees, that’s the justification behind paying prices most of us would balk at for what are fundamentally rather unassuming garments. Those same devotees will have found in this collection and in its auteurs, that is, Luke and Lucie Meier, creative directors since 2017, much of the original spirit of the label they love. Perhaps Jil won’t have to come out of retirement a third time after all.

Cyber security breached at St Cross

Rachel Cordery
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Cyber security breached at St Cross

St Cross College experienced a cyber attack on Wednesday, resulting in a loss of internet across the college.

Students were alerted to the situation yesterday after internet services were deactivated.

In a post on Facebook, St Cross said: “We are sorry to report that an IT failure continues to mean the loss of WiFi across the estate. We realise the inconvenience this causes and have an expert team on the case.

“WiFi has now been restored throughout the West Wing on the main site. We will update on progress elsewhere early this afternoon.”

All Oxford students received an email from the University Information Security team shortly after St Cross’s services were dis-activated to outline precautionary steps to prevent a similar attack from happening again.

The Security Team said: “We have seen a rise in phishing emails to staff and students; as well as a malware incident earlier this week that had a serious impact on some parts of the University.

“This activity has now been confined, and there is no indication that personal or sensitive information has been compromised.”

The guidelines to prevent future attacks include installing Antivirus, taking care to be wary of strange emails, and take immediate action if you are affected.

The University have advised students to, in suspicious circumstances, immediately disconnect computers from the network and inform IT support staff.

The Personal is the Political

Elizabeth Reynard
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The Personal is the Political

He was a boy
She was a girl
Can I make it any more obvious?
He was a punk
She did ballet
What more can I say?
He wanted her
She’d never tell
Secretly she wanted him as well
But all of her friends
Stuck up their nose
They had a problem with his baggy clothes

He was a skater boy
She said, “see you later, boy”
He wasn’t good enough for her

The first date may have gone well. Really well, in fact. They were funny, didn’t offer too many times to cover the bill and compromised to split it with good grace. But throughout, and afterwards, familiar alarm bells are ringing, and you can’t get it out of your mind. A Facebook profile picture: they’re blissfully happy, standing in front of their second ‘country house’ in Kent, leaning down in a dark blue Schöffel to pet their Labrador. And, crucially, across the middle of it the banner “nooo don’t vote tory ur too sexy aha”. (If you don’t get it, I have some bad news for you.)

Joking aside, it’s evidently an issue. If you google ‘Can a relationship survive political differences’, you get 133 million results – if even a quarter of those are actually related to the question, it’s evidently worth talking about. It seems like what we once considered important is changing. More than half of people stated that they have no religion in a survey published in 2019 – perhaps that’s why more and more often people are finding politics to be at the centre of what they value.

Our identity is, at its core, made up of different ideologies – ideologies which in turn inform our political beliefs, and the way in which we view the rest of the world more generally. Speaking personally, as someone who is (formally, at least) on the political fence, I would struggle to have a relationship with someone whose ideological beliefs on subjects that are important to me were fundamentally different to mine. But equally, it’s hard to put it so plainly. Someone may be ideologically distant to me in some respects and simultaneously a person whom I may admire; some people have been. Is it possible to overlook these things? Somehow, I don’t think that strongly disagreeing over the legitimacy of the abortion-rights movement is the same as overcoming a particularly aggressive snoring habit, but equally it doesn’t necessarily have to spell the end.

But even before you get to the relationship or friendship it’s possible, or even likely, that the political may stop it from going further. As standpoints and opinions become more impassioned, it’s hard to coexist with other perspectives that may fundamentally go against your own. If that opposing perspective is also concerned with telling the world why their opinion is more legitimate and, by extension, why other opinions are less legitimate than theirs, it becomes harder. If it is a case of fundamentally conflicting beliefs rather than a case of different experiences, then keeping your opinion of them separate from your opinion of their ideology is a struggle. This applies universally to relationships – if you have a family member that polemically differs from you in terms of your ideological beliefs, it’s hard to separate the frustration that that causes from the way you feel about them. Indeed, there are members of my family who were born, and evidently remain, in the Victorian era; one such person recently tried to justify the gender pay gap to me on the rock-solid foundation that women are less reliable because they have children. Ground-breaking stuff. Clearly, I’m still not over it. I’m not saying that putting your opinions out there for the world to agree or disagree with is a bad thing – on the contrary, that’s how change happens. But in terms of relationships, the intensity of emotion that fundamental political dispute can create is definitely a factor that could cause complications.

‘The personal is political’ was a political slogan of the student movement and of second wave feminism from the late 60s, underlining the connections between what we experience in our personal lives and larger social and political structures. While what it fought against has changed with the times, what it argues is still incredibly relevant, especially with regards to politics and relationships. The personal truly is political, because the ideologies that we have make up the way in which we see ourselves and others. Importantly though, we may not be right and we’re definitely not entirely objective when forming these ideologies which naturally change over the course of our lifetime: something that may contribute to whether politics really does spell doom for a relationship. If our ideologies do change – because of the things that we live through, or the people that we meet, or come to admire – then the way in which we associate them with different people may change too. But somehow it seems less realistic – or at least less achievable – when it comes to essence-defining ideological beliefs.

However, if we were to consider what we’d be without these debates or differences in opinions, the answer is bleak. Insular, boring, and two-dimensional people that remain only in the comfort zones assigned to them at birth aren’t really human beings, they’re practically lemmings. It’s just not how human nature works. By encountering people that we disagree with, we evolve and adapt using the things we learn from them and, nine times from ten, it doesn’t create an insurmountable wedge between us. The personal is political, but that isn’t to say that the personal or the political will never change. As hard as it is, ideological disagreement does not make up the whole of a multi-dimensional relationship between people and, depending on the way it is approached, doesn’t necessarily spell the end of a relationship. Despite the impassioned division that has characterised political discussion more than ever, life, our relationships and ourselves would be boring without it.

Lady Pat. R. Honising – Cowley Clinic Calling …

Lady Pat R. Honising
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Lady Pat. R. Honising – Cowley Clinic Calling …

Dear Lady P, 

I was so excited to come to Oxford: nights out, new people, and…sex. A far cry from the sheltered suburb of my tiny hometown with just one club to speak of. 

But that’s the issue, I made full use of my first fun term in the big (medium) city; Plush Tuesdays every week – the whole of Michaelmas was Freshers’ Week for me to be honest. Unfortunately, however, my antics are catching up with me and I’m paying for it now. Without going into too much intimate detail, something doesn’t feel quite right – but none of my friends will come with me to a STI clinic for a check-up. Is there even one here in Oxford? 

Also the thing is I’m scared of being judged for being gay if I go to the college nurse but am unsure of where I need to go. 

Lady P, what should I do? 

Yours sincerely, 

Mr C. Lamidia 

P.S. Too scared to Google this… 

Dear, sweet, not-so-innocent fresher, 

It’s everyone’s worst nightmare but fear ye not, it happens to even the most careful of us. The first thing to remember is that there’s nothing to be ashamed of – slut shaming is so 2010s! As long as it’s safe and consensual have as much slap and tickle as your heart desires – I know I did at your age. That being said, condoms can be your best friend, so if you have a lot of gentlemen callers make sure you’re minimising the chance of catching a pesky infection (and feelings). Most colleges have JCR Welfare officers who can pidge you supplies. 

Good for you for keeping an eye on your sexual health, but for the sake of not just you, but anyone else you might be getting frisky with, you should get checked regularly, whether you have symptoms or not. Better safe than sorry, as I always like to say.

There is indeed a sexual health clinic here in Oxford. Conveniently, it is located just off the Cowley Road, a mere 15/20 minutes’ walk from the city centre or accessible by bus or bike. No need to trek out to the hospital, unless you want the exercise, that is. A confession, dear fresher, I’ve had to go there myself on the odd occasion (I suspect Lord P is straying but it’s far too scandalous to discuss). On the plus side though, my dear, I can confirm that the nurses there are not just understanding and confidential, but trained on LGBTQ matters too, so please don’t worry about being gay. They’re open as a drop-in centre every weekday, and you can check the times easily online, with a range of staff to make sure you get seen quickly and safely. That being said, although there’s no shame in getting checked, it’s natural to feel a little bit scared. 

In certain areas of the UK, the NHS will post you home kits so you can carry out the tests yourself and send them back – take a look on the website to find out if you can do this yourself. Although these don’t test for everything, they’re a good way to test for the most common infections from the comfort of your own room. 

Overall though Mr. C, I understand that matters of one’s genitalia it can be rather difficult to discuss and, I admire your courage for sending us in this submission. It is something that is really quite common, especially among your peers and nothing to worry about. 

Well done you for living your best life, and fingers crossed that all will be right as rain in no time. Keep having as much fun this term as you did last term. After all, you’re only at university once, make the most of not necessarily having to be up in time for work bright and early at 9am, unless you have labs or actually attend lectures. Carpe diem and all that, my dear fresher. 

Be safe, be respectful, and be sensible and the dating world is your oyster. 

Live laugh love, 

Lady Pat R. Honising xxxx

Debate: The West Has No Role To Play In The Middle East

Debate
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Debate: The West Has No Role To Play In The Middle East

Proposition – Leo Rogers

When considering as large a question as the West’s role in the Middle East, we should be starting with the bare facts. The region is home to multiple failed states (Yemen, Syria, and Iraq) and some of the world’s most brutal autocracies. Many of these depend upon Western support. The lucky few living in the region’s sole democracy, Israel, constitute a mere 5% of the total population. After a century of Western interference, huge swathes of territory are drenched with innocent blood and perpetually teetering on the edge of another catastrophe.

Western governments deserve much of the blame; many flashpoints have their roots in Western interventionism. In 1953, America overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, as punishment for his attempt at nationalising Iran’s oil. Subsequently, under American tutelage, the Shah’s regime crushed dissent with a Stasi-esque secret police force. The revolution that overthrew the Shah evolved into the brutal autocracy the Iranian people suffer under today. If you are British, ask yourself: if Clement Attlee had been overthrown by American proxies, and your parents and grandparents had been tortured by agents of an American vassal regime, would you consider America qualified to guide your country on the path to democracy?

 The incompetence of Western interventions is as unforgivable as its brutality. Journalist Andrew Rawnsley captured a particularly ridiculous instance of this phenomenon: prior to the 2003 invasion, Tony Blair was briefed by Michael Williams- a senior foreign office expert- on the potential for conflict to break out between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities. With characteristic starry-eyed idiocy, Blair responded: “That’s all history, Mike. This is about the future.” One might ask whether Blair has been following recent events in Iraq. The future he helped create demonstrates that what’s past is indeed prologue.

When confronted with this legacy, interventionists- ironically, given they tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum – echo the classic Communist refrain that, though it may seem to have failed, their ideology has never truly been practiced. With enough commitments, better strategies, wiser alliances, we will be on our way to the sunlit uplands of a peaceful and democratic Middle East.

It’s too late. Alongside the millions of lives lost, homes destroyed, and families separated, the legacy of the last century of Western intervention is a loss of trust. The citizens of the Middle East are not stupid. They have memories as long as ours; too many have already made the rational calculation that, given the bloodshed and instability rippling out from every Western action in the region, we simply don’t have their best interests at heart.

 No amount of blood or treasure will win back this trust, and without it intervention is doomed to failure. While interventionists speak of moral responsibility, we have lost our moral credibility.

Opposition – Asher Weisz

More than any other event, the 2003 Iraq invasion has shaped our generation’s negative view of Western involvement in the Middle East. For reasons which I imagine are fluently explored above, many now see our presence in this region as inherently unnecessary and dangerous. Some, going further, see it as simply the latest stage in a long and sordid story of white imperialism.

Such views are useless caricatures. The legitimate role of the West in the Middle East today is twofold. Firstly, the West must protect its allies if it is to have any global respect, and in order to support its own interests and friends. Secondly, it is the imperative of powerful democratic nations not to watch idly by when populations are threatened by murderous totalitarians. That is not an imperialist imperative; it is an anti-imperialist one.

The Middle East is a troubled and volatile region. It is riven by religious divisions. Moreover, it is threatened by Iran’s maniacal imperialism. Worldwide, it is expected that the West will help those who put faith in it. In such a sensitive area, it is a travesty to betray this expectation. The Trump Administration’s cruel abandonment of the Kurds to Turkey’s mercy is a taster of the total breach of trust which this motion implicitly recommends. The idea the West has no role whatsoever would result in a situation where allies, particularly Israel and the Gulf states could be sure of no assistance against regional threats. Such shameful isolationism would make clear globally that it is dangerous to be the West’s enemy, but far more perilous to be its friend.

A complete Western absence from the region would also embolden those who seek its downfall. Amid the hysterical response to Qassem Soleimani’s assassination, the background of escalating Iranian aggression against the US and its allies has been conveniently forgotten. Our enemies are spurred on by our inaction. Ambivalence to all events in this crucial part of the world empowers every tinpot dictator and theocrat to threaten and hurt the Western nations.

Above all, Western refusal to involve itself in Middle Eastern affairs would be a conscious decision not to stop catastrophes perpetrated by murderers and terrorists. Under this motion, America would have rejected the Iraqi government’s desperate pleas to intervene against ISIS in 2014. Those “doves” who deny any place for the West would have feebly wrung their hands, posted their mournful tweets and held their demonstrations as Yazidis, Iraqis and Syrians were driven further under the yoke of bloodstained fanatics. It is only a presence in the region which stops disaster. There are times when moral duty compels us to act.

Western withdrawal from the Middle East would not mean that we had left those nations alone. We would have left them exposed: to the caprices of extremists and to the imperialism of Iran and Putin’s Russia. We would not leave peace. We would leave a vacuum waiting to be filled.


Truth and Technology: a Fraught Relationship

Jamie Slagel
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Truth and Technology: a Fraught Relationship

Recent discussion on the topic of so-called ‘fake news’ has exponentially grown. The use of the term “fake news” itself has increased by 40x (on Google search results) in the last year alone. The era of “fake news” has many worrying consequences, but perhaps the greatest is our all-too-real inability to really determine true from false: deception and reality seem too intertwined, despite our best efforts to genuinely and impartially seperate them. These troubles have only been severely compounded by the more eerie side of technological advancements.

The problem is very simple: there is so much misinformation out there – aggrandised by products of the modern age, like artificial intelligence, deep fakes and targeted algorithms –   that fact-checking seems like an almost impossible task. When we do actually try to distinguish true from false, it takes so long that few people actually carry through. Instead, other belief forming mechanisms—or, perhaps worse, decision-making procedures—fall into place. We suspend rational belief, and either believe what we want to believe, or throw our hands up in the air in confusion, and go back to watching cute cat videos online. Finally, after all of this, we make judgements decisions on these issues without justified beliefs.

Own a farm producing milk for a living? You’re probably going to stand by the health value of milk. Ardent vegan who thinks the milk industry is a moral outrage? You’ll be inclined to dismiss milk as being of little benefit to health. Don’t really care about milk other than with your cereal each morning? Cute cat videos it is. We believe what we want to believe, and if we don’t really care, we resort to lacking belief in anything. Apathy or impassioned belief without understanding the reality of a complex topic is an important discussion in its own right, but what I want to focus on is that this issue arises primarily from the vast piles conflicting opinions, articles, journals, videos, political statements, tweets and who knows what else just to find the truth.  The problem we face today is that when we develop a belief the threshold required to justify it is increasing to a level we simply cannot meet regularly, if at all. Advancements in technology has changed the way we consume media, making finding out the real truth seemingly impossible.  

Just take the recent example of deep fakes, ultra-realistic videos created using Artificial Intelligence. They were first reported by Motherboard at the end of 2017 when used to create fake pornography starring Gal Godot. A more recent report by the UK-led East Stratcom task force suggests something a lot more sinister. East Stratcom is an EU counter-measure to disinformation which reported that trolls backed by the Kremlin are experimenting with new AI technology that manipulates videos, and these videos will be used in the online information war in politics. This is exemplified by fake footage of Obama expressing sympathy for gay and lesbian victims in a shooting was disseminated in Georgia amongst conservative Christians by Russian-backed media.

But what are these deep fakes? The simplified version is as follows: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), devised in 2014 by Ph.D. student Ian Goodfellow, allow algorithms to create images, rather than just classify them—and it does this by having two GANs try to fool one another into thinking images they’ve created are real. As Samsung’s AI Centre has reported, this is extremely powerful: GANs only need one image of a person in order to create an ultra-realistic deep fake video.] If you were so inclined, you could just about ruin a stranger’s life by taking a picture of them on the street with this technology.

The Verge argues that this is merely scare-mongering. They contend that this technology has been around a while and has even been well-known for a couple years. In their eyes, it would remained marginal in the political sphere and information watchdogs (like East Stratcom) and corporations (like Facebook) e continue to keep a close eye on this kind of technology. However, the suggestion that the manipulation of photographic/videographic evidence hasn’t entered the political sphere or affected people’s mentality is simply wrong. One must merely cast their mind back to the time that Donald Trump tweeted out a fake (slowed down) video of Nancy Pelosi, and it seems that The Verge might well have benefited—as we all would—from hindsight. Or, we think back to that time he tweeted a video which purposefully edited clips from the 9/11 attack into Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s speech to make her seem pro-9/11. Not to mention the deep fakes supposedly originating from Russia, which are alleged to have been used to influence Brexit, the debate on Catalonian Independence, and the Eurovision song contest.

Like all technology, deep fakes have taken a while to reveal their more damaging potential. We may treat anything Trump says with scepticism, but no one can deny the widespread impact Trump and his tweets have. I for one don’t want to think about the effect of Trump tweeting deep fake footage of anything from 2020 presidential candidates or of the Ayatollah. With that said, Trump is as much, if not more, a victim of this sort of technology than a perpetrator. On May 16, one Belgian political party tweeted out a fake video of Trump calling upon Belgium to follow America’s footsteps, and exit the Paris climate agreement. Fraudulent behaviour, phishing and scams are rampant and convincing enough as it is to have fooled many of us—the power of deep fakes combined with the malicious intent of such fraudsters is somewhat frightening to consider. What this means is that very little, if anything, that we find online, provides any definitive proof that it is accurately reflecting reality.

Perhaps an even more worrying issue is information over-saturation. One solution to the above problem is just to check multiple sources, right? Well, that’s not so clear when contending with purposeful confusion mongers and disinformation publishers. Information over-saturation has a number of causes. For a start, there are just so many voices shouting over each other online that it’s difficult to differentiate what is backed up by real facts and what is made up. The IPCC, an authoritative voice on climate change, published in 2007 that climate change was real and the cause of man. The world was on the brink of a shift to radical action, but competing sources of information, such as this article published, claiming to have found leaked emails, ‘exposing’ that climate science alarmists had manipulated data to push their agenda disrupted change. Colloquially known as “climate gate”, the article, although quoting accurately,  took phrases out of context:three independent committees have found “climate gate” to be unsubstantiated.

It is the combination of new technology and existing consumer habits and dissemination tactics that is particularly dangerous. Consider again East Stratcom’s report that Russia are experimenting with deep fakes. The task force notes that “Often, the Russian policy is not to back one side or the other, but to amplify extreme views on both sides of an issue to fuel conflict, confusion and disaffection. Russia is believed to spend up to $1bn a year on disinformation activity.” This may seem counter-intuitive, but it actually makes a great deal of sense. When there is so much information which seems equally plausible out there, the resulting confusion leads people to suspend judgement, or, potentially worse, to stop caring. Technology like bots allow lies to be spread en masse and add some sense of legitimacy.

Imagine what deep fakes and manipulative AI technology could do: everything from creating emails indistinguishable from real ones to spread ten fake facts about climate change for each accurate point of data. All the problems caused by the information war around vaccines and autism is a worrying example of where every conversation is heading. Over-saturation, deepfakes, and things like fake news factories (which were reported in 2016, when the term “fake news” first arose, and have recently taken on a more sinister form), are all just the beginning of the kind of technology that can influence conversations. The consequences are terrifying. In the words of Marc Morano, notable for his non-profit that promotes climate change denial, “gridlock is the best friend” of anyone who wants to stop action against issues like climate change. The strategy Morano advocates is exponentially more effective in 2020.

So, what’s the solution? To start with, paying for reputable news sources is essential. The Times have long been charging for their online articles, while The Guardian and Wikipedia continue to ask their users for some sort of donation to their worthy cause. As consumers, we decide what drives our news. If what we want is free or entertaining news, then this clearly comes at the cost of accuracy, as clickbait, false stories and frivolous news take over. But if we prioritise our democratic values, we need to pay for accuracy; it is not clicks, or advertising, which drive our news sources, but reliable reporting.

This won’t entirely solve the issue. Ultimately, we need to change our habits when we consume the media. We need to start fact-checking everything we consume, and questioning whether what we’re engaging with is actually true. Programmes like the Poynter Institute’s MediaWise, which focuses on empowering us all to tell apart true and false and to stop disseminating fake news, or Google plug-ins like inVID, aiming to help users distinguish from falsities, will be crucial in this battle for the truth. Other organisations which have begun to address this issue include First Draft, Pheme and Full Fact, as well as the East Stratcom task force. 

As one of my Cherwell predecessors noted, “When it comes to the big stories, one where the safety of sources lies in the hands of the press, journalists are still the ones we turn to.” It seems like this is still the case today. We need to gain autonomy in handling our information in the face of our technological age, these organisations, amongst many others, provide tools towards our doing that. At this moment in time, this is a monumental task and responsibility for all of us. It’s a vicious cycle, if we let the problem fester, it becomes even more difficult. 

The Poynter Institute on its advice regarding how we engage with news, and East Stratcom, who state that we need to encourage people to: “question what they are reading before they consume it.” The first sentence in this very article contained a lie—one which was purposefully deceptive. One which might still be believed to be true by some who never made it to the end of this article. The statistic about the use of “fake news” in Google searches was false: the real number is closer to 400x than 40x. It is an unfortunate fact that most people reading this article probably believed the statistic without question, and perhaps even more unfortunate that many will fall short of fact-checking my corrected statistic as well. My predecessors at Cherwell have noted that ‘fake news’ is not a new concept, but technology, and its ability to magnify the effect of this fake news, is.

I have no doubt that technological advancement will roll on, whether or not we face up to these difficult questions. So the question becomes whether our own moral advancement will manage to match this. Will we bother to protect reality by changing our habits in acquiring information, reflecting on our morals in disseminating information and developing our decision-making abilities in using this information? Aldous Huxley stated on BBC Radio before the publication of Brave New World that eugenics might be the way forward. In his 1946 foreword to that same book, with the benefit of hindsight, Huxley changed tack: his message read that it is not technology, but the hand that wields it, that is good or bad. In this vein, it is the mixture of social media, AI, advertising systems and algorithm technologies combined with human shortcomings that have created this problem. It’s not eugenics or social media, nor atomic energy or Artificial Intelligence, that are the problem. The blame can only be on us. So, whether it’s education, counter-technology, or reforming our news consumption habits, something must steer us into reality. 

Oxford’s Divestment Shame

Maggie Wang
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Oxford’s Divestment Shame

There is a certain irony in studying, researching, or teaching at Oxford, one of the world’s leading institutions of higher education. This irony manifests itself especially in the field of climate science, which seeks to reclaim the future even as the university—albeit indirectly—seeks to destroy it. Nearly seven years ago, The Oxford Climate Justice Campaign published its first divestment petition, addressed to then-Vice-Chancellor Andrew Hamilton, as part of the global Fossil Free campaign. The original petition received 2,670 signatories, and this number is still on the increase. Following the release of the Paradise Papers in November 2010, which implicated Oxford, Cambridge, and many of their constituent colleges in secret offshore investments such as oil-drilling, OCJC realized the need for a fresh anti-divestment petition. Whilst this petition has received only 270 signatures so far, support for divestment still appears to be a top priority on the student agenda, with student involvement in OCJC increasing vastly in 2019.

Aside from student-run OCJC, Oxford’s divestment campaigns include Oxford Alumni for Divestment and Oxford Academics for Divestment, both of which published petitions in 2014. In addition to these, in 2015 the university itself publicly commended its own lack of direct investments in coal and tar sands. In a statement issued by University Council, the university’s executive governing body, the university pledged to continue this practice—a tangible but minuscule step on the long road towards ethical investment. However, in the same statement, the university also proclaimed a need for “the continued inclusion, where financially prudent, of a broad range of energy investments within The Oxford Funds.”

Such a description is fitting for the university’s approach to many issues, including divestment. The university has responded positively to the majority of climate-related lobbying, including the Oxford Climate Society’s effort to diversify course curricula to include more material relating to climate change, as well as the Student Union’s effort to encourage the Careers Service to feature more climate-friendly jobs and internships. However, it has been slow to embrace the widespread calls for divestment. The university’s ethical investment policy goes back to 2008, when University Council resolved that, “if the activities of a company are, on ethical grounds, inconsistent with the educational and/or research objectives of the University, then the University may choose not to invest even though this may reduce returns.” In the university’s eyes, divestment clearly remains a “choice”, and one that, in a world of revived climate denial, they do not appear to be all too keen to make.

Numerous universities across the UK, including St. Andrews, King’s College London, and University College London, have pledged to divest fully from fossil fuels. Others, including Edinburgh, Durham, and Bristol have already succeeded in doing so. Nearly all of these commitments resulted from years of student protests and relentless petitioning. Yet, even though Oxford is vibrant with student activism, the university remains unconvinced that fossil fuel investments require the particular ethical scrutiny that they doubtless do. In the past two years, OCJC has unfurled protest banners during the Boat Race, installed protest art on the Radcliffe Camera, and disrupted fossil fuel companies’ recruitment events. Twenty-six JCRs and 15 MCRs have passed motions in support of divestment. Still, the list of colleges that have moved closer to divestment is far too short to consider such actions successful.

In early 2018, St. Hilda’s amended its investment policy to eliminate companies whose business activities are incompatible with the needs of an endangered environment. A year later and Wadham followed suit, agreeing to completely divest from coal and tar sands after prolonged discussions between college government and student leadership. Every now and then, one hears talk of other colleges pledging to divest, but there is little evidence that other colleges have actually acted on any pro-divestment urges. Nonetheless, many JCRs continue to push for new investment policies and negotiate with college governing bodies in the hope that they will, someday, succeed. But in this new decade, is “someday” good enough? As one of the world’s leading universities continues to invest heavily in fossil fuels with little criticism, shouldn’t we be necessitating, and indeed forcing, immediate action?

It is difficult not to forgive student climate activists at Oxford for believing that negotiation and the occasional protest is enough. After all, this is what has worked at other universities across the country. But, given the stereotype that Oxford is “different”—a bastion of the elite with a convoluted system of constituent colleges—the lack of momentum on divestment shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In order to ensure divestment across the board at Oxford, student campaigns must commit to more frequent, comprehensive action involving more students and a more clearly defined method for achieving their goals. Students must use existing channels, such as university and college committees, to their fullest capacity, and ensure that campaigns sustain momentum from year to year and term to term. They must actively lobby for divestment, keeping in mind specific demands, such as timelines for divesting from various types of fossil fuels and ways to hold the university and individual colleges accountable. It is not enough to simply declare support for divestment. In this new decade, it will be more important than ever before to combat the reckless, backward nature of the fossil fuel sector. It may not be prudent to abandon previous strategies entirely, but further action in this arena will occur most easily if pro-divestment groups unite around a more specific methodology for reaching their goals.

Sung Sikyung: an ode to the Korean balladist

Haewon Han
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Sung Sikyung: an ode to the Korean balladist

I often get asked whether I listen to K-pop. Although I answer “yes,” I hate getting this question. In part this is because people often ask just to be sarcastic, as let’s be honest, the genre gets a lot of hate for its over-commercialisation. The other half who ask from a genuine enjoyment of K-pop are soon disappointed with my “no’s” to their follow up questions of: “Do you listen to x recent K-pop band?”. Rightly disappointed, they then go on to ask me “Well, who do you listen to?” I tell them: Sung Sikyung, Kyuhyun, Jo Sungmo, and other older K-pop bands; only to be told that my taste in music is “niche,” or even “hipster.”

At this point, I also get frustrated. Not because they don’t know of my favorite artists, but because they assume their knowledge of mainstream K-pop with is entirely representative of the diversity within the Korean music industry. If you asked anyone in Korea about these artists, you’ll find that everyone is bound (and yes, I do mean bound) to know of them; there is absolutely nothing ‘niche’ or ‘hipster’ about my taste in music.

After countless similar exchanges, I started to consider telling people, “No, I don’t listen to K-pop,” because I find the term K-pop itself to be unfair. K-pop has become a term to denote all music by Korean artists and producers. This means that for these artists, regardless of the style of music they create, their musical genre is defined by the mere fact that they’re Korean. ‘K-pop’ is short for ‘Korean popular music’ just as ‘pop’ is short for ‘popular music’. Therefore, just as pop only represents a subsection of western music, the same should go for K-pop.

I found it necessary to provide such a long introduction in order to do justice for my favorite musician, Sung Sikyung, a ballad singer that gets misattributed the K-pop label. The first time I listened to him was in 2009, when his biggest hit ‘On the Street(거리에서)’ started playing regularly, well…on the street. There was a serene and even heavenly quality to his voice that instantly got me hooked. Through Sikyung, I began to explore more ballad music, and the genre grew on me more and more. Five years later I was listening to essentially nothing else but a playlist of six ballad musicians: Sung Sikyung, Jo Sungmo, Kim Dongryul, Davichi, Kim Kwangseok,  and Kyuhyun. 

Needless to say, Sikyung remained the musician I listened to the most. Sikyung’s ‘노래가 되어’, amongst others, was a song that never failed to comfort me when I needed it most throughout struggles with my mental health. It’s a poignant song about how he himself has become a song to provide the listener with strength, support, and a shoulder to cry on. 

Over Christmas I had the opportunity to finally see Sikyung in concert, which meant a lot to me as I hadn’t had the chance to see him before. He opened with ‘바람, 그대,’ and from the very first word that he sang it was clear that even the latest recording technologies couldn’t fully capture the depth and the subtleties of his emotions, let alone the richness of his voice.

I was able to find so much comfort and consolation in hearing his singing live. Worries about finals and finding employment have been weighing on my mind; so listening to him sing was the perfect Christmas gift. It provided me with escapism, consolation, and a safe place: it was exactly what I needed.

To make the experience even more magical, the stage set-up, fireworks, house chorus and the orchestra were nothing short of perfect, complementing Sikyung’s voice in the best way possible. As a PPE student, I couldn’t help but conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the extravagant show that he put on. As a result, I felt as if he didn’t put this concert on for profit, but for the enjoyment of his fans like myself.

By writing this review, I hope that I have succeeded in introducing him to a new audience at Oxford, and furthermore I hope that this has been an adequate way of thanking Sikyung for his music and everything he has done for me over the last few years. I’d encourage everybody to listen to him, but most importantly follow him on Instagram @mayersung; he’s obsessed with it.

Review: The Gentlemen

Jack Allsopp
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Review: The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen has been described – somewhat euphemistically by critics – as a ‘guns and gangsters’ film. It has been perceived as an unsubtly orgiastic love-song to organised crime and its concomitant violence. This does a disservice to a film which in fact tries to grapple with the ambiguities and tensions of urban modernity. Far from revelling in a dated world of wheeler dealers, diamond geezers, and Mockney caricature, The Gentlemen depicts the delights and dangers of our present age. The film only has one character with a Cockney accent, and a relatively soft one at that, which in itself reflects the changing face of Britain’s capital city. 

Thus, on the face of it, it might appear surprising that class is absolutely central to The Gentlemen. Indeed, Ritchie initially titled the screenplay Toff Enough. Social status fundamentally shapes the film’s characters, from the pretentious faux-country squire accent which Matthew McConaughey’s protagonist Mickey Pearson doffs, to the pathetic drug-addict Laura Pressfield (Eliot Sumner), whose binges are financed by her aristocrat parents. Throughout, the fragility of high-status positions is exposed, and those with material, social and cultural capital mocked. Ritchie is trying to tell his audience that institutional privilege is clearly as relevant today as it’s ever been. Indeed, he includes a telling nod to Oxford as a breeding ground for pretentious junkies with more money than sense. 

There are further nods to the tensions of contemporary society. London’s knife crime is a recurring motif throughout. Yet Ritchie’s message is unambiguous: boys with knives are just that – boys.  They are young, inexperienced and ultimately frightened, using weapons as solutions to problems (often of their own making) without thinking through the consequences of their actions and are quickly overawed by truly genuine threats. Thus, when Colin Farrell’s Coach (a famed boxing instructor) wearily knocks the knives out of the hands two cocksure adolescents at a chicken shop, the message is clear: children carrying weapons, unsurprisingly, have no idea what they are doing. 

Coach is in some ways paradigmatic of British civic life at the turn of the decade. Fiercely protective of the boys he teaches to box, he shields them from the harm they would otherwise come to, given their troubled upbringings. Coach represents many ordinary 21st century Londoners in his unswerving devotion to providing support and stability to those who might otherwise have been discarded by Britain’s elite. Indeed, the state in all its forms (the police, judiciary, and so on) are tellingly absent. Perhaps Ritchie is suggesting something about the condition of Britain, ten years into austerity. 

If anything, The Gentlemen would have benefitted from more time spent in Coach’s gym, and less in the decadent splendour of country piles and chic London townhouses. Ritchie’s previous masterpieces – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), and Snatch (2000) – were so riveting in part because they focussed on the outsiders drawn into vast, sprawling criminal underworlds. Thus, the prosaic lives of petty thieves and crooks are blown apart by prospects of untold riches and unparalleled danger.  By homing in on the centre of a criminal maelstrom in The Gentlemen instead, Ritchie ups the material stakes but sacrifices some of the pathos he might have otherwise harnessed. 

The added problem here is that the weaving, swerving, interlocking plotlines for which Ritchie is usually renowned are not fully utilised in The Gentlemen. Plot twists can be seen coming before they are explicitly revealed, in the main because sparring business tycoons are more familiar to cinematic audiences than the intricacies involved in fixing boxing matches (Snatch) or petty armed robbery (Lock, Stock). The Gentlemen is about the centre of criminal empires, which is in some ways a shame, as Ritchie has aptly demonstrated in his earlier works that far more ambiguous and interesting dilemmas appear on the periphery of such worlds. 

Nevertheless, what The Gentlemen might lack in its narrative complexity it more than makes up for in its fleshed-out characters. Particular praise must be reserved for Hugh Grant’s ‘Fletcher’ and Michelle Dockery’s ‘Rosalind’. The former is a slimy, lisping investigative journalist who purrs and simpers as he tries to blackmail Raymond (Charlie Hunman), Mickey Pearson’s right-hand man. Hugh Grant is almost unrecognisable playing this sleezy tabloid writer, a far cry from his earlier years as Richard Curtis’s go-to cheesy heartthrob. Equally, Michelle Dockery, who rose to fame in Downton Abbey and has gone on to become a staple in British period dramas, takes on a new role to play a powerful and elegant businesswoman who exerts measured influence over her husband Mickey. 

On the whole, Ritchie deserves much praise for The Gentlemen. It’s a cool, cutting take on contemporary life, mixed with hefty doses of sharp dialogue, neat camerawork and bloody violence. It captures today’s zeitgeist, without feeling heavy-handed or preachy. So, although The Gentlemen may have plenty of guns, quippy one liners, and testosterone-fuelled punch-ups, it rises comfortably above the petty limits of its genre conventions. 

Orwell: a deserving modern hero

Melissa Hussain
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Orwell: a deserving modern hero

George Orwell should be declared a modern hero. The Etonian rebel was an interesting character, for he voluntarily subjected himself to poverty for many years between Paris and London. He eagerly wrote about his dreadful experiences, sprinkling his writing with stories of the British Empire, from Marrakech to Burma. He echoed the oppression of indigenous peoples, often subject to the brutal shortcomings of imperialism. As a result, Orwell’s books are woven into the fabric of British society. He pioneered a political dictionary of phrases, including ‘Doublethink’, ‘Big Brother’, ‘freedom is slavery’, and ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’. These phrases come from his written commentary of the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes across Europe. After fighting in the Spanish Civil War against fascism, Orwell took on the responsibility of educating his readers from the frontlines. 

As with many dystopian writers, Orwell made predictions that would come true several decades later. I once asked myself whether some political leaders used his infamous novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a political bible. Principally, he predicted that technology and economic growth would lead to powerful, oligarchic regimes with concentrated wealth. Orwell’s writing is readable and that is one of the greatest things about it. He unravels his complicated observations into enriching narratives.

I shall list, in no particular order, which essays and books I would recommend you read. This week marks seventy years since the prolific author’s death, but his work and attitudes continue to live on, and I am thus proud to present the following recommendations.  

A Hanging: an essay describing the tragedy of the abysmal justice system in Burma, an ensuing weakness of British colonial rule.

Why I Write: This essay is a lovely complement to Orwell’s other works. We directly hear from him and the burdens he felt as a writer. 

The Spike: Orwell talks of his experience at a miserly workhouse. Workhouses were places where the destitute of British society would go and work for free, in return for food and accommodation. 

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad: Orwell talks on the sublimity of nature and denies that it is a bourgeois exercise to seek pleasure from it.

Shooting an Elephant: Culture clashes can be traumatic, and this essay is an example of that. However, we are likely to take Orwell’s stance, because as the title suggests, this culture clash refers to the treatment of animals by officials.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: Perhaps you should start with Nineteen Eighty-Four, as Orwell offers a rich commentary of politics, economics and sociology, using an adventurous and heart-wrenching story.

Animal Farm:This novella can be read as a lovely bedtime story for children, but once you delve deeper, you will realise that Orwell has described the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Why the Poor Die: While this is self-explanatory, Orwell is able to create a very clear image of what poverty was like in his time, but the sentiments still remain universal. This is a crucial essay, if one wants to feel empathy for those in need. 

Politics and the English Language: Orwell gives the best tips on how to write well, with great context.

Pleasure Spots: Orwell talks about holidays. This is an insightful snippet of British culture, and how it has evolved.

All of the works I have suggested have major relevance today, even Pleasure Spots. The essay explains modern consumption habits and criticises mankind’s new methods of finding happiness.While I am not a political leader who uses Nineteen Eighty-Four as a bible, Orwell’s books have provided me with much guidance on not what to do. Moreover, he is more than his criticism of left-wing and right-wing politics: he teaches the importance of peace against power, freedom against slavery and love against hatred. It is no wonder why today’s writers still roar on about Orwellian warnings and why the world is not as bad as it might be. Seventy years on, we have Orwell to thank for that.

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