Monday 4th May 2026
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The Bookshelf: Vita Sackville-West’s ‘Solitude’

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The Bookshelf: Vita Sackville-West’s ‘Solitude’

One drear November day, in the English Faculty Library with laptop open before me and screen perpetually blank, books piled to either side waiting to be opened, I stood up and wandered over to the shelves – for each (wo)man procrastinates the thing (s)he loves. It was in so doing that I came across what has become one of the most important poems to me, matched only by T. S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets and Emily Brontë’s collected works; the text, Vita Sackville-West’s 1938 book-length poem, Solitude. Amounting to 56 pages of iambic pentameter, the poem is as soothing as it is poignant, as beautiful as it is understated, and its overriding sense, although obscured in its ambiguous ending, is of light in a darkening world.

“Now to my little death the pestering clock / Beckons, – but who would sleep when he might wake?” begins Sackville-West’s gentle yet penetrating exploration of what it means to be in oneself, by oneself. Her use of the adverb “[n]ow” draws the reader immediately into the poem’s distinct time, which characterises it as much as it serves as its background; a night that untangles as a thread across the pages, as, in darkness, she succeeds in finding her “private, personal shape”. As the night goes on, so the poem tunnels deeper into the self, “the alien language of the day forgotten / That we as foreigners were forced to learn”. Sackville-West presents the self as a native of the night, inhabiting the days only awkwardly, an interloper barely managing to maintain its disguise. With the coming of the night her “little self to nothingness/ Dwindles”. As the trappings of society slip away, the self finds its truest expression and seems to flow across the page. The “alien language” becomes gender, as Sackville West; the ever-shifting subject of Virginia Woolf’s            gender-bending biography Orlando; emerges “unvexed, unsexed, and unperplexed”. Thus, for Sackville-West, the solitude of the night becomes radical and liberating; “[o]nly with nightfall could I stand apart / And view the shaping pattern of my way”.

Sackville-West’s poetry is spellbinding, and its power in the poem’s beginning lies in how it enacts the very healing it describes, for, in reading, the reader, like Sackville-West’s speaker, is most likely alone. After a day spent fraught with socialising “[s]hreds of [the reader’s] self, that others took and wove / Into themselves, till [the reader] had ceased to be”, are returned. The redress of reading is enacted as it is relayed on the page, and the “daily scars” Sackville-West speaks of, the scars we all know; feelings of being over socialised, overworked, and anxious; slip gently away between the lines of verse.

This is not to say that the poem is purely one of pain absolved and questions answered. Often will Sackville-West lament how she is “forced [-] to live, feel, suffer”, often will she acknowledge the very necessity of pain, “since pain holds beauty in a fiery ring”, and often will she question God, “[w]hy, why and endless why again”. Indeed, faith in the poem sits as an uneasy thing, as Sackville-West declares herself “Christian in all but name” (italics my own), and demands of God answers to the eternal unknowns – why there should be evil, why we should suffer so. The poem does not follow the trajectory one might expect of it. It is as we go on, as the Solitude deepens and so our sense of herself, that uncertainties present themselves and despair rears its head, rather than that they are resolved. By the end of the poem the opening lines are turned on their head; “but who would wake when he might sleep?”, she asks. The reader must ask, has she given up, or has she simply and finally succumbed to sleep, that “little death” so scorned at the poem’s beginning? Is this a journey to be traversed night upon night as she fights the pull of sleep over and over and the end of each day to come, or is this her journey’s end, her final Odyssey into herself, and then into nothing at all?

At the time of the poem’s publication war loomed as a heavy gnarled cloud over the continent, closing in, threatening with each day to shut out more, then all, light, and the reader might be forgiven for “choos[ing] night not day for his eternal round”, to “sleep in forgetfulness” rather than face the horrors to come. Yet the poem ends on a question, as if whether to give up or not remains a choice on the part of the reader. The earlier part of the poem sees Sackville-West, in being by herself, humbling herself, declaring; “When I must die, I’ll drop as the leaf, / Raising no piteous yelp of desolation, / No tardy plea of unrehearsed belief”. Is this a noble relinquishing of human vanity, of the very stubbornness that breeds war, or is this simply Sackville-West giving in? Is this a faithful act or a faithless one? The poem itself is never sure, and neither, I imagine, was Vita. But for all this uncertainty, and for the poem’s uneasy trajectory, the beauty, the urgency of the verse shines through; shines, not violently, but passionately; and we are, in the pleasure of reading, “Happy for once, illusion though it be. / Hoping for sunlight on the other side”.

Thus, Sackville-West’s poem, which seems at first a case of gentle redress, but develops into something more challenging and more profound, finds a light in the darkness of the solitary night; hope, if obscure, of “sunlight to come”. It is the tale of every soul that wanders the earth, often overwhelmed, often alien even to itself. In these words, both the uplifting and the uncertain, the solitary self emerges to the reader once more, steps forward and truly sees the world, for all its beauty and pain:

“The night I love is Death, shared mystery.

Only in this deep darkness can I see

Luminous gleamings of a wider porch.”

Why fashion can be whatever it wants to be

Sophie Grapentin
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Why fashion can be whatever it wants to be

It’s 10.30 pm. While my friends are inside dancing, I sit outside, crying. It’s not because I’m heartbroken. It’s because of the orange sprinkles of curry sauce on my white woollen coat. Of course, wearing a white coat is impractical, and such mishaps have to be expected. Nevertheless, I got angry at the guy who told me that I should have worn a more reasonable jacket.

I am appalled by the very idea of sensible fashion. For me, the notion that fashion has to be practical is deeply flawed. I don’t even think the majority of consumers are actually looking for practical clothes! Here’s why…

First of all, fashion doesn’t have to draw solely from reality. It is about fantasy and image: creating a new identity out of the illusions an outfit can offer. Sure, there have been many conservative fashion movements but they didn’t boast much success. The ‘reform dress’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is mostly remembered in the delicious caricatures it inspired. My personal favourite was published in the satire magazine Simplizissimus in 1904: two women talking, one dressed in a plain sack dress with a simple hairstyle whilst the other boasts a corseted waist, high-heeled shoes, a frilly skirt and a wide brimmed hat. The image sparks associations of a court dress style in the era of Louis XVI. The first woman speaks: ‘The reform dress keeps the body healthy and suitable for motherhood.’ The second responds: ‘As long as you’re wearing those rags, that won’t be a problem for you.’ And while that response is exaggeratedly comic, I agree with it. Practicality excludes the seductive appeal of dreamy illusion.

Fashion is crafted through a design process that necessarily includes a few crazy things on the way. Take for example, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret who is celebrated for putting women in trousers. The wide and fluttering harem pants he invented in 1911 became popular among early feminists intending to shock high society. You could do anything in them. Poiret also popularized the loose ‘reformed’ dress shape that we still associate with the glamorous 1920s.

Conversely, in the same show, Poiret presented his models in ‘hobble skirts’. The ankle-length skirt was so tight around the knees that the wearer was only able to do the smallest steps – they could only hobble. There were countless caricatures depicting women desperately jumping after trains or buses to make fun of the impaired customers – but that didn’t affect the skirt’s popularity.

There’s also clothing that really only exists for the sole purpose of being impractical. I am talking about couture: made to outrage, amaze, and display the designer’s creative wiles. When I first saw a picture of Alexander McQueen’s 2010 Armadillo shoes, I was fascinated. They were mockingly christened ‘hoof heel’ by the newspapers. In hindsight, I’m not even sure I immediately recognised them as footwear. But their impracticality was such an integral part of their very being that perhaps its normal function was meant to be totally unrecognisable. Bulky, misshapen, ugly and probably a danger to the wearer’s ankles, they embody a very basic truth. Fashion is an art form like sculpting or painting and it deserves the same freedom to invent impractical and weird creations.

As students, we have the chance to dress freely, without regulations from school or work. It would be an absolute fashion faux pas not to make the most of the opportunity. Just remember that any visibly impractical garment makes a statement. When I wear my white wool coat (home-sewn with a 1954 pattern that blatantly plagiarises a 1950s Pierre Balmain design) I discovered that for some people this is a provocation. One instance saw a bus driver take a little swerve after spotting me on Magdalen bridge, just enough to drive through a puddle and leave me covered in mud. The result: hundreds of greasy dark stains on a white woollen coat! But what can I say? For me, my very own fashion fantasy is worth the effort.

Review: Hadestown – from myth to musical

Katie Knight
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Review: Hadestown – from myth to musical

To know how it ends, and still to begin to sing it again,

As if it might turn out this time, I learnt that from a friend of mine…

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been told time and time again – but if, like me, you have listened to Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown for years – never once expecting it would make its way across the Atlantic – watching it all pan out gives more than the usual sense of déjà vu. The messenger god Hermes (the inimitable André de Shields), charmingly greeting the audience in a folksy bar, starts his tale with a warning. We know how it ends. There’s only one way this story can end. And yet what surprises me most of all is how un-inevitable it all feels; how full of life a story half in the underworld can seem, infused with New Orleans jazz and relentless, bittersweet optimism.

Hadestown faces an almost insurmountable problem right from the get-go – how can you capture a voice from the gods in human form? The original concept album solved this problem by using Justin Vernon (better known as the lead of Bon Iver), his voice layered threefold to create an eerie, startling effect. For a moment, as Reeve Carney sings his first lines to a spectacular ensemble harmony, it appears this production is going to go along the same lines – such that it’s almost a shame when he begins to sing solo.

Carney’s voice can’t reach the haunting high notes of the original stage Orpheus (Damon Daunno) who many fell in love with, but this production has wisely lowered the range, giving this hero a more rock-star feel – and interestingly, to accompany this more mortal voice, an earthly goal.

Orpheus’ revolutionary call to arms is an unexpected but welcome development to this script, although the atmosphere is truly made by the fantastic ensemble who add another dimension to this tried and trusted story. It’s certainly interesting to see Orpheus evolve into the socialist revolutionary we always suspected (but – here I emphasise – never, ever, ever imagined) he would be.

Eva Noblezada as Eurydice is a surprise delight and a standout performer. Her role in this production has been developed, with suitable changes to the script: “A lyre and a player – I’ve heard that one before”, she quips, unimpressed by our hero’s chat-up lines. Noblezada’s version has a tough edge, refreshingly cynical against the fairy-tale-like narrative. A second-act rendition of the mournful ‘Flowers’ in Hadestown is the culmination of this character, making her tough and believable, strong and complex and powerfully mourning – a heroine in her own right, rather than a muse. It’s her performance I leave the theatre most remembering, and it’s wonderful to see an interpretation of the ancient myth which doesn’t overlook Eurydice’s significance.

High regard of Patrick Page (Hades) and the fantastic Amber Gray (Persephone) has preceded them, and it’s obvious to see why – the two positively are their characters, inhabiting their roles with ease. Each steal the limelight whenever they appear (Persephone even more so in her lime-green dress): yet even when the pair aren’t centre stage, I find myself constantly looking for them in the shadows, waiting to see their complex reactions to the events panning out before them. In ‘Our Lady of the Underground’ Gray charms audience and ensemble alike, while Page’s eerily timeful ‘Why We Build the Wall’ proves a formidable first-act finale; first written by Mitchell in 2010, and originally inspired by the imminent threat of climate change, its lyrics have gained such recent relevance that uninformed critics have accused it of being a cheap shot at a famous political figure:

Who do we call the enemy?

The enemy is poverty

And the wall keeps out the enemy

And we build the wall to keep us free

That’s why we build the wall

We build the wall to keep us free.

A testament, perhaps, to the absurdity of recent times. It’s by no means a perfect production; parts of it are still very much a work in progress, a fact which is acknowledged and indeed embraced by both director Rachel Chavkin and Mitchell herself. I attempt not to be jaded by some of the biggest lyric changes, and there’s been a definite move towards streamlining the plot of a very ethereal play, but some of these changes feel a little too speltout – Orpheus’ song-writing mission is emphasised for the audience, as he rescues the marriage of the immortals we are repeatedly told are in love. It’s an understandable addition, given the ethical ambiguity of the original myth. But Orpheus’ signature song has been changed from a tune imbued with his own divine power to a literal love song written by the gods, first sung by Hades in Persephone’s garden (a garden no longer her mother’s – Demeter is conspicuously absent from this telling of the myth). This makes Orpheus’ climactic confrontation with Hades all the stranger. Page and Gray are skilled enough to communicate a loving relationship through stolen glances – that much is made obvious in the play’s second act – as such, it seems a shame to force such an explicit narrative upon them. Orpheus’ skill shouldn’t just be that he has unique access to the divine, it’s that he’s able to challenge them in spite of his mortality.

What I would be interested to see is how the production changes as its run progresses. There’s no Wicked-esque blueprint for this sort of thing, and there’s nothing else quite like it, particularly on the West End – and with a Broadway transfer confirmed for 2019, its clear this play hasn’t yet reached its final form. At times it’s frustrating to watch, attempting to catch subtle changes to lyrics, sometimes wishing the whole thing would stay still for just a moment. But for a show about the power of the spoken narrative, such fluidity feels strangely fitting.

And yet despite its haphazardness, no words can quite capture the zeitgeist of seeing it on stage. An undeniable strength of this production is in its set design – although a stage spinning in concentric circles makes me feel lightheaded by the end. It succeeds in capturing the endless movement of Orpheus’s journey and the eternal, monotonous work of the underworld laborers. A lift rising to the heavens and falling deep beneath the stage assists with some of the most emotional moments of the play: as Carney journeys down to the underworld, and the wonderful ‘Wait for Me’ builds to a crescendo, I’m left in awe by just how wonderfully it’s staged.

And there are beautiful, fantastic moments of tableau – the musical’s poignant ending is inevitable, oh so inevitable, but the way it is played out is an undeniable highlight of the production. As though things could change. As though it might turn out this time. As spring comes back around and the play resumes its start, as I leave the National with a smile on my face, I go against my age-worn instincts – I leave just believing it might. Hadestown is showing at the National Theatre until 26 Jan.

Historicising Fashion

Georgia Corrigan
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Historicising Fashion

The 1971 Yves Saint Laurent Collection du Scandale highlights the instant, ever-changing nature of fashion as well as the day-to-day freedom it bestows. The scandalous collection – at the time a commercial failure – sparked outrage for displaying what have now become high-street staples of today – black flares, blocky strapped heels, chunky fur jackets, and waist-glorifying silhouettes.

Retro looks are the bread and butter of the contemporary fashion moment, but Saint Laurent, who asks the question “What can we really call ‘new’ in fashion?” was heavily criticised for the resuscitation of feminine 1940s styles in his ’71 collection.

This collection is but one of many portals into the greater cultural debates that exist within fashion. Fashion does not exist in a vacuum, it is made up of rules and temporal references whether you choose to break, follow, or twist them – you can only manoeuvre within this network of visual symbols.

Momentarily fleeing the constraints of academia, I see fashion as an escape – yet this is perhaps ironic as history often shows us that fashion is also something to escape from. Virginia Krause writes about the social codification of clothing in Renaissance France, where women were reified whilst men reaped social prestige from the sartorial adornment of their wives and daughters. Having an expensively dressed wife was a status symbol for a man, proving his wealth and status capable of supporting female dependants. Women’s idleness was scorned, and ‘idle’ women who did not have to work could dedicate themselves to a personal grooming regimen that was commodified and appropriated by men.

Though things have changed a lot since then, the “highly codified language of prestige inherent in how one dressed” identified by Krause reverberates with some aspects of our own society [Krause, 2003. P. 105]. She observes that the 16th century French poet Louise Labé understood that lavish clothing procures only the illusion of personal honour while in reality reinforcing male hegemony, which perhaps bears an echo of the ‘self-care’ trend of our own time; I’m certainly not the first person to draw attention to the fact that painting your nails is perhaps not the purest embodiment of self-care. According to Krause, Labé believes that “women can aspire to loftier ambitions for their leisure than self-adornment”  which generates symbolic capital for men [Krause, p. 107]. Whether men or women are the target audience of an outfit, a conversation in Sex and the City between Carrie and Charlotte about the former’s new heels highlights the calculated communication potential of garments in our own time:

[Carrie]: Do you think they make the right statement?

[Charlotte]: Well what statement do you want them to make?

[Carrie]: I am beautiful and powerful and I don’t care that you’re only 25 and married my ex.

[Charlotte]: I thought you didn’t have a complex about how you look to other women?

[Carrie]: Oh no, it’s not a complex, it’s a Natasha-specific obsession, which will be over as soon as she sees me, at the benefit looking fabulous in these shoes, and this dress I saw at Bergdorf’s that’s gonna cost me a month’s rent.

The literature of Early Modern France depicts a world where everyone is hyper-aware of codified outward appearances, and on many levels it doesn’t seem so different from today. Nothing stands alone in fashion: it is fundamentally a form of communication with a receiver, a viewer, a target. Perhaps this is part of why fashion-blogger Leandra Medine’s philosophy of “man repelling” through clothes took such a hold. It completely subverts the Renaissance French system, taking female ownership over fashion as a form of expression and focussing on, in her own words, “trends that women love and men hate”. These ideas are fortified in her book – Man Repeller: Seeking Love, Finding Overalls. Yet the notion of man-repelling suggests that this form of dressing still functions in a male-focused system, only this time dictated by what men don’t like.

Is it really possible to dress entirely for yourself? Is fashion a codifying device that traps women in a system of visual reification? It is virtually impossible to dress completely neutrally; every choice makes some form of statement and an outfit speaks a thousand words.

Maybe fashion is at once freeing and constraining. But this tension may be exactly what makes it exciting and unsettling: this visual world of constant flux somehow manages to be both a refuge from the real world and something to seek refuge from.

2019 Booklist: The Best is Yet to Come

Chung Kiu Kwok
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2019 Booklist: The Best is Yet to Come

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh – 7 March

Flying under the radar as Temi Oh’s debut, this alternate history, in which ten astronauts depart a “dying Earth” for a 23- year journey to a second habitable planet, could be March’s sci-fi sleeper hit. Self-described as “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet meets The 100m”, its premise teases a uniquely thought-provoking tale; not only because we may someday find ourselves in the position of sending astronauts to find our planet a new home, but also because the simultaneous isolation and vastness of space inevitably opens up an array of fascinating possibilities.

It remains to be seen how first-time author Oh will mix the profundity of exploring human nature with the thriller component of a space mission gone wrong, a delicate balance that has been managed to varying degrees of success by numerous novels and films such as Interstellar and Sunshine. As with all debut novels, it’s a coin flip between brilliant and boring: told effectively, this story will leave us dreaming of Terra-Two. Told poorly, it’ll drift off, lost in the vacuum.

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang – 6 August

“How does somebody go from being an irrelevant, backwater, peasant nobody to being a megalomaniac dictator capable of killing millions of people?” Such goes the question R.F. Kuang had in mind when she set out to write The Poppy War trilogy. Inspired by Mao Zedong, protagonist Rin rises from orphan shopgirl to powerful shaman, graduating from the elite Sinegard Academy in the first book. But it’s far from Hog warts and harmony – the other pitch for The Poppy War is Song Dynasty China faces Imperial Japan, complete with all the bloodshed and atrocities implied by the latter. One infamous chapter is based directly on the Rape of Nanking, and the novel is dedicated to Iris Chang, whose 1997 book received acclaim for introducing the Nanking Massacre to the West. Kuang cites the “ongoing erasure of sexual violence against women who aren’t white across military history” as a key incentive for her writing. The “forgotten Holocaust of the Second World War” must be forgotten no longer, she suggests. Neither must we forget the horrifying ramifications of war echoing beyond ceasefire, which is where The Dragon Republic will take readers. War makes monsters of us all – and if Rin’s destiny is tyranny, she won’t be without our sympathies.

Kuang cites the “ongoing erasure of sexual violence against women who aren’t white across military history” as a key incentive for her writing. The “forgotten Holocaust of the Second World War” must be forgotten no longer, she suggests. Neither must we forget the horrifying ramifications of war echoing beyond ceasefire, which is where The Dragon Republic will take readers. War makes monsters of us all – and if Rin’s destiny is tyranny, she won’t be without our sympathies.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood – 10 September

Up there on the list of sequels I’d never have thought were happening is the followup to The Handmaid’s Tale, updating the 2019 BOOKLIST THE BEST IS YET TO COME oppressive theocracy of Gilead to reflect the world we currently live in. Feminist novels of our times, from Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours to Christina Dalcher’s Vox, to Atwood protégée Naomi Alderman’s The Power, inevitably cite the 1985 classic as a key source of inspiration. Yet none of them have ever measured up to the original Handmaid’s Tale when it comes to sheer iconic status: The blood-red Handmaid’s dress remains a universally recognised costume.

The Testaments takes place 15 years after the ending of The Handmaid’s Tale. In contrast to the original, which created a claustrophobic, unreliable narrative solely from the perspective of Offred, it will be narrated by three women whose identities are anyone’s guess. If that’s not enough Gilead for you, there’s always season 3 of the Hulu show airing in the spring.

Starsight by Brandon Sanderson ­– October

Rather than the tried and tested “boy and his dragon”, Brandon Sanderson has written a delightful “girl and her starfighter” story in Skyward, the precursor to Starsight. Combining the flight school mechanics of Ender’s Game with a touching coming of age, Sky ward set the stage for an epic sci-fi quartet where even the skies aren’t a limit. This book was just so much fun. It’s witty; it’s thrilling; it’s buoyed by an indefatigable heroine who undergoes much-needed character development. It’s rare that I feel so satisfied with a novel. What would I like from the sequel, Starsight? More of the same, please.

Crescent City by Sarah J. Maas ­– Unknown

Anyone who has so much as casually strolled through a Waterstones in the past five years is likely to have at least seen the name Sarah J. Maas. Love, hate or grudgingly admire her, Maas’ impact on the YA and fantasy genres has been undeniable. For better or for worse, readers have already drawn the parallels between her forthcoming adult novel and Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series, a series of urban fantasies whose influence shines through in Maas’ recent novels. I may not be Maas’s biggest fan, but I’m looking forward to see if she can replicate her previous successes in a new market. Her Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses series are considered by many to be the gold standard in YA. With gorgeous prose and provocative character development, some of her earlier novels justify her top spot. On the other hand, her books have been met with various criticisms regarding their representation of women, people of colour and LGBT+ people, and taking more pages from Moning’s playbook isn’t likely to make the controversy go away. Add in the sloppier, cash cow-milking work that she’s produced lately, and Maas remains steadfastly hit or miss for me. All bets are off on which one Crescent City will be.

Bridgit: the simple power of looking

Elinor Staniforth
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Bridgit: the simple power of looking

It was by sheer chance that I happened upon Charlotte Prodger’s work Bridgit (2016) at the Bergen Kunsthall during a trip to Norway in 2017. I had not heard of Prodger’s work before, but once I’d seen it, I found it beguiling. Her work had a quiet contemplativeness about it that appealed to me. It was gentle and mesmeric, a soft provoking hum that made a statement through its underratedness. It was for this exhibition in Bergen that she was nominated for the Turner Prize; where I again had the chance to see Bridgit – a 32-minute single screen film.

Like the bookies, I expected Forensic Architecture, an artist/activist collective, to be the winners of this year’s prize. However, I was excited to hear that it was in fact Prodger, my personal favourite, that had won. The prize’s jury discussed how they were impressed with the way she described “lived experience as mediated through technologies and histories” and explored “the formation of a sense of self through disparate references”. In Bridgit, Prodger subtly tackles the changing notion of queer identity in the digital age. The title itself refers to the ancient goddess Bridgit whose own name has altered as her story has been told and retold over time.

The idea of queerness as a lived experience rather than a ‘category’ is something Prodger feels is under threat. With the rise of social media, queerness is “in danger of being colonized, of being sanitized, made digestible, hip, hilarious”, but Bridgit subverts this. In a shortlist of artists who are all making big political statements through “tackling the most pressing political and humanitarian issues of today”, Prodger’s work stood out as most effective at conveying its message. It was sensitive and unfussy in its exploration into the mutability of identity without coming of as self-righteousness (something I felt some of the other works were at guilty of).

Bridgit takes on a film-collage format that brings together excerpts of clips and narratives from Prodger’s life, forming what critic Adriene Searle described as an “interior landscape of thoughts, ideas and erotics.” The age-old artistic practice of observation is what seems to be at the heart of Prodger’s work. The voice-over in Bridgit, for me, was one of the highlights of the piece. A script consisting of diary-like excerpts of her personal thoughts, quotes from various authors, and notes of things people have said to her. Prodger forms a landscape of associations through the weaving of words and images. She reflects our sense of self today that is defined in almost equal parts by body, technology, and language making it hard to navigate and easy to misidentify. Without bitterness and almost a sense of triviality Prodger recounts some of her experiences as a lesbian woman, such as being mistaken as a man. The lack of affront in her relating of these encounters reveals a sense of tiredness of how normal these incidents have become. She is talking about uncomfortable experiences, but she is not shouting and consequently we are more likely to hear what is being said.

What I most enjoyed was the visual aspect of Bridgit and its respect for the simple powers of looking. The film is shot entirely on her mobile phone and the casualness of her shots is clear – her feet at the end of a sofa or (what I presume is) her cat sniffing a lightbulb – is what makes it a success. These are all images we can relate to and ultimately, though her experiences as a queer woman are individual, she is person just like ourselves.

This mobile footage format also lends the film to a more intimate reading, as well as reviving the tradition of low-budget artists films. Recently artist’s films have become more and more cinematic, but this visual spectacle has led to a growth of more inaccessible and impersonal video art. It is Bridgit’s shaky, close-up quality that makes the work – it’s relatable and reachable. As this year’s prize contains four video artists I think Prodger’s work is the one that best explores the materiality of film and film-making. The use of Prodger’s iPhone footage has been slightly over-played in reviews of her work, but nonetheless it cannot be be ignored. Prodger investigates the idea of the mobile phone as becoming like prosthesis, an extension of the self and a natural part of our lives. Thus, Bridgit asks us: how do we define ourselves in age of permanent filming and self-editing? Frieze writer Erika Balsom articulated this perfectly: “Prodger articulates an approach to personal filmmaking that is as intelligent as it is moving, using an iPhone camera to tackle problems of autobiography and authenticity in ways that today’s legions of personal essayists and selfie obsessives would do well to learn from”.

An alternative to ‘Fast Film’

Laura McGriele
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An alternative to ‘Fast Film’

The monotonous drone of modern-day cinema truly is fantastic. Like ‘Fast Fashion’, ‘Fast Film’ is at its greatest peak of evolution. Directors such as Michael Bay are at the very forefront of this historic movement in cinema. He has contributed ten films in the past ten years, all with the same wonderfully pumped out, conglomerate, congealed and slapped together structure, complete with haphazard character development and a squeezed-out narrative to hone in on the tropes of lonely hero and misplaced man on earth. Honestly, it’s almost as bad as producing over twenty films in three different phases for a franchise built on the back of Robert Downey Jr. – we’re looking at you, Marvel. Why do it? To make a ‘quick buck’ (or over $6,869,545,308[1] for just five films)? Ask yourselves, are they even well-done? Can’t people realise that they are handing over at least £8 per film to just watch the same thing but with a different face?

To be fair to us consumers, we really are given little else to work with. The nearest repertory cinemas are in London, and to visit the British Film Institute every other weekend is a costly travel expense. Sure, we have our Curzon. But it does little more than put on one ‘classic’ every couple of months in an attempt to cling on to its dusty place under the Google search: Repertory Cinema, Oxford. To be fair, they did put on what was one of the greatest films shown last year. A 1976 film, The Other Side of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles. Modern cinema must be looking up if the greatest film of last year is an epic produced in 1976.

However, I do understand. I’m aware that I sound like I’m just moaning on about the severity of regurgitation in modern cinema whilst regurgitating about it myself. Of course, modern cinema is not too bad – it’s the mainstream stuff that is. We can’t exactly storm Hollywood (and I wouldn’t suggest that we do) or boycott all modern-day films. We just need to tweak what we watch and how. It is the ‘mainstream’ modern film that is sucking the true good films of our generation away. It is our lack of knowledge of these films, the lack of independent cinemas, and the sheer lack of trust and funding from production companies that is to blame for this regurgitation, not the likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Andrew Bujalski. Perhaps the best that we can do is try to go back to those old veins of ‘true’ cinema, rediscover each individual labour of love by any director we can, dust it off, and return to it. Then we can see how cinema used to be able to move us, indulge us, and teach us, moreso than the current drawl is able to do.

This is what I intend to do. ‘Fast Film’ can no longer be an option. And why should it be? Why, when we have hundreds of films behind us that were not made to reap vast amounts of money, and instead exhibit the pains of laborious effort needed to produce something crafted with love. These films were made with originality and come from the human spirit.  The directors created something that can never be replicated after it – that is one of a kind, rather than one of several other kinds.

This 1st week, I intend to introduce Nicholas Ray’s best work: In a Lonely Place, starring Humphry Bogart and Gloria Grahame. The title, I hope, is not akin to our 1st week back.

See you soon,

A diligent survivor of Michael Bay, Marvel, and the cheesy Rom-Coms that come with them.

Black Mirror: Art as Social Satire

Emily Wigoder
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Black Mirror: Art as Social Satire

Our desire to laugh at that which terrifies and worries us has never been clearer than while viewing the artwork on display in Black Mirror: Art as Social Satire exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. Here, 26 different artists give voice to our anxieties: over the attraction of technology, the selfishness of society, and the greed of capitalism. This social satire provides us with the ability to laugh at that which we fear, but it is a laugh filled with unease. As Pym states “satire is both reality and its escape’; in reflecting both, Black Mirror creates within the viewer both relief and an unsettling notion that that which they are laughing at is a little too close to the truth.

On entering the first room of the exhibition, the viewer is confronted by Jade Townsend’s ‘Cash Cow’, a pair of male legs holding a red painting with faded statements about sex and death written across it. The blunt title makes clear Townsend’s message on the value society places on sex. To balance out this more sinister piece, half of the room is dedicated to Bedwyr Williams’ ‘Walk a Mile in my Shoes’. Williams takes this common idiom literally by comically presenting pairs of his own (size 13) shoes with labels explaining their relevance to his life. In doing so, he reminds us of the individuality so often ignored in favour of sweeping generalisations.

Within Black Mirror, James Howard and Simon Bedwell present us with two completely different yet equally powerful uses of satirical posters. Howard’s posters seem to advertise surgeries and processes that have become normalised while subverting their normality to highlight the issues with our commercial, quick-fix society. Bedwell’s posters, on the other hand, publicise non-existent events (much like in the popular tv-series Black Mirror itself) creating fictions based off what our world might slip into being, thus underlining the problematic parts of our current society.

Whilst much of the artwork in this exhibition is thought-provoking and enlightening, the highlight of the exhibition is, without a doubt, Richard Billingham’s photographic series ‘Ray’s A Laugh’. An insight into his childhood, surrounded by alcoholism and poverty, it is easy to view the series as simply an indictment of his own life and the wealth gap that divides our society. However, the title itself combined with some of the gentler photographs of his parents remind us that there are still moments of light, even when times seem dark.

Wandering through Black Mirror, it is easy to feel a little lost. There are no explanatory cards by each piece of artwork, no singular thematic idea; in fact, there is little guidance given at all. However, this pushes the viewer to pause by each piece a little longer and delve in a little deeper for themselves. By inviting the viewer to question what they are seeing, the exhibition reflects the process of creating social satire itself.

Whales: cultural traditions vs conservative concerns

Georgia Watts
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Whales: cultural traditions vs conservative concerns

On 26 December 2018, Japan confirmed its decision to resume commercial whaling, limiting the ‘commercial’ process to Japan’s territorial waters. This comes after its withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission, an international body which aims to “provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry”.The result has been international condemnation.

Japan joined the Commission in 1951, but the possibility of its withdrawal has loomed on the horizon for a while. In 1982, they opposed an international moratorium to allow whale stocks to recover, and were subsequently exempted from a proposal for a moratorium on all commercial whaling. Their disregard of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary’s boundaries – which ban all types of commercial whaling in 50 million square kilometres of Ocean surrounding Antarctica – followed this, as they continued to hunt under the pretence of allegedly conducting ‘scientific’ research.

Unsurprisingly, the move has prompted extensive backlash; Michael Gove tweeted that he was ‘extremely disappointed’ with the Japanese government’s decision, and Sam Annesley, Executive Director at Greenpeace Japan, criticised the government’s decision to announce its withdrawal at the end of the year, ‘away from the spotlight of international media’, but that ‘the world sees this for what it is’.

Why, then, have Japan decided to go ahead with such an internationally unpopular decision? Culture, it would seem. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga has said that the decision would allow fishermen to ‘pass our country’s rich whaling culture onto the next generation’. Shinrato Sato, the owner of a Japanese izakaya restaurant, similarly mused on Japan’s cultural connection with whaling when speaking to CNN, claiming that eating whale meat is an important part of the country’s ‘precious culinary culture’, which goes back some 4,000 years.

This raises the question as to where the line between being sympathetic to certain cultural traditions and protecting our environment ought to be drawn. In this case, it seems pretty clear that conservation concerns should reign supreme: despite doubts that Japan’s decision will make a substantial difference to whale populations, that the cultural tradition seems to be on its way out anyway arguably makes the move, and any loss of life it will bring about, unnecessary. An opinion poll in the liberal Asahi Shimbunnewspaper found that 48% of respondents had not eaten whale meat ‘in a long time’, compared to 37% who said they didn’t eat it at all. Given that many whale species remain threatened, it is a risk that is, quite frankly, not worth taking.

This does not mean that conservationists should never make concessions to those communities that depend on certain animals, plants or landscapes to sustain a long-standing cultural tradition. But in the war between culture and conservation, the former should only win out when scientists can guarantee that the practise can take place sustainably.

It is the way in which we attempt to implement this concept that is of the greatest importance if we are to move towards better international co-operation. Supporters of whale meat consumption often accuse western critics of ‘cultural imperialism’. We are certainly right to condemn Japan’s decision to restart commercial whale hunting on environmental grounds – but we can only avoid such accusations if we reflect on our owncultural choices concerning food.

Whilst the animals we most commonly eat in the West are not endangered species, we must not pretend that our decision to farm them does not do a great deal of environmental damage that endangers other species as a side effect. Texas University’s Professor Raj Patel notes that industrial agriculture is ‘absolutely responsible for driving deforestation’, making it ‘responsible for species loss’. Likewise, a study conducted by WWF in 2017 found that the UK food supply alone is directly linked to the extinction of an estimated 33 species ‘at home and abroad’.

Japan does contribute to such damage, of course – but according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s research conducted in 2017, Japan eats 78.7 lbs of meat per capita, compared to America’s 198.51 lbs, and the European Union’s 142.90 lbs. Can we really admonish Japan’s decision without being hypocritical, then?

Ultimately, however, co-operation, not culpability-contests and finger-wagging, lies at the heart of successful conservation. Japan’s move should incite protests, but it should equally incite a moment of reflection for conservationists as well as everyday citizens in the West, who ought to utilise well-publicised decisions like this one to encourage wider discussions to take place about our own cultural traditions surrounding food and the environmental impacts these are having as well. Every nation must be proactive in finding a sustainable balance between culture and conservation if we expect other countries to truly, and enduringly, co-operate with one another. This will surely be the key to both cultural and ecological preservation in the long run.

Oxfess – the good, the bad and the ugly

Aditi Arora
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Oxfess – the good, the bad and the ugly

In the bewitching hours of the night, you feel a sudden rush of emotions: be it romantic attraction, academic stress, some witty inspiration, or overwhelming melancholia — you submit an Oxfess in the sanctuary of anonymity.

In the dreary hours of the day, you find the work at hand impossible to crack; you then start scrolling through Oxfess posts, perhaps finding a couple of jokes hilarious or relating to some heartfelt complaints. You feel human again, lament at the procrastination, and return to work.

In the lonely hours of dusk, you brood in boredom in front of your screen. Suddenly, a Facebook notification pops up — you’ve been tagged in an Oxfess. You are warmed, feeling somewhat significant in the world. In turn, you tag another friend, conveying at once humour, amity and attachment.

Oxfess is no trivial part of the Oxford experience. It is a dimension parallel to the courteous propriety, the quiet shyness, and the plastic smiles of ordinary exchanges. Perhaps the most vibrant Oxford platform on the internet, with its release of passions, challenge of boundaries and blend of creativity, Oxfess is an enchanting space where the real intertwines with the surreal.

I cannot help but wonder, what does it all mean? Why are we so hooked to Oxfess, what are the consequences, and what are the caveats? Here, I offer my speculations for these questions, with some laboriously mined semi-data and partially amateur psychology.

Although Oxfess posts are amazingly diverse, there are some common threads we can pull from the mix. To ground my informal investigation, let’s start with the semi-data: I flipped through
five days of Oxfess posts in mid-December and eyeballed them into loosely defined categories.

Whilst most posts simply could not be categorised, the runner-up category was ‘sex or love life related’ (with 62 posts in five days). Unsurprisingly, Oxfess is abundant with political opinions (60), and serious or not, political posts are the most likely to get an unusually high volume of reacts and comments. Political posts can be roughly split into three groups: private schools, Brexit and free speech (the popularity in descending order).

Real personal difficulties and mental health issues amounted to around 36 posts, most of which got few or no reacts at all. Then there were college-specific posts, which tend to provoke a lot of tagging, especially those in the format of ‘Oxford colleges as…’. Posts involving name initials pop up every once in a while (17), although they do not command much popularity. The enduring catch phrases include ’sex is good but’ (12) and ’not a substitution for personality’ (12), not so enduring catch phrases include ‘BTEC’, ‘yeet’, and the obviously seasonal ‘all I want for Christmas is’. Finally, only one post about rowing, since, it was vacation time after all.

So what does it all mean? Do Oxfess posts reveal something about Oxford culture?

The caveat first: Oxfess is not representative in any way of the entire student body, and there are many people who do not follow it. There is no guarantee that everyone who writes to Oxfess is related to Oxford at all, and even more unlikely that every post is a true story.

Yet still, even if there is no such thing as ‘the Oxford culture’ in the strict sense, we know vaguely what we are talking about when we talk about ‘an Oxford culture’. It is intimately linked to the traditions of the institution and the broader history of British society, and remains clearly distinct from other university cultures.

Clearly, the bulk of Oxfess is just for fun – more like procrastination popcorn than food for thought. Sex seems to be constantly at the forefront of the collective consciousness of Oxford students, whether they claim to like or dislike it. When the Oxfess admin was asked last year what the page can tell us about the University’s student culture, the reply was, “What it says about Oxford culture as a whole is that everyone is really fucked up and everyone really
wants to f*** everything that moves”.

On the other hand, the revelation of psychological problems (especially pertaining to loneliness) on Oxfess ironically confirms how hidden such difficulties remain to be: people don’t tend to respond to such posts because, if they don’t relate to the post, they don’t know how to comfort the anon; if they do relate, they tend to only relate in secrecy in fear that a react or comment may expose their own inner turbulence to their Facebook friends.

Oxfess appears to be quite different from other university confession pages. Political opinions in Oxford are diverse and plenty, but the ‘private schools’ and ‘London’ fixation arguably reflects a class divide in Oxford and Britain which is hardly ever as pronounced or explicit elsewhere in the world. For example, the political posts on US universities UC Berkeley’s and UBC’s confession pages, whether jocular or serious, tend to be much more race-based than class-based; hardly any posts relate to discrimination based on one’s high school or place of origin within the country.

Why do we like, need or want Oxfess so much? High schools and universities are the main breeding ground of confession pages – but why? Does it have something to do with the operations of the young-adult mind?

In the New Yorker article ‘The Psychology of Online Comments’, the author cites a Pew poll in saying, “As the age of a user decreases, his reluctance to link a real name with an online remark increases; forty per cent of people in the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old demographic have posted anonymously”. In addition, psychological studies have found that “conformity increased to adolescence and decreased after adolescence”. It appears that both anonymity and popularity have more appeal to and influence upon adolescents and young adults; and perhaps, we are attracted to anonymity precisely because we are scared of losing popularity.

The tender darkness of anonymity bestows a strange, illusory power upon people. Life is boring; anonymity allows adventure. It frees us from the cell of socially expedient and socially acceptable remarks; it permits the congestion of inner feelings to be safely and conveniently discharged.

Exposure is vulnerability; power is knowing without being known. For readers, it is a great relief to know that someone else shares the same troubles as themselves, without having to first reveal their own troubles to the world. For authors, who quietly await to track the ripples of a post in the lake of users, they may observe the audience as they themselves retreat behind the curtain.

Even better, one hides only as much as one would like to hide. It is entirely up to the confessant how invisible they want to be, and the delicate discretion is a thrilling art in its own right. This is likely why we don’t have college confession pages — at the college level, everything becomes too identifiable. By contrast, the uni-wide nature of Oxfess means that a ‘crush’ post hinting at ‘xy@z’ is directed at an audience of thousands rather than just a few hundred.

A further element of Oxfess’s attraction is that tagging and being tagged under posts are signals of friendship. For fostering new friendships and maintaining old ones, in such a hectic environment where it can be hard to catch up with a friend in person, tagging on Facebook is a quick and easy way to show someone that we are thinking of them.

Oxfess is an opportunity for, rather curiously, anonymous popularity. For the confessant, an Oxfess generally has two motivations: one is to vent, the other is to elicit some reaction from others. The platform fulfils the first need by virtue of its anonymity, and the second need by virtue of its popularity. For the audience, the platform’s anonymity and popularity provides consolation and thrill. That’s why both writing and reading ‘relatable’ posts are so satisfying: it reassures us that we are not alone, that whatever we feel, there are people out there who feel the same way. Relatable and witty posts create win-win solutions, benefitting both the authors and the readers by giving them exactly what they seek.

When anonymity and popularity combine, Oxfess is the best intermediary. It is the artificial distance that excuses people from confronting one another fact to face. In a sense, it is a laboratory for social skills, a space for trial and error in our attempts to be likeable and interesting, where we test for reactions without the risk of leaving enduring impressions.

Yet, in the end, how much of all this — react baiting, tagging, relating — is what we truly want to do as opposed to what we feel like we ought to do? Perhaps, both in form (the huge audience, the
recurrent catch phrases) and content (the debate between going out and not going out, the jokes about sex and so on), Oxfess represents the tension between rejecting and succumbing to social pressure that is particular volatile, even torturous, at this time of our lives.

Finally, it’s time to explore the ugly side of Oxfess. Firstly, Oxfess feeds into procrastination. The eclectic nature of Oxfess posts certainly functions in a slot-machine like way, making us addicted whilst earning Facebook tons of money through traffic and advertisements.

Secondly, popular anonymity has its problems. We meet John Suler’s ‘online disinhibition effect’: “the moment you shed your identity the usual constraints on your behaviour go”. As Common Ground put in the description of its event ‘Oxfess: tracking colonial attitudes’ last term, “Anonymity is a well-known breeding ground for bigotry: it should be no surprise then to hear such voices coming through the Facebook page Oxfess”.

The event was prompted by the concern that Oxfess reveals “a lot of ignorant views on race and class” and “a basic lack of understanding” regarding colonialism and class structures. It was later aborted because the organisers believed it would be more fruitful to talk about de-platforming in general, especially in the wake of the Bannon’s talk at the Union.

The Oxfess admins certainly prioritise protecting their readers through their strict policy that “if someone wants a post deleted, and they have any interest in the matter of the post, we will delete it” – thanks to which, cyberbullying does not seem to be a problem with Oxfess. Yet Oxfess does indeed still contain traces of “ignorant views” and malicious content. However, perhaps exposing such views so that we have a realistic perception of how and what Oxford students think is not such a bad thing, so that comments from the community can potentially give the anonymous author more information and facilitate constructive discussion.

Thirdly, are we playing hide-and-seek with confessions because we are a lonelier generation, as so many researchers have claimed? The act of confession was at its roots religious, but modernity has seen religion wane. When the religious confessional has ever less authority, when confessional letters to trusted friends are out of fashion, and when hiding behind the blue shimmer of Facebook is often the easiest way out, does Oxfess take its place?

On the bright side, Oxfess certainly brings benefits. Aside from the aforementioned inevitable appeal of anonymous popularity, Oxfess provides stress release, more freedom and revelation via anonymity, and simply fun and creativity. The marvellous vitality with which Oxfess evolves with the tidings of student life and the world at large reflects its relevance amongst the Oxford student community.

In the end, it is certainly harmless to read a couple of Oxfesses to relax, enjoyable to interact with friends on the platform, and beneficial to engage in (occasional, perhaps) streaks of serious debate if one would like to. Yet that’s not to deny that Oxfess has a dark side too.

In good spirits, I will end with: sex is good but, Oxfess is not a substitute for personality.

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