Monday, May 12, 2025
Blog Page 527

Is the Christmas vac actually the worst holiday of the year?

Jenna Colaco
-
0
Is the Christmas vac actually the worst holiday of the year?

In very simple terms, yes: the Christmas vacation is arguably the worst of the year. It is usually the shortest— 39 days this year. It may seem very long and to our friends at other universities or in employment, very generous, but is actually a period of great stress for many students. It comes after a very draining term, Michaelmas— always a hit to the system after a long summer. For freshers, this is probably the hardest term in general, trying to navigate the complexities and rigour of Oxford for the whole term only to pack up and go back home after spending eight weeks trying to settle in. However, now they are going back with the added burden of probably an overdraft, a heap of academic work, a temporary loss of all their new friends and newfound freedom and the impending pressure of collections. To top it all off, everyone wants to ask how university is going, how the course is, or how much you must love it all, when in reality sometimes you just want a mental break from it all.

The Christmas vacation is also expensive; whilst many may not have to pay for accommodation during these periods by moving out of college, the money spent trying to have a social life and visit all the friends and family members you haven’t seen in a while can quickly add up. Not to mention that a term at Oxford can be very expensive, probably using up most, if not all, of your student loan, especially if your family or partner has not been able to help financially support you. With this in mind, and the fact the next student loan installment won’t be until the start of next term, you might be taking on part-time work to try and build up your bank balance before next term. The stress of finances and academic work are hard enough without having to work shifts, a time consuming activity which some tutors do not understand is a necessity for some students. Not to mention that this takes so much out of the time you could spend relaxing with those dearest to you, or just having some uninterrupted time to yourself. With all of these pressures combined, the idea of gift-giving can feel more like a burden than a happy exchange, especially when the budget is tight.

The Christmas period in general, without all the revision and assignments, is one of the most isolating for people who do not have a consistent home life. We are constantly attacked by images of people huddled under a tree with an abundance of presents sitting underneath it. We are inundated with songs and films which depict happy families, lovers and magical white Christmasses. Unfortunately, the commercials sell dreams and not everyone has such a wonderful home to go to, or people to care for them. For some students, returning home may not be an option at Christmas, so while everyone else leaves Oxford, they remain in city devoid of so many of the people who make it home, all while being bombarded by images of the magical Christmas ideal that ignores the fact that it is a day that can feel very isolating. It is a day where transport stops and public buildings are closed so people are forced to accept that this is a time where society expects them to have someone, it can be lonely. Additionally, Oxford, like many other cities in the UK, has a massive homelessness problem, and though there are many organisations who work to bring warmth and festive joy to those in need, winter is the toughest time for those on the street, or those whose families struggle to afford heating or food over the holidays.

In many ways, Christmas is the most beautiful time of year, but for those of us lucky enough to have somewhere to go and people to share it with, let’s count our blessings whilst remembering and doing our best to help those we know who don’t have the same privilege.

Please note:

The Oxford Homelessness Project is running a Christmas meal and need donations and volunteers (they will be having a three course dinner, handing out gifts, playing music and board games!).

For students who are finding university difficult to afford the university has a fund which you can access regardless of household income, you should really consider applying, you deserve to have time to put into your education and wellbeing without the constant pressure of worrying you won’t have enough: https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/fees-funding/assistance/hardship/alf?wssl=1

Pantomime: does it still deserve a place on the modern theatrical scene? (Oh, yes it does!)

Joanne McNulty
-
0
Pantomime: does it still deserve a place on the modern theatrical scene? (Oh, yes it does!)

When asked what the most culturally and/or socially relevant genre of theatre is, few people would think to respond with ‘pantomime’ – but this Christmas staple is by far the most successful and ubiquitous form of theatre in the United Kingdom, and it’s only growing more popular. The 2019 season has seen the genre’s highest turnover so far at over £60m, and the season isn’t even over yet.  To the theatre critic, pantomime might come across as cheap and amateurish, but that’s hardly a reason to imply that it’s irrelevant. It’s pantomime’s very accessibility that makes it a fascinating opportunity to involve kids in theatre and engage wider audiences in an experience that might otherwise be unacceptably subversive.

It’s crucial to remember that pantomime, for many children, is their first ever experience of theatre – indeed, for many people, going to the pantomime as a child is their only experience of theatre. And kids love it! What makes pantomime so exciting for kids is its combination of the familiar (pop songs, familiar fairy tales, celebrities) and the ‘strange’ (men playing women and vice versa, incomprehensible jokes that the adults all seem to find funny for some reason, an actual live theatre performance!) The audience participation aspect of pantomime encourages children to engage with the show and effectively demonstrates to them the potential of live performance. Here you can interact with the story very differently to the way in which you engage with a TV show or film – if you’re very lucky, you might even be invited up on stage at the end. If you’re a child, the concept of screaming ‘It’s behind you!’ to the oblivious old dame is the height of comedy. It’s not high art, but there’s no reason why it should be – its primary audience is children, and if it doesn’t prioritize their entertainment, then something has gone wrong. Sending a child to (what they perceive as) a boring, overlong and pretentious production is a sure-fire way to put them off theatre for a long time. Of course, we shouldn’t settle for a situation where many children never have the opportunity to experience theatre beyond pantomime – but that’s the fault of chronic underfunding in the arts. And the experience of attending an exciting and engaging pantomime at Christmas time can potentially encourage a much deeper interest in the world of theatre and live performance.

Pantomime’s near-ubiquitous popularity also renders it a crucial source of income for many smaller theatres. In some cases, the ticket sales from the yearly pantomime alone can fund its entire repertoire for the following year – allowing them to take risks and put on important but less commercially-friendly shows, supporting local creatives and bringing more artistic theatre to people who would otherwise have to travel to big cities. The pantomime itself is also often a great opportunity to give local actors and creatives experience in working on a big show. This includes the children’s chorus, many of whom will be performing on stage for the first time in their lives. Pantomime’s enduring popularity arguably allows it to help sustain the entire British theatre industry, both by providing an economic bedrock and by introducing theatre to the audiences of tomorrow.

That said, pantomime is important as a genre in and of itself; it doesn’t just exist simply to support ‘real’, high theatre. It’s important to remember that pantomime has its roots in a subversive tradition. Gender-swapped casting is all but prescribed for many characters, allowing audiences to enjoy subversive and disruptive presentations whilst still being couched in the safety of ‘family-friendly Christmas entertainment’. This was even more revolutionary in Victorian times, the birthplace of the modern pantomime. The concept of the principal boy being played by a woman was not simply a case of gender subversion – it also allowed Victorian audiences to get a cheeky glimpse of the actresses’ shapely legs in breeches rather than covered by a long skirt.

Of course, pantomime has existed for over two centuries now, and has evolved little for most of them. What was once subversive can in some cases become positively conservative. Often this is highly dependent on the quality of the individual pantomime. The old dame, in the hands of a talented actor and writer, can become a delightful opportunity to relish in the aesthetics and comedy of high camp – or, in less capable hands, she can become a disappointing transphobic archetype. The ‘comedy’ becomes the old dame’s body – hilarious because it is that of a man – rather than her physical comedy and wordplay. Even the best-quality pantomimes rarely stray from tradition despite the interesting gender dynamics of the actors in pantomime; the panto ‘canon’ is limited to a stock selection of traditional fairy tales almost always revolving around a heterosexual love story.

However, the rules of pantomime, though generally upheld, are not set in stone. This year’s production of Cinderella at the Lyric Hammersmith, for example, saw Cinderella’s ‘ugly’ stepsister fall in love with a female Buttons, and the show has received rave reviews. The nature of pantomime’s gleeful subversiveness means that radical rule changes are more likely to be accepted than anyone trying to pull the genre towards a more conservative status quo – particularly because pantomime as a genre has a long tradition of poking fun at the status quo. Every year, right back to its origins in Victorian times, pantos have been updated with topical, often politically-charged jokes. While Bobby Davro cracking jokes at Prince Andrew’s expense in Woking is hardly going to set the world on fire, it’s still an example of speaking truth to power. Good pantomime revels in taking shots at the establishment. It’s no coincidence that many of the classic pantomime tales – Cinderella, Aladdin, Dick Whittington, and so on – are stories of plucky, Picaresque heroes making their way in the world pitted against authoritarian baddies. They reach the upper echelons of society in the end, but do so through their morality and pluck, whilst the villains are deservedly toppled from their position of power.

Some pantomimes, of course, still rely on lazy and reactionary humour; characters insulting other characters or the audience by implying that they’re from the ‘scummy’ neighbourhood of wherever the show is being performed is a particularly common trope. But not all pantomimes are created equal, and to denounce the entire genre because of the laziness of a few writers is nonsensical. When pantomime gets it right, it really gets it right, and it’s a genuine celebration of the subversive and radical that nevertheless still manages to successfully engage wide audiences. It’s a genre that we should feel deeply privileged to have.

Opinion – Authentically Insincere: the conflict between sincerity and authenticity in British Politics

Christian Edwards
-
0
Opinion – Authentically Insincere: the conflict between sincerity and authenticity in British Politics

After nine years of Tory rule, voters have looked at our country and said ‘yeah, this is good, more of the same.’

How did this happen? How could Labour not force the Conservatives, in all their mess and disgrace, out of government? The inquest into the collapse of the Labour Party will be long, conducted mainly on Twitter, and unhelpful. Momentum will blame anyone but Corbyn and the dream will live on. But now we must be honest: whatever Corbyn was selling, the British people did not want it. This is the first time in a century that an opposition has lost seats after being out of government for nine years. The fault must lie, above all else, within the opposition.

But there may be a deeper reason than all this for the Tory victory. This election confirmed one thing: the problem is not that politicians lied, the problem is that people don’t mind being lied to. Andrew Neil said if Boris Johnson had come on his show to be interviewed, he would have centred his questions on ‘trust’ – why ‘critics and even those close to him deem him untrustworthy’. But we may be thinking about trust in the wrong way. Johnson has made it clear throughout his career that he reneges on promises, argues for whatever betters himself, cannot be trusted. And yet people still place their trust in him with their votes.

Why? We might look to the South African writer J.M. Coetzee for an answer. Coetzee lived in England for a number of years, he knows the English well. In a 2015 book called The Good Story, a series of exchanges between Coetzee and the clinical psychologist Arabella Kurtz, Coetzee made a striking observation about the difference between authenticity and sincerity:

“I suspect that the word authentic came into wider usage precisely to capture what the word sincere fails to… If so, this in turn suggests that the phenomenon of the person who holds a belief in all sincerity yet is not committed heart and soul to that belief is of quite recent birth…

“Being authentic includes being able to lie and steal and cheat as long as you don’t pretend to yourself that you are not a liar and a thief and a cheat. As a society we cut a great deal of slack for ‘authentic’ characters of this kind. I have never seen why. The classic English novelists (Fielding, Dickens, for example) are often prepared to forgive immorality yet are dead set against hypocrisy, the pretence to virtue.”

Authenticity, for Coetzee, is about being ‘true to yourself’. Sincerity is simpler: it is more about telling the truth than acting in a way that is true to oneself. We could say ‘I am sincerely sorry for what I did’, meaning that we are really, truthfully sorry. But we wouldn’t say ‘I am authentically sorry for what I did’. Authenticity is not about telling the truth; it is about being one’s own truth, being the truth of one’s self.

This matters in modern British politics because politicians often lie, and so, we should think about what sort of lie we are being told. Is this politician lying about the facts (are they being insincere), or are they lying about themselves (are they being inauthentic)? Coetzee is right: in Britain we tolerate insincerity if it is authentic. What we can’t tolerate is inauthenticity. So, Dickens’ villain Fagin can lie and thieve and cheat and that’s okay – it’s authentic. But when a good guy does something bad, their goodness is shown to be inauthentic, and we begin to doubt their whole character.

Think back to the Conservative leadership campaign. Michael Gove was never going to win that election. But his campaign was utterly crushed by the allegations that he used to sit at home in his Chelsea flat after long days on Fleet Street and take cocaine. Any momentum he had was gone overnight. Why was this allegation so damaging?

Perhaps because Michael Gove presented himself as sincere. He styled himself – before the EU Referendum at least – as someone who cared, someone who would try to make a difference, someone conscientious. In short, he was not a Boris Johnson.

Maybe it was the bug-eyed incredulity, the slight over-pronouncement of the ever-trembling lower lip, the overarching sense of unease and even nervousness that made us believe him sincere. He never had the Johnsonian wink or Cameron’s smug grin. He always seemed like he was trying and falling short. And so, when the cocaine story broke, his sincerity was exposed as inauthentic. Gove wasn’t a good guy: he was getting coked up throughout his twenties. He was insincere – and, worse, inauthentically sincere. Any chance of his becoming party leader disappeared.

So why did the same not happen to Johnson? After Gove, every leadership candidate was asked what they had taken and when. How did Johnson deflect these questions? Quite simply, he lied – and, what’s more, people just didn’t care. When asked, Johnson denied taking the drug. But this was untrue. He previously admitted to taking the drug on numerous occasions: he told Piers Morgan in 2007 that he remembered taking cocaine ‘vividly’. And, really, of course he can. I find it absolutely inconceivable that Johnson has not taken cocaine at least once, and impressive that his septum has emerged unscathed.

It was only in 2015, perhaps with his premiership in sight, that Johnson started to retreat from his earlier confessions. On Have I Got News for You? he said: ‘I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose’ – the most ridiculous line since Clinton’s ‘I didn’t inhale’. Johnson absurdly claimed a scene of Annie Hall for his own and somehow got away with it. The evidence was there, staring at voters in the face: Boris Johnson, by his own admission, had taken cocaine, just like his fellow candidate Michael Gove. So why did this bare-faced, unflinching, shameless lying not derail his campaign too?

Because Johnson’s deceit, his cynicism, his all-round bad guy-ness, is authentic. We know he lies, we know he cheats. This is who he, in a dramatic sense, is. This is his character, his persona, and he has spent most of his life perfecting it to the point that it is authentic.

Three details from Andrew Gimson’s 2006 biography of Johnson tell us more about this ‘character’. First, his school reports, which have long been doing the rounds: “Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies… I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”

Second, an anecdote from a school play: Johnson didn’t bother to learn his lines, so he pinned them up around the stage, dashing between them as he tried to catch his next cue, much to the audience’s hilarity and the anger of his fellow actors. Everyone could see what he was doing, but nonetheless, they found the performance funny.

And third, his post in an Eton yearbook: a picture of himself with two scarves and a machine gun and a vow to make ‘more notches on my phallocratic phallus’. And there we have our prime minister: lover of self, lover of audience, lover of sex. It’s blatantly there for us to see, and this authenticity works in his favour.

How could the allegations that this man had merely taken cocaine have hurt someone like this? It could hurt Gove, who was meant to be sincere. It couldn’t hurt Johnson, who everyone knows to be insincere – authentically insincere. This is the problem: we know Johnson is a bad guy, but because he doesn’t pretend not to be, we simply don’t care. In fact, it is a huge source of his appeal.

Journalists of late have picked up on this trend. Matthew Parris’s column in last Saturday’s Times picks up on the authenticity phenomenon: “Everywhere I go among fellow voters I meet the same response. They know he’s a scoundrel, know he’s a cheat, know he’s a selfish careerist, and there’s no point in reminding them. But something about his rascality appeals.”

Parris continues: “He’s your virtual mate. Boris is Boris but he’s our Boris. ‘Ooh you are awful, but we like you.’ In the southern Africa of my youth there was a human type widely admired in Bantu culture and the admiration helps to explain some of Africa’s political problems. He’s called a tsotsi and he’s basically a petty thief, an Artful Dodger, but he’s flashy, he’s fun and he’s a winger. Johnson is a blond tsotsi.” Like Dickens’ Artful Dodger, he is authentic, it is all there in his persona. This is the thing that makes voters dismiss each successive scandal with a tut and a frown, but with a stifled giggle and an ‘Oh, Boris!’.

Think about what Johnson was up against. (Not much.) We can see how the authenticity problem might have affected his opponents. Swinson is meant to be young and progressive, yet voted for a number of austerity policies. Corbyn is meant to be against racism in all its forms, yet had a blind spot to antisemitism. It seems as though one could not shake the idea that these sincere beliefs held by Johnson’s opponents may have been inauthentic.

But isn’t there a sense of authenticity I’m missing? Surely Corbyn’s politics are authentic? Yes, absolutely. Corbyn is authentically old left in a way that Johnson will never be a politically authentic anything. There is much talk of how Johnson may now return to how he was as London Mayor, a One Nation Conservative, whatever that soupy term still means. But he may equally continue in his current vein of populist nationalism. Who can say? As Chris Patten warns us: “His principles are so flexible he could do almost anything.” Authenticity is a matter of character, which goes deeper than politics. Johnson’s authenticity comes from his commitment to himself, stronger than his commitment to any political idea.

If we think about the language used to describe leaders like Johnson and Trump, we see the importance of authenticity. Throughout the populist movements around the globe we recognise the same distrust of irony, the same desire for there to be no gap between appearance and reality. People like Johnson and Trump, who supposedly embody a ‘what you see is what you get’ persona. It’s all there in Coetzee: ‘Being authentic includes being able to lie and steal and cheat as long as you don’t pretend to yourself that you are not a liar and a thief and a cheat.’ Johnson and Trump don’t pretend to be otherwise and are being rewarded by voters.

So what do we do with a man who seems to have accessed this special place in the British consciousness, coinciding with the pockets of populism around the globe, who we have just given five more years of power? People say the media failed to hold Johnson accountable. This is undoubtedly true, but even those who do hold him to account find their efforts rather impotent. Peter Oborne, a Conservative voter all his life until recently, has created a dossier (boris-johnson-lies.com) in which he adds a new Johnson untruth every day.

And for what? How can this possibly hurt Johnson or persuade voters? People do not care about Johnson’s lies, perhaps because Johnson himself does not. It’s the shamelessness that the media don’t know how to confront. Andrew Neil’s call on Johnson to be interviewed on the theme of trust was masterful, but ultimately of no effect. Johnson simply said no, and faced no consequences because he showed no shame.

We may be about to learn the hard way. A former ally of his said: “The British people are going to have the same experience with Boris that everyone who has known him have understood. They will feel hugely let down.” Johnson may leave Britain looking like the pain-stricken face of Jennifer Arcuri – incredulous, stunned, betrayed.

Except it won’t be like that. There’ll be nothing personal in it, no sense of tragedy, no communal sense of being ‘had’. Enough people, for whatever reason, just don’t seem to care about being lied to anymore. ‘That was just Boris,’ they’ll say. The truth will not be like a smack across the face, as Arcuri must have felt when her calls were declined and she was left to howl into the wind. It will be slower, less painful than that. Like a dull ache, constant, not overpowering. There will be no national sense of outrage when it turns out this emperor was in fact naked all the time, for, as Johnson’s former editor Max Hastings said: “We can scarcely strip the emperor’s new clothes from a man who has built a career, or at least a lurid love life, out of strutting without them.” Johnson has been nakedly himself for his whole career. While his commitment to ideas, to policies, to people has wavered erratically, his commitment to himself has pertained authentically.

So the feeling won’t be shock, it won’t even be pain. Those who voted for Johnson know, at some level, what they have signed up for. He has been telling us who he is all along. The feeling will be more of having our tails forever between our legs, a sense of shame and embarrassment, as if we must apologise for what we let happen – a sense, at the root of all, that now we are no longer ruled by a serious person, it may be a while before we can once more call ourselves a serious country.

The Skywalker ‘Saga’

Ben Beese
-
0
The Skywalker ‘Saga’

The following article is Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoiler-free.

In the several weeks leading up to the release of the newest Star Wars film, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the term “Skywalker Saga” has spread across the internet. Star Wars has long been referred to as a ‘saga.’ There has been a special emphasis on this installment being its conclusion. The idea of Star Wars as a ‘saga’ in the original sense of the word, an Old Norse prose history, has not received nearly as much attention as it might. What makes Star Wars a saga? And what does the end of that saga say about our changing relationship with stories?

Surprisingly, ‘saga’ is not a term commonly applied to Star Wars’ most closely related contemporaries. The Avengers, perhaps the closest kin to Star Wars in terms of scale, is more commonly referred to as a “cinematic universe.” Although one sometimes speaks of the “wizarding world,” Harry Potter never seemed to land a descriptor equivalent to ‘saga’ even after the 2016 and 2018 Fantastic Beasts films. Star Trek, Star Wars’ classic rival, could be called a saga (as a quick internet search can prove) but this does not feel quite appropriate for the sprawling tendrils of that franchise. English speakers seem to prefer the term ‘epic’ for Lord of the Rings despite the direct influence which the original Norse sagas had on the content and style of that work. Perhaps this is a coincidence or quirk of popular culture, or perhaps there is something distinctly saga-like about Star Wars.

The term ‘saga’ most likely entered the English lexicon via 17th– and 18th-century scholars studying the sögur (sing. saga) of the Old Norse world. This category includes a wide range of stories from medieval Iceland and Norway. There are King’s Sagas, Saint’s Sagas, Legendary Sagas (in one medieval source referred to as ‘Lying Sagas’), Contemporary Sagas, and an ever-changing list of other sub-categories. Fundamentally, sagas are distinct from epic court poetry (although sagas often featured fragments of court poetry to support the prose narrative). It is most likely that the sagas were performed to groups for the entertainment of nobles and commoners alike. The term saga itself is related to the verb segja meaning “to say” or “to tell.” This suggests that they were preserved orally, sometimes for several centuries, before being written by historians in the 13th-century.

Interestingly, many of the sagas, the so-called “Sagas of the Icelanders,” star more-or-less regular Icelanders and Norwegians. Kings, saints, and other ‘important’ figures are relegated to supporting roles. Admittedly, these ‘regular’ people were, like Luke Skywalker or Frodo Baggins, taken on extraordinary journeys. In one story, for example, Auðen of the Westfjords journeys across Iceland and Norway, repeatedly losing all of his money, in order to gift his pet polar bear to the king of Denmark. Yet, with the exception of this bizarre mission, Auðen appears to be no more than a regular Icelander worried about his ailing mother.

Sagas frequently feature the supernatural. Shapeshifters, ghosts, and cursed rings are all elements to be found in the Norse sagas. In the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway, the King rests from his Christianizing mission to listen to stories told by the Norse god Oðinn, disguised as an old man.

These general qualities of sagas already hint at Star Wars-esque entertainment. They are popular stories told about a regular farmer from a desolate land who takes part in exceptional events that are tinged with hints of the supernatural. Of course, many stories follow a similar structure and are not called sagas. Let us consider a specific example to demonstrate how Star Wars, in particular, fits comfortably in the saga genre.

Take the classic saga of Egill, Skallagrim’s son. In it, Kveldulf (possibly a werewolf, certainly a supernatural berserker) and his son Skallagrim flee the conquering King Harold of Norway to become founding settlers of Iceland. Skallagrim’s son, Egill, is born and demonstrates an equally striking temper and level of physical and poetic prowess. By age three, he composes his first court poetry, a task requiring immense skill, out of spite for not being invited to a party. By age seven, he had murdered his first victim with an axe over a dispute in their play. By age 12, he was strong enough to beat most full-grown men in athletic competitions.

As a young adult, he insisted on joining his older brother on his travels across the North Atlantic. In his travels, Egill repeatedly worsens his family’s feud with the Norwegian King Eirik. He joins King Aethelstan of England’s army in a decisive defeat of the King of Scotland. He is later captured by ex-King Eirik, escaping execution via a wager regarding his poetic abilities. By the end of the saga, Egill lives into his old age, long enough to see one of his sons die in a shipwreck and the other become increasingly enmeshed in feuds over land and cattle.

Although lacking in some of the narrative focus that modern readers have become accustomed to, Egill’s Saga contains many of the same elements as Star Wars: narrow escapes, epic battles, political intrigue, cross-generational family conflict, supernatural lineages which provide the hero with exceptional abilities, and adventures which take one to diverse locations across the world. One can imagine replacing Kveldulf, Skallagrim, and Egill with Darth Vader, Luke, and Ben Skywalker and a similar story would emerge. In contrast, Star Trek and The Avengers tell the story of organizations that, although at times familial, lack the personal and multi-generational dynamics of such dynastic struggles.

Sagas are not only entertainment, but histories. If stories tell us about people to admire (or hate), histories tell us about ourselves. In the 13th-century contemporary sagas, Egill is confidently described as the ancestor of the Sturlungs, the family who included many of the most important figures of 12th– and 13th-century Icelandic history. Egill’s fame continued to have an impact on the identity of his family and Icelanders as a whole.

Similarly, Star Wars has always claimed to be history from “a long time ago…” While no one claims literal heritage to the Skywalker family, generations have grown up imaging themselves as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. This is a two-way relationship; Star Wars is linked to our generations’ concerns. Our parents’ Star Wars told the story of good triumphing over evil and the redemption of Darth Vader. This generation’s Star Wars, on the other hand, asks how one moves beyond the inheritance of the past. When the past failed to eliminate evil in our world, do we reject it? As Luke and Ben Skywalker suggested in 2017’s The Last Jedi, do we let the past die, killing it if we need to?

Although extended narratives, even sagas must come to an end. After 2018’s Solo: a Star Wars Story was released, Joshua Rothman wrote in The New Yorker that Star Wars was becoming a genre instead of a story, an aesthetic instead of a saga. With the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga this year, simultaneous with the launch of The Mandolorian television show and the promise of several other Star Wars projects to come, Rothaman’s prediction seems on the verge of coming true. This will create a Star Wars mainstream much more like The Avengers universe or, even, the complicated expanse of Star Trek. Of course, this may not be bad necessarily. But something is lost with the abandonment of the saga form. Sagas have always been stories to build a culture around. Our culture has grown around the Skywalkers. What will happen when Star Wars grows past them?

Oxford University receives €56 million grant

Trudy Ross
-
0
Oxford University receives €56 million grant

Oxford University has been awarded a grant of €56 million by the European Research Council (ERC). 

The winners of the ERC’s latest Consolidator Grants Competition were announced on 10 December, the funding for this being a part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Awards worth €600 million went to 301 outstanding researchers across 24 countries. Oxford University received nine new ERC Consolidator Grants, the most awarded to any institution in the UK and the second most in Europe.

ERC grants are highly esteemed across the European academic community, and are awarded solely on the basis of scientific excellence. The Council was created to encourage groundbreaking research of the highest possible quality in Europe.

Researchers of any nationality with 7 to 12 years of experience since completion of PhD, and with a promising scientific track record and excellent research proposal are eligible to apply for a Consolidator grant.  

Professor Patrick Grant, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research) and Vesuvius Chair of Materials at Oxford University said: “We are proud of the success of our early career researchers in this recent round of highly competitive ERC funding. The level of funding support we receive from the ERC speaks to the calibre of researchers we are able to attract and who bring considerable prestige to the University. Teaching and research excellence is at the core of our mission, and in which ERC awards continue to play a valued and central role.”

Controversy surrounds the allocation of ERC Grants as their policy of focusing purely on excellence means wealthier and more well resourced institutions reap the greatest benefits.

Institutions in countries like Germany, the UK, France and the Netherlands receive large amounts of funding from the ERC, prompting the question of how it can be possible for less economically developed countries to catch up academically to their richer counterparts.

Some grants were awarded to Europe’s less wealthy central and eastern countries. Zaroui Pogossian at the Central European University in Hungrary, for example, received an award to support her research on cultural interactions in the medieval Caucasus, Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia.

Yet, the success of Oxford and other wealthy, Western European institutions may be indicative of a larger political problem. 

Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, acknowledged the need to examine this issue, saying: “…it is so important that we reach an agreement on an ambitious Horizon Europe budget for the next multi-annual budget. More available research funding would also allow us to create more opportunities everywhere in the EU – excellence should not be a question of geography.”

Grantees at Oxford University include researchers from a variety of departments, including Physics, Chemistry, Anthropology, Music, Medicine and Earth Sciences, to name a few.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian from the Faculty of Music is looking at the topic of sound in cities, and how we can utilize the power of sound to build healthier, more inclusive, and more sustainable societies.

Dr Dace Dzenovska from the Department of Anthropology is researching the concept of ‘emptiness’ in relation to post-socialism villages and towns in the Latvian Russian borderlands, while Dr Sergi Padilla-Para from the Nuffield Department of Medicine is studying antibody responses to aid rational vaccine design for HIV.

UN climate talks fail to tackle crisis

Emily Passmore
-
0
UN climate talks fail to tackle crisis

Emily Passmore

This year’s round of UN climate talks has once again ended in disappointment, with UN member states merely acknowledging that current plans for cutting emissions are too weak to limit global heating to safe levels.

Held in the Spanish city of Madrid, COP25 was the 25th UN climate conference, bringing together representatives from over 190 countries. After a sweltering 2019 with temperatures of over forty-five degrees celsius in Paris, this year’s conference was the longest on record. Although nothing revolutionary was expected going into the talks, due to the technical focus of discussions, it was hoped that more ambitious carbon-cutting targets could be agreed. This would signal a continued commitment to the 2015 Paris Agreement and to taking real action to limit global heating.

The Paris Agreement aimed to limit global heating to at most 2 degrees, but ideally 1.5 degrees, above pre-industrial levels. Current commitments put us nowhere near this goal, but would rather result in three to five degrees of heating by the end of the century. Such a rise in temperature would inevitably lead to environmental catastrophe; at the current 0.8 degree increase in heating, climate disasters are already occurring at the rate of one disaster per week. As heating increases, these incidents will increase in both scope and scale.

Despite a widespread understanding of the scientific reality of climate change, few countries arrived at COP25 with revised plans. On the one hand, an optimistic coalition consisting of the EU and numerous smaller nations pushed for a resolution mandating stronger national targets to limit carbon emissions. On the other, the COP25 conference saw little cooperation from richer countries such as the US, Brazil and Australia – all countries with high stakes in the fossil fuel industry. The result was a weakly-worded and frankly cowardly resolution, recognising only an “urgent need” to update national climate pledges.

Albeit being the central focus of COP25, even the technical issues on which the conference was focused were left largely unresolved. The US bluntly refused to agree to a loss and damage resolution, which would recompensate developing nations bearing the brunt of climate breakdown. Meanwhile, both Brazil and Australia attempted to manipulate the workings of the carbon market, within which emission cuts are traded from nations exceeding their carbon-cutting targets to those failing to reach them, in order to falsely inflate their successes in carbon reduction. Both issues will, hopefully, be resolved at the next round of talks.

Yet, the lack of resolution resulting from COP25 has clearly exposed the shortfalls of the UN’s climate talks. The first shortfall manifests itself in the lack of trust between richer and poorer nations, due to a focus on short-term self-protection over long-term survival. As a consequence of the scale of the climate crisis, there is little incentive for countries to take massively radical action independently. Without the cooperation of other nations, such action would be economically damaging, without having any significant impact in reducing heating levels.

Secondly, there is still, within some richer countries, a significant disconnect with the scientific reality of climate change. This has been coherently exemplified by the presentation of low-ambition language on future targets by the Chilean leadership, amended to become more radical. This refusal to consider the sweeping change needed highlights the emptiness of much of the COP25 conference. Despite a two-day extension of talks, discussions were still mainly technical, distracting from the looming prospect of climate breakdown. One session spent 20 minutes arguing over whether to ‘adjourn’ or ‘close’ their meeting.

Such attitudes stand in stark contrast to that of the protestors outside the event, numbering 500,000 according to organisers. Approximately 500 of these protestors stormed the event on the final Wednesday, led by Indigenous leaders from a number of nations, whilst Greta Thunberg accused world leaders of “creative PR” rather than real action. The resolution was widely condemned by activists as a failure to realise the scale of the climate crisis. Think-tank 350, which focusses on increasing the use of renewable energy sources, described the disconnect between the COP25 resolution and what truly needs to be achieved in line with the Paris Agreement as “appalling”, with powerful polluters “keeping the rest of the planet hostage”. Power Shift Africa, a youth-based climate conference, condemned the “disastrous, profoundly distressing outcome” of the meetings.

With time running out, such weak conclusions pile pressure on next year’s COP26, hosted by the UK in Glasgow. The EU has committed to reaching net-zero carbon by 2050, and will undoubtedly pressure its allies to do the same. However, other major emitters have shown little willingness to match this target. There is hope an EU-China summit in Germany two months before COP26 could build enough trust to convince China to strengthen its climate commitments. Much also rides on the result of the 2020 US election; under Trump, the US will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, and his re-election would mean further intransigence. Meanwhile, Democratic primary candidates have all demonstrated complete openness to action on climate change, and would likely remain within the Paris Agreement.

Much also depends on the UK’s leadership. Five years on from the Paris Agreement, COP26 is expected to strengthen commitments to limiting global heating, yet COP25’s difficulties around co-operation will not disappear.  If the UK fails to reach its own carbon-cutting targets, it will have almost no leverage to bring about change. Although Boris Johnson has pledged £6bn to improve energy efficiency of homes, he has also vowed to expand air travel, one of the most polluting industries. Furthermore, a post-Brexit trade deal with the US would likely undercut EU environmental standards – although again, this will depend on the result of the US election.

Johnson will face a difficult task in any case; to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, the UN estimates that countries will need to increase their ambitions fivefold, cutting emissions by over 7% a year. Achieving this will require great diplomatic skill from all parties. However, polling shows the public is increasingly supportive of radical action, with seven-in-ten UK citizens wanting urgent climate change action. This may provide the necessary political pressure for COP26 to recommit to the Paris Agreement and prevent a descent into climate catastrophe.

Cambridge Dominate in Convincing 15-0 Men’s Varsity Win

Joe Hyland Deeson
-
0
Cambridge Dominate in Convincing 15-0 Men’s Varsity Win

A crowd of over 22,000 were at Twickenham on Thursday afternoon to watch a resounding Cambridge victory in the 138th Men’s Varsity Match. In miserable conditions, the Dark Blues had a turbulent time, spending long periods camped out around their own 22-metre line, and conceding tries to debutant and Man of the Match Fergus Jemphrey either side of half time. Oxford struggled to create chances, with a strong Cambridge line never truly broken, and a Chris Bell try in the final minutes of the match confirmed that the result of last year’s match would be reversed this time out.

The weather no doubt played a role, with almost constant rain leading to slow attacks and a clutch of handling errors for both sides. Significant too was the loss of Tom Humberstone, Oxford’s brightest spark, to injury before half time. There were also some weaknesses on the part of Cambrdige, several of their lineouts leading to changes in possession and brief openings for Oxford to attack, yet in truth the partnership of James Horwill and Flip van der Merwe in the Tabs’ second row, with nearly a century of international caps between them for Australia and South Africa respectively, proved insurmountable time and time again. It is sometimes true in games such as these that one team have the weight in the tackle and the other have the technique, but in this case Cambridge proved dominant in both factors.

After an uneventful first half, Oxford finally began to push for tries in the last 30 minutes, but too much of this match saw Cambridge patiently moving the ball across the pitch in the final third, with the Dark Blue threat largely smothered by superior tackling and passing which made the three converted tries which sealed victory inevitable.

This completed a successful day for the Light Blues, having already triumphed in a far more open women’s match earlier in the day. Oxford had led for much of the game through Jessica Abele’s well-worked first half try, and looked on course for victory until the 77th minute, when Saracens’ Corren Grant picked up the ball just inside her own half and made a weaving diagonal run, shrugging off several challenges to seal an 8-5 win for Cambridge.

The double victory at Twickenham means that Cambridge have now won 64 men’s Varsity matches to Oxford’s 60 since the first game in 1872, although the latter still lead in women’s victories with 19 to 14.

Review: Lucian Freud: the Self-Portraits

Clare St George
-
0
Review: Lucian Freud: the Self-Portraits

The Royal Academy’s current exhibition, Lucian Freud: The Self-portraits, is a bold and singular response to this century’s fascination with self-image. Lucian Freud’s artistic career predates the selfie-saturated 2010s, yet his work captures the obsession and volume with which we display ourselves today. As Nancy Durrant says, ‘it is the perfect show for an egomaniac’. By piecing together Freud’s self-portraits through the years, we witness a rare and striking event: the lifetime pursuit of an eye intent on viewing itself.

With a portfolio spanning nearly seven decades, the Royal Academy displays Freud’s work broadly chronologically. The exhibition begins with his teenage sketches, including the ‘Self-Portrait as Acteon’ (1949) – one of four drawings where Freud is drawn as a mythological stag. Turn around, and you see ‘Man with a Thistle’ (1946) and ‘Man with Hyacinth’ (1948), where Freud is composed alongside his plants. He attempts something of narrative in these earlier studies. There is the anxiety of how best to present oneself – one which endures throughout his life. As Freud admits, in a statement that might resonate with us all:

“I don’t accept the information that I get when I look at myself and that’s where the trouble starts.”

Freud felt early that he could never quite represent himself – that his style needed to develop as he did.  He writes in his only published piece, ‘Some Thoughts on Painting’ (1954),

“A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work… It is this great insufficiency that drives [the artist] on.”



This drive is clear throughout. As the exhibition continues, Freud visibly moves away from geometric frames towards looser compositions. In terms of tools, he switches to coarser hog’s hair brushes upon the advice of his close friend, Francis Bacon. Gone are the companions of flower, fruit, or feather; the subject alone remains. The same questions persist: who am I, why this moment, this angle?

His ‘Man’s Head’ series (1963) is three self-portraits painted in rapid succession. The triptych interrogates both physical and psychological structure as emotional immediacy takes priority. Freud measures his own face against his quickly developing mood and style; the challenging expressions are aimed at him as much as us.

In the same space, a smaller study, ‘Self-portrait with a Black Eye’ (1978) fights for attention. Freud’s forehead swells inside the frame; his skin bulges yellow and purple and the uncomfortable crop offers no relief. Freud is his own unbearable subject: he paints with a constant fascination and dissatisfaction with what he sees. The portrait’s magnification is arguably key to his process. In the ‘Thoughts’ he suggests that:

“The painter’s obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.”

This ‘obsession’ extended beyond Freud himself – into his other portraits and commissions – yet we always find glimpses of him in whatever – and whoever – he sees. Even as he paints others, there is a clue of brush in a mirror, the sight of a hand at work, or in the case of ‘Flora with Blue Toe Nails’ (2000), a shadow looming on a bedsheet. The exhibition reveals his deeply self-reflexive creative process – driven by an incessant questioning of how and why he should be painting. Flora is a fine example of this extensive obsession. She had to seek osteopathic treatment to recover from the months of modelling Freud put her through (something which he asked of many of his muses).

While he completed many commissions (from Kate Moss to Big Sue), Freud repeatedly returned to his own image. It becomes apparent, after walking through each section of the gallery, that the central theme of his work is reflection. This is made explicit by the fact he often painted with mirrors, dotted around his studio. Freud preferred them to photographs and enjoyed the surprise that new angles forced him into. Two meanings of reflection are at play here in his work: in the external tools he used and the internal moments he captured. ‘Interior with Hand Mirror’ (1967) and ‘Small Interior (Self-portrait)’ (1968) propose how reflective surfaces can create depth, how a perspective can be physical, temporal, and psychological. The mirror selfie, it would seem, has long been a popular mode. The tradition extends long before Kim Kardashian, back to Rembrandt, Kahlo, and now Freud.

“The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.”

In his later period, and the final stages of the exhibition, Freud’s reflections reach full maturity. The knotted, frayed, almost sedimentary surface of ‘Self-portrait, Reflection’ (2002) offers a frank depiction of the ageing process. In ‘Painter Working, Reflection’ (1993), Freud paints himself nude (for the first time) in his 70s. He is bare, save some unlaced boots, and scrutinising of every feature – calves, nose, genitals – paint palette and knife in hand. Freud meets his own image with ruthless honesty. His self-observations are never narcissistic, but always obsessive.

Throughout his life, Freud’s own image never left him. It was where he – like we – went to scrutinise and find the ‘trouble’ that occurs when we look at ourselves. The Royal Academy’s exhibition shows us one man anxiously at work, talking always of insufficiency. Yet we leave with a palpable sense of accomplishment: that Freud has earnestly given us something of himself.

I would recommend this exhibition to anyone in London with a few hours to spare. There is one month left to see it in person, and the RA are also broadcasting it on-screen from the 14th January.


https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/lucian-freud-self-portraits#articles

Review: Knives Out

Albert Sowerby-Davies
-
0
Review: Knives Out

British audiences know the whodunit genre well. The Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, wrote 66 murder mystery novels over the course of her prolific literary career and her two most famous detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, are undoubtedly amongst the first names in the hat at family games of charades across the country every holiday season.

This Christmas break, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson brings us the warmth of the living-room fireplace and the iciness of familial contempt in his modern American murder mystery, Knives Out.

The Thrombey family history is stained with grudges and secrets. Christopher Plummer is Harlan Thrombey, a white-bearded, rose-cheeked family patriarch with a twinkle in his eye. His best-selling crime novels have amassed a great fortune and afforded he and his family  the gorgeous Gothic-style mansion where most of the film takes place. The morning after his 85th birthday party, he is found dead in his bedroom, lying on his divan with his throat slit. 

Local police conclude it was a suicide. So, it falls to mysterious piano-playing detective Benoit Blanc (whose ancestry is an amusing mix of Belgian, American and British) to untangle the web of family grudges which led to Harlan’s death. When lawyer Frank Oz delivers the shocking news that Harlan’s inheritance is up for grabs, almost every one of his heirs proves themself to be as false, self-serving and greedy as those upper-class Americans who claim self-made success, hoard their millions, and vote for Trump. This is no coincidence. Johnson’s critique of social class in modern-day America is as razor sharp as the knife that killed Harlan. 

Rian Johnson’s efforts to make the film fresh and modern are welcome and the results well-crafted. Harlan’s crime novels, stored on his bookshelf, have colourful cheap mass-market sleeves; internet-speak is integrated into the dialogue in a not unnatural way; and characters (particularly the younger ones) clearly belong to a generation whose daily life is consumed by social media and screens. Consequently, Knives Out feels like a movie-in-time– the kind of film that reflects the world of today so accurately that it may not age well. 

That said, the timelessness of Knives Out comes from the impressive performances of its stellar ensemble cast. The casting is superb. We all know that Daniel Craig is great as a stone-faced super-spy (James Bond) and an efficient, tidy drug dealer (Layer Cake). But who knew that he was so gifted at dead-pan comedy? Alongside him Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan make a memorable duo as happy-go-lucky cops; Jamie Lee Curtis and Don Johnson play a husband and wife hilariously gritting their teeth through a marriage in tatters; Chris Evans curses his way to some laughs and emits a flirtatious air of masculine confidence that is both lovable and detestable; and Ana de Armas delivers an immensely likeable, and at times brilliantly vengeful, performance as Marta Cabrera, Harlan’s nurse.

The cast of Knives Out

Similar to the way Tarantino makes you laugh while wincing through the excitement of one of his movies, playful acting makes Knives Out not just a thrilling film but a funny one. The comedic moments of this film should be fawned over just as obsessively as its impressively water-tight plot is appreciated . You may leave the cinema prizing the mystery apart and puzzling over its intricacies, but you’ll be chuckling at Daniel Craig’s donut speech for days or even weeks on end.

The marriage of cool pop music (The Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia,” for example) and Nathan Johnson’s ominous score with the artful cinematography of Steve Yedlin ensures that Knives Out appeals on all fronts. Not least of these fronts, the costume design, led by Jenny Eagan, has been celebrated by the public and critics alike. Online sales of ‘Chris Evans’ sweater’ have gone through the roof and one independent Los Angeles cinema even hosted a sweaters-only Knives Out screening. The illustrated miniatures of each character in the final credits, which pay homage to the graphic design of Agatha Christie novels, are also a nice touch. 

With Knives Out, Rian Johnson seems to be making a statement about what his cinema is all about. His films subtly argue that there is something to be said for pure entertainment and the impermanent candy-cane sweetness of a commercial film. Knives Out is exactly that: a clever, funny picture with mass market appeal. It’s Hollywood done right– the cinematic equivalent of a Campbell’s Soup Can. 

* In UK cinemas since 29th November, Knives Out is currently clocking an impressive 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

How the Grinch Stole the Christmas Number One

Joanne McNulty
-
0
How the Grinch Stole the Christmas Number One

Many years ago, all the good girls and boys of the United Kingdom would get a special present from Santa every Christmas – a brand new Christmas number one. But then, the grinch stole this Christmas gift from the good boys and girls and gave them commercial, indistinguishable cover songs instead – ruining the magic of the Christmas number one forever. This, at least, seems to be the prevailing narrative to make sense of the declining importance of the Christmas number one. To some extent, it’s true. But reaching Christmas number one has never been a guarantee of longevity and posterity. Who can honestly say that they remember 1982’s Christmas number one ‘Save Your Love’ by Renee and Renato? ‘Lily the Pink’ by The Scaffold, anyone? Nor did the X Factor mark the death of quality music in the Christmas charts – at least not while 1994’s number one ‘Mr Blobby’ exists. What it did achieve, however, was to expose how insignificant the Christmas number one is in the first place.

From a realistic perspective, the only function of the Christmas number one should be as a fun piece of trivia or as the answer to a pub quiz question. It’s newsworthy, but it doesn’t tend to elicit more than a passing “oh, alright” or a “back in myday we had real music!”, depending on who you’re talking to. In reality, there’s no reason that reaching number one on Christmas Day should be any more momentous than reaching number one on the 16th April. Of course, the snag in this way of thinking is that the British public love Christmas, and so the weekly, relatively mundane event of the updating of the charts is suddenly imbued with a special kind of festive gravitas.

That said, you still most likely wouldn’t lose sleep over it. However, music industry executives have taken note of the public penchant for marking occasions and have turned the idea of the Christmas number one being somehow special into an effective marketing strategy. Whilst the Christmas novelty song has in itself always been somewhat of an exercise in cash-grabbing, the construction of a narrative about how massively important it is to get Christmas number one only encourages people even further to go out and spend their money. The ‘race’ to reach Christmas number one between Slade and Wizzard in 1974 undoubtedly helped to boost both of their sales, and East 17 were able to sustain the momentum of their number one by standing in some fake snow, despite ‘Stay Another Day’ having otherwise nothing to do with Christmas. 

On a slightly less cynical note, charity singles, too, are aided by the Christmas spirit of festive goodwill. Bob Geldof could have simply put out an appeal for donations to the Ethopian famine relief, but instead he chose to release an explicitly Christmas-themed charity single with a call to the public to make it reach Christmas number one. It ticked every box possible, and it remains the biggest-selling Christmas number one of all time.

In the 1990s, however, something seemed to happen. Producers realized the potential of novelty songs and suddenly ‘Mr Blobby’ and ‘Can We Fix It?’ joined the illustrious ranks of the Christmas number one, prompting brief outrage from fans of Real Music before they immediately stopped caring about it because it really doesn’t matter. The Noughties, however, took things to a new level; suddenly, the X Factor winners’ single was the Christmas number one four years in a row. It was no longer possible to ignore the amount of marketing manipulation that went into securing the X Factor number one. The fact that these songs were all covers was an even greater affront to fans of Real Music; it seemed as though people couldn’t possibly be buying these songs because they actually liked them, but because they felt as though they had to. It’s no coincidence that the refrain of ‘Killing in the Name’, the Rage Against the Machine song at the centre of the 2009 protest campaign, is “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” The irony of the campaign is not only was it in itself a coordinated campaign to get one specific song to number one, but that RATM’s label are a subsidiary of Sony – just like Syco, Cowell’s label. And the spell was not yet broken – there were three more X Factor Christmas number ones to follow.

With the dawn of the Spotify age, however, Cowell has completely lost his grip on the Christmas number one – because, as the organizers of the RATM campaign correctly pointed out, nobody actually listens to these songs, and the charts are now reflected by what people are streaming and thus actually listening to. This has also inadvertently created an increasingly closed-off canon of Christmas songs which get blasted on repeat every year, sitting uncomfortably in the December charts alongside business-as-usual pop. In the US, 2019’s Christmas number one is the classic ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, a song released 25 years ago. This kind of situation is becoming increasingly likely in the UK – as the Christmas canon becomes ever more entrenched, it’s become increasingly difficult to galvanize the public into accepting new Christmas songs – and especially streaming them in large enough numbers to even hope of reaching Christmas number one. The status quo means that the number one is now almost guaranteed to be a song that was already popular or a song that can somehow sell actual copies in very large numbers.

One genre does, however, benefit from this – the charity single. In this case, people are prepared to go out in their thousands and actually spend their money on one specific song, comforted by the knowledge that it’s all for a good cause. This does mean that these charity number ones bear less resemblance to what people are actually listening to; LadBaby’s sausage roll parodies won’t be appearing at the top of anybody’s Spotify Wrapped. However, if it means that the money is going into the pockets of The Trussell Trust rather than the already well-lined ones of music industry executives, then it is a small sacrifice to make.

1...526527528...2,493Page 527 of 2,493

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