Thursday, April 17, 2025
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Recipe : Deconstructed Mississippi Mud Pie

Emma Hawkins
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Recipe : Deconstructed Mississippi Mud Pie

Ingredients

For the Chocolate brownie

  • 110g Butter
  • 140g Dark chocolate
  • 2 Medium eggs
  • 140g Caster sugar
  • 30g Plain flour
  • 100g White chocolate, roughly chopped

For the Chocolate custard

  • 100g Dark chocolate
  • 290ml Whole milk
  • 3 Egg yolks
  • 60g Caster sugar
  • 15g Plain flour
  • 1 tbsp Cocoa powder
  • 20g Cornflour
  • 160ml Double cream

For the Chocolate crumble

  • 100g Plain flour, plus extra for dusting
  • 150g Unsalted butter
  • 55g Cocoa powder
  • 40g Caster sugar
  • 5g Sea salt

For the Chantilly cream

  • 300ml Double cream
  • 1 tsp Vanilla bean paste

For the Coulis

  • 150g Raspberries
  • 100g Caster sugar

To Decorate

  • 50g White chocolate
  • 100g Dark chocolate
  • 5 Fresh raspberries
  • A few sprigs of fresh mint

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line a 15×15 cm loose tin with butter and baking paper.
  2. To make the brownies put the butter and chocolate into a bowl over a pan of simmering water and leave to melt.
  3. Take another bowl and whisk the eggs until pale and fluffy with an electric whisk. Add the sugar and continue to whisk until it leaves a trail when the whisk is taken out.
  4. Fold the chocolate into the eggs, sieve in the flour and add the white chocolate. Fold everything again until combined.
  5. Pour the mixture into the lined tin and bake for around 20 minutes until a crust has formed on top and it feel slightly firm. Set aside to cool.
  6. Now make the chocolate filling. Put the chocolate into a heat-proof bowl and melt over a pan of simmering water. Then put the milk into a pan and heat until just boiling.
  7. In another bowl whisk the egg yolks, sugar, plain flour, cocoa powder and cornflour until smooth. Pour in the milk whilst whisking until smooth. Pour the mixture back into the pan and cook gently, whilst whisking, until just starting to thicken. Take off the heat, stir in the melted chocolate and then leave in the fridge to cool completely.
  8. Take the filling out of the fridge and whisk to break up. In another bowl whisk the double cream to soft peaks. Fold the cream into the chocolate mix and then pour this into a pipping bag. Put this into the fridge to chill for 2 hours.
  9. Now make the chocolate crumble. Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until a smooth dough forms. Roll this out on a lightly floured surface to make a thin sheet. Put this onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Take out of the oven and crumble with your fingers to make a crumble/crumb-like texture. Then put it back into the oven to bake for another 10 minutes until crisp. Set to one side to cool.
  10. Next whip up the double cream and vanilla into soft peaks (when it just holds its shape). Spoon this into a pipping bag with a round nozzle and leave in the fridge to chill until needed.
  11. Then make the chocolate shards. Put the white and dark chocolates into separate heatproof bowls over pans of gently simmering water. When melted transfer the white chocolate to a piping bag with a small, round nozzle. Take a sheet of baking paper or acetate and drizzle the white chocolate in a squiggle pattern over it. Leave to set completely at room temperature.
  12. When set, take the dark chocolate and spread over the white chocolate in a thin layer, making it smooth with a palette knife. Leave to set.
  13. Finally make the raspberry coulis. Put the raspberries and sugar into a pan and heat gently until the raspberries mush and gently simmer.
  14. Pour the mixture into a sieve and press through with the back of a spoon to get the juice and pulp but to remove the seeds. Pour this into a pipping bottle with a small, round nozzle and leave in the fridge until needed.
  15. When ready to plate up begin by cutting 3 small circles out of the brownie. Place these in a semi-circle around the edge of the plate. Take the chocolate custard and pipe blobs of it around the brownies. Then take the fresh raspberries and arrange them in a crescent around the other elements. Then take the cream and fill in the gaps. Then sprinkle the crumble in the gaps to make a crescent shape and then break the chocolate sheet into shards and place them around the plate. Take the coulis and pipe spots of it around the plate, and then put the rest into a jug to serve with the dessert. Garnish with the fresh mint and serve!

For more recipes visit Emma’s blog.

Victory over Cambridge for Oxford Panthers

Ailsa Clark
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Victory over Cambridge for Oxford Panthers

It has been a fantastic year for women’s rugby in Oxford, with the Blues celebrating their 30th Varsity Match against Cambridge in December, and the club hosting the first ever women’s college Cuppers in Oxford, with the winners to be decided in Trinity term.

The Women’s Reserves, the Panthers, have had a very successful season, which included a double win against a joint Oxford Brookes and Oxford RFC side. The culmination of their strong run was the Varsity match against the Cambridge Reserves, the Tigers, which this year was held at Grange Road in Cambridge. The Panthers had already watched Oxford Women’s U20’s dominate their match and beating the respective Cambridge side 33-0, so knew they had a lot to live up to. Suffice to say, the team did not disappoint.

The Panthers showed their confidence in their attacking formations, causing them to have possession for the majority of the match and leaving the Tigers much on the defensive. When possession was occasionally lost, the proactive nature of the Panthers side meant that every breakdown was an opportunity for a steal, every line out was up for contest and every scrum was theirs to dominate.

The first half exemplified the patience of the Panthers side with their signature ‘calm aggression’ pushing the Tigers further into their own half with every play. With twenty minutes played, Vice Captain Fran Roxburgh saw an opportunity down the blindside to score the first try and give the Panthers the advantage. However it was not to be, as the Tigers’ defence made a desperate high tackle in a last ditch attempt to keep the score level, which unfortunately caused Roxburgh to sustain a knee injury. This had a bitter sweet result, as it meant Meryem Arik was called from the bench to fill in, reinforcing the strength and depth in the Panthers squad.

Eventually, the first try for the Dark Blues came as a result of the patience and determination of the whole team, with quick hands down the line. Once the ball was in winger Maddie Hindson’s hands, it was a done deal and the score board ticked over in favour of the Panthers’ hard work. Unfortunately, the Panthers failed to make the score 7-0, after a narrowly missed conversion from Meg Carter, who nevertheless did well due to the extremely difficult angle.

Entering the second half of the match 5-0 did not mean the Dark Blues sat back, and the Panthers continued the game with a 0-0 mentality. After a strong series of attacks, number 8 Milly Cohen produced a fierce run from a scrum, which was followed by great use of the width with hands down the line supported by substitute Kehinde Lawal. This meant another try was on the table and yet again, Hindson finished the job resulting in 10-0 score for Oxford.

The later minutes of the game saw the Tigers have more possession in their end of the pitch than they had done all game. Despite strong defence from the Panthers, the Light Blues managed to find their way through with ten minutes to go and scored their only try of the game, dashing Oxford’s hopes for a clean sheet.

The last play of the game ended with another dominant scrum from the Panthers and a boot out from Milly Cohen signalled victory for the Panthers, who had displayed great cohesion between the forwards and backs throughout the game. The final score of 10-5 perhaps did not represent the commanding possession of the Panthers side, but it was a victory over Cambridge nonetheless.

Fade to Black – a history of the theatrical blackout

Cesca Echlin
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Fade to Black – a history of the theatrical blackout

I have always thought that my favourite part about going to the theatre is in those few seconds of blackout at the end of a show. And no, that’s not me saying that I most forward to the bit when it’s all over and I get to go home. It’s about that moment of silence, of contemplation. If what you’ve seen has been particularly special, the blackout is when the audience can share a quiet moment, and realize that they have just witnessed something amazing.

At ending moments like these I have sometimes heard fellow audience members exclaim in sheer delight, as if they can’t keep their reactions in any longer. I myself have been privy to the odd gasp at the end of plays – the two-part, six- hour masterpiece, The Inheritance, at the Young Vic certainly gaining an involuntary yelp from an already tear-sodden me. Lighting designer and critic Scott Palmer wrote that the fade to black at the start of a play causes an “audible, collective intake of breath” in anticipation, and I would say the same about a play’s ending – although after a play’s end it is usually a communal exhale.

After I identified this feeling of release that an audience member often gets at the end of a play, I wanted to pin point exactly how the director made you feel that way. I also started to think more deeply about the role darkness plays in theatre – why, now, is it a convention to submerge our audience members in total darkness, and what effect does this have on the theatrical experience?

If we look back to some of the earliest examples of theatre, lighting was not an aspect of the performance that was considered particularly important. In Ancient Greece, theatres were outside, and performances were held in daylight. Other tools were employed to construct the theatrical experience – masks played a massive role in distinguishing actors and signifying the prominence of each character.

By the early modern period, during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, and when William Shakespeare’s company ‘The King’s Men’ were performing, the role of light in theatre shifted. Whilst it is true that theatre continued to be performed outside – the construction of the Globe in 1599 is testament to that – theatre-makers of this period were experimenting with new spaces. James Burbage, father of Richard Burbage, who was perhaps the most widely known actor in Shakespeare’s company and known for originating the title role in such plays as Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear, bought a property in 1596 which had been the refectory of a former priory, and converted it into a new indoor theatre.

The newly built Blackfriars Theatre brought with it an entirely altered theatrical process. The space was entirely candlelit, and the candles played such an important role in the performance that the end of each act signalled the point when candles had to be trimmed.

In the context of Shakespeare, this contrasts significantly to the way we choose to perform the playwright today – acts are now fused into each other, and theatre producers choose to perform Shakespeare’s plays in two halves. The interval is now seen as an opportunity to capitalize on audiences through the selling of drinks and ice creams.

The movement of theatre inside at the start of the seventeenth century forced theatre-makers to think about darkness as a technical problem that needed to be solved, but also as an opportunity to utilize light for dramatic effect. An example of the Jacobean indoor theatre can be seen at the fairly-recently built Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London – whilst not an exact reconstruction of the Blackfriars Theatre, it is entirely candle-lit, and creates a magical, sensory experience which uncovers and iterates the theatre of seventeenth century London.

As indoor theatre developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many theatres would have windows, and shutters were commonly used to create an element of darkness, thus allowing audiences to focus on the stage. Yet, the auditoria remained lit during this period because theatre was a hugely important social event – audience members would attend performances to see, and to be seen, by others in their social circles. But the end of the nineteenth century saw a significant shift to how theatres were lit – the invention of the gaslight allowed for the stage and the auditorium to be lit independently of one another.

This change occurred alongside the development of naturalism in theatre, when Stanislavskian approaches sought to sever the relationship between audience and performer through the construction of the fourth wall. The submerging of the audience in darkness, and the focus on lighting the stage was a physical manifestation of this boundary, allowing the theatrical illusion to be sustained throughout.

In London, the first theatre that created an entirely darkened auditorium was the refurbished Lyceum, which opened in 1878. From that period onwards, theatre practitioners have continued to utilize darkness as a means of constructing the theatrical illusion. Aside from actually shifting audience member attention to what is happening on stage, darkness now also serves to establish a convention of behaviour at the theatre – when the lights dim, the audience tend to turn off their phones, finish their conversations, and prepare themselves to be absorbed by the performance.

Since the work of renowned practitioner Bertolt Brecht the stability of the fourth wall has consistently been called into question – contemporary directors regularly have performers enter through the audience or directly address the audience, reminding us that we are watching a play, and that the show isn’t real after all. But, like many things in life, this is cyclical – it harkens back to the soliloquies of Shakespeare’s stage. Early modern audiences were constantly made aware that they were watching a play – one must only recall Prospero’s ending speech in The Tempest when he requests that the audience applaud him: “release me from my bands / With the help of your good hands.”

It is important to remember that the illusion in theatre is a fairly recent phenomenon. Still, the blackout continues to be utilized by directors – even if they simultaneously employ techniques that shatter the theatrical illusion. I would argue that the submerging of the audience in darkness encourages individual audience members to mull over the performance independently. Without consultation with our neighbours, we are forced to think more deeply about the play in relation to ourselves. Scott Palmer also argues that, in a particularly post-Samuel Beckett context, the moments of darkness in the theatre act as a “subliminal reminder of our mortality”.

This idea is perhaps morbid, but it is also compelling. Whilst it might speak volumes about the individualistic nature of our society, I think the use of the blackout encourages a level of self-interrogation, and often facilitates an internal emotional reaction, that could be stunted by a lit auditorium.

Review: What Comes After – ‘one of the most effortlessly flowing performances’

Cassie White
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Review: What Comes After – ‘one of the most effortlessly flowing performances’

Thinking about death is all too common a pastime for me, and so hearing that there was a musical at the Burton Taylor Studio based on that very subject seemed like the perfect way to round out Hilary term. The new musical song cycle, written by music student Máth Roberts and performed by Grace Albery and Henry Waddon, promised to tackle an issue everyone must come to terms with at some point in their life: how to deal with endings, and to deal with what comes after.

The minimal set design, consisting only of clocks and picture frames hanging from the back wall, perfectly set the tone for the show from the second the audience entered – time is an eternally lingering presence, and as chapters in our lives come to a close, the clocks keep ticking on. This, combined with a repeated note from the piano, immediately held the audience spellbound as they entered. The piano note became the ticking of the clock on the wall, seamlessly transitioning into the first scene as the actors moved the clock hands to one. Throughout the show, the actors and music kept the momentum by never breaking for applause, with songs ending with the return of the ticking of the clock, and each scene was marked by a new time on the clock. This was one of the most effortlessly flowing performances I have ever seen done by students; the songs were interwoven with one another, yet each song was still clearly defined in its own right.

The music itself was beautiful, being suggestive of a 2019 rewrite of Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World. Waddon’s first and second songs, about hitchhiking and ‘drinking on Christmas Eve’ respectively, were particular highlights – a combination of expert choreography, clever lyrics, believable characters, and catchy hooks made for an incredibly engaging performance (if let down slightly by an inability to hear Waddon over the band). This is not to forget Albery, whose ability to switch between a hilarious portrayal of a five year old girl and a heart-wrenching portrayal of someone recalling her classmate’s death was nothing short of astounding. The pair played off each other exceptionally in their duets as well; they perfectly captured their unique characters across the piece, and both gave nuanced and touching performances.

Roberts’ writing and Josh Cottell’s orchestration combined to deliver a musical production that seems to be of too high a calibre to be limited to just an Oxford run. This piece is a wonderful first draft – though, admittedly, certain songs (such as the duet in which Waddon and Albery lament their lost child) could use more exposition in order to make the individual scenarios more clear to the audience. Nevertheless, with some minor tweaks, I could see this show having a very successful Fringe run. The team deserve sincere congratulations for their efforts, and I am excited to see what comes after for this gem.

Coldplay heating up

Tom Davison
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Coldplay heating up

Living out with friends demands a number of sacrifices: complying with the cleaning rota, avoiding the 4am door knock by remembering your keys, and showing restraint over the communal milk.

But perhaps the most frustrating sacrifice I’ve had to make is to curtail my shower playlist. It turns out that paying £140 weekly rent buys walls that are no better insulated than Bruce Willis’ head, and so the music one plays in the bathroom is readily broadcast throughout the house. Though any arbitration from housemates generally remains unspoken, we are all acutely aware of the judgement that is certainly taking place.

For this reason, I’m not convinced that my housemates are genuine in their shower-music selections. The number of times I’ve woken to the techno car-crash that is Travis Scott’s ‘Sicko Mode’ or, even worse, Katy B’s ‘On a Mission’, doesn’t bear thinking about. This is not to say that I myself haven’t been guilty of succumbing to musical peer pressure. I like the Arctic Monkeys but often find myself substituting them for the Coral to please my Liverpudlian friend on the top floor. I also have a soft spot for Maroon 5, but don’t want my edgier cohabiters to think I’m stuck in 2002.

However, the band that seems to be met with the most disdain is Coldplay.

Before coming to Oxford, I was blissfully unaware of the contempt that people seem to have for Coldplay’s music. Taking evidence from Oxfess, that well-reputed barometer of student public opinion, submission #27621 writes: “Imagine getting to uni and not being out of your Coldplay phase yet”. Meanwhile, the architect of #26221 listens to Coldplay when working “Not because they are any good, but because their lyrics are so meaningless”.

On the one occasion that I decided to face my musical demons this term – I’d had a tough day, so blasted ‘Fix You’ in the shower at full volume – my enjoyment was tempered by the knowledge that my housemates would be desperate to uncover the identity of the guilty party. Indeed, I was being lampooned before I’d even crossed the bathroom threshold. Letting Chris Martin’s dulcet tones drown my sorrows was apparently so embarrassing that it was worth telling mutual friends away from home, who duly succeeded in propelling their anti-Coldplay comedic ammunition my way in the coming days. No-one ever said it would be this hard (The Scientist, 2002).

But I am not willing to succumb to this (what I would call) quasi-blasphemy. I believe that, beneath the surface, people like Coldplay more than they are willing to admit to.

Albums like X&Y (2005), A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002) and Parachutes (2000) remain as iconic today as they did upon their release. They are filled with instantly recognisable tracks, all elegantly constructed to draw on a wide range of emotions. ‘Yellow’, ‘Fix You’ and ‘The Scientist’ tug at our heartstrings. ‘Viva La Vida’ and ‘Life in Technicolor’ give us new lease of life whilst ‘Don’t Panic’ and ‘Speed of Sound’ comfort us. Coldplay’s songs are played at funerals, in nightclubs, over YouTube montages, and in showers across the globe. Their omnipresence is a reminder of the band’s mastery, not their genericity.

Naturally, I’m prepared to concede some ground in the face of criticism. Coldplay’s last two albums – Ghost Stories (2014) and A Head Full of Dreams (2015) – were nothing short of dreadful, not to mention their ear-splitting collaboration with the Chainsmokers in 2017. For modern Coldplay, genericity has become the rule rather than the exception. But making mistakes is the essence of making art, and career missteps are made all the more likely with the promise of lucrative financial contracts. Take the Black Eyed Peas as an example. What started as a funky hip-hop band wholeheartedly lost its musical edge as it capitulated to fame and the pop industry. Godforsaken tracks like ‘Boom Boom Pow’ and ‘My Humps’ – in which Fergie raps passionately about her ‘lady lumps’ – are certainly hard to erase from the memory. But despite their contemporary decline, the ingenuity and excitement of the Black Eyed Peas’ earlier works remains no less apparent. If we can forgive the Peas for their foray into the world of pop, we can forgive Coldplay; we should continue to revel in the excellence of their former albums without embarrassment. Chris Martin himself gave a worryingly accurate prediction of the future of his band back in 2002 (in ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’: “I know the mistakes that I’ve made”.

Of course, one’s taste in music is subjective. But Coldplay, more than many bands, have been successful in blurring the line between the subjective and the objective. Their music is not ‘cringeworthy’ or ‘meaningless’. It is emotive and, dare I say it, timeless. I am pleased to disclose that ‘Fix You’ is now regularly features on the shower playlists of my housemates.

Our toxically Islamophobic culture is to blame for the Christchurch attack

Brian Wong
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Our toxically Islamophobic culture is to blame for the Christchurch attack

On Friday morning, March 15th 2019, at least 49 people lost their lives in the hands of individuals that could be described as, for the lack of a better word, cowards. 49 people with their life stories, families, beliefs, and values; 49 New Zealanders looking to wrap up their hectic weeks in places of solace and religious comfort, silenced in the hands of malicious, radicalised terrorism. 

It would be easy to typecast these atrocities as a singular event, one that would never happen again, a tragedy that caught us out of the blue and in shock, but that would never repeat itself. Yet to do so would be neglecting the root causes of the violence today – the structural Islamophobia that has been allowed to be propagated, the media who prioritise sensationalising the life of the perpetrator over the public’s interests, and, finally, our public inertia to calls for help from the most marginalised communities who are confronted with racism on a daily basis.

First, Islamophobia has been on the rise in both New Zealand and, in general, Western Liberal Democracies. Crafty, manipulative far-right politicians have found a political space in constructing and demonising the Other, so as to develop the so-called mandate for their continued existence. From stereotyping Muslims as allegedly culturally backwards or associated with terrorism, to designating Judeo-Christianity as an alleged religion of peace and harmony in response to the ostensible militarism of Islam, political and cultural figures in the West must be held accountable for their continued propagation of misbeliefs about Muslims, which have spurred substantial animosity and paranoia in response to the presence of Muslim migrants in particular countries. 

In the UK we have seen the rise of UKIP and the roster of alt-right media sources, framing Muslims as systemically antithetical to the what is commonly referred to as “British values”; in Australia we see politicians – indeed, including one particular Senator who turned to framing today’s events as justifiably expectable in light of “rising immigration” – spinning immigration into an issue of national security; in the US we are witnesses to an ongoing cultural war waged asymmetrically by the Trumpian administration against disempowered members of the Muslim communities. The West has actively taken to alienating Muslims, and the events today are merely the tip of a far more insidious iceberg of inflamed, artificially engineered conflicts. 

Second, the media are to blame. From reporting on past shootings with elaborate emphasis upon the lives, testimonies, and alleged ‘justifications’ of the shooters, to engaging in ornate deconstruction and analysis of perpetrators’ motives – mass media have transformed mass shootings into public spectacles, consumed as breathtaking calamities, internalised as some sort of ‘natural outcomes’ of intercultural tensions. The privacy of victims is set aside as the media aim to maximise views and shock value – even from today’s events we have seen repeated attempts from media outlets to distribute the ‘first-person video’ and ‘manifesto’ of the terrorist, until a recent statement from the New Zealand government called for its cessation. The attention, glamour, and discursive power embodied by media reporting provides many a terrorist with the incentives to act, and to act perversely indeed – to seek to maximise their extent of damage, to terrorise, to lend their ideology an even greater platform. The public’s right to know may well be important – but it is both a conditional right, in that what is delivered to them must be accurate, true and de-sensationalised; and a limited right, knowledge does not and must not come before the rights of victims to privacy or public safety. 

Finally, we are all collectively responsible for the atrocities perpetuated in our communities. For far too long our governments have treated the cries for help from migrant communities as “less important” than the long roster of agenda items they employ to deprioritise select agenda. For far too long we have taken to accepting the ‘naturality’ of terror and acclimatised ourselves to a new normal that should never have been the normal. For far too long we have remained apathetic to the calls for more resources to facilitate security, protection, and greater cultural cohesion from marginalised communities.

Instead of acting, we allow the festering of dangerous, xenophobic rhetoric that attributes shootings like today’s to migrants; that upholds the view that migration is, as Fraser Anning argues in his frankly obscene statement, to blame for violence against migrants. 

Make no mistake here – whom we blame, how we blame, and what we blame migrants for is itself a political act, driven by ideology. When we choose to blame migrants for the backlash they face, we are undertaking the active decision of neglecting the racist beliefs, bigoted egoism, and fundamental misconceptions that drive such backlash. When we engage in the worst forms of victim-blaming, we become perpetrators of another kind of violence ourselves – the kind of violence that deprives victims and their communities, the Muslim community in New Zealand, in the United States, in Western Europe, of the right to speak out. We cannot afford to forget that it is our society’s failure to deradicalise white terrorism, and our gleefully racist interpretations of who is or isn’t a terrorist, that has led to where we are today. 

That today’s shootings were propelled by Islamophobia is perhaps of no surprise. What is perhaps more surprising about the violence, however, was its location – New Zealand has historically been a refuge and safe country for migrants, known for its relative openness both in terms of cultural and immigration policies; the integration of Maoris into the New Zealand community, whilst incomplete, remains a paradigm that puts the track record of its neighbour, Australia, and its appalling handling of Australian Aboriginals to shame. Finally, New Zealand’s progressive politics is perhaps best exemplified by its election of Jacinda Ardern as its Prime Minister, a pioneering political figure who has shattered the glass ceilings for young women (mothers in particular) seeking careers in politics.

All of this is relevant – in that it highlights how Islamophobia could pervade even the most ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ of states; that the Cerberus of terrorism could rear its head in the most unexpected of places, and that we must not and cannot conflate progressivism in general with religious tolerance, which has been under threat from the increasingly normalised fringes of the political spectrum, particularly from those in the nationalistic, fascistic right. 

In face of structural injustice, let us not shirk our responsibilities and scapegoat the least privileged in our society. 

In face of terror, let us not succumb to the cowardice of the terrorists.

In face of violence, let us not retaliate, but we must also stand firm and tall.

Because what happened in Christchurch could just as well happen in any other Western democracy, any other progressive state tomorrow. White, Islamophobic terrorism is real, and it falls upon us to address it. 

Neo-Nazi graffiti referencing New Zealand attacks appears in Headington

Sam Millward
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Neo-Nazi graffiti referencing New Zealand attacks appears in Headington

*Content Warning*: Images of the offensive graffiti are linked to in this article.

Graffiti featuring swastikas,  far-right symbols and language relating to the recent attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has been painted on a school wall in Cheney Lane, Headington.

The graffiti (which can be viewed on the Oxford Mail website) which features swastikas, the acronym OSA (a possible allusion to Italian neo-Fascist group CasaPound) and the phrase “sub 2 pewdiepie”.

The latter refers to the livestreamed Q/A broadcast by the perpetrator of an attack which left at least 49 people dead.

On the afternoon of the 17th March, Thames Valley Police announced the launch of an investigation into the event. It has been confirmed to Cherwell that this was a single, isolated incident.

Councillor Tom Hayes tweeted, in response to the incident: “Sickened by the daubing of Nazi graffiti on a back wall of Cheney School in Headington today. Have raised concerns with @OxfordCity @OxfordDS to remove this as a matter of immediate urgency. Hate is unacceptable in our diverse and welcoming city. “

A statement from Superintendent Joe Kidman (LPA Commander for Oxford City) implies that this is being treated as a hate crime: “I deplore the actions of the person or persons responsible for this graffiti and there are no excuses for those who carry out hate crimes.”

“Oxford is a tolerant community with strong links between our faith communities. This act is not representative of the people of Oxford and it will not be tolerated by Thames Valley Police.

“We are working to find the person or persons responsible. They may well have told someone else what they have done or been seen in the area and I ask anyone with information that could assist us to please come forward and call 101 quoting reference 43190081534.

“We are aware that the awful events in New Zealand will have heightened concerns for many communities. As a result officers in Oxford as well as the wider Thames Valley, will be visiting places of worship to reassure all faith communities. I have personally also made contact with a number of our faith leaders to offer support and advice on reviewing their safety and security measures.

“If you are a witness or a victim of hate crime please contact Thames Valley Police on 101 to report it.

“Our thoughts remain with the people of New Zealand and we stand together with them and all our communities at this difficult time.”

This is the second incident of its kind in the past five months. In November last year, swastikas were also painted on the wall of the Oxford Community Centre.

Lust for Life: Lana Del Rey

Sophie Taylor
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Lust for Life: Lana Del Rey

A genre in herself, Lana’s sleepy Hollywood aesthetic and tragic love songs have earned her success in the indie pop scene. Under her real name, Lizzy Grant, the singer attempted a career in 2009, performing in clubs and bars, without luck. Adopting the stage name of Lana Del Rey and growing into the all-American woman she was when her first album was released, the world lapped her up, and is now one of the most successful artists of this time.

The single ‘Video Games’ was released before Del Rey’s first album. If you haven’t cried at one point in your life listening to this song, something is wrong with you. Born to Die (2012) set the scene for what fans can appreciate as a beautifully haunting, emotional journey through Lana’s tragic romances. Her fans may have similar aesthetic, daddy issues and pouts, but it is undeniable that her song writing on her first album was, and still is, reflective, wily and brooding. Born to Die draws on all aspects of a young woman’s idyll of the American Dream, from rags to diamonds, James Dean, and her songs ‘playing on the radio’. Classical instruments alongside her versatile, wispy vocals creates a magical genre: a confused mixture of indie rock, trip-hop and sadcore.

However, whilst Born to Die received a predominantly positive response, many lyrics were interpreted as ‘anti-feminist’, such as ‘This is what makes us girls/ We don’t stick together ‘cause we put our love first,’. This sweeping statement about women was unpopular with some, as well as the song titled ‘F***ed my way up to the top’ on Ultraviolence, thought to be a diss-track written about other female artists, reportedly Lorde or Lady Gaga.

2014 saw Lana’s release of Ultraviolence, a continuation of the feeling-sorry-for-herself mood. As a woman of her own genre, belonging to no crowd, she is, in some ways, alone. Ultraviolence is simply a lonely album. It would be easy to imagine her stage performances with a single spotlight, ribbon microphone, and placid arm movements, eyes closed. The pleasure-in-pain theme runs through the enchantingly gloomy album through phrases such as ‘he hit me, and it felt like a kiss’ (Ultraviolence), and somehow irresistible drug addicts: ‘I don’t mean nothing compared to your drugs … I’ll wait for you’ (Pretty When You Cry). It would appear that Lana needs to keep a wide berth from LA bad-boys to have any hope of her tears drying.

It soon became clear that Lana couldn’t find any decent men after Ultraviolence. Honeymoon (2015)was her next album, showing an obsession with the idea of love rather than the reality of it. On this album, Lana’s Hollywood aesthetic played out by layering cinematic music below her breathy, depressed voice, almost imitating movie background music. The tracks on the album are often longer than five minutes, usually lacking percussion. Lana seems to know we are ready to listen to whatever she has to say, not needing drama in the form of exciting instruments or rushed choruses to hold our attention. This style reflects an idleness; Lana hasn’t felt much happiness in a while, and no visions of change are on the horizon.

The title of the emotional ‘Swan Song’, suggested that this could have been Lana’s last album, given the rumours that her talent was not genuine, and that she achieved success due to her millionaire father’s helping hand. She even sang the words ‘I will never sing again’.

In 2016, The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) released Starboy, on which Lana features in one of the most poignant songs Stargirl Interlude. The Stargirl/Starboy relationship links Del Rey’s seductive vocals with The Weeknd’s sexual lyrics which have evolved throughout their careers.

Del Rey collaborated with Tesfaye again, a year later with Lust for Life on the eponymous album, along with A$AP Rocky and Stevie Nicks. In the album, Lana treats us with a smile on the cover. The frowny-pout brand she has painted over three albums is suddenly U-turned. The brighter tones on the album could offer escapism, rather than a reality, for listeners as well as Lana herself, even admitting that she is ‘caught up in my [her] dreams’ (White Mustang). This is implied when Lana and Abel sing about climbing up the Hollywood sign’s ‘H’. Jumping from the ‘H’ was famously the chosen method of suicide of the 1930s failed actress Peg Entwistle, cursing the sign. So, despite the brighter sounds of the melodies and fantasies in many of the songs, is there a darker meaning behind them, and behind Lana’s smile on the album cover?

Whether her smile is sincere or not, she offers a more feminist approach than before, in the song ‘God Bless America – And All the Beautiful Women in It’. Contradicting many of her previous lyrics referencing competition between women, this song was a response to the American Women’s marches protesting Republicans’ views on women’s rights. Suddenly, Lana’s idealised version of America described in her previous albums has come crumbling down.

Lana has announced the name of her next album ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’, reportedly being released in March. Norman Rockwell was an artist and author, celebrated for his portrayal of America and its culture; perhaps Lana’s romanticised patriotism will make a homecoming in her new work. Over the past couple of months, three lengthy singles ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’, ‘Venice Bitch’ and ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’ have been released, alongside a since deleted clip of Machine Gun Kelly on her Instagram. From these sneak peaks, after the short respite of Lust for Life, we can only predict that her acoustic, yet orchestral troubled-youth sound and visuals will make a return in March.

Worcester Provost Resigns

Sam Millward
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Worcester Provost Resigns

The Provost of Worcester College, Professor Sir Jonathan Bate, has announced his resignation from the post, effective from the 12th September 2019.

In a message to his ‘Worcester Family’ on the 14th March, the Provost cited the “toll on family life” and a “slow[ing] of academic productivity” as reasons for his departure, as well as reduced opportunities to teach.

The role will be taken up in the interim by Dr Kate Tunstall. Due to take up the role of Vice-Provost just a month before Professor Bate’s departure, the twenty-year French Fellow has been selected by the Governing Body to hold the position, with the current Vice-Provost extending his tenure.

Professor Bate stated that he “feel[s] his work at Worcester is done”, making reference to recent successes seen at the college. These include the completion of the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre and the Tercentenary Campaign, the latter of which has raised over £100 million to “endow Worcester for the next three hundred years”.

Awarded a Knighthood in 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education, the Provost expressed a desire to “return to academic work” over the next decade. He will also remain a member of the college, having been elected to a Senior Research Fellowship.

He went on to specify that future projects may entail “Shakespearean scholarship and performance…making the case for the public value of the humanities and… leading an initiative to bring a humanities contribution to the global crisis of sustainability.”

In addition, Bate thanked his wife, biographer Paula Byrne, for her ‘unstinting support’, saying that “it is now time for me to take a back seat, and give her support, as she takes forward her important work for mental health and wellbeing, especially among young people, through her ReLit Foundation.”

This resignation follows recent changes in the leadership of St Catherine’s College, The Queen’s College and Christ Church.

Eating like a caveman

Jennifer Donnellan
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Eating like a caveman

In July 2018, Jordan Peterson appeared on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast and shocked the world by declaring that he followed a diet consisting exclusively of “beef, salt, water” – and nothing else. He claimed this diet, inspired by that of his twenty-six-year-old daughter Mikhaila, had not only resulted in improved energy, sleep, mental health, digestion, and drastic weight loss, but was also responsible for the total recovery of his daughter from a lifelong series of autoimmune diseases and rare illnesses.

In fact, Peterson’s daughter had been making these claims herself long before her father took them to the global stage. Her blog, mikhailapeterson.com, appropriately entitled Don’t Eat That, advocates an elimination diet as the solution to almost all health issues – indeed, everything from bleeding gums to just “feel[ing] like you could do better”. Once the international news picked up on Peterson’s claims, a flurry of articles followed, doing everything from breaking down the (lack of ) nutritional science behind it to having reporters try it out for themselves and document the effects.

Clearly, Jordan and Mikhaila Peterson’s diets are at the extreme end of the spectrum. But what may be more familiar is the attitude that Mikhaila has toward nutritional science, and, indeed, all mainstream science. The first line of the subtitle of her blog – which, by the way, has almost fifty thousand subscribers – is “the food pyramid is a lie”. This is closely followed by “many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone.”

The nature of the Peterson’s extreme forms of clean eating are clearly founded on total scepticism for scientific professionals, and indeed, an almost paranoid idea that the entire nutritionist and medical professions are implicated in a giant conspiracy theory designed to sell dairy and grains. There is no doubt that it has become harder to tell what is and isn’t good for us to eat.

In October 2015, for example, the World Health Organisation broke the news that processed meats like bacon and sausages were now officially classed as a group 1 carcinogen, ranking them alongside other carcinogens like tobacco and alcohol. What made matters worse was the extent to which the meat industry lobbied to prevent people taking this news seriously while at the same time adding chemicals to make meats like bacon look pinker.

Meanwhile, in fruit and vegetable production, the pesticide glyphosate was found to have been relicensed by the EU, just this January, based on a report that was plagiarised, meaning that the European Food Safety Authority had declared this pesticide safe for use despite the World Health Organisation deeming it a probable human carcinogen. It is therefore understandable that consumers might be wary about what exactly they are eating, since the food industry has proven it does not always have our best interests at heart.

But cases like the Peterson’s show that this scepticism has been taken to the extreme and should be seen as part of a wider movement of counterfactual dietary and health advice. Jordan Peterson, for example, argues in favour of his all beef diet by drawing attention to human societies in the past that survived largely or almost entirely on meat. There are parallels here to be drawn with the so-called paleo diet, which is a dietary plan that aims to mimic the food that would have been eaten during the Paleolithic era, i.e. in the time of cavemen.

Unlike the Peterson diet, the average follower of the Paleolithic diet eats fruit, vegetables, nut, seeds and fish, simply avoiding foods which were not available to humans ten thousand years ago. Thus, the paleo diet steers clear of dairy, grains and legumes (pulses like beans, chickpeas and lentils). Those who believe in the merits of the paleo diet argue that the human body is not equipped to deal with many components in our diets today. Changes in human dietary patterns brought about by developments in farming happened faster than the body could adapt to match them. This mismatch is the cause of many contemporary dietary issues, particularly obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

In keeping with this idea of a genetic ‘mismatch’, advocates of a Paleo diet are sceptical of mainstream dietary advice, which views pulses and legumes as a useful source of protein, dairy as a source of calcium and other minerals, and grains as important for fibre. The paleo approach holds that these benefits are fictional, and that in the long term consuming these ‘mismatched’ foods causes health problems. Effectively, extreme advocates of the Paleo diet question the validity of any medical advice and scientific research that goes against their beliefs.

Celebrity paleo chef Pete Evans is one such advocate. He came under fire in June 2018 by the Australian Medical Association, which strongly criticised Netflix’s decision to allow his documentary, The Magic Pill, to be available on their platform. Evans has argued, both in the documentary and in a series of his own cookbooks, that the paleo diet and paleo remedies can act to alleviate and aid medical conditions from epilepsy to autism to asthma. Evans has also claimed that breast milk can be replaced with a paleo bone broth for equivalent, if not superior, health benefits in infants.

The Magic Pill trailer features a woman with cancer who states that her tumorous growth started shrinking following her adoption of the diet, and a mother of a child with epilepsy who claims that her daughter stopped having seizures after they started following a high fat, low carb diet which avoided fibre and dairy.

The president of the Australian Medical Association, Doctor Tony Bartone, expressed concerns that the release of the documentary onto Netflix’s platform is a breach of their responsibilities as a broadcasting company. He feared that vulnerable members of society might see the claims of the documentary as a viable alternative to the advice of healthcare professionals, rather than viewing it simply as a programme for entertainment and intrigue.

Evans responded to this criticism in an Instagram post by asking what possible objection the AMA could have to his claim that eating vegetables and fruit with a side of well sourced meat/seafood/eggs is a healthy way to live. He then went on to attack the association, asking if the real reason behind its objections was that “this simple approach may actually hurt the industries that rely on a large percentage of the population being sick?”

The radical message behind his argument is that the reason why society does not follow a paleo diet was because of a grand conspiracy that implicated both the food industry and the medical profession. Evans’ argument ties into a wider movement of people who feel that not only is the food we eat causing more harm than good, but the medications that we take, and indeed the whole western approach to medicine, is flawed. This distrust for conventional medicine is particularly potent in the US; aside from the various criticisms of the US healthcare system in general, and all the questions that have been raised about its affordability and accessibility, it is most clearly exemplified by the anti-vaccination movement.

This trend, sparked by a highly problematic 1998 study that linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism in children, is verging on the point of a national crisis, as these nineteenth century diseases resurge in communities where parents choose to for the babies forego basic childhood vaccinations.

But even outside of the anti-vaccine movement, the claim that medical institutions are corrupt has special bite in the USA. Americans are increasingly familiar with the term ‘Big Pharma’ and the notion of health clinics offering a cycle of prescriptions aimed at making profit rather than promoting health.

Consider for instance the litigation currently pending against members of the Sackler family, who own the Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma and the prescription opioid OxyContin. The deceptive marketing campaigns by this pharmaceutical company enabled OxyContin to be overprescribed to the extent that it is now at the centre of a national opioids crisis, which is said to kill almost 200 people a day in the US. It is clear to see why the average American citizen would therefore distrust the same doctors who helped to cause such a crisis.

An article on ‘8 Natural Alternatives to Antibiotics’ on paleohacks.com states that “plants, food, and herbal tinctures have been used as natural antibiotics to treat illness and disease for centuries. Then Big Pharma swept the nation… with the advancement of Western medicine and pharmaceutical drugs, it’s easy to forget how effective ancient healing remedies and natural antibiotics can still be.”

It’s not difficult to see how developments like the OxyContin crisis, as well as wider fears about the development of antibiotic resistance in some pathogens, can feed into the sentiments of paleo advocates like these – leading bloggers to advocate oregano oil, grape seed extract and apple cider vinegar as alternatives to medical practices that fail to care. The idea that there was once a golden age of natural medicine and eating, when mankind was at one with nature and did not face the difficulties and complications that humans do now in modern society, is a common thread running through many of these kinds of arguments.

Yet this idea is simply a romanticised fallacy, with the average life expectancy of a human in the paleolithic era at around 34 years and plenty of evidence showing the human genome has evolved over the past 10,000 and even 1,000 years. It is worth considering whether such a total rejection of modernity and its rationalism, science and technological developments, is linked to a discomfort with and desire to reject the wider political and social complexity which riddles modern society.

The big danger with this attitude comes when those increasingly disillusioned with mainstream health and nutritional advice turn to alternatives that result in serious problems for them. In 2015, Jessica Ainscough passed away from a rare form of soft-tissue cancer. With chemotherapy having failed to treat the cancer in her arm, and facing the prospect of amputation, Ainscough had turned to a method known as ‘Gerson therapy’ to attempt to cure her cancer.

She became known as a ‘wellness warrior’ as she turned to social media to document her self-medication through a strict regime of dietary supplements, daily coffee enemas, and an organic vegetarian diet – over two years, Ainscough reported her treatment included 8760 glasses of juice, 2920 coffee enemas, 1460 baked potatoes, 1460 bowls of Hippocrates soup, 33580 supplements, and 174 shots of castor oil. Surgical oncologist David Gorski had written that without treatment most succumb to the disease within 10 years – she died seven years after her diagnosis.

In a slightly different vein of alternative medicine, Doctor Robert O Young advocated the idea that disease is caused by eating acidic foods and can be cured by following an alkaline diet. He charged patients with serious, often terminal illnesses tens of thousands of dollars for his treatments, which took place at his ‘pH miracle’ ranch in the US. Young was prosecuted and convicted of charges including practising medicine without a license.

We must begin to recognise the ways in which certain restrictive diets tap into a wider culture of scientific scepticism and even plain-faced counter-factuality. People have begun to realise the mental dangers associated with so-called ‘clean eating’ movements. However, the new threat we face is that problems within the food and pharmaceutical industry may overwhelm the bank of reliable science backing up mainstream nutritional advice. Not only are there scandals like the bacon cancer scare, the horsemeat fiasco and the pesticide plagiarism threat breaking all the time, but choosing what to eat often comes with the pressure considering what is best for the environment as well as what is best for our bodies.

In order to protect ourselves from getting caught up in the counterfactual food trend, we need to balance curiosity and a desire for improvement with trust in science and a vigilant awareness of the evidence.

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