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89th Academy Awards: Predictions
Well what an incredible film year it’s been. We’ve seen Marvel smash box office records, the DCEU continue to struggle in its quest for superhero domination and a massive increase in popularity for independent films across the UK and the World. However, once more, it is that time of the year when our focus turns to the Oscars, that one incredible night when the entire entertainment world is watching. Funnily enough, if anyone needed any proof as to how important the night is to Hollywood, when I was having lunch one day in the Hard Rock Café in Los Angeles, I was told that instead of Christmas Day, the one day off work the waitresses had all year was the day of the Oscars. Anyway, without further ado, here are my Oscar predictions for the awards on Sunday 26th February. Will La La Land dance its way to glory, or will Moonlight’s luck shine upon its chances? Only time will tell, but until then, here are my predictions:
Best Film Editing—La La Land
As is traditional, the Best Editing Oscar is a key precursor to the Best Picture victor. Although not the same result that year, Tom Cross walked away with the Oscar for Whiplash, and will most likely do so again for his terrific work on making a painstakingly-shot musical feel like a fleeting glimpse at Seb and Mia’s life. Expect him to become a winner once more.
Best Original Song- ‘City of Stars’—La La Land
It is extremely unlikely that anything other than La La Land will walk away with both (or even either of) the awards for the music on the big night itself, and rightly so. Hurwitz’s music is magical, inspiring, and tremendously catching, and ‘City of Stars’ is the emotional centre of the film. If I were a betting man, this would be my most sure-fire category; it’s basically already won.
Best Original Score—La La Land
See above for an explanation as to why La La Land will win this awards: once more, it’s almost a guarantee.
Best Animated Feature—Kubo and the Two Strings
This is a very interesting category once more this year. Until one month ago, it seemed that Zootropolis would calmly stroll away with this award, but then came the Oscar Nominations, and the BAFTA awards. Kubo was nominated for special effects at the Oscars (almost unheard-of for an animated film) and won the BAFTA, signifying that there is a lot of love for the film. Expect it to pull off an upset on Oscar night and win the prize.
Best Foreign Language Film—The Salesman
Although Toni Erdmann has all of the critical praise imaginable for a foregin film (and perhaps should have made it onto the Best Picture list), the director of The Salesman has had very public troubles in attending the ceremony due to President Trump’s border controls, so expect the political force behind the Academy to push The Salesman to victory. This will be the evening’s ‘Protest Vote’.
Best Adapted Screenplay—Moonlight
Although Arrival won the WGA award in this category(a usual precursor to this category), expect the Academy to lavish some praise on Moonlight here, a film that will not find much love in the major categories except for Supporting Actor. This will be their chance to reward the film with a big-ish trophy, so expect this one to be a major victory for Barry Jenkins’ sophomore outing.
Best Original Screenplay: Kenneth Longergan—Manchester by the Sea
This is one of the most difficult awards to predict. La La Land won many of the precursor awards for his category, but in all honest Kenneth Lonergan’s screenplay for Manchester by the Sea exudes such raw, emotional power it would be a true shame if it weren’t to win. Even though you have to be a brave man to bet against La La Land in almost any category this year, I expect Kenneth Lonergan to win his first Oscar here.
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis—Fences
It is extremely unlikely that anyone other than Viola Davis will walk away with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar this Sunday night. Don’t get me wrong, she is terrific. But in no way is it a supporting performance: she is in well-over half of the film, and dominates almost every screen she appears in. Without Davis, Michelle Williams would surely win for her emotionally-devastating turn in Manchester by the Sea, which is a true supporting performance. However, expect Viola Davis to walk away an Oscar winner on Sunday night.
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali—Moonlight
As I suggested earlier, it is very likely that the Academy will look to give Moonlight some serious awards love here. Mahershala Ali is terrific in the film, fulfilling a true supporting-role and becoming such an emotional crux of the narrative it’s impossible for the audience to forget him during every frame in which he does not appear. Although it is a shame that Jeff Bridges will miss-out for the brilliant Hell or High Water, Ali is a deserving winner this year.
Best Actress: Emma Stone—La La Land
Discarding Meryl Streep’s guaranteed nomination for the poor Florence Foster Jenkins, it is a very strong field for Best Actress once more this year. Although it seemed that Natalie Portman had the early momentum, and that Isabelle Huppert has the support of the foreign critics, expect Emma Stone to dance her way to the stage to finally collect a well-deserved Oscar this year for her brilliant work in La La Land.
Best Actor: Casey Affleck—Manchester by the Sea
This is, in a welcome change of events, the most unpredictable category this year. The race has been terrifically well-fought, with both Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington holding first place for significant periods of time. Although Washington has much of the current goodwill after a SAG win (a good precursor for the Oscar), I still expect Affleck to win for his magnificently-understated performance in Manchester by the Sea, a film the Academy clearly loves (it received six nominations this year). Especially if La La Land were to take Original Screenplay from under MBTS’s nose, expect Affleck to emerge victorious.
Best Director: Damien Chazelle—La La Land
Once more, expect La La Land to dance away with another well-deserved trophy. It is so brilliantly directed, choreographed, shot and edited, there is no way all of that could not come together without an incredible director. Now don’t get me wrong: although only thirty-two years old, Damien Chazelle is an incredible director with a long career ahead of him. He fully deserves this prize, and will definitely be leaving the Dolby Theatre an Oscar winner on Sunday night.
Best Picture: La La Land
So here we are: the biggest award of the night. As anyone who has been following my earlier predictions will realise, there is a clear favourite: the awards juggernaut that is La La Land. It will win Best Picture on Sunday night, and rightly-so. It is truly joyous: an ever-shining light in the current world that is so-often characterised by darkness and despair. La La Land is one of those rare films that manages to be released at just the perfect time: if one were to watch it at any point over the next four years (or however long Trump lasts), they can expect to be transported from the current times to ‘Another Day of Sun’, a ‘City of Stars’ or even an ‘Epilogue’ of Twenties movie-sets, complete with tap-dancing extras, stunning hand-painted backgrounds and perhaps a different future entirely. Without sounding too fawning of its brilliance, it is one of the best films of the decade, and will walk away a multiple Oscar winner on Sunday night, with Best Director in one hand and Best Picture in the other. – Oliver Barlow
As any of my friends will tell you, my attempts to see all of this year’s Oscar contenders have been nothing less than exhaustive (or exhausting, depending on who you ask). Having seen every film nominated in three or more categories, including every Best Picture nominee, now comes my chance to show off and wildly speculate about who I think is most likely to win and, more subjectively, who I think ought to win in each major category.
Let’s kick off with the biggest prize of all: Best Picture. My prediction is that La La Land will win, but, really, Moonlight should win. We’ve all heard the extraordinary hype for La La Land by now (I even gave it a 5-star review), but it’s also one of the safest, most “Oscar-friendly” nominees in years. It’s my favourite of the BP nominees, but it’s hard to argue it’s the best. It’s likely to sweep many of the technical categories (Costume Design, Cinematography, Original Song/Score) anyway, so it would be nice to see the Academy give the top prize to a bolder, more interesting, and arguably more accomplished film like Moonlight.
The category for Best Director is a little closer than the two-horse race for Best Picture—after all, it’s also extremely plausible that Damien Chazelle will win for La La Land, since these nominations tend to go hand-in-hand. Nevertheless, Jenkins displays such a command of the material in Moonlight, and such a unique and compelling vision, he really should (and probably will) win this category.
The competition for Best Actor has generated lots of talk about Casey Affleck, so there’s an outside chance he’ll take this one, but Gosling put the prep in for his role and it shows, so he will probably take the Oscar. Nevertheless, Garfield’s stoic, empathic performance as Desmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge really deserves more attention than it’s getting—so Garfield deserves the trophy in my opinion.
We all know that Emma Stone will win Best Actress for La La Land, but my vote would go to Amy Adams for Arrival. Before you argue with me: yes, I’m well aware that Adams wasn’t nominated. But I’m also aware this is one of the biggest Oscar snubs in years; her performance in Arrival is incredible and to be honest, this category is a hot mess this year—actresses like Adams and Taraji P. Henson have gone un-nominated for truly sterling work.
Mahershala Ali deserves Best Supporting Actor, because his incredible performance is the bedrock of what makes Moonlight great. That said, Dev Patel’s work in Lion is an incredible combination of preparation and performance. Lion is one of my favourite Best Picture nominees, and if it deserves any award, it’s this one.
Though I didn’t care much for Fences, Viola Davis’ performance was nothing short of masterful. If anyone else wins Best Supporting Actress, it’ll be a real upset.
Finally, to cartoons: Zootropolis is a brilliant film, and because it was released by Disney and grossed a billion dollars it’s almost a lock that it’ll win the Best Animated Feature category. However, Kubo and the Two Strings is one of the most beautiful and engrossing animated films ever made, jaw-dropping both technically and emotionally. Watch it now if you haven’t yet, so you have something intelligent-sounding to say if it becomes an underdog champion on the night.
So there you have it: possibly the most subjective guide to an Oscar’s ceremony that’s ever been written, and one I hope you’ll have fun rereading once the results come in and proven heinously wrong. Jonnie Barrow
Reinvention: a love affair with language
I recently read Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words and Elena Lappin’s What Language Do I Dream In?: A Memoir one after the other, a happy coincidence. Lahiri’s In Other Words, a collection of essays, is a type of memoir recounting her relationship with the Italian language. After years trying to learn Italian in America by using ‘teach yourself’ books, Lahiri made the bold decision to move to Italy and the even bolder decision to write only in Italian. She describes her relationship with the Italian language as a love affair— the language is Beatrice to her Dante, “the poets inspiration, forever unattainable” and “marked by distance, silence”.
Elena Lappin speaks five languages, Russian, Czech, German, French and English, a result of her peripatetic childhood—”five languages in search of an author’. Born in Soviet Moscow, her family moved first to Prague and then Hamburg. The author then studied in Israel, moved to Canada and then America and finally Britain, where she has lived the longest. Her work begins with a revelation, the discovery of a biological father she was unaware of, which in turn triggers her mediation on the languages she has lived in, languages which she has made her own and the language she has chosen above all others: English. She writes, “as a writer, I died when my parents decided to emigrate and I knew it. And then came the miracle of being reborn in English.” Both writers realise that language can represent a choice, an opportunity to be reborn.
For Lahiri, Italian allows her a creative freedom as the writer she has never found before, because she elects to use it. It is not forced upon her by anyone, as the Bengali of her parents or the English of the culture she grew up in—but never felt she belonged within—were forced upon her. Lahiri is used to linguistic exile but her exile in In Other Words is self-imposed. For Lahiri, the authors can be reborn with each new language chosen. Her exile is a kind of test, a hope flung wide, that the creative impulse is something innate unleashed by the language of her choice rather than dependent on her ‘mother tongue’; the creative impulse precedes language and Italian allows her to know this as a certainty.
Lahiri’s essays were all written in Italian, translated by Ann Goldstein to English and produced in a bilingual tradition. I have not read Lahiri’s previous work, written in English, so I can’t judge whether her voice carries across, but there is a striking simplicity to the translated English—and from the sections I can read, to the Italian as well. Lahiri’s Italian, the writer herself acknowledges, will always be imperfect, but this allows her a freedom, a bravery; “from the creative point of view there is nothing so dangerous as security”.
Critics have patronisingly applauded Lahiri’s return to the US and what they presume will be a return to her use of English. But the book with all its imperfections makes something perfect, beautiful, sincere and brave, one that I think writers will return to again and again. So many writers, such as Lappin, recreate themselves in different languages. Just as Lahiri writes “a translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal” this book is a renewal for all involved.
Lahiri’s experience as the daughter of immigrants, caught between two languages, parallels Lappin’s on many levels. Lappin’s work is full of warmth, wise, full of comic anecdotes. It’s a history of her family as much as her own memoir, going back multiple generations and projecting forward into the future, to her children who must also make their linguistic choice, having each “arrived in a different linguistic constellation”. She finds her identity not just in language, but ulimately in her Jewishness, an identity which drives her to leave Germany, to find her linguistic home elsewhere. Moving so much gives her a fearlessness and reinventing herself becomes easier and easier.
Yet loss also pervades her work. Lappin has not lost her history—she instead possesses a collective cultural memory due to her Jewish identity—but she has lost home after home. In English she finds a home for her voice, but she still feels a deeply personal loss. Lahiri writes of speaking Italian in Rome and a shop assistant assuming she had learnt the language from her husband—because of the colour of Lahiri’s skin. Her voice is not enough in the speaking world, a loss she feels everyday that she tries to write in Italian, but also when she uses English.
Both writers still find different kinds of displacement greet them wherever they go, but they use this displacement to empower them, to recreate themselves and their work, to create daring, unforgettable work.
Time-turners and doppelgängers: battling homesickness at Oxford
I think I’d be a crippling disappointment to my ten-year-old self. My first thought upon acquiring a time-turner probably wouldn’t revolve around a desire to be simultaneously battered in two tutorials at once. Unlike Hermione Granger, I’d probably first use my additional time to renegotiate my currently distant and frayed relationship with a systemised sleep cycle. After all, it’s sixth week: I’m already the shattered husk of the eager-eyed 0th week student I once pretended to be. At Oxford, there just never seems to be enough time.
Yet, we battle on. Feeling as deflated as IKEA flatpack furniture and tired as aged wallpaper, we furnish our lives with far too much to do. The idea of missing out on the ‘Oxford Experience’ is incomprehensible. We must all bustle on the eight-week-long highway to success and survival. But, amongst all this rapidity there exists a desire to escape. To leave the city, it’s social chaos and unrelenting deadlines, and just, well, go home.
Homesickness is not a foreign concept to the university student. Yet, it seems that Oxford has taken great efforts to create its own special brew. Procured guilt and an undertone of apparent selfishness combines to create a powerful notion: the belief that you lead two separate lives that often seem irreconcilable.
Part of the problem of homesickness is that you often self-diagnose yourself as its root cause. University is supposedly meant to be the time of your life, and getting into Oxford was no mean feat. The reality then, of life slightly dragging at points and missing the comforts of home, doesn’t really cross your mind whilst you read that acceptance letter with trembling hands. Oxford does not fail to present you with countless opportunities—one for each essay crisis—and, when you are unhappy, the natural conclusion is to blame yourself for not taking enough of them.
Indeed, the collegiate system does essentially grant you a home away from home; happy days spent within college can make everything seem quite well with the world. But, sometimes, amid all the insularity and relentless welfare teas, one can feel quite suffocated, lonely and unable to display any of these sentiments. This is especially true on the weekends where hoards of tourists will gaze at you aghast, as if the tears on your face form part of an out-of-place 20th Century water feature. Often, then, just as you have begun to feel comfortable during term-time, you are forced to pack up your belongings and clear your room to make space for some all-important conference guest.
This guilt felt for experiencing homesickness often combines with the knowledge that, as Oxford students, we can prove rather self-centered with our priorities. I have often found myself—more than once—easily finding excuses to justify why I may have forgotten to call a friend from home, or buy my brother’s birthday present earlier than the day before. Similarly, it must seem somewhat ridiculous, from an outsider’s perspective, that the times when I choose to Skype home often revolve around the points when I’ve decided not to fall into an essay crisis (that was probably avoidable).
As often as we may express a desire to escape from the land of dreaming spires, there also exists a marked tendency to avoid or postpone contacting those from outside the Oxford bubble. After all, keeping up with everything during our eight-week terms can prove quite a struggle. Thus, we idealise about returning home whilst simultaneously putting off connection with the very people and places we long for.
If only we could all have our own doppelgänger that allowed us to keep both of our lives successfully running in tandem. Then we wouldn’t feel so constantly swamped.
Letter from Abroad: Paris
After months of finalising my ever-elusive year abroad plans, I have found myself interning at a legal translation firm in Paris for ten months.
Perhaps it’s not been as glamorous or lucrative as working as a British Council teaching assistant, as many of my friends have done. The experience, for sure, hasn’t always been easy. But it’s definitely been rewarding. During my time spent in Paris I think I will particularly remember the effect that various recent terrorist attacks have had on the city. The mentality of the general population has been unnerved, and continues to be so, more than one might expect.
When I arrived, what struck me first was the sheer amount of soldiers that marked many of the streets. It’s the kind of thing you get used to, but from time-to-time can’t help but feel slightly disturbed and question ‘Should this feel so normal?’
At the office we have, on several occasions, pondered over where the next attack might take place. It is this disconcerting atmosphere which has resulted in the tourism industry suffering quite a severe blow; apparently, there are significantly fewer non-European visitors than in recent years. No doubt this is true, yet it is hard to believe this whilst queuing for the Musée d’Orsay on a Sunday morning.
I have been pleasantly surprised as to how friendly Parisians generally are. Despite their reputation for being rude and cold, in particular to foreigners, I have found that if you try (your best) to engage with someone in French, they are often incredibly helpful. Saying that, Parisians do have that awkward tendency to immediately address you in English.
However, it’s safe to say, the English do still have a bad reputation in France. I can’t fully understand why, but whenever I mention that I’m from the United Kingdom, the typical response I receive is “oh dear”. Then again, that response is always followed by a laugh. I smile bemusedly back.
People often talk about the fear of missing out during their year abroad. For me this has manifested itself more as a sense of not really belonging. You see university life continue without you, while you yourself are still trying to settle down and express yourself coherently amidst swathes of colloquial and rapidly spoken French. To this day, I am still not sure whether it is acceptable to start addressing new acquaintances as ‘tu’.
Nevertheless, the year abroad has been refreshing. Just spending time surrounding yourself with a different culture is an incredible eye-opener.
Sometimes, it’s the small things that serve to best reflect surprising differing interests and tendencies. For example, in comparison to Blackwell’s in Oxford, the local French bookshop has significantly more police thrillers, and I am still yet to find a single English book. I have also found discussions of Brexit and colonialism with French people particularly interesting, especially since their consequences are still very much present.
The year abroad is an incredible opportunity, but also a challenge. Ultimately, all you can do is embrace and enjoy it as much as you can, before coming back home and knuckling down for finals.
Is May following Trump’s model?
Since Donald Trump was inaugurated on 20 January this year, it seems as though there has been a daily barrage of outcry after outcry. Some would say, given the campaign he ran, and the populist nature of the platform he ran on, this is not surprising.
What has surprised many, is the swiftness at which he has imposed (the now overturned) travel ban, and the flippant nature with which his plans appear to have been drawn up. A further surprise has been Theresa May’s unwillingness to condemn the ban, and, what’s
more, her own response to the refugee crisis: withdrawing a scheme to allow unaccompanied child refugees sanctuary in the UK.
The initial resettlement plan was proposed by Labour peer Alf Dubs, and was passed in 2016 as an amendment to the Immigration Act: it paved the way to allow 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children into the UK.
On Thursday of last week (9 February), it was announced that this scheme was coming to a close after admitting only 350 child refugees into the UK. There has been the expected anger. Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi, who is of Iraqi origin but a British citizen, called it “a sad sad day to feel like a second-class citizen … the order does apply to myself and my wife as we were both born in Iraq.” The impact of the ban is shockingly pervasive.
What is most worrying, though, is what this says about our government, its priorities, and what this means for the Western world. Has May seen Trump’s ‘crack-down’ on immigrants and refugees as paving the way for more stringent measures in the UK? Has this been a long-planned U-turn on a promise, that the government tried to sneak out in and amongst all of the outcry at Trump?
Or are there more pressing reasons for the withdrawal of the scheme? Perhaps there is some issue of national security at risk. Perhaps the costs of these child refugees are crippling and would divert funds from hospitals, or education?
Whatever the reason, it seems unlikely that there is a reasonable response for this – the government certainly hasn’t furnished the public with one. What is more concerning is what this might mean for the western world. It seems that we are slowly moving towards a policy of isolationism, where nations forget that we are all citizens of the world, and have du- ties to one another. Instead, states are putting sovereignty above all else, including humanity.
Trump symbolises a far wider problem: people feeling disenfranchised. Through his continuous stream of outrageous actions he gives other governments carte blanche to act in equally outrageous ways. More worryingly, he may be allowing other governments to hide behind the furore that his actions are creating.
Time will tell if our own government will continue down this path. But, without a doubt, May’s decision to renege on a promise to child refugees is a worrying sign. One can only hope this is simply a misstep, and not the first step on a path to far more nationalistic policies.
The birth of modernism: a journey in innovation
The Special Exhibition gallery in the Ashmolean is a significant space. Last year it housed over a hundred pieces by Andy Warhol, in an important exhibition that marked the first time many of the works had been exhibited in public. Yet, whilst significant, it is by no means an enormous space, especially if an exhibition attempts to span almost 200 years—as Degas to Picasso does. Any attempt at providing an all-inclusive overview of French art in this enormous period would have been futile.
Thankfully, the exhibition does not attempt this. There is no glamorous, instantly-recognisable centre-piece. The range of artists is broad, as the exhibition approaches French modernism as a revolutionary desire which bore markedly different reactions from its many proponents.
The three large rooms which comprise the exhibition are generally (though not strictly) chronological, beginning with the French Revolution and finishing up in the latter-half of the twentieth century. For an exhibition on modernism, beginning in 1789 may seem risibly illogical: modernism is a prodigiously nebulous term, yet people generally agree that it was a child of the fin de siècle.
But beginning here sets up the rebellious desire which would come to characterise not only the end of the eighteenth century, but also the nineteenth: there would be two more rebellions, one in 1830 and another 1848. The exhibition uses this as a frame to view the various challenges to convention which would define modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Starting early also allows for an exploration of the Academy, an institution which largely dictated a French artist’s success between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. The first part of the exhibition whizzes through artists creating art in this Academy context, looking particularly at responses to the three revolutions. The artworks are all hung on one long wall, a smart curatorial decision which physically manifests them as a sort of timeline that one walks along.
There is a preoccupation, throughout the exhibition, both on the human form and on the classical demands of the Academy. In ‘La Toilette’ (1862), Manet takes the idealised composition of an older work (‘Surprised Nymph’) and shifts it onto a domestic view of his mistress. The result is juxtaposed in tone, with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. Whilst Manet has numerous works which are more overtly politicised, ‘La Toilette’ reformulates convention in its own, more subtle way.
Degas battles with both the human form and convention. Once remarking: “No art is less spontaneous than mine”, he repeats the same forms over and over, obsessively, making miniscule adjustments with each new iteration. For instance, in ‘Nude Woman Standing at her Toilette’ (1891), the background gradually fades away so that the focus falls solely on the exquisite human form.
For any exhibition exploring modernism in France, a key determiner of audience interest is going to be the amount of coverage afforded to our dear friend Pablo. Fear not: he is given ample space. The second room, which focuses on and around Cubism, would have been naked without some Cubist still-lifes by the man himself.
However, the more stimulating works here are the less obvious ones. There is a ‘Study of Four Nudes’ from around 1906, a small work which eventually led to ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’. But most interesting of all the Picasso on show is a sheet from a sketchbook entitled ‘Three Heads with a Christ on the Cross’ (1901). The three heads are in a cartoon style, probably intended as comic caricatures of people Picasso encountered in everyday life. Whilst the accompanying paragraph assures us that this is “one of a number he created at the time”, this is not the Picasso we know from this period: the work anticipates the more cartoon-based style he would come to adopt in the 1960s.
In the third room hangs ‘Bathers’ (1961), one of a vast number of rapidly executed drawings Picasso created in the period. It is dated ‘4.6.61.I’, setting it as the first work in the day’s output— Picasso operated in a mechanised manner. Several works in this final, post-Cubist room turn to mechanisation as an answer to the tricky question of ‘what next?’, not least Fernand Léger’s ‘Factory’ (1918). The work would provide the groundwork for Léger’s experimental animated film ‘Ballet Mécanique’ (1924), which is stuffed full of mechanical forms.
Much like the Warhol exhibition, which opened almost exactly a year ago, this exhibition takes a well-trodden topic and approaches it from a new angle. These artworks are taken from a private collection never before exhibited in the UK, so it is not an exaggeration to suggest that you will never be given such an easy opportunity to see them. Pick up your bod card and go.
A dose of sarcasm, playfulness, and politics
In a chatty interlude during her gig at the O2 Academy, Kate Nash tells the audience that it was in a tour bus outside this very venue that she received one of the most sexist interview questions of her career. A journalist asked her if she was disappointed that it was mainly teenage girls who attended her gig, to which she replied, “Yes, of course I’d prefer it if only old men turned up”. Defiant, irreverent and unashamedly feminist, her response exemplifies what makes Kate Nash a fantastic live performer: her infectious enthusiasm ensures that, aside from loving her music, you also want to be her best friend.
Her set—which was attended by a diverse range of ages and genders, if any chauvinistic music critics happen to be interested—saw her take to the stage in holographic silver trousers and a sports bra, looking like a mermaid who updated her clamshells in JD Sports. With help from her all female band, she treats us to a winning mix of favourites, from her debut, Made of Bricks, to the edgier material of Girl Talk, as well the few standout songs from her weaker second album, My Best Friend is You, and a smattering of brand new tracks.
Her music is perfectly suited to live performance due to its intoxicating peaks and troughs. In the opening number, ‘Sister’, the slow, sultry verse entrances and beguiles before suddenly breaking into the raucous, angry chorus: this gear-shift comes into its own in the presence of a jumping, joyful crowd.
As well as musical catharsis, Nash delivers sarcasm, playfulness, and politics. The tour works with the mental health charity, Mind, to promote awareness, combat stigma and raise money, and Nash frankly discusses her own anxiety and OCD. In a music industry where tactical, empty feminism is often employed simply to bolster ticket sales—we’re looking at you, Taylor Swift— it is refreshing to see a musician seem to genuinely care about the causes they are associated with. Nash also talks about the statistically low number of female musicians, complete with a hilarious anecdote about a young female protégée who wrote a punk hit called ‘I AM ANGRY’.
Anger, it seems, is natural response to the social minefield of being a young woman, and this is something Nash understands, hence lyrics such as “being ripped away from you is like being ripped out of a womb” and “why you being a dickhead for/ you’re just fucking up situations”. When rage is as witty and sequin-studded as this, it can’t help but be edifying. It also transforms into moments of tenderness, such as in new single, ‘My Little Alien’, which is dedicated to her dog and professed soul mate, Stella.
In seconds, Nash switches from cosy camaraderie, treating the audience like a gathering of close friends, to full-blown rock star, crowd surfing with her guitar and screaming along with the strobe lights. One thing remains a constant: you want to be included in her Girl Talk.
Preview: ‘Tender Napalm’
“I could squeeze a bullet between those lips. Point first. Press it between those rosebud lips. Prise it between your pearly whites. Gently. I wouldn’t break a single tooth.”
The play opens with man and a woman embracing as they share their disturbingly violent sexual fantasies with each other. They never remain static, at times kissing, at times fighting, even lifting each other in the air. Their words are equally fluid: interwoven monologues and sharp dialogues that sweetly trace their youthful love story of a chance meeting at a party—and then switch to wild fantastic imagery of islands and monkeys and sea monsters.
The time and place are unclear, but there is a sense of apocalyptic disaster happening outside the intimate space of the two lovers. Themes are repeated throughout the shifting monologues: the threat of bombs, the pain of losing a loved one. The characters shift between playful sparring to clutching one another in agony in moments.
Even in the brightly lit Wadham rehearsal room, with the actors in their own clothes and not fully off-book, the emotion and fervour of Tender Napalm was overpowering. Catriona Bolt’s production, set in the round for an added sense of closeness, is both mesmerising and stifling. I felt myself at points wanting to escape from the relentless intensity of the lovers—although perhaps “lovers” is the wrong word, for at times their loathing for each other was palpable.
James Walsh and Hannah Marsters have excellent chemistry and produce varied and captivating performances. He is lustful and yearning as he describes his dark sexual desires, and then wracked with anguish as he sobs for a loss we do not fully understand. She is playful and almost childish as she imagines herself queen of a desert island, and vicious as she describes punishing her lover. She manages, however, to contrast this with moments of acute fragility and tenderness. It will be interesting to see how the production uses sound and lighting to intensify these performances.
Tender Napalm is not performed very often, and it’s easy to see why: the absence of real plot and disquieting nature of the play don’t make it an easy watch. But the visceral power of the performances, and the moving and sometimes shockingly funny commentary on love, loss, fantasy, and violence in a devastated world make it well worth a ticket.
Who will represent France in a new world order?
In June 2016 the world was convinced that Britain would remain in the EU and that Hillary Clinton would be the next US President. The pre-Brexit world also probably thought the idea of Marine le Pen winning the 2017 French election a ludicrous idea.
In the past year, the pro-globalisation European centrists have yet to see a political vote go their way. Populist politics and fear-mongering rhetoric have become the norm and experts are now the enemy of the people. The past year has seen the emergence of what some have called a “post-truth era” where facts are no longer of consequence and voters are motivated by fear and prejudice. We are yet to see whether this shall be the case in France.
Alongside the threat of terrorism, the past decade has been a time in which free speech in the West has come into question. Marine le Pen has marketed herself as a pillar of free speech, patriotism, and secularity. When she spoke at the Oxford Union in Hilary 2015 she said she admired the institution for its “open debate and freedom of expression”. Something tells me that Marine le Pen’s campaign is not quite what Evelyn Beatrice Hall had in mind when she said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”, (it’s a commonly misunderstood ‘alternative fact’ that Voltaire was the one who said this).
As we draw ever closer to the French election, it is becoming yet more evident that politics in France are turning the same way as they have in Britain and America. The Macron, Fillon, le Pen trio bears a noticeable resemblance to the Sanders, Clinton, Trump line-up in America in early 2016. Macron, a 39-year-old ex-member of France’s Socialist Party who launched his campaign as part of the movement En Marche ! in November, is the young people’s choice.
Fillon, on the other hand, represents to some extent the ‘old France’, of Catholicism and so-called “family values”. A key policy of his, for example, is retracting the same-sex marriage bill passed in May 2013. Similarly, Marine le Pen has promised a referendum on same-sex marriage. Indeed, it was she who led the manif pour tous (protest for all) movement, the counter-campaign to marriage pour tous (marriage for all) prior to the introduction of same-sex marriage.
Le Pen and Fillon also stand united on the supposed ‘trivialisation’ of abortion. Macron, therefore, is the only socialist option of any kind, given that Hollande’s presidency has left the Socialist Party in tatters. And yet, if we assume that he will go the way that Bernie Sanders did at the Democrat Primaries, the choice is realistically right versus ultra far-right.
So why the sudden shift from relatively left-wing government to right-wing extremism? Although there are many factors that influence voters, the past five years have made it clear: the fear of terrorism. France has made the most terror-related arrests, and, after the UK, it has been subject to the second most attempted attacks of all EU countries. France, along with Belgium, has become a target for ISIS attacks since the countries’ decision to ban the burka (full face veil) and niqab (veil with eyes uncovered) in public. France initiated this ban on the basis of the country’s policy of laicité (secularity) that prohibits the wearing of any religious garment or sign in public.
In theory, the wearing of crucifix necklaces is to be dealt with as severely as the wearing of a kippa or hijab is, but this is rarely the case. One does not hear of Catholics being refused entry to banks or having their necklaces ripped from their necks in public. This is, however, a reality for Muslim women who wish to wear the hijab.
France’s secularism is a constant source of bewilderment for its EU neighbours. The country’s Catholics are said to make up to 88 per cent of the population, though this is dropping fast as young people are increasingly coming out as non-religious and defying their religious parents. Fillon’s popularity, therefore, could be seen as a political backlash against this atheism. The campaigns of Fillon and Le Pen could easily have taken the “make France great again” or “Vote X, take control” slogans, if they hadn’t already been taken by other white scare-mongering right- wingers in the Western world.
Marine le Pen’s campaign has had a resurgence in the midst of the widespread fear surrounding the terror attacks. Six years ago, under leader Jean-Marie le Pen, the National Front was a minority party made up of racists and extremists: a taint on French politics. But Marine is so much more than simply a daughter carrying on her father’s long-lost political dream. Now, the party has rebranded itself as the party of the ‘French people’. The people are the same, their marketing has simply got better. Since 2014, the National Front has been France’s largest party and in the 2015 local elections the party won more than 1,500 councillors and 12 cities. Every day it seems that her Presidency is becoming an evermore likely reality.
And so what are the implications for the EU? Now that Britain has voted—its public and its politicians—to trigger Article 50, there is a chance that other European countries will want to follow suit. Who knew Britain was a trend-setter? Greece has already voted to leave the EU, except the government refused. Indeed, the case could be argued that it does not make sense for Greece, whose economy has been failing since 4 B.C., to remain part of the same currency as Germany. France, however, is more concerned with bureaucracy and immigration.
The future for France, no matter what the outcome of the election, looks bleak for the likes of European centrists. If Macron wins, le Pen supporters will potentially rise up in protest against an ‘unfair’ voting system. If Fillon wins, France’s non-religious minorities are in trouble, and in the case where le Pen becomes President, who knows what lies in store.
It is uncertain how the French will vote, and much depends on the weeks leading up to the election. Back in the day of Louis XIV, the more scandalous a leader, the higher his popularity rating, although leaders were not exactly elected back then. And there’s a case to be made that the French of today think similarly; famously, in 2014, President Hollande’s a air with actress Valerie Trierweiler improved his popularity. This could go in Macron’s favour, given his marriage to his former French teacher, a woman 20 years his senior. Fillon looks to be the ‘safe’ option, at least for the Jewish and Muslim citizens of France. But if a terrorist attack takes place within a week of the election, there is almost no stopping le Pen.
