Monday 7th July 2025
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Police call for witnesses over transphobic stickers

Jeevan Ravindran
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Police call for witnesses over transphobic stickers

Thames Valley Police have called for witnesses after a slew of transphobic stickers were posted around Oxford city centre.

In a statement on their website, Thames Valley Police referred to the posting of the stickers as a public offence, with stickers being placed around the High Street, Catte Street and Parks Road areas from March 2019 onwards.

Investigating officer PC Rebecca Nightingale said, “Behaviour like this is not acceptable and we take incidents of this nature very seriously,” and called for anyone who had witnessed the placing of the stickers to call the non-emergency 101 number.

The stickers are thought to have largely posted by a group known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and include comments such as “Woman. Noun. Adult human female” and “women don’t have penises,” as well as “Auto-gynephilia.”

Oxford’s trans community has been fighting back against the at- tacks by replacing or removing the stickers with affirmative messages such as “Trans happiness is real,” a common slogan graffitied by a TERF counter movement of the same name, and stickers trying to encourage TERFs to talk to them. However, many of these stickers have been subsequently defaced with messages such as “die mad about it” and swastika signs.

Zaman Keinath-Esmail, a first- year student at Oxford who identifies as non-binary, said: “[I feel] a bit angry, as they [the stickers] are generally invalidating and I would have hoped Oxford would be more accepting than that.

“But also [I feel] defiant, because I enjoy activism and fighting for my values and this is like a call to action in a sense – there is something wrong and I want to change it while standing up to the trans- exclusionists,” she added.

However, the police’s approach to the stickers has been criticised both in The Spectator and by Oxford’s Associate Professor in Sociology, Michael Biggs, who said: “To say that a dictionary definition is a terrible hate crime is extraordinary.The police is being incredibly irresponsible.” He also accused them of taking sides in the debate, saying that if putting up stickers was a criminal act then the activists replacing them with positive images should also be the target of any police action.

Professor Biggs was found to be linked to a number of transphobic tweets in October 2018, with The Oxford Student finding tweets under the handle @MrHenryWimbush, an account which allegedly belongs to the profes- sor. The tweets included content which misgendered a transgender sportswoman and a tweet stating, “the odd thing about transitioning is that it makes you less attractive.”

The story also provoked a satirical article in the blog section of The Spectator, mockingly referring to the stickers as a “transphobic crime wave.” Several others reacted on Twitter to the police response, with one user saying, “Stickers v stabbings? Police concentrate on stickers!” whilst another commented, “the stickers can’t be offensive.” Another user referred to a previous instance in which trans-exclusionary radical feminist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull paid to have a billboard put up in Liverpool bearing the same message as the stickers appearing in Oxford.

However, some supported the police move, calling the stickers “an ugly and destructive provocation,” whilst another said the stickers were a measure used by “upper-class TERFs… to ‘raise consciousness’ about their non-existent oppression’.” One user made reference to the vulnerability of the trans community to such an attack, adding “transphobia is bigotry.”

The leader of counter movement Stickers Against Hate, who replace transphobic stickers with positive messages, said: “I can’t imagine not doing it. Walking past these stickers regularly, even while taking them down, feels absolutely horrible. And I’ve heard from multiple people how much of a difference it makes to see supportive stuff all over town.”

Zayna Ratty, President of Oxford Pride, told Cherwell: “Unfortunately no one has been caught and the police can only do what they can.

“It’s their interpretation of the law, and what’s admirable is how our community is answering with positive stickers.”

Home Office Figures published on October 15 showed an increase in hate crime during the year 2018- 19, with 2,333 transgender identity hate crimes – an increase of 37 percent from the previous year. However, they commented that the reason for the increase may be due to better reporting of crimes, although “genuine increases cannot be ruled out.”

ATWOOD RETURNS TO GILEAD

Lewis Roberts
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ATWOOD RETURNS TO GILEAD

It is difficult to sanitise Atwood’s new venture. In fact, it is difficult to put into words at all the violence of the novel. One finds oneself much more in the world of 1980s radical feminism than our own while reading Margaret Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale: The Testaments.

Atwood begins her new polemic recounting the most shocking symbols of the world of Gilead: red gowns for menstruation and childbirth, eggs for fertility, even the ‘moss has sprouted in my damper crevices’ is uncomfortably sexual. In her controversial review of the book in The Spectator, Ruth Scurr argues that the intensity of Atwood’s vision makes it fundamentally incomparable to the analogue that many commentators (especially since the populism of Bruce Miller’s TV adaptation) have given it: Trump’s America.

While, as with most things written in The Spectator, one ought to take it with a pinch of salt, Scurr’s review is incisive and prescient. Scurr points to communities all over the world in which women are denied the right to choose what they wear, forced to have sex and unable to own money. While I have no time for the lazy shot against Islam which Scurr falls into, I am nonetheless convinced that The Testaments is a radically feminist book. It is not, and should not be seen as populist.

Atwood brings a lifetime of experience to bear on this palimpsestic novel, even writing in the novel: “As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” She arranges independent ‘testimonies’ of the women of Gilead alongside each other and asks the reader to join the dots. Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, it is hard to attach oneself to a character like Offred; Atwood instead makes the reader into a spy, gleaning unconnected and disparate pieces of information.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that this formal technique collides Atwood’s 1980s deliberate style of feminism (that is, arguments over sexual liberation and the physical subjugation of women) with a timbre more common in 2019 (an intersectional account of the varying lives of women and their interaction with patriarchy and capitalism). The real strength of Atwood’s New Testament (if you’ll excuse the obvious pun) is to resist a temptation to either mollify or intensify the suffering of her characters in the light of its predecessor’s success. Instead she suspends them in the ether of Gilead’s mysticism, somewhere between relatable to the suffering of women in the 21st-century West and a dramatic fiction which we find repellent. To quote from the book itself: “You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.” I think we are right to be fascinated by the media storm around Atwood’s work. At the launch of The Testaments, staff dressed in red robes as if to say that this is a fantasy world for fancy dress. Atwood’s critique of capitalism is worryingly reflexive.

Returning to my earlier theme, I find the brutality of Atwood’s collection of stories, for that is what it really is, refreshing. She refuses to play a part in a feminism of pacification, usually heard from a floundering politician rather than an activist who believes in its importance. It is worth remembering that in 2016, only 7% of the UK population said they would describe themselves as feminists when asked. If feminism is as radical as Atwood purports, it would be disingenuous for many more to say they come anywhere close.

For whom and for how long?

Sofía Sanabria de Felipe
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For whom and for how long?

There is something oddly powerful about bells. For years, they signalled the beginning and end of school periods, the beginning and end of gaps in time in which all else was put aside for learning. Now, I don’t mean the old, cute ones primary school teachers held in the playground. I’m referring to that mechanical scream of a banshee roaming through the halls of secondary school. As annoying as they were, I cannot help but miss their interruptions. Miss that sense of direction and time control that, whilst under the rule of an authority figure, nevertheless gave me a purpose. A place to be at a specific time. A place where I kept my brain occupied. And the bells were its guardian, providing a musical soundtrack to adolescence.

Reminiscing about one’s teenage years is a rather cinematic task. After all, Hollywood has made a great profit from narrating stories about what being a teenager should be and feel like. Dances, friendships that last lifetimes, makeovers that turn one popular, and social hierarchies to be challenged, usually to the beat of some musical number. Don’t get me wrong, they make incredible sleepover and comfort movies, and catching me singing along to the High School Musical soundtrack isn’t at all unusual. They aren’t, however, realistic, and while that may not have been the point in the first place, I cannot help but think they add on to a rather big issue in our society: the idealisation of teenagehood. It seems to me there is a tendency to speak of this time as otherworldly, as the Platonic Idea of Youth come to unravel amongst mortal humans, with not a scratch of doubt, confusion, ambivalence or excess. Funnily enough, the latter seems a more fitting description of that time.

Logging onto my old Tumblr account, I couldn’t help but smile at the sheer number of fandom posts my profile had. Sherlock, Doctor Who, One Direction… you name it, there’s probably a picture somewhere. As I kept scrolling, the reason why I decided to create an account became apparent. You see, the fangirl aspect of my persona had plenty of outlets in other aspects of my life. I would save up to get posters of my favourite shows and bands, re-watch old episodes, reread books — most of my socialising was based on discussing these characters and worlds — and listen to albums on loop. The real reason became apparent as I stumbled upon a text-based image. It was a gentle reminder to breathe. To inhale and exhale deeply and maybe grab a glass of water. It told me things would be ok in the end. I found myself following the advice, and as I did, a number of memories rolled in. Memories tainted in black. The smell of tear-wet pillows. Cold metal pressed against my skin. The light from my laptop burning my eyes as countless hours went by. No, I didn’t come to Tumblr for fanfics and cute pics. I came to it because it was a platform where my feelings would be echoed. I never really created a post of my own, I never had the courage to. But every night, as I logged onto the site, I could hear these posts screaming at me. So much pain. So much suffering encapsulated by a number of characters, read by a stranger probably on the opposite side of the world.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Tumblr was my first proper exposure to any form of discussion of Mental Health. My disenchantment with the platform came after a conversation with a close friend, realising that some posts on the site had accentuated a romanticization of what they were going through. Hearing my friend talk about “fallen angels coming back home” scared me enough at the age of fifteen to lay off the site for a while. When I logged back in, around six months later, I came across slightly different posts, more in-keeping with the “gentle reminder” one. Not once in all my black tainted memories do I recall a conversation with an adult. That is, until a teacher ended up approaching me in school. The memories after that, I must admit, have a little more light. If there is anything I’d like you to take from this Tumblr experience is that for the greater part of my adolescence Mental Health was something between me and other teens. Adults would simply tell us to “grow up”, “smile more” and “act normal for once”, because we were an embarrassment. And I’d come to see it like that. 

Coming into Uni, walking into Welfare talks and bumping into flyers displaying hotlines and support groups made me understand that maybe I was wrong. Sure, with stress, high expectations and my extraordinary difficulties facing any sort of change and need for adaptation to new environments, thoughts and behaviour patterns of those tainted days came back. But this time I didn’t scroll through Tumblr. Discussions of Mental Health no longer relied on aesthetically pleasing black and white images, but were held in serious, yet sensitive, tones. What had seemed like a teenage tragedy, worthy of belonging to one of those Young Adult novels that make it onto the big screen, suddenly became something manageable, an issue to be dealt with, no one at fault. And though the thoughts were back, the behaviour patterns almost the same, the memories of this particular period aren’t tainted black.

Teenagers are often described as idealistic lumps of flesh, guided by their passionate soul, raging hormones with an absolute lack of authority over their own reasonings. As a consequence, our thoughts, opinions and ideas are dismissed with a “you’re too young to understand” or “you haven’t lived enough”. Having your ideas invalidated and dismissed in such a condescending manner seems to me a recurring theme in a teenager’s experience. One need only turn to the media coverage of Greta Thunberg’s most recent speeches at the UN or Donald Trump’s absurd comment on her. The Guardian’s First Dog on the Moons’ latest opinion piece and cartoon “Is she the brainwasher or the brainwashee?” perhaps best depicting the “adolescent problem”: are we merely puppets, occasionally rebelling against the puppeteer’s strings? Or are we puppeteers in the making, ridiculed by this generation of “grown-ups”, shaping the future in which we will ridicule the next generation of “teens”?

Unheard. Misunderstood. Held responsible for every little mistake. Alone. Scarred. Heartbroken. I can see why adolescence is often equated with tragedy. But there is also Laughter. Sleepover talks. First crushes and concerts. Friendships and movie nights filled with smiles. Feeling of empowerment and satisfaction when your effort pays off, and that acceptance letter appears in your inbox. I can see where all the cheesy, musical movies are coming from. In the end, it seems to me that adolescence is whatever the rest of the world makes of it. It is up to the world to regard adolescence as something more than a “transition period”, as more than a moment encapsulated by the ringing of school bells, “the real world” awaiting on the other side.

Kiki Smith: I am a Wanderer

Zoe Hind
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Kiki Smith: I am a Wanderer

Smith is a wanderer. This is the word she uses to describe herself, for she has no desire to seek control over the direction of her work within its creative journey. Instead, she wanders aimlessly and follows “wherever the road takes me”. Yet despite this lack of agenda, it is clear that her art is imbued with socio-political significance.

Over the years, she has developed a uniquely blended form of storytelling that incorporates experiences and trauma drawn from her own life. In order to do this, she combines symbolic imagery from art historical and mythological legends with elements of the natural world and allusions to her own religious background. The result is a collection of eclectic symbols, which subtly allows Smith to articulate the condition of man and our perilous relationship with the planet, a concern underlying her work. Although Smith is not ostensibly engaging with political sensibilities, through the poetry of her artwork, she quietly responds to the ecological crisis we are now faced with.

The New York based artist first became aware of the drastic changes occurring in the planet after attending an Art-Science assembly at Harvard, 25 years ago. This produced a lasting effect, and in the early 90s Smith turned her focus towards the natural world. The shift was marked by the installation of a bronze-cast sculpture, depicting a murder of dead crows that lay strewn across the floor. ‘Jersey Crows’ (1995) was made in response to a news report documenting a strange phenomenon where a flock of birds fell dead from the sky in New Jersey, supposedly killed by air pollution. Smith has since described feeling “in some way responsible” for the event, and in a keynote lecture delivered at Oxford last week, lamented how “we’ve lost 3 million birds in the United States due to environmental changes”. What’s more, the identity of the crow is steeped in traditional meaning within folklore, considered the harbinger of death; in the context of Smith’s sculpture, these inauspicious birds fulfil their role as omens for what is to come.

Smith is currently being exhibited in Modern Art Oxford until January, and I urge you to pass through the vast portals of her immense yet intricately woven tapestries, draped from floor to ceiling; the stark-whitewashed walls of industrial brickwork serve as a contrasting foil to these complex and finely wrought designs. Her work betrays a preoccupation with the spiritual and mythical worlds, woven together with emblematic threads from each. As a result, these tapestries seem to me to represent the threshold between two realms, giving us access to an innocent fantastical world: the highly imaginative scenes are teeming with woodland-dwelling creatures and enthralling female figures who dance amidst the glittering foliage of dark medieval forests, beneath a host of heavenly bodies.

The choreographed compositions of these tapestries are reminiscent of the dancing chorus of woodland nymphs in Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ (1482), and by association their allegorical figures hark even further back in time to the pagan deities of antiquity. Yet these tapestry utopias harbour a hidden purgatorial sensibility, perhaps informed by Smith’s Catholic upbringing. Balanced indefinitely between heaven and hell, the artist indicates that any disturbance to nature’s equilibrium holds the capacity to tip the scales either way, with the imminent threat of paradise lost lying latent in the shadows, alongside anticipation for the inevitable mistake of mankind: “to me,” says Smith, “nature is precious and wondrous; its our intervention that causes the mayhem.” This resounds heavily in an age of adolescents growing up with the burden of climate change, imparted on us by the irresponsibility of previous generations.

‘Sky’ (2011), depicts a woman in the nude, elegantly unfurling her limbs as she curves round the composition. Our eye is drawn in a circular motion around the compendium of butterflies, birds and constellations that hover above the snow-capped mountain peaks, serving as an effervescent backdrop to Smith’s dreamscape. The artist’s choice to reveal the figure’s lucid porcelain flesh in all its raw beauty is significant, since her naked vulnerability communicates a natural ability to live sustainably alongside our environment, and to preserve all the ecosystems at work beneath the surface.This notion of coalesced existence is expressed through the portrayal of harmony between woman, animal and forest.

Holding up her suggestion of an ideal universe for us to measure, the viewer is reminded of what is lacking in our own society. If we want to translate this peaceful coexistence with our environment into reality we must first develop a mutual respect for our planet, or else the threat of a dystopian future will befall our young.

The nude motif works on a deeper level, for the artist’s allusion to the female origin of the world traces us back to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their existence in a prelapsarian Eden. With this reading we are reminded of the fatal nature of man’s mistakes, and how our transgression against the natural world has drastic consequences tied up in our own existence. Smith herself explains in words what her art already articulates; that “we are interdependent with the natural world… our identity is completely attached to our relationship with our habitat and animals… sometimes tragically.” The artist thus proves her unique role as a poetic environmentalist with another subtle nod to the climate crisis.

De Bruge’s Apocalypse Tapestry d’Angers serves as one of the main influences behind Smith’s own. This terrorizing work of art references the Last Judgement from the bible’s book of Revelation, and stands as a symbol of the religious dread that ran throughout the middle ages: Christians all over Europe were seized with an apocalyptic fear every fin-de-ciècle, in anticipation of their doom at the second coming of Christ. Albrecht Dürer, heralded the best printmaker of his time, came from Nuremberg, Germany – the same town in which Kiki Smith was born. At the turn of the 16th century, Dürer created his own Apocalypse, a series of prints highlighting the general human struggle between good and evil.

The dual influence of de Bruges’ tapestry and Dürer’s prints is echoed in Smith’s own post-modernist version of apocalyptic doom, via her inventive merging of printmaking and tapestry. For all three artists, the subject matter spins a common thread, with the medieval religious reckoning being substituted for a contemporary scientific prophecy: the only difference is that this time round, humanity will not be granted the same possibility of salvation as the Book of Revelation promised.

Kiki Smith exhibits her own emotional and existential response to living in the world, but remains self-conscious that her art cannot “alleviate suffering” for generations to come. Regardless, it has indirectly become a tool for communication, allowing the artist both to express her foreboding poetic insight and appeal to a world finally waking up to the destructive impact of climate change. All this is revealed through a celebration of nature’s boundless beauty, woven into a silent call for action.

Image: Kiki Smith, Egg, 200. Kiki Smith, I am a Wanderer, Modern Art Oxford, Photo by Ben Westoby

Eternal Boredom

Maya Dhillon
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Eternal Boredom

Is it only the boring who become bored?

The tired precept has prompted many to believe it true. To a certain extent, it makes sense; ‘interesting’ people surely must be equipped to entertain themselves infinitely given their predisposition for intelligence and curiosity? Yet it is increasingly argued that boredom should not be a state of mind to abhor and resist but rather one to embrace and work with. This notion has been speculated by philosophers, substantiated by science, and indeed demonstrated by artists and musicians through their creative endeavours. Now we can even appreciate the importance of boredom being a driving force behind creativity, and some of the greatest minds in history.

Before delving into the creative crux of the matter, a scientific explanation behind why boredom can actually nurture creativity, not stifle it, can be provided. In the 20th century, British philosopher Betrand Russel theorised that there were two types of boredom: stultifying and fructifying. Fleeing from fructifying boredom can endanger one to falling into stultifying boredom, which can worsen quality of life. 50 years later, Sandi Mann, a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire, provided a scientific reasoning behind Bertrand’s claim that boredom can be an empowering and ultimately productive force. Mann describes ‘boredom’ as a “search for neural stimulation that isn’t satisfied.” A blank mind will naturally wander and seek for material to keep it occupied; at this point, the human brain becomes susceptible to creativity.

Think back to your childhood. Imagination would take over. “Pretend that you’re a…” was a common phrase floating around the playground. When faced with no alternative, children come up with their own games, powered by the sheer force of imagination. Nearly every child must have ‘played’ either ‘Doctors and Nurses,’ ‘Families’ or ‘Teacher;’ games that required no props but rather just the willingness of its participants to invent their own entertainment. Due to the rapid development of technology, there is no need to ‘pretend’ to entertain anymore. Mobile apps and video games are so advanced they can create these worlds themselves and allow children to merely follow the instructions. Games like Fortnite allow players to team up and engage in combat in a dystopian, zombie-environment. All players are required to do is to press buttons. FIFA encourages similar button pushing, where children play as their favourite team without having to go outside. It stands to reason therefore, that this absence of external stimulation motivates children to push their creative capacity to amuse themselves – which they most likely would not do, were they not bored.

A lack of stimulus leading to ingenuity can also be seen in adult life. Western civilisation, in particular, ingrains within society conforming to a path of school, university, a job, etc. The most important requisite in a job is that it earns enough money – not that it is enjoyable. And hence, monotonous. Prescribed existence, the tired trope of ‘adult who hates their job and by extension, life’ has permeated through reality into books and films alike. Take ‘The Incredibles’ for example – Bob despises his grey and dreary office job and finds it underwhelming and wholly unsatisfying. He is bored out of his mind. The complete lack of inspiration he finds in his day to day life inspires him to change it and make it what he wants it to be – so he returns to his previous career as a superhero. His boredom drives him to create the life he actually wants and to carve it into his reality. Transformation of lifestyle can also be seen in real life; consider that acquaintance who could not stand their HR office job any longer and so packed up and spent a year travelling around South America – their boredom inspired them to create a new path for themselves simply for satisfaction. A powerful and creative mindset is borne of an utterly insipid context which then motivates an inspired mindset.

There is also no escaping the prescence of boredom within art. Ennui is critical to the world of arts, whether it be the switch that sparks a passion, or inspiration for an individual piece. The former is often seen in the formation of an artist’s career – a reason for pursuing their craft in a particular field. For instance, the French painter Henri Matisse was interested in law until he was twenty-one. However, when struck down by appendicitis and the subsequent lengthy and wearisome recovery, his mother bought him some paints. With little else to do, he gave it a go. Soon he became riveted by the activity, eventually leading to his status as one of the most prominent artists of all time. It seems probable that had he not been in the throes of a monotonous recovery period that he would never have picked up the brush at all.

As well as igniting an interest, boredom can also inspire pieces. George Harrison of ‘The Beatles’ learned to play sitar after he became disillusioned with the music his group were producing. He studied under Ravi Shankar to hone his technique and soon ‘Norwegian Wood’ (1965) became the first commercial song in the Western hemisphere to use a sitar. Harrison’s boredom lead him and his band to become pioneers in pushing the boundaries of Western pop music, to give their audiences something they had not heard before. Similarly, American composer Mark Appelbaum said that he was bored of music in general – it all sounded the same to him. His motivation when composing is thus to make something “interesting”, something unheard before; he neglects the limitations of genre, instrumentation and time signatures to create “experiences of sounds” that are novel in their existence. Boredom of the conformity within artistic spheres allows artists to push their own boundaries of creativity and innovation.

Tavi Gevinson, creator and editor of ‘Rookie’ magazine and website, ascribes her career to her teenage boredom. As a freshman in high school, she found that there was no resource for teenage girls to share their art, stories, lifes and problems in a non-judgemental yet engaging format. ‘Vogue’ was too highbrow, ‘Red Tops’ only interested in surface emotions, nothing deeper. And so, she created an online publication that invited teenage women to share their creativity and the pains of adolescence to an audience that craved their content as much as these girls needed to share it. Gevinson’s boredom not only launched her career and gave her an outlet to read the things she wanted to but shared that opportunity with a generation of young girls and allowed them to give their creativity a channel and an audience.

Ultimately, boredom should be embraced. It has a productive power that is absent in other mental states. Boredom is a state of searching, needing, and wanting – when there is so little to occupy the brain, there is nothing to hold it back. People can be utterly reckless in their creativity, whether that be within their chosen medium of art, or implicated within their very own lives. Indeed, if you choose to believe Kierkegaard, boredom is at the very essence of our being and genesis; “the gods were bored; therefore, they created human beings.” Boredom is a natural occurrence of human life and cannot be ignored.

Peaky Blinders Season 5 Review

Eleanor Ruxton
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Peaky Blinders Season 5 Review

For all its sex, drugs and violence, Peaky Blinders is starting to get tired of itself. Its response? A gripping foray into the world of political deal making, so scandalous it makes even members of the Shelby family feel uncomfortable.

Series five of the hit BBC drama follows its protagonist, the now exhausted, frustrated and paranoid Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby, on his next adventure, as he gives his support to the intensely creepy Oswald Mosely MP (Sam Claflin) and his nascent fascist party. What follows is a top-secret plan to bring down the fascist operation from the inside that leaves both the audience and the Shelby family feeling conflicted. How far will Tommy go to prove he is a good man? And what values might he sacrifice?

In his deteriorating mental state Tommy Shelby ponders his exhaustion. “I need to sleep.” he tells a hallucination of his dead wife. Indeed, tiredness is this series’ dominant theme and in many ways seems to parallel the feelings of the show’s creators. The familiar formula of gang warfare which intensifies over five episodes until its sudden resolution in the sixth has been dispensed of. Quantifiable threat has succumbed to an exhilarating chaos.

In his crusade against the fascists, Shelby’s response must escape the confines of family politics and vendetta. This new context renders the behaviour of the characters and the progression of the plot rather unpredictable. It’s as if we’ve been shaken awake, unable to rely completely on our much-beloved protagonist and uncertain that the writers will show him mercy.

With this new strategy comes new dangers and perhaps an even more profound suspense. Both Tommy and the audience are left increasingly confused about what his values really are. Conflicting feelings about his methods serve to break away from the simplistic, binary morality of the earlier series in a way that is immensely refreshing. More than this, unable to work out just how ‘good’ our ‘good guy’ really is, he can no longer be trusted to win.

Collectively, we have been plunged into a clammy state of anxiety, emphatically alive. We feel wide awake and can be sure that the protagonist does too. It is from this point of heightened anxiety that the liberal use of heavy-breathing sound effects and artificial mist serve to drag us into the character’s eventual breakdown

This downward spiral is far from complete. Tommy’s conversations with ‘Grace’ serve to negotiate his emotions and suicidal impulses. From the outset the brakes are applied to his inevitable mental collapse: “So much to do, Grace…I need to say goodbye.” The energy-sapping misery that characterises the first few episodes dissipates. “I will continue ‘til I find a man that I can’t defeat.” becomes a believable claim.

So we leave Tommy as we found him, stumbling through the mist, lost. Having invigorated the format, he has, in one sense, emerged a hero. Newly energised he shouts, “anyone who is tired of this old-fashioned, backstreet fucking razor gang can leave”. This is a statement directed against accusations of predictability and ‘sameyness’. The show lives to fight another day.

Film School- Tales of Coming of Age

Kavya Deshpande
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Film School- Tales of Coming of Age

In the language of the Aymara, an indigenous South American nation, it is the future and not the past that lies behind you. The logic behind this idea is immaculate. What has been done and seen and experienced will be laid out in front of you, visible at all times. Turning the other way is futile; there is nothing to see.

It is something of a shame, then, that the tyranny of looking forward has settled on the rest of us. It has become a symbol of stoicism and progressiveness. Memory is now a dehumidified place, a container for postcard anecdotes that can be safely retrieved, shared, and put away again. Anything else – anything more – would be wallowing.

But there is something deeply atavistic about people’s needto take stock, and the pressure to avoid doing so has sprung a market for spaces where quick and unceremonious attempts can be made. A lot of these offerings go for cheap sentimentality, proving that the past is only palatable when kitsch. Admit it, everyone who has ever been to a noughties club night went with the small hope of recapturing something oftheir childhood, and no one has ever emerged from one convinced that Flo Rida helped them do it.

The coming-of-age genre is no exception, and many of its products have their faults forgiven by a culminating wide-angle of the protagonist pulling out of the driveway and heading to college (hey, remember when you left for uni? Great! Now cry, you anxious, regret-fuelled adult-thing, and don’t pay ten quid for a cinema ticket if you’re going to track your imposter syndrome onto the carpet). There are exceptions, though, and the past twenty years have seen some of the most subtle and sublime films of this kind ever made. They are less about becoming someone else – older, better – than they are about having that often-discouraged dialogue with who we once were. As Joan Didion put it, “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”

Freshers’ week is a time when the cultural expectation to never look back is at its strongest, and when who you used to be seems most unattractive. The curtain is pulled back on your new life, you’re shown around and reassured about its superiority, and without warning comes the plunge into its demands and rhythms. Besides, you can’t toss in bed thinking about the past when you’re at a different club everynight (which you definitely will be because no one in the history of this university has ever chosen to admit their social inferiority by skipping out on going to Fever, ever). If, however, you happen to find the time or the willingness, now or at any point in the next few years, here are a few films that demonstrate how looking back can be done with dignity and style.

1. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017)

Greta Gerwig restages her adolescence against buttery Californian sunlight. Not quite autobiographical but, if you’re a daughter who has a certain kind of mother, it may at times feel autobiographical to you. The film follows Christine McPherson – or “Lady Bird”, as she has styled herself (quotation marks included) – in her last months of high school. At its centre is her relationship with her mother, and equally, her mother’s relationship with her. Both are stubborn and angry in their own way, loving and empathetic in quite a similar way, and Lady Bird is as much about dealing with someone growing up as it is about growing up yourself.

2. The History Boys (dir. Nicholas Hynter, 2006)

Yes, it is about a group of sixth- formers being trained for their Oxbridge exams and interviews to study History, and for that reason alone many of us are guaranteed to sense the past raise its head while watching it. But both the play and the film also encapsulate a common frustration that quietly plagues seventeen-year-olds: the suspicion that you might be a bit clever and the desperate need to be seen as such. They also nod at something many of us realise years later, that teachers are people too, and sometimes the ones who are too eager to make us feel clever aren’t necessarily the best for us.

3. Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burn- ham, 2018)

A coming-of-age film that throws out every trope John Hughes ever started. Swollen soundtracks and prom night are eschewed for the blue light of a phone screen under the covers after bedtime and the clumsy, undersubscribed YouTube channels that form one’s early online footprint. Also, if you were fortunate enough to have experienced middle school as it is constructed in the American and international systems – those three self-contained years that replace childhood optimism with a generous selection of complexes and insecurities – please watch,and squirm, and redeem your thirteen-year-old selves. We may have been embarrassing, but we often still are, and bless us, we never stopped trying our best.

Matsubara: Lifelines

Mia Simovic
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Matsubara: Lifelines

Dynamic red and orange patterned planes of abstraction framing icy-blue Himalayan skies – Matsubara’s Tibetan Sky B (1987) seems to embody the essence of her exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum. The woodcut, inspired by her visit with her husband to Tibet in 1985, hosts a conversation, one that is sparked by contrasting complexity, pallet and energies evident in her representations of the elaborately decorated monasteries and the palpable coolness and expanse of the landscape beyond.

This dialectic is a recurrent theme throughout her exhibition which displays an assortment of woodcuts; ranging from buildings and figures for book illustrations, to organic forms from over 60 years of artistic endeavor. Yet despite their eclecticism, all images are unified in their invocation of a time, a place, and of the artistic varieties which compose her culture and heritage. Growing up in Kyoto, Matsubara’s father was the head priest at the Kenkun Shrine where she spent much of her childhood and often performed. These formative years are manifested in the pinto figurations of traditional Japanese lifestyles and dwellings, her continual references to landscape and setting, and her desire to marry spiritual and physical beauty. Likewise, each woodcut is mounted on silk panels, reminiscent of Japanese folding screens, suggesting a peripheral connection with her homeland within the typically modernist exhibition space at the Ashmolean.

Beyond geographical influences, the dynamism and diverse subject choices can be traced back to a concert she attended by Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, whose highly emotional and intimate performance is depicted in a figurative and grey-scale woodcut (1962). This sense of excitement and momentum distinguishes this exhibition; Matsubara’s retrospective is a collection of defining moments catalogued in a series of joyous compositions, but which sensitively allude to wider cultural tropes.

Image: Naoko Matsubara, Foliage A 1992 © Naoko Matsubara. Photo: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)

William Blake

William Atkinson
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William Blake

William Blake was never the artist he wanted to be, nor the one we want him to be. As with all the great Romantics, both our view of him and his view of himself are a bit too, well, romantic. The Tate Britain’s new exhibition on him is labelled “Rebel, Radical, Revolutionary”: “an artist for the 21st century”. Blake was a man of his time, but one who made a career out of revolting against it. He didn’t do that because he was some ur-Lenin, a Jeremy Corbyn of 1800 making a career out of countering an ill-defined establishment. No, William Blake was what you might call “a bit of a character”. In layman’s terms, he was bonkers.

I came to Blake as most schoolkids do: the tiger. Plus, seven years at public school meant I had my fair share of singing Jerusalem. But unlike his poetry, Blake’s art has seemed more mysterious to me. Those who know about it will have images in their heads of huge muscle-bound Gods fighting Satanic serpents; or men with big white bushy beards poking life into their world with their fingertips; or swirly, colourful scenes of pretty angels in near-psychedelic environments. It’s like Michelangelo on a bad trip. Often, even, rather terrifying.  

But the Tate’s exhibition sets out to establish Blake’s position as an artist as well as a poet and to chart the whole of his not-inconsiderable career. Confronting you upon entry is his beautiful Albion Rose. It was chosen no doubt because it’s emblematic of his work for the popular imagination. It portrays a serenely powerful nude figure ringed by beautiful colour with their arms open onto the world. Albion is a central character in the complex and unwieldly mythology Blake created – think Tolkien, but less film-friendly – which runs through much of his work. As such, it could be said to be a good start to an exhibition on his life. But it’s also signifies the kind of Blake the exhibition consciously or unconsciously pushes. The figure embodies the liberating power of imagination; this is Blake the free spirit railing against the chains of conformity. This is Blake, implacable opponent of everything from traditional marriage, to contemporary politics, to mainstream Anglicanism. It’s nice that the next picture along is a supposed self-portrait, as the message of the curators is clear: Blake’s a Rebel Rebel, (though his face ain’t a mess).

The impression we actually get is that the vision of Blake as an ‘implacable maverick’ isn’t wholly accurate. Some of the featured work is impressive: I particularly liked watercolours of Joseph and his brothers (despite them lacking a technicolour dream coat) as well as early works based off his mythology. But this sits alongside the jobbery that he produced in order to make a living. In a section entitled “Money”, we see Blake’s commercial engravings. A lot of the information provided is interesting, and fitting for Blake: we’re told of a few of his patrons including the Earl of Egremont’s mistress and Jo Jonson, a noted radical. He also illustrated works by Mary Wollstonecraft whilst working on his more famous watercolours at night. But unfortunately for the Tate, they’ve already inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. The great secret about Blake is clear: he could be just as much of a hack as the rest of us.

Of course, the man had to make a living. But it’s not alone in the exhibition in taking the shine from Blake’s idiosyncratic image. We learn about the role his long-suffering wife Catherine had in assisting with colouring his engravings and finishing his work after he died. For a supposed loner, she was one of many who helped him along his way. The famous collection of aspiring artists that worshipped at his feet when he was going as grey and beardy as his pictures were just the latest in a long line of friends and patrons who, somewhat bemusedly, supported him throughout his life. It begs the question as to why the Tate wants to market the exhibition through Blake’s image as a maverick whilst going so far to undermine it.  

The answer’s simple. The popularised version of Blake that this exhibition seeks to promote is fundamentally revisionist. It’s a product of the 1960s’. Contemporary academics working in the arts and humanities sought to reinvent him as a precursor to one of them; some sort of quasi-hippie, all free love, psychedelic visions and railing against the system. He was an obvious candidate; not only a writer and painter, but a friend of Tom Paine, eulogiser of the American Revolution and author of the theme tune of radicals the length and breadth of England. No public-school classical education a la Wordsworth and Coleridge for Blake; he was the son of a Soho shop-owner but driven by visions and his own force of personality to charge against his qualms at his contemporary society. He was the perfect fit for a generation of artists and curators of the Vietnam, LSD and Woodstock generation. It’s this vision of Blake that the exhibition, rightly or wrongly, tries to push. Creaking under the stubborn refusal of Blake’s actual idiosyncrasy to conform to this model, it almost causes this exhibition to collapse under its own agenda.

Which would be a shame. Not only because it would miss what makes Blake so fascinating, but because it would rob you of the parts of this exhibition that are really worth your time. By that I can only mean Blake’s unique, brilliant and rather terrifying imagination. Yes, there’s a lot here that’s underwhelming. He repeats the same pictures repeatedly and he can’t paint an animal to save his life: the tiger in the original Songs of Experience collection looks more like a cuddly teddy bear.  

But for all that the entry price can still be justified for one room. Coming about three-fifths of the way in, it shows Blake at the peak of his imaginative and artistic abilities. It is wonderful. It features images drawn from Milton, Shakespeare and Blake’s own mythology. There’s Newton charting the world from the bottom of the sea; King Nebuchadnezzar reduced to a mindless animal through his affliction of madness. They are so vivid, so striking and so utterly unique. This is the Blake we want to see: resplendent in his magnificent idiosyncrasy rather than pigeonholed into a political agenda.

The rest of the gallery is peppered with other similarly great works, from his horrifying muscle-bound Ghost of a Flea to a terrifying Cerberus clenching the soul of its victim. A highlight were his representations of the recently deceased (for him) PM William Pitt and Lord Nelson as classical heroes fighting monsters and serpents in a heavenly dreamscape. I can’t see that being done for any recent Prime Minsters, but that’s Blake for you. The only big serpent in the artistic garden is the supremely idiotic choice by the gallery to hang some pictures in a replica of an 1809 exhibition of Blake’s work. Nice in theory, but lamentable in practice; the space is gloomy and shadow-filled, meaning that the watercolours are even harder to see than they were after 200 years of fading. Though, to give the Tate their due they rectify their mistake on an opposite wall.

Blake long dreamed of making his works 30 metres high in order to act as national monuments. Via some helpful projection the Tate have shown us what could have been. The power and detail is incredible. It’s partnered with a computer mock-up of a small print blown up as a tapestry in Blake’s local church, another dream fulfilled.  It’s another good idea and well executed. But it’s also sad. Both these visions show that Blake’s mind and imagination were too big for typical constraints, and that he never had the chance to realise his visions how he wanted. Ultimately, this exhibition never truly shows the extent of Blake’s genius, as he never got the chance to.  

He was a man in his own world. Not only in the sense of seeing visions of angels and demons or by remaining stubbornly different throughout his life. Blake was a man who lived in and through his work. He used it to view the world wholly uniquely. His work was essential to his sense of himself and his personal world: he once attacked a Westminster schoolboy who mocked him as an apprentice engraver. I imagine that was because he felt attacking his work was such a powerful personal slight. His wife once said she didn’t see much of him since he was “always in Paradise”. That Paradise wasn’t only his visions, but his work through which he realised his own personal understanding of reality. He never fully managed that. That’s the thing that both curators with agendas and us as gallery-goers need to know. We can never truly know Blake; his world and his work were his own, and since he’s gone, we can’t every fully know what he was trying to do. It’s a good thing he was a fan of Milton; it is, in a very real sense, a Paradise Lost.

Bolton may be gone, but it is the President who has the most dangerous foreign policy

Nicholas Monaco
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Bolton may be gone, but it is the President who has the most dangerous foreign policy

For just a moment last month, a divided Washington came together to marvel at the defenestration-bytweet of John Bolton, the West Wing’s resident uber-hawk. In his 520 days as President Trump’s national security adviser, Bolton acted on his extreme beliefs, driving the world towards conflict with Iran and taking a bureaucratic hatchet to the processes that traditionally steer U.S. foreign policy. The bonfire of American prestige that is the Trump administration has left many hands dark with soot, but his are blacker than most.

While Bolton will be little missed, he and Trump were always something of an odd couple. Hired on the strength of his brash Fox News performances, Bolton functioned as a muse and a vessel for Trump’s most aggressive, unilateral, nationalist instincts. But consistency is not one of this president’s virtues.

There is another Trump: one who loves to make deals, no matter their terms; one who craves approval, even from the world’s worst. The dissonance between these two personas – between his provocations and his willingness to back them up – has become so dangerous that some of Bolton’s critics even found themselves hoping that his dogmatism might temper Trump’s strategic OPINION nihilism. In the weeks before Bolton’s departure, as Trump invited Russia to the G7 and the Taliban to Camp David, those contradictions evidently proved too great to stomach.

Bolton’s exit comes at a turbulent moment. While the Persian Gulf seems to have temporarily stabilized, violence can flare up with no warning, as with the September attack on Saudi oil facilities. North Korea’s arsenal continues to expand, apparently unaffected by Kim Jong Un’s ‘love’ for Trump.

Closer to home, Venezuela’s crisis is crushing its people, destabilizing the region, and entrenching a hostile regime in the Western Hemisphere. Most importantly, what began as a trade dispute with China has hardened into a comprehensive, explicit competition for global influence that looks likely to continue for decades.

Above all this now looms the House of Representative’s impeachment inquiry, the first in American history to focus on a president’s actions abroad. The evidence that has already emerged is damning. Trump appears to have weaponized American foreign policy against his domestic political opponents, leveraging the powers of his office to coerce at least one foreign nation to intervene in the 2020 election. Impeachment will consume Washington for the coming months. It will be the prism through which the president sees the world.

What that means for the world is anyone’s guess. Will Trump quickly seal a cosmetic trade deal with Beijing to goose a weakening economy, or will he double-down on China-bashing to motivate his base? Will ending the so-called “forever wars” in the Middle East, irrespective of the situation on the ground, prove an irresistible opportunity to bolster his deal-making bona fides? What does any of this look like refracted through the far-right media, Trump’s last line of defence?

Whatever he does, Trump will not lack enablers. Bolton’s successor – Robert O’Brien, formerly a hostage negotiator – brings the thinnest resume to the post in decades, having only recently made a name for himself by shepherding A$AP Rocky, that prisoner of conscience, safely home from Sweden. A review of his career and writings (‘What Would Winston Churchill Do?’) serves as a road map to the once proud GOP foreign policy tradition’s descent first into cliché, then self-abasement. He is John Bolton without the mustache – or, it appears, the spine. And there are many more like him.

Ultimately, though, everything comes back to Trump. Confident in his judgement and freed from advisers that sought to control his impulses, he now sits alone in the cockpit of the American state. All the institutions, processes, and norms that should serve as guardrails lie demolished or ignored. With those hands firmly on the control-wheel, the United States will increasingly look to the world like its president himself – whipping back and from between warmonger and dealmaker, bully and coward, a source of fear and an object of scorn.

‘Blustery declarations, backed by unsustainable commitments, do not regain the strategic initiative,’ wrote Philip Zelikow, an American historian, in 2017. ‘Instead, they invite exemplary humiliation, this American generation’s version of Britain’s “Suez”moment, that some of our adversaries will eagerly try to arrange.’ Such a moment feels fast approaching, but only one thing is sure. For the foreseeable future, the United States will have no foreign policy beyond the self-preservation of Donald Trump. To a president who will not distinguish between national and personal interests, ‘America First’ has only ever meant ‘Me First.’

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