Monday 9th June 2025
Blog Page 649

Sexualisation in music: liberation or objectification?

Tara Mewawalla
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Sexualisation in music: liberation or objectification?

Many have argued that it is the nature of music, as a form of artistic expression, to be related to human emotions and sexualities. Art and creative expression have always made up our social and sensitive nature, from telling stories, to performing primal dances, to painting scenes of human experience on cave walls. Pablo Picasso claimed that ‘sex and art are the same thing’ while Sigmund Freud’s Sublimation theory suggested that ‘true’ artists made artwork out of an excess of sexual energy.

Charles Darwin highlighted the link between music and sex, arguing in The Descent of Man, that ‘musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male and female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex’. Along the same lines as the male peacock’s colourful feather tail, the male songbird develops a large repertoire of (technically useless but attention-catching) songs in order to best attract a mate.

Interestingly, Benjamin D. Charlton released a study in 2014 with evidence which suggested that women’s sexual preferences for composers changed during their menstrual cycle, depending on the complexity of the music; when the women were at their most fertile, they were attracted to the composers of more complex music.

Historically, music has not always been explicitly sexual, in fact most Western music in the Middle Ages was practiced by monks. However, as a natural part of being human, it can and very often is, especially in modern times, associated with sex and sexuality. Brian McNair’s essay ‘Striptease Culture’ highlights the paradox between the intimate and private nature of sex and how it has increasingly become part of the public domain, and this is largely due to mass and social medias, such as music videos.

At the same time, music alongside other mediums such as film and visual art have huge cultural and psychological effects on society. Elizabeth Wollman illuminates that in the 1970s, adult musicals portrayed the “country’s rapidly changing, often contradictory, attitudes about gender and sexuality at a time when the sexual revolution had given way to the gay and women’s liberation movements”. Music and performance are a space where gender and sexuality have been debated. As such it is important that the music industry is constantly aware of how they present sexuality, especially since music videos are so accessible to those who are young and easily influenced.

In 2011, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey and Cynthia M. Frisby published a study analysing sexual objectification in music videos, which they defined as the process of valuing a body, or body parts, primarily for its use and consumption by others. Looking at 147 music videos, they found that female artists revealed significantly more body parts on average and played primarily decorative (rather than instrumental, or useful) roles.

Laura Mulvey’s 1975 concept of the ‘gazer’ and the ‘gazed’ is important here as it shifts the power dynamics of the sexual situation. In music videos, as in TV and film, the viewer is in the position of ‘gazer’ while those performing are being ‘gazed’ at, but within the videos, characters can take on these ‘gazer’ and ‘gazed’ roles as well.

While Aubrey and Frisby proved there was no significant difference in the amount of times male and female singers were subjected to the gaze, they did reveal that men were much more likely to be the perpetrator of it than females. This means that men generally take on more voyeuristic roles where women take on more performative ones.

The study went on to discuss the negative implications of female over-sexualisation, including self-sexualisation which can lead to lower body confidence and even mental illness such as depression and eating disorders.

Music videos generally tend to sexually objectify women more explicitly and to depict them as objects to be consumed. When female artists, however, decide to sexualize themselves they have more autonomy over their role as the ‘gazed’ or the ‘gazer’. While sexual objectification can be harmful whether it be orchestrated by men or women, when a woman is performing, and is in the ‘instrumental’ role, explicitly controlling her own sexual image, it sends a more positive image to young girls than the sight of women as adding to a purely male hareem or ‘collection’.

Take the two most watched music videos on YouTube by a male artist and a female artist respectively. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s Despacito comes first with over 5 billion views and features two men explicitly watching and appreciating the body of one woman in particular. She is objectified most directly by the cinematic division of her body into parts with the camera focusing at intervals on her legs, bum and chest, next to the men who mainly have their faces videoed.

Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off is the ninth most viewed and while it does feature sexual dancing and objectification, it incorporates more varied forms of performance and more often displays women dancing alongside men on the same level.

Sexuality is inextricably linked to music and performance, especially in our consumeristic and commercial society. With the ever-increasing sexualisation of these mass forms of media, it becomes imperative that we pay attention to the way all genders are portrayed and call out when the power dynamic is unbalanced and could fuel the fire, or be even more damaging, to cultural and social perceptions of gender roles. As a dynamic and evolving art-form, music has the great opportunity to spark debates about sexuality, relationships and gender dynamics; while sexuality in mainstream music is presently one-sided, it is not the sexual nature of music that is damaging but the way this is often manipulated and made to reinforce male-female stereotypes.

 

 

Why do we write?

Alison McArthur
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Why do we write?

As I sit down to write this article, I am struck by the realisation that I have never properly examined my own motivations behind wanting to write – why, in the face of reading lists, deadlines and various other commitments I have volunteered to write 1000 words on a subject that is unrelated to my degree. Usually in this sort of situation – that is, where I am unsure of my own thoughts on a subject – I tend to just start writing and trust that the writing process will reveal them to me.  If I am lucky, my thoughts will organise themselves into some semblance of order that will convey an element of insight or understanding.

I believe that this is true of writing in general. At the outset, we do not know exactly what the finished product will look like. We may have some idea of what we want to say – the more practical among us may have sketched out a structure, the main points and the central argument – but we don’t know what nuances we may discover, the links we might make, and how the thread of the argument will wind its way through the prose.  In that sense, a piece of writing is a route to understanding.

This applies to fiction, too. Often novelists will claim that their characters took on a life of their own, and that they just had to follow them through the pages to find out what happens in the book. Obviously, the novelist is aware that the character comes from her own imagination, but this implies that writing is a process of discovery – whether it is how a story will unfold, what we think about something, or how we feel at a particular moment in time.

As such, it is easy to see why an individual can personally benefit from the process of writing. Much of our writing, however, is not kept to ourselves – it is released into the world, to be read by others. Despite the technological ease with which we can converse remotely using dialogue and images, writing remains a key method of communication between individuals. Even though letters are no longer the only means of communication between separated lovers, friends or family, card shops are still a booming business; somehow our sentiments are made more meaningful in written form.

Writing is also a powerful way of conveying a message to a wider audience.  People have always been moved to write on issues that they feel passionately about. The adage ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ has persisted due to its empirical truth, and has been used to great effect by writers over time, from the New Testament to contemporary writers such as Margaret Atwood, whose dystopian fiction has made an important contribution to the feminist movement, showing us that (in her own words) “a word after a word after a word is power”.

George Orwell once claimed that “no book is genuinely free from political bias”, citing a “desire to push the world in a certain direction” in every person. Writing has always responded to what is happening in the world. It can initiate discussion, create solidarity and provoke social movements. We have never been more interconnected and aware of the problems facing humanity.  The current political, social and environmental climate has instilled in us a sense of urgency that change needs to be made. With the advent of blogging and social media, many people have taken to writing as a means of joining the conversation.

In that sense, writing can imbue the writer with a sense of purpose. We find it hard to accept the idea that our lives are largely dictated by chance, luck (or lack of), and a variety of externalities. Philosophers throughout the ages have used writing to give meaning to our existence, from Aristotle to Alain de Botton.  This is of particular importance in today’s increasingly secular society, where we can no longer rely on religion to give our lives significance. Large cities remove the sense of community that we once took for granted, and our jobs often do not give us an outlet to express a personal identity. The memoir is probably the most obvious contemporary example of the human need to impose a sense of narrative on our lives, though this practice has existed in one form or another for thousands of years.

We also have a tendency to apply this self-deceptive rationalization to current events, even those that seem to defy sense or logic. Journalists are quick to provide an analysis of the causes, contributing factors and the lessons that can be learnt. By participating in this process, we both seek to understand and to protect our pre-conceived notions of humanity. Writing gives us back some power; we have total control of the words that we write onto the page, and how we shape our thoughts.

Words can also provide a refuge. Fiction writing in particular allows us to enter a world of our own making, where we have control over the outcomes. It is no coincidence that the fantasy genre increases in popularity in times of economic and political struggle.

After the gloom of the previous paragraphs, it seems appropriate to mention one of the most important reasons we write: for the joy of it. I am writing this article because I love the process of getting words onto a page, and the way it allows me to delve into topics that I am interested in. And I am not alone: many people dream of writing a novel or having a career as a writer. It is certainly not for money – writers are notably poorly paid – so it must be providing some other sense of fulfilment.

Writing is as important now as it has ever been. While forms and styles of writing have evolved over the centuries, they all stem from a human desire to express our feelings, seek understanding, and give meaning to our lives. We are driven to write about the same subjects that we have always have – love and hate, life and death, good and evil and everything in between, from the macro to the minutiae, the serious to the trivial. We write for ourselves, for the reader, and for wider society.  And I think that’s probably a good enough reason to write an article for Cherwell.

Simply the breast: fashion frees the nipple

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Simply the breast: fashion frees the nipple

In the 2018 US Open, French player Alizé Cornet was penalised for removing her shirt, revealing a momentary flash of sports bra after realising her top was on back-to-front. In December 2018, Tumblr announced a blanket ban on pornographic content, including, specifically, any content displaying ‘female-presenting nipples’. Although the prospect of ditching one’s shirt and merrily heading off into town isn’t necessarily my idea of a comfortable day out, the controversies surrounding female toplessness certainly beg the question – just why is the female nipple quite so offensive?

Delve through the Instagram of just about any former Love Island contestant and you’ll be sure to find at least a few snaps where a faint outline of nipple can be detected (and this isn’t limited to the women: ‘cool Paul’ loves a tight t-shirt). On the men’s posts nobody seems to bat an eyelid. On the women’s? One uncovers hordes of comments reading some variation of ‘bit nippy love? *Insert wandering eyes emoji.*’

Now, more than ever, increasing numbers of women are giving ye ol’ trusty middle-finger to the notion that bras are a compulsory element for any outfit. For many, they are a means of practicality and comfort – for others, they are a needless inconvenience. Celebrities and mere mortals alike have continued to declare themselves in favour of ‘freeing the nipple,’ a campaign born out of Lina Esco’s 2014 film (entitled, as you could probably guess, Free the Nipple). So where does fashion, an industry that’s entirely centred around its relationship to the human body, come into play in all of this?

Put simply, fashion has always been a huge fan of boobs. The 90s saw a young Kate Moss posing fresh-faced and bare-skinned, smoking on the beach – more recently, Kendall Jenner took to Marc Jacobs’ runway in a sheer top that left little to the imagination. Predictably, the following day saw uproar across the Internet, partly in response to the very presence of nipples on the runway, and partly in light of Jenner’s adolescent age. Plenty of other labels regularly make nipples a focal point of their fashion shows: Anthony Vaccarallo’s inaugural Saint Laurent collection and Jean Paul Gaultier’s AW18  #freethenipple show in Paris are but two examples.

Could it be that fashion is normalising exposure to the female body? The whole purpose of the runway is to inspire and predict trends before they occur in the ‘real’ world; in dissociating breasts from a pornographic or erotic context and resituating them within daily fashion, arguably designers can help to dismantle the idea that female toplessness holds exclusively sexual connotations. This movement away from conservative fashion is already evident in consumer behaviour: underwear has become outerwear, sheer tops are no longer feared, and one underlying message is clear – the way a woman dresses need not be a marker of her behaviour or worth.

Equally, we must recognise the darker side of designers’ fascinations with the female body. Upon a simple Google search of ‘kendall jenner nipple controversy’ (top-notch investigative journalism), I was met with news that I hadn’t banked on: the fact that women across the globe are getting plastic surgery to make their nipples look like Kendall’s. It’s easy to say that KenJen’s statement look can inspire boldness in other women to do the same. But such a simplification ignores the fact that Kendall embodies what is deemed ‘conventional’ beauty. The glorification of her body does nothing to honour the average woman, who in reality encompasses a whole range of different sizes, races and ages. As is so often the case with the fashion industry, displaying only a single body type can in fact do far more harm than good, and cause young girls (and even grown women) anxiety over not fulfilling conventional standards of beauty.

Kate Moss has spoken out about her early experiences in the modeling industry, revealing that she often felt uncomfortable when being asked to pose topless. Whilst photos display a carefree, seemingly liberated young woman, the bitter reality is that she felt peer-pressured into nudity in order to be successful. With recent allegations of sexual misconduct filed against photographers such as Mario Testino and Bruce Weber, Moss is certainly not alone in her experiences.

Looking to the future, then, is it naïve to believe that the fashion industry can ever remedy the issue of female objectification? Whilst breaking taboos is admirable and ought to be celebrated, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is just one tiny part of a whole host of gender-related issues affecting both men and women in the world. Moreover, designers have a responsibility to think about the wider implications of what they choose to cast a spotlight on. By all means, let’s support any movements towards a more a liberated, open-minded runway. But if you’re looking for real, concrete examples of female empowerment, however, you’re probably better off looking elsewhere for now.

Enron Preview – ‘financial collapse made tangible’

Cesca Echlin
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Enron Preview – ‘financial collapse made tangible’

It’s 2001. A Texas-based company worth more than a hundred billion dollars has declared bankruptcy. This move will unveil the corporation’s systemic accounting fraud and corruption, and will lead to the imprisonment of multiple employees. ‘Enron’, this high-flying company, hailed for being forward-thinking at the turn of the twentieth century, would fall.

Fast-forward to early 2019 and the tale of Enron’s unravelling is being brought to the Oxford Playhouse in a vibrant and slick new production by Theatre Goose and Sour Peach Productions. The twelve-strong ensemble cast engage in a performance by which the audience bear witness to an overwhelming barrage of multiple connections and networks, painting a portrait of the corporate world with all of its flaws.

Lucy Prebble’s play, Enron, premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2009 to glowing reviews when the playwright was only twenty-eight. Prebble’s play traces the rise and fall of Enron frontrunner and eventual CEO Jeffrey Skilling (Jamie Murphy) in a narrative not dissimilar from a Classical or Shakespearean tragedy.

The succession of scenes I watched in the preview for Enron began at the play’s start. Director Emma Howlett creates the corporate world through ensemble work. One minute actors bunch together, chatting viciously in crowds, the next they are darting across to the other side of the room to find the next person. Such imagery of groups has the effect of making a lone actor on stage appear even more prominent – reminding the audience that, amongst the mass, there remain individuals with individual agency.

Such an individual begins the play: ensemble member Lee Simmonds performs a monologue, declaring that he is a “lawyer” who is “one of the few who makes money in times like these.” He explains to the audience how Enron’s story will be told: “you should you know it could never be exactly what happened. But we’re going to put it together and sell it to you as truth.” Their task of story-telling is overt, and Simmonds’ monologue gets the ball rolling with a captivating start.

We are introduced to the leading characters at a party in the offices of Enron – Howlett optimises the entirety of the stage to focus our attention on certain figures. Individuals dart from the background into the foreground, making their presence known both to their colleagues and to the audience. It is at this point we are acquainted with our leading man: Jeffrey Skilling. Jamie Murphy brings to the role a charm and restlessness that marks him as the golden boy one should look out for. We are also introduced to Andy Fastow (Alex Rugman), Skilling’s partner and Enron’s eventual CFO. Rugman’s awkward and eager-to impress Fastow excellently contrasts the polished and perfect corporate world he inhabits.

Skilling and Fastow are newer elements in the a much older equation, fronted by Enron founder Ken Lay (Jonny Wiles) and woman of the hour Claudia Roe (Abby McCann). Howlett informs me later that all of these main characters are portraits of the real people involved in, and some of them prosecuted for, the Enron scandal – except Claudia Roe. Through the character of Claudia Roe, Howlett continues, Prebble creates a “paradigm of what it means to be female” in the macho, hyper-masculine world of the Enron Corporation. McCann’s Roe is a force to be reckoned with – Skilling recognizes her from the pages of Vogue that she reminds him was “cropped from a profile in Forbes.”

A hotbed of competition and hunger, Enron also becomes a hotbed of sex. Soon enough, Skilling and McCann are in bed together. But just as Roe zips her skirt up, they are back to talking numbers: “I’ve been thinking mark-to-market,” Roe declares. A moment of possible emotional connection is conflated with matters of business – Skilling blurts out that he is leaving his wife, whilst simultaneously Roe declares that she might be getting a promotion. It becomes clear that these characters have real difficulty occupying any sense of self distinct from the one they occupy at work.

Together, Murphy and McCann have a chemistry that is electric, proving particularly intense in a later scene with Enron boss Ken Lay as they fight over the possibility of a promotion: each are sat at either end of a very long table, with Wiles as Lay sat in between them at the middle. Lay’s choice is obvious: go with the charismatic Skilling and change the future of Enron forever, or with Roe, her Texan drawl representative of the company’s roots in southern tradition. Skilling makes his last bid for power, selling Lay his modern outlook on the future of the company and its potential investment opportunities: “There’s a dignity to giving people something they can’t touch.”

This question of tangibility is one I am left thinking about long after the scenes are over. Despite what Skilling declares in the line above, what Prebble’s play makes possible is in fact tangibility: we, the audience, are able to see that at the root of financial failure is human decision-making. I myself find the world of finance completely alien to me at the best of times, but what Enron does is frame it in terms that we can all understand, and in fact, relate to.

I very much look forward to seeing the cast and crew in full force next week at the Oxford Playhouse.

Projections of time: film and fashion

Rosa Haworth
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Projections of time: film and fashion

With the release of Alfonso Cuarón’s latest film Roma, a vast amount of critical attention has been devoted to the autobiographical nature of the piece. The film, set
in 1970/1, chronicles a year in the life of the Cuarón family’s maid during his childhood in Mexico City, and Cuarón and his crew painstakingly recreated his family home.

Yet surprisingly little attention has been given film’s costume – given that they were made and sourced with an equal attention to detail. Cuarón’s devotion to recreating the fashion of 70s Mexico involved him ringing up childhood family and friends to ensure that every item of clothing used on set was as authentic. The crew even replicated the clothes of Cuarón’s old neighbours when dressing individual extras. The lack of discussion on the film’s costume may be due to the distinctive colour palette of the film: black and white, favouring very pale, almost luminescent shades of grey. The costume becomes entirely incorporated into this colour scheme – if the word ‘colour’ can be used at all – and so does
not stand out in any way. But it is by no means lost; this exact replication of an earlier fashion, from the knitted jumpers and cotton shorts of the children to the simple chequered
cloth apron of their maid Cleo, is vital in recreating such a vivid image of the past.

The artist Annabel Nicolson’s 1973 performance of Reel Time, which connected a film projector and a sewing machine through a loop of celluloid, provides a striking visual representation of the intertwined relationship between film and fashion; a relationship that has existed since the beginning of cinema. When cinemas began to spring up in cities, towns, and even villages in the early 1900s, high fashion suddenly became visible on a widely available platform; now they were seen by anyone who attended the cinema, with short fashion films being shown before other screenings. The 1913 Kinemacolor Fashion Gazette, produced by fashion journalist Abbey Meehan, for example, showed all the latest fashions modelled in colour with a musical accompaniment alongside each gown.

Fashion has even altered the pace of Hollywood film production: during the 1920s and 30s producer Samuel Goldwyn was forced to get rid of thousands of feet of film, as the fast-shifting waistlines and hemlines of this period meant that a film’s costume choices could become ‘outmoded’ before the film’s release. Goldwyn eventually hired Chanel in 1931, providing her with a workshop and fashion tools in Hollywood so that she could create the styles that she believed would be ‘in fashion’ in a year’s time. Initially, films were recordings of everyday events, and so their costumes typically reflected the fashion of the time. Yet over the next several decades, costume became a means of transporting an audience years into the past through the imitation of earlier fashions.

Gone With The Wind (1939) is commonly labelled as the birth of the ‘costume drama’ with its recreation of the elaborate gowns of the 1860s and over 5000 individual items of clothing. The costumes here take on a symbolic function, too, as Scarlet O’Hara’s famous first outfit is a ‘Southern Belle’ style gown – the buttoned neck and white fabric suggesting innocence, but red details hinting at something more rebellious. This latter idea is then developed with a more suggestive, vivid green dress later in the film. The heavy-handedness of such symbolism, along with the almost melodramatic colour scheme of the entire film is jarring compared to modern modes of costume design, and the use of costume was soon to become integrated into more finely tuned colour palettes.

In The Birds (1963), for example, following Hitchcock’s demand that Tippi Hedren should wear a green dress when being chased by crows, costume designer Edith Head created
outfits of only blue and green for the rest of the film. In Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016), set in modern day America, stark images of poverty are interspersed with beautiful shots of the sleepy, empty expanse of the American landscape, and through costume the two are linked. The costumes are a display of cheap, colourful clothes. The staple outfit of the 17-year-old runaway protagonist Star, for example, is a canary-yellow, baggy vest top worn over an electric pink bralette and paired with blue denim hot-pants. Yet the result is not garish, and the colouring of the scenery itself seems enhanced, everything becoming part of an almost nostalgic, sun-baked saturation.

American Honey isn’t an attempt to recreate the past but a comment on present-day America. What is therefore interesting is the fact that, in 50 years – or even 10 – the costumes of American Honey will become a fashion of a previous era, an indicator of this decade, where mass-produced, cheap clothing dominates. Whilst preserved in the film, these styles will become outdated in reality, and this is where the ‘reels’ of film and fashion begin to run at different paces. In sci-fi films, costumes are as vital as futuristic buildings
or technology in signalling to the audience that this is an imagined vision of the future. The early sci-fi film, Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) features strangely dressed,
unhuman figures whose vivid coloured clothes are jarringly discordant with the background’s peculiar mix of clashing colours and sepia-wash. This was made before Technicolour, with the random array of colours being due to the lengthy process of hand painting the colours directly on to each copy of film stock.

This slightly clumsy use of colour in costume has given way over the past century to something much more finely-tuned. Costumes in later sci-fi films are just as bold and exaggerated, but have become fashion, distinct from simply costume. Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner makes use of a very sparse colour palette, and instead of creating a
completely new imagined fashion of the future, costume designer Michael Kaplan instead used film noir as inspiration: the film’s wardrobe consists of an exaggerated, futuristic
take on tailored suits, faux-fur jackets and trench coats. By incorporating this, the costumes are not gimmicky attempts at predicting the future, but almost timeless. The costume design in Blade Runner had a direct effect on 80s fashion, with Kaplan’s designs inspiring wide-shouldered looks in women’s fashion. Futuristic fashions are therefore no longer so unfamiliar; they hold dual positions on fashion’s rapidly changing timeline, simultaneously in the imagined future and in the present.

Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky once said that “one cannot conceive of a cinematic work with no sense of time passing through the shot, but one can easily imagine a film with no actors, music, décor or even editing” – time is what is at the core of cinema. The same can be said for fashion; without its continuous state of change, fashion would not be ‘fashion’ at all – it would just be clothes. So for filmmakers, such as Cuarón with Roma, costume becomes the easiest means of time-travel. How this relationship between fashion and film will change with further advancements in film technology, and as the imagined future ages of old sci-fi films are reached in reality, is something that only cinema will be able to show us.

Restaurant Review: Pan Pan

Darius Parvizi-Wayne
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Restaurant Review: Pan Pan

In London, Korean food is truly having its moment in the sun. From street stands on Tottenham Court Road to the ever expanding chains of Bibimbap and On The Bab, Korean cuisine’s already significant position within the culturally diverse zeitgeist looks as if it will continue to grow in 2019. What about in Oxford? There is Jeong’s Dosirak, which, despite its pretty interior and authentic feel, is often overlooked within the maze of the Covered Market. So where in Oxford can Korean food really stand out and garner the acclaim it deserves? Simple: Pan Pan.

You may have not heard of it, and tucked away on St Clement’s Street in Cowley you may have not even seen it. I certainly had not, until one day I found myself critically hungover and craving Korean food. A quick Google search, and next thing you know I am stumbling into Cowley, alcohol steaming off my body. In the midst of my disorientation, I found Pan Pan to be a welcome refuge, and it’s Korean Fried Chicken to be ever so good. Crunchier than at Jeong’s, and packed with more flavour than almost anywhere else, my satisfaction at that moment was immeasurable.

Nonetheless, given that I was not in an appropriate psychological state to write a comprehensive review of Pan Pan back then, I decided to wait and then return. Slightly more clear-headed this time around, I discovered that, even if on that first occasion my brain was fuzzy, my taste buds had certainly not betrayed me. Pan Pan was and still is a fantastic little restaurant.

Firstly, let me explain that Pan Pan is not wholly a Korean restaurant. Part of its charm is its ability to harmoniously merge the foods of different nations into a long but relatively coherent menu.

From its splendid incarnation of a Taiwanese pork belly Bao to rich Japanese Yaki Udon, I was thoroughly impressed by the diversity on show.

However, since this review is inevitably based on my initial impression of Pan Pan, I had to make sure the Korean food would not let me down. Some Kimchi to start, a traditional side dish dating back around 2000 years. Nothing complicated: fermented cabbage, carrots, garlic and ginger, all lathered in spice. Tangy and punchy, 2000 years of tradition upheld.

Next, the main event: the Bibimbap. Bibimbap, like Kimchi, is a crucial staple in Korean cuisine, traditionally eaten on the eve of the lunar year.

A dish packed with ingredients, its very creation is symbolic of harmony. The darker elements, such as the shitake mushrooms, are representative of the North and the kidneys. The redness of the carrots and chillies symbolises the South and the heart, with the greenness of the cucumber represents the East and the liver. Finally the white of the egg is the centre, the stomach. Undemanding, unassuming and nicely balanced, Pan Pan did the Bibimbap justice. Crunchy carrots and cucumber, tender bulgogi beef and the heat of the chillies come together for a joyous combination. No petty refinement, no sprinkle of this or that, no huge flames erupting from charcoal grills that you may find in the capital where aesthetics occasionally supersedes flavour. Simple and, therefore, all the more fun, Pan Pan stayed true to a prolific culinary tradition that has often gone unnoticed in this country.

For a street loaded with real-estate agents and newsagents from the 1980s, Pan Pan is also miraculously intimate. Smiley staff, soft music, dim lights – I could have been here for hours. It really is a wonderful place, a restaurant where hangovers, rain and the general drab of winter can be put aside, supplanted by fantastically joyful food.

 

Recipe: Scallops with Celeriac Purée, Chorizo Oil, Fennel and Grapefruit

Alexander Krespi
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Recipe: Scallops with Celeriac Purée, Chorizo Oil, Fennel and Grapefruit

Ingredients

  • 2 scallops (try to buy them as large as you can
)
  • Approx. 200g celeriac
  • 120g milk

  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 50g heavy cream
  • Pinch of nutmeg
  • 1/4 of a grapefruit
  • 100g fennel

  • 100g semi-dry chorizo
  • 100g olive oil

Method

CHORIZO OIL:

  1. Semi-dry chorizo.
  2. Cut into chunks.
  3. Place in blender and cover with olive oil. Blend until chorizo is fully broken up.
  4. Pour all into small pot.
  5. Render on low heat, bring to a simmer.
  6. Reserve.

CELERIAC PURÉE:

  1. Peel celeriac
  2. Cut into thin slices
  3. Heat a little butter in a high sided saucepan
  4. Add celeriac slices, cover halfway with whole milk
  5. Cook on medium-low heat, no colour on the celeriac
  6. Go until slices are fully tender — should be able to mash them with a fork — anywhere from 40-60 mins depending on thickness of slices
  7. Drain milk
  8. Add celeriac to blender
  9. Blend with butter, heavy cream until extremely smooth
  10. Add white pepper and a little nutmeg
  11. Reserve

FENNEL AND GRAPEFRUIT SALAD:

  1. Thinly slice fennel bulb (the white stuff), having removed the core. Preferably do this on a mandoline. 
  2. Cut segments out of grapefruit. Combine all together with a little juice from the grapefruit and olive oil
  3. Season sparingly with salt and white pepper
  4. Reserve

SCALLOPS:

  1. If scallops are bought with the orange roe attached, remove but to not discard this. They are edible and can be used in many seafood dishes.
  2. Scallops have a round side and a flat side.
  3. Ripping hot pan, good amount of oil.
  4. Flat side down for two minutes. 1 minute on the other. (That’s for a relatively large scallop, scale down searing time for smaller).

PLATING:

  1. Spread a bed of pureé on the bottom of plate.
  2. Place the salad and scallops on top
  3. Sprinkle a little grapefruit zest on the top of each scallop
  4. Drizzle chorizo oil around plate

Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde

Isabella Welch
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Art, Intimacy and the Avant-Garde

Marcel Duchamp made tiny sculptures from moulded casts of his lover Maria Martins’ body – the curvature under one of her breasts, indentations from around her thighs. With her permission, even after she left him, he often carried around these intimate sculptures in his pockets, the indented negative spaces of where she no longer was. I went around the Barbican Modern Couples exhibit alone and in many ways, felt this negative space. The exhibit is not only about the famous muses of 20th century artists, but the symbiosis of a relationship as a functioning platform for the growth of intellect and inspiration.

A significant portion of this exhibition is comprised of artistic couples photographing one another, often naked, often in sexual acts. You feel like a voyeuristic observer and a third party, even in the most otherworldly photos. There is an image of George Tooker, Jared French and Monroe Wheeler all standing naked around a twisted tree on a sterile beach, one of them in a toga, that appears like a scene from a deserted post-apocalyptic
wasteland, and screams loneliness though they are together. There is another of a penis stuck through a gap into an alien world, blue and gray craters surrounding it, leaving you wondering about the transport of sexual conquest, the disembodied journeys of parts of the body to other planes. Dora Maar photographed Picasso posing like a minotaur, or in great chambers of tormented fantasies.

But even with all of these surreal photographs, some of those I liked most were from Natalie Clifford Barney. Once writing ‘I am a lesbian. One need not hide it, nor boast of it, though being other than normal is a perilous advantage,’ Barney opened up a salon in a pavilion with classical Doric columns and called it ‘The Temple of Friendship’, dedicating it to lesbian solidarity. There with Romaine Brooks, the portrait painter she loved, Romaine would paint portraits of the guests, and there is a simplistic set of photos of Romaine waking taken by Barney. This was accompanied with many early 20th century amateur intimate photographs of women, by other women, made only for the sake of a small moment of perfect expression. This exhibition shows that trying to capture someone’s essence for a photograph, to be held only by the photographer is one of the most erotic acts one could perform.

There is a subsection within the exhibit called ‘mad love’ about some of the most obsessive, twisted artistic passions. Leonora Carrington painted Max Ernst as the Bird Superior, twisting him halfway between human and creature, with the shadow of herself as the Bride of the Wind behind, and the ‘mad love’ section showed all sorts of distorted images of loves drawn through wringers of pain. The exhibit as a whole showed everything from modern Scandinavian printing artists to authors like Virginia Woolf and her lover Vita Sackville-West. This exhibit doesn’t treat one artist in a partnership as greater or lesser than the other, even though usually one is recognised in traditional history to be far more famous. It is a landmark of representation for those people usually just think of as props for more well-known partners who eclipse them. Every relationship is made up of halves, or is completely blurred to comprise one entity.

This exhibit sets a standard for a philosophy of love, wherein thinkers are each other’s perpetual inspiration, and even if they do not last forever, they last as long as those great streams of thought keep developing. The romances in the exhibit are all puzzles to be figured out, regarding how these influences fit together, especially when the couple works on a collaborative piece. Much art can be considered a beautiful testament to a single emotive moment, but so rarely is the cause of that emotive made so clear, nor is the call-and response of the artist’s emotions (demonstrated through a couple’s collaborative body of work) so clear. The entire time I walked through the exhibit I was sending excited messages to my friend, eager to talk immediately about the little snippets of stories I’d seen.

It is very hard to walk through the pieces without picking up a few little unforgettable details, and little bits of inspiration that the artistically-minded will potentially want to carry forward into their own relationships. It was easily one of the most meticulously researched exhibits I saw in 2018, with huge amounts of information available in every room, and I couldn’t recommend it enough. Although maybe don’t go alone – it might leave you wondering if you’ll ever have anyone to lounge around perpetually creating art and debating expressionism with.

Sackler family more involved than thought in opioid crisis

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Sackler family more involved than thought in opioid crisis

A recent court ling reveals that the Sackler family, a major source of donations to Oxford University and owners of Purdue Pharma LP, were more involved than had been previously assumed in deceiving the public about the side effects of the opioid painkiller OxyContin.

The memorandum was led as part of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s ongoing lawsuit against the company and 17 associated individuals, including 8 members of the Sackler family.

The court ruling states: “They [the 8 Sackler family members] directed deceptive sales and marketing practices deep within Purdue, sending hundreds of orders to executives and line employees.

“From the money that Purdue collected selling opioids, they paid themselves and their family billions of dollars.”

Since 1991, the University has received over £11 million in donations from the Sacklers’ trusts and from the family themselves. Their donations have gone towards erecting the Bodleian Sackler Library and towards funding the Sackler Keeper of Antiquities at the Ash- molean.

The Sacklers also support a University lecturer and a teaching fellowship in Earth Sciences, and the family’s contributions have facilitated projects in paediatrics and neuroscience.

The memorandum suggests the Sacklers to be directly involved in developing a strong marketing strategy for OxyContin and its other opioids, repeatedly pushing for the prescrip- tion of higher doses for longer periods of time.

The marketing campaign targeted customers for whom opioid use was accompanied by great risk, such as the elderly and patients who had not previously been on opioids, without warning them of the additional risk of drug interactions, addiction, and overdose, the court ling suggests.

The suit also asserts that the Sacklers were aware of Purdue’s repeated failure to notify authorities of “pill mills” and reports on the illegal sale and distribution of OxyContin. According to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, overdoses from prescription opioids accounted for 218,000 deaths from 1999 to 2017 nationwide.

When asked whether Oxford University will review its policy on accepting donations, and whether they will accept donations from the Sacklers in the future, a University spokes- person said: “All major prospective donors are carefully considered by the University’s Committee to Review Donations under the University’s guidelines for acceptance.

“The Committee considers the sources of an individual’s or organisation’s wealth and may reconsider a donor in the light of new information. The University monitors significant developments in the public domain and the Committee considers donors when potential donations are brought to their attention.”

Richard Sackler, who served as Purdue Pharma’s president from 1999 to 2002, is characterised by the Massachusetts Attorney General as the main driving force behind the OxyContin campaign.

It is asserted in the suit that in 1997 staff informed Richard Sackler that selling OxyContin as a “non-narcotic” in certain markets would provide “a vast increase of the market potential”, bypassing safeguards intending to protect patients from addictive drugs.

The idea faced opposition from Richard Kaiko, the inventor of OxyContin. Noting that products like OxyContin were among the most widely abused opioids in the US, he wrote: “If OxyContin is uncontrolled, it is highly likely that it will eventually be abused.”

Richard Sackler allegedly responded: “How substantially would it improve your sales?”

Purdue Pharma wrote in a statement: “[T]he Attorney General has cherry-picked from among tens of millions of emails and other business documents produced by Purdue. The complaint is littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations of these documents and individual defendants, often highlighting potential courses of action that were ultimately rejected by the company.”

A spokesperson for The Sackler Trust and The Dr Mortimer And Theresa Sackler Founda- tion said: “We support a range of educational, medical, scientific, cultural and community organisations. It is a privilege to be able to support such vital work and we continue to do so.”

Cherwell has contacted the Sackler family for comment.

Gillette’s advertisement is sharper than usual

Jan Eijking
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Gillette’s advertisement is sharper than usual

Apparently it still stirs up controversy when a major brand launches a campaign promoting a kinder, more tolerant idea of what it means to be a man. Shaving company Gillette’s newest ad has changed its outdated slogan from “The best a man can get” to “The best men can be”.

The ad feels like a rollercoaster ride through everyday sexism: from bullying on the playground, mansplaining in the boardroom, to groping at the pub. The ad went viral, and received a tornado of praise and criticism alike which is, after all — a landslide victory for the advertising industry. But there’s more to it.

Responses to the ad tell us a good bit about where we currently stand in matters of masculinity.

Toxic masculinity may enter the annals of history as one of 2018’s biggest buzzwords — and it may be time for 2019 to move on. Suppose we all got the bottom line: we can actively decide whether or not we want to encourage certain ideas of what it means to be a man.

It’s in our hands whether or not we want to promote a culture in which a “no” is taken for a teasing “yes”, in which forcing yourself on someone else is being a real man, and in which we measure manliness by the number of drinks you can down on a crewdate. What a revelation: we don’t know everything better than women, it’s okay if we’re sad or afraid, and we can actually be something other than either “macho” or “pussy”.

The fact that we treat toxic masculinity as though it were some novel discovery of the dark side of gender self-stereotyping, rather than the millionth confirmation of that being a timeless problem, is telling. Whilst we comfort ourselves with progressive hashtags, there is something deeply conservative about our generation.

The Urban Dictionary reflects a sentiment that is in fact creepily widespread: toxic masculinity, it says, is “a term that far leftists use to try to manipulate real men into feeling shameful for being themselves and feeling like normal men do”. Far leftists? Real men? Normal men?

What’s so particularly left-wing about promoting a version of manhood that is simply open to the various ways of being a man, rather than so monolithic you can only either be (un)lucky to fit the norm or you’ll have to justify yourself every time you don’t?

The let-men-be-men argument (the ultimate Jordan Peterson move) is echoed in social media commentary across the board.

Award-winning actor and fierce Trump-supporter James Woods, for example, accuses Gillette of “jumping on the ‘men are horrible’ campaign” and calls for a boycott of its products.

Many men were happy to follow suit and have posted pictures of razors flushed down toilets or being otherwise disposed of. Far-right magazine The New American confirms how far-from-okay some are with a masculinity that isn’t rough and rowdy: “Men are the wilder sex, which accounts for their dangerousness – but also their dynamism.”

Similar responses are heard outside the Anglo-American world. Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published an article with the title “Gillette replaces rough stubbles with guilty conscience — and not everyone is happy about that”. One of the comments reads: “Why doesn’t a sanitary pad company create an ad in which women are told not to exploit men and not always to play the little victim? Or is that sexist?” Meanwhile in Germany, a journalist tweeted that the ad was “an insult for millions of decent men who shouldn’t have to change anything other than their shaving brand”.

Ours is a generation that yearns for the recuperation of all that which postmodernism has so skillfully smashed: fixed categories, stable meanings, hard facts. While our Facebook feed may suggest otherwise, our generation is just as much about Jordan Peterson as it is about Pussy Riot.

The divide between the two runs deep and is, forgive the pun, razor-sharp. It’ll continue to be a daily task to point out that certain ideas of manliness are outdated and simply unacceptable. But that can’t change without normal men, real men, in fact: all men reflecting on their own behaviour, and taking their own share of responsibility.

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