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Music History: Django Reinhardt

George Newton
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Music History: Django Reinhardt

If Django Reinhardt’s name doesn’t instantly ring a bell, his music certainly will. Hearing it will transport you to a Parisian café or brasserie – his entrancing jazz has become synonymous with French café culture. 

As the most famous, and arguably most iconic, European jazz musician of all time, Reinhardt’s life was as eventful as his music was influential. Jean – or ‘Django’ – Reinhardt was a Belgian-born Romani-French jazz musician who lived through most of the first half of the twentieth century. He combined the melodies of American jazz with the faster rhythms associated with Romani music, his innovative approach earning him an extensive following in the jazz world. This combination, along with his use of the acoustic guitar as a lead instrument, provided an avant-garde and fresh take, rethinking jazz after incorporating inspiration from other genres. Reinhardt’s music was unique in 1930s and ‘40s Europe and quite different to anything his contemporaries were producing. 

What makes Reinhardt’s transfixing solos all the more impressive is that he was unable to read sheet music and, due to a devastating fire in his Romani wagon, only had three fully working fingers on his left hand for most of his career. The injuries he sustained compromised his ability to form certain chords – he had to completely relearn how to play guitar, making his skill and influence even more extraordinary and unique. 

After meeting French-Italian violinist Stéphane Grappelli, the pair formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which went on to become one of the most famous and inventive jazz groups of the era – using only string instruments. The Quintette brought hot club jazz to the forefront of the European jazz scene, transforming a little-appreciated genre into one capable of rivalling great American swing artists like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. By the late 1930s, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli and the Quintette du Hot Club de France were the most famous European jazz musicians.

When the Second World War broke out, the Quintette were on tour in the UK; whilst Stéphane Grappelli opted to stay in Britain, Reinhardt returned to Paris, where his position as a Romani jazz musician in the Nazi-occupied city was a precarious one. The Nazis persecuted the Roma and Sinti peoples and saw jazz musicians as opponents of the regime. It is remarkable that Reinhardt, who was in the limelight as a Romani jazz musician, not only managed to survive the war, but also carried on performing live in Nazi-occupied Paris. In addition, he made seventy recordings of his music throughout the War, including liberation anthem ‘Nuages’. When Reinhardt eventually decided to leave occupied France, he was captured, and it was his good fortune that a jazz-loving Nazi officer allowed him to return to Paris unscathed.

Django Reinhardt changed the ways jazz could be played, and listened to, forever. He created a wonderfully mellifluous new type of jazz which could rival American swing, using his musical ear to write his solos and to develop his iconic guitar style despite the fact that a fire had compromised his ability to use his left hand. He made an astonishing number of recordings, producing over 900 sides between 1923 and 1953, using an instrument never before associated with leading a jazz band. One of the most notable and impressive aspects of Reinhardt’s life is that, although he came from a group which had been marginalised for centuries, and who were facing the worst persecution and genocide in their history, he still managed to create ground-breaking developments in jazz and gain widespread popularity doing what he loved. His Romani identity and family remained important to Reinhardt throughout his life; he would often just leave Paris to join his family for a few days, without even telling the Quintette.

In 1953, Reinhardt passed away at the age of just 43; however, his legacy lives on and continues to inspire musicians today. His children and grandchildren are musical; his second son Babik is a jazz guitarist and Babik’s son, David, leads his own jazz trio. However, the fact Reinhardt questioned assumptions of what the guitar was capable of has extended his influence to many modern guitarists too. When Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident, he was inspired to play guitar after hearing about Reindhardt’s right-handed technique. Jeff Beck, who played with Eric Clapton, referred to Reinhardt as ‘by far the most astonishing guitarist ever’. Joe Pass, one of the most renowned jazz guitarists of the 20th century, wrote an album called ‘For Django’ and there have been two films made about him.

With his smart suit, pencil moustache, slicked-back hair and a cigarette nestled between his lips, Reinhardt symbolises the archetypal French musician of the 1930s. He was brave, innovative, sometimes erratic and unreliable, but more than anything focused on creating and performing unique music which forever changed the face of jazz and expanded the boundaries of the acoustic guitar.

Suggested listening: Nuages / Beyond The Sea (La Mer) / St Louis Blues / Où es-tu mon amour? / Brazil (An interpretation of a Brazilian samba song – for a Brazilian version see Brasil (Aquarela Do Brasil) by Eliane Elias).

Emails reveal Government ministers “losing patience” over freedom of speech issues

Imogen Duke
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Emails reveal Government ministers “losing patience” over freedom of speech issues

Oxford University’s public condemnation of UNWomen Oxford UK Society’s decision to ‘no-platform’ Amber Rudd came after communication with the Department of Education and internal disagreement over the proposed statement.

The society cancelled the International Women’s Day event, which was hosting a talk by Amber Rudd, 30 minutes before it was scheduled to begin, due to protests over Rudd’s links to the Windrush scandal and her time in government.

Emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal internal discussion over the public response of the University. The statement initially proposed by the Public Affairs Directorate was published in its original form on 6th March, the day after the cancellation. The University deregistered UNWomen Oxford UK as an affiliated society in late March.  

The Vice-Chancellor spoke with the Secretary of State for Education’s Special Adviser the morning after Rudd’s ‘no-platforming’, following the Department for Education asking the University to “talk to someone as soon as possible.” The University also had “off the record” information that “senior Government ministers are losing patience with the sector in general, and what they perceive as slowness and inconsistency in response to freedom of issues [sic].”

The Proctors had suggested that the proposed full statement be replaced by a more “succinct message” which would be “in line with how the University has responded to other such clubs and society concerns.”

The head of University Communications responded saying the “wider political context” meant that to “deflect criticism of Oxford” the University had to “unambiguously condemn” the students’ decision. This referred to an expected Department for Education announcement of “tougher regulation/ legislation around freedom of speech.”

Later that day, Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, called for the University to take “robust action” against the “unacceptable” decision. The next day, he wrote in The Times that “if universities can’t defend free speech, the government will,” praising the University of Oxford for adopting “strong codes of conduct that champion academic free speech, explicitly recognising that this may sometimes cause offence.”

The Proctors’ Office had also recommended the proposed statement be less “emotive”, through removing reference to the University’s “feelings”. They suggested deleting the statement “taking necessary steps to ensure that this cannot be repeated”, saying it committed the University to “something that is not possible to 100% enforce.”

One staff member described the Public Affairs Directorate as “blowing the situation up” and that they were “worried” they would “make it worse”. They said: “I managed to see sight of the briefing (they don’t typically share as it’s not us responding) and I have gone back to them as I didn’t like what they were saying and some of it was incorrect.”

The University was also concerned about the formal complaint to be made by the Free Speech Union, run by Toby Young. He had lodged a complaint to Exeter College about the ‘no-platforming’ of Selina Todd earlier that week. The Public Affairs Directorate noted: “no doubt Toby Young will pick this up – two no platform issues in under a week related to us.” The complaint to Exeter College is described as having “detailed understanding of national legislation and the college’s own policies.”

The Mail on Sunday reported that this “correspondence between senior university staff… shows a strong statement denouncing the cancellation was only published after pressure from the Government and from political campaigner Toby Young.”

The University told Cherwell: “Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor has a long history of defending freedom of speech and the Secretary of State had nothing to do with the University’s position on this matter.

“The University strongly disapproved of the decision to disinvite Amber Rudd and the Proctors took just and proportionate action according to the existing policies which underpin the University’s stance on freedom of speech.

“The decision to deregister the UNWomen Oxford UK Society was taken by the University proctors because its conduct was in breach of the University’s code of conduct for student societies.”

Toby Young told Cherwell: “I was pleased to see the Free Speech Union being taken seriously by the Oxford authorities. From now on, any university that fails to uphold free speech can expect to receive a letter of complaint from the FSU and those letters will be copied to the Secretary of State for Education. University administrators know that if they don’t uphold free speech the Secretary of State is minded to take action.”

The society, which has since changed its name to United Women Oxford Student Society, defended the decision to disinvite Amber Rudd on its Facebook page: “We would like to begin by directly apologising for our decision to invite Amber Rudd to talk at our society, in particular to the BAME students of Oxford and other communities affected by her policies. We recognise that we should have addressed this issue upon deciding whether to invite her. We stand by our decision to cancel the event and show solidarity with the BAME community.”

The Committee of Oxford College JCR Presidents (PresCom) wrote an open letter criticising the University’s response to the society’s cancellation of Amber Rudd’s talk. The letter said the response demonstrated “the widely felt sentiment that the University is quick to abandon its students in the face of unwarranted backlash from national newspapers and high-profile individuals.” It also described “a lack of consistency as to when the University will take a stance in response to national headlines; in previous cases, the University has chosen to distance itself and not intervene.”

Oxford love can hurt like this

Franziska Rauh
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Oxford love can hurt like this

Okay, I thought, when I found myself two weeks into lockdown: NOW is the time to finally read that copy of Brideshead Revisited I bought at Blackwell’s in my first week at Oxford. I opened Evelyn Waugh’s much beloved masterpiece and read its opening description of a sunny June day in Oxford. But the references to cobblestones, punting on the Isis, walking down High Street, and passing Carfax tower gave me a sharp pain in the chest. I could not read them while feeling that I had been torn away from all this beauty and excitement by a global health crisis; that, in all likelihood, there would not be any days of June in Oxford for me in the foreseeable future (being on a one-year graduate course, I could not soothe myself by hoping for better luck in Trinity 2021, either). I was too heartbroken. So with a sigh, I put Evelyn Waugh back on the shelf, where he had been since October; only, this was now the bookshelf in my childhood bedroom somewhere in Bavaria, and not an Oxford college bookshelf anymore, which had given my earlier failure to read one of the most famous Oxford novels at least some kind of glamour before.

I browsed my mother’s bookshelves instead, in search of light entertainment, captivating enough to keep me from thinking about the pandemic or the academic work I was not doing. I settled for the crime section and decided to revisit a man who rarely fails to cheer me up: Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’ charming gentleman detective with impeccable manners. Deliberately, I did not go for Gaudy Night, the famous case in which he, once again, comes to the aid of Miss Harriet Vane, herself a writer of detective stories who has returned to her former Oxford college haunted by mysterious incidents, culminating in attempted murder. I read Have His Carcase first, a story set in Wilvercombe and not in danger of harming my feelings. Only when I had thus reacquainted myself with Wimsey and Vane did I dare to give Oxford novels a second try, and reread Gaudy Night (after a first reading last summer, in preparation for Oxford life). Gaudy Night is a very rich novel, giving you food for thought way beyond your typical detective story. So at first, the Brideshead Revisited effect held off. Maybe because I already knew the novel, and the reading was not imbued with the high expectations of a first encounter with a literary classic that had put me under pressure trying to read Brideshead Revisited; maybe because I had a captivating mystery to solve, Sayers’ witty language to admire, and her protagonist’s thoughts on female empowerment to evaluate, and could not dwell on my broken heart (blessed with an astonishingly bad long-term memory, I was not restrained by already knowing the ending of the story).

Still, the more I imaginatively delved into college life again, the more I felt I had been bilked out of something. Strolling around Christ Church, where Harriet meets Lord Peter’s spoilt but amiable nephew? That should have been me in an hour of leisure I just had not found yet, because there was always an essay to write when I wanted to go visit other colleges! Harriet and Lord Peter romantically resting in a punt on the Isis? That should have been me and my equally charming Oxford love interest still to be found at one of the college balls I was now not going to! Girls running around college in panic because they cannot find their gowns? That should have been me before my Trinity exams, dressed up in sub-fusc and in a rush to get to examination schools (okay, that might not be a totally attractive idea to everybody, but you get the point). In her foreword to Gaudy Night, Sayers writes, with reference to the mixture of fiction and reality that forms the novel’s setting: “However realistic the background, the novelist’s only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offence in the world.” But I was offended. Sayers’ Cloud-Cuckooland bore enough resemblance with the Oxford I knew for that.

At some point, I intended this to become a well-balanced piece of writing which would retrace my journey from anger to acceptance, where I would tell you how reading Gaudy Night had been a source of calm and solace to me, where I had been disappointed at first, but ultimately found a way to look at all the fun Oxford stuff depicted in the novel with gratitude: for I had been a part of this amazing world for a while, and I still was, even if only remotely. But you know what? I am not going to lie. I am not there yet. I am still in the anger stage. I am aware that I am incredibly privileged because the only major effect this pandemic has had on my life so far is that it has interrupted my year abroad, at Oxford. I am not intending to compare. Yet I also do not think it is helpful to deny oneself the right to feel angry, disappointed or sad. I think that having these feelings about the abrupt ending of my Oxford time means to maintain a pinch of normality in this crazy world. Because under normal circumstances, if I had to return home from Oxford in haste, if I was not able to carry on living a dream of mine I had cherished for years and I had finally seen come true, I would be exactly that: angry, disappointed, and sad. And so, no, reading Gaudy Night did not soothe me by imaginatively letting me return to Oxford. It made me realize even more clearly what I had lost and thus kindled my anger. I intend to stay angry for quite a bit longer. But I’ll be fine eventually. And after some time, I may be able to pick up Brideshead Revisited again, or any other Oxford novel, and maybe the thought of sunlit cobblestones will not make me flinch anymore. Maybe a reference to the Rad Cam will not hurt so much. Maybe I will be able to think about High Street or Queen’s Lane as just some street I used to know. But I doubt it. 

Fashion in an age of aesthetics: artwork’s place within commercial culture

Devanshika Bajpai
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Fashion in an age of aesthetics: artwork’s place within commercial culture

The intrinsic connection between art and fashion has been so perfectly expressed by none other than the illustrious Giorgio Armani who selects his garments “as if they were works of art and art chosen and exhibited with all the brilliance of fashion.” It is unsurprising, then, that in a world dictated by constantly-updating social media feeds that the two industries are using one another to stay relevant. The forerunners in both industries from large fast-fashion brands and conglomerate museums to haute couture houses and unknown artist are all gloriously collaborating with one another pandering to consumers whose attention consistently needs to be attained. Consequently, this trend in cross-pollination is giving a gravitas to brands & artists enabling them access to markets they could only dream of entering. Back in 2016 we saw the high-street brand COS join forces with The Guggenheim to create a collaborative line of Agnes Martin inspired clothing which radically altered their better known fast-fashion aesthetic. Whilst at the other end of the spectrum we have reveled in Gucci’s collaboration with Trevor Andrews better known as ‘Gucci Ghost’. Such a radical composition chaperoned Gucci into a successful street-style aesthetic that has not only appealed to the common consumer but also to celebrities such as Rihanna all the way up to Elton John. Such a contrast in brand, artist and successful outcome is fascinating; this world of symbiosis is not only changing the face of the art market but also the boundaries of fashion.

Art as an entity is often sought after because it’s a ‘one off’ – the less there are, the more they are worth – is a common rhetoric at any art auction or sale. So how does a mass-produced brand use art to make both, the artists and the brand more successful? How is it that making original artwork more accessible makes it more profitable? Well if one is to look at the early days of Supreme, Jebbia decided to create ‘drops’ of limited-edition clothing, commercially akin to Warhol’s multiples in order to upmarket the price on ‘exclusive clothing’. Other brands caught on to the success of Supremes’ ‘art-fashion’ model and began to produce in the same way. Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami’s collection made with Louis Vuitton sold at prices higher than the luxury brand’s basic pieces signaling to the consumer, the rarity of this collaboration. In keeping with the art markets exclusivity, brands use ‘limited edition’ to keep both relevant in this fast-paced world and also to retain the ‘integrity’ of the artists name. Evidenced by Vuitton’s prominence in the public eye being credited for its propulsion of Murakami into the global art market. It’s clear that fashion has an accessibility to commercialisation that art had never before had access to and this is a strong benefit for their unison of creativity. However, its shelf-life seems to be deteriorating to nothing more than a tokenistic trend where these obvious strategies no longer challenge the face of fashion.

Artistic integrity, fashion and commercial culture enjoy a tenuous relationship even when the influence extends vice versa, for artists using fashion as stimulus. Elmgreen and Dragset’s ‘Prada Marfa’ land art installation that creates bountiful discussion and personal interpterion that even the artists didn’t expect. The work itself is a reconstruction of a Prada shop placed outside the city of Marfa, Texas. Not only is the store stocked with real Prada items, it was even vandalised and burgled on its opening night. The irony doesn’t stop there however, the real-life exclusivity of Prada is replicated in their ‘Prada Marfa’ work’s visual exclusivity being that one has to take a pilgrimage to get there. As a comical and fascinating interjection in the fashion world, Elmgreen and Dragset’s are benefitting from the cult-followings of fashion houses which has introduced new audiences to their art. However, one can now begin to see that such successful collaborations are few and far between.

One just has to look at the infamous Vuitton partnership with the king of commercialisation Jeff Koonz which was heavily panned by critics due to its unoriginality, tacky appropriation and its clear disrespect to the works of Old Masters – it was even famously described as “fashion terrorism”, the ultimate symbol of appropriating artists’ work for consumerist goals. For those unaware of this disaster Koonz pasted paintings from various Old Masters including, Rubens, da Vinci and Titan onto Vuitton’s bags, tactlessly adorned by garish primary colors and Koonz iconic bunny. Perhaps the question remaining is whether these art and fashion collaborations need to do anything more than entertain the fast-paced changing aesthetic of the modern-day consumer whom are willing to pay the price.

It is easy to see how expensive designer brands can collaborate with successful artists to make their exclusive clothes even more desirable. Yet more interestingly, one may claim that when collaborations allow art and fashion to reach a wider audience, directly or indirectly, this outweighs the underlying issues of tokenistic commercialisation. For example, in 2004 Uniqlo released Andy Warhol prints on their clothing in order to follow in Warhol’s rhetoric of art for the people thus began their illustrious journey of combining contemporary art with their ‘affordable’ brand. Today, Uniqlo are partnered with MoMA in New York symbiotically printing artist work that is housed in the museum from Basquiat to Kruger in an attempt to bring divergent audiences to both Uniqlo’s store and to MoMA. Such a powerful symbiosis extends over the pond to The Tate in London who similarly paired with a high-street store, Dr. Martens, to garner a wider interest in the galleries permanent collection. Incorporated with the classic Doc aesthetic William Blakes paintings adorn the shoes leather depicting some of his most famous scenes. Dr. Martens and The Tate noted that like Doc’s “Blake is a true rebel and the ideal artist to elevate DM’s shoes and accessories.” Both of these major collaborations are seemingly doing a lot to encourage visibility of the arts as well as expanding their own brands cultural aesthetic. Therefore, these successful examples are forging a path for other artistic collaborations to comfortably find their place within commercial culture.

In conversation with Dr Xand

Lucas Jones
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In conversation with Dr Xand

Dr. Alexander van Tulleken has Covid-19. He told me as much down the phone, explaining that no other disease could explain the symptoms he was suffering from. He had a persistent cough and a fever, the standard symptoms, but he had also lost his sense of taste and smell. This was before that was widely accepted as a key symptom, but he was certain that it was important. “Anecdote is more powerful tool in medicine than we give it credit for,” he explains, noting that although studies had not proved a conclusive link between loss of sensation and the disease, reports from South Korea strongly suggest that one exists. In a post-truth world, the suggestion that our trust should be placed in anecdotes may raise some eyebrows, but Xand, as he’s usually known, knows what he’s talking about.

While he may be best known as the presenter of programmes like Operation Ouch and The Twinstitute, Dr. Xand also has an impressive medical background. With qualifications from Somerville College and Harvard Medical School under his belt, he made a name for himself as an editor of the Oxford Handbook of Humanitarian Medicine, and a senior research fellow at Fordham University, New York. His career as a senior medical analyst has seen him report on health crises around the globe, covering the Ebola epidemic in the United States and working with the World Health Organisation, Merlin, and other significant health charities.

“I was quite lazy at school,” he says, “I would have loved to do an English degree or a History degree, but I would have sunk without a trace.”  He points to the nature of the degree as one of the key reasons he wanted to study medicine, arguing that he needed the structure to keep him on track. There was also a family element involved. “There’s this sort of reinforcing virtuousness about saying that you want to be a doctor,” he laughs, “people start to treat you like a doctor when you’re fifteen.”

You would think that children’s telly would be the undignified, silly, boring, weird bit of a person’s career… instead it’s literally the most intellectually stimulating.”

“

Perhaps this explains why Xand and Chris (his identical twin brother) followed such similar paths. Both hold medical degrees from Oxford University, and both studied Tropical Medicine afterwards. Intriguingly, they both started presenting at the same time, doing a documentary series called Medicine Men Go Wild, which examined indigenous medicine. Since then they have worked together on several television projects, most famously Operation Ouch.

“There was never a moment when either of us went ‘I’m going to pivot to presenting’” says Xand, making it clear that his main interest is still humanitarian medicine. However, that hasn’t stopped him from presenting an impressive selection of programmes. “We got asked to do more stuff,” he explains, “we had a strange thing that we were twins, and twins are very useful on telly because… you have a built-in relationship that can be very silly or antagonistic and still be comfortable.”  The Van Tulleken twins put this relationship to full use in many of their shows, acting as human ‘lab-rats’ for experiments ranging from alcohol intake to acupuncture.

The twins are probably best known for their children’s series Operation Ouch, a science show on CBBC that Xand describes as the “most intellectually demanding, morally engaging, complicated, scientifically accurate thing on the telly.” More on that in a moment. Asked whether he changes his register to get his ideas across the children who watch the shows, he laughs. “On BBC 2 I would be reluctant to use the word ‘hypothesis’ whereas on Operation Ouch we use it routinely.” Children who don’t understand something, he explains, keep watching, whereas adults tend to switch off.

Operation Ouch is, according to Xand, pitched at the level of first-year medical students. While this may seem ludicrous, his justification makes it clear that he isn’t joking. “You would think that children’s telly would be the undignified, silly, boring, weird bit of a person’s career… instead it’s literally the most intellectually stimulating.” Navigating topics like alcohol, sex, and gender while remaining both appropriate and completely inclusive is no mean feat. The brothers manage impressively, discussing concepts as advanced as saltatory nerves and iron channels without ever deviating from the juvenile humour that characterises the show.

“Public Health England (PHE) has one of the most difficult jobs in the world at the moment.”

Getting messages about health and wellbeing out to the population has never been more important than it is right now. I asked Xand his thoughts on the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as someone who has been delivering public health messages to the UK for years. He immediately refuted my suggestion that his work was primarily concerned with public health. “Most of what we’re trying to make,” he responded, “is entertainment… I try not say ‘here’s how to live your life.’”

True as that may be, he hasn’t shied away from public health work in the current circumstances. Since the start of the pandemic, he has appeared as a medical advisor on several television shows, responding to questions on BBC’s Newsround and filming a documentary about self-isolation for Channel 4. Despite his modesty, he is clearly more than qualified to comment on the government’s response.

“I think that Public Health England (PHE) has one of the most difficult jobs in the world at the moment.”  Although he concedes that many of the publications published by PHE aren’t as visually appealing as they could be, he also reminds me that “that isn’t their job.” Instead, the organisation has to put out clear material for local community leaders to reinterpret in ways that will accommodate for everyone in Britain. The respect he has for PHE’s response to the crisis is audible, he takes the opportunity to emphasise the unique difficulties of planning such a response.

“In doing the messaging correctly,” says Xand, “the government will look bad and chaotic… You think ‘well, that’s terrible communication’ but it’s not. That’s perfect public health.” This is how Xand explains the Prime Minister’s seemingly sudden decision to put the country into ‘lockdown’. Public health announcements clearly change our behaviour, often in a way that helps the virus spread. In keeping information to themselves for the good of the country, the government’s response looks more piecemeal and disorganised than it actually is. In other words, “PHE are doing a much better job than they can ever get credit for”.

“In doing the messaging correctly,the government will look bad and chaotic… You think ‘well, that’s terrible communication’ but it’s not. That’s perfect public health.”

The coronavirus crisis will not treat everyone equally, Xand is brutally honest about that. “I think we are going to get a massive tension between desperate attempts to slow the spread of the virus and the absolute desperation of people who are already in extreme poverty or who have fallen into extreme poverty. For many people, the big consequence of this virus will be a plunge into poverty from which they cannot escape.”

The long-term problems associated with this pandemic will be more to do with economics than health, and the short-term victims of the lockdown certainly won’t be the politicians. There’s a whole social element to the crisis as well: many people will inevitably be trapped with their abusers and single parents will have to juggle a daunting set of tasks that now includes home-schooling.

Since this interview took place, Xand has made a full recovery. He continues to answer the nation’s questions on television, providing a reassuring, expert presence in a world of terrifying news and ill-informed WhatsApp oracles. The UK, however, continues to see cases rise in line with Xand’s tentative predictions. He made another prediction, this time that the coronavirus was “spreading unchecked” in Africa. As Africa’s total confirmed cases exceeds 10,000 and lockdowns are implemented across the continent, his words ring true. His consistent ability to interpret the direction makes me wish that he hadn’t made any more predictions. Unfortunately, he did.

“We’ll recover from Covid-19,” says Xand, “unfortunately, I think this is not the big one. I think in our lifetime we will see worse pandemics.” Coming from anyone else, this would seem like an alarmist conspiracy theory. But it’s coming from Dr. Xand, and he clearly knows what he’s talking about.

Readers questions:

When is the UK going to return to normality? – Ayesha Khan

“This will leave a very significant scar in everyone’s minds and some people’s bodies in the way that huge global events like September 11th often do. Life goes back to normal, but not quite. We will get our lives back, for sure. Most people are happy to get on the train and go to the park with this virus circulating, so clearly this is not a virus that will in itself change our behaviour. Our behaviour is being changed by rules and regulations and as soon as those are lifted to some extent our lives will go back to normal. I would say the next twelve weeks are going to be really, really unpleasant in terms of what we see on the news. In the end the virus is not stoppable in any proper way, we can slow it down but the health service will inevitably be overwhelmed. I would think that by the end of the summer with testing increased and more knowledge about the denominator we are going to have a much clearer picture of how to respond. I would think that in a year’s time things will look very much better for most people.”

Is there going to be a dramatic rethink of the economy after Covid-19? – Sam Millward

“No. I think basically people are idiots and as a species, we’re doing an absolutely terrible job of everything. What’s a slightly more intellectual way of phrasing that? There have always been heroic people throughout history who we’ve ignored: The Labour Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement. So many people have resisted the bad forces of greed and capitalism through the centuries but essentially, we have built a world which seems to require its own destruction and I don’t believe we’ll stop doing that. If you look at our behaviour with regard to climate change, if you look at the way we ran the economy post-2008 we seem absolutely unwilling to put long-term benefit over short-term gain. Given our willingness to ignore things that are definitely going to happen and be bad for us, climate change being the obvious example. I feel very, very pessimistic about our ability to change anything significant.”

Responses have been edited for length and clarity, interview conducted on Wednesday 25th March.

The Minefield of Coronavirus Metaphors

Orna Rifkin
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The Minefield of Coronavirus Metaphors

“This is the frontline in a war,” begins BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh’s special report on coronavirus, filmed in University College Hospital, London. He speaks these words over footage of doctors armoured in blue and white plastic gowns, facemasks, and visors. The coronavirus-as-war metaphor besieges the language of world leaders, from self-proclaimed ‘war president’ Trump to Xi Jinping’s waging of a ‘people’s war’ against the virus. It has also invaded the language used on the news, on social media, and in our quarantined homes.

Who, exactly, is fighting this war? The doctors? The patients? Peter Openshaw, a senior doctor who has been treating COVID-19 patients, finds the metaphor harmful. He speaks of patients suffering from the disease who suffer a further sense of guilt and personal inadequacy, feeling that they haven’t had the strength to fight the virus, when the biological reality is completely removed from such psychological perceptions. Was it really Boris Johnson’s strength as a ‘fighter’ that led to his discharge from St. Thomas’, or, as he himself says, the hard work of the NHS staff who treated him?

Politicians like the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Matt Hancock, and Donald Trump have all referred to coronavirus as an ‘invisible enemy/killer’. But while the war metaphor is used to turn coronavirus into a psychological reality, it is also causing psychological ills.

This is the argument of Susan Sontag’s long essay Illness as Metaphor, a study of literary and historical portrayals of tuberculosis and cancer, the most metaphor-addled diseases of their epochs, aiming for a ‘liberation’ from morally-charged metaphors which extend the spread of these diseases into language itself. A disease-turned-metaphor harms more than the ill.

What separates coronavirus from other illnesses is its WHO-endorsed status as a pandemic. Here, disease-as-war metaphors work both on a personal and a national scale; they can be read both inwards, as in Openshaw and Sontag’s misgivings, and also outwards, as a collective fight into which the healthy are also ‘enlisted’ or ‘conscripted’.

There are two war metaphors which are becoming increasingly tangled — disease as war, and politics as war. We should be mindful of keeping these separate. A point of contention around the House of Commons Brexit debates has been the use of military terms to describe political processes, the PM’s ‘surrender bill’ being a prominent example. Camouflaged within these metaphors are violent notions of division and superiority which are deeply unhelpful in public discourse.

One issue with the military metaphor is its misogyny — it implies that only men are soldiers, only men are politicians, only men are doctors. Deborah Tannen, in her outmoded linguistic theory of gender ‘difference’, associates language of collaboration with women, and language of conflict with men. A linguistic difference which has since been shown to reflect pre-existing gender roles. The use of this metaphor, overwhelmingly by men, perpetuates sexist stereotypes which not only harm women, but complicate political processes of consensus.

There is an aggressive, nationalistic quality that is attached to the war metaphor which, when its use is universalised, is undoubtedly dangerous. Although the prominence of the Second World War in the Queen’s address can be criticised, her call to “join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour” is powerful. It cuts through the rapid-fire declarations of national war that have been made by so many world leaders, hasty to enforce their own political power. This is why I find the words of Fergus Walsh, and so many others, so incongruent — doctors work to heal, not to harm.

Image via Getty Images

God Save the Queen, I Guess

Natasha Voase
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God Save the Queen, I Guess

I’ve never made any secret of my dislike for the British Royal Family; they spend too much on clothes, horses and houses few of us will ever see and, other than a bit of ribbon-cutting, what good do they actually do? From their tangled web of relationships to their ludicrous headline-grabbing scandals, they’ve always struck me as being the well-bred version of the Kardashians. However, during this time of crisis, I’ve developed a sort of grudging respect for one royal in particular: the Queen.

This year hasn’t been a good one for the royal family; from Prince Andrew’s car crash Newsnight interview and implication in the Epstein Scandal, to the abrupt exit of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from the Firm, it’s been a true annus horriblis. However, with Boris Johnson out of action and his cabinet bickering about who’s meant to be in charge, the Queen has emerged above the fray to remind us that, despite the absurd soap opera of her own family, she still does, at 93 years old, have a role to play.

Addressing the nation outside of her Christmas Speech for the fourth time and facing the camera looking like a sweet but determined granny, she urged the nation to be unified in the face of a pathogen which has brought the world to a grinding halt. Telling us to live in the knowledge that we’ll meet again was a masterful touch; in a time when physical contact has been banned and Zoom proves to be a poor replacement for face-to-face contact, never have we been more eager to meet our friends again. Perhaps as a woman who has lived through many of the events described in history textbooks, she is uniquely placed to capture the mood of millions of people hiding away indoors.

Though the Queen might be the unifying figure Britain needs at this moment in time, the future of the British monarchy is by no means secure and no one knows that better than she. A child during the 1936 Abdication Crisis, she saw the monarchy coming close to the end as her uncle abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile, the Queen mother and George VI were regularly booed when they visited bomb sites in the East End during the Second World War. A bomb might have landed in Buckingham Palace’s garden, but that didn’t mean that their suffering was on par with those living in the heart of one of the poorest and worst-affected areas of London. Meanwhile, coming to the throne in 1952 as the head of a large empire, she oversaw the transition from Empire to Commonwealth amidst the backdrop of a rapidly changing British society to which the monarchy looked increasingly stuffy and out of date. Going back to the decade in which many of us were born, the Queen was far from popular. From the annus horriblis of 1992 to her handling of the death of Princess Diana in 1997, her Second World War stoicism seemed increasingly out of place with the new Britain of the 1990s. However, somehow, she’s managed to survive it all, celebrating her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

Therefore, the Queen, with her brightly-coloured suits and matching hats perched atop white hair, might be the head of state Britain needs, if not the one we chose. Whilst an elected Head of State might drag Britain kicking and screaming into the 21st century, the advantage of the Queen is that, unlike any President, she’s almost eternal. Donald Trump may be voted out in November 2020, Emmanuel Macron in 2022, but the Queen will always be there. Thus, the greatest challenge faced by the monarchy today is not COVID-19 but what to do when the Queen’s no longer at the helm – and at 93 years old, her death isn’t a remote possibility.

The Queen’s well-chosen words may have proven the monarchy’s worth, but the rest of the family should be working out how to keep the lights on when the head of the family is gone. The departure of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as well as Prince Andrew’s disgrace should give them the impetus they need to slim down the monarchy and get rid of the hangers-on, whilst the Queen’s speech should give them the inspiration they’ve been looking for to prove that they’re more than just reality stars with posh accents.

The role of the monarchy is to provide unifying leadership and the Queen has done just that. However, in order to keep the Crown on their heads, they should continue to adapt, remembering that more secure monarchies than theirs have been brought down by smaller crises than this.

Review: Corpus Christi

Magdalena Kościółek
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Review: Corpus Christi

Once in a while you want to remain in your seat after the closing credits appear – you find yourself unable to simply get up and go back to your daily life. The movies that leave you in this state have such power that you cannot be indifferent to them, mindlessly indulging in the entertainment they nonetheless offer. The Polish nominee for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film Corpus Christi (2019) is indeed one of these films. 

It is the story of twenty-year old Daniel who is kept in a detention centre because of his criminal past. Soon, due to a coincidence, he is mistaken for a priest and is asked to replace the vicar of a small town for a short period of time. He becomes the spiritual leader of this local community, which was recently broken by a tragedy the year before. Implausible as it may seem, the plot is inspired by true events that occurred in Poland in 2011. 

Corpus Christi is incredibly multifaceted, and true pleasure can be found in exploring the different dimensions of possible interpretations. The deliberate avoidance of explicit conclusions and stereotypes facilitates these explorations, and makes the film equally appealing to religious people and atheists alike. This is because on the one hand Corpus Christi is about religion, more specifically, Catholicism, in a modern iteration, but on the other, it constitutes a parable about good and evil, a tale of redemption, and an account of adolescence. Polish viewers will certainly find that the film offers insightful commentary on the provincial life, but the movie by no means needs to be considered in this specific national context. 

The director, Jan Komasa does a great deal of work to look at Catholicism with honesty, without prejudices and one-sidedness. The movie does not constitute an uncritical celebration but neither does it offer a total condemnation. The characters are very complex. For example, Daniel is more of a coach than a priest. He may not know the technicalities of theology, but he does speak to people from the bottom of his heart. His words are fierce and he knows how important and difficult forgiveness is, partly because of his own past. Throughout the movie, it is easy to forget about Daniel’s criminal record, which, once reminded, only intensifies the film’s messaging around the dualism of human nature. 

All of this would not be possible without a brilliant script from twenty-eight-year-old Mateusz Pacewicz. The seriousness of the issues with which Corpus Christi is preoccupied is balanced with many humorous dialogues and one-liners that prevent the movie from becoming too “heavy”. As to the director, Corpus Christi is quite different from director Jan Komasa’s previous works, especially in terms of means of expression, but it certainly gives us hope for his future work.

Last but not least, Corpus Christi is a concerto of outstanding acting performances. Bartosz Bielenia, playing Daniel, literally hypnotises with his intense gaze. His experience is visible in the way he operates his body, fully aware of his distinctive physiognomy and taking full advantage of it. He perfectly embodies every role his character takes on – a hooligan from a detention centre, a charismatic priest, and, most of all, a lost young man. 

Bielenia’s performance is complemented by an excellent group of supporting characters. Aleksandra Konieczna, playing a sexton whose way of looking at the world is deeply entwined with her faith, does not disappoint. She strikes just the right balance between exaggeration and understatement; every single grimace in her performance is significant. Her daughter, played by Eliza Rycembel, manages to manifest a natural youthfulness in the role even while maintaining her character’s complexity. Other actors, such as Tomasz Ziętek as Daniel’s friend from the detention centre and Łukasz Simlat as another priest, succeed in portraying the full depth of their characters, irrespective of the screen time they have been given. 

The Church, apart from its meaning as an institution, is also, very simply, a body of believers. Corpus Christi is all about these believers, these humans, and their complicated problems and choices. To that end, the film has a lot to offer to every viewer and is well worth watching. 

Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

Abigail Howe
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Richard II, coronavirus and creativity – in conversation with Dorothy McDowell

It seems like there’s enough drama happening in the real world to justify dark theatres and empty stages. The Edinburgh Fringe has been cancelled, Broadway is in its longest-ever closure, and there won’t even be any experimental student theatre in the Burton-Taylor Studio next term. While many major theatres are releasing recordings of their shows, this isn’t an option for typical student productions – especially for those which were due to perform in Trinity. Instead, there’s been a slew of cancellations and postponements.

But, as I was scrolling sluggishly through my Facebook feed, I saw something shocking – auditions being advertised! Highly complex investigate journalism showed that these auditions were for a virtual production of Richard II, produced by Not the Way Forward Productions. I was curious to know more, so (virtually) sat down with the director, Dorothy McDowell, to (virtually) discuss creativity in a time of crisis, the appeal of Shakespeare and the joy of quizzes!

Dorothy McDowell is a second-year English student at Keble. Previously, she’s directed Measure for Measure and she’s the current President of the Keble O’Reilly.  At the moment, she’s directing Richard II, which will be available for free as a virtual show from 5-8 May. More information can be found here.

What gave you the idea of doing a virtual production?

I mentioned it as a joke to Juliet (the show’s producer) when we began to realize that our Trinity show probably wasn’t going to happen, and the more I thought about it the more I liked it – it’s nice to be able to make something that’s genuinely responsive to the situation you are living in. We had to move pretty quickly to make sure we were ready to rehearse when lockdown started. We were keen to do the majority of the work when the tightest restrictions were in place so we could give everyone involved something fun to do.

Was there a significant difference between looking at filmed auditions and the in-person ones which are more typical for Oxford productions?

It was a bit odd, but only in that it wasn’t something I’d done before. In fact, I hope it might have made the audition process a bit easier for the actors because they didn’t have to worry about getting their performance right first time (or having two strange women staring at them for 10 minutes).

Why did you choose Shakespeare (and specifically Richard II)? Why is Shakespeare appealing to creatives so much now?

I think the answer to why so many people are reaching for Shakespeare right now is, in part, a very boring one: he’s one of the few playwrights that basically every theatre-minded person has a good working knowledge of. A bit more poetically, there is also something very reassuring about plays that are 400 years old. They are so far removed from the situation you find yourself in that they act as a welcome distraction; and they come with a sense of ‘well, these things have survived several plagues and a couple of world wars; I suppose I can make it through this’.

As to why I chose Richard II: I’ve loved it for years – it’s always been in the back of my mind as something I’d like to direct, but I’d never come up with an interpretation strong enough to justify it. I stumbled upon it when I was trying to think of a show to do in an online format. I’d decided I wanted to make a show about ‘choice’, because I think the thing that makes the situation we’re all in at the moment scary is the fact that we don’t have anychoice about what happens next. Besides, I’d just been put in a position of not having any choice over the kind of show I was going to make (it had to be online), so I felt I had to acknowledge that in the show itself. Richard popped into my head and I realized that it’s all about choice – it’s about people being forced to pick a side in a civil war; and about other people causing that civil war by stealing money and raising armies and then claiming that they didn’t have any choice in the matter. The irony of Henry Bolingbroke standing outside Flint Castle with 3000 French soldiers explaining that ‘well, I didn’t actually want to invade, but, honestly, what other logical choice was there?’ is oddly fitting. As I’ve been rather irritatingly repeating in all of my marketing copy: this isn’t the way I’d choose to tell this story; but it isn’t the story that any of the characters would choose to have told about them either.

From looking at your auditions event, the genders of characters have clearly been switched even before casting. Why is this and what effect do you think it’ll have on your production?

I always do majority-female shows, for all kinds of reasons. A lot of student directors will tell you that the number of female-identifying actors auditioning for shows significantly outnumbers the number of male-identifying ones, but any play written before 2000 is almost guaranteed to have far more parts for men, which is unfair. Having a majority female cast also makes it easier to convince the audience that they are listening to a story that they haven’t heard before. One of the most famous speeches in Richard II is ‘let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings’; it’s a page of meditation on what it means to be a king, and probably one of the most quoted bits of Shakespeare. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a page on what it means to be a Queen. We’re rehearsing that scene in a few days: I’ll have heard it then. I also just love putting powerful women onstage – Richard II is full of Queens, usurpers and political fixers; people who hold everyone else’s future in their hands. Women that other people are scared of are such a rarity onstage and I think they’re great: so much fun to play, and so much fun to watch. I understand why the question has to be asked, but I find it a strange one to answer: ‘why are you putting on a show where all of the interesting characters are men?’ is really the one that needs asking.

Marketing will have to be innovative – you can’t put posters up in the JCR anymore! Is there anything we should be looking out for?

Quizzes. Soooo many quizzes. If our play is about choice, we want to give our audience as much choice as possible. Get a warring noble to align yourself with or roast your mates on a tag yourself – we’ve got loads of option-based marketing lined up for you! (I have remembered to say: follow us on Facebook @notthewayforward so my marketing manager doesn’t kill me).

Lots of directors have had their Trinity projects cancelled or delayed – do you have any advice for how they can remain encouraged or even attempt to transfer their work to the digital realm?

I wish I was wise enough to be able to give other people advice. I have a theory that it’s almost easier to be creative within sets of restrictions, because when you have to work out how to get round something you come up with things you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise – I don’t know if that’s exactly helpful, but maybe it’s encouraging?

Can museums be decolonised? The restitution question

Annabelle Grigg
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Can museums be decolonised? The restitution question

The first step of reckoning with our colonial past is recognising its remaining presence. Every aspect of modern life is informed by the spoils of imperialism from the architecture that surrounds us to the languages spoken across the globe. The next step of decolonisation is much trickier: what are we to do with cultural institutions that embody the most aggressive and destructive parts of Europe’s history? Museums fall into this category. Their formation and proliferation in the eighteenth century paralleled the building of empires and the rise of nationalism. They are stocked with looted objects from colonial and ethnographic missions. Is it enough to just acknowledge that imperialism was (and still is) imperative to the museum, or should we be more proactive, following a policy of restitution?

Some progress has been made. Arts Council England recently published government-backed guidance for museums on repatriation; Macron commissioned a report pushing for the permanent return of looted items during French colonial occupation of sub-Saharan Africa; and curators are becoming more sensitive to the past of museums as pressure has mounted from protest movements like #RhodesMustFall. But I would argue it is not just what fills museums that make them problematic – rather, the function and concept of the museum are still rooted in a colonial way of seeing the world.

Museums decontextualize objects from their original conditions and reframe them on their own terms, which are often bound to colonial ideologies. This is simply unavoidable in the process of curation. Objects must be ordered and, if done chronologically, they risk perpetuating the pervasive myth of a nation’s teleological progress forward. Items looted by Napoleon like the Horse of Saint Mark went from a triumphal public procession straight into the Louvre, and the museum became a trophy box for war spoils. If categorised by function rather than geography, distinct cultural objects are collapsed into one – Portuguese pots are equated with Malaysian crockery, incorrectly portraying their original intention. Museums give cultural objects an aesthetic and artistic function, and lived social practices, beliefs, and identities infused in them are changed to foreign peculiarities for Western eyes. In Oxford’s own Pitt Rivers Museum, items are given blanket labels such as ‘animal forms in art’ that completely distort their makers’ intention. Essentially, there is always some kind of destruction in the act of collecting itself, and new meaning is inevitably created.

These issues are amplified when considering cultural value assigned to museums. Most public museums are in capital cities at the heart of town, with dominating architectural features. Consider the National Gallery’s huge pillars, lions, and dramatic steps – all of this signifies to the public that museums are places to be venerated rather than critically analysed. Most public museums mimic Greek and Roman temples, from the Glyptothek in Munich to the National Gallery in Sydney. Chosen for their beauty and glory, Carol Duncan has also noted that this rational form is also an expression of Enlightenment values, of secular truths being the basis of knowledge. Museums are seen then as places of objective knowledge and glory; however, they will always present information in a subjective and skewed way.

Is it enough, then, to simply return looted objects when the museum space remains problematic? For obvious reasons, I am not advocating for the wholesale dismantling of museums. The power of the museum space has resulted in it also becoming a crucial space for the creation of national collective memory and even definitions of citizenships, often positively: for example, recent efforts to include more representations of members of the BAME community in the Tate Collection. If the museum has such power to represent, I wonder if emptying museums of colonial goods could result in the end of discussions of imperialism and prevent proper reckoning with our past.

Wherever and whenever possible, it is crucial for museums to repatriate stolen goods, and to continue to find new ways to do so. Manchester Museum’s livestreams of ‘handover’ ceremonies of looted goods shows how museums can transcend geographical boundaries and improve current dialogues with those who suffered at the hands of the empire. However, this should not be seen as the end of museum decolonisation when it is clear Europe’s past is so ingrained in the museum’s history, function, and structure.

Rather, museums should also try to utilise their cultural value to begin new dialogues about colonialism. Some have already started this – the Victoria and Albert museum’s 2001 exhibition “Mixed Messages” engaged with the role of the museum in the British Empire and attempted to present the contradictions of colonialism by juxtaposing the perspective of the colonised and coloniser. This could be taken further by revamping the arrangement of museums. Elizabeth Edward notes that museums privilege sight over other senses and that this in itself reflects a ‘Western hierarchy of senses’ imposed on cultural objects. When objects cannot be returned, using more interactive and multi-sensual display methods is a creative way for museums to try and address their ethnocentricity. I suspect that arguments about art restitution will continue and rightly so. What both sides of the debate seem to miss, however, is that repatriation is only the start of decolonising museums and that the entire museum space must be critically considered.

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