Tuesday 7th October 2025
Blog Page 927

An injection of life and joy in the dark

Romilly Mavin
-
0
An injection of life and joy in the dark

Having not played in London for four years, and returning to play two nights last weekend, the Irish three piece were met with joyous expectation as they walked on stage. They began with the well known and loved ‘Cigarettes in the Theatre’, easing the crowd in and setting the tone for the night, which was filled with the nostalgia of their first album released in 2010.

Two Door Cinema Club was preceded by Sundara Karma and Circa Waves, both closely comparable to Two Door’s indie-pop sound. Circa Waves presented a heavier element to the line up with the inclusion of recent releases such as ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Fire That Burns’. They were so well received that it almost seemed as though they were the headliners. However, upon the entrance of Two Door the night was undeniably theirs.

Performing in Alexandra Palace provided the gig with an air of sophistication, reflecting the way the band themselves have become so established within the music culture of the past decade. The huge mirrors that lined the walls intensified the numbers of the crowd and cast light reflections, creating an atmosphere that reached each corner of the venue.

Although, the ecstatic bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings making up the crowd were forever anticipating the opening chords of ‘What You Know’, the songs off the new album, Gameshow had the most interesting impact. The disco influence that runs through all the new tracks infected the crowd, forcing everyone to dance. The recent material achieves a difference to the sound that occupies their previous albums, but maintains an atmospheric cheer which enlivens the audience.

The highlight of the gig for me was when the band played ‘Something Good Can Work’ and I was transported to the slopes of the Austrian Alps where the film Chalet Girl is set and the track is featured. The bouncy track is made for the sunshine and daytime; in the dark of Ally Pally Two Door created this joyfully elated scene.

A tale of two brunches

Julia Alsop
-
0
A tale of two brunches

Oxford students have many reasons to rejoice: sure, we have great academic resources and educations, not to mention centuries of traditions to enjoy—but Oxford is also home to a wealth of amazing places for brunch. Brunch is probably my favourite meal: you can go sweet or savoury or both, if you’re so inclined, you can get together and celebrate with friends, or you can treat yourself to it to help make the deadlines more bearable. I have tried and tested the best places and here are two of my favourites.

Browns (5-11 Woodstock Rd, OX2 6HA)

So this is a classic. You’ve probably taken your parents here when they came to visit—it’s not exactly in the average student budget. However, hear me out: sometimes brunch is for a celebration, for an indulgent splurge and Browns is the perfect place for this. The menu features a lot of delicious brunch food: I tend to go for the classic avocado toast, which I order with poached eggs. It is absolutely delicious, particularly if you’re slightly hungover and in need of some gastronomical TLC.

There is a big variety on the menu: you can have the classic full English, eggs benedict, or even a lobster champagne breakfast if you’re really pushing the boat out. But the brunch cocktails are probably one of the strongest parts of the Browns brunch. My recommendation is the grand mimosa—it’s the ultimate treat—but the bar is very well-stocked and there are numerous brunch cocktails (non-alcoholic ones too!). Ultimately, the elegant décor of Browns and the multitude of menu choice make this the perfect place to celebrate a brunch.

The Jericho Café (112 Walton St, OX2 6AJ)

The Jericho Café is a bit of a contrast from Browns: wholesome and vibrant, it’s common to see families catching lunch, friends meeting for a casual coffee, or in my case, students enjoying brunch whilst having their weekly essay crisis. It’s the ideal place to work with a coffee (their cappuccinos really are delicious), with plenty of tables and not normally too noisy (although I’d bring earphones anyway).

Like Browns, the menu at The Jericho Café is pretty extensive, but obviously I tend to go for avocado toast (I’m not sorry, avocado is life). The avocado toast arrives on sourdough with tomatoes and seeds over the top—the perfect brain food for the busy student. It’s definitely one of my favourite cafes to study in, and far enough from central Oxford that it’s not normally hectically busy and noisy—perfect.

Walking in someone else’s shoes

Alice Robinson
-
0
Walking in someone else’s shoes

How did insanely popular TV quiz show Pointless celebrate its 100th episode? Not with fireworks. Not with champagne. No. Instead they marked the milestone by having co-hosts Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman switch roles, realising the somewhat gimmicky idea of role-swapping held something weirdly fascinating for an audience. Indeed, they were merely employing a long-used theatrical technique of stage collaboration. Ian Richardson and Richard Pasco alternated Richard II and Bolingbroke in 1973, and Gielgud and Olivier shared Mercutio and Romeo back in 1935.

The technique, however, was still relatively rare, even in theatre, until the last few years. In Robert Icke’s production of Mary Stuart at London’s Almeida Theatre last winter, the two lead actresses, Lia Williams and Juliet Stevenson, began each performance with the spin of a coin which decided which of them would play Mary, and which her cousin Elizabeth. Williams is used to this: she starred alongside Kristin Scott-Thomas in Old Times on Broadway in 2013, swapping roles once a week.

The RSC’s Dr Faustus last year started with the two leads simultaneously lighting matches—whoever’s burnt out first played the doomed doctor, the other played Mephistopheles. Most famously, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller become both the creator and the created in Nick Dear’s 2011 production of Frankenstein. It’s even happened in Oxford, when, only a couple of years ago, two students alternated the roles of Orlando and Elizabeth I in an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel.

Although the technique itself has always been greeted with interest by critics and audience members alike, there must be some reason behind its growing popularity: a reason not specific to each one of these directorial decisions, but to the concept as a whole. Perhaps it is partly due to a desire on the part of theatre practitioners to differentiate their medium from other art forms, especially in an age of easily available drama via Netflix, Amazon Prime and iPlayer.

The casting emphasises the high-stakes nature of live theatrical performance. With two people each having learnt two parts, each part hundreds of lines long, the potential for failure doubles. What if they forget their lines? Say the wrong part? Start performing the wrong role? And of course, there’s the behind-the-scenes possibility for inter-actor rivalry. Just think of the brilliant That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch in which two arrogant actors determined to steal the spotlight become increasingly violent whilst sharing the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Theatre takes place over such a long time that relationships can develop and disintegrate—and there’s no way of editing out any expression of underlying tensions.

The chance of seeing two different interpretations of exactly the same role on two different nights also highlights a key selling point of live theatre: that each performance is a totally unique event. Like much metatheatres, the technique does not necessarily create something entirely new. It rather emphasises the already present, unique assets of theatre as an art form.

Perhaps there is something further, though, to this particular theatrical technique, linking even to other art forms—like the body swap movie. Yep, that’s right, I’m going to attempt to connect Gielgud and Olivier’s performances in Romeo and Juliet to Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday. A feat I doubt has been attempted thus far, but there’s a first time for everything. Hear me out.

In body-swap movies like 17 Again and It’s a Boy-Girl Thing, the swappees start the film hating both each other and their own lives, and finish by understanding the other and appreciating what they have. Role-alternating allows for that same sweet-spot of both empathy and distance.

In the past few years, we have seen an increasing amount of left-wing activism, mostly revolving around identity politics, which uses empathy as a key part of its argument. Being offended is now a reason to protest (against Germaine Greer for example, or even the Cecil Rhodes statue). If only we could walk in someone else’s shoes, we could understand them and perhaps agree with them. This aligns with a belief in nurture over nature: that problems and personality are predominantly created by society and therefore are societal constructs rather than innate characteristics.

Role-swapping in theatre, particularly the kind of role-swapping based on chance, as in Mary Stuart or Dr Faustus, promotes this belief. It promotes empathy above all, but shows how easy it is to be blind to the underlying similarities between us and other people. This, I believe, is why the technique is growing in popularity—and why, with the backlash against Trump’s seeming lack of empathy, I think Mary Stuart will by no means be the last time we see this technique on the stage in England.

What to watch in the time of Trump

Tilly Nevin
-
0
What to watch in the time of Trump

At a time when it seems as if the world has taken a step back, the opposite seems to be occurring in the world of TV comedy. American sitcoms have finally realised that audiences are interested in watching a show like Black-ish, which dares to address the experiences of a black family living in a predominately white, suburban environment. Or One Day at A Time, which documents the life of an American family who just “happen to be Latino”, in which the unrivalled Justina Machado plays Elena, a nurse and army veteran struggling to cope as a single mother.

Or in watching a Taiwanese-American family in Fresh Off the Boat struggle to adapt to a new life in Florida as they open a Western-style restaurant and try both to preserve their own cultural heritage and acclimatise to a new, often hostile one. Or even in watching Jane the Virgin, which plays cleverly with telenovela tropes yet also breaks down stereotypes—exploring what it is to be an undocumented immigrant.

It’s impossible to forget when watching these programmes that America is a nation of immigrants. It always has been, as Lazarus’ ‘The New Colossus’ declares. Black-ish sees Dre and Rainbow struggle to teach their children about police brutality, about the use of the N-word, about what it means to have hope in an increasingly hopeless world. One Day at A Time tackles PTSD, depression, mansplaining, and the wage gap.

The content of such shows might seem too dark for ‘normal’ comedy—but comedy is often subversive. These shows are alert to what’s happening in reality. They’re radical and they refuse to be silenced. They’re brave shows, brilliant shows, laugh-out-loud-funny, but are irrefutably, deadly serious.

My favourite episode of Black-ish, ‘Lemons’ deals with the repercussions of the results of the Presidential Election. Trump has won and each member of the family responds differently; Bow throws herself into activism while her daughter, Zoe, decides to make lemonade for school, not because she’s making “lemonade out of lemons” or in reference to Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ but because she wants to do something that unites.

And the simple taste of the bitter sweet does that. Dre goes to work, where his colleagues are divided amongst themselves and listening to their arguments, he laughs. His co-worker, enraged, “don’t you care about this country?” Dre replies: “I love this country, even though, at times, it doesn’t love me back…I’m used to things not going my way. I’m sorry that you’re not and it’s blowing your mind.” As he speaks ‘Strange Fruit’ plays in the background and at the end of the episode his son reads Martin Luther King’s speech aloud as his family watches, Zoe serving lemonade.

For comedy, it’s undeniably, atypically hard hitting. Dre’s laughter, our laughter, opens up a space for dialogue, a space in which you question yourself as a spectator.

Why are we laughing at something this important? Because it’s the human thing to do. Laughter, like lemonade, can be used to unite in a very divided world. Comedy opens up a moment in which an audience can feel an affinity, a closeness to the ‘other’. The laughter might sometimes be uncomfortable and it might sometimes come as a relief from heated argument, but it’s necessary, provocative. It prompts conversation. Watch these if you think that art can’t ever make a difference or be political.

Two lonely people, one heartrending production

Bessie Yuill
-
0
Two lonely people, one heartrending production

You won’t have to be an expert on Beckett to be enraptured by this combination of plays directed by Beatrix Grant, Krapp’s Last Tape and Rockaby (performed at the Burton Taylor Studio 21st-25th February). These compelling portraits of human seclusion and the power of voice are sure to be heartrending for all.

In the more famous play of the two, the old man Krapp records himself and re-listens to tapes about his life endlessly: his recorded voice serves as another actor on stage, and his reactions demonstrate the distortive power of retrospect. Krapp shifts from violent anger to benevolent amusement, from regret to outbursts of song, searching for the ever-elusive question of whether he was ever happy. His moods and outlooks quickly range over great distances throughout Beckett’s lyrical monologues, even as the character never strays beyond his small room.

Rockaby is far less well-known, but its conceit captures that same sense of range in speech and limited physical movement. The voice here accompanies a constant rocking of the central old woman’s chair, as she maintains mechanical back-and-forth and looks at her neighbours’ closed blinds. Just as trapped in the past as Krapp, the woman listens to a sing-song voice that moves from comforting nursery rhymes to taunting reminders of her past.

Both of these characters are supposed to be far older than the performers, Christopher Page and Natalie Woodward. The themes of isolation, and of language shaping our outlook on the past, however, should resonate just as strongly with a younger generation; the strength of the actors will pull an audience into the reality of a regretful older perspective as well. Page in particular creates an incredibly vivid character through a gravelly Irish accent, and a shade of bitterness that’s implicit even in his joyful moments. Neither he, nor Woodward shy away from uncomfortable silence or the difficulty of acting opposite only a recording, and the effects of both in the Burton Taylor Studio are sure to be compelling. Woodward’s wide-eyed gaze is especially hard to look away from, as the misery of her situation becomes clearer and clearer.

These plays have never appeared in this combination before, but as Grant explained to me, they are both character studies of severe isolation. By pairing the two, their loneliness appears starker, as they share the same experience but can never interact. Everything down to the sound design is intended to immerse the audience in the characters’ minds: the voice recordings in Rockaby surround the audience as though they are hearing the taunting voice inside their own minds.

In a small space like the Burton-Taylor, these one-character plays may seem claustrophobically intense to some audience members but it will be an incredibly thought-provoking evening, if not always a comfortable one. The poetry of the language, the affecting talent of the two actors and the sheer force of pairing minimalist staging with painting whole lives in retrospect; all of these together ensure a powerful night of Beckett if you think you can handle it. The anticipatory buzz around this production is well-earned.

Magdalen and Somerville vote to defund Oxford Radical Forum

Felix Pope
-
0
Magdalen and Somerville vote to defund Oxford Radical Forum

Magdalen and Somerville JCRs voted last night to to rescind their donations to the Oxford Radical Forum (ORF), and to condemn the organisers of ORF for inviting “speakers with a history of anti-Semitic hate speech”, in the words of the Somerville motion.

In Magdalen the motion passed overwhelmingly in a secret ballot, with 43 in support and just 14 against. One ballot was spoiled.

Grace Linden, who argued against the motion, told Cherwell: “It is disappointing that Magdalen JCR has decided to withdraw funding for ORF, on the basis of false allegations of anti-Semitism.

“This sets a dangerous precedent for student organised conferences – we will seek other sources of funding for ORF, and are determined that it should go ahead as an open and honest forum for debate.

“Anyone who wishes to assess the strength of the claims made against the speakers, should research the context of the comments quoted, and also Malia Bouattia’s full apology for her lack of clarity in use of language last year.”

At both colleges debate was heated. Members of Magdalen JCR allegedly defended Hamas as a diverse organisation and argued that Muslims could not be anti-Semitic as they themselves were members of an oppressed group. Members also clashed over definitions of anti-Semitism and racism.

At Somerville a member of the ORF organising committee allegedly argued that the speakers invited were not anti-Semitic, clashing with the predominantly Jewish proposers of the motion. 22 voted in favour, with 6 against, and 6 abstentions.

Somerville JCR President Alex Crichton-Miller, who supported the motion, told Cherwell: “from my discussion with members afterwards it seemed that concern for the welfare of Somerville’s Jewish population was a primary concern.

“Several Jewish students attended the meeting and expressed their support of the motion, and opposition to the speakers, with passion and vehemence. Our JCR stands for the interests of the entire Somerville community, and voting as we did was the best way to ensure the welfare of that community as a whole.”

Both JCRs have already given their donations to the Forum, but Crichton-Miller is “fairly confident” that ORF will return their £150. He said: “we expect the ORF will understand our expressed view and return the money as it was originally a donation”

The votes follow a Cherwell investigation that revealed the Forum to have invited a number of figures with allegedly anti-Semitic ties and other provocative viewpoints to speak. This led to condemnation of the Forum’s organisers by Jsoc and a move to cancel funding of the event by JCRs and OUSU.

Magdalen’s motion declared: “Oxford Radical Forum has invited a number of speakers who have a history of making anti-Semitic comments”.

The motion carried on to name particular speakers: “Miriyam Aouragh, who stated that “Holocaust discourse has become part of a propaganda industry”, and who organised a memorial service in 2004 for the founder of Hamas, a terrorist organisation whose charter (1998) is overtly anti-Semitic, stating the need to kill Jews and referring to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

In a statement made to Cherwell, Aouragh said that the blog post from which the holocaust quote was taken in fact expressed her opposition to holocaust denial. She said of the latter accusation: “Like many I was very angry about Israel’s murderous targeted killings campaign between 2000-2004, which saw hundreds of political activists and leaders assassinated when the popular uprising in 2000 broke out.

“These war crimes were condemned across the political spectrum, especially the ‘collateral damage’ caused by extrajudicial killings using F16s, such as collapsing buildings with families in them and the killing of bystanders when cars were blown up.

“One case was that of Ahmed Yassin of Hamas, an elderly man in a wheelchair living in a refugee camp in Gaza. I was part of a protest against the incredible violence of that period, many were making this argument, including the UN, the EU, as well as a large numbers of MPs in this country.”

However Jewish News—Britain’s largest Jewish newspaper—and JTA—a global Jewish news agency—have claimed that in 2004 Aouragh indeed did organise a memorial service in Amsterdam for Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder and ‘spiritual leader’ killed by Israel that year.

Magdalen’s motion further criticised  “Malia Bouattia, whose anti-Semitic comments were condemned as “outright racism” by the Home Affairs Select Committee, and whose NUS presidency 84% of Oxford Jewish Society members felt they were unable to align with their Jewish identity.

“Last year, Malia was called upon by OUSU to issue a full and formal apology, or otherwise to stand down from her NUS presidency. We are still waiting for either.”

An NUS spokesperson released the following statement in relation to allegations made against President Bouattia: “Malia has addressed the accusations of antisemitism numerous times since her election last year, including in the Sunday Times in April, the Huffington Post in October, and in writing to the 560 NUS-affiliated further and higher education students’ unions in December.”

The final speaker mentioned in Magdalen’s motion was George Cicciarello-Maher: “ [He] suggested in a tweet that Israel harvests organs, and explicitly refers to the blood libel trope, the idea that Jews steal the blood and organs of non-Jews for religious rituals. This is both entirely false and grossly offensive.”

Ciccariello-Maher rejected the allegations, telling Cherwell: “The desperation of OUJS’s campaign against the ORF is truly absurd. In particular, I am accused of fostering a ‘blood libel’ narrative, when the totality of my comments on the matter have been limited to: one, defending my courageous colleague Jasbir Puar from a similar smear campaign, two, posting a 2009 article published in The Guardian on the subject, and three, responding to Israeli military comments regarding admitted past practices.

“The ludicrous nature of OSJS’s claims is most apparent when they suggest that I “explicitly refer to the blood libel trope,” without mentioning that I only “refer” to the trope in order to reject its use in smear campaigns like this one.

“The saddest part of such witch hunts is that we live in a moment of resurgent white supremacy – anti-Semitism very much included. We should be spending our energy fighting real racists and anti-Semites, not invented fantasies.”

OUSU is set to debate their funding of ORF at the next OUSU council meeting on the first of March, two days before the Forum is due to start.

In statement released on Friday they said: “The OUSU Executive Committee has considered the matter, and believes that the Cherwell’s [sic] investigation constitutes new information, and which may have affected the outcome of the motion had it come to light in the original discussion.”

They encourage all involved, including the original proposers of the motion and Jsoc, to “attend and debate the issues.”

Oxford Radical Forum have been contacted for comment.

Society divided: Dickens and revolution

Ethan Croft
-
0
Society divided: Dickens and revolution

Though he is known in public consciousness for illuminating life in the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens wrote firmly in the shadow of the eighteenth. A Tale of Two Cities, his reflection on the French Revolution, is told not in grand political abstractions, but with a focus on the lives of French emigrants living in London, and their relationship with the old country. Originally published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities constitutes Dickens’ first main attempt at ‘historical fiction.’

Dickens’ writing, constrained by serialisation, is perhaps uncharacteristically punchy. He takes us quickly through the historical timeline on which the plot is based, from the dusk of ancien régime Paris to the height of Robespierre’s terror.

The novel is half-remembered now for its famous opening line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” These words are the key to unlocking A Tale of Two Cities’ underlying theme of duality. They epitomise the struggle of holding to opposing things side by side. Dickens knows it is far easier to hop off the fence and pick a side, as the people of France did in 1789. The ‘two cities’ are not merely geographical (Paris and London), but ideological—aristocratic excess versus revolutionary zeal.

In A Tale of Two Cities, both systems of thought result in acts of evil. Whether it be the Monsieur de Marquis running over a child with his carriage and proceeding to pay for the infant’s life with a single coin, or the Jacquerie’s reign of mob rule and guillotine justice.

Dickens quite deliberately shies away from individual presentations of what it is to be ‘bad’. Characters such as Madame Defarge emphasise the point, but the prevailing theme is one of collective mentality. The revolutionary crowds who storm the Bastille prison fortress are referred to as ‘the sea’, a metaphor that plainly suggests these individuals, put together as one, are an unstoppable natural force. Later in the novel, Dickens uses the same technique by personifying the entire St. Antoine district of Paris. The arsonist revolutionaries, the Jacques, who burn down the Evrémonde country chateau are known only as points of the compass, and their Parisian counterparts are numbered rather than named.

This has a whiff of privileged ignorance, or even arrogance, about it. Dickens seems reluctant to venture even the tiniest investigation of their character or motivation, because they are proletarian delinquents. But his detachment from the French partisans is consistent throughout the novel, regardless of class.

In his preliminary sketches of the rancid ancien régime, Dickens uses the term ‘Monseigneur’ quite ambiguously. The descriptions are abstract, targeting no one person in favour of lambasting the entire pre-revolutionary social order.

This technique, a focus on the collective, is integral to Dickens wider tale of two cities, his depiction of fundamental division in society between two extremes. In the novel’s closing chapters, this is shown quite movingly in the face-off between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge. The two cities are in this instance two women, who somehow know they are determined enemies. Yet the language barrier renders them incapable of communication, and they resort to primal violence.

It is hard to identify one single protagonist in A Tale of Two Cities, but the antagonist is in plain sight—division itself. The tragic sacrifice at the novel’s climax is the price we pay for being zealous and uncompromising. Rather than identifying ourselves by ideology, or how we voted in a referendum, Dickens asks that, every once in a while, we adhere to that quaint tradition of keeping our ears open and our mouths shut.

The Coen brothers: a dynamic directing duo

Jack Allsopp
-
0
The Coen brothers: a dynamic directing duo

Hollywood refuses to allow the name of more than one director to be placed in film credits unless the directors are an ‘established duo’. It is believed that, if directing was considered a collaborative process, it would undermine the role of the director by reducing his or her importance.

Therefore, in all of their pre-2003 works, Joel Coen is credited as director and Ethan Coen as writer. Indeed, in some instances they adopted an alias: Roderick Jaynes. Even now when both are credited as co-directors, there is a tendency amongst the public to think of the director in the singular sense. Collaboration is a concept which undermines the celebrity culture of the modern era, so cannot figure in public consciousness.

Perhaps this is why, when I told friends that I was writing this piece on the Coen brothers, I was met with near universal confusion: very few know who they are. This is despite the fact that they are one of only six directors to win three Oscars for the same film, and only the third directing duo to win an Academy award.

Joel Coen completed a degree programme at film school in New York, whilst Ethan studied philosophy, and this is manifested in a combination of quality cinematography with a sort of quasi-intellectualism that characterises their films. Fargo, with its bleak, snow-blown depiction of Minnesota inspires an existential terror as one is shown greed’s true and hideous face. No Country For Old Men, with its incredible panoramas of the modern American West, depicts humanity’s capacity for avarice in a chillingly empty and unfulfilling reality.

Indeed, the covetous, self-serving tendencies of the modern age is perhaps, more than anything else, the overarching theme of the Coen brothers’ films. This should not be seen merely as a product of their liberal upbringing, with Joel and Ethan the children of an academic and artist raised in 1960s America. Rather, they are quintessentially products of the 1990s and 2000s: the age of the billionaire banker, the unsympathetic boss and above all the white-collar worker, transfixed on breaking out of his deathly dull shell into a world of irresistibly dangerous wealth.

Music, or the lack thereof, is a key component of Coen brothers films. At one extreme one would look at No Country For Old Men as an example of the Coen brothers at their most innovative. The film has almost no soundtrack whatsoever, yet its deathly silence awakens much deeper responses that one might think possible. This idea was presented by Ethan to a sceptical Joel, but the two agreed to go ahead with it, and reaped the rewards. The lack of music means the audience cannot rely on sounds to guide their responses, and this creates simultaneously a sense of unease but also engrossment.

Conversely, Inside Llewyn Davis uses sound to convey the deep-seated antipathy towards life that grows within the titular character as the film progresses. Perhaps the most resonant moment is when Llewyn is made to sing ‘Fare Thee Well’ by his hosts despite the fact that this song was traditionally sung by Llewyn’s now deceased partner. Mrs Gorfein then chimes in with a harmony, and Llewyn promptly loses his temper spectacularly, and the dissonance between his beautifully composed song on the one hand and the uncontrolled rage on the other shows how masterfully the Coen brothers can deploy auditory effects.

Yet theirs is not merely a two-way collaboration. One must also pay homage to regulars like George Clooney, Frances McDormand (Joel’s wife) and Steve Buscemi. Their ability to attract actors of this calibre illustrates the Coen brothers’ consummate skills as a directing duo: who can forget McDormand’s performance in Fargo as Marge, a pregnant police officer who becomes more and more aware and disgusted by the horrors that afflict her seemingly innocuously sleepy locality? Whilst the frequency of the McDormand-Coen collaboration may seem like the epitome of nepotism (and, indeed, it probably is), it is a successful, fruitful marital partnership on the big screen.

Joel and Ethan Coen are perhaps most famous for their inversion of genres, and their tendency to add a noir element to each of their films. For instance, one can see No Country For Old Men as a subversion of the classic Western and Miller’s Crossing as depicting twists on many of the tropes of Prohibition-era crime stories.

Their ability to tell wonderful stories by reworking classic film genres mirrors how we should rework our perception of the film director: they do not have to be an autonomous creator, but a coalescence of two great artists is equally valid: Joel and Ethan Coen most definitely constitute a dynamic duo.

SeXX-based cancer

Elena Zanchini di Castiglionchio
-
0
SeXX-based cancer

The recent discovery of the biological basis for sex-based differences in health has acted as a catalyst for an explosion of understanding in the field of sex medicine.

The incidence of many different types of cancer varies between men and women. Meningioma, a form of usually benign brain tumour, is twice as likely to occur in adult females (30 to 70 years old) than adult males. A study in Japan also found that women are 2.14 times more likely to develop non-urothelial carcinoma than males, a rare form of aggressive bladder cancer. Yet it’s not all doom and gloom for females: gliomas, a normally malignant cancer of the brain’s glial cells, is much more common in males.

This sex-based difference in health has been attributed to the gonadal hormones, produced by the sex organs in males and females. These seem to be linked to differences in tumour rates. The incidence of bladder cancer was shown to be higher in post-menopausal women than in pre-menopausal, probably due to a decrease in the concentration of hormones such as oestrogen after menopause. Many cancers even have receptors that recognise female hormones on their surface, making them responsive to progesterone and oestrogen levels. What’s more, women undertaking hormone replacement therapy have increased risk of developing a meningioma. The same can be said of male prostate cancer patients who’ve had their hormones therapeutically decreased.

However, sex hormones alone are not sufficient to explain all variation between males and females. Scientists have observed differences in brain structure between mice of both sex which have been genetically engineered to prevent the development of sex organs and so are unable to produce sex hormones. This divergence has been attributed to basic genetic differences between the male and female cells.

While male cells contain XY chromosomes, female cells contain XX. Due to its physical size, the X chromosome carries more genes than the Y chromosome. Indeed, female cells must inactivate one of their X chromosomes to prevent over-expression of these genes. When the X chromosome is incompletely inactivated genes found on it are over-expressed, with potentially severe consequences. This is associated with many diseases prevalent in women, including autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Interestingly, men with Klinefelter’s syndrome whose cells contain XXY chromosomes due to a failure of cellular machinery during meiosis (cell division to form sperm or eggs) are more at risk of developing diseases normally prevalent in women. This is most likely due to their increased levels of X chromosome expression.

Scientists are channeling their knowledge of sex-based diseases to combat them. For example, the protective effect of male hormones in inhibiting meningiomas could potentially be used to treat the tumour itself. The field’s innovative perspective on health is primed to revolutionise the way we prescribe medication and treat disease in the near future.

University denies reports of overseas campus

Daniel Curtis
-
0
University denies reports of overseas campus

Oxford University has denied reports that it is to open a foreign campus in France.

The Telegraph reported that French officials met with the University last week to discuss the proposed site, which would have been Oxford’s first ever foreign campus.

However, the University has denied that any such plan exists.

In a statement given to Cherwell, Stephen Rouse, Head of News and Information, said: “The University has received several constructive and helpful proposals from European colleagues since the Brexit vote. We are not, however, pursuing the model of a campus overseas.”

The Telegraph claimed that construction of any such site would begin in 2018, with courses being restructured to accommodate the prospective partnership.

This is a developing news story and will be updated with more information as we receive it.

1...926927928...2,524Page 927 of 2,524

Support Student Journalism

Cherwell is Oxford’s oldest independent newspaper, established in 1920. We are entirely student-run. By supporting us, you will contribute to keeping our paper in print and online. Every donation makes a difference.

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

Oxford Student Publications Limited © 2025 - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy

Website by Jamie Ashley