Sunday 27th July 2025
Blog Page 864

College Insider at Pembroke

Anonymous
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College Insider at Pembroke

Even in sunny Trinity, Pembroke students aren’t faring well: there’s only so much vitamin D that you can absorb with Tom Tower looming large across the road, and blocking out the sky. It’s a trade-off though, because at least we manage to avoid the tourists who clog up the Christ Church quads (except the ones who refuse to move out of the way of our bikes while they take pictures of the college across the road). The college itself is no longer a safe haven for students. The rebranding of Pembroke College as Pembroke Conference Centre has left us fearful. Will we be able to make it to the laundry room in our pyjamas without running into businessmen in suits? Maybe not, but we may be able to sneak a free glass of wine, so it isn’t all bad news.

The only way we’re dealing with the change is by seeking solace in the endless panini meal deals supplied by Farthings, our café, and by hoping to avoid the many men in baby pink leggings and their endless rowing chat. If we’re lucky, there won’t be too many student newspapers exploiting our welfare issues for crude front pages in future either. Even after VIIIs, the rowing doesn’t stop. That being said, we are all quite thankful to PCBC for ensuring our blood has been around 30 per cent Pimms for the most of this term—even if it means they have had to become the largest non-commercial Pimm’s purchaser in Europe. We might manage to avoid the rowers and the press, but we are still vulnerable to those snakes amongst us who will listen in on conversations, and sneakily send your weirdest words to Overheard in Farthings. People may all agree that, “crackers are merely a vessel for brie”, but do you really want to be quoted saying you “had to get quinoa from M&S, and it’s just not the same as the Waitrose stuff ”? Maybe Farthings isn’t the best place to seek solace.

The alternative is to just spend our days hiding in the College Pink Panther costume. But, no matter how much we play up the Pink Panther, there’s only so much we can do to distract ourselves from the fact that our college colours are the same as Jack Wills, and that our stash, and the navy and pink sofas in our JCR, remind us all a little too closely of our thirteen-year-old selves. At least, for now, pink is in fashion.

Bernie Sanders, the hero we need but don’t deserve

Adam John Ellison and Alex Kumar
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Bernie Sanders, the hero we need but don’t deserve

And so, to thunderous applause, Bernie left the Sheldonian. As he went about his business, the people took to the streets in his wake. The people sought just to catch a fleeting glimpse of the man himself. They knew that when they cast their eyes upon this man of the people, they would see a hero and a great leader to light the path for the future. In the dark four years that we must live with, the hero of the times is he who does not surrender his beliefs just to win elections. That man is Bernie Sanders.

A populist? A demagogue? No, Bernie Sanders is adored because he provides the ideas and policies that mainstream Democrats and Republicans have utterly failed to provide. Accusations of “polemic” or “empty rhetoric” are bizarre as Sanders laid out a plan for activists on both sides of the Atlantic to create positive change in both minor and major ways. One of the least accurate and most damaging accusations levelled against Senator Sanders is that he is somehow still selling himself. Indeed, Our Revolution is not just the name of his book but of his organisation, an alliance of grassroots organisers and progressive legislators to influence the next generation of Democratic lawmakers and to take the fight to the Republican party. He is also a patron of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, similar progressive groups focusing on Congressional races. If Bernie Sanders is one thing, it’s a man of action.

The audience was not provided, “Polemic, platitudes, and empty rhetoric” as claimed in one Cherwell piece, but instead practical ideas: he praised and encouraged the actions of Governors and State Legislatures in committing the states, in defiance of Washington, to universal healthcare and climate change policy. He talked about building broad coalitions both in Congress and across America to oppose, modify and moderate Republican legislation. He emphasised the continued role of protests in keeping the Trump administration on their toes and reminding the American people just how abnormal this current Presidency is. Sanders interwove proposed solutions and observed problems. Let us remember, Sanders was talking to a broad, foreign audience not about a theoretical presidency but a broad movement.

Given that we are only a few months into Trump’s Presidency, it’ll be at least three years before Democrats are making policy again. Sanders is not here to lecture us on specific solutions but to rally a global movement and to spread an ideology, one of hope and unity. If you came to him looking for tax plans and infrastructural programs, you came to the wrong place.

The reasons Senator Sanders gave for Clinton’s loss might be old news but the reason they are so often circulated is because they are absolutely true. Poor industrial whites turned desperately to Trump as they felt their prosperity slip away and anger at Clinton’s links with Wall Street and Big Business fuelled the populism of Donald Trump. You might see them splashed across Facebook or hear them over hashed at dinner but a repetitive truth is still a truth and, if we neglect these key issues out of boredom, the Left is sure to lose again.

The potential of a Sanders candidacy is not simply an off-hand counterfactual, it is an essential element to consider running forward. Sanders isn’t the most popular politician in the country because he said so or because Baroness Kennedy announced him as such; Harvard-Harris has been running polls on the perception of US Politicians for years and since his rise to prominence nearly two years ago Senator Sanders has consistently topped the list. In polls of Clinton vs Trump, the former held a lead of approximately five per cent, for Sanders vs Trump the lead shot up to approximately twenty per cent. In Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia and across the Rust Belt—the states that handed Trump the keys to the White House—Sanders consistently trounced both Clinton and the entirety of the Republican line up. If the Democrats want to win back these regions and the White House come 2020, they should look to Sanders’ example and build upon his successes.

Just because politicians like Bernie Sanders hold ideals and values—an idea so alien to those valueless opportunists politics is plagued with —does not mean that those ideals and values are blindly idealistic or incapable of engaging with real politics. Sanders’ home state of Vermont was staunchly Republican when he entered politics but by cooperating with various left-of-centre groups such as the Liberty Union Party and the Vermont Democrats, Sanders worked his way up against the odds and turned the state blue.

Bernie Sanders was, perhaps, ahead of his time in 2016 but history vindicates him every single day that Trump is in the White House. The Senator is building a movement, spreading the word and providing the solutions for a new age of Progressive politics. He has inspired a generation and brought into politics both old and young who had long since lost their faith. a torch held up in an ever darkening world and a call to arms for a global people feeling ever more abandoned.

The Naked Truth

Jessica Brown
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The Naked Truth

“The naked truth”. “Naked as the day she was born”. “Barely there”. Nakedness has saturated our conversations since forever, and these days its even more widespread—in branding and everywhere else. Nakedness is what makes wearing clothes so exciting. The power to strip them off dictates much of the attributes of our fashion choices—zips over buttons, straps over sleeves, and so on. Labels like “Bare Minerals”, “Naked Juice” and “Naked Eyeshadow” all play on our fascination with nudity.

On one level it’s to do with the frisson of sexual excitement that the word provokes, but nakedness also epitomizes wholesomeness, honesty, and innocence—hence its prevalence in the annoying-smoothie business.

Ever since Adam and Eve put some clothes on, we’ve been desperate to get them off again, so it seems paradoxical in a modern, relatively liberated climate that nakedness is being so highly problematised again in social media. Body-related campaigns such as #freethenipple have aroused mixed emotions, ranging from proud boob-barers riding the activist wave with sheer tops and bras to those who believe that such movements miss the point.

Our very own Oxfeud records one frustrated response, “Do you even realise how privileged you are if you can sit around worrying about freeing the nipple?” And it’s true: it is a position of privilege to be concerned with fighting to uncover what constitutes about two inches of flesh online and on Instagram. But that does not mean that it does not matter.

Facebook recently reformed their nudity policy, amid a storm of frustration at Facebook’s censorship of an “iconic” image of the Vietnam War, featuring a naked girl. In case you were wondering, you’re now allowed to see and share “all handmade AND digital nudity” and “handmade Sexual Activity” but the line has been drawn at “Digital Sexual Activity” (which sounds like the least sexy stuff ever created, but each to their own).

Initially, on reading the new policy, I was just deeply confused—why does it really matter if a “hand” or technology has created or recreated an image? Surely that’s the least important facet of the problem—its like allowing watercolours but banning crayons. But thinking deeper, I realised I’m affected by the same prejudices—I guess you could call it snobbery—towards digital art.

I’ve never shared a naked photo but I’m hoping to apply to be a life model. It’s likely that a digital version of my naked body would be more detailed or realistic than a drawing, painting, or sculpture, but not necessarily significantly so. In which case, why does it make a difference to me whether people see my body at an art show or on their phone?
The answer is, of course, an anxiety surrounding being sexually commoditised, as opposed to the desire to contribute to art. Without attempting the impossible task of defining art, I want my nakedness to be entirely my own, and the digitalisation of it for sexual pleasure would, for me, be a violation of the ownership of my body.

Being drawn appeals to me as a liberating, ungendered, and generous action that fascinates me on many levels. But, again, I’ve recently started to question the validity of my reservations. Naked photos used to be a subject of horror for me. Having witnessed underage friends’ naked selfies, and the betrayal, exposure and public shaming by both schools and social circles that would inevitably ensue after the unworthy receiver of the image sent it on, I swore to myself that I would never subject my body, or my self-worth, to such scrutiny.

However since coming to university, the ubiquitousness and creativity of the way people treat and share images of their naked bodies has made me doubt my vow. As someone who likes to get my kit off pretty frequently (I just don’t find clothes very comfortable!) with my friends, perhaps the next stage in accepting my body image is to create an image of body.

It’s a tricky and divisive topic to gauge/ Too many women my age have been hurt or helped through the way their bodies have been viewed by others. But either way, a new tryst needs to be wrought in our digital society that bridges the gap between undressing ourselves and expressing ourselves, and I’m not sure #freethenipple quite cuts it.

Shaving – removing hair or removing choice

Kate Asquith
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Shaving – removing hair or removing choice

Hair is amazing. It contains nanoparticles of gold, regulates temperature and releases pheromones. Why then is such an incredible biological feature criticised, demonised and politicised to such an extent? Having spoken to people of many genders, it seems that body hair is caught in a conflict between the public—conforming to or challenging social expectations, and the private—whether we have the ability or the functionality to physically remove body hair.

To shave or not to shave is a deeply personal decision, but more often than not it is claimed by the public sphere. The relationship between a person’s body and their hair is one of the most complex and interesting narratives of social history. Ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks all agreed that pubic hair was disagreeable, and used tools called “volsellas”, a kind of proto-tweezer, to manage growth.

In contrast, Catherine de Medici, the Queen of France in the late 16th century, favoured the complete opposite and forbade any of the ladies in her court from shaving their pubic area. Her contemporary, Queen Elizabeth I, endorsed the fashionable removal of hair from the top of the forehead to create the illusion of a longer, more elegant face. Walnut oil or even cat faeces would be rubbed into the skin to deter regrowth.

In more recent times, the launch of Gillette’s 1915 Milady Décolleté campaign was the first to encourage the shaving of under arms. This corresponded with the increasing popularity for sleeveless dresses, and in the same year, Harper Bazaar preached that hairless armpits were a “necessity” for the modern woman.Luckily, most people today are not subjected to the same level of policing as our historical ancestors, but within the small, every-day lives we occupy, the way we manage and present our bodies can feel like a very conscious statement.

Speaking to many different people in Oxford, much of the feedback came with negativity—one person described to me how childhood insecurity and teasing over hair had affected their perception of their adult body. They admitted that “my ideal presentation would be hair on my head, eyebrows, eyelashes and literally nowhere else”. Another girl admitted: “I know that my decision to shave is probably due to internalised misogyny, and every time I go through the pain of waxing my upper lip I question why I do it”.

However, while it’s true that the obvious double standards of masculine and feminine beauty call into question the sexism behind the tradition of shaving, it’s also important to discredit the heteronormative assumption that women simply shave to be considered “attractive” to men. Some enjoy the feel of smooth legs, while others appreciate the benefits of shaving, such as the skin’s increased collagen production.

In many cases, shaving can be a very individual declaration of self-confidence. Emily said, “I started shaving every day after getting out of a relationship with an abusive partner. She pushed me to not shave because she was obsessed with being more feminine than me, so removing all my body hair has always been really personally empowering”.

Likewise, many people find that leaving body hair uncultivated is equally empowering. The acceptance of your body as it truly and naturally exists can be a very fulfilling experience—why else would hair grow if it was supposed to be stripped away again as soon as it surfaced? Taisie agreed: “I haven’t shaved my legs or underarms for a year and I feel good about that because it makes me feel more ‘me’”.

However, the decision to let hair remain au naturel can be difficult, as Miranda told me: “I stopped shaving completely the summer before I started university. I felt very self- conscious at first, and in the summer would cover my legs and armpits until I convinced myself not to care. I’m happy I managed to remove the internalised fear and stigma I had about body hair and make-up, and I feel much happier in my body these days”.

As an act of reclamation, last year Juliette decided to stop waxing her armpits and dye them instead. She explained “one of the reasons I originally dyed my armpit hair was so that people couldn’t tell me that I was just neglecting myself. It was sort of a statement of ‘nope, I didn’t just forget to shave’”. Within these conversations, one sentiment that quickly emerged was how many of those who chose not to shave were aware of their privilege. Taisie said: “I think that the body hair positivity movement doesn’t sufficiently interrogate who it’s really accessible for. As a femme cis white woman, my body hair isn’t policed like it is for other people”.

Francesca, who is Jewish and dark-haired, voices this issue—she feels that “not shaving is something that many people seem to take a great deal of pride in; the idea that ‘I don’t shave which makes me super feminist’”. The decision to ‘just not shave’ is very differently weighted for dark-haired girls, who Francesca said: “feel constantly embarrassed and self-conscious in order to fully ‘perform’ this kind of feminism”. Miriam likewise emphasised this disparity: “being mixed race means I have a lot of dark body hair and I used to get really stressed out about the little black dots that remain even after shaving. My blonde friend once asked if I’d forgotten to shave when I had literally spent all morning doing so. Because of this, I spent a lot of hot summer days wearing jeans”.

These micro-aggressions further alienate people of colour and ignore the racism and oppression that surrounds body hair. The desire to avoid harmful stereotyping or to escape racism is often over-looked or even criticised by ‘white feminism’, despite the fact that shaving or removing hair is a completely valid and justifiable choice for people of all ethnicities.

This privileged view of body hair affects transgender and non-binary people as well. Alyson, a trans girl, stated that, “shaving can provoke dysphoria. I have zero time for a feminism that is going to put the things trans people do to preserve their lives or mental health on the same scale as the things people do to police or enforce patriarchal beauty standards”.

The gender expectations that are problematically aligned with body hair surpass simple feminist discussions about choice, and rather present much more difficult challenges for non-cis people: “I don’t just risk being judged but being outed, misgendered, or even hurt. There are people who would take me having a beard as a personal attack on their ideas of gender”, Alyson told me.

Similarly, Elise said, “as a person who identifies as non-binary (with woman as part of that identity), body hair has always been a strange locus for me.” At school, they felt “shaving meant I was performing womanhood, and not shaving meant I was more manly—that’s how I saw it, though I knew deep down those were just gender roles”. The choice to shave or not to shave is more than an act of defiance against the patriarchy—for some people, it is an unavoidable act of defiance against the social construction of gender itself, and that can carry greater repercussions.

It’s also worth considering that sometimes people have little or no autonomy when it comes to the management of their body hair. Alice told me how she stopped shaving during an exhausting period of being very ill, explaining “it’s because I have issues with functioning rather than a defined aesthetic choice”, while Elise also noted that a struggle with self-harm meant that owning razors was not a safe option.

Similarly, one woman explained that “these kinds of social pressures and insecurities can really perpetuate aspects of eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorders, and body focused repetitive behaviours—I know that body hair definitely plays a part in my history of dealing with all of these”.

When addressing comparable problems, Alyson highlighted how “dyspraxia makes it difficult for me to shave—lots of reaching and bending which rapidly starts to cause aches and pains”. The ableist concept that “there are no ugly women, only lazy ones” (according to cosmetics entrepreneur, Helena Rubinstein) disregards ways in which common beauty rituals can actually be very inaccessible, exhausting and painful for many disabled people.

However, at the same time, shaving can be medically necessary for others whose conditions cause hirsutism, or excessive hair growth, which can compromise surgical procedures. The point being that a disabled person’s body hair experience—no matter what form it takes—should not be commodified by mainstream feminism (as it often is) to either argue for or against shaving. To do so is to appropriate the struggles of disabled or neuro-divergent people for a discussion that concerns mainly aesthetic considerations; in other words, politicising other people’s bodies in order to claim a social symbolism.

Therefore, to exclusively reserve the choice of shaving for those who already conform to the majority of beauty standards (such as Miley Cyrus, Lola Kirke or Madonna) really illuminates the narrow-mindedness of ‘white feminism’ and the oppression it continues to serve. Strands of false feminism which neglect the issues faced by minorities are not truly feminist. In my interviews, a great many people showed sensitivity to this hypocrisy but among non-liberal and socially aware circles, the problems are pervasive.

Ginger expressed how she “would like for female body hair to be normalised and seen in the mainstream more” but until both the absence and the presence of body hair are equally divorced from social politics, there will always be the risk of accidentally perpetuating the oppression faced by minority groups. This is not to say white, cis-gendered, able women should feel guilty for their decisions regarding body hair, far from it—as long as they do not project or force these opinions upon others, and actively support and celebrate the choices (and acknowledge the possible lack of choice) of minority people.

In the end, whether you do or do not shave is a personal decision—albeit one with a bizarre amount of public interference—and maybe one day people will be able to pick up a razor without wondering if that makes them a bad feminist or not.

The internet rules international relations

Katherine Pye
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The internet rules international relations

At the recent G7 summit, the usual array of national figureheads flooded our television screens, their quarrels, rifts and pledges seem to characterise global politics today. One ignorant megalomaniac too many on the international stage seems to tip the world into despair.

Yet, beneath the surface a revolution is taking place, shifting power from the hands of presidents shuffling around conference tables to glow beneath the fingertips of ordinary citizens. It is a quiet revolution of 1s and 0s, which is slowly but surely shifting the sands of international policy-making. The internet, and how it is used, is revolutionising international society and global power structures.

International relations has historically revolved around nations and their interrelation- ships. Diplomacy has historically been a way to conduct those interactions. Yet the exponential growth of the internet is both multiplying and intensifying the voices that shape strategic international decision-making. The internet has, under the feet of international leaders in glowing fibre-optic cables, been an integral force in driving forward a global civil society; civilian transnational groups that act across international borders and operate independently of what their states tell them.

The ‘Israel loves Iran’ and reciprocal ‘Iran loves Israel’ Facebook page which went viral in 2012 is a brilliant example. Whilst it had little effect on the geopolitics of the region, it markedly affected how millions of ordinary citizens viewed each other. Thousands of meetings were arranged between ordinary Iranians and Israelis, who circulated photos and formed new friendships. They completely undercut the conventional diplomatic process, directly addressing citizens over states, with “not ready to die for your war” as the most famous slogan.

In this way, ordinary voices have, slowly but surely, undercut the state monopoly on the diplomatic process, particularly on relations between citizens. Cyber space is what its users make of it; its content is defined by groups of users circulating what they want others to see in the world. These communities are lateral and dispersed, but able to act collectively through the internet, most notably since 2010 in the Arab Revolutions in which Facebook and Twitter connected disparate communities to unite, in the face of great danger, behind a common cause. Naturally, a global cyberspace community also spreads into the deep and dark web, with the spread of fascist and islamist hate speech in groups online.

But the internet is also hastening the dissemination of information, regardless of whether it is accurate or not, often on events which can have a global impact. International government pandemonium over how to deal with WikiLeaks reflects the emergence of a society far beyond their control. More and more, information is going on to the internet directly to users and even established news outlets are struggling to filter, process and gain the upper hand in the dissemination of information. You only need to ask the Chinese government how difficult it is to retain a state monopoly on information in light of current internet technology.

So how should our national figureheads respond? Is there still a place for intergovernmental organisations? International organisations such as NATO hugely benefit from data-driven technology which allow them to exchange large volumes of information between member states. Yet many of the international organisations founded in the aftermath of World War II lag behind in dealing with the new challenges posed by the internet age. They are losing their ability to govern the vastly expanding but largely unregulated domain technology has generated. Institutions that deal only in sanctions, international summits and confers information by press conferences are already an anachronism.

In the way that the development of ships for ocean voyages in the 16th century enabled the European expansion at the expense of Arab empires and radio and telegrams transformed 20th century international relations, so the expansion of the internet creates new opportunities for 21st century foreign policy. However, the rate of change brought about by the internet is unprecedented, and the change is more radical than ever before. The internet will not continue to expand unregulated at its present rate; the next decade will see governments and organisations begin to adapt to the Wild West of cyber space. Global society in 10 years’ time will likely be unrecognisable, for better or for worse, directly because of continued technological innovation.

Controlling your emotions

Suzan Asya Yavuz
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Controlling your emotions

‘Emotional Intelligence’ or EQ, is the ability to process emotional information in relation to the ‘perception, expression, regulation and management of emotion’. It involves a set of mental abilities which allow individuals to process attitudes to feelings and discrimination between feelings, as well as apply mood regulating strategies. Psychologists have argued that an individual’s ability to integrate emotion into thought has an impact on how much we procrastinate, while studies have found a negative relationship between procrastination (or the inability to self-regulate performance) and emotional intelligence.

There are, of course a number of factors which may determine how much we procrastinate. Boredom, anxiety, and perfectionism have all been identified as component factors. One may procrastinate more if they have attention deficits—a tendency to boredom, low self esteem, a fear of failure etc. EQ however, is less obvious and therefore a more interesting factor to consider. Mayer and Salovey’s model of EQ consists of four main components, the ability to perceive emotions (in oneself and others), to use emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand emotions and to manage emotions to attain specific goals. Emotional regulation—namely one’s ability to cope with stress—could be influential in determining how much one procrastinates. Many studies link the aforementioned factors with EQ. One 2014 study concluded that it was EQ’s relation to self-efficacy which then influenced procrastination. Individuals with a high EQ were more likely to believe in their ability to achieve a goal, and were therefore less likely to procrastinate. Using emotional knowledge to assess thought is an important part of EQ. Therefore, it is a reasonable assumption that a lack of EQ leads to emotions like anxiety or boredom overriding responsibility, and in turn prohibits personal growth.

Dr Travis Bradbury, co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 lists nine characteristics of individuals with high EQ’s. They remain optimistic through hardships, and are able to identify their own emotions. They are assertive, curious about others, and won’t let anyone limit their joy. They know what makes them happy, aren’t easily offended, and give little power to negative self-talk.

Procrastination decreases both the quality and the quantity of learning, if you procrastinate and feel it may be due to lacking EQ, but there are ways to develop your emotional intelligence. Dr Susan David’s four stage RUUM model states that applying a system whereby one recognises, uses, understands and manages their emotions can aid the development of an improved EQ. To use this model, check in with yourself occasionally, and ask yourself how you are feeling. Once you have recognised your emotions, try to identify how these feelings are affecting your thinking—acknowledge that emotions can actually help you make better decisions, Try to understand these emotions and identify the factors contributing to how you to feel.

Finally, try to manage these emotions. You can do this through meditation, exercise, music, social support and basically whatever clears your mind and makes you happy. If you are checking in during bouts of procrastination, recognise how you feel. Anxious? Bored? See if this negative thinking is causing you to procrastinate. Ask yourself what caused you to feel this way, and finally try to clear your mind and combat your negative self-talk so that you can return to work with a clear and able mind.

“Unapologetically Blink-182”

Abby Ridsdill-Smith
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“Unapologetically Blink-182”

I have a confession to make before we start: the only reason I got into blink-182 was my all-consuming love affair with My Chemical Romance.

Throughout my obsession with the inspirational piece that is The Black Parade, I trawled YouTube for any video which even contained a curl of Ray Toro’s incredibly voluminous hair. Knee deep in a series of interviews discussing the band’s personal hygiene, I came across a seminal work: Gerard Way’s hyper-aggressive cover of blink-182’s ‘First Date’. When Mark Hoppus paid him some kind of compliment for his slightly angstier version of their song, I knew we were bonded for life over a shared appreciation of Gerard.

With this in mind, I sat down to listen to the deluxe edition of blink-182’s latest album, California. Before I’d even pressed play, I realised this was the kind of album which served well for the revision period. Tunes, such as ‘Misery’ and ‘Bored to Death’, are great for setting the mood when you sit down in the library at 8am, for your fifteenth past paper. ‘Hey I’m Sorry’ works well as a secondary attachment to any email which you send your tutor, while ‘Don’t Mean Anything’ is a tune which I’ve really been enjoying in the run up to my grammar coursework paper.

But despite the fact that the titles make fitting accompaniments to any revision montage, the songs themselves aren’t dire, painful or emotionally trying, as revision is. Instead, they’re incredibly successful: because they are unapologetically blink-182. In particular, ‘Parking Lot’, which has already been released as a single, and ‘Good Old Days’ are brilliant, and fit comfortably with the band’s previous albums.

Yet, this isn’t an album which is afraid to try something new and exploratory. It’s worth mentioning the striking acoustic cover of ‘Bored to Death’, a punk rock anthem which has been transformed into something pretty emotional, even cracking out the crowd chant, reminiscent of Panic! At The Disco’s ‘Pretty Odd’ or anything by Dog is Dead. Meanwhile, ‘Don’t Mean Anything’ is the stand out track on the album and its bridge is something I enjoyed far more than any night out in Oxford’s own club.

For those with an exercise playlist, I would also highlight ‘Bottom of the Ocean’. The powerful, high paced rhythm is something that makes me want to work out, or, failing that, walk really fast to lectures. So what’s the overall review? I’d have to give it five stars. blink-182’s deluxe edition of California is a great album, full of catchy, brilliant tunes that have brightened up the revision period and reacquainted me with my MCR days.

Traditional folk music at its experimental best

Ben Ray
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Traditional folk music at its experimental best

The double bass isn’t usually the first instrument one thinks of when one thinks of folk music—but the Miranda Sykes’ latest album, borrowed places, seems to stand out in many different ways. You can tell from the first track that it is a beautiful, lovingly crafted collection of carefully chosen songs.

Traditional music, sometimes prey to simplistic repetition of lyric and melody, has sometimes been given a bad press. This album is a clear sign that the form can be the complete opposite—expressive, heartfelt and, most importantly, hugely listenable. Sykes is a veteran of the folk music scene—after playing for over 20 years with such big name groups as Show Of Hands. This solo album displays her verve and skill, with each tune telling a story and holding a personal connection to Sykes.

Coming mainly from her native Lancashire, the stories, in her words, seek to “take the audience on a journey that resonates with us all”: whether it be the exploration of a family story and a mysterious brooch handed down the generations or an interpretation of a local folk tale, each track introduces the listener to a different scene. By the end of the album, it ing near non-existent, she manages to carry feels like we’ve almost been inside a conversation.

A personal favourite is ‘Panchpuran’, telling the story of a a family emigration from India to England and the traditional cooking methods linked to their ancestral home— a testament to the diverse, almost eclectic collection of themes and threads this album contains.

It is Sykes’ distinctive voice, however, that really brings this music alive—even when the accompaniment is sparse to the extent of being non-existent, she manages to carry the tune and bring the lyrics alive.

And when the double bass and guitar do feature prominently, such as on the final track ‘Sea Glass’, its deep echoing resonance seems to give the music a new depth.

Borrowed Places really is a beautifully expressed piece of traditional musics, engaging and haunting— and I think we can all agree that traditional music just needs more double bass. Or at least, more double bass as good as this.

Choose wisely, it’s in your hands

Alice Robinson
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Choose wisely, it’s in your hands

The leading couple get married. The villain dies. The protagonist dies. Everyone dies. A happily ever after. How to end a story? A bad ending to a book, play, film, can almost feel like a betrayal: a betrayal of either fiction’s conventions, or of what we see as reality.

Ernest Hemingway wrote 47 different finales to his 1929 masterpiece A Farewell to Arms in an attempt to feel “satisfied”, to find that elusive perfect finish, to “get the words right”. Yet five years ago, Scribner published all these endings in one volume, each possibility offering a fresh perspective on the story. ‘The Nada Ending’ and its tone of apathetic resignation—“That is all there is to the story. Catherine will die and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you”—gives a quite different impression to this rather more spiritual option—“The thing is that there is nothing you can do about it. It is all right if you believe in God and love God.”

But as fascinating as these options are, Hemingway did ultimately choose just one—so why publish all the others? Multiple endings allow a consumer to decide for themselves what happened, taking power away from the creator in doing so, although of course all endings only exist because of the creator. They allow a sense of freedom within restriction, something which has been exploited to its fullest by the videogame industry. There are only a certain number of endings available—but there are enough options to pique one’s interest over and over again to try to get a different ending. You can see it both as a weird kind of reincarnation, and, more cynically, as a marketing ploy, a way of ensuring constant audience engagement.

The internet-fuelled success of Clue, the 1985 film of the board game Cluedo, proves this—released with three different endings, it was not successful commercially or critically at the time, but has since become a cult-classic. Netflix is looking at creating its own interactive, branchnarrative show in the near future. The streaming service has been at the forefront of television innovation for a while now, and at first glance this interactivity feels a very modern phenomenon. It combines video games with internet fanfiction and discussion boards to create a heady cocktail of consumer power, all whilst ultimate power still remains with the creator. But this technology has been around in book-form for decades. Remember Goosebumps: You Choose the Scare? Stemming from publisher RA Montgomery’s bestselling Choose Your Own Adventure series, these so-called ‘game-books’ address the reader in the second-person, confronting them with a constant series of choices, each of which leads them to a different page with a different and conflicting fate lying in store.

Despite a period of huge popularity, the videogame industry all but wiped out these books: Montgomery’s series ended finally in 1998. What they showed, nonetheless, was the importance of engagement, something companies are obsessed with today. They demonstrated the importance of keeping your audience on their toes. They also, and perhaps most importantly, worked against the idea, so important in children’s literature, of a moral ending. Readers were not rewarded for ‘being good’. The quantity of endings, the fact that one could end up with a ‘bad’ ending despite making moral choices and vice versa, is both true to reality, and false to fiction.

In a way, then, multiple endings are subversive, preventing didacticism through sheer quantity. This quality is transferred to theatre in Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges. Despite having only two actors, the play has ten characters and sixteen possible endings. Depending on whether or not the character of Celia Teasdale decides to have a cigarette in the first five seconds of the play, several people might get divorced, married, start affairs, have children, or die. Playing to the unique liveness of theatre, the four different two-way decisions continually re-emphasise the element of chance in both theatre, and in life, like the Gwyneth Paltrow film, Sliding Doors.

But multiple endings don’t simply add to the sense of reality. They also emphasise the importance of decision-making. In 1934-6, Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th positioned real people as jury, (a bit like Channel 4’s recent documentary The Trial: A Murder in the Family), leaving the final judgement, and so the ending of the play, entirely down to them. The fate of characters depends entirely on real people. The decision made cannot be changed—you cannot rewind theatre. This technique was put to even more dramatic effect in one of Derren Brown’s Experiments. Looking at the impact of crowd mentality, a studio audience were led to believe they could control what happened to a real person—with tragic consequences. The director of Late Shift, Weber, remarked: “The format is about decisions and consequences, so we wanted to show that in real life, you cannot shoot people”.

Unlike in videogames, there are no multiple lives. Multiple endings give consumers a degree of responsibility. This, ironically, can simultaneously make one feel even less in control. Your actions are restricted. Whatever you do, your path is mapped out for you. Multiple endings, as well as being a kind of gimmick, equally force a consumer to consider the bigger questions of life in general. Do you like choice? Do you like knowing all the endings are mapped out? To have just one ending, take road A. Or to choose your own adventure.

SnapShot: Techno where you’d least expect it

Matthew Roller
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SnapShot: Techno where you’d least expect it

It’s 2am, but it feels like the music has been playing for hours. This must be the best set I’ve ever heard—the pounding bass is met with some more ambient interludes, with acid licks tying it all together. And yet the music is almost secondary to my current experience. I feel almost out of control of my upper body, which sways, twists and shakes to the bass line. My head can’t focus on the music, with the events of the preceding hours proving too much. My hands are still shaking somewhat from the substances I’ve taken, my fingers moving uncontrollably and irregularly. I know that I have been in this state far too often recently, but my lifestyle isn’t going to change any time soon.

The music starts to take over, and I lose all focus. Looking around, I realise that I can’t see anyone I know around me. I start to panic. Moving around, I see nothing but empty spaces, until I see out of the corner of my eye my friend, Jack. He too is in quite a state, juddering turbulently to whatever it is he is hearing. Catching his glazed-over eyes, I put two fingers to my mouth and gesture. I don’t smoke, but I need to get out of this place and take in some fresh air.

We head down the stairs, almost tripping such is the darkness, and head outside. “How are you doing?” I ask, trying to detract from my own situation. “This isn’t going well,” he replies. “This set is outrageous, but my head space isn’t right. We need to get out of here before I get any more trapped.”

Our conversation continues as we stand outside in the cold air. I start to shiver, and realise that my jacket is still inside. “Let’s just go back in briefly and get everything,” I tell Jack. He nods, puts out his cigarette, and follows me back.

I swipe my Bod card and go back upstairs. Hitting save on this bitch of an essay, I pick up my laptop and notes, and carry them with my headphones back to my room. Another caffeine-fuelled, unproductive night in the College library has ended in disappointment, and as the SoundCloud mix I listened to dies down in my head, I make my way to bed.

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