Monday, May 12, 2025
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The Early Roots of Film

David Alexander
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The Early Roots of Film

The Parisians screamed. And it seemed a perfectly reasonable response. After all, packed into a musty early cinema, they had just witnessed the Lumière Brothers’ 1896 The Arrival of a Train, where the titular locomotive had screamed towards them with a shocking inexorableness that must have recalled the Montparnasse derailment of the previous year, when an inbound train had smashed through a Paris station and fallen front-first into the street below. How could the audience be sure it wouldn’t happen again? “Because this was a film” doesn’t mean much when film hadn’t existed before.

Even if this story is little more than urban legend, it points dramatically to a fundamental truth about cinema. Well before Dorothy was dreaming technicolour dreams of a world beyond Kansas, and far preceding any gimmicky fetishization of ‘3D’, there was the shock and awe generated by twodimensional, monochrome motion. Movement was the basis of film.

Photographer, romantic, and, in the words of the jury that acquitted him, sometime dabbler in “justifiable homicide”, Eadweard Muybridge took pictures of things in motion. He used the 1870s to advance knowledge of animal locomotion, most famously with his The Horse in Motion series, created in order to determine conclusively whether all four feet of a horse left the ground at the same time while it was running. It was in the 1880s, though, that he produced most of his work. Over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, to be precise: people going up and down staircases; dogs walking; horses drawing carriages; dancing; juggling; and, most famously, and most thrillingly, the flowing, arching and splashing of water being thrown (never seen in slow-motion before). Forget Edward Bellamy’s contemporary, utopian Looking Backward. Muybridge was giving us a real vision of the future. And just look how it moved.

While Muybridge continued churning out his stills, far away, in the crisp air and hard autumn sun of the high Victorian north of England, Louis Le Prince was producing his masterpiece. All two seconds of it. 1888’s Roundhay Garden Scene, believed to be the oldest surviving film in existence, is a ‘short’ film in the more extreme sense of the word, and it doesn’t have much of a plot. Four figures move – some walking, some surely dancing – around a garden in Leeds. Perhaps unexpectedly (and I love you, Leeds, but still), this northern suburb captures the ebullient essence of cinema. There’s an epilogue here which isn’t quite so happy or glorious. One of the dancers died ten days after being filmed, and Louis Le Prince would disappear in 1890, possibly having killed himself. But for those brief two seconds of footage, the prospect of permanent existence in the perpetual moment of movement creates what certainly looks like pure joy.

Let’s push on a little further. In 1903 Edwin S. Porter released The Great Train Robbery and included a finale shot to blow the Lumière Train right back out of the station. Innovative technically, the short film follows a fairly standard narrative (bandits rob train; receive comeuppance), until, right at the end, and unrelated to the preceding action, one bandit faces the camera directly and fires his revolver at the audience. The message is pretty clear: cinema is dangerous, because really, deep down, isn’t all its violence quite thrilling?

If watching a firearm blast off in our faces wasn’t traumatic enough (and recent Joker debates suggest we still aren’t quite used to it), then how would we manage with deeper cinematic evil? Władysław Starewicz’s 1913 The Night before Christmas introduced the Devil to cinema, and the first thing to notice was how he travelled around. Arched around his witch/ lover, he spends most of his time flying over snowy Russian hamlets, intermittently descending, hooves first, onto rooftops. Starewicz had used motion to astounding effect before, transforming dead insects into duelling lovers in 1912’s The Beautiful Leukanida. But here was something more intriguing yet. The Devil, biggest and most recurrent ‘villain’ in history, and for much of the cinema-going world (and certainly contemporary Russia) a lot more than just that, was being brought to life. That he was less a transcendental embodiment of pure evil, and more of a prancing and preening, scheming and screaming malcontent, was beside the point

Early film didn’t have the luxury of time. It didn’t really have the use of language or colour either. So, it made movement its raison d’être. A wise decision. Motion shocked and moved, thrilled and horrified audiences, and all four reactions were addictive.

The Farewell Review

Mattie O'Donovan
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The Farewell Review

Seemingly all of us either have or yearn for an affectionate but caustically witty grandmother such as Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), the endearing matriarch found at the centre of Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. Indeed, the film will make that painfully clear to its audience, for as will quickly become apparent, Nai Nai is terminally ill and unaware that she is dying. Her family in China have gone to great lengths to hide the truth from her, much to the consternation of American-grown granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina). A comically fabricated wedding sets the wheel in the motion for the extended family to return home one last time to say their goodbyes in every way but words.

Such an absurd premise would, with a less skilled hand at the helm, have suffered from a cloying soapiness. Thankfully Wang, whose personal experience serve as the basis of the story, has evaded this in favour of a script filled with personality and an assured trust in her cast’s chemistry to carry the day. Shuzhen’s performance is terrific; wondrously genial and protective of her kin, there is an often hard to swallow serving of dramatic irony in seeing her fuss over the health of her children and Billi. Her interactions with the wider ensemble cast vary between scenes of the utterly solemn to heart-warmingly silly- a particular favourite of the latter involves Nai Nai’s confusion at a stilted and awkward wedding photo-shoot, in which the prospective bride Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) struggles to appear intimate.

Memorable characters abound within the family circle, from Nai Nai’s oblivious live-in partner Mr Li to the younger cousin Bao, forever playing games on his phone. While certainly archetypes, there is a warm sense of the rank and file of the family, and a cultural sensitivity to familial dynamics that do not feel forced, but quietly earned. We are made to understand why certain relatives choose to maintain this lie, either to maintain harmony or out of a dutiful role to not scare Nai Nai. Through Billi’s perspective, we are afforded glimpses into what the family really feels throughout, often to poignant effect.

Speaking of Billi, it is refreshing to see Awkwafina, following on from her bit-roles in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, take a more central and realised role here. Billi’s wrestling with the lie underpins a wider thematic clash of eastern and western values about individualism and family ties. The film’s handling of this is mostly subtle and intelligible, though there are occasional lines of dialogue that are perhaps too on the nose.

Affecting and yet emotionally measured, The Farwell is the sort of intimate affair of film that, despite being about death and estrangement, manages to remain rewardingly charming. It would be a disservice to say that the film is carried dramatically by the novelty of its premise, but rather its observational wryness and the richness of excellently chosen cast. It certainly has excited me for Lulu Wang’s projects to come.

Comfort food of China

Sophia Zu
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Comfort food of China

When my parents and my older brother arrived at the Los Angeles airport in the spring of 1997, their worth became one-tenth of what it had been in China, thanks to the currency exchange. They lived in a basement. They had envisioned the United States to be a sprawling metropolis of lights and cars and Hollywood sparkle, so they were surprised by the sleepy silence of suburban California. In China, the concentrated buzz of cicadas matched the voices of vendors on the streets, yelling out prices for steaming bowls of tofu and rice. In America, talking too loudly at a restaurant or anywhere, really, earned you under-the-breath cursing and stares. 

For my mother, who grew up in the humid valleys of Chongqing, California’s dry air tortured her skin. She’d always been attracted to the melodrama of monotone—in college, she told me that her favourite activity was “listening to Simon and Garfunkel while watching the rain.” The constant sun, the golden oranges and the Californian glow grated on her sensibilities, it weathered away her spirit. Her opinion carries a great deal of weight in my family so my parents moved to Vancouver on a whim, hearing from neighbours and strangers that it was a beautiful part of the world. 

My parent’s immigration story and my love affair with food are one and the same. Before Ramen shops and Hot Pot joints began to crowd the Vancouver streets, my mother, craving the dance of the Szechuan peppercorn across her tongue, would drive 40 kilometers to the only restaurant in Vancouver that cooked mapo tofu the way she liked it—tender, hot, and excruciatingly spicy. There is nothing more painful than the desire for the food from your home. While others may crave their grandmother’s bouillabaisse or chicken marsala or clafoutis, my mother craved tripe and coagulated pig’s blood, swimming in chili peppers that dyed the tips of her chopsticks red.

Food has occupied a central position in my life since I was born. My family is Chinese, a culture whose fascination with the culinary arts has transcended eons—each city, village, hamlet specialize in dishes cultivated from the spices and crops native to their soil. As a child, my holidays were shrouded in a mist of freshly-blistered shishito peppers and steaming pork belly whose skin caramelized into an ear-shattering crisp when consumed. No food was too exotic; I loved pig ears crunchy with cartilage, the rich butteriness of bone marrow which seeped into garlic toast, and pig brains stewed in a broth of peppercorn and chilis served with sesame oil. Most of the dishes hailed from Chongqing, a large metropolis in the southwest of China, perched precariously over rolling mountains and lakes, and my mother’s hometown. Food was her love letter to us, a postcard of her childhood she painstakingly recreated, time and time again.

The defining feature of Chongqing cuisine is its colour—red. Nearly every dish sits atop a bed of red chili peppers, sautéed until bursting with fragrance. For a city so hot and humid, the food is even hotter and more steam-inducing. This summer, I travelled to China for the first time since I was ten. I drove out of the Chongqing for the annual Tomb-Sweeping festival, where we visit the graves of our ancestors, and as the smog gradually thinned into a wispy blue sky, colour began to re-enter the world in the form of sickly-green pastures, golden mud-choked rivers that reflected the glaring sun, and newly-formed, glowing-red mosquito bites. Under whispering bamboo trees, I ate and I wept, visiting distant family members whose lives could not have been more different from mine except for this wild addiction to a warm, burning pain lingering on the backs of our tongues.

Review: Lincoln College Hall

Hattie Blackman
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Review: Lincoln College Hall

Lincoln College likes very much to boast about its reputation for the best food in Oxford – something which had me, an unashamedly pretentious foodie, rather excited before my arrival. And they certainly seem eager to cultivate this reputation, strewing the menu liberally with ‘rissolés’ and ‘supremes’ of various cuts of meat. I am unable to comment on these quintessentially Lincoln dishes, being a vegetarian – and therefore, sadly overlooked, it seems, by the catering system, which require vegetarians to sign up for food when others don’t (disastrous, for a poor organiser like me). 

But perhaps it seems outdated to talk about vegetarianism – now, it would seem, a rather old-fashioned term, redolent of fusty dishes such as stuffed peppers (another Lincoln staple, although a surprisingly well-executed one in my experience. The same cannot be said for the mushroom vol-au-vents, another 70s vegetarian throwback wheeled out as one of a series of intensively mushroom-based dishes). It’s World Vegan Day this Friday: perhaps I should mention Lincoln’s vegan food. Well, to do so is to mention Lincoln’s vegetarian food – only substitute the prodigal amount of cheese for an equally prodigal amount of vegan ‘cheese’, which always seems slightly reluctant to melt, and lies sadly and lethargically on the surface of the dish (a quality of the stuff that has always seemed to me, perhaps prejudicially, as somewhat mimetic of the more uptight attitudes associated with a vegan diet). 

Don’t mistake this for bitching: I love cheese, even – almost – as much as the menu planners love cheese. And, as the stuffed peppers testify, some of the Lincoln dishes manage to come at least slightly closer to elegance than much food served in a canteen would. But the food here is a rather strange mixture of such aims at old-fashioned smart dinners, and some decidedly (but often wonderfully) lowbrow food: at the last formal I went to, I was served macaroni cheese with a side of sweet potato fries. Sinking a fork into the plateful of creamy, sweet, tangy stodge was an immensely comforting experience, if somewhat incongruous with the candlelit and oak-panelled setting. So, in summary, the Lincoln hall food is rather miscellaneous – sometimes seeming as though it suffers from a misguided self-consciousness about its own reputation (I’m looking at you, vol-au-vents). Often, too, though, I am reminded of why this reputation exists – just make sure you like (fake?) cheese. 

Who’s afraid of Derrida?

Lewis Roberts
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Who’s afraid of Derrida?

This article is a complaint to my academic discipline, English literature. It is, not to overstate the matter, one of my great loves, but it is fickle and frustrating, as are many such loves. Specifically, it is frustrating by its deep self-doubt and attendant reliance on the outdated and equally fickle subject of continental philosophy.

For those who are not acquainted with this issue, I am referring to the fact that when searching for evidence for their theses on literary texts, critics and scholars find themselves repeatedly quoting Derrida and Foucault and suchlike without redress to the fact that these thinkers have been superseded (at least in the UK and the US) by analytic theories. It is an interesting phenomenon, whereby we find esteemed practitioners of very modern and cutting-edge theories such as Trans Theory and Thing Theory, referring to Europeans of note (in the former case, Freud, and in the latter, Adorno) as if the similarity between their novel point and the existing continental philosophy somehow acts as proof.

Bertrand Russell, the Oxford philosopher often credited with developing the school of analytic philosophy which relies on exemplification and scientific analysis to discern philosophical ‘truths’, was reacting against the idealist school of thought pursued by Hegel, and in Britain, F.H. Bradley. It was at this moment that I believe the problem came for scholars of literature. At a very similar time to Russell’s railing against idealism (the 1910s and 1920s) literature turned towards it.

Gertrude Stein called the young writers left behind by the First World War ‘the Lost Generation’. An associate of hers, T.S. Eliot, who many (rightly, in my opinion) call one of the greatest poets to ever write, wrote his Harvard PhD thesis on F.H. Bradley and his ‘Doctrine of Experience’. That is to say, he found himself, found some solid base, in continental philosophy. Henri Bergson, whose philosophy of lived time (durée) versus measurable clock time (temps), is known by all respectable students of Eliot as a deep influence on The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Therefore, I posit, that without Eliot and this post-war flaneurism, we would not find academic books still relying on these same philosophers. Eliot and his circle set the academy on a route towards speculation and idealism instead of analytical thought.

One of my favourite academic texts is Patricia Parker’s masterful 1979 work Inescapable Romance, a study of Renaissance poetics. Her main thesis on the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser takes Derrida’s infamous concept of différance as an analogue to the expansiveness and dilation of Spenser’s writing. It is a fantastic thesis, which elucidates and clarifies Spenser’s poetics in a way that pierces to the core of Elizabethan thought. If you haven’t read it, I would recommend it heartily if you ever intend to understand Spenser’s Faery Queene.

So, reader, I am sure you are wondering why I am so outraged. Well, because it throws my subject into question. If so many of our most important contributors are guided by out-of-date schools of thought, what do we do?

My view is that the competition between, on the one hand, the anger we feel towards the Freuds and the Derridas of the world, and on the other, our wholehearted acceptance of them is what supports our discipline; it is, if you’ll excuse me, a dialectic. There is a significant amount of push and pull between allowing the discipline to be consumed by such abstract thought and rooting ourselves in an analytical stricture that we kid ourselves we always follow.

Indeed, the joy of studying literature comes from the coalition of art, in the literature itself, and science, in the analysis thereof. So my advice, dear reader, is go forth and pontificate. Read your Derrida as closely as you dare; try Althusser if you’re feeling lefty. These philosophies were constructed for their beauty and many are truly gorgeous. For all I know, you might even enjoy it.

Metamorphosis, Money, and Moldovan ice cream

Cora MacGregor
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Metamorphosis, Money, and Moldovan ice cream

It’s probably unsurprising that while The Guardian hails Ian McEwan’s latest novella as a “comic triumph”, it is dismissed by The Telegraph as “an over-stretched dinner-party joke”.

Consisting of just under a hundred pages of embittered, Kafka-esque allegory, in which the Brexit mania of the current Tory leadership is transformed into the pheromonal impulses of a cabinet of metamorphosed insects, it is near impossible to read The Cockroach apolitically.

The satirical bite gluts itself on the current theatre of Westminster and Europe, but at times it seems at risk of being poisoned by its subject. The evident urgency to publish the novella while still relevant is reflected in an occasional clumsiness of style – it lacks the easy eloquence which normally characterises McEwan’s writing. It hasn’t escaped the risks of such swift composition (references to events of the past month suggest the editing process was severely truncated) and the suspicion is that McEwan’s personal resentment at times displaces his control over the prose. A propensity for paragraphs constructed almost exclusively of short, tautologous exclamatives gives it the flavour of an angry and sometimes tedious tirade.

Beyond superficial lapses in style, however, the satire is impeccably managed. Cleverly rendered, yet imprecise parallels ensure there is sufficient distance for the humour to be effective: Brexit is replaced by a bizarre economic policy, Reversalism, the implementation of which will mean money flows backwards; the character correspondent with Boris Johnson is more a metamorphic amalgamation of the past three Conservative leaders. No doubt any allegory closer to the reality of the situation would be too depressing to be comic. Its lack of ambition is also refreshing: this satire isn’t trying to direct or change anybody’s attitude towards Brexit; it’s simply a sympathetic expression of the fury and frustration shared by many in the country.

It is shrewdly observant of all elements of the situation: one of its funniest moments is the “fierce debate on Moldovan ice cream”, an example of the many highly pressing concerns which the EU is kept from by the insolubility of the British problem. As in Nutshell, McEwan balances the apparent absurdity of the fictional conceit with piercingly accurate and often hilarious cultural references and insights: from the manipulation of the Me Too movement to mockery of politicians’ post-truth rhetoric. The Cockroach is limited, but it’s fully aware of that fact.

If you’re going to read it, do so soon, although frankly, unless you share McEwan’s sentiments on the matter, you’re unlikely to enjoy it. McEwan is derisive, if not unsympathetic towards his supposed detractors and he leaves little room in the text for an alternative viewpoint. The Cockroach doesn’t offer the sort of commentary or insight that allows some satires to endure. However, it is comic relief in the darkest sense. McEwan seems to recognise the futility of his satirical weapon, but uses it nonetheless, not so much wounding Brexiteers, but taking a stab at populism and comforting Remainers, with a sense of solidarity and a pantomime of resistance. To appropriate a comment from Atonement, written of a political climate almost unrecognisable today, The Cockroach’s subject is “the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

The Unscheduled Life of a History Student

Sofia Henderson
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The Unscheduled Life of a History Student

I round the corner. The door is in sight. I make awkward eye contact with the person coming the other way down the path and it takes approximately three tries for me to get through the barrier with my Bod card. It’s another day in my life as a History student: I’m in the Rad Cam.

Taking yourself on a study date to the library every single day is a staple in the life of a historian at Oxford. In fact, it might be the only staple. I’m a second year and this term I have two contact hours. One lecture, one tute. And they’re on the same day. It may seem like a dream, but the lack of contact hours we get as History students can make our degrees more difficult.

I can lay in until 10:30 if I want to, but starting the day off with literally nothing to do except read for the same essay you’ll be doing every day for the entire week is both daunting and demoralising.

Oxford is always intense, and balanced with hours upon hours of time spent by yourself reading books at a limited revolving selection of study spaces, the term is over before you know it and all you can remember from it is all the time you spent staring at the same pages over and over, hoping the words would just enter your brain.

Having this little contact time takes a toll on your mental health. Many students are already anxiety-ridden; this makes being left entirely to your own devices for eight weeks particularly difficult. There’s a reason why History students are often found panic-writing their essay after having an entire week to do it, and it’s not because we’re lazy.

It becomes easier than ever to isolate yourself. Your non-historian friends are out for most of the day getting the most out of the £9,250 a year they spend on their degree. Your day isn’t neatly arranged; there’s nothing to fit your lunch or snack breaks around and there’s nobody to encourage you to keep reading a little longer.

I knew before I came to Oxford that I’d be doing an essay or maybe two a week, and that, as History is more of an independent degree, most of my time would be spent reading. Still, I thought I’d have things to go to. Nobody tells you that you’ll only get one hour of academic interaction a week.

Of course, the tutorial system is unparalleled. In Trinity, I was lucky enough to be given one and a half hour long tutes, one-to-one. It was amazing to be able to focus so much on my individual work and I got so much out of such a personalised and focused approach. History, though, is about discussion, and I missed out on interacting with my peers in an academic setting.

History at Oxford is great because of just how much choice there is available to you from the beginning. An individualised approach can be greatly beneficial, especially when studying for more in-depth ‘optional’ or ‘further’ subject papers. Still, there must be a way to balance this.

Perhaps the History Faculty is struggling, but there is no doubt that Oxford has enough money to be able to provide their students with more contact time. We do already help fund STEM. Only recently has studying world history become a course requirement, and undergraduates still have to study one British history paper in first year and another in second year.

In comparison to other top universities, the selection is dismal. Sometimes, even European history papers fail to venture further than France. I love History and becoming a historian is constantly rewarding and fulfilling. However, I can’t help thinking History as an undergraduate degree has become an afterthought.

It may be what Oxford historians have done for centuries, but I can’t help but feel I could be doing a lot more academically with my time than spending hours freezing in the Rad Cam.

Novelty Music is Real Music

Megan Whitlock
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Novelty Music is Real Music

To call the summer of 2018 memorable would probably be an understatement: there was the heatwave, the subsequent hours spent in beer gardens, and, perhaps most significantly, the World Cup. For a couple of weeks, to venture out and not hear some rendition of ‘Three Lions’ was a rarity. The whole country appeared to have briefly suspended all anxieties about Brexit and climate change to group together and sing “football’s coming home.” It didn’t matter about your background (or even if you cared about football that much…), if ‘Three Lions’ cropped up on a night out, chances were that you were singing along. So, what is it about unconventional ‘novelty’ music that creates such a community spirit?

For chart-targeted music to be successful, it must resonate with a mass audience. It must be both palatable and marketable to consumers without losing any of its illusions of ‘raw’ and ‘real’ authenticity. The pressure to create a catchy song that encompasses all these qualities is exacerbated further by the motivations of the music industry. It may be cynical, but there is an undeniable expectation that big artists signed by big labels must make big money. The result is that much chart music runs the risk of losing its originality in its quest to follow the money-making formula. A generic love song is more likely to appeal to a wider audience than a song, for example, about being a “working man from Lancashire” and wanting a chippy tea.

The latter is, of course, the focus of popular Lancashire band The Lancashire Hotpots’ leading hit, ‘Chippy Tea.’ Sing the lyrics to anyone in Oxford and be braced to receive a few blank stares, yet in the Northern county the song graces festivals and football matches alike. So, what do ‘Three Lions’ and ‘Chippy Tea’ have in common? My guess would be less people’s predisposition to write these songs off as ‘novelty’ music, and more to do with the way they make us feel when we sing them.

The initial reaction when people discuss ‘novelty’ music is often, as Dickie from the Hotpots explained when I got in touch about this topic, to think of the negative connotations – “mention novelty music and you can already see people curling their noses.” There is an assumption that it is inherently less serious than chart songs and valued less than music we more commonly associate with ‘art.’ Yet, by definition, ‘novelty’ is not restricted to comedic connotations. Specifically, it is defined as something ‘new, original and unusual,’ all qualities that are perceived as valuable by wider society. If the music is new, original and unusual, then it also must be affecting listeners in new, original and unusual ways. There are hundreds upon thousands of famous love songs in the world, but only one that proudly describes the definition of a Lancashire ‘barmcake’; the Hotpots’ creation is both unique and clearly targeted at a more specific audience. Consequently, the effect of such local novelty music replicates the summer 2018 feeling of singing along to ‘Three Lions’ with a bunch of strangers in a pub (albeit on a much smaller scale). It creates a respite from generic chart hits and an original sense of identity for those who resonate with the song, allowing these people who understand to unite together, have a laugh and sing along.

The Lancashire Hotpots can be described as more of a folk band than anything, “documenting the lives and stories of people in a specific locale”. Though their songs have a comedic undertone to them, they are cleverly pieced together in such a way that provides those in-the-know with a specific local identity. It is this local identity and that songs trying to reach a wider consumer market just cannot manage to give. However, in times where people are experiencing increasing anxiety about the state of the world and political divisions threaten to isolate us, simple things such as having a communal identity to relate to and the ability to have a laugh have become increasingly important. We are a nation of storytellers, and telling the stories of real people in real places in a way people can understand – similar, as Dickie pointed out, to grime artists telling stories about life in the inner cities – is infinitely valuable in developing our personal culture and uniting our communities.

Whilst nobody is ever going to argue that the likes of ‘Three Lions’ and ‘Chippy Tea’ are in the same class as the masterpieces of Mozart or ballads of Beyoncé, this certainly isn’t because they are less valuable. Instead, they are incomparable; their value comes from them serving an entirely different purpose and, if the summer of 2018 is anything to go by, serving that purpose well. As for Lancashire lads and lasses, local bands such as The Lancashire Hotpots represent a piece of home and lift your spirits no matter where you are listening from. It may be sentimental, but nothing can quite top that.

Review: Kanye West – ‘Jesus is King’

Guy Brabbins
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Review: Kanye West – ‘Jesus is King’

It’s that time of the year again when Kanye West, armed with another batch of outrageous quotes (“God is using me to show off”) and the usual hubristic boasts (“I am unquestionably, undoubtedly, the greatest human artist of all time”), makes his inevitable return to the public eye. His ninth studio album, ‘Jesus is King,’ may plough a more restrained ground than the ‘bleached assholes’ and ‘black balls’ of prior releases, but he nevertheless remains the proverbial bull in the china shop that is celebrity culture; the problem is, he’s already broken everything there is to break, and so now is just left awkwardly galloping around, trying to keep all eyes on him, but ultimately failing, as we customers gradually begin to leave, bored, uninterested and tired. Oh, and the bull now makes really boring music, too. The ‘Yeezy season’ formula of spouting the ridiculous and doing the ‘unexpected’ has grown abysmally tedious, and the inclusion of Jesus doesn’t change this.

Now in all honesty, I’d rather not talk too much about the artist, focusing instead on his offering, but with Kanye, the two are so intimately yoked together, by his own design, that this is a nigh-on impossible feat. With that said, let’s boil down Kanye’s recent endeavours to this; he’s rediscovered Christ and missed a bunch of album release dates. Now it is not at all my intention to question Kanye’s faith, but after a turbulent 2018, which involved manic support for Donald Trump, claims that ‘slavery was a choice,’ and a very strange Twitter-published entry into philosophy, a Christian redemption arc was certainly not a bad move towards saving his public persona. At this point though, I find myself rather indifferent to Kanye. Despite his formidable ability to become, seemingly at will, the most famous person on the planet at any given time, it is quite telling that the most relevant thing he’s done during these last couple of years was piggybacking Lil Pump’s hype on the track ‘I Love It,’ created for the inaugural Pornhub Awards. Sad as it may be, Kanye’s powers are waning, and this may help explain his 2019. He has always been obsessed with and attracted to powerful people, be it Bill Gates, Walt Disney or Donald Trump, and whether intentional or not, one can’t help but see this reignited passion for Jesus to be a further example of this egomaniac aligning himself with power.

Last year, he could be forgiven for his tired antics, since he produced and released some excellent music – Pusha T’s ‘Daytona’ and his collaboration with Kid Cudi, ‘Kids See Ghosts’ saw him back near the peak of his powers. The same cannot be said for ‘Jesus is King.’ Although my excitement had been significantly dampened over the preceding weeks by the numerous missed release dates, I was nevertheless eager, on the eve of the Friday 25th October as I settled down in a window seat on the 853 bus back home to the Cotswolds, cosy and warm in spite of the angry wind and keen rain, to slip on my headphones and relish in the joys of a new Kanye album. It was not to be. Within ten minutes, I was fast asleep, head bobbing against the window as Kanye’s words strolled unnoticed through my unconscious mind. Now I concede that it had been a long week and that I was exhausted, but you can be damn sure that had I played ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ or ‘The College Dropout,’ (or pretty much any other Kanye album), I’d have been subtly grooving on that bus all the way back to Cheltenham. The bitter truth is simple; ‘Jesus is King’ is a highly forgettable project.

It begins with some very by-the-numbers gospel music, that, if not particularly interesting, does at least succeed as a reasonably captivating intro to the album. From second track, ‘Selah,’ it becomes evident that although ‘Jesus is King’ may appear to be, and in many ways is, an album in reverence of Christ, it is nevertheless also an album in reverence of Kanye. From implying that he is guaranteed a place in Heaven (“I ain’t gotta peak over [the gates]”) to comparing his recent criticism to the story of Noah (“Before the flood, people judge. They did the same thing to Noah”) and finally to the admittedly very funny mispronunciation of the KJV translation of John 8:33, “Ye should be made free” to sound like his own nickname, there should be no doubt that Christianity serves as a fitting veil for Kanye’s evergreen ego. This is a shame. Oddly, one of his most endearing character traits used to be this ferocious self-confidence, but when it’s being thus disguised, it no longer carries the same impact. Musically the track is laden with interesting ideas, including a momentous organ intro, primal drums reminiscent of ‘Yeezus,’ and a spirited outro of chopped up shouts and whoops, but nothing comes together in a cohesive way; it is simply one rather cool idea after another and this is no guarantee of a good song. The terrible mixing of Kanye’s vocals certainly doesn’t help.

The third track ‘Follow God’ is by far (really very far) the best song on the album. It sees Kanye return to his signature production style, chopping up old samples to create a steady, easy-going rhythm that is extremely pleasant on the ears. It has an obvious impact on Kanye too, who is clearly more comfortable rapping on this sort of beat. His flow, so often jilted and awkward on this album, is here natural and smooth. It is no secret that Kanye’s ability as an emcee has been on a gradual decline, so it is always pleasing to see him come through with a verse of legitimate talent. Beyond this, though, it is hard to find a single other verse – be it rapped or sung – that is worth a listen; though difficult to believe now, there was a time when it was just as hard to find a verse of his that wasn’t worth a listen. The lyrical content on the track, though hardly exceptional, is also the pick of the bunch here. It sees Kanye arguing with his dad about what it is to be ‘Christ-like.’ Now there’s nothing resembling conclusion, nor are any points of genuine interest made, but it does at least show that Kanye is considering Christianity beyond the utterly superficial. The rest of the album, though, where religion is concerned, resembles nothing more than a billboard on a Louisiana highway advertising the local Christian community.

The amount of times Kanye says anything pertaining to Christianity of real profundity can be counted on one hand. What we do get is standard doctrine (“Follow Jesus, listen and obey”), corny jokes (“When I thought the Book of Job was a job”), and empty confessions, (“The Devil had my soul, I can’t lie”), all of which I could get from going to church, but with myriad times more interpretation, humour and depth. I’ve heard countless sermons more exciting than what Kanye offers here, which is hugely disappointing, especially given his knack for genuinely affecting self-evaluation in past releases (see ‘All Falls Down’ or ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’). Totally absent is any inquiry into Kanye’s rediscovered faith, or anything that would genuinely work towards persuading others to convert (a goal for which he himself has said he is striving).

Unfortunately, the odd musical flourish cannot save ‘Jesus is King’ from becoming a disgustingly long 27 minutes. Even the aforementioned ‘Follow God’ is directionless, and this half-baked approach is even more present throughout the rest of the album. ‘Closed on Sunday’ quickly engages the listener with a very dramatic opening of creeping acoustic guitars and moody choral hums, but devolves just as rapidly into farce with the aggressively stupid refrain, “Closed on Sunday, you’re my Chick-fil-A.” How are we supposed to take Kanye seriously? ‘On God’ comes next, decked out in an annoying synth line and laboured singing. To think something so dull could end up on a Kanye West album would have been unfathomable just half a decade ago. And it is this dullness that wins the day in the end. ‘Everything We Need’ ambles along without leaving so much as a dent of intrigue. ‘Water’ rivals its namesake more in blandness than in purity, and even Kanye sounds a bit worn out with the whole Jesus thing in his central refrain. ‘God Is’ proves to be a decent little ballad, ruined completely by Kanye’s rather awful singing – and this is coming from someone who is usually a big fan of his sung verses.

Were it not for Kanye’s moans about how he’s not been readily accepted into the Christian community, ‘Hands On’ would be equally forgettable. Intent on being a victim, he begrudges “What have you been hearin’ from the Christians? They’ll be the first ones to judge me.” But did Kanye seriously expect to be welcomed into the community with open arms after previously proclaiming himself a god on the track “I am a god (feat. God)” and spending years spitting in the face of the vast majority of the Ten Commandments? Even if we forget about everything in the past (since Christianity is, after all, founded on forgiveness), he is still radically hypocritical in his practice. While being absurdly dogmatic, to the point of hilarity in some respects (banning everyone working on his album from having pre-marital sex and keeping a daily scorecard for whenever he curses), he is still the antithesis of humility in a religion that preaches being low and humble. Similarly, he has spent the last few weeks boasting about his $68 million tax refunds, rejoicing in his ignorance of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 19:24 that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It is such contradictions that Kanye would typically revel in exploring through his music, and would make for fascinating content, but now they just serve to remove credibility from the man.

An excellent Clipse feature and Kenny G saxophone solo in ‘Use This Gospel’ prevent the record from crashing and burning, but one can’t help but feel the former has been sold short in their grand reunion, while the latter has just been tacked on the end of the song, because why not? Clipse especially deserve better than this; Pusha T has consistently been Kanye’s best featured artist ever since his show-stealing appearances on ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,’ while No Malice delivers the best verse of the album here, displaying his internal conflict of being a man of God, while also having brought such great damage to people’s lives through his past actions.

The final song ends abruptly, in one last awkward stab to finish off this long-suffering album. Kanye has managed to pull off the remarkable in making an unreservedly soulless gospel record. Considering the theme, it’s very cold and almost heartless, lacking any semblance of emotional pay-off. Lethargic and spineless, it eventually drags itself to completion. I do still have faith in Kanye West – if there’s one person you can never count out, it is he – but I can’t help but feel bitterly let down by this. His rampant egoism no longer holds much weight as Kanye here takes another kick at his own legacy. Jesus may be king, but Kanye is distinctly average. 1.5/5

Boyfriend vs. Genghis Khan

William McCathie
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Boyfriend vs. Genghis Khan

Back in February of this year, Ariana Grande seemed on top of the world, or at least the music industry. With the release of an album carrying two back-to-back Billboard number one singles that were followed by another that reached number two, it seemed as if no other star in the music industry could possibly shine brighter. A critical as well as commercial success, Thank U, Next managed to significantly evolve her musical style towards more hip-hop influenced production, all less than a year after the release of Sweetener. And yet Grande hasn’t been able to touch those heights since. The two singles after the album, both collaborations, went nowhere, the third, ‘boyfriend’, barely cracked the Billboard Hot 100, and the mess that was ‘Don’t Call Me Angel’ was rightly panned and shunned from the top 10. For an artist who seemed so utterly dominant, these have been very poor commercial responses.

So, what happened? The answer, I think, can best be seen in her most successful post-Thank U, Next song, ‘boyfriend’.  Listening to the song I was immediately reminded of another song, not of Grande’s but of the trio Miike Snow, more specifically their 2015 single ‘Genghis Khan’. Like ‘boyfriend’, the song deals with a speaker whose jealousy makes them want to stop a lover from seeing other people, despite their relationship still being non-committal. I will admit that perhaps my love of ‘Genghis Khan’ has led me to draw a link where others would see only wisps, but I still think we can learn a great deal about the underperformance of ‘boyfriend’ by comparison of which song does what better, if only as part of a transparent exercise to get you to add ‘Genghis Khan’ to your music library.

Certainly, on the visual style of things, ‘Genghis Khan’ has ‘boyfriend’ beat. That’s not to say ‘boyfriend’ has poor quality in its music video and cover art – in fact, the over-the-top ‘imagination’ sequences to show off the jealousy of both partners is quite entertaining and original, but it is all pulled off in the same old Hannah Lux Davis-style tongue-in-cheek shiny and somewhat silly production. It’s the same colour palette we were treated to with Thank U, Next’s videos, the same abundance of slow motion, the whole thing ends up appearing quickly prepared, and treats us to only a single location for the whole video that serves little purpose other than looking mildly interesting. Grande’ style evolved into Thank U, Next, but now appears to stagnate. Genghis Khan, on the other hand, gives us a brilliant homage to classic bond films, complete with massive laser, armies of henchmen and an extremely well-matched visual aesthetic. The video is so good, in fact, I would urge you to watch it purely on its own merits, even if you are not sold on the song.

The modern music industry may be dominated by visual style, but it certainly isn’t everything – and on the topic of the music itself ‘Genghis Khan’ has a few more things to offer as exemplary practices. In terms of vocal skill, Wyatt is nowhere near Grande, which becomes painfully obvious when watching any of Miike Snow’s live performances. Despite this, he manages to inject significant energy and feeling into ‘Genghis Khan’, which are two elements sadly lacking from ‘boyfriend’. Grande sounds a little too comfortable, a little too bored, and Social House add very little from their feature. Defenders of ‘boyfriend’ may have some recourse in the lyrical domain, however. Whilst the line “I get a little bit Genghis Khan” may be interesting and catching, the metaphor is tenuous at best and downright confusing at worst, and I must admit seems a little like shoehorning in order to give the song a more memorable hook line and title. Grande’s song may be repetitive, but uses its lyrics well to fit in with the mood and vibe of the song, and conjures up some fairly decent imagery at times. It may be a little vague to enable listeners to easily slot themselves into the narrative of the song, but such an accusation can easily be levelled at both songs as much as each other. On the production side of things, the drums roll ‘Genghis Khan’ forward with infectious energy, and though the tuned elements may be limited to a piano and bass, the whole production fits together rather excellently. ‘boyfriend’ seems to more subscribe to a modern trend of ‘chill’ music, but admittedly does this rather well. The production elements are altogether not a departure from Thank U, Next in any way, but are nicely refined and provide for a satisfying experience, especially in the chorus.

I think it inevitable that Grande will return to the top 10 of the Billboard charts. She may not have had her usual level of success from her post-Thank U, Next singles, but the album is not even a year old, and she remains an enormous presence in the industry, backed up by extremely competent producers and writers. So, whilst her most recent efforts may not have been par with her best work, at least you can enjoy the top-notch production of ‘Genghis Khan’, which may be four years old, but likely new to many. After all, it may have one to two exemplary elements to be learnt from.

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