Thursday 26th June 2025
Blog Page 490

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.”

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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.

Now is a Time for Politics

Edward Rhys Jones
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Now is a Time for Politics

There was little outrage when on 30th March 2020 Hungary effectively declared itself a dictatorship. Parliament was dissolved, rule by decree established, journalists accused of interfering with the ‘successful protection’ of the public could be jailed. The new law has no expiry date.

I have written before about Hungary’s state-sponsored Holocaust distortion, and even last year in speaking with young people in Budapest I felt as though the entire system of government was in a chokehold. I wondered what Viktor Orbán’s next break would be.

This was not in the British news headlines. It was scarcely present in Western European or American media. I would like to think that at any other time this would be towards the top of the international headlines, but because there is an ongoing pandemic, it is as if everyone has forgotten that democratic government and proportional crisis response are not mutually exclusive. Orbán has been let off.

Hungary is still shocking for being so close to home. Accusations levelled at China back in February of projecting political image as a priority were met by unsurprised shrugs; the slow, callous response of the American president has come as a surprise to nobody. But wherever human rights and civil liberties are a question on the lips of journalists and observers, the answer is already tending towards authoritarianism.

In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte has given himself the power to silence ‘fake news’. Israel has used coronavirus to grind its judicial system to a halt at the same time as Benjamin Netanyahu faces charges of corruption. In India, protests against anti-Muslim citizenship laws have also been halted. Serbia has arrested opposition activists on the grounds of breaking isolation rules. In Japan, Representative Mio Sugita of the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party has suggested that Covid-19 measures should not be extended to foreign residents.

History does not repeat itself. When, on Twitter, the news about Hungary was being discussed, comparisons to the Reichstag fire, that created the atmosphere of national crisis that brought the Nazis to power, felt cheap. Coronavirus is not a political act. That is not to say that coronavirus can not also be a catalyst; in its chaos it, too, can be an enemy of human rights and the rule of law.

We are living through an extraordinary global health crisis, in which our first priority must be to protect the lives of everyone at greater risk: older people and those with underlying health conditions, health workers, homeless people, and refugees. Almost unfathomable numbers have died, and many more will. Yet, there is no political ‘off’ switch: tempting as it might be, we must not forget that decisions being made in response to Covid-19 are done so within a political paradigm.

I have heard people describe what we are all living through with a tempered optimism. Perhaps we will emerge from this crisis with a newfound understanding that we never really needed that much commercial aviation, or perhaps with a well-funded NHS. Maybe I am a pessimist, nevertheless there is an obvious need to prepare for the worst, and history hints that this could be an unprecedented global shift towards authoritarianism and isolationism.

There are autocrats, like Orbán, who will simply continue to use Covid-19 to further their frightening political agendas, but even more frightening is the idea that, owing to the crisis, the world will take a break from scrutinising coronavirus-era power. Even here in the UK, I hear the attitude that an idea of ‘national unity’ is the most powerful way of navigating our way through this crisis – and that scares me.  If there ever was a time to take a close look at the actions of the government and law enforcement, now would be it. Well-formulated and democratically enacted policy will solve the coronavirus crisis – lurch towards authoritarianism will not. Simple as it might be, it is worth repeating: for the health of civil liberty, democracy and freedom for many years after Covid-19, we need to be paying attention right now.

Image by Annika Haas via Flickr

Oxford It Happens Here launches “Letters from Survivors”

Emily Reed
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Oxford It Happens Here launches “Letters from Survivors”

CW: Sexual Violence

Oxford’s It Happens Here Student Union campaign, which raises awareness about sexual harassment and violence in Oxford University, launched a new platform today called “Letters from Survivors”.

The new platform aims to give a voice to survivors of sexual violence and harassment, functioning as a “place where they can express their feelings and experiences openly and without judgement, and know that they will be acknowledged and believed” writes the group.

The platform welcomes named and anonymous contribution, as well as submissions from allies. Content will include profiles and stories about experiences and recovery, interviews, opinion pieces, personal essays, illustration, fiction and photography.

“Letters from Survivors” joins the Campaign’s other activism, which includes a photo campaign and vigil for survivors in Sexual Violence Awareness Week during Hilary. The platform will add to their termly open discussions as a way for Oxford students to voice experiences of sexual violence.

A Facebook group has been launched today titled “Letters from Survivors” and a website is launching by Sunday of 0th Week.  

Vice-Chancellor criticises global COVID-19 response

Florine Lips
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Vice-Chancellor criticises global COVID-19 response

The Vice-Chancellor has criticised the response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the international community. In a post uploaded to the University’s “Coronavirus Research” page, she described the absence of a united global response as “one of the very many disheartening aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic”, noting that neither the G7 nor the G20 were able to fashion a unified response. The WHO, she added, has been the “only international institution in evidence throughout the crisis.”

She went on to note the stark inequality between COVID-19 relief funding for wealthier countries and for developing countries, describing the money allocated towards developing countries as “derisory”. Referring back to previous epidemics, such as the 2002-04 SARS epidemic or the Ebola crisis, she wrote that warnings of the past were largely ignored by global institutions. “That this pandemic occurred at all, of course,” she wrote, “reflects a failure of international institutions and national governments too.” Bill Gates’ 2015 TED talk entitled “The next outbreak? We’re not ready” should also have served as a warning, she observed, in which he outlined the need to match the money spent on pandemic relief to that allocated towards nuclear deterrence.

Moving on from the shortcomings of international institutions such as the G7 and G20, she noted that “far below the haute politique of international relations, there are global institutions in the trenched that are working to find a vaccine, develop effective therapeutics and use technology to design treatments and expedite mass production. They are working together with colleagues from around the world, including the global south. They are, of course, universities.”

Oxford labs, she wrote, are “buzzing” as scientists and technicians engage in Coronavirus related research. Along with Oxford-based study, the University also has teams around the world, such as in Thailand, Vietnam and Kenya, who are collaborating with local researchers to “build local capacity and to understand and to counter respiratory and other diseases.”

She highlighted the research being carried out by teams in Oxford, such as at the Jenner Institute, where a team led by Professor Sarah Gilbert have identified a non-replicating viral vector candidate, for which GMP manufacturing is in progress. It is soon to become an international effort, and is aiming to be effective in humans by late June. Another Oxford researcher, Professor Peter Horby, who led the University’s work in response to both the SARS and Ebola epidemic, has been collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the China Centre for Disease Control throughout the pandemic.

Overseas medics are also mentioned, such as a team in Thailand, led by Professor Nick Day, who are conducting large-scale multinational clinical trials. Oxford academics in Kenya, working at the KEMRI-Wellcome site, are one of only three sites in the country where COVID-19 testing is taking place. Programme capacity had been building for many years in Kenya, as a result of which many are now being run by Kenyan scientists.

She noted that “it is the bringing together of people from different nationalities, different perspectives, different disciplines with a shared commitment to translate the academic research of the university for the betterment of society that is leading the way in the global response to COVID-19.” However, she concluded that, despite the efforts of universities, it is still imperative that global institutions provide a unified approach to stop the spread of the virus. She wrote: “We know that this will not be the last pandemic. We need effective international institutions, supported by governments with the wealth to do so, to ensure that the next time we are prepared.”

Image Credit to Brian Deegan. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Better to burn out or fade away? The crafting of musical legacy

Annabelle Grigg
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Better to burn out or fade away? The crafting of musical legacy

Crafting a respected legacy is difficult to achieve in the music industry, and relevance is even harder for artists to maintain. The dominance of streaming in modern music consumption favours the catchy single over conceptual albums, though the latter are usually the key to critical acclaim. ‘Cancel culture’ (the internet’s form of group shaming) sets a shelf-life on popularity. The link between youth and pop culture has always made ageing a difficult inevitability for musicians but is acutely present now the constantly evolving realm of social media has become the frontline for advertising. Essentially, the internet’s ability to rapidly build up and tear down musicians gives the old saying ‘It is better to burn out than fade away’ new meaning.

And perhaps it is better to burn out instead of slowly fading away. Passion for anything is difficult to sustain and made especially hard when musical success comes with the baggage of media scrutiny. Justin Bieber’s recent return to the industry after abruptly cancelling his tour dates in 2015 leaves one wondering if his legacy would have been better preserved, albeit by its infamy, if he had left his fans wanting more. His return came alongside a new documentary and a tightly run publicity campaign. Yet when Changes did arrive, it was mostly panned by critics, judged as riding the wave of R&B’s current popularity with little originality and predictably labelled a cash-grab. Bieber’s call on TikTok for his fans to create content for his new Chipotle-sponsored single, ‘Yummy’, was mocked by Gen Z and boomers collectively on Twitter.

I am not going to try to defend Justin Bieber’s recent album and rather transparent marketing techniques. However, some criticism directed at Changes orbited around the fact that its subject matter – settling into marriage – was not nearly as exciting as that of his previous works like Purpose, which dealt with the crushing effect of fame on his mental health. Though valid, such criticism touches upon a pervasive theme in the creative sphere present before the dawn of the Internet: the myth that the creation of the best art is an unsustainable and painful process that comes at the expense of the creator. As Matty Healy of The 1975 quipped, “It’s so much sexier if artists are in pain, but it can be really, really destructive”.[1] YouTube videos of him crying onstage at the height of his heroin addiction and the epoch of his commercial success are filled with comments discussing his ‘tragic beauty’.

The toxicity of this is self-evident, but the aphorism ‘it is better to burn out than fade away’ is widely accepted, despite the fact it insidiously feeds the same narrative. Burning equates to destruction. Yet the destructive substance abuse burn-out legends like Hendrix, Winehouse, or Cobain struggled with is still framed as a necessary ingredient to their creative work. Kurt Cobain’s drug addiction, tumultuous relationship, and eventual suicide are as important to Nirvana’s legacy as ‘Come as You Are’ ’s opening guitar riff. It is painfully clear that musicians’ publicly displayed personal lives can be as formative to their status as their music. In Cobain’s suicide note he penned the phrase ‘‘It is better to burn out than fade away”, quoting Neil Young’s 1979 song ‘Hey, Hey, My My (Into the Black)’.

Cobain, however, misconstrued Young’s lyrics. He had actually been trying to reach out to Cobain at the time to encourage him only to play when he felt like it. There are countless examples of musicians who have faded away from the spotlight in a dignified manner or maintained a modified form of fame as ‘nostalgia acts’, like Elton John, The Cure, or Paul McCartney. Yet, there remains a morbid obsession with posthumous glorification in pop culture, fuelled by consumers of music more than by the musicians themselves.

This is because the beneficiary of the ‘burn out or fade away’ doctrine is the audience, never the performer. To burn out is to be a visual spectacle, and a star’s cataclysmic rise and fall is exciting to watch. But measuring an artist based on public reception creates countless other ethical problems in the music industry. What is an artist to do when their image is no longer palatable to the public? Madonna was originally praised for embracing her sexuality when young and conventionally attractive. As she has aged, Madonna’s attempt to continue to utilise her sexuality has been shunned. She is now framed as an aged, embarrassing has-been. A study by Marketing Professor Jeetendr Sehdev at the University of Southern California found such efforts were described as ‘desperate’ and three in five said her image was ‘embarrassing’[2]. If we continue to validate the ‘better to burn out than fade away’ mantra, we continue to consider relevance the yardstick of success despite its being bound up with some of the most toxic traits of our society, such as ageism and sexism. Taylor Swift is only thirty, but acutely aware and anxious of this, stating in her 2020 documentary “I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being myself”, because “female artists I know of have to remake themselves, like, 20 times more than male artists”.[3]

I mentioned earlier that musicians can fade out of their career peaks peacefully. However, this seems easier for men, whose behaviour is permissible until much later in their lives whilst the same would be framed as outrageous if continued by the opposite sex. Though most agree Morrissey’s current political stances are outdated at best and blatantly racist at worst, his musical legacy with The Smiths remains relatively intact. Mick Jagger is still widely considered a sex icon, and details of his salacious private life are praised rather than ridiculed. There are few, if any, females comparable to these men.

It is incredibly difficult for creative industries to shake the enduring ‘better to burn out’ myth. Creatives’ use of emotion in art makes their private lives feel more open to us than in other careers. When this art is the product of pain, it is even harder to praise it without implicitly validating the context of its creation. To be a musician you have to consider audience response, and though relevance is evidently problematic, it is quite obviously the only route to commercial success. Thus, though it’s clear it is not better for musicians to burn out, it remains obscure how we can disentangle this belief from our collective understanding of the creative process and of the music industry.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/11/matt-healy-the-1975-pretentious-not-apologising-interview

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/madonna-has-now-become-toxic-figure-for-millennials-academics-say-a6952711.html

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/10/interesting-reinvention-taylor-swift-celebrities

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