Saturday 2nd May 2026
Blog Page 743

Wang Dan – “There are a lot of lies about true democracy”

Libby Cherry
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Wang Dan – “There are a lot of lies about true democracy”

It is immediately clear that Wang Dan would prefer not to focus on his own past, but in-
stead on China’s future. An outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang has spent almost half of the last 30 years in prison and is still banned from the country
to this day. His campaign for democracy in China has defined his life since his days as a student leader during the Tiananmen protests in 1989, but
he refuses to think of himself as a martyr. Today’s China couldn’t be more different from the government he challenged decades ago, but until his dreams of a democratic China are realised, he isn’t prepared to stop.

Rather than becoming disillusioned, or worse, during the eleven years he spent in a single cell, he describes the experience less in terms of its horrors than its formative influence on his thinking. “Reading was the only thing I could do,” he explains, “I still think it is beneficial for me to have read so many books.”

Yet contemplative solitude is evidently not Wang’s preferred course of action. While undoubtedly an intellectual appreciation for democracy provided the incentive for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, it was a movement that was as firmly grounded in the experiences and thoughts of individual students as in abstract philosophies. In 1988, Wang set up the first “campus salons” at his university, engaging his fellow students and teachers on the issue of China’s democratic development.

“We tried to form an atmosphere in the campus,” he says. “To do this we tried to encourage our students to participate – I mean, if you want something to happen you have to do something.”

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that when I ask Wang about his influences, he answers not with a political theoretician – although he admits he got the initial “idea of democracy” from high school classes – but with his teachers.

“I’m not just referring to those supervisors,” he clarifies, “but I mean young teachers – when I was a student, I had very close relationships with young teachers. They were like family, they had a lot of influence on me.”

Even today, Wang is still trying to foster these kinds of constructive conversations, melding academic principles of democracy with individual and contemporary circumstances. He has set up the think-tank Dialogue, a group of mostly Chinese overseas academics, who hope to bring public attention to the issues surrounding China’s current constitution.

Part of the group’s project is to create a series of video clips, each describing a different benefit of democracy which they intend to disseminate to the public over social media. He proudly tells me that his current YouTube channel has 4,000 followers, with “some of them from mainland China.” His optimism, however, is noticeably forced. Although he claims that the mainland population often circumvent the government’s online firewall, there seems little hope that his attempts at social “enlightenment” will reach anywhere near the levels required to establish a native movement.

“My opinion is pretty negative because – the Chinese government did a lot of things so that there are a lot of lies about what is true democracy.

“I mean, they pick up a lot of the shortcomings of democracy, they pick up the problems of the UK and the US and they try to say that democracy does nothing helpful and that the Communist Party is better than them.

“The Chinese government has done a lot of this kind of propaganda and it has worked. A lot of the younger generation, that are not going abroad, they really have no idea, no channel, they just listen to the government’s propaganda, so maybe younger generations, they don’t have a good impression about democracy.”

While there are recognised democratic parties in China, they are compliant with the current Communist system, mostly acting as groups of academics and professionals who advise the main party, the CCP, on scientific aspects of policy, rather than championing any abstract democratic ideals. However, even if Wang did hear of any activist groups in China, he would be nervous about contacting them.

“I think it is too dangerous for them. If I tried to give them some money or offer some instruction, it would be giving the government an opportunity to crack down on them.” The Chinese government’s chokehold on discourse has led to what Wang calls a lack of “common sense” among the Chinese population.

“There is a lot of common sense in the US and the UK, but we don’t have it.

“For example, like people cannot easily just shoot other people – gunmen can shoot other people – but in the case of June 4th [The Tiananmen protests], a lot of Chinese people think if government do this its OK.”

However, although Wang seems to frame the debate about democracy around highly Westernised terms – alongside “common sense”, he suggests that China should accept democracy to gain the “respect” of Western countries. As the interview continues, it transpires that he is far from satisfied with the UK and the US’s attitude towards an increasingly totalitarian China.

“Western countries can do a lot, for example like use their personal relationship with Xi Jinping or other high-level officials to persuade them to start doing something – say “This is something you can do,” or something like that.”

One of the most problematic facets of Xi Jinping’s current policy, in Wang’s opinion, is the national attitude to Taiwan. A democratic state with its own distinctive entrepreneurial spirit, yet still unrecognized as a country by many, including the UK, and increasingly reliant on China economically, Wang tells me the re-capture of the island state has become one of Xi’s most important ideological principles. To reunite Taiwan and China would satisfy a Communist obsession that has plagued CCP leaders, and most significantly Mao himself, since the Kuomintang retreat to the island in 1949 following the Civil War.

“Taking back Taiwan [is] more important than any other thing for him, and maybe the most important thing [for Xi],” Wang says, “He won’t be the hero in the party’s history [if he doesn’t do it].”

Nor is Taiwan the only symptom of Xi’s aim to take up Mao’s legacy. In February of this year, China’s President Xi Jinping eliminated the two-term rule for China’s premiership, which would allow him to remain the nominal head of state for the country indefinitely. Imperial ambition, Wang believes, is manifest.

“Xi may not be called an emperor, he may be called a President but he wants to be that kind of person that can do anything.”

Although obviously an ambivalent figure, Wang describes a country that still hasn’t shaken off the aspects of Mao’s original cult of personality. Government officials still harbour effigies of Mao in their homes and village squares are often graced with his stony presence.

The longing for security in a world increasingly characterised by economic and political turbulence means that strongman rulership – and not just in China, but indeed worldwide – couldn’t be more in vogue.

“Xi grew up in Mao’s area,” Wang tells me. “That is very important for him and he’s not a person with a background in high level education. So all his education comes from Mao’s era – his ideas about the war, about how to be a person, has all come from the cultural revolution. [Mao is] still really a hero for younger generation, including him. This kind of shadow or influence still keeping in his mind I think.”

While ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’ may have been a stock phrase in recent decades, Wang rejects the idea that there is “just some Western democracy”, which can be superficially altered to fit China. He believes in democracy (rather than a “vague definition”) as a series of “concrete policies” that have been borne out of the specific concerns and material problems for China’s population.

Privatisation is his key policy: freedom, he believes, can only be achieved with the disassembly of state monopolies over industry, and by returning the land to the “peasant” class in China’s still highly rural economy.

Wang’s principal model for this economic change comes immediately – China in the 1980s.“I think the 1980s is the golden time, because at that time there is cooperation between society and the State and I think that now you can see that there is no cooperation between society and state. This cooperation is very important for our country if you want developments , mostly – so in 1980 we have links – in 1980s we have a democracy idea, what people want to do something not only for themselves but for their country.”

Paradoxically perhaps, Wang condemns the current system of unified state control as killing patriotic fervor in the young.

“Today we cannot see this kind of -ism, this kind of ideology, to persuade young generations to work for their country, for the country benefit, they just want to make money for themselves.”

Wang views economic freedom and political freedom as a kind of symbiosis, claiming that the democratic outcry in 1989 in Tiananmen Square itself was a natural product of the entrepreneurial, independent-minded spirit that was cultivated in the preceding decade, as China began to open up their cities to Western trade.

So which will begin first? As I pose the question, the interview is brought to a hasty close. Wang earlier pinpointed the urban middle classes and the younger generation as the “driving force” for democratic revolution. But will he ever gain revolutionary commitment from the group that has, benefited the most from Xi? Without real pressure from the West, itself mired in the democratic question, Wang’s vision of a democratic China perhaps does not look rosy.

 

Students protest colleges’ ‘unethical’ investments

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Students protest colleges’ ‘unethical’ investments

Oxford students, staff, and residents marched through the city on Wednesday calling for specific colleges to divest millions of pounds from fossil fuels, arms and tobacco companies.

Protesters marched past colleges deemed to have the worst-offending investment portfolios, after a Cherwell investigation last week revealed over £150 million invested by Oxford colleges in offshore tax havens, as well as direct investments by New and Hertford in fossil fuels and arms corporations.

At Pembroke, Exeter and New colleges, protesters put up notices bearing the slogan, “Time is Up.”

The protest demanded full divestment, over a period of two years, from direct and indirect holdings in the top 200 fossil fuel companies as listed on Carbon Underground in the University’s endowment fund and in the funds of its colleges.

The protesters further demanded “an end to research partnerships with fossil fuel companies that have no plan to comply with the Paris Agreement”, and that the University “honour its ethical responsibilities by immediately terminating its investments in, and all institutional links with, companies and institutions – including Mitsubishi Electric and Rolls Royce – which produce arms and thus profit from exploitation, illegal wars and ongoing settler-colonisation abroad.”

Lastly, they demanded “an end to arms companies recruitment drives at Oxford”and “transparency” about relationships with arms companies.”

The march was organised by a coalition of student groups including the Oxford Climate Justice Campaign (OCJC), Free Education Oxford, and Demilitarise Oxford, and coincided with the student network People & Planet’s National Day of Action for Divestment.

Oxford Climate Justice Campaign spokesperson Rachel Qiu said: “Climate change – and the natural disasters and critical impoverishment it causes – has created business opportunities for many unethical industries.

“These industries’ activities disproportionately impact the formerly colonised, the global working class, and communities of colour who are considered sacrificeable for profit.”

Chair of OCJC, Julia Peck, told Cherwell: “The fact of the matter is that about 60 universities in the UK have already divested from fossil fuels, and Oxford is lagging behind. So we are part of that National Day of Action; but, also, ours is a quite urgent situation, because Oxford has rejected calls for divestment whereas other universities have actually heeded those calls.”

Approximately 100 people took part in the march, which culminated at the Clarendon Building with rallies and speeches.

Demilitarise Oxford founder, Naomi Miall, told Cherwell: “For too long Oxford University has gone unchallenged on its role in the international arms trade.

“Today, students marched through the city to show that it is time for Oxford to end its contribution to oppression and violence – towards humans and towards the world we live in. The arms industry has a tight wrap on our University – shaping research directions, benefiting from investments and recruiting Oxford students.”

A New College spokesperson told Cherwell: “A discussion with the JCR over its concerns in relation to Cherwell’s recent reporting on colleges’ investments has commenced, with a view to any JCR proposals for updating the New College ethical investment policy and socially responsible investing policy being considered by the Endowment Committee and then by Governing Body in February.”

Associate Professor in Human Geography Dr Amber Murrey told Cherwell: “From an environmental justice perspective, we know that the risks and the benefits of extraction are highly uneven.

“Fossil fuel extraction, refinement, consumption and resulting climate changes affect communities and regions unequally. My research is with communities along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline, an area where we have seen the social fracturing and ecological degradations of crude oil extraction play out for over a decade in ways that harken back to colonial-era extraction.

“Student-led movements for divestment are important spaces for the critique of the uneven politics, economics and ecologies of profit and risk within the extractive industries. An important part of the movement at Oxford must also be creating a vision for an alternative – so that we’re not just critiquing environmental and racial injustices but also pushing for alternative energy sources, alternative economic arrangements, alternative employments and so forth.”

A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “In May 2015, responding to a Student Union request and following a wide-ranging consultation, Oxford University’s Council made a statement on fossil fuel investment which restricted investment in coal and tar sands.

“This statement remains the University’s position and all investment decisions are made in accordance with it. The Oxford Endowment Fund has low exposure to the energy sector and has actively sought to invest in groups targeting resource efficient companies.”

‘Brink’ Preview – ‘an exploration into public vs. private spaces’

Cesca Echlin
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‘Brink’ Preview – ‘an exploration into public vs. private spaces’

In the modern world we inhabit, we are forced navigate multiple spaces at once – from your living room, to the urban landscape of London, and even your Tinder profile. Each one comes with its unique demands. But, so often when we navigate these spaces, we are expected to be totally present and attentive. We are expected to perform the best version of ourselves at all times. Such a feat is exhausting.

Nitrous Cow Productions’ new play, Brink, explores how six characters function in the modern city. Crucially, it is concerned with the stories of the many types of individuals that make up wider society. Almost paradoxically, the revealing of character nuances and eccentricities allow audience members to feel a greater assimilation and sense of unity with individual characters.

The play’s writer, Alastair Curtis, is an ex-Oxford student, and was the writing mind behind successful recent productions such as Dining Al Desko and Eat Your Heart Out. As such, I looked forward to seeing what he had produced. In Brink, Curtis has constructed a series of six monologues for six actors, which are interwoven with elements of ensemble work.

When I preview Brink in the weekend before show week, I am most struck by the dichotomy of individual vs. society that this play explores. One character, Stephanie (Emma Howlett), begins her monologue in an imagined airplane cabin, describing the various characters around her. She eventually reveals to the audience her anxieties about this imagined plane crashing, and her obsession with the constructed images in which she descending thousands of feet through the sky. In such moments the audience are absorbed by, and in the hands of, the character’s innermost voice. Stephanie is isolated by this internal world she creates, but is simultaneously surrounded by the ensemble on stage, embodying her fellow plane passengers. Particularly eye-catching in this scene was Julia Pilkington’s depiction of a little girl on board. This merging of the internal, imagined landscape with the external world and its array of gormless passing faces forces you to consider how we all fit in.

Ensemble work occurred intermittently between, and sometimes during, monologues. It ranged from lifts to canonized movement, and provided enjoyable visuals onstage. The ensemble worked especially well together in a scene which enacted a party. Actors laughed, or more fittingly they roared, in unison, providing a hilariously heightened depiction of how overwhelming social encounters can be. What I would say about this ensemble work is that some actors demanded more attention or proved more enticing to watch than others. I think attaining a sense of balance is inherently difficult in such scenes.

Director Luke Wintour tells me afterward that initial discussions for this production were focussed on depicting the modern experience, specifically on how individuals interact with the digital world. Quickly Wintour and Curtis became interested in the concept of “urban solitude” and how individuals experience “disconnection in a world of possible connections.” Wintour mentions the results of the BBC’s recent Loneliness Survey, which revealed tremendous levels of loneliness in the UK. Particularly interesting, he emphasizes, was the fact that young people were the most affected group where loneliness was concerned – 40% of 16-24 year olds reported feeling lonely often or very often.

I ask more about the processes of casting and rehearsing, and Wintour explains that the script “emerged through the rehearsal process,” after casting. This meant that the company were able to “develop characters for the individuals” and could “play to their strengths.” This is apparent when watching the monologues – Lee Simonds is responsible for providing a lot of the laughs as Damian, an awkward and overtly self-conscious young man in his thirties. Simonds’ stage presence, with his detailed facial expressions, consistent tics, and hilariously executed northern accent, is a real treat. Julia Pilkington’s monologue as Debs similarly plays to her strengths.

Debs describes to the audience one of her dreams in which the “councilman” continuously knocks at her flat door, her panic spiralling as the landscape of her environment starts to shift – her wardrobe spits out clothes and ceramic ornaments take flight. Pilkington brings to the character a kookiness which works to colour the surreal nature of her words. Hannah Taylor also proved particularly eye-catching as Kelly-Anne, a young woman who develops an infatuation with a girl she meets in a nightclub.

I suggest to Wintour that Brink also could be seen as a kind of love letter to the city, and he agrees that the script enables a “romanticism” for the urban landscape. But, he says, ultimately this romanticism is “torn apart and tugged at,” and the city proves “a very harsh place” with the characters developing “quite an antagonistic relationship with it.”

To present to the audience a chain of varying characters with individual monologues works to explore how we each make up a greater whole. But what else does Wintour want the audience to come away with? He views the play as a kind of “barrage of narrative” which people won’t necessarily be able to “keep up with.”

I suggest that this feels indicative of how we experience and process content in our modern, digital world. He agrees, and says that “each time you watch it you have a different take on it, a different understanding – partly on character.” Through the combination of ensemble work and the development of individual characters, along with their manifold eccentricities, Nitrous Cow Productions are offering a variety of elements for an audience to pick up on and, thereafter, mull over.

Brink is showing at the Michael Pilch Studio from 21st-24th Nov.

‘Riverdale’, get off your hype horse

Jennifer Donnellan
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‘Riverdale’, get off your hype horse

The CW’s Riverdale exploded onto our screens in January 2017. Marketed as a reboot of the Archie Comics for the digital generation, the series takes familiar characters to new places, the first series revolving around the suspicious death of Jason Blossom, the schoolmate of iconic original characters.

The series received generally positive reviews and has since been renewed for two further seasons. Stars of the show – with the exception of Disney Channel child star Cole Sprouse – were relatively unknown prior to the show’s debut, and have since been launched into fame by its adoring teenage fans (helped by the disproportionately attractive cast). But when actually watching Riverdale, paying attention to the writing, the acting, and even the cinematography, it should become immediately obvious that this is one of the worst shows currently on mainstream network television.

Riverdale belongs to a particular category of teen dramas with fast paced, relentlessly changing plots and subplots – think Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries. The strength of the first season lay in the intrigue provided by the death of Jason Blossom – there was a revelation for the show to work towards, a promise of something that would be revealed in the season finale. But when this mystery had been solved, Riverdale was forced to invent increasingly ridiculous and convoluted plot arcs that left it floundering amongst an unwieldy pile of mysteries, obstacles, and traumas.

The second series purportedly revolved around a masked killer stalking the town of Riverdale, but was complicated by the arrival of Betty’s long-lost brother, Jughead’s initiation into the town gang, a mayoral race, and a confusing sideplot involving Jason’s twin sister Cheryl.

The third series, meanwhile, has completely changed the direction of the show by introducing a new supernatural twist, with a Dungeons and Dragons style role-play game leading to deaths among the student population.

All this would be well and good if the show’s writing was able to carry these plot twists. However, it is here most of all that the show really pushes the viewer’s suspension of disbelief – not in introducing a supernatural demon that gains power when teenagers play a board game, but simply in the fact that it tries to pass off dialogue that no real human being would ever say.

In part this is down to some poor acting, but it is also indicative of the fact that the show’s priority is attempting to create dramatic and wow-worthy moments rather than actually letting the dialogue be cliché and cringe free. Take the most recent episode: on being interrupted taking a pregnancy test, rebel-girl Alice Smith tells Catholic-girl Hermione Gomez: “Shouldn’t you be in a church or something?”

Back in season one, when the gang find a memory stick hidden in the lining of a jacket, the writers just can’t resist having Veronica remind us of her privilege through having her blithely add that she “always loses her Mont Blanc pens this way.”

Often, it’s genuinely difficult to gauge the writers’ intentions with lines like this. Do they genuinely believe this is how teens talk? Or are they aware of the fact that they are essentially filling their show with a string of badly-delivered, buzzword-filled, cringe compilations?

Less easy to forgive is the show’s treatment of social issues. From season one onwards, the show has chosen to tackle political topics by having them feature as plot points. This is itself is not necessarily a problem and could be effective if handled tastefully. But the problem is that in the context of the fast-moving pace and punchline-centred tone of Riverdale, it seems like issues like toxic masculinity, racial politics, and the colonialist origins of local festivities are only being discussed for social kudos, and to get the show in the news. They are being co-opted rather than addressed.

A case in point here is the treatment of the show’s solitary gay character, Kevin Keller, and it’s only two black characters. Kevin gets few lines that do not revolve around his sexuality. Yet there is the sense that the writers see this as cuttingedge social commentary. In Chapter 18, when asked for a password to an invite-only speakeasy, Kevin responds with “Um…Stonewall?” It is difficult to imagine something so superficial and so dismissive of the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community.

In the name of being representative, Riverdale does little more than tick the box of having a gay character. Likewise, Josie’s mother is shown in a flashback episode as having little to no personality beyond her ethnicity – we open with her writing ‘end apartheid’ on the mirror, but learn nothing about her motivations or what it means to her to be a person of colour in a small American town.

None of these issues will stop me from watching Riverdale. For all its flaws, it makes for easy Thursday morning viewing. But we should not forget that the show is based on a patronising, condescending, and downright ignorant view of the intelligence of teenagers as an audience.

It is not overdramatic to say that it is one of the worst shows on television.

Christ Church dean suspended over salary row

Verity Crane
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Christ Church dean suspended over salary row

Members of Christ Church College’s JCR and GCR were informed yesterday that the college Dean, Martyn Percy, has been suspended from his duties pending the outcome of a tribunal which could see him permanently removed from office.

In an email sent to the college’s JCR and GCR, the Censor revealed that a tribunal will review a formal complaint filed by several members of Christ Church Governing Body concerning the process by which the Dean’s salary is set.

The email read: “As you know, the College is currently engaged in a highly confidential matter.

“Unfortunately, there has been further press interest and, in light of this, we felt junior members should be sent a copy of the statement that has been issued: ‘Ahead of an internal tribunal, which will review a formal complaint, the Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy, has been suspended from his duties pending the tribunal’s outcome.

‘The tribunal will be held with an independent chair. As this is now a matter of legal process, it would be inappropriate to comment further until the tribunal has reached its conclusion.'”

The college added: “Fair and robust procedures are in place to resolve the matter and that in the meantime, the College’s teaching, research, welfare and other activities continue as normal.”

A separate email informed students that the college asked The Mail on Sunday to apologise for recently reporting that the complaint was related to Percy’s efforts to close the gender pay gap between his staff members and increase the college’s intake of state-school students.

The email read: “Christ Church’s lawyers advised us that it was appropriate to ask the Mail on Sunday to correct inaccuracies in the story that appeared on November 4.”

Following a request made by the college, The Mail on Sunday printed the following statement in yesterday’s paper: “An earlier version of this article said the complainants were trying to force out the Dean through a formal complaint about their pay which, we said, was set by the Dean.

“We have been asked to make clear that the complaint is not concerned with the complainants’ pay, which is not set by the Dean, but in fact arises from issues surrounding how the Dean’s own pay is set.”

Christ Church has also dismissed other “numerous, very serious inaccuracies” published by national media, including allegations of “bullying” in The Sunday Times.

In response to the allegations, Christ Church Treasurer James Lawrie told Cherwell: “Christ Church is extremely distressed about a claim of bullying as we have taken great care throughout to support the Dean’s well-being.”

One undergraduate student said that he was “disappointed” by Christ Church’s failure to communicate with its students, many of whom only found out about the issue from national headlines.

He told Cherwell: “It may be the case that the complaints against [the Dean] are completely legitimate, or perhaps he really is being bullied by a cabal of stuffy, aged academics.

“Points of procedure aside, this silence naturally implies that the reasons for the tribunal would, if publicised, be unpopular, while the condescending tone of the very limited statements which college has made to the junior members suggests that Christ Church would like its student body to be blithely unaware of the entire fiasco.”

Students and friends of Christ Church cathedral donated £40 towards a gift and good luck card for the Dean following the news of his suspension to show their support.

Over half of Oxford libraries lack full step-free access

Iggy Wood
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Over half of Oxford libraries lack full step-free access

Only 40.8% of Oxford’s libraries have full step-free access, according to an Oxford SU report released today.

The report, produced on behalf of Oxford SU’s official disability campaign – the Oxford Students Disability Community (OSDC) – also identifies a lack of accessible toilets, automatic doors, and visual aids in libraries.

Only 21% of college libraries have accessible toilets.

The number of fully step-free libraries drops to 9.2% for college libraries, a situation described by the SU as: “…detrimental not only to academic success but also to student welfare.”

Entitled the ‘Library Accessibility Project’ (LAP), the report recommends that libraries should have accessibility-specific budgets – a policy already implemented by Christ Church and Hertford college libraries. It also calls for accessibility to be “placed at the forefront” of library renovation plans.

Secretary of the OSDC committee and joint author of the report, Ebie Edwards-Cole, told Cherwell: “By arming Oxford University with this knowledge and these recommendations, we are hoping that our university, its departments, and its colleges, will work with us to improve the situation for disabled students, ensuring equal opportunities, and an environment that we can all thrive in.”

The report notes the varied levels of accessibility between libraries, with some libraries more accessible in certain areas. For example, both the Bodleian Law Library and Bodleian Old Library provide “…an impressive range of visual aids,” which can help students with dyslexia, dyspraxia and visual impairments.

As a group, the Bodleian Libraries perform better than college libraries in provision of hearing support, height-adjustable desks, accessible toilets, and step-free access.

However, the report notes that “college libraries are key study venues, which typically have longer opening hours than Bodleian or other libraries.”

Kathryn Reece, the report’s other co-author, told Cherwell: “It is important to note that although the two papers released today only deal with library accessibility, this is one part of a bigger picture. There are still many areas across the university that are less accessible to students with disabilities, and I hope that by opening up a dialogue about library accessibility, this sentiment for positive change will spread across the University.

“In the past, students with disabilities were often forgotten by many bodies across the University. However, in recent years disability has increasingly made it onto the agenda.

“OSDC believe the future is equal, inclusive and accessible, and I hope that by shining a light on library accessibility Oxford University will endeavour to work towards a more accessible future for all students.”

A special Cherwell investigation into disability at Oxford will be released on Friday.

David Cameron to visit Oxford

Greg Ritchie
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David Cameron to visit Oxford

Former Prime Minister David Cameron will visit Oxford this Friday to deliver a talk and question and answer session, Cherwell can reveal.

However, the talk’s attendance is strictly limited and will not be open to the public.

He will be hosted by Brasenose, where he spent his undergraduate degree. The talk will be open to current Brasenose PPEists and History and Politics students, as well as various academics and politics alumni.

Cameron will give a short speech which will be followed by a question and answer session. There will then be a short tea with the Prime Minister, open only to the alumni.

Earlier this month, it was reported widely that David Cameron was considering a return to frontline politics, with sources saying he was “bored shitless”. He resigned from the office of Prime Minster in 2016 after he failed to convince the British public to vote against Brexit.

 

Police looking into Nazi salutes at Bannon protests

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Police looking into Nazi salutes at Bannon protests

Thames Valley Police are investigating videos filmed by an Oxford student, which show men giving Nazi salutes during the protest last Friday against Steve Bannon’s Oxford Union event.

Oxford student Masha Alimandari, who filmed the salutes, believes that the men were part of a pro-Bannon group of protesters.  

In the video, the men are seen grinning, filming the anti-Bannon protesters, mock-shushing the crowd, and conferring with each other before one gave a salute. The same man also gesticulated towards his crotch.

The Oxford Mail reported that at least two men shouted in front of protesters, “Alerta, antifascista”.

A Thames Valley police spokeswoman told the Oxford Mail: “Officers will review the video to establish if any offences have occurred.”  

During a talk given by Bannon last week in Edinburgh, a man brandishing a “Nae Nazis” sign was arrested for “threatening and abusive behaviour.”

Autumn by Ali Smith: a seasonal portrait of post-Brexit Britain

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Autumn by Ali Smith: a seasonal portrait of post-Brexit Britain

Ali Smith’s 2016 Autumn is the first in a four-part series and despite being set in the disillusioned aftermath of Brexit, the novel is lyrical and dreamy – contemplating the haunting brevity of human life. The novel centres on the unconventional friendship between Elisabeth and Daniel Gluck who meet in 1993. Before long, the precocious eight-year-old Elisabeth is pulled into a world of storytelling and pop art by her whimsical, retiree neighbour.

In the present, the fragile Daniel Gluck is now over a hundred years old; confined to a bed in an assisted care facility, he spends his time in an “increased sleep period” that “happens when people are close to death”. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, Daniel’s ephemeral dreams bring to the surface his deepest desires, as he imagines his broken body becoming beautifully metamorphosed into a coat of green leaves.

After this surrealist blending of old and new, of the resplendent and fantastical promise of change, Smith drops us back into the dreary present which is meticulously ruled by linearity and fixed categories. We are now introduced to the grown up Elisabeth – a junior lecturer in the history of art – as she battles the bureaucratic forces at work in the Post Office, who reject her “Check and Send” application for a new passport based on the fact that her head is the wrong size.

Setting her novel just after Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Smith shows a dreary and split nation where “All across the country there was misery and rejoicing”. This surly atmosphere is exasperated by a house vandalised with “GO HOME” which Elisabeth sees in her mother’s village, and when the two go on a walk together they are confronted with a monstrous barbed wire fence, seemingly sprung out of nowhere to mark the land’s border.

However, Smith’s novel never lapses into hopelessness. Set against this uneasy backdrop, we also enter a world of animated and intelligent conversations between Elisabeth and Daniel as they discuss art, literature, and life. Another glimpse of hope in the novel is its focus on Pauline Boty: the subject of Elisabeth’s dissertation and a now largely forgotten female British Pop Artist. Her paintings burst forth with vibrant and unapologetic vitality, laughing in the face of the norm with splashes of colour and scenes of female pleasure.

Throughout Autumn we never cease to celebrate the characters’ small rebellions and victories against life. Whether this be Elisabeth’s mother’s lesbian awakening after years of loneliness, or the captivating moment when Daniel throws his watch into the river. Smith’s writing is defiantly non-linear and its flitting between past and present shows just how subjective the experience of time is. The novel continually takes solace in the power of words and storytelling to give delight and its imaginative retreats into dream-worlds provide us with fantastical images of regeneration.

Despite its brevity, Autumn can be a stubbornly difficult read. Smith’s abstract musings on the passing of time sometimes sink into a stream-of-consciousness obscurity. Moreover, her subtle interweaving of issues like art, feminism, ageing, and the perseverant struggle for intimacy in an age of numb modernity comes at the expense of plot progression.

Yet Smith always re-captivates us with her delicate and moving prose, which verges on poetry, such as when she describes a room of abandoned antiques as the “symphony of worth and worthlessness.” Just like these discarded remnants of lives past which have slipped into irrelevancy, the characters of the novel are in no way spectacular or singularly special. We have the art lecturer whose job security is in doubt due to government cuts; the old man unconscious in his bed whose biggest success was a one-hit wonder musical composition.

Nonetheless, through the improbable friendship between these two characters we are shown how fleeting human life is sacred in all its irrelevancy. Poignant, empathetic, and difficult – Ali Smith’s Autumn is a call to human connection, responding to the sullen post-Brexit despondency she sees all around her.

 

 

 

‘Widows’ is a celebration of female grit and resolve

Angelica De Vido
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‘Widows’ is a celebration of female grit and resolve

When the director of 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen) and the writer of Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn) team up to create a female-fronted thriller, it’s unsurprising that it combines all the explosive elements of the heist genre with a searing indictment of the systemic racism and inequality in contemporary American society.

The frenetic violence that pervades the film is immediately established in the opening montage, where a heist goes catastrophically wrong. The entire gang of men involved are killed, leaving their wives alone to fend for themselves.

However, the women have little time to grieve; Veronica (Viola Davis) soon discovers that her husband, the gang’s ringleader, stole $2 million from one of Chicago’s most notorious criminals, and she’s given only one month to return the money before facing violent retribution. The wives band together, forced to become criminals themselves to reclaim the money as they pull off a heist that their late husbands had planned.

These women are no secondary characters whose husbands take centre stage. Instead, while the women’s characters are established in relation to their husbands – from Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) who is struggling to raise her children after her business is repossessed because of her late husband’s debts, to Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) who is a victim of domestic violence and abuse – they are developed through their relationships with each other.

This narrative technique illuminates the diversity and nuanced characterisation of these women, offering an array of perspectives on contemporary American female experiences. It’s a marked rejection of the reductive female stereotypes that have dominated characterisations in American cinema.

Led by the tremendous force of Davis’ performance, McQueen repeatedly foregrounds the toughness of these women. In what could be seen as the film’s mantra, Veronica reminds the others that “we have a lot of work to do; crying isn’t on the list.”

Crucially, this ‘toughness’ is not antithetical to femininity in the film. Instead, Flynn writes characters who bring an array of attributes, skills, and insights to the table. In classic “heist preparation” montages, McQueen highlights the diversity of their skills and the different strengths and resiliences that each woman displays. There is not just one type of power that women in cinema can portray.

As opposed to the recent glitz of the all-female Ocean’s 8, Widows has grit running through its aesthetic and narrative preoccupations. The film offers a more overtly political message to its viewer. The film is inspired by a London-based ITV drama from 1983, but it transports this story to the suburbs of Chicago to offer a poignant indictment of the corruption, racism, deprivation, and brutality that continues to poison contemporary American life. Cutting between scenes of everyday domestic life and scenes of extreme violence at the hands of criminal gangs and the police, McQueen foregrounds the pervasion of this violence.

The exceptional cast portray the horrors and hardships that engulf people’s lives in this Chicago neighbourhood, and by intertwining multiple narrative threads the film offers a poignant, devastating portrait of the lasting effects of violence and corruption on the individual and the community.

Combining intimate, intricate character portraits of these individual women’s lives with spectacular action sequences, Widows is a fantastic thriller that offers an original take on the heist genre, and is most certainly a standout contender in the upcoming Oscar race.

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