Saturday, May 17, 2025
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The Sweet Smell of Excess

David Alexander
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The Sweet Smell of Excess

“White elephants – the God of Hollywood wanted white elephants, and white elephants he got – eight of ’em, plaster mammoths perched on mega-mushroom pedestals, lording it over the colossal court.”

So begins Kenneth Anger’s gossipy movie memoir Hollywood Babylon, referencing D.W. Griffith’s gigantic Intolerance (1916). It’s immediately clear what Anger perceives to be the thrusting force in the development of Hollywood’s appeal: gloriously overblown, gleefully bloated excess. Flash forward roughly a century from Intolerance’s opening night, and the promise of thrilling excess is at least in part responsible for drawing audiences to Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Audiences, it seems, love films centred around extremes.

Excess, and its unavoidable corollary, inequality, are perdurable elements in the societies which duly provide audiences for Hollywood’s most extravagant creations. We all hear the cries and whispers of this or that debauched incident and like to tut and scorn; but why then are we so obsessed with seeing representations of this kind of behaviour on screen, and reminding ourselves of the extreme lives some can happily enjoy while others have little or nothing.

Maybe we can err on the side of idealism and claim that we’re seeking an explanation for extravagant behaviour. Is Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Belfort right when, in reference to his extravagant, obnoxious and massively successful brokerage house, he gurns that “Stratton Oakmont IS America”? Is Michael Fassbender’s sex addiction in Shame really representative of society’s inability to tame and accommodate its primal urges? What can we learn about the socially transcendent nature of genius by watching Mozart’s fall away from the decadent opulence of Viennese high society in ‘Amadeus’?

While the social implications of excessive behaviour seem real and uncomfortable, then, the extent to which films tend to deal with these is, we surely have to admit, limited. Just look at the work of the most vividly, luridly over-the-top mainstream director of the past twenty-five years. Quentin Tarantino has pumped his cinematic oeuvre so full of drug-taking, foul-mouthing and ultraviolence that it has occasionally risked rupturing out into an unengaging orgy of excess. You’d be hard pressed to find much in the way of socio-cultural analysis in-between the swear-y quips and gunshots.  

This is not a criticism, but rather a path into what I’d consider the fundamental tension in our relationship with cinematic excess. Experience of film is characterised by the dual tenets of ‘fear’ and ‘desire’. These work not in dichotomy, however, but in tandem. We find excessive behaviour alluring because we both fear its consequences, in individual narratives and in ‘real-world’ society, and are drawn to its potential pleasures, chiefly the opportunity to enter a world most of us feel ordinarily excluded from. There’s something beguiling about the opportunity to experience the heights of decadence in the safety of the cinema and the finiteness of a film.

This dual interpretation is essentially an answer to the question A. O. Scott asks at the start of his review of The Wolf of Wall Street, if it were applied to all films that depict over-the-top behaviour:  “Do they offer a sustained and compelling diagnosis of the terminal pathology that afflicts us, or are they especially florid symptoms of the disease?” The answer, surely, is both.

In Defence of Excess

Ellie Czyzowska
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In Defence of Excess

When describing the plot of films such as Funny Games (1997), Requiem for a Dream (2000), and Salò, or, 120 Days of Sodom (1975), the response from my mum is typically: “Not my sort of thing”. But why? I get that people can be put off by gore, by sex, or by the title for the second chapter of Salò, ‘Circle of Shit’ – but I am here to write about why these excessive portrayals are not only the best of content, but why they are worthwhile content at that. 

Cinema, though it can provide solace to an individual, is certainly a group event in culture today – and what screams ‘group’ more than cult films? The cult following of films like Wiseau’s The Room create a dedicated audience to an often extreme, or excessive, artform. But they have this cult for a reason – they provide entertainment, excitement, or simply a space of like-minded people to share an interest in. When watching Salò, there are moments of disgust, but when watching it with a friend, we laughed at the uncomfortable moments, and spent up to an hour afterwards reading reviews and talking about the merit in the film. Yes, there is a lot to be concerned about (the young age of many of the actors being a huge issue, of course), but as a film, the sex does say something, and it is wrong to discredit the film purely because its ‘too much’. 

Both Requiem for a Dream and Funny Games have something to say about the excesses that they show: for the former, it is about the dangers of drugs, and for the latter, the danger of violence on screen. Haneke’s 1997 film (which he remade in English shot-for-shot in 2007) in particular suits this question of why excess can be a good thing, because its message is a sort of paradox: the film pushes violence, murder and sexual abuse to an extreme in a family setting, but at the same time, is asking why we want to see such extremes, and judging us for enjoying it. The fourth wall break from the intruders are in my opinion, amazing – the best one being halfway through an especially violent scene, when the intruder turns to the camera and asks “is this violent enough for you?”. You feel attacked, but you also feel seen – and really, is that not one of the most important things people look for when watching a film – to feel seen? 

But now, let’s think, rather than feel, and look at the excess of Requiem for a Dream. Darren Aronofsky is not a man known for his subtlety – having a baby-murder scene in his 2017 flick Mother! made that pretty clear. Requiem for a Dream is a film which objectively works because of its excess – it is whole-heartedly devoted to excessiveness, from its extended scenes with Jared Leto’s mother being chased by her fridge, to the parallels of each character turning onto their side in the final shots, made particularly extreme by Leto’s amputation. This is an antidrugs film, and it serves this aim well – the excess is what allows this film to work, so I have to ask how anyone could criticise it for being ‘too much’. 

Excess can feel as though the creator is just throwing everything even slightly ‘horrible’ in to get a reaction, but that’s the joy. When Von Trier ends his film The House that Jack Built (2018) with a house made of mutilated, murdered dead bodies, strung up and screwed together after being frozen for years, you may be disgusted and (wrongly) discredit Von Trier’s work forever, but one thing is for sure, you don’t forget the ending. 

‘Carry-On’ Excess-ing?

Kristian Hallett and Matthew Jones
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‘Carry-On’ Excess-ing?

The Carry-On films are an odd bundle of affairs – 31 films (the largest number of any British series) of homophobia, misogyny, and casual racism, to name a few. They’re horrible in how outdated and casually offensive they are, and yet, ironically, hilarious. When I laugh at a joke in a CarryOn film, I’m not laughing with them, not at all – I’m laughing at how bad they are. Much like how I may laugh at a Christian mum’s minion meme page or simply a horse, the humour comes in the subversion of intention. The excessive nature of the films in their original context simply becomes more fodder to laugh at. The outrageously camp characters ogling Barbara Windsor’s exposed breasts is comedic for how over-the-top it is in its poor portrayal of women and gays, to name just a few casual victims of the show. 

Carry On Girls is an example of the film series’ incredible excess, both in terms of plot and politics. Mocking feminism and objectifying women all in one – it’s almost impressive in how poor it is. A group of protesting feminists speak of “squatting on this erection” (for clarity, the premises of the building – mind out of the gutter!) until their goals are met. What follows is a smorgasbord of nudity, women fighting over stolen bikinis and a pesky feminist plot to ruin everyone’s good old-fashioned fun. That’s possibly the most obviously excessive thing about these films – the passing off of ‘old-fashioned fun’. You know the type: private school showers, randy old men, big breasts, gays being gay and just gay-ing out everywhere. 

Yet Carry-On raises a lot of interesting cultural questions. How has our society changed since they were made? Could they have been made today? And how should we interpret films made in ‘the good old days’ of excessive, woeful prejudice? Kenneth Williams, a staple of the Carry-On franchise, struggled immensely with his homosexuality: yet in every film he’s part of the same joke. He’s gay. That was unacceptable at the time. That’s the punchline. Yet his presentation is persistently one of camp characterization and, arguably, excess. He’s also one of the funniest characters. There’s a reason he was in so many of the films. 

When we laugh at him, are we indulging societal homophobia? It’s a strange situation that I, as a gay man, find myself in. I’m not sure we’re being homophobic. His presentation is one of stereotypical homosexuality, yet it’s left unmentioned in the films. This makes the Carry-On films strangely metatextual. What did the scriptwriters think? How did he get along with his fellow actors? From this angle, the Carry-On films are an exercise in self-aware excess. The women and gays are willing solicitors in their own mockery. 

And it’s something that comedy ran with. From the Carry-On films, writers gained a springboard where they could turn the tables and make characters so excessive that we’re laughing at them, not with them. Absolutely Fabulous’ Eddie and Patsy, for example, are fun, excessive stereotypes of the rich, vapid, and conceited in the fashion world. We’re not supposed to relate to them. Yet I love them. After all, they got to meet 90s-era Naomi Campbell. God, I wish that were me. 

The nature of excessiveness is a peculiar one. We assume excess to be a bad thing, and sometimes it can be, but need it always be? I’m an advocate of comedic excessiveness as much as I am comedic restraint. Some films work best by restraining the over the top comedy that they could include within them; others work best by going all out. I think the most interesting things in comedy are the excessive restraints and restrained excesses of films such as Napoleon Dynamite or The Greasy Strangler. I love both of these films. They’re both incredibly odd, idiosyncratic approaches to comedy which will either be loved or hated. Napoleon Dynamite is excessive in its restraint of basic human emotion whilst The Greasy Strangler is excessive in its excess of grease. These sentences may not make sense if you haven’t seen the films – I recommend them immensely.

 Comedy, as an art form, is always centered around this balance between restraint and excess. Too much excess and the audience gets bored, too much restraint and the audience get bored. Where do the Carry-On films lie? Very clearly within the overly excessive bracket – but that’s why they’re funny now, in an ironic way. Because of the excess of offensive jargon and bawdy comedy, I can find them funnier than they have the right to be. 

It’s confusing, but comedy is confusing. Some people will love the unbounded excess of shows like Family Guy, and some will find the restraint of things like Napoleon Dynamite to be frustrating. But I think that a midway point is the safest place to be. That’s where the Carry-On films reside. In the middle.

Troy Story Revisited

Serena Millen
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Troy Story Revisited

In Pat Barker’s latest novel (out this month in paperback), the story of the Iliad is reanalysed from the point of view of one of the original works’ most seemingly minor characters, Briseïs. The great Greek general Achilles, encamped by the besieged city of Troy, is forced to return the Trojan woman he has captured as a prize; angered, he takes instead the captive Briseïs from his comrade Agamemnon.

What is interesting about her character in the Iliad is the disparity between such a brief appearance and her narrative importance, as the unwitting cause of Agamemnon and Achilles’ fateful feud. Barker’s text uses this paradox by giving Briseïs an active voice, while still maintaining the passivity of Homer’s original character.

The exploration of alternative narratives of ancient texts is hardly new. In the same year as Barker’s book, Madeleine Miller returned with Circe, a tale similarly torn from its original context in Homer’s other epic, the Odyssey, and given to a minor female character. Intertextuality played an important role in ancient literature; long before Miller or Barker, writers such as Ovid were already giving voice to ancient heroines.

However, what elevates the modern novelists’ works above mere fan- fiction is their stature as impressive texts in their own right. The Silence of the Girls is a novel which, though enhanced by prior knowledge of the Iliad, could very well stand without it. Such books are important transitions for those unfamiliar with, but interested in, the Classical world, and we owe it to writers such as Barker who rejuvenate ancient texts without stripping them of their original greatness.

Something I didn’t particularly enjoy when I first started reading was the mixture of colloquial dialogue with more formal speech, which seemed jarring considering the high verse of Homer. However, this did not detract from the work, and it developed nicely in the text alongside the normal and commonplace stories which the tale explored. This isn’t supposed to be elevated verse, but sharp and acces- sible prose.

The stories which are explored are not those of the god-like warriors, but of the people who fade into the background in the original texts. A particularly noteworthy moment is the list of Achilles’ victims as one finds in Homer, but here they are supplemented not just with the causes of the deaths, but also personal stories from the women connected to the dead men. Such elements create an appreciable poignancy for modern readers which Bronze-Age battles can never provide.

The best thing about Barker’s novel is its realism; she does not try to pretend that, because Briseïs has a narrative, she has any control over it.

The book maintains all of the brutality of the original, whilst expanding on the stories of the marginalised characters. Despite the antiquity of the original text, The Silence of the Girls manages to be fresh, exciting, and moving. It is versatile enough to be read by those with knowledge of the Iliad, as well as by those unacquainted with the ancient source – and read it should be.

Going Wilde in America

William Atkinson
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Going Wilde in America

Oscar Wilde is a creation of those who write about him. From my dog-eared GCSE coursework on The Importance of Being Earnest to the audiences of Victorian high society who adored and then loathed him, Wilde is made in our imagination. Picture him now – a witty, tragic, Victorian dandy, revered as a gay icon and literary great. Mendelssohn, however, has provided a refreshing and unexpected new interpretation of Wilde’s life.

The book starts with yet another interpretation of Wilde, from an 1882 American cartoon. He’s portrayed as a grotesque caricature of an African-American with the caption of “What’s de matter wid de n*gga? Why Oscar you’s gone wild!” Mendelssohn has uncovered an aspect of Wilde’s history previously neglected – the racial debates underpinning his 1882 American tour.

Arriving in America, Wilde was a living parody, the author of some badly received poetry and an unperformable play. He had been spurred on by popular interest in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Patience, which satirised Wilde and the aesthetic movement he led. His tour flopped – audiences deserted his lectures, Harvard students mocked his outfits to public glee, and his failures left him drunk, exhausted and dejected. Most damaging of all, however, was the popular press coverage and cartoons, satirising Wilde with gross racial caricatures. Mendelssohn presents an America obsessed with racial hierarchy, with the blacks and the Irish at the bottom. Wilde, a dandyish, effete and pretentious Irish import, was an easy target. He was called the ‘wild man of Borneo’; a woman called him a gorilla in the street. Central to this mockery was the popular minstrel culture of the time; grotesque black-face shows that sometimes included mocking presentations of Wilde and his set.

Mendelssohn deftly shows how Wilde reinvented himself in the face of these attacks. He reclaimed his Irishness, spun tales of being lauded by Colorado miners, and visited Jefferson Davis, erstwhile Confederate President, to burnish his ‘white’ credentials. Most importantly, Mendelssohn suggests Wilde’s American experience firmly shaped his later writing. Characters and scenes in Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Im- portance lampoon not only America’s puritanical society, but the style of minstrel shows. Wilde is renowned for making high society laugh at its own absurdities, but Mendelssohn argues his extraordinary wit was channelled into a very English take on the same minstrels who once spoofed him.

Convincing? Not entirely. The book is a cracking read, informative and thought- provoking. But Mendelssohn’s suggested link between Wilde’s greatest works and his American experience seems a little far- fetched. Mendelssohn’s Wilde is another creation of those who write about him. Perhaps the most important lesson this book teaches us is just how hard it is to understand him. The man was a mass of contradictions; reinvention was part of his nature. Trying to understand how he was ‘made’ is inevitably going to disappoint. However, it is to Mendelssohn’s great credit that she attempts it in such a refreshingly readable fashion.

Morrissey: a musician of excess?

Florine Lips
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Morrissey: a musician of excess?

Whether or not you like The Smiths, or any of his solo music, it is difficult to overcome the labelling of Morrissey as an “excessive” musician. Despite being judged by music critics to be one of the most important artists of the 1980s, throughout his 40-year-career Morrissey has been accused by celebrities, members of the general public and the global mass media of racial insensitivity, promoting far-right views, and defending sexual criminals. If this wasn’t enough, he has also publicly given statements in which he criticises the royal family, that he views as authoritarian and corrupt. It is safe to say that ‘this charming man’ has been described over the course of his career as anything but.

What does it mean to describe a musician as “excessive”? Considering the nature of the popular music industry, we must remember that, essentially, free reign is given to all kinds of craziness. Morrissey is part of an industry in which Lady Gaga can turn up to the 2010 MTV music video awards in a dress made of meat.

So, why do we call certain people “excessive”, and allow others to escape from this label? It is far from unusual for a musician to be outspoken about their values and politics, especially in today’s ‘woke’ culture. This begs the question: why is Morrissey so often criticised for expressing his views and labelled as ‘excessive’?

The answer may be rooted in the fact that he takes his views one step further than most. Take his staunch commitment to vegetarianism, and later veganism, as an example. Morrissey regularly refuses to perform in venues that host companies selling meat, and has been known to forbid his band members from being photographed eating it. In 2011, following the Oslo massacre in which 76 people died, he was reported to have told a crowd it was ‘nothing’ compared to the animals killed for meat in fast-food chains every day. He’s certainly not the only artist to have committed themselves to defending the rights of animals, but I doubt many others would go to such lengths to show it. Whether you see it as an admirable display of integrity or as plainly unnecessary, the ways in which Morrissey expresses his views seem to be especially ‘excessive’ even within the grand scope of celebrity behaviour. Somehow, Morrissey’s controversial views add to his sense of artistic and personal authenticity. For example, he has made comments and taken political stances that even his most loyal fans have found difficult to stomach. In one statement, he called Reggae ‘the most racist music in the world – an absolute glorification of black supremacy’. In a 2017 interview, he defended the accused sexual predators Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, blaming the victims for ‘overreacting’. More recently, headlines have reported his support for the nationalist group ‘For Britain’, which he has described as “the only British political party that can safeguard our security.” Again, this was a move that fans have questioned, especially considering his support for the Muslim community around the UK.

Then again, Morrissey has alwaysbeen controversial. Who couldn’t be when they write lyrics such as ‘why do I smile / at people who I’d much rather kick in the eye?’. Should his outspoken nature and tendency to shock even come as a surprise? We might even say that part of his “excess” is his unpredictability; his unwavering commitment not to fit the mould, to always keep us wondering what’s next.

Interview: George Osborne

Angus Brown
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Interview: George Osborne

The first impression that I get of George Osborne is that he is a man in a hurry – both literally and figuratively. After unforeseen traffic issues, what is meant to be a thorough half an hour interview before a talk at my college is reduced to a frantic ten minutes afterwards.

By the time Osborne and I sit down together he could be forgiven if he was sick of half-baked questions from undergraduates having just delivered a talk on many of the themes I ask him about, but to his great credit he is as lively and animated in the awkward format of a one on one interview as he is speaking to a packed auditorium.

Indeed, the genuine enthusiasm I sense is at first a surprise: a politician widely decried for being a creature of spin and artifice in the Blairite model is hardly supposed to seem as genuinely excited by the things he believes in as Osborne.

Naturally the first question I ask him is where he thinks that both the country and the party that he has dedicated so much of his life to are heading. A few days before our interview Osborne said that he felt that “the Conservative party has to confront the truth. It needs a new leader, a new agenda, it needs to win over supporters who have disappeared and make an appeal to urban, metropolitan Britain that has turned its back on the Conservatives”, and I ask him if he thinks that a kind of socially liberal, deeply metropolitan – perhaps even cosmopolitan – conservatism is what he sees as Britain’s future.

“Yeah,” he replies, “I think that the Conservative Party wins when it goes beyond its comfort zone and reaches out to more urban, metropolitan voters, to younger voters, to people from different ethnic minorities, and that’s what it’s done when it’s won elections, and when it doesn’t do that it loses elections.

“I’d give the same advice to the Labour Party which is reach out beyond its natural base, for example win over the support of people who run businesses and the like. I think a good test in politics is do you understand why people don’t vote for you, and in my experience, being a politician, if you don’t understand why people don’t vote for you you’re never going be in office.

“You know, you need to try and appreciate opinions on the other side of the fence.”

I ask him if these ideas are really best expressed by the Conservative Party, or whether what we might call “Osbornism” might be better off in a new centrist party – whether that’s Change UK or not – just as similar ideas flourished in Emmanuel Macron’s new En Marche! party.

“Well, the British system is quite difficult, in the parliamentary system its quite difficult to have a new party,” he says hesitantly, “but if ever there was a time for it, it’s probably now, because both parties are moving away from the centre and creating a vacuum, but maybe that doesn’t require a new party – maybe the Liberal Democrats are showing that they can fill that space.”

“It’s still easier to try and seize control of the direction and leadership of one of the main parties, it’s easier rather than creating a centre-left, moderate, social democrat party to try and get back control of the Labour leadership from the Hard left, and change it.

“Similarly, with the Conservatives, it’s easier to get control of the Conservative leadership, and take the party back to a more liberal, cosmopolitan, pro-business position, than go with the kind of hard right, hard Brexit right. So that’s still the easier route than creating a brand-new force: Emmanuel Macron could do that in France, but in France the electoral system made it a little bit easier for him to do that, even if it is a big achievement.”

I press him on this point, and ask if there might be circumstances in which he might switch his support to such a party: his reply is surprisingly candid, for a politician.

“Well, I think I’m still going to fight for getting the Conservative Party in the right direction, and as someone who gave my life to Conservative politics I don’t want to abandon that. That doesn’t mean that my newspaper which I edit might not take a different view.

“And I have a responsibility to the readers of that news- paper, so I would distinguish there. As I say before we move on, and before you give up on the Conservative Party, as someone who was one of its MPs, I would fight for its future.” An intriguing comment at the time, these remarks now seem like a hint at things to come: two days before the European Elections The Evening Standard tacitly endorsed the Liberal Democrats.

At the time, however, I didn’t have time to press him on this before we hurtled towards Osborne’s pet project, the Northern Powerhouse. When I ask him why he thinks the project never took off in quite the way it was pitched Osborne almost bristles, and he replies sternly that: “Well I think it is taking off, I announced it four years ago, and in that space we’ve, out of nowhere, created elected mayors in Greater Manchester, in Merseyside, in Teeside, and South Yorkshire.

“We’ve got really ambitious projects that didn’t exist before for train connections between these cities, we’ve got new science facilities going up, so lots has happened in the last few years.

“But turning around a hundred years of economic history is hard to do, and it can’t be done overnight.

“And although I think the government aren’t giving it as much support as they should, the local communities, the different cities, the different towns, have really embraced it, and are working together.

“The basic idea is not just ‘the North is great’, and I say that as someone who was an MP in the North for many years, its that the North could be stronger if the different cities of the North worked more closely together.”


This seems to be the centre of Osborne’s vision for Britain: interconnected, metropolitan, focused on building great cities where people can do great things. He seeks a Britain where high-speed trains rush across the landscape and we all become homogenised into a vision of a world which looks all too coincidentally like London. But I’m not sure that’s actual what people in the North of England want. From my own experience growing up near Preston, Osborne could politely be described as less than popular.

I ask him if, in light of electoral victories like the Copeland by-election and a brief surge of support before her campaign’s fatal crash, it is disappointing that Theresa May’s conservatism seems more popular than his. His answer is at once incisive and insightful, and I’ll readily admit that he somewhat sways me from the popular narrative.

“I’m not sure that’s true,” he says, “if you take Cheshire where I was an MP, we lost half of the Tory seats in Cheshire under Theresa May, and we went backwards in Lancashire and elsewhere, so it’s true that we picked up a couple of places like Middlesbrough, so I’m not saying it’s all in one direction, but generally we’ve gone backwards and will continue to go backwards until we can be that national party.

“And by the way if we cancel projects like HS2, which is the biggest single investment in the North of England in its modern history, that will be a betrayal of the North, and will be seen rightly so as that.”

Moving on again I ask Osborne how he thinks Oxford has changed since his student days. The speech he gave before the interview indicates that it may not have changed that much. In his talk he mentioned two professors I’d seen the same day who had taught him, and referenced the same silly student rumours about certain tutors recruiting for MI6 that are still passed around by furtive Magdalen freshers to this day.

“I like to think that the success of places like Oxford is that they retain their deep roots in history, but they change and modernise as well, and we’re in a set of buildings which didn’t exist when I was an undergraduate here at Magdalen.

“I think there’s something precious about a culture built up over centuries that you don’t want to jettison.

“So I’m all for Oxford changing and embracing and expanding the people who can get places here, but don’t throw away what I would say is the culture of excellence, and interest, and a belief in the value of academic study for its own right.

“I think if you lose those things that’ll be a sad end to the story.”

Somewhat unusually for a major British politician Osborne himself did not play a very large role in student politics (although he was editor of The ISIS), and I ask him if he thinks it really matters all that much.

“Well look, there’s two things: one is it’s just a fact, and maybe it’ll change, but many of the people who start their life out as student politicians and in the Union here will end up being national politicians.

“You look at the cabinet today and there were people who were Presidents of the Oxford and Cambridge Union and at other universities debating societies and student unions, so that’s one thing.

“Second, it can be a kind of taste of things to come, student politics, as I was saying when I was here one of the reasons I was put off politics here was because Conservative politics was very Eurosceptic, campaigning for a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, which feels like ancient history, but of course both the individuals then, and the subject came back and dominated politics for thirty years, and I think that it was, in that way, ahead of its time, though not in a very positive way.”

It’s amusing to think that the same dramas that played out in OUCA when Osborne was a student are those wrack- ing the Conservative Party today, but I can’t help but think that politics – in both its national and student guises – has changed considerably since Osborne was at Oxford. Even just five years ago, as I note to him, the country’s three most prominent Tories (himself, David Cameron, and Boris Johnson) were all members of the Bullingdon Club, an organisation that even OUCA has now seen fit to ban its members from joining.

He laughs at the mention of the Bullingdon Club, and remarks, “Well, I think first of all society moves on, I guess. I think its okay for students to have a good time as long as they don’t do it in a way that’s offensive and disruptive to others, and I think you don’t want your university to be so serious that people can’t enjoy themselves.”

That’s a somewhat rose-tinted understanding of a dining club famous for its “loutish” behaviour, and his response is the same rehearsed line he and Cameron have repeated for most of their political careers, but he can hardly be blamed for wanting to distance himself from a club which seems grossly out of touch with his own vision of a meritocratic Britain.

He continues: “I think one place where Oxford – and this is true of other big universities in Britain – they should try to feed in a little bit more; they can feel like they’re a bit cut off from the rest of the country.

“So I teach at Stanford University in California, and I’m going to be there in a couple of days’ time, and you really feel on the campus that this is a place completely connected with the latest developments in artificial intelligence, they’re thinking about how you regulate social media companies, big decisions on the future of China.

“And a lot of academics there come in and out of not just the US government but other governments, and I always felt that the British universities could perhaps do more to really plug into national life.

“I’m not so much talking about the undergraduates here, I’m talking about the professors, the academics, and the post-grads, and not be afraid to say: ‘well I think the country can be run better, and here’s how to do it’, because you know, if ever it was needed it was needed now.”

This, again, gives us a glimpse of the technocratic kind of liberalism Osborne wants to usher in, but it’s not lines like these which are most revealing, but rather one throwaway comment during his speech.

Pausing for a moment when asked how he felt about the somewhat ignominious end to his career as Chancellor and Tory heir apparent, he says “Well, as they say, all political careers… end”.

And it’s that fumbling over Enoch Powell’s old quip (that all political careers end in failure for those that don’t know) that cuts to the heart of the matter: this is a man who doesn’t believe his political career has to end in failure and, I think, doesn’t believe its ended quite yet.

Excess of Expression: John Lennon 1969-72

Basil Bowdler
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Excess of Expression: John Lennon 1969-72

For better and – mostly – for worse, John Lennon essentially invented the phenomena of the ‘Rock Star’ as social-political activist. Having broken free of the perceived restraints put upon him whilst in The Beatles, Lennon’s early solo works are marked by an earnest, and in many cases naïve, search for integrity and meaning. Or as he put it in 1970: “I remember what it’s all about now you f**kers! F**k you all!” It was a pursuit which took Lennon to musical, political and personal extremes: from musique concrete back to blues-infused rock ‘n’ roll; from the bed-ins for peace to flirtations with Maoism; from heroin to primal scream therapy.

Yet in spite of the drama and energy of his private and public life, Lennon’s solo-music spectacularly failed to recapture the emotional weight and expression of his work with The Beatles. Neither ‘Mother’ nor ‘My Mummy’s Dead’ from Plastic Ono Band come close to channeling Lennon’s pain and feelings of parental abandonment in the same way that ‘Julia’ from the White Album does. Similarly, the two and a half minutes of ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ contains more imagination than all forty minutes of ‘Imagine’. Why was it that, in putting self- expression, politics and philosophical substance at the forefront of his artistic agenda, Lennon’s music ended up failing to express both himself and everyday concerns with the same force as his work from the sixties?

Part of the answer probably lies in Lennon’s willingness to adopt and take on political or spiritual movements at the drop of a hat. While certainly no fool – possessed with both one of the sharpest wits and most powerful imaginations in modern music – John, and for matter all of The Beatles, was always susceptible to taking artistic and political movements at face value. The same child-like naivety that led him to meditate in India also caused him to appear on American talk-shows dressed as Che Guevara, espousing the cause of Maoism, whilst living in a New York penthouse overlooking Central Park. Lennon took himself too seriously to permit himself to back down, and could not resist jumping up onto a soap box at any opportunity to espouse causes he (probably at heart) did not completely believe in.

In musical terms, this led Lennon to confuse throwing political slogans or topical issues into a chorus with giving his music ‘weight’. In ‘Power to the People’, unsure where to take his message or how to translate it into concrete action or feeling, Lennon resorts merely to repeating the title slogan over and over again.

In contrast, whilst a member of The Beatles, Lennon had the cynicism of his band-mates to reign in such earnest excesses and slogan chanting, giving his more political work for The Beatles a self-awareness that his solo songs painfully lack. The ‘in/out’ meditations of ‘Revolution 1’ – in which Lennon is at once sympathetic to the cause of revolution, but also pokes fun at the protesters of ’68 (‘You tell me it’s the institution, well you better free your mind instead’) – is not only a more entertaining listen than, say, ‘Working Class Hero’, but also captures Lennon’s paradoxical combination of idealism and cynicism far better than the provocative posturing of a celebrity raised in middle class suburbia.

Yet more importantly, once Lennon’s personal demons seeped from the subconscious background of his songs to take centre stage, his music lost its underlying tension. Unable to express himself explicitly, Lennon was forced to explore deeper parts of his imagination to convey his feelings. The narcotic opening of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, conveying Lennon’s yearnings for the sanctuary of an idealized childhood tree house, is a far more powerful image than the jaunting piano of ‘Remember’. Indeed, it is through playful, yet barbed, linguistic mischief and nonsense that ‘I Am the Walrus’ succeeds as a song of powerful self expression, articulating Lennon’s uncertainty as to whether he was a genius or a lunatic. In each of their respective ways, once released from the restraints of the group, the solo careers of each of The Beatles proved disappointing.

In Lennon’s case, the problem was that once his desire to express himself and produce music of ‘adult’ weight and subject matter was unshackled from the sensibilities of a pop group, he fell back on a mode of puritanical expressionism and self-obsession. Unfortunately, this robbed his work of its humorous cynicism, as well as the enchanting imagination which had led public opinion to label him as one of the greatest popular artists of the twentieth century.

Entomophagy: a word to remember

Rohan jain
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Entomophagy: a word to remember

Deep inside of Sainsbury’s Locals across the country, a revolution is
stirring, creeping and crawling its way into the public eye: the insect
revolution. That’s right. Thanks to start-up Eat Grub, for the first time in my young life, I can walk down the street and purchase a bag of roasted crickets like it’s the most natural thing in the world (which, on some
level, it is).

We all know the spiel: insects are the future of protein.

Firstly, they are highly nutritious, containing roughly three times as much
protein per gram as beef. Secondly, the environmental impact of rearing insects does not compare to that of farming mammals and birds. Cows, for example, need copious amounts of feed and water to survive. Producing a kilogram of insect protein requires only one twenty-two-thousandth of the amount of water that producing a kilogram of cow protein does. Now you can protect your gains and your planet at the same time.

But do crickets taste good? The short answer is: yes.

The most direct comparison is to crisps or pork scratchings. There is no pronounced ‘crickety’ flavour to be reckoned with and, in a blind taste test, my guess is that you would happily chow them down. The crickets provide a crunchy base which goes well with standard crisp seasonings. Eat Grub’s ‘Smoky BBQ’ bugs live up to their billing and are given a slight sweetness by
the granules of brown sugar mixed into the packet. ‘Peri-Peri’ and ‘Sweet Chili & Lime’ are also available as flavours.

What is distinctive about crickets is the pleasant flakiness that comes from the skin of the insects and the slightly powdery consistency of their roasted bodies. Neither of these features detracts from the experience of eating them. If anything, they create a richer textural landscape for the seasonings to interact with. However, the downside of this flakiness is the absence of structural integrity. Be ready for some crumbly crickets.

To reiterate, there’s not much to be afraid of here. Sure, the eyes on the critters will make you think twice, but by the end of the bag, any initial revulsion will likely have been overcome. And the good news is, roasted crickets are just the start. Once we Westerners unshackle ourselves from our psychological reservations, we will gain access to new worlds of food. We will see our planet and its culinary offerings in a fresh light. From the aphrodisiacal fried hornets of Japan to the crunchy termite snacks of sub-Saharan Africa, the potential rewards are too great, too interesting, to pass up on.

Alexander Woollcott once lamented: ‘everything I like is either immoral, expensive, or fattening’. I guess the poor guy never found out how good crickets taste.

Review: A Little Night Music – ‘a sophisticated and pleasant performance’

Simone Fraser
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Review: A Little Night Music – ‘a sophisticated and pleasant performance’

Queen’s choice of A Little Night Music for their garden play was a good one. The Sondheim classic fit beautifully with its surroundings: the lush gardens of Queen’s, and excellent lighting meant that the slow setting of the sun only added to the intimate atmosphere of the performance. We’d been blessed with a beautiful day for the first night of the performance, and the combination made for a very pleasant evening.

Although there were a few opening night wobbles in the early stages of the musical, for the most part the singing was excellent, particularly that of the main characters. In places the orchestra and chorus seemed to be a little out of sync; once again I would put this down to the stress of a first performance, as by the interval these had been smoothed out, and the second half was significantly better.

In the lead role of Desiree, Emi Staniazsek dazzled, showcasing an ability to be both seductive, comedic, and intensely vulnerable at different parts in the performance. Indeed, the audience laughed aloud frequently throughout the performance. A special mention must be given to Gavin Fleming and Grace Albery in their roles as the wonderfully mismatched couple Count Carl-Magnus and Countess Charlotte – the huge cheer they received during the bows shows just how fantastic their performances were. Fleming in particular managed to make the audience almost cry with laughter at his pompous and fiery demeanour – even with his trousers round his ankles. The main cast in general had fantastic chemistry, and were well-rehearsed and confident in their performances. Even the supporting characters had very distinct personalities, and almost every person stole the show at some point.

A few other areas that must be praised were the stage direction and costume. By careful use of the chorus, the tricky business of moving characters and props off stage at the end of the scene was made much smoother. Furthermore the choreography throughout was simple but effective, and very fitting with the tone and setting of the performance. The costume too was for the most part very fitting. This was particularly the case for  Madame Armfelt, an old woman, whose costume and make-up was so convincing that several among us were left wondering if she was genuinely an older tutor or mature student. There was, however, some discrepancy in historical base. Costumes like that of Count Carl-Magnus or the servant Frid suggested a reasonable level of devotion to the original setting of the play around 1900, but other characters wore jeans or other outfits much more fitting with the modern day, or past century. Yet this did not particularly detract from what was a very impressive performance, and was just a minor note.

The thing that let the performance down the most were the frequent technical faults. Particularly regarding the chorus, there were moments when you simply could not hear what was being said or sung, and some microphones completely switched on and off at random moments throughout the performance. Again, hopefully this issue will be resolved in the remainder of performances, but did at some points dull the magic somewhat.

Generally, I really enjoyed the performance. To be able to produce something as complex and moving as that performance A Little Night Music, with the cast and crew still tackling difficult degrees is highly impressive, and I would recommend watching it for the magnificent cast if nothing else. I’m confident that the minor criticisms I have are mainly down to the fact it was opening night, and will be resolved in the remainder of the performances. Overall, a sophisticated and pleasant performance.

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