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The death of Fullscreen

Lizzie Monaghan
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The death of Fullscreen

Have you ever heard of Fullscreen? The chances are, you haven’t – and that’s a shame. Come January, you will probably never hear anything about it again.

Fullscreen is, in fact, a video media company. Back in April 2016, it launched an online video subscription site, designed to rival the more dominant and competitive services like YouTube Red – premium-tier on-demand video sites, which create their own exclusive original content as well as hosting other shows.

“We wanted to provide a new platform for the breakthrough creators, personalities and storytellers of social entertainment  – and the fans who love them,” says Fullscreen’s CEO and founder, George Strompolos. The “mission” of Fullscreen, he affirms, is “to empower creators”. Since its release it has indeed been host to a number of excellent original serials produced by emerging online influencers, comedians and filmmakers.

“Millions downloaded our app and hundreds of thousands became paying subscribers.”

Strompolos himself had previously worked for YouTube and the company that owns it, Google. An intimate awareness the growing gulf between the corporation and its talent would certainly account for the centrality of community and creator-collaboration in his new company’s mission statement.

Interestingly, the majority of Fullscreen’s more prominent content creators – the likes of Grace Helbig, Shane Dawson, Jack Howard, Dean Dobbs and Hazel Hayes – first found their creative feet (and their media following) on YouTube. Many of them are still creating content on the site. However, whilst YouTube’s format may have favoured these talented, though medium-sized, content creators in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the same cannot be said of the site today.

Sure, YouTube’s corporate evolution may not have affected so much the giants of the community, with subscribers well into the millions. But the increasing precariousness of YouTube’s ad-revenue system, the inaccessibility of its algorithm, the ever-growing pressure to produce videos with high production value, and the recent introduction of its premium tier, YouTube Red, have been pushing its smaller creators under. Even taking into account the additional revenue provided to creators through working with brands and in-video product placement, making videos on YouTube alone simply isn’t enough to pay the bills of an aspiring filmmaker.

Financially, staying with YouTube is becoming less and less of an option for ‘breakthrough creators’. As such, many have utilised external measures in order to stay afloat – often it’s through Patreon, or streaming sites like Twitch. In the case of aspiring YouTube filmmakers, collaborating with Fullscreen would have been ideal.

One of Fullscreen’s latest and most compelling serials would be psychological crime thriller Prank Me, created by Jesse Cleverly and Paul Neafcy, and directed by YouTube filmmaker Hazel Hayes. Hayes has already illustrated her ability to unsettle in her YouTube portfolio, perhaps most notably in her short-film SEPTEM. In Prank Me, she generates a stomach churning sense of unease and dread, and she places her finger to the pulse of current fears about the culture of viral prank videos on YouTube.

The serial plays out the story of teen vlogger Jasper Perkins, as pressure from his expanding fan base leads him to conduct increasingly dangerous pranks, leading him down a criminal road from which there is no way back. The series focuses on the troubling human implications of current social media. In nurturing an intense anxiety about the disturbing potential of current or imminent technology, it stands strong as a sister to shows like Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. Hayes has a power to craft a drama that at once captivates and unsettles, treating frightening concepts with exceptional nuance

Yet, despite the excellent quality of original serials like Prank Me, and the initial promise of the site in general, Fullscreen’s video on-demand subscription service is set for closure in January 2018.

Whilst Fullscreen may not have taken the internet by storm, one cannot underestimate the significance of its closure. It shows just how hard it is going to be for the medium-sized creators of YouTube to break away from the platform which made them. At the same time, it says a lot about the increasing willingness of creators to break away in the first place. Fullscreen’s site is not the first competitive effort to go south, and it won’t be the last, either. But it’s only a matter of time before something could stick. If a competitor has the right idea, the right form, and at the right time with support from sufficiently influential creators, then YouTube, along with its premium service, could be in trouble.

Nevertheless, Fullscreen’s closure is a real tragedy for many reasons. In particular, its mission statement put community at the core of the company. This element of community is something which YouTube appears to have lost along its corporate journey, but is also something which was vital in YouTube’s definitive success. Additionally, as the company puts in its twitter statement, the impressive quantity and quality of content that they have already produced in the brief time since their launch will have to be given out to “a different home”. At this stage, it is difficult to say where this “home” might be. Optimistically speaking, they could find a home on a recognised site like Vimeo. More pessimistically, they could be placed on another site even lesser-known than Fullscreen, or put back onto YouTube where they’ll be lost to obscurity, or maybe they won’t be re-uploaded anywhere at all.

But perhaps most tragically of all, Fullscreen’s closure will go unnoticed by many, since nobody seemed to know what it was, or what it stood for, in the first place.

Imagining Idris Elba

Lydia Stephens
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Imagining Idris Elba

#OscarsSoWhite seemed to come and go. Viewers held their breath for the opening speech but soon after curtains closed, narratives about the events seemed disbanded and dissembled. Then came speculation surrounding the Nation’s favourite spy, James Bond. Would we get a black or female Bond? Discussions persisted, with the favourite being Idris Elba and in February, after a joke about the role, speculation increased. September proposed eight main contenders, Elba being one. Yet with this came poorly-worded discourses on the ‘appropriateness’ of such casting.

Although there are hostile opponents, the general feeling is discomfort. Whilst the film industry struggles to justify its lack of diversity, for the British public, the issue is not that they don’t want a black James Bond, but that they cannot imagine one. Elba’s flourishing television career indicates the progress TV is making in diversity, compared to film. We know that diversity does exist in England but there is reluctance to allow this to be reflected in the sacred, untouchable media of the motion picture. Both Elba and Abraham Attah remained un-nominated for Oscars after their roles in Beasts of No Nation to much public confusion, with the same true of Jason Mitchell in Straight Outta Compton.

There is something about Elba specifically. Perhaps it’s his tolerance and softness towards the issues. His speech in the House of Commons on TV’s lack of diversity stresses how the issue manifests across all fields as well as race. He argued “when you don’t reflect the real world too much, talent is trashed”. If people cannot see someone in a role, they will never be given the opportunity. Instead, black actors are often stereotyped or compartmentalised. Viola Davis has noted the limited roles available to her, who, since her role in The Help frequently receives scripts for the roles of maids. In the past, the majority of Oscar winning black actors have portrayed a narrow range of characters, principally: slave, maid, jezebel, thug, ‘Magical Negro’, or a famous personality in a biopic.

The fact people ‘just can’t see’ black actors in important roles is due to conditioning exerted by the media. Our imagination is lacking as we just aren’t used to seeing the diversity of life reflected in film. For James Bond, lack of imagination is fuelled by narrow ideas of the perfect English man. Critics forget that today the Englishman isn’t the same as a 1950s English man.

Today, in order to place anyone who is different from the norm in a lead film role would be a political statement, as opposed to an exhibition of raw talent. Recently, a precedent has been set. Ground-breaking films such as Get Out, Moonlight, Loving, Fences, and Hidden Figures call for a more representative Academy.

We often fall into the cliché of heralding film as an art form for all, which shows real stories and real lives, but for it to remain in this image it must commit, as an art, to imitating life in a more honest way.

Disney buys Fox’s entertainment assets for $52.4 billion

Jonnie Barrow
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Disney buys Fox’s entertainment assets for $52.4 billion

Analysing business deals is normally a pretty dry affair, but the recently announced Disney/Fox merger is not just any business deal. Disney’s payment of $52.4 billion for the entertainment division of 21st Century Fox has some serious ramifications on our media and how we consume it, many of which are far more wide-ranging than you might imagine.

Firstly, it’s worth clarifying what exactly Disney have paid all that money for. Fox have sold off nearly all of their entertainment divisions, handing Disney their entire movie-making operation, a lot of their TV stations (including National Geographic and the FX Network), their 39% stake in Sky, and enough of a stake in the Hulu streaming service to make Disney the majority stakeholder in that business.

Fox are retaining control of their international portfolio of newspapers and their US sports and news channels (including the infamous Fox News). This is partly due to some hefty anti-trust laws in the US, but the other reason will have untold effects on our “democratic process”. Selling off these extraneous assets allows Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to focus on his political agenda, paying closer attention to the dissemination of news and his influence over politicians.

But never mind that heavy stuff – this is the Film and TV Section, so let’s talk movies! Not only do Disney now have control of major franchises such as the Alien and Avatar sequels, but the Marvel team now have the rights back for the X-Men and the Fantastic 4, meaning we can finally see them team up with the Avengers on the big screen! As exciting as it might be to see Wolverine fight Iron Man, it’s a little sad when you realise that incredible, adult-oriented side-projects like Deadpool and Logan probably won’t be made anymore under the family-friendly Disney brand. This could also be the case for adult TV shows on FX like It’s Always Sunny and Archer. 

Speaking of TV shows, TV in the UK may be in for a substantial shake-up. Murdoch had previously been in the process of bidding for the remaining 61% of Sky they didn’t already own, but kept being rejected because our regulatory heads were wary of creating an environment where a British equivalent of Fox News could thrive. Under Disney’s ownership, the bid is much more likely to go through, likely leading to the death of Sky News and a vastly changed UK TV landscape. 

That’s nothing compared to what’s likely to happen to streaming, however. It’s been an open secret for a while now that Disney have been looking to create their own streaming service, replete with their entire back catalogue of Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Disney content, along with some unique shows based on these properties. They now have access to Fox’s entire back catalogue too, so they have even more content they can remove from Netflix and Amazon Prime to show exclusively on their own service. More importantly, now that they own the controlling stake in Hulu, they have the infrastructure to easily roll this service out. All of this, combined with Netflix’s well-reported financial struggles and Apple’s imminent entry into the streaming race, likely signals the death knell for Netflix. 

There is no understating the myriad effects of this deal, and this article has been dense enough without even touching on the likely death of Blue Sky Animation Studios (why would Disney need yet another animation studio to worry about?) or Fox Searchlight (who have been a vital cog in the indie filmmaking machine). Nobody knows where this could all lead – perhaps a golden age of moviemaking and television, or perhaps an unassailable entertainment monopoly that leads to the death of creativity in Hollywood. Your guess is as good as mine, folks.

Balliol accused of bowing to “anti-colonial” pressure by moving Viceroy’s portrait

Greg Ritchie
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Balliol accused of bowing to “anti-colonial” pressure by moving Viceroy’s portrait

Balliol have moved an imperial statesman’s portrait out of their hall, prompting accusations of “anti-colonial” motives.

The 1913 oil painting of George Curzon – the former Viceroy of India and British Foreign Secretary – hung in Balliol’s main hall for decades. It was taken down early last year at the height of the student decolonisation movement, though the college insisted this was purely for maintenance work.

However, despite the repairs being completed earlier this year, the painting was not returned to the hall. Instead, the portrait has been moved into the office of history professor Martin Conway.

Nigel Biggar – a theology professor at Christ Church – accused Balliol of submitting to “anti-imperial ideology”, though the college insist that the painting still “hangs prominently in a busy teaching area.”

The portrait initially disappeared at the the height of the debate sparked by the Rhodes Must Fall movement last year. Both Balliol undergraduates and graduates passed motions demanding the removal of the colonialist’s statue from Oriel.

Balliol’s JCR motion, which passed by seventy votes to twelve, included the line: “Balliol has its own colonialist, George Curzon, honoured with a painting hung in Hall.”

Despite the growing student concern, college authorities claimed the painting was removed purely for cleaning and repair work.

Last summer, the Master of Balliol, Sir Drummond Bone, reassured a descendant of the former Viceroy that, despite “the heat generated over statues in Oxford”, the painting was undergoing conservation work.

This maintenance was completed at a cost of £3,200 earlier this year.

Professor Biggar – who last week was criticised by almost 60 Oxford academics for his defence of the British Empire’s moral legacy – said: “Oxford colleges are full of overwhelmingly male portraits, so there is a case for more diversity.

“But I would object if there is a general stripping of our walls of any memory of our imperial past. Our past is full of things, some of which we can be proud, and Curzon was a great man in many respects.

“But right now colleges are vulnerable to anti-imperialist ideology, which is shared by some senior members. If Curzon disappears into some back office, I would strongly suspect that political correctness and a too-uncritical deference to anti-colonialist ideology would be the reason.”

A Balliol spokesperson said: “The painting hangs prominently in a busy teaching area for historians, where it often stimulates informed historical discussion and debate among students and academics. It is therefore absurd to allege the portrait has been removed from sight to avoid any controversy about Lord Curzon and his time.

“The painting was in a very bad state of repair two years ago and had to be sent away from the college for restoration work to ensure its survival.”

Curzon’s portrait was replaced by four smaller portraits of women painted by Emily Carrington Freeman, an undergraduate studying fine art. It was the first time a current student’s work had been hung in the hall.

Gender pronouns matter, especially at school

Brian Wong
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Gender pronouns matter, especially at school

Joshua Sutcliffe, a teacher at an Oxford secondary school, was recently suspended for referring to a transgender student as a girl as opposed to a boy. The act of misgendering was revealed to the public through a complaint launched by the parent of the student. Given that the case is currently under investigation, it may be worth taking a step back and reflecting upon the dangers of misgendering in general.

Misgendering is often deeply discomforting and potentially triggering for trans individuals. For individuals who have openly come out as trans, it may be associated with memories of historical abuses directed towards the individuals on the misguided perceptual, socially constructed basis that they are somehow ‘deviant’ or ‘misfits’ with respect to cisheteronormative gender expectations.

Alternatively, it may be correlated with specific traumatic episodes of transphobic bullying, violence, and harassment, such that the act of misgendering could instigate flashbacks that are vivid and excruciating to bear for affected individuals. Even in its least harmful form, misgendering actively reminds the subject of the days prior to their coming out or coming to terms with their self-identification, more often than not featuring deeply rooted feelings of dissonance and anxiety.

For individuals in the closet, misgendering serves to reinforce the controlling images that police their behaviours, actions, speech, and thought – making coming forth with their gender identities highly difficult. Trans students are particularly vulnerable, given their situation within power structures that are often difficult to navigate and obstinate towards recognising their identities.

Secondly, misgendering transforms spaces into actively hostile environments, through signaling that the intimate identities of trans individuals are up for debate and questioning.

Imagine studying or working in an environment where despite repeated attempts to establish your name to your friends, your friends insist on calling you – not by abbreviations or names that are even proximate to your own – but by a name that you deeply and repulsively dislike. Now imagine that the name they call you shapes the attitudes and expectations they hold towards you, as well as policing the interactions between you and your friends.

Misgendering signals to trans individuals, as the above plausibly may to you, that their gender identities are neither decided by nor controllable by them; that the majoritarian whims can dictate whether they are accorded with the most basic respect to which every human being is entitled. It erases the voices and autonomy of trans individuals, by articulating the bigoted view that their most intimate preferences and values do not matter. It suggests that their very existence could be ignored at the whims of callous external bodies.

More fundamentally, the process renders spaces unwelcoming for trans individuals. It makes the trans student in your class less likely to come forth with answers or questions, because they fear being shunned and humiliated in front of the rest of the class. It renders the trans worker in your workplace emotionally drained and apprehensive of working in a group, because group work – to them – implies a continuous uphill battle against repeated prescription of an erroneous gender identity upon them.

Finally, misgendering exerts substantial pressure on trans individuals to engage in the emotionally exhaustive labour of performing their gender. In more conservative settings, this may be the performance of the gender to which they are assigned at birth (and feel deeply incongruous to). This is actively harmful, as it forces trans individuals to suppress their true identities and continually enact rituals and performances that are contrived at best, and self-deprecating at worst. The exhaustion comes from the need to maintain an external appearance that is so fundamentally antithetical to whom they really are.

What can be done? For starters, let’s do away with the egregious association of gender pronouns with the ongoing free speech battle concerning ‘offense’ on campuses. Much like safe spaces and trigger warnings, gender pronouns are not about free speech and most definitely not about what is often trivialised by conservatives as ‘offense-seeking snowflake culture’. Not misgendering others isn’t a matter of ‘PC culture’ – it’s a matter of basic decency. In a liberal society, there exist certain baselines that we accept that we never cross. Not misgendering others should be one of them; encouraging individuals to use the correct pronouns would be a step in the right direction.

Melodrama Review: honest without being embarrassing

Lydia Stephens
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Melodrama Review: honest without being embarrassing

Lorde’s aptly named Melodrama captures the period after clichéd teenage years but before adulthood, taking the neurotic theatrics we associate with millennials and painting them as considered and uncontrived. It makes the drama of parties, break-ups, hook-ups, and hangovers seems profound and finds an honesty you can listen to without feeling embarrassed.

Excluding the maturer “Liability” and “Writer in the Dark”, the album’s subject matter is lyrically jaded with the knowledge of how ‘first world problem’ it is. The lead single “Green Light,” leads into “Sober,” but we aren’t given the party that precedes sobriety till later. All the songs are told in a sort of bitter-sweet hindsight.

Otherwise ‘cheesy’ songs like “The Louvre” and Supercut” are simply too self-aware to be so. Lyrics of young love like “sweetheart,” and “quiet afternoon crush,” are ironised against “psychopathic crush,” and “violent overnight rush,” so as to avoid being too sickly-sweet. These anthemic declarations of love fade into the “Boom Boom Boom” of music heard through club walls onto the street. Even the most tender heartbreak in “Hard Feelings,” fades into a rogue upbeat pop tune – one moment comforting, the next telling you ‘get over it.’ It’s one of many disclaimers that this is not just a Generation Y album. This sentiment is put most bluntly in the album’s eponymous track, the biggest nod to its self-awareness. What did we expect of the album? Lorde reminds us: “We told you this was melodrama.”

These melodramas of twenty-somethings are pitched against the ‘bigger picture.’ In “Homemade Dynamite” a drop coincides with the sound of a fired-gun. But the ‘drop’ is more like a bubble popping than a speaker exploding. The speaker does explode in the final track “Perfect Places,” with a gun being cocked alongside the chorus. Representative of the whole album the song details the familiar house parties we attend to avoid real world problems like those of 2016-17. Instead of being ‘young and free’, Lorde describes a generation “young and ashamed.” Lorde herself wanted to create something “pop and obvious (that also) feels profound.”

Melodrama has a unique ability to make drunk antics sound as deep and unironic as they feel at the time. As far as subdued-pop albums aimed at twenty-somethings go, Melodrama is considered but not neurotic; honest but not whiny; open but not embarrassing, and as far 2017 albums go, commercially successful but deeply underrated. 

12 books to get you through 2018

Amber Sidney-Woollett
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12 books to get you through 2018

January – Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

“Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.”

At the beginning of a new year we often set impossible standards for ourselves, believing happiness will be attained by losing that stubborn kilo. Winterson’s childhood autobiography reminds us we should be less hard on ourselves and choose paths we want to follow, not those others draw for us in the sand.

February – Despair by Vladimir Nabokov

“If I were not perfectly sure of my power to write and of my marvellous ability to express ideas with the utmost grace and vividness…”

So opens Nabokov’s hysterical story of a man who plots his own murder. Whilst February marks ‘Valentine’s Day,’ a traditional celebration of deflated expectations, you certainly won’t be left despairing.

March – The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

“Keep passing the open windows.”

This is the mantra of the Berry family who decide to open a hotel. A book of hilarity and tragedy, from New Hampshire to Vienna and back to New York, The Hotel New Hampshire will stay with you long after you have read the last page.

April – Academy Street by Mary Costello

“She did not know how to reassemble herself.”

Costello tells the life-story of a young Irish Catholic woman, Tess, who moves to New York. Her life in the Big Apple is lonely and insignificant until she finds herself pregnant from a one night stand. This novella is about the measure of love and the measure of a life. It attempts to equate the two.

May – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.”

If you’re feeling especially brave/European – read in French for the genuine experience. This book may break your heart but it will also put it back together again.

June – Self Portrait by Man Ray

“We cannot revive something that is alive just as we cannot revive anything that is dead.”

A surprisingly evocative autobiography, Self Portrait is both factual and imaginative. Ray is technical and lyrical in telling the story of his art, and by extension, his own self.

July – The Collector by John Fowles

“Sometimes losing is winning.”

Though The Collector has now become an emblem of human darkness, perhaps as a result of the movie franchise which developed around it, we should not forget that this novel is alive with human heat and light: passion.

August – The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Obreht journeys us through the landscape of Yugoslavian mythology. Her allusive narrative does not allow itself to be pinned down despite the rich history of her characters. We learn there is always some fact to be found in fiction.

September – Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smoulder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”

Hope. That is the feeling which one takes away from this novel. Hope, above all. Hope, in the face of every kind of natural (or man-made) disaster. Golden’s portrait of a Geisha powerfully combines history and art as he narrates the life of Chiyo, who continuously strives to maintain her identity in a world which forces different masks upon her.

October – M Train by Patti Smith

“Not all dreams need to be realised.”

M Train is the older sister of the acclaimed Just Kids, and becomes a representation of time and self which surpasses Smith’s own expectations of her work. October is a time of change and welcoming the next season. Though trees change colour and lose their leaves, this period of reconstruction can be magical and beautiful. At this time we should congratulate ourselves for being able to revel in grief and loss.

November – White Oleander by Janet Fitch

“One can survive anything. The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright.”

This used to be my favourite book. White Oleander is a troubled and mesmerising story about a girl, Astrid, who moves between different foster homes after her mother murders her lover. It is rich with pain and passion and even a little bit of faith.

December – The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

“To say ‘I love you,’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’”

Christmas is a time of giving and celebrating the life you have made for yourself among family and friends. These are perhaps powerful and relevant words to carry you into the New Year and remember the one which has just passed. The Fountainhead is the story of the will of one conflicting with the will of many; do not lose yourself at Christmas.

An open letter to Santa

Meha Razdan
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An open letter to Santa

Dear Mister Claus,

Most years, I’d be sending you a list of presents, and assurances that I’ve been well-behaved. Well hold your horses/reindeer, because this isn’t most years. This year, I’m a woke Oxonian. This year, I have purpose. This year, I’m done being nice, and this year, I’m putting you on the naughty list.

I believe the time has come to reform the outdated workings of Christmas. To that end, I present to you the Five Theses – they’re like the 95 Theses, except there are fewer of them, they’re not written by a German monk, and they’re directed at you.

  1. Stop giving coal to naughty children. It is frankly an irresponsible waste of the Earth’s finite resources. Have some compassion and leave the exploitation of fossil fuels in 2017. I mean not all of us have reindeer-power to rely on. The rest of us need coal. It is the cornerstone of modern life, and without it our lives would grind to a halt. But here you are, giving a scarce commodity to spoilt kids who have done nothing to deserve it. I suggest you think again. Don’t make the world suffer for the actions of bratty kids, you thoughtless bearded twit.
  2. Develop a keener and more active interest in the wellbeing of reindeer. Apparently polar bears aren’t the only arctic creatures whose lives you delight in ruining. Did you know the typical diet of reindeer includes lichen, willow, and birch? Clearly not, because you remain apathetic while year after year, all people provide for the poor creatures is carrots, with no lichen in sight. If you’re going to make reindeer do all your legwork, at least make sure they’re fed correctly. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, you stood by silently while Rudolph was harassed for years for a physical feature over which he had no control. Then you decided to force him (and the other reindeer) into dangerous, unpaid labour when you deemed it convenient? And you’re the one passing moral judgements on the world’s children?
  3. Find better, less invasive ways to monitor good or bad behaviour. Watching children while they’re sleeping is never a positive. Given that you’re an old man doing it in preparation for climbing down said children’s chimneys in the dead of night, I’m surprised you haven’t been the subject of a lawsuit. Did you not watch Spotlight? Connection to the Catholic Church is no longer a sufficient cover-up for this kind of behaviour.
  4. Have a little dignity. You were supposed to be a bishop. A bishop. You were supposed to wear a bishop’s mitre and everything. But a glance at the history books will tell us that after Thomas Nast drew a cartoon of you in a red suit, and the Coca-Cola company standardised the image as part of their advertising campaign, you adopted that as your trademark look. Supposedly, you safeguard the moral character of the nation’s children…but all you are is a commercialised sell-out. You have about as much substance as the Michelin Man, and he’s just supposed to sell tires.
  5. Do something about the mistletoe. You may not have been responsible for the mistletoe tradition, but as the face of Christmas, do you not feel an obligation to deal with the fact that every year, millions of people hang toxic plants all over their homes? And when I say toxic, I mean it in many ways. Firstly, it creates uncomfortable situations in which people are forced to kiss each other without explicit consent as a result of overwhelming social pressure thinly veiled as ‘tradition’. Secondly, it’s literally poisonous. What if a child swallows it accidentally? Or is that just how you whittle down the naughty list?

Having addressed these demands, you should move on to ensuring your elves are paid the National Living Wage.

Happy Christmas,

Meha

All Souls plans plaque to mark donor’s slavery links

Naomi Packer
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All Souls plans plaque to mark donor’s slavery links

All Souls College has commissioned a ‘memorial tablet’ outside the Codrington Library in recognition of the slaves owned by the building’s benefactor.

Codrington, a sugar plantation magnate from Barbados, left part of his fortune to the college in 1710 to establish the library, and has become the latest in a series of colonial icons to be held under scrutiny by academics and students at the University.

The idea of erecting a plaque arose from a conference held at All Souls in October last year to discuss Codrington’s legacy with members of the local community, and consultation for the project included campaigners and a descendant of one of those enslaved by Codrington.

In its planning application to Oxford City Council, Dr Sarah Beaver, the domestic bursar at All Souls, said that the plaque is intended to “serve as a reminder” that “Codrington’s wealth was derived in large part from estates which were dependent on slave labour”.

The plans have emerged after the University faced controversy over the academic Nigel Biggar defending certain aspects of colonialism in an article for The Times last week.

Common Ground Oxford, the student campaign group which headed much of the criticism of Biggar, said that although they “welcome all efforts to confront Oxford’s colonial past”, they were critical of its overall significance.

A spokeswoman told Cherwell: “The decision to erect a small plaque outside of the library seems a semantic and peripheral change relative to the centrality of Codrington’s statue in the heart of All Souls’ academic space.”

The group have called upon All Souls to take further action to confront its colonial legacy, including the renaming of the Codrington library and for the statue of Codrington, which is currently displayed in the centre of the library, to be moved to a museum.

Common Ground told Cherwell that while the statue remains, the college remains “a living contradiction” and presents “a warped, whitewashed view of Codrington and his legacy”.

All Souls College has said they have no current plans to remove the statue.

Life Divided: Christmas Films

Julia Alsop and Dominic Tomlinson
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Life Divided: Christmas Films

For: Julia Alsop

‘Buddy the Elf, what’s your favourite colour?’

‘keep the change, you filthy animal’

Like it or not, from November onwards you’ll be hearing iconic quotes from cheesy Christmas movies always and everywhere. Embrace it or Crimbo will be miserable for you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as cynical as any other Oxford Humanities student. RomComs make me cringe, and I’m definitely not a Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte or Miranda. Yet somehow, if you stick some tinsel and a child’s hopeful wish to Santa in the plot, I become an over-emotional, warm-hearted believer (I’m not even ashamed).

So what makes Christmas films different? There’s the twinkly lights and snowy scenes, the childhood-themed nostalgia (Is that the Polar Express’ bell ringing?), the sentimental soundtracks, and even Donald Trump’s cameo in ‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’, which now gets a sad chuckle. But overall it’s the melting of the protagonists’ hard hearts that warms my icy soul into submission.

Just when you’re all Oxmas-ed out, December hits and you begin feeling Scroogey, telling your family that you’ve ‘basically done Christmas anyway’. So you sit wrapped up in your duvet cocoon, clutching a hot chocolate (with the necessary shot of Baileys), and whack on The Grinch. Go ahead, admit you identify with him. How could you not?

Following Michaelmas term, you, like all the Christmas protagonists, will be irritable and simply intolerant of festive spirit. But like the protagonists, you can’t avoid magically realising the importance of family time (except with that one weird cousin), rather than quality time with your reading list. We all do it anyway, but the plots of Christmas movies give you actual permission to prioritise fun over work. Above all, unlike (dumb) RomComs, the morals are always ‘wholesome’ and not just about falling in love with some pretty person who isn’t quite as vain as they initially seem to be (yawn).

The nostalgia of Christmas films mean that, even if it is objectively an awful film(‘Nativity 2’ I’m looking at you), watching the same ones year after year become a ritualistic and romanticised part of the festive season. I freely admit that I become basic as soon as 1st December comes around, but to watch the romance of Buddy and Jovie unfold or to witness Macaulay Culkin take down the Wet Bandits has to make you feel festive. Oh, and controversial opinion, but this excludes Love Actually. We all know that that film is ridiculous.

Against: Dominic Tomlinson

I’m not trying to sound like a Grinch, but I have to be honest. Christmas movies are pretty terrible.

I love Christmas as much as the next person, and although I’m no expert, I’m a huge fan of Cinema too – this is why the constant loop of ‘festive’ films that litter our screens over the holidays fills me with anything but the holiday spirit. Of course once in while there will be a classic – I’m not against ‘It’s a wonderful life’, ‘Elf’ or ‘Die Hard’ (objectively a Christmas movie) – but Christmas movies are generally appalling.

The worst Christmas films tend to be so bad for all the same reasons. Firstly, they’re so lazily formulaic that a room of typewriting apes are no doubt halfway through the latest caper. In summary, Vince Vaughn and Cameron Diaz will be a hapless married couple, inviting the in-laws for a calm, controlled Christmas day, only for it to all go wrong and hilarity to ensue. Believe it or not, most of these films aren’t written by primates – ‘Christmas with the Kranks’ is even based on a John Grisham story – yet their plots rarely extend beyond the level of intrigue and complexity you’d find in a Christmas cracker joke.

Yes, other genres suffer from predicable and formulaic plots (we’re all thinking of horror films here), but at least they’re nowhere near as sickeningly sentimental as Christmas films. They’re so saccharin they make a Mars bar seem as bitter as a recently divorced lemon spending Christmas day with a ready-meal and a bottle of gin. Happy endings belong in a family film, but there’s no need for the not-so-subtle lesson that any trial can be overcome by the spirit of Christmas, love and family. Haven’t these people heard of tequila?

Also, thinking about it, most of these films don’t really have anything to do with Christmas. Instead, the plot has had fairy lights and tinsel draped onto it, and some poorly-paid set designer has stuck a fir tree in the background. Oh, and of course it’s snowing. But why would they do this? Well my naive little friend, to make money out of us overly-nostalgic nitwits of course. ‘Love Actually’ could take place at any time of the year, but would it have had a fraction of its box-office success? I think not. The hard truth is that these films are guaranteed a large enough audience from those who are already on a Christmas high.

Of course you can’t avoid watching Christmas films (I challenge you to try). But please choose wisely. Unless you do actually, genuinely love ‘Surviving Christmas’, in which case, who am I to judge… (judging you).

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