Thursday 14th August 2025
Blog Page 661

Hard to Be-Leave – Brexit: The Uncivil War

Jacob Ridley
-
0
Hard to Be-Leave – Brexit: The Uncivil War

The earliest laughable moment in James Graham’s political docudrama comes about five minutes in, when political strategist Matthew Elliott (wellplayed by John Heffernan) and UKIP’s erstwhile MP Douglas Carswell (played out of the corner of his mouth by Simon Paisley Day) turn up at Sherlock’s house in 2015 and ask him what he’s been up to since leaving Westminster. ‘Reading,’ he deadpans; ‘Thucydides. Kipling. Tolstoy.’

I would have found this profoundly annoying, had I been unprepared for it; luckily, in one of the brief jump-cuts during the portentous opening sequence he has already been heard deadpanning ‘Apollonian rationality versus Dionysian intuition’ to a board of executives. Later, he will scribble all over a blackboard while shouting ‘Tzu’s Art of War!’ with deadpan élan.

From these subtle, naturalistic hints, we can guess that Sherlock is a clever man, well-versed in strategy and the classics, but emotionally distant – a brilliant but unreadable sociopath.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was not in fact Sherlock, but Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave and mastermind of Brexit’s success in the 2016 referendum. Graham left occasional reminders of this (people would sometimes address the protagonist as ‘Dom’, for instance), but frankly Benedict Cumberbatch plays Cummings as Holmes with less hair and more wood. Perhaps Channel 4 can only make sense of Leave’s victory if it was magicked up by a semi-mythical detective?

Either way, it is clearly tumescent with envy of the BBC Conan Doyle megahit and has decided to remake it: text appears punchily on the screen whenever anyone of importance is introduced; there are feverish but light-hearted splices of Cumberbatch doing unexpected things like playing pool or having a pint, while actually on a serious mission gathering data on punters’ prejudices; while some scenes (Cummings staggers woozily out of a house and puts his ear to the tarmac while music thunders; Cummings sends one message to a Whatsapp group in a board meeting, everyone’s phones start pinging, and he suddenly gets promoted to chairman) could have been lifted from Sherlock verbatim.

Generally, this all makes for watchable TV, and The Uncivil War is well-produced and sometimes quite exciting. It refocuses the events of 2016 in a much more dynamic historical lens than the turgid process seemed the first time around. However, unlike Sherlock, this performance from Cumberbatch is one of actual poorness, which sees one of the English speaking world’s most touted actors hamstrung by a poor script and a northern accent – Cummings occasionally seems to be from everywhere north of Birmingham – which at moments of higher emotion he often forgets altogether.

Nonetheless he commands centre stage, the camera engorged by him. Cumberbatch has simply become too big for domestic productions like this; one is almost never given the sense of Cummings as a real person, for all of Cumberbatch’s fussy method acting, because the shadow the programme does not allow itself to escape is Cumberbatch’s own. It made me nostalgic for 2006 and Starter for 10, where Cumberbatch’s best line as an embarrassed University Challenge captain was ‘It’s a kind of fungal infection.’ Ironically that line sums up his influence here. Graham, like his leading man, is a major West End animal, possibly British drama’s most high-profile political playwright and one of the few whose works near-automatically debut at the National Theatre. It is genuinely disappointing, then, to see the Westminster landscape conjured in The Uncivil War populated only by caricature charlatans – which in Boris Johnson’s case, of course, is a caricature of a caricature.

Richard Goulding’s Johnson is a fine piece of character acting – almost passable for the real thing, though Graham’s refusal to recognise that ‘the real thing’ in Johnson’s case is not merely what meets the eye betrays a lack of the kind of effort a Brexit drama needs if it’s to exceed fifteen years’ political cartoons in relevance. Oliver Maltman plays Michael Gove like an owl that’s been sat on, and his accent is even wobblier than Cumberbatch’s. Nigel Farage and UKIP donor Arron Banks (Paul Ryan and Lee Boardman respectively) are mined for comic relief, which mostly seems to be saying ‘fuck’ a lot; it is a mark of Graham’s effort at some kind of impartiality that Cummings’ Vote Leave campaign have as sincere a distaste as the Remainers for UKIP and the concomitant ineptitude of Leave.EU – even if it inevitably leaves the challenge of Farage to a thoughtful topical scriptwriter as wholly unanswered as that of Johnson.

This is probably Channel 4’s best effort at impartiality on a question which many of its programmers and target audience still find too raw and unpleasant to give much ground on. Even if no Remainers are caricatured at all (though May appears in archive footage as herself, which does half the job), they are at least made out to be as flawed as their Leave counterparts, and perhaps all the more blameworthy for being fatally detuned to the brewing zeitgeist of the last thirty years. Needless to say, this is only impartiality by Channel 4’s standards.

What promises to examine the Leave campaign with frankness and wit ends up leadenly moralising about Vote Leave’s use of online data-gathering methods (seemingly prompted by a sudden revelation in St James’s Park that lots of people use their phones a lot) to target advertisements at fence-sitters. Cummings, whose (legal) use of data-gatherers AggregateIQ is the target cardinal sin of the whole drama, is allowed to appear slightly sympathetic only at the price of regularly voicing contempt for his whole enterprise.

‘Referenda are the worst way to make political choices,’ he deadpans at one point; ‘not that we live in a nuanced or political age, do we?’ At this point the camera starts creeping towards him and an epic note of doom is struck in Cumberbatch’s voice and posture.

‘I hate them; they stop us progressing,’ he says later of nostalgic slogans (i.e. his own ‘Take Back Control’), ‘but in this case, let’s use them.’ It is hard to imagine anyone in real life saying any of these things.

Like Macbeth or a self-destructive drug addict (Sherlock again?), Cummings’ so-called recklessness can only be absolved if presented as a helplessly self-aware hurtle towards a fatal mistake. He has his ‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’ moment right at the end when he leaves a tribunal over the AggregateIQ question with the words ‘We’re all done. Thank you.’ And accidentally knocks over his chair. Subtle.

What is ultimately hard to forgive is Graham’s dated cop-out technique of words on a black screen recounting events which have not been dramatised. This happens twice: at Jo Cox’s assassination, seven days before the referendum, and then before the credits, when Graham makes sure to let us know that AggregateIQ is ‘linked to billionaire businessman Robert Mercer’. After a brief pause the second line sombrely fades onto the screen: ‘who went on to become the largest donor to the election campaign of President Donald Trump.’

The T-word was a long time coming and is dropped with all the portentous reverence of a criminal sentence. The quiet moralism is shockingly crude, and, in implicitly equating an MP’s murder with the election of someone Graham disagrees with, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and demonstrates how much more water is needed under the bridge before some grown-up perspective can be gained on the Brexit question.

Binge shopping – a no brainer?

Zoe Butler
-
0
Binge shopping – a no brainer?

We’ve all been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, dress, jeans and shoes that we didn’t really need. And now we’re broke and still have nothing to wear.

It might feel like a never-ending cycle that leaves you with a limp bank card and an overflowing closet, but there is some science to explain what makes us buy things all the time (and how sometimes, a little indulgence can be a good thing!).

During a shopping experience, the human brain releases dopamine, which causes us to feel pleasure, chemically programming our brain to respond positively to sales and advertisements. As with receiving rewards, we feel an instant sense of gratification at being able to obtain the item we want.

Additionally, split second decisions don’t function around a careful evaluation of possible outcomes. Instead, excitement causes a spike in brainwaves and results in emotional engagement with the product. Studies have shown that even just anticipating the experience can cause shoppers to instantly feel better.

So, you can almost justify any irresponsible shopping spree as the result of brain chemicals. But what are the consequences if we let our brains (and our bank cards) run wild?

Of course, there’s the obvious, such as financial constraints and a depressing bank statement. But a dependence on excessive shopping can actually become compulsive buying disorder. The fear of missing out on a purchase (otherwise known as ‘loss aversion theory’) causes one to irrationally overvalue the losses of not buying something – to the extent that this is valued at double as much as they’d gain by buying it. Such behaviour is also closely linked to hoarding, as many sufferers will keep every single purchase as a reminder of their ‘victory’ through buying it.

Of course, this is the worst-case scenario and a couple of shopping trips every now and then won’t hurt. Technically, it could even be beneficial for your mental health as it releases dopamine, which simulates feelings of happiness. However, uncontrolled spending can lead to larger money problems. This is especially prevalent around the Boxing Day and New Year sales, promising us savings that could make us happier than we thought possible. When shopping, it may be beneficial to take a moment to consider what you’re buying and whether you can justify it; one shopping trip seems affordable, but a prolonged habit of binge shopping is less so. As cool as the new outfit you have may be, you probably don’t need as much as your brain thinks you do.

The psychology of an evil stepmother

Isabella Welch
-
0
The psychology of an evil stepmother

The notion of remarriage offers the idea of a second chance, or a rejuvenation. A return to the hope and romance of youth. In fairytales as old as time, children stand in the way of that hope. A woman who may never have had any children herself is forced prematurely into the role of mother for children she doesn’t love. Her body hasn’t been wrecked with childbirth, but equally she has never had the need to be compassionate. Maybe the wicked stepmother will have her own children, but they will only warp her affections even more, as she will only understand how to love her own.

Romances can be thought of as a completion of another person, and a journey together that begins with utter devotion. But if the father already has children, his devotion will always be fractured, his love will never be wholly hers. Thus in order to gain the full extent of that possessive love, she has to either kill the children or put them to work to the degree where their identities are subsumed by the drudgery of the labour they engage in. Inherently though there is a pathetic indignity to it – the necessity of competing with and fighting against children.

In the era of most early fairytales, where children were still treated as property, there is a horror to the notion that they could be set the most gruelling, abusive tasks by a wicked stepparent in a fruitless attempt at vengeance for the way the children are loved. This would be the result of a hatred of an entity that is indestructible (at least until the stepmother’s detestation of the children overcomes her love for her husband and she snaps and kills them) but completely powerless. To despise something so weak, so inoffensive simply because one of the few faculties they have is the love for their father, there is a visceral extremity in this capacity to hate.

Often stepmothers are wicked witches too. If they aren’t siphoning the life out of their children by setting them to menial labour, they are literally siphoning the life out of them. It is but a matter of time before any figure of impure beauty such as the second wife seductress that crashes through the family ends up with occult power behind them.
Why might this be? Children for many families represent an extension of the growth that the parents have found valuable in their own lives. We teach children everything we know in the hopes they will learn from their mistakes and might surpass us, but also as an extension of the ego. By taking forwards our knowledge and utilising it in the world in a myriad of scenarios, children have chances for development that we never had. A lot of people put all their hope for the future in their children instead of themselves when they have them. Children are the futures that parents never had made either consciously or subconsciously in their own image.

But the wicked stepmother never made that choice to translate her hopes for a future into a child, and have a child as the extension of her own identity. Usually the established, somewhat wealthy father, and that marriage represents the future to her, and the children are only a relic of a past that is dead (via their biological mother). The wicked stepmother will show no desire to put any of herself into the children by raising and teaching them. The wicked stepmother has not a scrap of self-sacrifice that traditional parenting demands. She represents parental knowledge withheld, and someone trapped in the family scenario who shows no desire to put any of her own development or ambitions on hold for the children she has been forced to look after. The wicked stepmother has complete mastery over herself and always will, so she retains her beauty and role of temptress even when settling into marriage.

One could easily see how power over the self ends up translating into a type of magic. When the daughters grow up to be more beautiful than she is, in an attempt at all costs to resist sacrificing any of her identity, she will happily kill or siphon off the life and youth of the children before her to retain that dynamic of complete autonomy that seems so alien within a family setting.

Though we may consider the wicked stepmother an archetype of the days of the Brothers Grimm, we still have characters such as A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Esmé Squalor. The extraordinarily wealthy fashionista leeches power from the children by reducing them to a mere accessory – ‘orphans are in’ – and triumphantly parades them around to enhance her own reputation. Like the wicked witch stepmothers often become, Esmé uses her powers of fashion to create chic outfits to disguise herself with and seduce anyone in her path to the children’s fortune and status. Fundamentally, children will always represent the chance for parents to impart their knowledge and offer chances for growth those parents never had.
When faced with substitute guardians who are unwilling to sacrifice themselves, that core process of growth will be disrupted. For as long as children even in some part exist as an extension of parental identity, the self-assured wicked stepmother will exist alongside them.

The anxiety of envy

Olya Makarova
-
2
The anxiety of envy

All writers have their idols – the giants of literature whose turn of phrase and inventive forms inspire envy. Without Dickens, Joyce, Pynchon, and the like, contemporary literature simply wouldn’t be what it is. But are the towering figures of past literary landscapes hindering contemporary writing as much as they are inspiring it?

In his landmark piece of literary criticism, The Anxiety of Influence (1973), Harold Bloom argues that poets feel the weight of their forebears so heavily, that to overcome this weight and craft a truly individual style takes monumental effort. Forty-five years on, can the same still be said of literary fiction?

In an age of decreasing readers and increasing viewers, the sphere of literary writing is becoming ever-narrower. Big names dominate the industry, and yet their fiction feels incredibly same-y. The most flagrant offence may be found in American postmodernism. The shadow of Pynchon’s writing, most prominently Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), looms over the pinnacles of contemporary American literature. DeLillo’s White Noise (1985), Underworld (1997), and Foster-Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) mimic and marginally modify Pynchon’s style. This style, dubbed “hysterical realism” by critic James Wood, has since crossed the Atlantic to manifest itself in British authors such as Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie. As Wood explains it, this literary style is “characterised by a fear of silence. This kind of realism is a perpetual motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page. There is a pursuit of vitality at all costs.” Though this style isn’t inherently bad (though Wood will tell you otherwise), it is agonisingly widespread in contemporary literature, seeming to paradoxically constrain itself into flabby abundance. It has an element of ‘anxiety of influence’ to it – feeling as if many postmodern writers feel pressured to live up to the achievements of Pynchon’s 900- page Gravity’s Rainbow. And if they aren’t able to span all the realms of Freudian hermeneutics, colonial dodo-hunting, and biochemical engineering in one book, they have somehow failed as an intellectual and as an author. It is an incredibly silly form of literary envy – authors env y their predecessor’s cleverness, and seem to believe that using this single form will push them into the same exalted positions as the likes of DeLillo and Foster-Wallace.

In Foster-Wallace’s fiction especially, the anxiety of influence is tangible. In his essays, Foster-Wallace is relatively concise and legible. And the maxims he preaches seem to directly contradict the monstrosity he has created that is Infinite Jest. In the essay ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’ (1993), Foster-Wallace criticises the effect of television upon American fiction, writing, “I’m going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that, at the same time, they are agents of a great despair and stasis in US culture, and that, for aspiring fictionists, they pose terrifically vexing problems.” And yet, Infinite Jest is ironic through and through, down to its very title. Perhaps it is life-affirming; this is what I hear from the few friends who have had space in their life to read it. However, I only got through the first 100 pages, rapidly becoming dismayed by the quantity of posturing and irony, and the lack of something genuine and human. But most of all, it all felt rather tedious and useless, because I’d already read Gravity’s Rainbow and Foster-Wallace didn’t seem to be doing anything particularly different from Pynchon.

In British postmodernism, as well, this overbearing sameness weighs heavy. McEwan, Faulks, Barnes – I was struck by how incredibly similar British contemporary fiction felt as I tried out and discarded each successive author. This is probably unfair; I know these authors are well-loved by many, but, stylistically, I discern little significant difference.

Literary fiction has become a tin-can, each rolling penny inside making the same cacophony as the others, till the sound all rolls into one great din. Few authors try to do something truly unique with their fiction, and when they do, it often feels gimmicky. Ali Smith’s Autumn, for instance, was intensely, self-gratifyingly bad. To quote a truly exemplary passage:

“All across the country, people felt history at their shoulder. All across the country, people felt history meant nothing. All across the country, people felt like they counted for nothing. All across the country, people had pinned their hopes on it. All across the country, people waved flags in the rain. All across the country, people drew swastika graffiti. All across the country, people threatened other people. All across the country, people told people to leave. All across the country, the media was insane. All across the country, politicians lied.”

As tedious as that was, it didn’t nearly capture the genuine agony of reading the original – the banal repetition goes on for almost two pages.

I’m not saying that all contemporary fiction is bad – far from it. But it is being held back by the literary status quo, by the envy of great postmodern experimenters. And this inability to craft a style and form which is unique and inventive and not contorting itself into some beast of compulsive self-congratulation is the result of the politicisation of literature. In the 21st century, we’ve come to feel that literature has little depth or value unless it is commenting on the world at large. Ali Smith was determined to write a Brexit novel. Why? Because of the expectations of British readers, the feeling that someone had to do it.

Taking up old forms of writing is an important, even necessary, part of any writer’s growth. Even Virginia Woolf, modernist writer through and through, had her experiments with Victorian style in Night and Day (1919). However, the important part is that she progressed beyond the Victorian form to find her own voice. The politicisation of contemporary literature has led to a stylistic pragmatism; writers are simply borrowing the most popular styles of their predecessors without adding much of anything new. There is no need for anything new – the readers of literary fiction have grown complacent, easily wooed with the originality of gimmicky novels such as House of Leaves (2000) and If on a winter’s night a traveller (1979). Reading of novels for their political sentiment means that readers are free to ignore form, instead focusing upon the marvels of social criticism in fiction. Hence, contemporary writers have little reason to break free of the anxiety around relying on influence. There is no reason to feel anxious when style is no longer an important factor in fiction.

Word on the Street

Cherwell Fashion
-
0
Word on the Street

A phenomenon spurred throughout the past decade by Instagram influencers and fashion bloggers, street style is a form of fashion that can be traced back to the end of World War II. The rise of style-conscious magazines – initially targeted towards men – helped an increasingly visual understanding of metropolitan masculinity, as the traditional flaneur evolved into the modern sartorial appeal. From Terence Donovan’s 1960s black and white prints to Scott Schuman’s extensive online portfolio, street style photography has turned everyday urban scenes into a catwalk. Whilst Oxford’s historic backdrop signals tradition over vogue, the student population boasts a myriad of approaches to style. Student street style foregrounds functionality over the avant-garde, whilst still allowing for individual expression. This week we explore Oxford’s equivalents of Soho and Harajuku in an appreciation of student fashion.

 

Fast Film: In a Lonely Place unites noir tradition with painfully real romance

Laura McGriele
-
0
Fast Film: In a Lonely Place unites noir tradition with painfully real romance

Quintessential quote: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”

You could recognise the names as they appear on the screen in an instant. Humphrey Bogart – a pop culture icon – and Gloria Grahame – the lesser known, but still good, actress who played the woman you might have loved to hate in the overly reviewed seasonal film, It’s a Wonderful Life. In A Lonely Place is a distillation of both the short-lived beauty of romance and the simmering bleakness of noir, and it displays the fatalism that binds them both.

Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a walking usurpation of the archetype that he set within Hollywood; instead of the sardonic, pragmatic, yet kind-hearted noir-hero who saves the day and gets the ‘dame’ in The Big Sleep, we’re greeted with the unnerving presence of a man who displaces those elements entirely. He’s old and lonely, obviously, as well as hunched and isolated within tightly framed shots. He’s a screenwriter that’s down on his luck and unable to find motivation. He reluctantly has to adapt a screenplay from a novel he hasn’t read. After finding a girl that has read the book in a nearby bar, he takes her home, has her read the book to him, and asks her to leave. The next day, she’s dead, and his next-door neighbour Laurel, played by Grahame, appears. She brings Steele an alibi, a new focus, and the charging energy of the film; a playful, bantering tone, continually undercut by a seething, shimmering anger. From the get-go, the main problem of the film seems to be: did he do it? But the real problem this film concerns itself with is offering a realistic portrayal of love.

This film is about the tender spaces of existence, of love, and, perhaps, works as a commentary on the emerging age of New Hollywood cinema. At the time, cinema was breaking away from the comfort of the Hollywood classics. It’s A Wonderful Life, a film of complete optimism (undertones aside), was no longer what Hollywood was interested in. Now, films were shifting into becoming complex contradictions. There is a dark violence in them that suggests the struggle of moving away from the formulaic, typical narrative arc of man, woman, and optimism that was deemed ‘good’ filmmaking. In a Lonely Place presents to us this deep contradiction through the figure of Steele.

The parallels are obvious: the ageing man being pushed out of his sphere of existence, not caring enough to read the new works of his generation, not bothered enough to write new screenplays for salaries or checks, and instead wanting to exist purely in his own sphere, or to be left alone. Louise Brooks thought that this film, with the “character’s pride in his art, his selfishness, drunkenness, [and] a lack of energy that stabbed with lightning strokes of violence”, had much in common with the “‘real’ Bogart”. Bogart no longer has to play fancified versions of a character he has been pigeon-holed into; here, he can play himself, or at least a more appropriate version of how he wishes to act. The real nuance of this film and the greatest scene from the whole of Bogart’s career can be summarised 4 minutes and 22 seconds in. Here you should pause it, replay it, and watch the change in his eyes and forehead, and the control he has over his body in composing it perfectly to express the form of a man quick to change, and to anger. Am I being pedantic? Of course. But it is here, within this frame, that you can see the details of Bogart’s acting – his face changes, subtly, but intently. It sets an ethos of cinema that dictates that subtlety can be found in the smallest of gestures, in the minutiae of film.

Steele’s counterpart is Laurel, who complements him perfectly. She can play off his wry jokes and can handle conversations with dry wit and ease. She is not the typical Hollywood ‘dame’, nor the femme fatale of noir cinema. Arguably, her plight in the latter half of the film makes her the main character; for once, the noir isn’t about the male’s downfall, but the female’s doubts. These doubts are echoed in the actress’ life, wherein her volatile marriage to the director, Nicholas Ray, was mirrored on screen in the violence, anger and doubts the character expresses for Steele (another reason she, like Bogart, may have chosen this role).

When each counterpart comes together to balance the other out, we are given two characters merely trying to consolidate their loves for one another whilst still being trapped in that lonely place. Steele, unable to prove his innocence (or guilt), and Laurel, unable to fully trust him and scarred by previous commitment, are in a consistently lonely sphere of doubt. Both characters are isolated and alone, and whilst they share the same emotion of love, they remain segregated from each other. It is this lonely and negative space in the film that brings together the components of tragedy – distrust and fear pervade, whilst love whittles away into loneliness.

However, the love, whilst it is there, is stark. One of the greatest love scenes of cinema can be summarised in a scene in which they are in the kitchen together. Laurel remarks:

“I love the love scene. It’s very good.”

To which Steele replies:

“Well, that’s because they’re not always telling each other how in love they are. A good love scene should be about something beside love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit, you sittin’ over there, dopey, half asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we were in love.”

It is, of course, Ray commenting on the ridiculous nature of declarations of love that often seep into the screen. It is, however, a very realistic portrayal of it. Love in this film is not presented as a saviour complex, as it cannot save you from your character, the traits you hold, or who you are. In this film, love is an option and a choice; it can separate you from loneliness or drown you in it.

Whatever prongs of choice pervades you in your personal life, this is a great film regardless. Whether you want a deep commentary on the nature of Hollywood itself, to feel better about your own personality and idiosyncrasies, or be pervaded by a tragic love story with some sharp, witty humour – find this film. Watch it, pause it when necessary to analyse the contrasts of the chiaroscuros lighting (and Bogart or Grahame themselves), and know that this is a film about love and loneliness that feels no need to romanticise.

“Look what you made me do”: Taylor Swift’s reinvention

Ellie Donachie
-
0
“Look what you made me do”: Taylor Swift’s reinvention

To declare yourself a Taylor Swift fan is to be inevitably met with jibes of irritation and resentment. So why is it so fashionable to love-to-hate Swift? Some may put it down to a sense of victimhood or conceit for which Swift has been accused of distracting from genuine feminine expression or perhaps it is a frustration with her relentless disparaging of her ex-relationships? Swift’s reluctance to allow her music on Spotify through 2014-2017 certainly didn’t help ease the fact it was becoming increasingly popular to oppose the country-turned-pop star.

Since 2012’s Red, Swift has been moving away from the stripped back, pining, country-girl tones of ‘Dear John’ to try her hand at pop. By the release of her 6th studio album, Reputation, Swift and her team were eager to not only push the change in sound to its limits with drum machine beats and half-rap, but took to a total rebranding. Swift’s new ‘reputation’ is premised upon a rejection of concerns over her image in the media. Essentially, Swift was opting to ‘Shake it Off’. But is a killing off of her old self a sure sign that she is concerned about her reputation more than ever?

The Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour film was released on Netflix last week. Filmed at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas where she played to 210,000 on her final leg of her sold out world tour, the movie was, much like the tour itself, a resounding success. The production quality of the film is exceptional: the camera zooms in and out of panoramic views of the stadium and the fine detail of Swift’s expressions, costumes, set and backup dancers to create a highly immersive experience.

Swift accepts the risk of being criticised for over-production or too much drama in her performance, and I for one, am very thankful she chose to do so. Her team created a show which can only be described as a spectacle: the combination of the force of the music and the sheer wow factor of the firework displays, lights and highly intricate set designs was, for a fan, downright emotional. In periods of quiet, both on film and in person, you can hear fans desperately screaming “I love you Taylor,” in view of an audience of crying, screaming fans (myself included).  Whether you came to the tour as a 13-year-old girl dressed in a Junior Jewels t-shirt or a Dad reluctantly forced into supervision, the production quality and Swift’s never-faltering high energy meant there was certainly something for everyone. What this movie does for those resentful of Swift is deny them the opportunity to refute her commitment to a performance.

In accordance with her new scheme of rebranding, the Reputation Tour followed her newly unapologetic narrative. Both the movie and the tour itself began with a compilation of reporters voices all seeking to slander Swift’s image, behind various videos of herself avoiding paparazzi, accepting awards, and as a young teenager. The pattern of these shifting images is maintained across the concert as the production switches between clips of Swift sporting tight blonde ringlets and singing ‘You Belong with Me’, before she falls onto a sea of backup dancers in a sacrificial-like performance on a blood red stage. The ‘nice girl’ image of the country girl from Nashville is sharply contrasted with the nightmarish, destructive Swift who boldly declares she will be ‘the actress starring in your bad dreams.’

Obviously, this constantly shifting persona and display of imagery is intentional: Swift is acutely aware that to fix herself resolutely in the angry, commanding image of the reputation era would be detrimental to her fan base who will never want to let go completely of the ‘old Taylor’. The continual switching between dark, serpentine set design to support the frustrated lyrical tones of ‘Bad Blood’ and the stripped down conversation she has with her fans as she sits down at her guitar about to play ‘All Too Well’, perfectly exemplifies Swift’s holding onto of her past success.

It would be naïve to think that Swift, or any other popstar, present themselves as anything to do with how they really are behind closed doors. The reinvention of her ‘reputation’ is not a change of character nor a sudden shift in her attitude to the spotlight. The reputation era was simply a rebranding of sound, lyricism, production and image which worked to provoke her audience and, ironically, sustain her reputation. As much as Swift may force an angry lip bite on stage or dress her dancers in snakeskin, her fans will always be reminiscent of the country girl who sung about the teardrops on her guitar. If the old Taylor is dead, she will soon be resurrected.

 

Town vs Gown 2019: Press Release

-
0
Town vs Gown 2019: Press Release

Town vs Gown 2019
25th January 2019
18:30-23:30 (Boxing commences at 19:00)

[OXFORD, The Oxford Union, Frewin Ct OX1 3JB]

With the Varsity match taking place in Cambridge, this is Oxford’s only boxing event of the academic year. Following the hugely successful all-women’s boxing match last term-the first ever in Oxford, 16 bouts await at the historic Union.

Challengers will arrive from local boxing clubs, ready for a tear up with the finest boxers the university has to offer. Months of technique development, morning fitness sessions, and a camp in Tenerife have provided the boxers with a chance to dazzle under the bright lights. For many, this will be the first ever experience of amateur boxing, proving the only opportunity for exposure before the team travel over to Cambridge in a few months time.

Spectators will be provided with an incredible view of the action wherever they are, with tickets starting from just £14. The dress code for this year will be formal, ie shirt and tie or equivalent, no denim or trainers. Drinks will be served from the union bar and can be taken into the main hall. Show your support for the boxers and get behind the university, join us for an action-packed evening! Do not miss out.

If you would like any more information please contact the OUABC group on Facebook, or
email:
Indie Walker (President) [email protected]
Harrie Smith (Marketing officer) [email protected]
Edward Harris (Marketing officer) [email protected]

Review: The 1975’s latest album falls short

William Atkinson
-
2
Review: The 1975’s latest album falls short

I first listened to The 1975 to impress a girl. We did theatre classes together and I fancied her rotten. I ended up getting her a signed photo of her favourite band for Christmas, hoping to be charming. She liked it, but didn’t take the hint. Shame really. I haven’t seen her in years, but the photo would be worth a bit if I’d kept it. Not bad for a Sharpie and some laminated paper.

So, The 1975. Led by teenage heartthrob Matty Healy, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships sees the band riff on an eclectic mix of the 21st century’s ills. Their style is a bit like if the Pet Shop Boys wedged their synthesiser on “funk” whilst earnestly throwing some guitars against a wall. The lyrics are a tad grandiose. The last album – with the logically obvious yet grammatically difficult title I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It – had classics like “you look famous, let’s be friends / And portray we possess something important”. Shelley must be weeping.

But I’m an old cynic, and far from the target audience.  A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships has some genuinely good songs. ‘TooTimeTooTimeTooTime’ is catchy. ‘Love It If We Made It’ has a great chorus. ‘It’s Not Living (If it’s not with you)’ has enough rhythm, at least, for a jogging playlist.

But by the time you’re reaching the vainglory of ‘The Man Who Married a Robot’, something’s going wrong. Art is staring to imitate life. It’s about a man whose lonely life revolves around the internet, narrated by a cod-Google Translate electronic voice. For an album about online relationships, something about a relationship with the online doesn’t seem that unusual. But, in writing it, The 1975 have been wilfully blind to just how much it sums them up.

1975 was great for music. Two number ones are certified classics – Space Oddity and Bohemian Rhapsody. They are iconic because they’re unique. Not only are they well written, memorable and catchy – even operatic – but they boldly go where music hasn’t gone before. This isn’t true of The 1975. Not the opera bit, though they do lack there. No, this album’s real problem is its jarring predictability.

I blame the internet. Like many, I listened to this album on Spotify. For reasonable fees we get all the music we’d want just a few clicks away. My Dad, his school lunchtimes lost trawling the record shops of 80s Aylesbury, finds this magical.  For me, self-conscious young fogey I am, it’s quite sad. Music is being ruined.

No longer does it need to be genuinely different to win success, like Bowie and Queen. Instead it’s the same pseudo-edgy Sixth Form poetry being churned out again and again to an audience getting exactly what they want. If we want, our Song Radio can find us a hundred other songs from a hundred similar bands all trying equally to be daring and new. The revolutionary in commonplace. How is that anything but dull?

The 1975 typify this. Some robotic pretentious waffle. Some cynical love songs. Some good hooks, a few nice bridges. Rinse and repeat for an album for an identikit album, with a dozen else out there the same.

This album, then, is like my gift to that girl – grandiose and well-intended, but woefully missing its mark. In trying to make an interesting point about how the internet corrupts us, it falls victim to the same malaise. A shame, as “Love It If We Made it” really is quite good. Who knows, maybe better things are on the horizon.

City Council Blasts Oxford Union over Le Pen Invite

Ben van der Merwe
-
6
City Council Blasts Oxford Union over Le Pen Invite

The City Council have joined the growing chorus of opposition against the Oxford Union’s latest far-right speaker invitation.

In an official letter to Union President Dan Wilkinson, the Council’s executive board member for public safety expressed concerns about “the Oxford Union’s pattern of endangering community safety by inviting fascists into the city.

“Steve Bannon, Tommy Robinson, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel. Now Marion Marechal Le Pen. The Union has recently put an unhealthy fascination with courting controversy ahead of doing the right thing by Oxford, the city that’s called it home since 1823.”

Councillor Tom Hayes argued that the Union was legitimising the far-right, writing: “While you may live in Oxford for a short time, the costs of your courting of controversy will last a long time. It should be of concern that this line-up of fascists you are inviting into Oxford get to exploit the prestige of the Union to legitimise prejudice.

“We know that hate hurts. Up the road from the Union, there will be an exhibition on the Lessons of the Holocaust at the same time as you are enabling fascists to spread a sickening series of racist views. That exhibition clearly shows just how much hate hurts and how much the legitimisation of hate can hurt on the biggest possible scale. I invite you to visit the Town Hall to discuss your invitation and visit the exhibition.”

The letter also raised concerns about the cost of security for the event: “Our cash-strapped, cut-back Thames Valley Police should not be forced to police this event when they could be stopping and catching criminals, just as they should never be made to pay for the costs of policing the Union’s attention-grabbing behaviour. What security support will the Union be giving to your event?

“We have seen stand-offs between police and far-right activists in the capital, and I do not want to see similar stand-offs in Oxford city centre. I have concerns for the safety of the police, as well as our citizens, and urge you to do the right thing and revoke an invitation which ought never to have been made.”

Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds has also fiercely criticised the Union’s decision, calling on the Union’s leadership to “grow up” and cancel the invitation.

The MP said: “Inviting Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to the Oxford Union legitimises one of the ‘new generation’ of fascists. She is known to be on the far-right even of the far-right National Rally.

“The Oxford Union’s pathetic courting of publicity by inviting racist after racist is deeply frustrating for local people. Our city is proud of its diversity and yet the Oxford Union seems determined to threaten this.”

The statement comes as a planned protest gathers pace, with one event on Facebook listing 175 people as going and 529 as interested. The event is being hosted by a number of local and national activist groups, including Oxford University Labour Club and the Oxford SU LGBTQ+ and racial equality campaigns.

Mr. Wilkinson are yet to respond to request for comment

1...660661662...2,518Page 661 of 2,518

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by James Ashley