Monday 28th July 2025
Blog Page 545

Petition launched to protect UK’s role in Erasmus

Trudy Ross
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Petition launched to protect UK’s role in Erasmus

A petition to put pressure on the government to protect the UK’s role in the EU’s Erasmus scheme has received over 26,000 signatures. 

MPs voted against the Liberal Democrats’ amendment to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which would have required the government to negotiate full membership to the EU’s Erasmus+ education and youth programme.

The vote has caused a backlash among the British public, and many are sharing the petition or expressing their outrage on social media pages.

Among the individuals to assert her opposition to the government’s decision is Dr Anna K. Bobak, a fellow at Stirling University, who tweeted: “Apparently continuing Erasmus is not a priority for the British Government after Brexit. Fostering student exchange, cultural diversity, and widening horizons are not important enough. Erasmus is not just a ‘gap year’, it’s an enormous learning opportunity.”

Erasmus (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) is an EU-funded programme which organises student exchanges across the continent. Exchanges enable students to either study part of their degree or undertake a work placement in another European country.

Since students are given funding for living costs by the programme and are not required to pay tuition fees for their overseas studies, individuals from a range of backgrounds are given the opportunity to develop the key life skills which come from living and working abroad. Funding support is also available for students with physical, mental, or health-related conditions.

Layla Moran, the Oxford MP who pushed the amendment, said of the programme: “The EU has achieved something our parents could only dream of: making studying abroad fashionable and affordable.

“The benefits are huge: learning a new language, picking up skills and work experience, building lifelong friendships and providing a huge boost to your confidence and independence. Without Erasmus, the opportunity to study abroad is only available to a select few.”

Oxford is one of the many UK institutions which makes use of Erasmus to support their own students while studying abroad, as well as receiving a number of incoming students from across Europe. 

The petition is sponsored by Scram News and can be found on the Action Network website at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/save-erasmus.

Review: Frozen 2

Jemima Sinclair
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Review: Frozen 2

It’s not every day that Disney releases a sequel to a ‘Princess’ film. I approached Frozen 2 already resigned to the fact that this sequel could never live up to Frozen, and sure that the inevitable lack of substance I’d encounter would be the result of a money-driven, panicked studio trying its hardest to capitalize on one of its biggest franchises ever. To my surprise, this film instead comes across as a good effort at a plausible and engaging continuation of the original story. I, and parents everywhere, breathed a sigh of relief.

This film achieves many true successes: the songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez are catchy and well-written (if not as memorable as the first film’s), the jokes are often surprisingly funny, the emotional tone of the film comes across as genuine, the autumnal colours are refreshingly muted, and the animation, from the depiction of water to the stitching on the costumes, is notably gorgeous. The interaction between Elsa (Idina Menzel) and the water-horse, in particular, is stunning. However, it’s not all good news: the plot moves from an understandable emphasis on discovering the origin of Elsa’s powers to a rambling and unfulfilling meander of a story with too many characters and an oddly shoe-horned pseudo-colonialist storyline. 

The plot begins, after a flashback to Anna and Elsa’s childhood, with a newly philosophising Olaf discussing the nature of change with Anna, and a fourth-wall-breaking self-aware acknowledgement of the passing of time through the catchy ‘Some Things Never Change’. The cosy charades-playing family dynamic of Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf is cut short by Elsa hearing a mystical call to adventure. Her following song, ‘Into the Unknown,’ doesn’t match the explosive magic of ‘Let it Go,, but it does, along with the later ‘Show Yourself,’  make a decent effort at capturing similarly powerful emotion in typical theatrical style. 

Following an elemental attack on Arendelle, the main characters journey into the magical forest for an unfocused but charming adventure. High points include:  Kristoff’s surprisingly hilarious song and refreshingly gentle masculinity, as manifested in his repeated proposal attempts, and also, in contrast, the standout emotional rawness of Anna’s song, ‘The Next Right Thing,’ which is aided by an impressive performance from Kristen Bell. This song and Olaf’s played-for-laughs existential crisis throughout the film give Frozen 2 an  increased sense of emotional maturity that is both a welcome change from the original and also speaks  well to the growth of Frozen’s original audience, which it found a whole six years ago. This maturity, paired with Olaf’s show-stoppingly funny rundown of the entirety of the previous film, does a good job asserting this film as a fresh and relevant continuation of the original story that does just enough to leave the past Frozen behind.

Despite this, the focus on the characters’ pasts is disconcerting; the almost worshipful focus on Elsa and Anna’s parents (after their controlling and abusive role in the original) doesn’t ring true, and, without giving too many spoilers, the plot twist surrounding the sisters’ mother was embarrassingly badly handled. Most intriguing was the addition of a political subplot regarding the sisters’ ancestors and their personification as treacherous colonisers of the forest’s indigenous people; this topic is oddly and unfortunately skated over, leaving audiences with the sense that it either should have been further developed or instead cut out entirely. The finale itself is similarly disappointing. Without giving too much away, I will say that the film’s last ten minutes gave the unfortunate impression of a studio with too many ideas and too little focus.

On the other hand, the lack of a traditional Disney villain works well in this film – it seems fitting for this era that the demons these characters are facing are their own. It’s also a relief to find that Elsa is not given an unnecessary love interest, though in the wake of the Twitter-famous demand to ‘#giveelsaagirlfriend,’ it’s remarkable  that this film was able to both reject the idea of a romantic storyline for her and also leave the subject of Elsa’s romance open to interpretation by way of the final act’s open-endedness. To focus instead on Elsa’s journey of self-discovery seems to speak to our current era, and the deeper dive into the relational dynamic between sisters results in a story with even more relatable themes and more sensitive portrayals of emotions than those seen in the original. 

Despite its unsatisfying storyline, Frozen 2 represents some of Disney’s best work in its beautiful animation, engaging characters, and universal appeal –  it’s a far cry from the cash-grabbing mess it could have been. 

100 Years of Sexism in the United Nations

Izzy Tod
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100 Years of Sexism in the United Nations

This week marks 100 years since the League of Nations, parent to the United Nations, was founded at the 1920 Paris Peace Conference. The week also marks 100 years of women being overlooked, harassed and even abused by an organisation that is supposed to protect them.

The League of Nations was created in order to bring about world peace through international collaboration in the aftermath of the First World War. With the second outbreak of war in 1939, the League (having failed in their most salient objective) was dissolved, to be replaced by the United Nations in 1945. The UN was a new and improved intergovernmental organisation that had a renewed commitment to global peace, that had learned from the failures of its predecessor, and that was empowered to tackle the problems of the late 20th century with gumption, idealism, and cooperation. The picture is a rosy one. But where do women fit in?

In the early days of the League of Nations, women at the Inter-Allied Women’s Conference were granted a small platform upon which they could lobby on matters relating directly to women and children, such as child trafficking and labour regulations. Sir Eric Drumond, the League’s first Secretary-General, stated: ‘I have always told anyone who asked me that I felt the more help we could receive from women the better’. This sentiment was translated into the League’s charter, which permitted women to work for the League in all capacities and to be treated equally in terms of hiring, promotions, and dismissals – an immensely progressive target at the time. As of 1925, there were 245 women working for the League. Whilst they were predominantly employed as secretaries and assistants, the League of Nations was not off to a bad start. 

When the turn came for the United Nations 25 years later, the status of women in the organisation once again became a point of contention. Of the 850 delegates who signed the first official charter of the United Nations at the San Francisco conference in 1945, only 4 were women. This would come as a huge disappointment for those who had been encouraged by the egalitarian promise of the League of Nations. Although this figure is underwhelming, SOAS University of London carried out a study into the unrecognised contributions of Latin American women at the foundation of the UN. Bertha Lutz, a Brazilian advocate for women’s rights, fought tirelessly alongside other female delegates from the Global South for the phrase ‘equal rights of men and women’ to be included in the preamble to the UN charter. Without this addition, the UN would have been left without a mandate to protect women’s rights. Unfortunately, this was a battle they fought without the support of other female delegates from Western Nations: the British representative Ellen Wilkinson argued that equality had already been reached, proven by her own high-ranking position in international politics, and the American delegate, Virginia Gildersleeve, is quoted as calling the inclusion of women in the charter ‘a vulgar thing to do’. Despite the incredible work that was done by Lutz, her achievements are still underplayed and sidelined by the UN in favour of a westernised narrative. Contrastingly, Eleanor Roosevelt remains is plastered across the internet as a pioneer for universal human rights. However, a Google search for Bertha Lutz’s name produces next to no content produced by the UN in recognition of her contributions. A search of her name on their website yields only 590 results, compared to Wilkinson’s, which produces 7983, and Gildersleeve, whose name appears 3795 times. The UN is supposed to be an intersectional platform for all women around the world, but the disappearance of Bertha Lutz demonstrates its failure to amplify and celebrate the voices most in need of being heard. 

Moving onto the United Nations as we know it today and the familiar question of gender parity. Whilst the UN has achieved an equal number of men and women working at the two lowest levels of responsibility, this does not extend to the upper levels, and the organisation is not expected to achieve full parity for the next 112 years if current trends are maintained. For example, out of the 193 member states of the United Nations, only 50 countries are currently represented by women at the UN General Assembly; even then, the countries represented by women are predominantly Western nations. Delegations such as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Iraq have never sent a female delegate. There is only one woman currently sat on the Security Council, Joanna Wronecka, who is representing Poland. This is a huge drop from 2014, which saw 6 women take up seats on the council. The top position at the United Nations, the Secretary-General, has never been filled by a woman. In 2016, the possibility of a female Secretary-General seemed finally within reach as seven of the thirteen candidates put forward were women. The former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon even admitted that it was ‘high time now’ for a woman to take over the position. Antonio Guterres was given the post instead and the highly qualified women of the UN sat back down in their assigned seats to prepare for 5 more years masculine administration. 

But why is it that women are unequally represented in the top positions of an organisation that is supposed to be dedicated to the promotion of gender equality? Some suggest it is because the UN is still a private gentleman’s club with a culture of bullying, backroom deals and impunity. This creates an environment that is either consciously or unconsciously hostile to women. It will come as no surprise that this toxic masculine climate comes hand in hand with cases of sexual harassment in the workplace. The Guardian reported that one in three UN workers claim to have been sexually harassed between 2017 and 2019, mainly in the form of offensive jokes (22%), offensive remarks about appearance (14%) and conversations relating to sexual matters (13%). The most recent case that hit the headlines was that of Michel Didibe, who stepped down from his position as Director of UNAIDS in May 2019 after an independent panel found him to be creating ‘a patriarchal culture tolerating harassment and abuse of authority’. The report took particular issue with his choice to protect his deputy, Luiz Loures, who was accused of sexual assault by an employee, Martina Brostrom. This surely begs the question: If the UN itself is not meeting the bare minimum standard of equality and safeguarding in its own workplace, what authority does it have to preach female empowerment to anyone else?

Due to the nature of the UN as a global organisation, its inaction on structural sexism does not simply affect those stationed at the headquarters in New York, but spreads across borders, ethnicities and socio-economic classes. Through peacekeeping missions, the UN interacts with women who are in incredibly vulnerable positions due to adverse circumstances beyond their control. It is these women, who are the most in need of the support of the UN, who are the most let down. Take Haiti, for example, which is home to the longest-running peacekeeping mission in UN history, MINUSTAH. From 2004 to 2007, 114 Sri Lankan peacekeeping troops were found to be running a child abuse ring while stationed in Haiti. Instead of prosecution, the troops were simply repatriated and are still yet to receive a conviction. More recently, a study was conducted by the University of Birmingham and Ontario University interviewing 2500 Haitians who lived near the peacekeeper base throughout the MINUSTAH mission from 2004-2017. Unprompted, 10% of respondents mentioned that there were hundreds of children who had been fathered and abandoned by UN peacekeepers. Throughout the mission, women and girls would have transactional sex with peacekeepers in exchange for a meal or a handful of change. The practice was so common that the Haitian people even coined a term for the illegitimate children of UN peacekeepers; ‘Petit Minustah’. Young women were targeted as easy prey and trapped in a perpetual cycle of poverty by the UN, who withheld any access to child support. 

The MINUSTAH mission is not even an isolated incident. In 1992, Italian personnel of the UN were found to be paying girls aged 12-18 for sex while stationed in Mozambique. In Bosnia in 1999, women who were the victims of sex trafficking were sexually exploited by the UN contractors instead of being helped. In the Congo in 2005, troops were found to be offering food and money for sex with girls as young as 13. In 2014, it was revealed that French troops had been exploiting children in what the UN eventually admitted was a ‘gross institutional failure’ in the Central African Republic. Despite this horrific pattern of sexual exploitation dating up to the present day, the UN’s response has always remained more or less the same. The offending officers are repatriated, the blame is directed at their country of origin, the case is squashed, and the affected women are abandoned. Whilst Guterres, the current Secretary-General, claims to hold sexual exploitation as a top priority, the lack of repercussions for offending peacekeepers and the lack of substantial review of practice calls into question the UN’s true dedication to the elimination of violence against women and gender-based inequality. Women who have been affected by poverty, war and natural disaster are being trampled on yet again by the seismic foot of the United Nations while guilty male troops get away without a scratch. If this is what the UN means by ‘peacekeeping’, the status of women, in the eyes of the organisation, cannot be anything but secondary to men. 

This is not to say that the UN fails women in all aspects of its work. The United Nations and particularly the sub-organisation UN Women, have undoubtedly achieved huge steps forward for female empowerment, education and reproductive rights all across the globe. There is no need to undersell this achievement or belittle those who have worked so hard for the cause. But there is a need for conversation. Is the UN’s impact on women’s lives around the world always a net-positive one, and what can be done to make it so? It is certainly not a conversation the UN will instigate itself. Being the most senior inter-governmental organisation in the world comes with its privileges. Chiefly, the UN has no one to hold it to account. The Office of Internal Oversight Services, the UN’s internal investigative office, is precisely that, internal. The UN has no compelling obligation beyond that which it sets itself to dispel the stench of misogyny that has been lingering for the last hundred years. Even so, to some, the idea of denouncing the UN is borderline heretic and the argument could well be raised that since the UN is a force for immense good, it is counter-productive or even reckless to attack it for occasional shortcomings. But the UN is not infallible and surely it is more reckless to let it continue its downwards spiral unchecked. No one is exempt from fair criticism, particularly when such criticism is so vital to ensuring the protection of vulnerable women and girls around the world. 

Although Donald Trump’s Twitter account is scarcely home to insightful commentary on international affairs, his tweet from 2016 is startlingly true to mark: ‘The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!’. The UN, while it is still an exclusive private gentleman’s club to which women are not invited, will never be a place that takes its own chauvinism seriously if it is more advantageous not to. If the UN is going to change, it must be through structural reshuffling and power redistribution so that women are listened to and supported when they speak up. 

We are so fortunate to have spent the last 100 years with an international organisation that is dedicated to the preservation of human life, but women are not the price to be paid for world peace.

Review: Skogen

Hattie Blackman
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Review: Skogen

I’ve never quite been able to get behind the lifestyle trends which have been in constant formation, over the past year or so, on the basis of the ‘discovery’ of an ‘untranslatable’ word from another language: ikigai, còsagach, hygge, lagom… Whilst I’m far from declaring myself free of the motivating jealousy of cultures which, to an outside observer, seem more balanced, productive, and generally better off (both mentally and, let’s face it, the main driving factor of these trends – economically) than our own, I’m not (yet) desperate enough for that jealousy to manifest itself in the purchase of over-priced, under-thought hardback books and a quasi-ritualistic quantity of candles.

What I can always get behind, though, is good food, especially authentically regional food. It was the promise of this which attracted me to Skogen, even if, at first sight, the pared-back, white-washed interior might look rather like a stylish Instagram post. The atmosphere in this coffee shop is decidedly minimalist, but look further and you notice details which give the place an unobtrusive personality: on a small bookcase, handwritten labels advertise for sale rye crispbreads, cloudberry jam, charmingly naff-looking chocolate and, bizarrely, salsa mix (perhaps someone with a genuine knowledge of Swedish culture will understand this better than me). In the corner is a stack of well-thumbed Swedish cookbooks; a high shelf carries bottles of aquavit; under a deli counter, near-fluorescent pickles jostle between neatly sliced bread rolls, and even the obligatory bowls of salad manage not to look too abstemious. The menu offers classic Scandinavian breakfasts, waffles, and open sandwiches. I decided to begin with a classic fika (mid-morning pastry break) combination, though: a milky coffee and one of their self-proclaimed sell-out cardamom buns. I visited early, so the counter was still piled with pastries and service was fast; within a few minutes, I was presented with a neat knot of dough, whose tight structure tore open to reveal a pale, fluffy crumb, flecked with crackling nibs of cardamom and sugar. For all that I was dismissing lagom as a trend, this bun was just enough: by no means overwhelmingly sweet, but kept interesting by the cardamom’s aromatic warmth and hint of powerful spice. My cappuccino was a very good accompaniment, mellow and pillowy-foamed, though not outstanding – this isn’t the café for exquisite latte art or the silkiest crema (The Missing Bean is, if that’s what you’re seeking). As well as the coffee is done here, the attention is undoubtedly on the food.

This was confirmed by my second visit, on which I ordered the ‘Skogen breakfast’, an assortment of cold things and condiments with sourdough toast. I was intrigued by the sound of this bright platter (being all too used to comforting stodge in the mornings), whose motley components arrived clustered around a startlingly magenta mound of creamy beetroot salad. This initially eclectic-seeming collection, though, proved both fresh and bolstering on what was an especially cold morning. The chewy bread, the velvety, earthy sweetness of the beetroot, the deeply savoury, crumbly tang of the Scandinavian hard cheese, complemented each other excellently; the sticky amber of the cloudberry jam provided a wonderful sugary tartness. I could almost taste the crisp Nordic air (or maybe that was the faint smell of fish coming from the dishes being prepared in the kitchen).
In the end, Skogen proves that well-executed, affectionately made food will connect you to another culture far more than any number of cable-knit throws or stylish chairs.

‘Little Women’: endlessly adaptable?

Florine Lips
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‘Little Women’: endlessly adaptable?

Another 20 or so years, another Little Women; this time brought to us by acclaimed director Greta Gerwig and starring some of the hottest young actors of the moment: Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh, to name but a few. It seems that every generation is granted their own reincarnation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, the film history of which has been star-studded – Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Winona Ryder and Maya Hawke have all taken on the March sisters over the years. More than many others of its time, especially within the limited selection of novels concerned with the radical subject of adolescent women, it is endlessly adaptable, with Gerwig’s much-hyped film coming to cinemas 151 years after the text’s original publication. Regardless of my excitement at the prospect of another Little Women, I have to wonder why that is: what is it about Alcott’s novel that means we go back to it again and again, staying relevant all this time?

It might have something to do with the novel’s semi-autobiographical nature. Alcott based the novel on her own experiences growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, with her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and Abigail, who became the inspiration for the March sisters. Anna, the oldest, was marriage-oriented and dutiful, Elizabeth, “Lizzie”, died of scarlet fever at 22 after nursing a sick child, and Abigail, “May”, eventually trained as an artist in Europe. Louisa herself, naturally, shared many characteristics with the fiercely independent and talented Jo March, a character who continues to inspire writers 151 years after she was first penned. Perhaps this is partly why all four sisters felt like rounded, three-dimensional characters. They made do with their dwindling finances and the absence of their father, but they weren’t uncomplaining about it, as the novel’s opening lines makes very clear – “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. “It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. They were realistic, fleshed-out characters, with flaws that teenage girls still recognise today: shyness, vanity, an uncontrollable temper.

But this does not necessarily elucidate why we need another adaptation, 25 years on from the 90s version that starred It-Girl Winona Ryder and was widely praised by fans of the book. One thing that felt new to me about Gerwig’s adaptation was how she takes pains to validate every sister’s life choice, so we aren’t left with the idea that Jo’s fight for independence and creative freedom trumps them all. One scene on Meg’s wedding day sums this up particularly well – Jo, bewildered at her sister’s desire for a domestic life, offers her the chance to escape and pursue an acting career, to which Meg responds:“Just because my dreams are different than yours, doesn’t mean they’re unimportant”. A refreshingly modern take on a choice that could be seen as disappointingly conventional. Gerwig also devotes an unprecedented amount of screen-time to Amy and the development of her relationship with Laurie, finally allowing us to believe this traditionally under-explored plotline, with Pugh’s wonderful performance breathing new life into a character frequently considered the “worst” March sister. 

The novel is endlessly read- and watch-able because of its heart; the coming-of-age story of four very different sisters, all of whom face trials and tribulations of their own, but share every success and tragedy and wholeheartedly champion each other’s happiness (yes, Amy does burn Jo’s manuscript, but she grows out of this childish pettiness). Gerwig’s adaptation comes at a time of unprecedented female representation on the screen, with successful shows such as Fleabag, Killing Eve and Big Little Lies reshaping the cultural landscape to make it more inclusive (although there is still a long way to go), and series such as the BBC’s The Trial of Christine Keeler attempting to reshape dominant narratives that have traditionally excluded the perspective of women. What is so ‘adaptable’ about Little Women, I think, is that we’re never quite done exploring the different options available for adolescent women, and how each choice is viewed by the society in which they live. Alcott gave us the material to explore that in 1868, a very different time to 2020, and we’re still looking to her for inspiration 152 years on.

Harry and Meghan: An Unhappy New Year for the Queen

Will Robinson
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Harry and Meghan: An Unhappy New Year for the Queen

Imagine being the Queen right now. You’re 93 years old, and your 98-year-old husband isn’t very well and has spent Christmas in and out of hospital. You’re knackered from the last three years of political turmoil and all the faff of the election, opening Parliament, and the prorogation hoo-hah. You’ve just had to fire the man everyone knows is your favourite son from the family business, for accidentally convincing the nation that he didn’t give a hoot about the victims of his paedophile friend. You’ve even had to prevent him from going to Church with you on Christmas Day because such is the mess he’s caused your family that you can’t be seen in public with him. And then, to top it all off, your grandson decides to give you, your family, and everything for which you have stood for the last 67 years, the most almighty slap in the face. And you find out that your own grandson is effectively severing ties with you not because he talked to you about it and explained whatever difficulties he was in and what he and his wife felt they need to do for their young family, for whatever reason, but because one evening it just popped up on the telly.

Imagine being the Queen and now having to deal with the fallout this will cause for your family and for the institution which you embody. It would be difficult enough if Harry and Meghan had decided to renounce their Royal status altogether and move away. But what they have done is far more damaging to the monarchy. In deciding to retain their royalty whilst renouncing ‘senior’ status, they have essentially decided to live with all the privileges of being a member of the royal family while shirking all the duties that come with it in return. Aside from the role the Royal family play in our constitutional settlement, the unspoken agreement between sovereign and their subjects is that in return for the privileges that royalty is afforded, the Royals themselves carry out their ‘public duties,’ undefined as they might be. Harry and Meghan had a beautiful and vastly expensive royal wedding. The taxpayer has shelled out 2.4 million quid to renovate their cottage. They have now decided that they don’t fancy upholding their side of the deal, and to add insult to injury, they’ll be further abusing their royal status by turning ‘Sussex Royal’ (which they have already trademarked) into a brand to further milk the cow of privilege they are lucky enough to access, to but which they will do nothing in exchange for. It’s clear that the two of them fancy being American-style mega-celebrities, with the added bonus of the prestige of their royal titles, so as to convert a public image of themselves into a multi-million-dollar business empire. I suppose that the funding of the Duchy of Cornwall (which comes from Charles) was not quite sufficient for the lifestyle they want to lead. Not that they’ll be weaning themselves off the Duchy’s income in their quest for ‘financial independence’. They’ll only be renouncing the Sovereign Grant which provides around 5% of their income, whilst generously retaining the rest of it.

So, they have a publicly-funded cottage, the celebrity of their publicly-funded wedding and of their royal status, the debt for which they refuse to pay back, and the considerable fat of Harry’s father’s land to live off. Impressive financial independence. Together, Daddy and the British taxpayer shall provide! Harry may have just become the most senior trustafarian in the world. Maybe when they begin exploiting their branded version of the royal household they’ll write a cheque to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to reimburse the public for its unfortunate investment.

And who is going to have to foot the political and personal bill for all of this? For the fresh wave of republicanism that will surely break as the taxpayer realises just how raw this rawest of deals turned out to be? Poor old Queen. She didn’t do anything to deserve the family she’s got.

New Year’s Resolutions: Do They Work?

Coral Kim
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New Year’s Resolutions: Do They Work?

That my new year saw a rough start is a huge understatement. I spent its first three hours crying alone in my room, for reasons I shall not disclose for the reader’s own good. I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions—with one item left unfinished, to be determined sometime later (should I go with “read 40 books” or “drink more water”? It’s a tough choice). Ironic.

Developing that list put me in an exceptionally contemplative mood—or at least that’s what I assumed was happening—as I went over my past year and how I’d lived it. I felt simultaneously pleased and lonely: pleased because I found myself capable of ruminating over 2019 with an ample sense of satisfaction, and lonely because I realized once again how most of the things from the past year were up to me, and how most of the things in the new year were up to me too. Certainly not because of the disappointing number of new friends I’d made.

Save for some timezone-related discrepancies, the entire world had encountered 2020, for the first time, together. Everyone used to live in 2019, but now everyone lived in 2020. Yet every single individual, myself included obviously, had their own 2019 and 2020. And that’s what making a New Year’s Resolutions list is all about: declaring what and how my new year will be. Not yours, not ours. Mine. My growth, my progress. My new beginning. Another chapter of my life.

But does it work?

This naturally individual nature of New Year’s Resolutions both make and break their efficacy. Most of us are forever locked up in a love-hate relationship with ourselves, wanting us to succeed and feed, but never as capable of acknowledging our successes and failures as an objective observer may be. We see the best of ourselves when we’re alone having that glorious moment writing an essay at 2am in the library; we see the worst of ourselves when we’re getting through that hangover or secretly sneaking off with a snickers bar from our younger sibling’s Halloween stash. All this easily makes us the best experts of ourselves. It would be ridiculous to ask someone else to make your list of resolutions for you; you love and hate yourself best. So of course your own list works and fits best.

Yet it is equally true that promises to oneself are some of the hardest to keep. We’ve all been there. You swear to yourself that you’ll get this essay done by noon; it drags on till you call it a day and decide to pick it back up tomorrow. You read a self-help book and decide to be confident from now on; you’re insecure browsing the cheesy titles in the self-help section, warily eyeing the very distinguished-looking gentleman poring over a distinguished-looking expert’s newest book on James Joyce and linguistic metaphors.

Another notable factor is the significance of a new year. After all, New Year’s Day, not to mention dates in general, is a social construct; there is nothing inherent in a new year that boosts change and/or progress. Yet the celebrations and messages involved, along with the flood of New Year’s posts on social media, did have a recognizable effect on me: they provided a social context to my individualistic resolutions. Comparing oneself to others is rarely recommended, as many focus on and rightfully condemn the habit of valuing oneself and acting according to the external—being a “second-hander,” as Objectivists say. But what about competition and context? Society and culture?

I doubt I’d have made or conceived of any resolutions if there was no New Year’s Day, and people hadn’t made an implicit agreement to make and share their lists online. Does it seem shallow, this admission that I have done it after being inspired by convention and social media? Maybe. It’s true, though. Seeing a friend’s list of her resolutions was what prompted me to make my own, and the rest of our society’s New Year’s culture—sardonic (said too many times, though, to be honest) jokes about the gym crowd diminishing over time, 2020-inspired designs, etc.—that envelops January 1st and a considerable portion of the end of December/the rest of January has been reminding me regularly of my promises to myself, at the very least. The New Year’s culture has thus made me want my new year-new me self to be the best, and my resolutions the most substantialized. There’s clearly more to New Year’s Day than putting things off to the new year.

At the time of writing this article, it is the 10th of January. I can’t say I’m proud of my first 10 days of 2020; I still haven’t decided what will be the unfinished resolution on my list. Yet while I can’t say making a list of resolutions has had or will have a substantial effect on my lifestyle, I do believe that it has pushed me to properly diagnose and think about myself and my life, which may potentially lead to some changes, if qualified and minor: I have now a boosted awareness of how little water I drink, a desire to count the number of books I read, and a sense of alarm at my sleeping habits. Will I keep my promises to myself to drink, read, and sleep more? Like any other honest writer would admit, I can’t say—maybe to some extent, hopefully. Did making this list of New Year’s Resolutions encourage me to assess myself properly and as detachedly as possible? Yes. For a member of a species that regularly consumes physically harmful substances, makes life choices based on other people’s judgements, and pathologically either over-glorifies or over-criticizes itself, that’s something. Socrates would be proud, though Marie Kondo or my walking tracker app may not be.

Why the vac isn’t enough to solve Oxford’s mental health problem

Hope Oxley Green
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Why the vac isn’t enough to solve Oxford’s mental health problem

“There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodleian.”

Although I most certainly don’t agree with the latter, Hilaire Belloc did have a point. Oxford has operated a short term in perpetuity, with 24 weeks of contact, the rest of the year is supposedly left for that well-needed rest and recuperation. Unfortunately for many, this is seldom achieved. Whether it be simply the stillness and subsequent boredom of the vac after a busy term, or the increasing challenges in the present day to mental health, some students are seeing the vacation period more as something to dread rather than a time of relaxation. Alas, this is the Oxford life, you don’t get the pleasures of being able to relax.

I must admit, I am endlessly jealous of my friends who look forward to going home. Those in the lucky enough position to have a stable home life normally see this time as a way to destress, catch up with home friends, and enjoy those home comforts we miss out on as students (Lurpak rather than olive spread is a favourite of mine). But for others, coming home is not necessarily a base of stability and security, and the vac is merely seen as something to “get over” before they can return.

A 2016 Survey by Oxford University Student Union found that 54% of students felt studying at Oxford had impacted their mental health negatively, with women and non-binary undergraduates twice as likely, and LGBTQ students 2.75 times more likely to experience these feelings. Of course, we cannot assume that the long vacation periods are the cause of this, surely if anything they help? I for one disagree, and would call these ‘vacs’ anything but relaxing. Not only does the overhanging dread of collections mean we are unable to fully recharge, but you should probably read those 19 books you’ve been set by your new tutor. Oh, don’t forget that internship you need to apply for, and the 30 others if you want a decent stab at being employed after you graduate.

The truth is, Oxford does an atrocious job at encouraging its students to use the vacation periods as productive means of relaxing. The instilled culture of working with no means to an end always overspills into the holidays, and the competitive nature of extra-curriculars, whether that be in societies or networking, encourages little preservation for one’s mental or emotional health as they often play catch up out of term time. Our education system fetishizes Oxford to a blinding extent, as the majority of focus is about whether candidates are clever enough to get in. They rarely stop to consider what it’ll be like once you’re actually there. It seems that once a student arrives, they are branded more than capable, and if anyone dare complain about their responsibilities, they are met with little sympathy. “What do you expect?”.

It is imperative that we, as a community, make a significant effort to address increasing mental health concerns over unmanageable workloads at Oxford. What’s more, we must challenge the nature of the vacation we receive as unacceptable in the pressures they continue to put us under out of term time, and strive for healthier connotations surrounding rest and recuperation during these periods. I do wonder if this will ever be possible, as it requires the cooperation of students and institution members alike, to accept that people at Oxford are not superhuman. They are not robotic machines that can maintain pursuit of study for the duration of their course without proper breaks, and without confronting the need for support out of term time as well as during.

As we come full circle, I must admit perhaps Belloc’s comment is more insightful than initially meets the eye. Has a love for academia, and desire to constantly learn and develop one’s knowledge been warped by a competitive need to be the best? Has Oxford systematically controlled us to seek constant academic prowess, never being happy with our own achievements? Has it taught us the association that relaxing is bad, leading to an endemic obsession with study, and neglect to one’s mental health? You best get started then… there’s only 12 million books in the Bod after all.

MUST SEE: Cossacks of the Kuban

Masha Egieva
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MUST SEE: Cossacks of the Kuban

On the 12th and 13th of January 2020 Oxford’s Ultimate Picture Palace will show the classic Soviet musical Cossacks of the Kuban (1949) as part of Kino Klassika Foundation’s Melodia! season in partnership with the British Film Institute. Previously rarely screened, the film was shown at the BFI Southbank in October 2019 with great success, as part of Kino Klassika’s long-standing endeavour to programme Russian, Soviet and Caucasian films in the UK. Perhaps, it is worth pondering  why a post-war musical, glorifying the myth of Soviet prosperity, is evermore relevant to Russia’s cultural politics today. 

On New Year’s Eve in 1995 Russian Public Television (ORT), now Channel One, aired a faux-retro musical set on a Soviet kolkhoz (that is, a collective farm) titled Old Songs About Important Things. Not only is this piece of popular entertainment remembered with fondness, but it was shown again on Channel One only a few days ago, on the 3rd of January 2020. The film is composed of musical numbers, in which modern Russian pop stars sing Soviet hits. These songs have been so deeply embedded into collective memory that one may easily mistake them for traditional folk music. The film indicates neither the historical period nor the location of the story, but it quickly becomes apparent that Old Songs is a nostalgic and kitsch take on Ivan Pyryev’s Cossacks of the Kuban, which is itself an epitome of Soviet mythology. What does contemporary Russian mainstream entertainment have to do with a Stalinist-era propaganda musical?

The term ‘propaganda,’ with regards to the arts, is often defined as a symbolically direct cultural practice of mass persuasion: “a weapon of state for the purposes of political indoctrination and social control” (James Chapman, 2000). Cossacks, however, is an example of a more subtle strategy of persuasion via entertainment. Pyryev’s musical is a rigidly orchestrated representation of rivalry between two collective farms, The Red Partisan and Lenin’s Covenant. Following the Romeo and Juliet template, Cossacks portrays forbidden love between Dasha and Nikolai, a worker and a technician from competing farms. Recognised for its meticulously choreographed scenes of harvesting to the rhythm of Isaak Dunayevsky’s renowned score, it masterfully admixes an imitation of musical folklore with the representation of the extensive industrialisation of rural Russia. 

Built on a simple plot, this classic of Stalinist-era cinema produces a myth of Soviet prosperity, showing off the agrarian wealth of the southern region of Russia. Approximately fifteen years prior to the release of Cossacks the region suffered from a severe famine, and in 1949, when the film was being made, Kuban, alongside the rest of the country, was still recovering from the devastations of the Second World War. Pyryev’s mythology does not merely gloss over the post-war struggles, but omits them completely in this boastful rite of singing, dancing and, of course, harvesting, so as to fabricate a new history. In another attempt to rewrite history, Nikita Khruschev banned the film completely in 1956 in the process of de-Stalinisation, while his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, allowed a heavily edited version of it to be shown in 1968. Today’s viewer has never seen the pre-1968 cut of the film. However, it seems that Cossacks does more than forge history. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s criticism of capitalist culture industry, ironically, provides a strikingly accurate description of at least some of the strategies of the Soviet post-war mainstream entertainment — those of “mass deception” and “fettering [of] consciousness” (Adorno, 1975).

Surely, Cossacks is an important case study for those interested in cultural politics of totalitarian states. Besides its relevance to niche research, it may, arguably, help one to understand the cultural trends in modern-day Russia. It is precisely this strategy of mythologising entertainment that has been adopted by Russia’s mainstream cinema and television so as to maintain the status quo in which the country finds itself today. As Moscow-based correspondent for The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa, notes that the CEO of widely popular Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, has been directing most of his energies towards entertainment programming. “The news is momentary and ephemeral,” Yaffa quotes Ernst. “But the artistic realm, this is something deeper. It can stay in people’s minds forever.” Pyryev’s musical did indeed stay in the minds of generations of viewers. For today’s viewer, the film revealed the difference between hard propaganda and, to put it in Adorno and Horkheimer’s terms, the “fettering of consciousness” via highly entertaining fabricated myths. 

An artefact of glorification regarding the mythical ‘Soviet way of life’, Cossacks may be they key to understanding modern Russia’s mainstream culture, from the 2014 Sochi Olympics pompous opening ceremony to the lighthearted late-night talk show hosted by a local counterpart to Jimmy Fallon, Ivan Urgant. Carefully glossing over the harsh political reality of today’s stagnant Russia, its modern mainstream culture has been re-writing history and forging political well-being by means of entertainment. Attending a screening of Cossacks of the Kuban seems like a good way to start understanding this strategy, with the luxury of critical distance. 

* Tickets for the screening of Cossacks of the Kuban can be booked at The Ultimate Picture Palace website.

The Souvenir Review

Olivia Wrafter
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The Souvenir Review

Joanna Hogg’s latest film, The Souvenir, executively produced by Martin Scorsese, depicts the semi-autobiographical coming of age of its heroin, Julie. The plot circulates the turbulent relationship between Julie, a young film student, and Anthony, her older mentor-come-lover, in the 1980s.

Hogg taps into a current predilection of the screen, entering the cinematic space at a point where functional drug use seems to fascinate screenwriters. Inevitably, culture turns its gaze to what has come before, and these dramas are symptomatic of a prior era ignorance – much like Honor Swinton Byrne’s character – to the depths of societies caveats.

The Souvenir, described on IMDb as a ‘mystery’, is anything but. Those who fail to sense the immediate dissipation of Tom Burke’s character are as deluded as Julie, the jarringly naïve protagonist. Ironically, I viewed this in my college room, centred in accommodation where I am doors away from quasi-Julie’s. Her personality was so familiar to me from my time at Oxford that it would not be too hyperbolic to say that at points I almost forgot I was watching a film and not the life of a fellow student. Julie encapsulates the middle to upper class ignorance of privilege; the family-funded student who wants to and believes she is capable of experiencing life outside the bubble in which she exists (something she even professes to her teachers) whilst staying firmly within it.

Anthony enters her life and is nothing but a positive influence on her, until he begins to fail to keep his two lives separate. Anthony is unafraid to challenge her, and his air of arrogance, although flawed, is one that exposes the idiocy of her intentions. Tom Burke’s performance here, is stunning, and utterly convincing, to the point at which we are compelled to favour a heroin addict who steals off his own partner over the victim of his moral bankruptcy. Yet, it is Julie’s victimisation of herself that also prompts this: how can we feel sorry for someone who ends up apologising for being stolen off? Someone who Anthony himself describes as “inviting me to torture you.” Inevitably, she falls short of Anthony’s intellectual mark, but also through a sycophantic and childish personality which repulses, laps up Anthony’s abuse and is fulfilled by her subservient role in the relationship.

Anthony provides Julie with a taste of reality, likely her only one, which no doubt will be further explored in The Souvenir Part II, yet she barely realises this and repeatedly fails to bridge the gap between them in experience. She is an individual who stands aside uselessly as her lover goes into withdrawal, suffering appallingly. Even once she is aware of his addiction, she is as blind as she was before wilfully ignorant, to the blatant needle marks on his arms, (and even Richard Ayoade’s camo revelation of Anthony’s addiction) which point to a desperate need for salvation. Such a character, unless you fall into the bracket of a Julie yourself, fails to draw upon sympathy when she loses someone she only ever buffets against. Theirs is a relationship where the two only ever nudge at each other’s boundaries, primarily due to Julie’s ignorance, and Anthony is a persona that even in death she fails to truly comprehend.

Despite the brilliance of these character depictions, which although in equal parts are repulsive and enthralling, Hogg undermines the achievements of the film with a lack-lustre ending. Anthony’s death is realistic, but anti-climactic, yet the ensuing scenes were if anything offensive. Julie resumes her life, minus Anthony, and in the final shot we see her gazing into the distant horizon. Cliché was something that was profoundly and refreshingly absent from the film (aside from Hogg’s satire of it) yet here it crashes back in clumsily and disrupts the cool conveyance of a highly successful, personal, yet impersonal, adventure in cinematography with a moment of scriptural weakness.The Souvenir is a film that aesthetically pleases [IC1] and gives viewers rewarding character performances and analyses. This aesthetic indulgence is one that often mirrors the plot. Just as the camera intrudes on private spaces, through indirect shots which feel as if they allow viewers glimpses into a life that is truly private and substantiated, often this viewpoint is all too obvious. In this way, the style of the film serves to reflect the main character’s desire to escape the bubble in which she exists through art, and her belief that she truly can do this, despite her obvious inability to escape the glamorisation of disadvantage. The conclusive scene is a continuation of this cinematic lens, yet here it feels that the films creative direction falls short of what throughout seems to be an ironic lens, through a superficial and clichéd final shot. Hogg unfortunately falls short in her conclusion of the plot but perhaps this will be redeemed in the films expected sequel

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