Sunday, May 18, 2025
Blog Page 861

Warhol and the importance of social exchange

Mia Neafcy
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Warhol and the importance of social exchange

More than thirty years after his death, it is a testament to Warhol’s creative genius that he remains one of the most influential and exalted figures in contemporary art, a longevity of career almost ironic in its defiance of his self-imposed rule: “Everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes”.

Andy Warhol was at the inception of a brave new world of consumerism in the ‘60s. The artist redefined an era and his elevation to iconic status was the work of revisionist historians. His career presented us with possibly the largest exchange of societal values in 20th century artistic history. As an artist who rose to eminence at a point where the abstract expressionism of the ‘40s and ‘50s had almost reached its creative bankruptcy, it was a decidedly radical decision of his to use seemingly innocuous consumer products such as Coca-Cola, Brillo and Campbell’s Soup, to name but a few, as not merely the source but the very essence of his oeuvre. As one of the leading proponents of the new pop art movement, Warhol demarcated himself from his contemporaries, Lichtenstein and Rosenquist, by shifting the commercial light from fictitious depictions meant for comic entertainment, onto the stuff of everyday recognition and universal consumer use—an emphatic nod to the societal value imputed upon the post-war consumer culture. On the cusp of a decade synonymous with counterculture, consumerism, sexual liberation, and freedom, Warhol succeeded in capturing the zeitgeist of the time, injecting a realist perspective of what the American Dream entailed.

The idea that Warhol partook in an ‘exchange’ rather than a mere one-sided exhibition of societal values lies in the philosophy of anti-mimesis: a notion most succinctly described by Oscar Wilde in his 1889 essay ‘The Decay of Lying’: “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”. This symbiotic ‘imitation’ is evident in Warhol’s seminal work ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ (1962): a work consisting of 32 canvases, with each painting corresponding to a different flavour, imitating the real-life Campbell’s advertisement billboards through the grid-like, repetitive, methodical aesthetic he used. His mimicking of the archetypally capitalist techniques used for advertisement puts himself in the de facto position of society’s mass producer. His silk-screening process was increasingly relied upon in his work that followed, providing us with an even more striking parallel with mass production, with this process constituting the printing of facsimiles of each illustration, making the need to individually repaint each image a redundant process. The automatism of Warhol’s printing processes quite presciently coincided with the increase in the efficacy of mass production, displaying a real-life emulation of Warhol’s work.

In a similar fashion, Warhol’s vision of a society of mass consumption became a self-fulfilling prophecy in its own right. Not only did Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ transpose itself onto the world of fashion with the advent of the new ‘Souper dress’ donned primarily by affluent New York socialites, but in rather ominous fashion, Campbell’s Soup capitalised on his success by reducing this self-same design to a crude imitation of a dress, now made from paper, being sold as part of a special offer to anyone who sent one dollar and two Campbell’s soup can labels they accrued to the company. This aggressively capitalist exploitation of Warhol’s work depicted the commercial devaluation of art in exchange for a consumer society: Warhol had given his art to society and this is what society gave to him in return.

Interestingly, Warhol found a way of usurping the idea of a capitalist stronghold on a society of consumerism, by explaining thus: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest”, for “you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.” By introducing parity in the most curious set of circumstances, Warhol extolled the unexpected virtue of equality in mass production and the uniformity of consumer products.

Warhol’s foray into film also demonstrated the transient value that society placed on celebrities: the most notorious ‘superstar’ that emerged from his Factory was ‘it’ girl Edie Sedgwick, who epitomised the sad disposability and rapid diminution in value of society’s celebrities. As a socialite once bestowed with the title ‘Girl of the Year’ and believed to be for a certain time Warhol’s muse, her untimely death by drug overdose at 28 was met with Andy’s response: “Edie who?” His indifference towards his very own purpose-built superstar serves as an example of the impermanence of value that society places upon celebrities.

Warhol’s exchange of societal values, half a century hence, has shown no signs of stopping, even posthumously: Moschino’s Autumn 2014 fashion show inspired by fast food demonstrates that the existence of consumerism in art is alive as much now as it ever has been.

The humble notes that hold great meaning

Katherine Wood
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The humble notes that hold great meaning

This week marks the 93rd anniversary of the birth of Bulat Okudzhava, one of the first and greatest of the Soviet ‘bards’. The bard genre which arose in Russia in the 1950s, saw poets putting their words to simple music and performing them for the public. Though largely ignored on an official level, the voices of the bards, including Okudzhava, Vizbor, the Nikitins, and the iconic Vladimir Vysotsky, became some of the loudest in the Soviet Union up to and beyond perestroika.

For many Westerners, the idea of ‘Soviet art’ evokes images of propaganda controlled and disseminated by the State. However, following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Khrushchev ‘thaw’ brought with it an atmosphere of relative freedom in the cultural world. Many artists were able to navigate the boundaries of what was acceptable, and in turn their work thrived. The bards were a prime example of this, being neither explicit dissidents nor allies of the regime. Their songs managed to express the realities of Soviet life without being overtly political—they provided a form of escapism without spelling out what they were escaping from. Yuri Vizbor, for example, has become known as the bard who ‘took a whole generation up into the hills and saved them’ from the lunacy of the Stagnation era with his songs about alpinism and the mountains. In one of his seminal songs, another idol of the generation, Vladimir Vysotsky, encapsulated the contrast between these Romantic images and the reality of life:

 

“To the bustle of cities and flowing of cars

We return—there’s no way out!

And we start our descent from the conquered peaks,

Leaving our hearts, leaving our hearts in the mountains.”

 

As a result of their independent, but ultimately ambiguous positions, the bards were treated with ambivalence by the Soviet authorities. They gained a cult following, and the way in which they shared their poetry — through live performances, word-of-mouth and amateur recordings—meant their success didn’t rely on the approval of the state. Moreover, their lack of interest in commercial returns served to increase their popularity and recognition. It meant that the bards’ songs could be unofficially copied through magnitizdat (homemade re-recordings) and distributed throughout the USSR. They gave Russians the words they needed to process their existence without asking anything in return, and their reward was a population who still know their songs off by heart today.

Interestingly, although it was a form of popular music, the music of the Bards was predominantly enjoyed by the Soviet intelligentsia. Knowing the words of the bards’ songs became the equivalent of being well read, and everyday speech was littered with references and citations from them—a testament not only to their relevance, but also to the precision with which they expressed the feelings of a generation. Through these songs, people could fulfil their intellectual need to communicate with the like-minded, and the music created an unspoken bond between them. Young people also began to emulate the Bards. Every year, they looked forward to annual bard music festivals, and often took part.

Nowadays, it is difficult to find a middle aged person in Russia who doesn’t know the bards, and speaking to them about their songs provokes a wave of nostalgia. Tatiana, who was a teenager during the Stagnation era, reminisces: “On holidays and weekends, we’d go to the countryside and have barbecues. We’d build a campfire and everyone would drink and sing the bards’ songs for hours. The picnic scene in the famous Soviet film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears is taken straight out of Soviet reality: sitting around the fire, eating shashlik, playing the guitar, with the Nikitins’ and Okudzhava in the background. It was so fashionable for young people to play the guitar, and every friendship group would have a guitarist. We lived for those outings. There was really nothing else to live for—your dreams didn’t take you far. So you’d just enjoy nature, friendship and music. When people responded to music in the same way, it created unity, and those songs kept everyone going.”

However, bard music is not only a symbol of Russia’s Soviet past. It still has an active role in its musical world, with Bard music festivals taking place every year across the country. Eighties stars like Tatiana and Sergei Nikitin continue to perform new compositions and old favourites.

The following poem was written by Okudzhava in 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR. In it, the bard explains the importance of his art for the people of Russia:

 

“This century that has been so fruitless

Is the work of our bitter hands,

And only through reading music

Can this malady be cured.

 

“When the people are crying in grief

And staring with horror-filled eyes,

Those humble notes on the page

Aren’t many but hold great meaning.”

The comeback kids keep ‘lad rock’ alive

Matthew Roller
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The comeback kids keep ‘lad rock’ alive

It is easy to see why so many critics want to hate Kasabian. They are an uncomplicated, unapologetically ‘laddish’ rock band, with a pint-drinking, football shirt-clad, pill-taking fanbase.

Their five previous albums have all enjoyed immense chart success, despite their repetitive nature. Throw into the mix the fact that their occasionally nonsensical lyrics and references to themselves as “the saviours of rock ‘n’ roll”, and it is clear why the self-proclaimed musical intellectual would want to pick holes in the unashamedly working-class band and their newest release, For Crying Out Loud.

But if this agenda is cast aside, the brilliance of both the album and the band can be properly appreciated. Kasabian know what they are, and play up to it superbly.

Yes, they come across as arrogant and testosterone-fuelled, but they are remorseless about it: they know what they are good at, and have continued to do just that ever since ‘Club Foot’ became a student union anthem in 2004.

Thankfully, unlike so many 21st century rock bands, Pizzorno and co. are yet to release some kind of a ‘reinvention’ album. Their fans want simple choruses, big guitar riffs, and occasional eccentricity: the idea of watching a Kasabian set containing anything else is alien and unsettling.

And therein lies the beauty of For Crying Out Loud: without being exactly the same as any of their previous LPs, it provides fans with new material to lap up, and varies the setlist for their festival appearances this summer, which include headline slots at Benicassim, Sziget, and Reading & Leeds.

The band fell foul of the now commonplace phenomenon of releasing some of the main singles weeks before the album’s release date, but ‘You’re In Love With A Psycho’ and ‘Comeback Kid’ both whetted the appetite. The former, which brings to mind their 2009 track ‘Where Did All The Love Go?’, seems like a track you’ve been listening to for five years the first time you hear it and the latter’s headbanging chorus is accompanied by some appropriately bizarre lyrics (“Sasquatch in a binbag/It’s no surprise”).

And the opening track, ‘Ill Ray (The King)’ packs an almighty punch, providing reassurance that this will be the roaring LP that fans were after—you can almost hear the festival speakers suffer through the immense sound they create. ‘Wasted’ is described by NME as a “romantic banger”, and shows that despite their relentless machismo, Kasabian are more than capable of a softer emotional discourse in their lyrics, and ‘Put Your Life On It’ is a rare love song. There are some tracks that seem like filler—‘Twentyfourseven’ and ‘The Party Never Ends’ both pass by unnoticed—but the tracklist is so well ordered that it seems not to matter.

The three best songs—the two already released singles and ‘Bless This Acid House’, which is arguably the band’s best release yet—are tracks two, six, and eleven out of twelve, meaning that there is no respite, and there is scarcely time for the underwhelming album tracks to disappoint. The deluxe version of the album features a recording of their set at the King Power Stadium following their hometown club Leicester City’s Premier League success last May, as if to rub it into those who view them so snootily: the working-class heroes are back with an album as good as ever, and they couldn’t care less about what their doubters might think.

Culture is a prop used to please the privileged

Kir West-Hunter
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Culture is a prop used to please the privileged

When I was five-years-old, unsurprisingly, I got my first case of ‘the nits’. This isn’t a particularly dramatic or surprising childhood experience, but when it your mum already spends an average of 2 hours a day combing your hair with a ‘fat-tooth-comb’, nit combs were clearly going to be impossible. Cainrows were the solution my mother settled on: tight and thin plaits that went across my head, somewhat resembling rows of corn or cain (hence the name). They would expose my surprisingly white scalp, making hair searches particularly efficient for when my mum had received yet another letter about my school’s latest infestation.

This marks the beginning of my hair story, which has defined my relationship with fashion, race and my peers for most of my life thus far. From the age of five my hair was subject to the Sunday ritual: sitting in front of my mum, watching either Roots or the EastEnders omnibus, I tried not to flinch, but inevitably teared up as my mum intricately plaited my hair. If you’ve never had cainrows let me tell you this: it bloody hurts. But, at the time it was the most manageable way of dealing with my natural hair. I would go to school from Monday to Friday with my plaits greased and neat thanks to my nifty little doorag, then on Saturday it would be my special treat to let my hair out, wild, free and remarkably frizzy. Although practical, and very common within the black community, cainrows at this point had yet to attain their modern status as ‘urban’ and ‘cool’ through appropriation by the likes of Kylie Jenner.

They would be described as ‘greasy’, ‘worms’ and I felt like they made me look very alien-esque. In a sense they were ‘alien’—separate and distinct from the white beauty standards that dominate fashion and the media. At the time I didn’t really mind—nine-year-old me was fine being weird and ‘unattractive’—and it was only when my Caucasian friends went on holiday and came back with their tight ‘plaits’ from the beaches of Spain or the Caribbean, that I began to notice the double standard. Confused, I started to wonder why anyone would choose to have cainrows: clear evidence that even I was beginning to distinguish between acceptable white beauty ideals and my own hair. My friend’s plaits were complimented as ‘summery’ and ‘exotic’, whilst mine made me less attractive and less feminine.

Yet I didn’t object, it felt normal to conform. I stared at black celebrities like Beyoncé and dreamed of weaves and straight blonde locks—black activism had not yet become a capitalist tool. So when I moved to secondary school I made a stand by saying “Mum, I want to straighten my hair”. My dad was particularly upset, having loved my curls and not understanding the social pressure to conform to a predominantly white society, which he was still very much a part of. My mum had a confusing response, partly hurt by the rejection of my ‘blackness’, but also understanding, being herself a black woman who, in truth, had had it a lot worse than me in terms of racist experiences and social pressure. For my part, well I just wanted to be ‘pretty’.

My adolescence became characterised by the smell of burnt hair, relaxer and using plastic bags to shield my singed locks from the rain. From the ages of 11 to 16 I had my first kiss, my first boyfriend and even began to feel a little attractive. Yet, whilst I started conforming to the beauty ideals presented by the likes of Teen Vogue, Barbie and Tumblr, the rest of the world was becoming obsessed with black culture. Celebrities like Ke$ha, Cheryl Cole and Kim Kardashian all began to wear their hair in the same cainrow style that had caused me so much strife as a child. Yet people loved it—these celebrities weren’t ‘alien’ or ‘other’, but were rather simply making a fashion statement: a statement which ‘normalised’ and ‘celebrated’ this traditionally black hair style.

Forgive me for not being particularly grateful. White people making black culture palatable does nothing for people of colour; it does not stop black women being viewed as ‘undateable’ or ‘unattractive’ when exposing their natural hair. Appropriation simply uses our culture as a prop to be used when it pleases the privileged—whilst Kim can take out her cainrows after the summer, we cannot simply remove our blackness when the fad passes. Some, usually privileged and unaffected Caucasians, refer to those who protest against cultural appropriation in fashion as ‘lefty snowflakes’ who are overreacting.

Yet, what recent activities show is that the appropriation of culture as a fashion statement inevitably leads to the seizure of that culture’s political movements. I do not find it surprising that Kendall Jenner, the sister of well-known appropriator Kylie Jenner, was a part of the profoundly racist Pepsi advert, which was clearly based around the Black Lives Matter protests. When the privileged feel that they can use your culture as a tool for attaining the title of ‘Best Dressed at Coachella’, what is to stop corporations from stealing your cultural politics to earn more money whilst being praised as ‘liberal’?

Yet even I am privileged: my mixed-race skin tone has made me more acceptable to the white eye than my fellow black peers. My curls will never be judged as harshly as my mum’s coarser afro, and when men say they can’t see themselves dating a “black girl” I
am usually excluded from the category. Perhaps this is why throughout most of my teen years I didn’t mind conforming. At least I could conform. I have always wondered whether Beyoncé has felt similarly—growing up she was my beauty idol. Now, she is a reminder that I must always check my privilege. Many would crucify me for criticising Queen B, but she is a prime example of the capitalist appropriation of black activism. In ‘Formation’ she sings “I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros” yet her attempt to validate hair like mine comes a little too late after all those years in primary school when I literally thought she was blonde.

I cannot shake the feeling that Beyoncé herself has fallen into the ‘its-cool-to-be-ablack-activist-trope’. This particularly hit home when I realised that Beyoncé herself has been a perpetrator of black face in the French fashion magazine L’Officiel Paris; a reminder that black on black oppression is real. Yet, whilst I am critical of Beyoncé, ultimately I cannot blame her. I cannot blame any black, mixed or otherwise ethnic woman from falling victim to the white beauty standards that are so embedded in society.

I can only hope that collectively we begin to appreciate our beauty without feeling the need to conform. Fashion and music, like most other industries in the world, are not post-racial. Skin lightening creams continue to be sold and adored by many of Africa and Asia’s female population. Doorags continue to be associated with thugs and gangsters when worn by black men, but are fashionable when worn by Kylie Jenner. It is still seen as normal for white women to get hair extensions, but ‘ghetto’ when a black girl gets a weave.

Most industries continue to downplay the subtle but prevailing racism that can be seen in these forms of cultural appropriation. The concept that we live in a ‘world without race’ is continually pushed, but frankly far from true. We are all victims of beauty standards, but what is significantly different about cultural appropriation, is that our ethnicity and culture is not something we can change.

As for me, particularly in Oxford, I still fall victim to the pressure to conform. Despite continuing to wear my hair in its natural kinky glory, it is still rare that I will go to a ball or a formal interview without it being straightened. I have refused to wear my hair in cainrows since my childhood and I only ever wear my doorag to bed, despite having days where my hair could really use some protection from the elements.

Yet when I look in the mirror I no longer cringe at my curls and wish I had the hair of my white friends. I am sure that movements like #blackgirlmagic and the active effort of BME celebrities such as Zendaya, Zoe Kravitz and even Beyonce (despite her questionable motives) have definitely aided my own, and others, acceptance of their natural beauty.

However the fight is far from over: we must not allow our cultural image to become a trend of the past, whilst the struggles of ethnic minorities continue in silence.

C+: Who has been protested at the Oxford Union, and why?

Maxim Parr-Reid
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C+: Who has been protested at the Oxford Union, and why?

Many comments recieved as part of the online survey were of the view that protesting against Union speakers constituted an infringement of the freedom of speech of the speakers. One anonymous comment said that “protesting speakers at the Ox­ford Union just because they do not share your opinions is one step short of censorship”.

In November 2010, the news that Nick Clegg had to cancel his proposed visit to Oxford was met with strong reactions from many students. He had been scheduled to speak at the Oxford Union on Wednesday 17 November. The Liberal Democrat leader faced criticism for breaking his pre-election pledge to “vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament”. Clegg’s postponement was viewed by many students as a means to avoid the hostility he may have met in Oxford.

An Oxford Union talk by George Galloway, former MP, was protested in October 2012. The protesters disputed his comments on rape. Particular offence was caused by his comment that sex with a sleeping partner does not always constitute rape, but is simply “bad sexual etiquette”. The protesters, mainly members of the Oxford Feminist Network, protested the ar­rival of George Galloway, who was giving a talk entitled ‘A World At War’. They displayed ban­ners and posters with slogans including “My Assault is Not My Fault”, “Wake Up George” and “George, No Means No.”

Only three months later, in January 2013, an invite to Julian Assange to address the Union via web-link led to a protest that attracted over 100 attendees. Protesters included Tom Rut­land, the then President-Elect of OUSU, Joe Mor­ris, Treasurer of Oxford University Labour Club, and Sarah Pine, the former OUSU Women’s Officer. Pine told Cherwell that the Union had committed itself to “further treating the experiences of rape survivors with contempt”.

One of the most controversial figures to speak at the Union in recent years was Marine Le Pen, the then leader of France’s far-right Front National, in February 2015. The protest drew a crowd of some 300 demonstrators, and was covered by major news outlets such as the BBC and The Guardian. Her talk was delayed by more than an hour, and security guards were forced to close the doors to the University’s de­bating society. Protesters came close to scaling the walls from the street outside.

In November of 2015, a protest took place in the Oxford Union debate chamber against the appearance of Germaine Greer and her views on trans issues as part of a Union debate. A similar event occurred at Cardiff University in the weeks prior, leading to a petition signed by thousands of students opposing her talk. Peter Hitchens was also part of the debate, and was labelled “deeply racist” by the small group of protesters. A flyer handed out condemned the Union, saying it “thrives off controversy”—an accusation which the Union is no stranger to. The Union closed the gallery for the debate for fear of objects and liquids being thrown down on the speakers.

Finally, and most recently, protesters gath­ered outside the Oxford Union in November 2016 to demonstrate against Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. The protest, which was organized by Oxford Migrant Solidarity and OUSU LGBTQ Campaign, amassed a crowd of more than 60 protesters. While student protest is frequently a lively part of student life in Oxford, few of the protests re­sulted in a cancellation of a speaker or event. Furthermore, only 7.1 per cent of the respondants to our survey stated that they had been involved in a Union protest.

Less affluent countries are more committed to wildlife conservation

Jacob Cheli
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Less affluent countries are more committed to wildlife conservation

An Oxford University research collaboration has found that poorer nations tend to take a more active approach to conservation than richer countries.

Researchers from Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) partnered with Panthera, the only organisation dedicated to protecting wild cats, to assess the level of commitment of individual countries to protecting the world’s wildlife.

The team created a Mega-Fauna Conservation Index (MCI) of 152 countries to assess their conservation footprint and created a benchmarking system which evaluated the proportion of the country occupied by each species, the proportion protected and the money spent on conservation relative to GDP.

African countries were found to top the list, with Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe leading, whereas the United States came in at 19th place and a quarter of countries in Asia and Europe were classed as significantly underperforming.

Leader of the collaboration and Panthera researcher Dr Peter Lindsey, told Cherwell: “This is the first attempt to try to compare the conservation efforts of different countries. We need to be able to compare efforts to create a floating benchmark so that the average effort is pulled up, especially as megafauna populations are dropping.”

On the need to monitor megafauna in particular, he added: “Megafauna act as a proxy for conservation efforts in general, hopefully in the future the study might be expanded to monitor marine conservation efforts.”

Professor David Macdonald, Director of WildCRU, said: “Every country should strive to do more to protect its wildlife. Our index provides a measure of how well each country is doing, and sets a benchmark for nations that are performing below the average level, to understand the kind of contributions they need to make as a minimum.”

The study also explains the reasons for this disparity in contributions to conservation. Mega-fauna are valuable assets and to many less affluent countries their existence provides both a national identity and an economic lifeline in the form of tourism, which provides a high proportion of the GDP of some African nations: for example in 2014 tourism contributed 17% of Tanzania’s GDP.

Dr Dawn Burnham, also of WildCRU, told Cherwell: “What really matters is the idea we have developed, rather than the detail: countries can be ranked in their commitment to conservation, and each country can and should strive to climb the rankings – the details of how the rank is calculated can surely be refined in future, but the idea of the ranking will endure”.

Speaking about the future of the project, Dr Lindsey said: “We will be generally improving the study and making it as fair as possible. Our goal is to have an index that is published annually and the performance of countries regularly assessed.”

At the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, developed nations promised to allocate at least $2 billion (USD) per year towards conservation in developing nations. However, current contributions from developed nations are just half of the proposed amount, $1.1 billion (USD) per year.

Diamond-studded skies and carriages at 5am

Susannah Goldsbrough
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Diamond-studded skies and carriages at 5am

Last Saturday night, I think I went to heaven. Gothic towers smudged in cold blue light sliced the skyline, plates of food appeared as if by magic, and the thrum of dancing feet spread across the city. While some of the more traditionally advertised features of paradise may have been lacking (I’m talking golden gates, soft beds of clouds, and harp-strumming heavenly hosts), their places were adequately filled by slightly more modern incarnations of the divine. Puffs of steam from freshly sizzled gyoza fi lled the air, while a display of giant inflatable jellyfish glowed and swirled their tentacles in the breeze. We tend to think of heaven as an inaccessible kind of place, to be reached only through a combination of faith, good deeds, and death, but last Saturday night, all you needed to do was turn right off St Giles. It was Keble College’s Trinity Ball, and it was completely magical.

I recognise my tendency to romanticize ‘The Oxford Ball’. Many find the experience far from divine. Balls can be cold, underwhelming overpriced, and even dull, and so much of your enjoyment of the evening hinges on random and subjective factors, like how many of your friends are there, or how comfortable your shoes are. And yet, I do maintain that they are special. As a dedicated literature student, I will take this opportunity to carry out some rigorous Freudian analysis of my strange viewpoint. From the fairytale-fueled imaginings of child-hood, through the pretentious Jane Austen obsessions of my teenage years, to the Gossip Girl binge sessions of my hung-over univer-sity weekends, it feels like every phase of my life has been just so slightly touched by the dreamy vision of a ball. One of my favourite stories of all is The Twelve Dancing Princesses, a rather unorthodox fairytale in which twelve princesses sneak away from their beds to dance through the night with their lovers in magical, moonlit ballrooms. And so I think there is an intrinsic whiff of danger, or perhaps simply of thrill, about a ball. It’s the fairy lights strung through dark branches, it’s the walk home through dusky medieval streets at 5am, and it’s the moment of flinging your head back on the dance floor, and catching a glimpse of the diamond-studded sky. While the rest of the world sleeps, you move through a bubble of champagne and of rustling silk. It’s strange, it’s exotic, and it is alien.

One bit of magic I enjoyed at Keble was the illusion of ‘the free lunch’. The idea that ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ is a central tenet to theories of free market economics (or so Wikipedia tells me—I do English, what do I know?). At £99 a pop for a ticket, Keble Ball was certainly no exception. But the time lapse between payment and consumption, the sense of distance from the bank transfer of last term, to the reality of the evening, created the powerful impression that, well, everything was free. As I swanned from food van to food van, graciously allowing the staff to fill my greedy arms with paper bags of cinnamon donuts, with plates of halloumi and pork burgers, and with tubs of G&D’s ice-cream, it seemed as though the rules of economics had been suspended for the night. How strange to demand six strawberry daiquiri shots, and an elderflower cocktail, from the barman, and be asked for nothing in return. How we eat is so defined by processes of transaction, of give and take, that for the entire night I retained a Christmas morning feeling—as though I was being given a series of gifts. Oh yes, an illusion it most certainly was, but, then, illusion is just another word for magic, right?

And of course, there’s the dressing up. In my day-to-day life, I am a firm believer in the power of casual. Faded and over-worn jeans, cable-knit sweaters, and baggy t-shirts are the staples of my Oxford wardrobe. I enjoy the simplicity, the ease and the style of my clothes. I never feel more me than when I catch sight of my skinny-legged, baggy torso-ed silhouette in a shop window. But it is not despite my normal attire, but rather because of it, that I find so much pleasure in donning a ball gown. I love the soft rushing sound the silk makes as it wraps around my hips, the sudden and delightful thrill of transformation as I catch my refl ection, the confi dence (and the blisters) that high heels give me. The me that smiles out of my Saturday night photos looks little like my ordinary self—perhaps I should start brushing my hair more than twice a week?—but that’s exactly what crystallizes the evening in my memory as something quite apart from the ordinary. I box away the night as a Cinderella moment, and return to my daily routine.

So yes, I am syrupy and sentimental. Yes, my account of Keble is not just tinted, but thickly painted, with roses. And yes, I should probably widen my reading material a little, if only for the sake of my degree. But I think, as students, we are at a cynical age, in a cynical time. Our default is sarcasm, our go-to humour, satire. And I have absolutely no problem with that. But I cannot help the delight of escaping it, even just for the night. Princess dresses and ice-cream tubs are the most refreshing antidotes to my usual student sarkiness. Whilst 21st century Britain is extraordinary in so many ways, it does not bear much resemblance to fairyland. So I am grateful for Oxford’s bizarreness, for those moonlit hours in May, and for the power of illusion.

Beware the Russians under the bed

Felix Pope
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Beware the Russians under the bed

In the early evening on Friday 5 May—one of the final days of campaigning in the French election, and just hours before the domestic media blackout that would begin on the weekend of the vote—a file named ‘EMLEAKES’ appeared on pastebin.com. This vast document was in fact nine gigabytes of data hacked from the Macron campaign, which over the coming hours and days would be spewed out onto the internet and picked over by journalists and alt-right agitators alike.

Initially little regard was paid to the leak. Then, as it was posted first to the anarchic hard right online message board /pol/, then shared on twitter by Canadian ‘journalist’ Jack Posobiec, shared again by WikiLeaks (who notably declined to verify the documents in their totality), and then boosted by an army of bots, the attention directed towards the content of the files intensified.

This development was not entirely unexpected. For months rumours had swirled that Macron, an ex-Rothschild investment banker and slick representative of France’s incestuous political and economic elite, owned an off shore account and avoided taxes. But in reality the leak was disappointing, to say the least. Endless reels of mundane emails between friends and colleagues. Birthday felicitations, meeting arrangements, routine campaign details. Not exactly Watergate. No, the only scandal here was the source, rather than the content, of the leak, and its relation to a running debate over the impact of Russian interference upon Western democracy.

It is now widely accepted—including by US intelligence agencies—that Kremlin agents with the delightfully innocent code names ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘Cozy Bear’ hacked into Democratic National Committee servers and the private email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta.

But increasingly what evidence there is for Russian attempts to subvert democracy has been blown up out of all proportion. Russian leaks are treated by many Clinton acolytes and supporters as the overwhelming cause of her defeat. Trump is portrayed as a scheming Manchurian candidate, coordinating with Putin to seize victory through underhand tactics. Never mind that Trump struggles to coordinate with himself most days, this narrative is ever more widely accepted amoung the anti-Trump ‘Resistance’. Further afield, dirty Russian tricks become the cause of Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Ben Bradshaw, a Labour MP and former deputy leadership candidate, declares in Parliament without a shred of evidence that it’s “highly probable” that Russia interfered in Brexit. Every populist victory, left or right, across Europe becomes another Russian psy-op, another victorious propaganda campaign for the Kremlin.

On Twitter a rolling, amorphous kangaroo court has sprung up to prosecute and condemn anyone remotely connected with Russia as a Kremlin agent. Louise Mensch, formerly (somehow) a Conservative MP, now stands at the vanguard of this campaign, making bolder and bolder claims as her sanity wanes and prominence rises in inverse proportion. Not content with denouncing Russia Today journalists as propagandists and White House staffers as double agents, she recently ludicrously claimed (like Bradshaw, without a shred of evidence) that Black Lives Matters protesters in Ferguson were funded by Russia. For these efforts the Russians have (according to her) installed a spy in a florist’s van outside her New York apartment.

The real horror here is not that a woman recently described by an American intelligence officer as “batshit crazy” can vent unhinged conspiracy theories on Twitter (that is, after all, pretty much the reason for its existence), but that the American liberal establishment can take her so seriously. Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe has lauded Mensch as “impressive” and “incomparable”, while the New York Times granted her a much coveted op ed spot.

Clearly there is some truth at the core of this, some degree of Russian involvement that genuinely did occur, and it is of the imperative that this must be uncovered, most likely through a congressional investigation. But the whole affair has now become wrapped up in so much hysteria that a return to sanity seems nigh on impossible.

These claims have not, therefore, been lept upon due to their veracity, and certainly not due to any moral imperative felt by the American establishment to prevent democracies from being subverted, especially given America has been doing the same itself for decades.

No, the real motivation for this 21st century red scare, where Putin-backed nationalists replace Commies as the ever present shadowy threat to American society, is a need to insulate the American establishment from any and all critique.

In this fantasy world Clinton lost not because of her ties to Wall Street, not because of the Democratic party’s systematic neglect of their working class and rustbelt voters, not due to her dependence on corporate donors, and certainly not because the woman has never yet come across a conflict she thinks might not be improved by a few thousand pounds of American munitions.

No, she lost because of the damn Ruskies and their dastardly tricks. Never mind that they could only leak evidence of, say, the Democratic establishment conspiring against Sanders in favour of Clinton if the Democratic party had actually conspired against Sanders in the first place. And equally in the UK, Brexit happened not because millions of people across Britain realised that they actually kind of valued democracy, and wanted their country to be able to set its own laws and control its own borders, but instead merely because Putin’s cyber warriors hacked, uh, something. Maybe the voter rolls.

So the Democratic Party rolls on, ignoring the interests of its historic voter base yet expecting their loyal support. Any truth that might exist at the bottom of this is drowned out, and any critical reflection from the left is lost in the face of conspiratorial delusions.

A future made with 3D printing

Ryan Sephton
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A future made with 3D printing

In the rapidly expanding playground of gadgets, gizmos, and all things tech, it’s sometimes hard to believe that some of the latest breakthroughs aren’t from the mind of an eccentric Hollywood director. We find ourselves in an age of self-driving cars and levitating trains—so why do so many care about printing flimsy toy models and fancy keyrings?

In my ten-month placement at a leading British engineering company, I saw the research and design that went into evolving 3D printing from plastic polymers to metals through direct metal laser sintering—the formal name given to the process of blasting metal with an extremely powerful laser to make structures, also know as metal 3D printing.

The inner workings are extraordinarily complicated: in essence, metal 3D printing works through a powder chute that dispenses a set amount of powdered metal beads, and a wiper blade not dissimilar to a car windscreen wiper that spreads the powder over the ‘bed’—a flat metal sheet. A programmable laser (or even multiple lasers nowadays) blast certain areas of the powder, selectively ‘welding’ parts of the current layer to the layer below. After this the bed drops down and a new layer is spread on top, and the process repeats.

Other than re-creating battle scenes from Star Wars, there are actually some extremely profound consequences of this method. In building the structure layer by layer, complexity in design comes with almost no extra time cost.

This is where the remarkable promise of metal 3D printing comes to hand—it turns out that nature itself has already put in a few million years’ worth of research and development for the industry, through the design of lattice structures—the idea of interweaving and convoluting thinner support structures to maximise strength whilst minimising the weight.

Think of a spider’s web: a dinner plate style web with no gaps would just as efficiently capture a fly, however this would cost the spider dearly in extra time and materials to spin such a dense web. Instead, the spider intuitively picks a low energy, low resource, and sparse design that’s just as functional in doing the job.

This is also applicable with metal 3D printing as these spacious and ‘low-cost’ designs check all the boxes of what we need in a good metal 3D printing design—they distribute the energy evenly, use less metal powder, and tend not to have as many ‘sharp edges’ or overhangs.

Lattices structures also avoid a ‘thermal gradient’ from arising. Think about trying to bake a cake using only a small Bunsen burner: the cake should come out semi-presentable providing you distribute the heat evenly and don’t heat any overhanging parts, or else they’ll sag and deform the cake.

Given that the laser is ignorant to the order of how you want to heat things, a spacious and spread-out structure would keep the thermal gradient at bay by distributing the energy evenly across the bed, whereas something like a block of metal would turn out horrendously, causing warps and deformation almost instantly.

So why can’t lattices be used in normal manufacturing outside of 3D printing? Theoretically they can: there just isn’t a machine yet that’s capable of building anything to that level of precision or complexity, bar 3D printers. But these lattice designs and 3D printing have unlimited potential in changing our world.

During my internship, the 3D printing division was contracted to print the steering wheel for the Bloodhound SSC, a car attempting to beat the world land-speed record with a projected top speed of 1000 miles per hour. The steering wheel was designed in-house and printed as a bespoke fit for the driver’s hands, something of phenomenal importance when every square inch of cockpit bites into your room for fuel.

With rising profit margins, we are getting ever closer to a future where a 3D printed titanium lattice structure could be inserted onto someone’s skull to reconstruct it after an accident—a future where weight minimisation yields phenomenal profit though fuel savings, from reducing the weight of seats, door hinges to maybe someday fuselages—all without losing any structural strength! It would be a radically different world: one defined by 3D printing.

C+: Student testimonials on free speech in Oxford

Cat Bean
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C+: Student testimonials on free speech in Oxford

Comments verged wildly between polar op­posite opinions. Many views criticised the left in Oxford for dominating popular opinion, an observation that aligned with our findings that students identifying as right wing, or centre-right, were more likely to be concerned about a loss of freedom of speech in Oxford.

On the Union, and student protest, one student, identifying as centre-right, said that “some people don’t seem to realise the irony of their position: how can you stand for tolerance and equality yet violently protest speakers from expressing their views? If views are challenging to some, they can be shot down legitimately in debate, not barred from conversation. Branding and labelling have become far too important due to snippet news on social media, which makes it easier to propagate myths about some speakers and their views without engaging in their thought”.

Comments from those on the right also accused the left of suppressing conversations that disagreed with a left-wing point of view.

One right-wing student said: “Since the left won the culture war, there are certain things that it has become taboo to stand up for, and that incur ridicule or ostracism when said. Praising traditional family structures, being proud of British history, saying that perhaps who you want to be should not need to impact who I want to be: these are all things that on campus see one branded as a radical, as a sex­ist, as a racist.”

Some accusations were levelled at OUSU, and student-run groups like Rhodes Must Fall, for stifling opinions that were not perceived as left wing.

One student, identifying as a centrist, argued that “OUSU is motivated to oppose free speech, mitigated only by the fact that nobody takes them seriously”.

This wasn’t just a concern from the right-wing contingent of the student body. One left-wing commenter argued that “the left-wing is becoming what it has fought against for so long. I am about as liberal as you can possibly get, and I don’t think we should shut down Germaine Greer or Katie Hopkins or Corey Lewandowski or Marine Le Pen. Their right to speak their mind must not be banned—instead, their ideas should be allowed to rot and die from the arguments of those who opposite them.

“And yes, I do believe disinviting a speaker from a university is banning a right, even though universities are not parts of the government. This is because I think of univer­sities as beacons of free expression and free speech. Once you remove that, the destruction of expression follows easily.

“At Oxford, I feel like my college is par­ticularly toxic when it comes to this. Nobody would even ever publicly consider inviting someone who might not be an ultra-liberal. Nobody would ever speak out against a ridicu­lous, authoritarian, yet left-wing JCR motion because they would get eviscerated, both verbally and socially. So we just let everything pass. Well, it seems to me the left-wing is be­coming what it once fought against. We have students keeping silent pre-emptively so they don’t happen to say the wrong thing, offend someone, and end up being ostracised.”

Some students even reported being afraid to express their opinions, arguing that this constituted a lack of freedom of speech in Oxford.

One student, identifying as a centrist, said that “There is no longer free speech in Oxford, no debate can be had unless it supports a left-wing agenda. If it does not it is shut down by the minority who state that it is in all our interests that no other viewpoint is accept­able except their own.”

Some comments were careful to draw the line between a loss of freedom of speech, and a bias against certain viewpoints. One centre-left student commented: “I feel as though the censorship I have faced has been much more passive and coercive than an outright ‘ban’ on saying things. I wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing some of my views at university be­cause of the culture that has been created, but this does not necessarily mean that I am not free to say them, rather that I would choose not to in this context.”

Opinions on the left generally disagreed that freedom of speech was under threat in Oxford, and had strong opinions on no-platforming and student protest.

Some respondents were of the opinion that popular media outside of the university has a bias against right wing opinions. One left-wing student stated that “the idea that free speech is under threat in UK universities rests on a complete miscomprehension of the concept and a media commentariat willing to spin anything into yet another caricature of the student left (along with an audience that’s been made to believe this is a real issue and will accordingly eat up such stories).”

Similarly, another left-wing student said: “Most people who complain about lack of freedom of speech don’t seem to understand what freedom of speech is”.

Others disagreed with the assertion that freedom of speech could be infringed upon by students, the University or OUSU.

One left-wing student argued that “freedom of speech can only be infringed by the govern­ment”.

Some even disagreed with the premise that freedom of speech should be a high priority for students, another commenter going as far to argue that “free speech is the most over- hyped principle of our generation”.

Overall, the statements we received embodied the tension between the left and right view on freedom of speech, dividing our sample of the student body along ideological and political lines.

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