Tuesday 19th August 2025
Blog Page 590

Funny before Fleabag- the best flawed female sitcom characters

Esme Sanders
-
0
Funny before Fleabag- the best flawed female sitcom characters

Although seemingly it is a truth universally acknowledged, we need to reiterate that Fleabag was one of the best sitcoms broadcast in years. From its three-dimensional characters to its liberation of sexual taboo discussion; from its meditations on grief and the modern family dynamic to its sexy priests (I adore that that oxymoron has become a buzzword in meme culture over the past few months) – Fleabag just about managed to be everyone’s cup of tea in some loose way or another. And the reason it has stimulated such a widespread phenomenon? Because Fleabag soothes us. It, or rather, she – soothes our existential dread about not having achieved anything of substantial value. The character functions as a sort of modern myth to assure us mere mortals that – don’t worry, no-one else knows what they’re doing with their lives either. And it’s this simple message’s reassurance which acts like a warm embrace, wrapping its arm round us as we let the next episode of Line of Duty roll over, feeling morally supported that we’re now watching for the sixth hour on the trot.

However, Fleabag wasn’t the first of these ‘myths’. In the modern generation of television comedy – and specifically British television comedy – there has been a chain of myths which preceded Fleabag. There have been a string of female sitcom characters who all use their flaws, and are very conscious about displaying said flaws, to make us love them and thank them for our newfound self-assurance. And we simultaneously laugh at and with them – comforted that we ourselves are not in these quite-often farcical situations, and yet paradoxically finding ourselves self-identifying. These characters are all bound by:

  1. Being women
  2. Being unconventional and often unsuited in the context of their employment
  3. Being initially in temporary situations which then accidentally become really quite permanent
  4. Having fractured or disordered love lives
  5. Featuring in British sitcoms in the 00s

The fifth pointer is so significant because the 00s embodied the realisation of this essential character trait: of not knowing what we are doing with ourselves. This is likely to be due to the narrower availability and effectiveness of the Internet, not yet being able to constantly provide us with streams of answers; of objectivity. In this pre-Smartphone era, there would have been a fearful consciousness of, well – shit, I’m gonna have to try and answer some of this stuff for myself.

And here are some of those ‘attempted’ answers:

  1. Jen Barber — The IT Crowd — portrayed by Katherine Parkinson

Jen is so assuringly relatable thanks to her relentless resort to bullshitting through life to impress or to avoid often awkward situations. ‘What does I.T actually stand for?’, she gets asked in Episode 3 of Series 3. Her retreat into the toilet (“I… need… to… wee wee”) to go and have a mini mental breakdown is what I’m sure many feel inclined to do when asked ‘what are the key narrative points of this novel?’ during a tutorial. It is this lack of fundamental knowledge on what is supposedly our main occupation in life which comforts our own self-diagnosed imposter syndrome. Her incongruous placement in the I.T sector highlights the bizarre ‘randomnesses’ that life will throw us, sometimes which is beyond our own human control, yet which more often than not ends up becoming what our life is defined by. For example Jen’s endearing naivety towards this monster to which she has given birth is beautifully executed in Series 3 Episode 4 when she reveals in a public speech that the world’s Internet is contained in one tiny box. The genius of this moment? Her audience believe her too – thus universally relating that everyone is sometimes blind to these ridiculous but totally human moments of senselessness. Also, it shows that sometimes, the crazy imaginative products of bullshitting can be to our advantage. It’s a creative process, no?

Jen’s wedging between the 2 actual I.T geniuses Moss and Roy – and in later series her central placement within the triangulation with boss Douglas Denholym – is genius because it reminds us that amid these super-humans nerds and/or weirdos, she is the normal one – she is the one like the rest of us! Parkinson’s performance is so wonderful because she completely reveals Jen’s wide-eyed bewilderment in the face of people fully absorbed in the world about which she doesn’t have a clue.

2. Daisy — Spaced — portrayed by Jessica Hynes

Spaced was one of the first British sitcoms to exist in the fully-integrated Internet era, and what I really enjoy about it today (now being nearly 20 years old) is watching retrospectively in a modern -millennial age, because protagonist Daisy completely possesses the biting self-awareness that these days is such a striking trait of humour in the ‘meme generation’. It is her self-parodying is what makes Daisy all the more relevant in the self-analytical humour which exists in 2019 – and which also, in my eyes, makes her this distant ancestor of Fleabag’s active consciousness. Daisy’s greatest turn has to be her quest to find a job (Series 1 Episode 3) – something so tragically relatable when being in the age bracket of ‘graduate’ (fuck). Like many of us, she has an ambition to become a writer, although, perhaps even more strongly like the rest of us – she’s not quite sure how to go about achieving this. She has the goal, she sees the future – although she struggles to see the ‘now’, the actual present moment and what she herself must do to move out of this stage of uncertainty, temporariness and blurriness.“Maybe I’ll just be the funny one in the office!” is what tickles me – a desire to have a career but not actually have to commit seriously and/or professionally. Also – Daisy’s first resort when she gets dumped? Gets a dog (Series 1 Episode 4). If that’s not a knee-jerk millennial reaction to a personal meltdown, then I don’t know what is.

3. Maggie Jacobs — Extras — portrayed by Ashley Jensen

Existential midlife crisis is perfectly personified in Maggie (although not sure she’d understand what ‘existential’ means. I mean, to be honest, neither do I – and I’ve dropped it in a few times in this already. Boom.) Maggie has trials and tribulations in just about every domain under the sun: dating, friendships, career, maturity in general. Getting told to ‘grow up’ by best friend Andy (Ricky Gervais) at the end of series 1 leads her to reassess the question that she had buried beneath the layers of this-or-that questions and inappropriate crushes – does she need to find an adult purpose? Or can she keep rattling along living in her own head, doing everything a little bit randomly and with no fixed finality? What’s important about Maggie is that although at the end of this episode she takes down a few of her hot celeb posters, when Extras returns for its 2nd season, she’s just back to being her same dopey, dilly-dallying self again. Goes to show that sometimes, our flaws are just an unavoidable part of who we are. It’s often like Maggie’s not capable of doing anything that’s not spoon-fed to her, and this is particularly relevant when we recall her pure bewilderment about not knowing what to say when the guy she’s seeing asks her to ‘talk dirty to him’ over the phone.

4. Tracey Jordan — Chewing Gum — performed by Michaela Coel

Chewing Gum is the closest to Fleabag if we’re taking a chronological view of British sitcoms. But there’s something about Chewing Gum which feels older than 2015, when it was first broadcast, because heavily-religious Tracey is seemingly so shut off from the modern world. Tracey’s fashion, mannerisms and total obliviousness slots it in well to this more mid-00s, pre-social media (and thus pre-collective-joke) vibe. What is so unique about Chewing Gum is its complete openness of sexual discussion – Coel creates a very tangible world where we can almost smell, taste and most definitely see every single one of her quite often disastrous introductory sexual encounters. What we relate to here is the hopelessness of Tracey’s love and sex life, because, quite frankly, she has no idea what she’s doing. Just like Daisy taking her first steps into the world at work or Jen being initiated into the virtual world of computers (or Maggie and phone flirting), Tracey’s walking into the very messy world of sex. This theme of ‘being a virgin’ seems also be a metaphor for being a virgin at life – it’s like we feel obliged by the demands of modern society to constantly seem like we’re enjoying ourselves (even if you’re feeling it can be as vanilla as a Carte D’Or soft scoop).

5. Dawn Tinsley — The Office — performed by Lucy Davis

Despite arguably not having the most laugh-out-loud lines (to be fair it would be hard to get a word in edgeways with Brent), Dawn functions the heart at the centre of the show, she is what makes it so real, so human. And she is literally placed at the centre: sat in her receptionist booth, she observes the ridiculous occurrings of the office around her. It is she who has the clarity of vision among the idiots she works with, but she is definitely not any more put together than them, not in a ‘life way’ anyhow. Dawn sees working at Wernham Hogg as a mere stop-gap; although only ever seeing it as a temporary measure, she is unsure about what she is actually going to do. Her true passion would be illustrating, but she’s plagued by that insecurity which afflicts us all – that of not wanting to strive for something ambitious due to that deep, ingrained fear of failing, and then social embarrassment about having to explain and defend yourself after. And so Dawn takes the easy, non-potentially-awkward option of staying in the office, even if it’s not what she wants, because – well, like in Waiting for Godot, the best comic content is generated from the fact that the subject can’t leave the place they’re in.

So voilà. Here are the women showing us how it should be done, or rather, not done. Or perhaps it is actually more apt to say they are showing us ways we can try – and fail along the way – to do it. And although that sounds a lot less pleasing rhetorically (I did try and think of a smooth way to slither that one out, evidently to no avail), these figures essentially tell us that we don’t have to worry. If we’re flawed, if we have no definite or stable career path, if our love lives are a bit fucked – it’s fine. I don’t want to end this by quoting a film that is the embodiment of 21st century capitalism, but these figures, these modern myths tell us ‘we’re all in this together.’ Femmes fatales, more like femme naturALS, am I right.*

* I know I’m not right. Please ignore this inherently unfunny ‘pun’.  Let’s pretend this never happened. 

The Virtues (2019)- Review

Esme Sanders
-
0
The Virtues (2019)- Review

It may seem an overstatement, but I truly believe that Shane Meadows’ This is England saga is one of the greatest contributions ever made to British culture. Meadows serialized what it meant to be a young person growing up in the UK over a very politically and artistically significant period and despite its ‘naturalness’, projected it to an epic scale – chronicling the lives of characters going through a very significant period of their own. Although Channel 4’s The Virtues consists of just four episodes, its narrative is constantly fluctuating between the present day and the past, making it seem like we have been with this story for a long time, thus endowing it with this same sense of continuity and memory possessed by its predecessor.

The Virtues tells the story of Joseph, ‘Joe’, (Stephen Graham) who, following the new absence of his young son moving to Australia, returns to the questions and events left untouched after his own absence as a child. He returns to Ireland where he grew up and where he spent part of his youth in a children’s home, and there is reconciled after many years with his sister Anna (Helen Behan). Moving in with her family, he meets her sister-in-law, Dinah (Niamh Algar), whose personal trauma shares some parallels and certainly the same amount of heartbreak with his own. We know that Joe has some dark memories from the children’s home, although isn’t clear until the final episode what exactly the trauma Joe has experienced is. Yet it is this unknown status that these mysterious secrets acquire that come to contribute to the tension that surrounds Joe as he embarks on the painful journey into his past.

The Virtues masterfully showcases Meadows’ most characteristic trait: his naturalistic filming style. Known for casting non-professional actors as protagonists and encouraging improvisation so as to achieve that sense of ‘real’ conversation, it often seems that his work is more closely connected to documentary than fiction: how much true direction is there? Are they even acting? The best portrayal of this has to be Joe’s drunken scene in Episode One, which is arguably the best enactment of an ‘absolute bender’ that I have ever seen. It begins with a classic trope of which I am sure we are all too aware: man walks into a bar; man proceeds to get atrociously rat-arsed. Joe’s enthused rowdiness is infectious upon fellow punters, doing what we have all done once or twice on those fated bop nights: flirting, chatting shit, and buying literally anyone and everyone he can drinks. The aggressively familiar trajectory from the ‘who wants a shot?’ to the ‘I just want a kebab’ stage is a mark of genius. The disordered revelry of the whole segment is almost tangible – from the hugging people we’ve never met in our lives to the grizzly wake-up, finding ourselves smeared in dry sick and blood. What is truly striking and moving about this scene aside from the personal association, is the tragedy that this carnage is concealing. This is all happening because Joe is a painfully sad man.

Another element which worked powerfully throughout the series was the use of home video footage, which is used to portray scenes from Joe’s childhood, living in the children’s home. Aside from being a visually striking feature which distinguishes the past, seeing this kind of footage onscreen struck a prominent and unique, novel chord. Aside from our own personal home videos, the only other time we see this sort of filming is on the news, perhaps to show footage of a murder victim. This interpretation would be well-suited to the documentary style of filmmaking with which Meadows works. This inherent perception taints the videos that we see of the youthful Joe with an ominous and quite frightening air – they connote a sense of danger, that something troubling is going to happen to this young boy whose face we keep seeing close-up on those grainy videos which never quite provide proper clarity.

Like the rest of his work, Meadows conjures remarkable performances from his cast. Graham, who recently had a turn as the of course fated ‘bent copper’ in BBC’s Line of Duty, never fails to convey that extraordinarily nuanced fine line between intimidating and vulnerable. In Joe’s hard poise there could always be some aggression brewing, although as we see in his farewell with his son or his reconciliation with his sister, there’s a gentle underbelly that rests beneath – an inherent loveliness and charm that appears as his twinkly eyes crinkle as he laughs. Behan puts in an equally emotional and moving turn as Anna, who conveys both the firmness of the modern mum and an honest concern and anguish upon the return of her long-lost brother. Algar is dynamic and powerful as Dinah, whose significance as a character is not fully revealed until the final two episodes, although when it is – is difficult to shake off.

A major theme that I was struck by in The Virtues, one which appears frequently in Meadows’ work, is that of family. Although primarily a very naturalistic and quasi-documentary style director, I noted many powerful visual symbols that highlighted both the presence and absence of family in Joe’s world. Scenes of Anna’s family in the sitting room watching T.V or eating at the dinner table (which recalled the monumental Sunday roast reveal scene from This is England ’90) strongly contrast images of Joe constantly alone: taking long, solitary, silent walks, charging round after his all-night bender, alone in his private room on the way to Ireland. The family-based pictures are generally inside, within the home, showing that family assigns place. The warm, fuzzy lighting and proximity of people symbolizes the coziness and protection that a family provides – starkly opposing the vulnerable Joe – getting in the wars, with only him to defend himself. He’s constantly outside, on the go, never having really in a fixed place of his own since he was deprived of one following the separation from his sister as a child. He is completely lost in the world – and this sense of the ‘lost child’ is found frequently throughout The Virtues – children running away or being taken away without consent, children deprived of their parents, children deprived of their innocence.

Overall, The Virtues makes for a unique watching experience because of its weaving in between time zones and intricate exploration of the themes of grief, loss and redemption. Its striking tonal and thematic contrast between danger and tenderness is heartbreaking, as this is what exposes the brokenness of its protagonists. I have been pondering whether The Virtues ends up as a positive portrayal of man finding the courage to come to terms with his troubled past, or if it is completely an attack of the system that betrays and takes advantage of vulnerable people.

I think it is therefore valuable to relate it to Meadows’ own experiences – a horrific one about which he talks about in this interview: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/05/shane-meadows-interview-the-virtues-stephen-graham-trauma. It is significant when he says: ‘I’m not scared or ashamed anymore. …This is just a part of my life and I’ve got through it.’ And this stance is conveyed in The Virtues – in both its gritty, distressing energy and its honest, human nature, it manages to uphold an honourable dignity throughout.

Sensational: The Power of Synesthesia

Alex Beukers
-
0
Sensational: The Power of Synesthesia

A moment I found memorable in Disney’s Ratatouille is a universally popular one. Remy the rat is trying different culinary combinations: as he chews a bite of cheese and grapes together, jazzy chords and colours fade hypnotically around his head.

Besides being aesthetically satisfying, the scene is a vivid illustration of the phenomenon of synaesthesia. This is the neurological blending of the senses, when one sense is triggered involuntarily by stimuli to another. The experience is acknowledged as a scientific condition – yet for those who claim to experience it (which is about 4% of the population), it is hardly seen as a malady. On the contrary – over history, it has become inextricably linked with creative personalities. Benefit or not, however, it begs the question as to how an experience so individual – and subjective – can ever be conveyed.

“The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are,” writes Nabokov, who recorded his childhood experience of synaesthesia in his impressionistic autobiography, Speak, Memory. He locates an enduring problem with the perception of synaesthetes: it is an inaccessible experience to those without any kind of ‘cross-modal perception’. Examples of communication breakdown range from Eddie Van Halen’s ‘brown sound’ perplexing the band, to Liszt’s direction of his orchestra to play “a little bluer, please, gentlemen!”. A passing conversation with a non-synaesthete today might end in dismissal of its existence for this reason. The condition is incommunicable, another thing to compound the difficulty of understanding artistic ‘genius’.

Apologetic as he seems here, Nabokov’s general view of synaesthesia matched romantic perceptions of the condition that dominated early synaesthetic art. We only need to look as far as Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most famous synaesthetes, whose paintings named ‘Composition(s)’, bridged sight and sound by showing how he visualised classical pieces as they were being played. His 1912 essay, On the Spiritual in Art, explores plainly the theory of colour, but in it he also likens the senses themselves to instruments. Kandinsky writes that, upon being ‘played’ or touched, they

“would imply an echo or reverberation, such as occurs sometimes in musical instruments which, without being touched, sound in harmony with some other instrument struck at the moment.”

Connections, if not intentional, are always tuneful. But an even more important point in Kandinsky’s thinking is that they were only a steppingstone to an artistic experience that would transcend sense entirely. What Kandinsky called the ‘spiritual vibration’ was the only thing that gave the first physical ‘impression’, the combining of the senses, any meaning. Kandinsky’s music-prompted paintings thus aimed to point towards an art beyond the capacity of sense, an idea rife in 18th century German philosophy. They aimed at something like Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, a term which tellingly translates both as ‘synthesis of the arts’ and ‘ideal work of art’. For those without the synaesthetic abilities, though, this does not make the synaesthetic image any less esoteric.

Early synaesthetic music is similarly engulfed by mysticism. Olivier Messiaen’s own colour-to-music associations (and back again) invoked his Couleurs de la Cites Celeste (1963), an expansive piece inspired by the shimmering colours of the New Jerusalem in Revelations. Another is Scriabin, famous for his wild, orgiastic musical visions, who composed ‘Mysterium’ to accompany ‘the conclusion of the world’. Ideally delivered at the base of the Himalayas, it would involve a deafening climax of sound, smell, and light; and listening to even ten minutes of the unfinished work indicates what Scriabin was attempting: nearly unlistenable, artistic ecstasy. Innovation (Scriabin wanted to invent a piano of light, while Messiaen codified ‘colour-chords’ to write his music) and a certain dissonance characterise their art as the search for a divine, mystical whole.

This conception of colour synaesthesia is enticing, but it blurs the line dangerously with symbolism. Does Messiaen’s Couleurs build on the imagery of the Apocalypse, or the colours themselves as they appear to him? It is difficult for the listener to break down. Scriabin may not have even been a synaesthete at all; his mappings of colour-sound correspondences in 1911 may have just been metaphoric, in the way that we could associate happiness with the colour yellow, without necessarily ‘seeing’ it. Colour symbolism interferes with literary synaesthesia too: Rimbaud’s famous sonnet Voyelles is now also thought to have described the vowels in a synaesthetic way – such as ‘A’ made of a ‘black velvety jacket of brilliant flies’ – simply because together, they fit nicely in a rhyme scheme. He may not have had it either. How can the audience discern real synaesthesia from mere artistic effect?

Perhaps this is why contemporary synaesthetic art wants to show the experience of the senses eliding. There is no question that the popular conception of synaesthesia has been shaped by neuroscience: we know now that it is comprised of a series of involuntary responses, unplanned and unconnected (at least initially) to a ‘vision’. The transformation of media has also changed our notion of it. Mary Blair, the synaesthete behind much early animation, created memorable clips like Disney’s 1940 film, Fantasia, where Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 is played out to the movement of abstract shapes. In it, twisting geometric butterflies and clouds riven by light explode in time with each bar. It shows the viewer how a synaesthete might visually render the grandeur of Beethoven’s music – as it plays.

The same upheaval seems to be there even for those artists working with traditional forms. Jack Coulter, who had his lucky break last year in his 2018 collaboration with London Chamber Orchestra painting Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, also works in the junction between visual art and music. Despite his finished abstract expressionist pieces added to Instagram, he is loyal to sharing the spontaneity of his creative process. A caption to one discloses he was ‘personally overwhelmed’ making one painting, as well as an almost shrugging resignation to his sensory associations:

“I always trust those visuals, it honestly felt as if something was channelling,/I’ll never know the reason.”

Inexplicably, scrolling through his Instagram page will show that no matter the song of inspiration, his viewers connectwith Coulter’s interpretations beyond complimenting his striking use of colour. Comments like, “this is exactly how the song feels when I listen to it”, or even just that the painting “makes sense”, are surprisingly common. Taking inspiration from a wide scope of music, from Stormzy to the Rolling Stones, Coulter is likely to strike a chord in every listener. The experience of chromesthesia becomes more of a dialogue with the viewer, encouraging an implicit comparison of Coulter’s interpretation with even the most nascent impressions or associations of their own.

Focusing on process has also diversified understanding of synaesthesia. James Wannerton, the President of the UK Synaesthesia Society and an IT professional in his lay life, is an example of a lesser-known type, and one which illustrates the flexibility of the condition. He has lexical-gustatory synaesthesia, where hearing sounds causes him to taste. This he visualised in a tongue-in-cheek project with the London Underground, where each station’s name appears replaced by the food (or other substance) he tastes when he hears it. Speaking candidly in an interview on the Art Matters podcast, Wannerton disagrees that synaesthesia needs to trigger ‘beautiful’ sensations, to be fascinating. His own condition certainly does not, and maybe the sheer weirdness of his rechristening of Kilburn and Shoreditch as ‘Putrid meat’ and ‘Cabbage water’ respectively also confirms this. Like Coulter, he is at the mercy of his associating senses, but the process adds a pleasant quirkiness, and broadens how synaesthesia (and synaesthetic ‘art’) can be defined.

Synaesthesia is still relatively untapped in both scientific research and as an artistic reserve, and more work to relay the experience of synaesthesia has only added to its depth. A focus on the synaesthesia’s instantaneity further connects the viewer to artist: even if an audience cannot empathise, they can appreciate and comprehend it step-by-step. And besides – whether it is genuine blending of the senses, or just a gimmick engineered by Disney for emotional pull, the phenomenon is still a pleasure to watch – or to hear about.

Image: Vassily Kadinski – Composition 7, public domain

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)- Review

William McCathie
-
0
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)- Review

Within the first five minutes of Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Idris Elba jumps onscreen off of a CGI motorbike and announces to the audience that he is the bad guy. Even if one had somehow avoided all the marketing material for this film, from this point onward there cannot be any pretense about the film you are about to witness. Hobbs & Shaw is a balls-to-the-wall action spectacle of epic proportion. Whilst its comedy may sometimes be hit-and-miss, its dramatic moments a bit flat, and its character arcs as simple as baby’s first guide to making friends, you can’t help but enjoy every moment – even if the rest of the theatre is staring at you strangely for laughing along.

Modern audiences are no longer impressed by special effects. We have long since proven that any visual spectacle is possible to create in a computer, and so filmmakers must strive further with new methods to impress audiences. It is hard to isolate any particular element of Hobbs & Shaw that succeeds in this regard, but as an overall package this film is unmatched this summer in terms of impressive action and spectacle. Perhaps it is the film’s overindulgence in slow motion, or sweeping, over-the-top camera movements. It could simply be the clever choice of mostly tangible, recognizable locations that work overtime to desperately try to convince the audience the events unfolding before them are supposed to take place in the real word. Either way, the film is wonderfully creative in its effects and action, mostly taking care not to repeat itself and keep the audience unaware of what lies around the next bend.

I have seen other reviewers liken this film to an 80s buddy-cop movie more than a modern blockbuster – and though I would disagree that this film feels for a second anything other than the product of 2019; the central buddy-cop story is surprisingly successful in tying the whole movie into a mostly cohesive arc. The dynamic between Jason Statham and The Rock, whilst incredibly simplistic and predictable in its ultimate conclusion, does prove amply entertaining, and infrequently funny.

This goodwill is threatened however, whenever the film attempts to make the audience take its drama seriously. With dialogue that draws parallels with a bad soap opera, combined with a poorly executed romantic arc, the dramatic heart of this film often fails to be appropriately serious despite its best efforts. To an extent, however, this can be forgiven. With scenes jam-packed with the ridiculous and absurd situated amongst supposedly ‘deeper’ dialogue-based interactions, it can be impossible to bring an audience back to the right frame of mind. But none of this helped by sweeping Michael Bay-esque helicopter shots at all the wrong moments.

As much as I would like to praise the spectacle of this film as its honestly advertised main draw, the writing clearly lets down the visuals somewhat in keeping an audience tense. As has been true of the Fast & Furious franchise since Fast Five, the main characters can survive anything except the real death of the actor- even then, their character gets to drive off into the sunset. There is a complete absence of palpable danger. Sure, the movie may be unafraid to kill off tertiary characters, but when the universe we witness appears to have no rules at all, where everything is possible in pursuit of a cool slow-mo-360 shot, we disengage, no longer concerned for the characters we have invested in. This is particularly the case, if we know they are powerful enough to take out rooms full of armed guards with their fists, rip through chains given enough effort, fall off a building with only another body as cushioning, and even hold onto a goddamn helicopter with one hand. In fact, it’s just like watching anime, except with far more orange, teal and ex-WWE stars.

This last week I was finally convinced to watch Casablanca for the first time. Needless to say, the contrast with Hobbs & Shaw was significant, and I mean that in the best way possible for both. Where Casablanca was like going to see well-acted play, Hobbs & Shaw was a world-famous circus. The weather, time of day, and rules of physics may have changed and flipped on a whim to create the next set piece, the humour may not all be perfect, the romance may not have been convincing and the running time may have deserved to lose 15 minutes, but none of it matters. Hobbes & Shaw was, and is, advertised as a mindless action spectacle that you can have great fun with. If you want Oscar-baiting pretentious think-pieces, go watch something else. For everything else, watch Hobbs & Shaw.

Remembering ‘Comfort Women’, survivors of atrocities the world didn’t know about until 1991

Ming Zee Tee
-
0
Remembering ‘Comfort Women’, survivors of atrocities the world didn’t know about until 1991

CONTENT WARNING: this article contains references to sex slavery and other issues that may upset some readers

On August 14th 1991 — 46 years after the end of World War II — the world learned of ‘comfort women’. In a moving testimony, Kim Hak-Sun was the first survivor to publicly tell the story of her enslavement: how, aged seventeen, she was abducted by Japanese soldiers, sent by truck to a military unit, and imprisoned for 4 months as a sex slave.

This August 14th, students and residents of Oxford celebrated the International Memorial Day for Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ with a screening of The Apology, a film that follows survivors in their fight for justice. We traced the stories of three “grandmothers”– Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines – as they grapple with failing health, past trauma, and their quest to obtain a formal apology from the Japanese government.

As early as 1932, after hostilities between Japan and China began, women in Japanese-occupied territories were kidnapped, coerced and deceived into joining “comfort stations” that provided on-site prostitutes for the Japanese army. By 1945, the sexual slavery system held more than 200,000 girls and women captive in at least 125 stations. It was highly institutionalised: the Japanese administration meticulously recorded its details, viewing sex as another amenity to buttress troops’ morale, and to prevent scandals like the Rape of Nanking from reoccurring.

These women came from Korea, the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, Taiwan, and more. ‘Serving’ 10 to 60 soldiers per day, they were subjected to untold levels of sexual violence, harassment, torture and other atrocities. Even the end of the war in 1945 brought them no relief: many were killed by the Japanese troops, who feared the women would be an embarrassment were they to be found by the advancing American troops. Others were abandoned to fend for themselves, with no money or way to return to their families.

Maya Angelou wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”. How do we explain the years of silence that these women endured? Grandma Adela hid the truth from her husband “because he would be ashamed of (me)”, spending time at a comfort women rehabilitation home under the guise of a volunteer. Grandma Cao’s adopted daughter never knew: “(My mother) didn’t want to tell me, so I didn’t ask.”

Their silence was a product of social shame, the pressures of reintegration, and the patriarchal communities they lived in. Tomasa Salinog, another Filipina survivor, declined all marriage proposals because she could not bear to have sexual contact with a man again; one of her suitors responded: “you must prefer sleeping with hundreds of Japanese men.” Nan Erpu, a survivor from the rural Shanxi province, suffered serious medical problems following her enslavement and endured repeated public humiliation during the Cultural Revolution. She committed suicide in 1967. A fear of being re-victimised – of not being believed, or of being shamed and blamed as a co-conspirator with the Japanese – led thousands of survivors to keep mum.  

Their silence was a result of our wilful political blindness. Sexual slavery was not recognised as a crime during the post-war reconciliation period: in 1946, the IMTFE (International Military Tribunal for the Far East) failed to prosecute commanders on the grounds of sexual violence and mass rape. Our legal procedures are ill-equipped to deal with such tragedies; because they suffer from PTSD, survivors are often unable to recall the details of their rape to be used as evidence. Moreover, the very act of testimony is a process of re-living and re-traumatisation.

National actors have also colluded to keep a lid on things; to support Japan’s post-war recovery, the USA pressured its Asian allies not to seek war-related compensation from Japan in exchange for American economic assistance, and loans from Japan’s Official Development Assistance program. In the 1990s, Japan’s revisionist history movement – supported by far-right LDP politicians occupying key cabinet positions – proliferated textbooks that eliminated mention of wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. This sickening collusion of international politics and national agendas to perpetuate survivors’ suffering was the true disgrace. Our legal and political institutions have failed these women to an astonishing degree.

Kim Hak-Sun’s 1991 testimony sparked off a movement. Survivors – known in Korea as halmoni, or ‘grandmothers’ – have since insisted on their right to accuse, to tell, and to be heard. In what is now the longest running weekly protest rally in world history, the Wednesday Demonstrations occur every Wednesday at noon in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Halmoni and their supporters demand a full reckoning of the numerous Japanese state and military institutions that abused women and repressed or misrepresented their stories. They have been campaigning for 27 years.

Attempts at amends have been made, but they have been insufficient. The Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) was established by Japan in 1995, collecting donations from private individuals to compensate survivors. Yet the voluntary nature of such donations was an affront to the survivors’ real legal rights to redress. The AWF’s narrative added insult to injury: in their story of “comfort women”, it is the war, and not the Japanese military or individual soldiers, that caused their suffering. Public calls for donations began with: “The war caused enormous horror and ravaged the people of Japan and of many other nations…particularly brutal was the act of forcing women to serve the Japanese armed forces as ‘comfort women’ (The Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1995)”. By according agency to “the war” instead of the perpetrators who raped, tortured and maimed women, the AWF erases – and excuses – the precise individuals that survivors are demanding accountability from. 

In 2015, Japan and South Korea entered into a supposedly conclusive agreement. Including a 1bn yen fund for the 45 surviving victims and an apology from Shinzo Abe, it was hailed by the political elite as a “final and irreversible resolution”. Yet the way it was reached was highly problematic – negotiations took place in secret and excluded the voices of the victims. Moreover, the description of the fund as a measure to help the women, rather than a direct government compensation, seems like a familiar sleight of hand in evading responsibility.

We must not shelve this issue in the crusty corners of our libraries. Grandma Kim Bok-Dong, captured when she was 14 and abused for 8 years, passed away in January this year. As the number of survivors dwindle, the emotional fervour and political salience of their cause may fade too. How we redress these wounds will have implications on contemporary problems of sexual violence in armed conflict, slavery, the #MeToo movement, and other strands of feminist and postcolonial discourse. The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military and Sexual Slavery by Japan works extensively with transnational solidarity movements, and has included the military rapes in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Sub-Saharan countries in its submissions at the UN Commission on Human Rights. Women still experience these atrocities daily in our live conflict zones of Syria and the Islamic State.

Moreover, while South Korea is the locus of organisation for political engagement, we must not forget “comfort women” in other areas of the Asia-Pacific. This is an unfortunate fact about postcolonial activism: differences in race, nationality, language and class create a hierarchy in human rights issues, relegating the voices of the most vulnerable to the margins of discourse. It is precisely those who suffer most that we do not hear about: they have died from the pain long ago.

To sign a petition by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance, go here (navigate to the ‘English’ menu tab).

To watch The Apology, find it on Amazon here.

To learn more about the issue, access our compiled list of resources here.

The Screening of “The Apology” (2016) in Hertford College was organised by Woohee Kim and Ming Zee Tee, supported by The Uncomfortable Oxford Project, Race and Resistance, and TORCH – The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

Just a Crush?

Maya Little
-
0
Just a Crush?

Pop music can be pretty alienating if you’re not in love with someone or anywhere near it. The relentless glorification of love and sex, the constant fixation on a relationship as the goal. Sometimes it seems less like the background noise of shopping centres and more like the background noise of our lives.

But there’s a wave of songwriters skirting the edges of the traditional love song market, making music that acknowledges that feelings which might not be particularly deep or enduring can still be intense and powerful.

Tessa Violet’s upcoming Bad Ideas kicks off with ‘Crush’, a cool-glass-of-water of a song, humorously self effacing (‘cause I’m a stalker, I’ve seen all of your posts’) and served up by Violet’s conversational voice.  It runs swiftly through all the tropes of a crush: ‘I’d been waiting hoping that you’d want to text, like’, ‘I can’t focus on what needs to get done’, ‘I wanna touch you but don’t wanna be weird’. She delivers them simply and in a soundscape of sharp drum strokes, jumbled voices and rough-voiced exclamations that refuse to elevate her feelings to a higher plane. 

Instead, she faithfully represents the scatteredness, the brief kaleidoscopic whirl of feelings that a crush brings with it. The music video communicates this too – Violet dances around an empty supermarket with a mix of exuberance and self-conscious precision, whilst the stark lighting of the aisles leaves her excitement exposed, overexposed – misplaced. The disorientating mundanity of the setting is half at odds with Violet’s feelings as she sings, and half in keeping with them. In a similar manner, having feelings for someone can at first seem disorientating in the same way as waking up in a paradisiacal garden, but eventually you realise it’s more like the disorientation of taking a wrong turn down a back alley.

Another track already released from the album, ‘I Like the Idea of You’, is gentler, more laidback and more straightforward than Crush, finding as its hook ‘I like the idea of you/ Wonder how it’d be to love you’. This admittance that the feelings driving the song are maybe more theoretical than practical would undercut a traditional love song, devalue those feelings. By placing this line front and centre, Violet refuses conventional love narratives in an album in which the whole point is to talk about romantic feelings as messy, brief, foolish, even funny. But still worth it: the whole song is high, light, fast-paced and anticipatory – the beauty of crushes, after all, ultimately always hangs on this ‘I wonder’.

Mitski, another female singer-songwriter, exploits the imaginative richness of that ‘I wonder’ across her 2018 album Be The Cowboy. I found myself stuck listening to’ Remember My Name’ on repeat, as it struck again and again on a powerful longing: ‘I need someone to remember my name/ After all that I can do for them is done’. ‘Crush’ is such a diminutive word, but Mitski makes this need for another person into a need for ‘something bigger than the sky’, some strange roving feeling whose enormity is greater than the love object could ever really be. Romance is more about yourself than you ever like to admit.

Mitski claims this with ‘Pink in the Night’, an intense imagining of self-transformation in which the ‘you’ is almost absent. Evolving synthesisers sound dreamily as Mitski croons ‘I glow pink in the night in my room/ I’ve been blossoming alone over you’. Her gentle voice belies the disorder of the words, glowing impossibly pink and blossoming mysteriously. Her beautiful feeling twists paradoxically, ‘alone’ as it attempts to approach ‘you’. Instead of yielding to the notion that an unfulfilled or unreciprocated crush is shameful, Mitski moves dreamily through something strange, uses her aloneness in the feeling to bend reality around it, make ‘every drop of rain’ sing ‘I love you’, and makes her voice tumble these words over and over in a shower that soaks you through.

Mitski’s most searing examination of the crush comes in the song ‘Nobody’: ‘Venus, planet of love/ Was destroyed by global warming/ Did its people want too much too?’. This uncompromising metaphor paints lovers (including herself) as greed-stricken plunderers of a limited resource. Perhaps wanting something bigger than the sky has a destructiveness built in. There’s a callousness to the lyrics that follow, untinged by the romanticism of ‘Pink in the Night’: ‘I don’t want your pity/ I just want somebody near me’. The demands of the song becomes less specific, with ‘I know no one will save me/ I just need someone to kiss’ finding its echo in the later ‘I’m just asking for a kiss’. Mitski distances both herself and her feeling, no longer admitting a need but just ‘asking’, no longer looking for ‘someone’, but for the process, the ritual of romance, the kiss only, the kiss without the kisser.

‘Nobody’ devolves into a haunting and distorted repetition of its own title, a persistent refusal of Mitski’s stripped back desire. This nightmarish element forms the song’s music video, in which Mitski goes searching for a lover –  in the telephone directory, at the house down the road, in her diary, only to constantly be confronted by nobody – at the end of the phone, as the person at the door, as the only name written in her diary. And when she looks again at her hand, on which the word ‘nobody’ was previously imprinted, she instead sees the word ‘you’. Mitski dramatises the most horrifying potential of crushes – that at the end of the day it is only you. Either only you with the feeling, or only you making the feeling. It was never anything to do with the ‘you’ of them, but instead your self-absorption, your loneliness, your need. This is pretty chilling for a love song.

Neither Tessa Violet’s nor Mitski’s work is without cliched words. They don’t avoid well-trodden ground. But what they do is talk about the experience of love in a different way. They realise that often their feelings might be more interesting and complicated than the person that they’re felt for. That even the crush, the smallest, loneliness, and most trodden upon kind of romance can be strange and powerful when we celebrate that it belongs to us, rather than being ashamed of that inevitable fact.

Review: Simon Armitage’s ‘Sandette Light Vessel Automatic’ (Faber, 2019).

Alice Wilson
-
0
Review: Simon Armitage’s ‘Sandette Light Vessel Automatic’ (Faber, 2019).

In the introduction to Simon Armitage’s new collection, out earlier this summer, he describes public poetry as an occasion ‘when reluctant poets are paraded in front of unaccustomed audiences’, but there must be a touch of irony to this. He is evidently a poet comfortable working in the public sphere: the proof is in the book itself. It gathers together disparate poetic projects: some focused on public engagement and poetry’s material existence, others on his extensive collaborations with the worlds of theatre, film, and music.

Several of the projects are enhanced a great deal by the context provided in note-form at the end of the book: a particular stand-out is the set of poems written for the documentary The War Dead, and their accompanying essay. The sharp imagery – “in the butcher’s window, a side of beef / Is precisely a corpse” – gains greater emotional depth from Armitage’s discussion of the testimony given by real soldiers on which the works are based.

The poems written for screenings of Peter and the Wolf are entirely charming, with a delicate childlike lilt, and Peter “a living, walking violin, / so … we hear what you feel.” Walking Home and Walking Away, sets of poems written as Armitage walked the Pennine Way, have a sensory immediacy in their treatment of the landscape that evokes Hughes or Heaney. In his notes, Armitage compares them to photographs, ‘snapshots’ of his journey. ‘Above Ickornshaw, Black Huts’ is particularly stark image: “the salvaged timbers / ooze bitumen / out of the grain, a liquorice sweat”.  Flit, coming near the end of the collection, is a lovely surprise, a book-length set of poems on the “small mid-European state of Ysp” (Yorkshire Sculpture Park), which in its free-wheeling fantasy is some of the most exciting work in the collection. 

There are also plenty of poems not part of wider projects. A few feel like bit-pieces, published here just to be put somewhere, like the poetic translation of the first speech of Agamemnon. Others, however, are genuinely striking, such as ‘The Lives of the Poets’, a reflection on poetic temperament that contains the fantastic aside: “the sky might be falling, but look at these plums”.

However, one cannot help but feel that sometimes, in the transition to the traditional format of a paper poetry collection, there is a little lost. Some of the projects included in the collection are formally specific, tied to a particular moment – like In Memory of Water (poems which were carved into slabs and placed in the natural landscape of Armitage’s native Yorkshire) or Poems in the Air, a set released as satellite recordings in specific places in Northumberland National Park. Their physical manifestations seem so much a part of the poetic experience that seeing them on a page, relying only on written descriptions for their original context, is almost a tease – a promise of the possibility of an even fuller experience.

The collection is a fascinating read. It is an eclectic mix, but perhaps that should only be expected. It shows Armitage to be accessible, engaged, and, most of all, concerned that poetry should not just be an arcane, ivory-tower pursuit, but instead woven into the fabric of our lives – as in the script for a 2019 ‘film-poem’ considering Britain’s relationship to Europe. Tendencies like these are surely admirable in our new Poet Laureate.

Impossible heights: meat-free meat turns hyper-realistic

George Phillips
-
0
Impossible heights: meat-free meat turns hyper-realistic

Two weeks ago, fast-food giant Burger King hit the headlines with the announcement that customers would soon be able to find the ‘Impossible Whopper’ – a meatless version of the company’s most well-known burger – in stores across the US. The nationwide rollout follows a hugely successful trial period in 7 key US markets which highlighted the need for affordable vegetarian and vegan fast food. 

Despite a lack of name recognition in the UK, Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods Inc has been making waves in the US market, employing cutting edge-technologies to create commercially viable meat alternatives. Veggie burgers are by no means a new invention with the first examples dating back to the early seventies, but Impossiblehave succeeded in developing a new generation of ‘bleeding’ meatless products which are gaining presence on the market. 

Setting the Impossible Burger apart from current offerings is the fact that it succeeds in mimicking the principal qualities of its meat based siblings. The key ingredient is an iron-rich molecule called ‘heme’, which occurs naturally in both plants and animals and most importantly provides traditional burgers with their distinctive blood red colour. Impossiblehave devised a way to incorporate this molecule in the soy protein ‘leghemoglobin’ meaning their burgers retain the appearance, cooking aroma, and taste of beef, yet are suitable for both vegetarians and vegans. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this description was lifted straight out of an episode of Black Mirror, but the Impossible Burger is rapidly making its way to plates across the States. The company’s website claims that their product is stocked by more than 10,000 restaurants across the country, a number which grows each week. The partnership with Burger King however represents a hugely important development, both for the Impossibleand for meat alternatives more generally. Fast-food has long been an area where vegetarian and vegan offerings fall short of what many people have come to expect, particularly in an age when an increasing number of people are opting to remove meat from their diet. 

Whilst it is possible to purchase a cheeseburger (albeit of questionable origin) for 99p, meatless offerings are far more difficult to come by. Although there is no shortage of vegetarian and vegan fast-food options in the UK, in particular in cities like London and Bristol, these are often prohibitively expensive and cater more for Instagram food critics than the mass market. The fact that Burger King are openly making an effort to target a largely neglected customer base can undoubtedly be seen as an acknowledgement of the change in eating habits and a clear move towards encouraging the general public to reduce meat consumption. Whether this is a genuine attempt to diversify their offerings and make a positive impact on the environment, or merely a profit grabbing move remains open for debate, and many will view the latter as more plausible.  

Regardless of how cynically you choose to view Burger King’s strategy though, the partnership will surely result in a change of focus as far as the fast-food market is concerned. Companies across the US are already scrambling to secure similar deals, triggering something of a plant-based arms race; Impossible’sprincipal competitor Beyond Meathave in recent weeks signed an exclusive contract with sandwich chain Subway, and an official statement provided by McDonalds hinted that the company will follow suit with a range of meatless products. 

There’s no doubt that such moves will be welcomed with open arms by increasingly eco-conscious consumers. A paper published last year in the journal Sciencehighlighted the devastating impacts of farming, noting that beef production can generate as much as 105kg of greenhouse gases for every 100g of meat. The research was led by Joseph Poore at the University of Oxford who further stated that ‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth’. A bold claim, but a recent study conducted by Barclays shows a clear rise in public interest in meat alternatives, revealing that US retail sales of plant-based foods have grown 13% in the past year. A significant chunk of this interest undoubtedly stems from existing vegetarian and vegan consumers seeking to experiment with new offerings. At the same time, a plant-based burger which retains the principal qualities of its beef counterparts is ideal for consumers who are seeking to reduce their environmental footprint without compromising on taste. 

It seems clear then that Impossiblehave produced a winning product which caters to a market in which vegetarians and vegans tend to fall to the wayside. The question is therefore whether they are capable of keeping up with the huge surge in interest; already this is proving questionable and the company have been plagued by supply chain issues. VP of communications, Jessica Appelgren, said publicly that “We are working our hardest to increase production and are making real strides”. Whether they can meet the demands of the fast food industry remains to be seen.  

The future of vegetarian and vegan fast food seems to be looking up, and the next 10 years will hopefully see the market continue to evolve as meatless offerings are refined and improved. Providing supply issues can be resolved and Impossibleand its competitors can scale effectively, it won’t be long before we see them gain a notable presence here in Europe. And given the environmental benefits a move away from meat can have, this can’t come soon enough…

Anarchy unmasked; Peterloo 200 years on

Felicity Victoria Graham
-
0
Anarchy unmasked; Peterloo 200 years on

With the 200th Anniversary of The Peterloo Massacre this month, were the rebels’ objectives truly ever achieved?

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, working-class Britain was manifested by appalling levels of famine and a frightfully low employment rate. Exacerbating these issues were the notorious Corn Laws, which recommended the exclusion of foreign-grown corn until UK prices had risen substantially. The blight of this was, of course, to fall mainly onto the urban poor. With the rapid mechanisation of the textile industry, men, women and children were hurriedly dismissed from work without any forewarning, leaving whole families unable to feed. 

In our 21st century Britain, brimming with rules, regulations and 24-hour McDonalds’, it is almost impossible to imagine such a lapse into disorder. With our damp-proof housing, reliable food supply and relatively satisfactory minimum wages, we are alienated by the idea that a large fraction of our country was once stuck in what would now resemble the developing world. Yet this was the reality, only two centuries ago. The British working-class, deprived of the vote, were left abandoned to the murky shadows.

200 years on from the Peterloo massacre, and it appears that the North is, finally, being paid the attention it deserves. Our new Prime Minister, however questionable his intentions, has traipsed around almost every major Northern capital, assiduously frowning under his blonde mop whilst listening to locals’ complaints. As a Northerner, I can guarantee that this is a very welcome change. But just why and how has it taken Westminster this long to realise the North’s importance?  

When considering this question, I’m struck by the lack of publicity for the 200thAnniversary of Peterloo in the national media. Only last month we saw the 50thanniversary of the moon landing, which saw zealous celebration across the UK, despite being a largely American success. With many historians agreeing that Peterloo played an integral role in creating modern Britain’s liberal democracy, I am baffled that this anniversary is being so massively undervalued. The people of Manchester rightfully honoured their heritage and turned out in their hundreds last Friday, yet most of the country don’t seem to have any idea or interest in commemorating this crucial event. 

Unfortunately, such ignorance is all too common. In the South, the narrative applied to the North/South divide is one of pity, of token concern for ‘the other side’ and its troubling socio-economic history. Yet, the North is no longer impoverished. London may be the preferred location to initiate a career, but in the North opportunity is rife, and its social concerns are often marginal compared to those of London. Whilst the defeated rebels of Peterloo may have been pleased by the concept of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, their principal political aim has not been achieved; working-class northerners are still not only vaguely undermined, but entirely politically silenced.

I’m referring, of course, to Brexit. The referendum of 2016 saw the North voting overwhelmingly Leave, with the majority in regions such as North East Lincolnshire coming up to just below seventy-percent. This decision – and I believe that it must now be re-iterated that this was a thoroughly considered decision – astounded the political class. Those who maintained the very same naïve mindset as David Cameron were taken aback, unable to construe any reason to vote for such a divorce. They were astonished by the temerity of Northerners in not doing what they’d been told, just as those plump-bottomed Parliamentarians had been surprised 200 years earlier at Peterloo. 

Since 2016, the contempt shown for the referendum result by those politicians, journalists, think-tankers and others ensconced in SW1 has clearly demonstrated that the complaints of the Peterloo rebels are still justified today. In fact, even as I sit here at my laptop fact-checking this article, Google has very pointedly decided to push me in the direction of an article entitled ‘Why the North of England will regret voting for Brexit.’ The idea that this search result has been given pride of place doesn’t shock me at all; Brexit has shown intellectual and political snobbery at its very worst.

The Commons’ handling of Brexit has shattered my hope in democracy, and I am confident that I do not stand alone. Blood, tears, toil and sweat have been spent by the public in order to ensure that Parliament hears their voice. I feel an even deeper sorrow for those who lost their lives at Peterloo when I realise with horrible irony that, on the very anniversary of the massacre, the political class were rabidly plotting to overthrow the democratic vote. Sitting pretty in their comfortable London show-homes, the majority of Remainer MPs have repeatedly refused to lend an ear to those they consider to be insolent and idiotic Brexiteers from the regions. As such, they’ve failed to realise that for many voting to Leave was simply a desperate cry for help. Disillusioned by a political class that never alters, whatever we tick in the ballot box, voters used their first real chance at changing something in decades to voice their frustration. To parallel with Peterloo, the Remainers are imitating the stance of the Duke of Wellington: “Beginning reform is beginning revolution.” For those upper echelons who feel at ease in their socio-economic situation, what doesn’t seem broken doesn’t need fixing. 

Yet, Brexit is not the only recent political catastrophe which holds clear parallels with Peterloo. Thatcherism of the 1980s infamously ripped the heart out of Northern industry, leaving old and great cities such as Newcastle and Sheffield to seemingly irreversible decline. The livelihoods of millions were torn away as communities were shattered for an ideological project that began in London. This had consequences much like the textile industry’s mechanisation prior to Peterloo. The physical violence struck against the Northern mining communities shows that, over the intervening 200 years, the suppression tactics of the ruling classes haven’t changed one bit. Recalling Thatcher’s treatment of the miners mirrors how Shelley described Lord Castlereagh’s actions during Peterloo; ‘I met murder on the way – he had a mask like Castlereagh.’ Whilst it would be unreasonable to argue that all of Thatcher’s reign was completely disastrous, for the Northern working classes Thatcher was indeed little more than a masked murderer. Even today, when assessing our current political leaders, it becomes difficult to set them apart from such brutal rulers. The South’s “intellectual” elite still show aggressive contempt if ‘the many’ have the boldness to express a contrary political opinion.

However, the situation is not entirely hopeless. It would be both defeatist and inaccurate to say British politics hasn’t improved since Peterloo. Following the Representation of the People Acts of 1918 and 1928, our country’s political constitution has gone from strength to strength. Those vicious laws put in place following Peterloo, such as the Unlawful Drilling Act, have been repealed, and protests are now more tolerated than ever before. For those on the outside looking in, it must appear as though the UK is a place of unadulterated free speech and absolute equality.

For women especially, life has greatly improved. The Peterloo massacre was notable for its number of female protesters, which included societies such as the Blackburn Female Reform Society and the Manchester Female Reform Society. With now 202 female MPs within parliament, I have no doubt that the women of Peterloo would be more than satisfied with the position of women in society today, and feel that their sacrifice was by no means wasted.

Regardless of your opinions of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, it is undoubtedly a success that the UK gave the Western world its first female Prime Minister, and has now seen two in less than a hundred years since all women were given the right to vote. However, there are still significant battles to be fought. Four days before Peterloo, a nasty cartoon was published depicting the Blackburn Female Reform Society addressing an open-air meeting. The cartoon portrays these women as licentious, with their clothing unkempt and their children lying abandoned in the background. On this front, it appears women cannot win. Only two months ago, Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, spoke out against Parliament’s rules on maternity leave for female MPs, arguing she felt she had to choose between “being an MP and being a mum”. The first female MP to face such a struggle, Baroness Hayman, was treated even worse; she was immediately dubbed a ‘militant feminist’ and bombarded with national criticism.

This is just one of many deterrents women still face on entering the political world. With Trump’s blatant misogyny damaging women’s political ambitions across the pond, such sexism seems to have trickled slowly into our Commons. As a consequence of the gentlemen’s dining-club culture of parliament, any female MP seen loudly vocalising her opinion is accused of ‘whining’. Even today such opinions are often displayed openly, in a nation much less crippled by a gender gap than the majority of the world. It is no secret that, during the PMQs of December 2018, Jeremy Corbyn churlishly mouthed ‘stupid woman’ at Theresa May. With such a culture in place, it comes as no surprise that Maggie Thatcher sought out vocal training in order for her voice to sound more masculine.

Yet, whilst women remain undermined in the political sphere, and the desires of the Peterloo rebels have still not yet been wholly achieved, I am confident that a situation similar to Peterloo could never re-occur. Eighteen innocent citizens were killed at Peterloo, with up to 700 others badly injured. Although the English Bill of Rights of 1689 should have prevented the military’s cruelty, the absence of free speech and unbiased media sources meant that local authorities were able to easily cover up their actions. Prior to the creation of The Guardian newspaper, governmental control of news media enabled a complete disregard for human rights. With recent bills and treaties such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1998 Human Rights Act, it is reassuring to know that legal barriers are now in place to prevent another Peterloo staining British soil. 

Unfortunately, it becomes difficult to maintain such optimism when faced with the open partiality of the mainstream media. Although The Guardian was designed with the simple task of addressing this issue, I am unsure I could name one modern media outlet that doesn’t reek of inexcusable bias. In 2017, only 48% of Britons said that they trusted the mainstream media. Another regrettable trend to spread from across the pond is so-called ‘fake news’, which appears to be at an all-time high. Even social media outlets such as Facebook aren’t innocent, with the Tories paying out millions for Facebook advertisements in the run-up to the 2017 election. The outrageous lies of the mainstream media are regularly a cause for dismay and, on this front, I am unsure that this area has had any drastic improvement since Peterloo.

With no party in place to represent the people’s vote, I feel a sense of dismay surely not dissimilar to how the survivors of Peterloo felt, when they would have to wait thirteen years before any legislation would admit them onto the tedious road to political reform. Yet, Peterloo must be celebrated. It must be celebrated because the fight for true democracy is far from over. In such a turbulent political climate as this, we must honour those who fought at Peterloo, and recognise their sacrifice now more than ever before. 

War Horse – Coloured by Love and Hate

Maxim Mower
-
0
War Horse – Coloured by Love and Hate

It seems ironic that the most undesirable part in a school play is the role of rear or front of a horse, second only to that of a tree, or perhaps a lonely cloud floating in the background. In Warhorse, however, the actors that breathe life into the mechanical horses, particularly Joey and Topthorn, are the stars of the show. 

​There is no attempt to make these animals look realistic, in the sense of them having flesh, eyes, etc., with the overall appearance consisting in a lattice and mesh design. But this is what makes the production so moving, because the studious way in which the actors inside the construction move Joey gives him a timidness and gentility that makes the audience immediately fall in love with him. The designer, Rae Smith, mentions how he opted for ‘poetry’ over ‘documentary realism’ – a decision that would have perhaps improved the recent Lion King film. One of the most poetic and beautiful instances in Warhorse is when a horse dies, and the actors that had been fuelling it stand, and slowly step away. Directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris do not try to hide the fact that there are people beneath the horses’ skeletons, and during this scene, it feels as though it is not the actors leaving this horse behind, but its soul. 

​Albert (Scott Miller) brings tremendous energy to the stage, and injects undeniable verve to every scene he is in. This could perhaps have been reigned in when we first meet him, just to tug at the sympathy strings a little more and underline his role as the downtrodden son, who finds solace and growth in his companionship with Joey. 

​The unsung hero within all the action is the Songperson (Ben Murray). His lyrical croons are interspersed into key moments in the plot, and add to the sense of tragic foreboding that accompanies the poignant decisions made by the characters. He acts out his mini-ballads with enough nonchalance so as not to take away from the main scene, but through this he also conveys a feeling of apathy, of defeat, as though because he is removed from the central action he can see the futility of it all. 

​In the play notes, Micheal Morpurgo states that he was inspired to write the original book because of his experiences with family members who had been involved in the war, as well as the touching story of a boy he met on his farm who had a terrible stutter, and had consequently refused to speak altogether at the age of seven. However, one day Morpurgo saw him talking to one of the horses, because he knew it would not judge or mock him, and what’s more, the author saw that the horse seemed to be listening.

​He has said that he intended the tale to be one of ‘reunion and reconciliation’, but that Nick Stafford and the National Theatre have transformed it into an ‘anthem for peace’. The common nature of one’s fellow man is a pivotal theme that is conveyed brilliantly, culminating when Joey is trapped in No Man’s Land. We get a view into trenches on either side, and each hesitantly sends a man up to help the horse. What follows is a hilarious exchange between the Englishman and German, both of whom speak English to the audience, but cannot understand each other, underlining how this is all being perceived from the neutral standpoint of Joey. It is a moment which stresses how alike people from all nationalities are, and ridicules the excuse of the language barrier in justifying hostility. ​It is a message that is arguably more relevant than ever in the current political climate.

While this may well be the theme that critics pay most attention too, what resonates with me the most is Warhorse’s portrayal of the special, and sometimes magical, nature we can see in animals. The bond formed between Joey and Albert is one that desperately refuses to be relinquished, despite every obstacle possible being thrown its way. It is a tale of unconditional love, and the bravery this can inspire. Perhaps Morpurgo wants to show us how this love inspires far greater feats than the hate of war ever can, which only provokes further bloodshed. 

​A mention has to be given to the outstanding staging, with every battle scene being punctuated by ominous fog and jarring lights, the cracks of gunfire literally making audience members (including myself!) jump in shock. Throughout the entire performance, the backdrop is carved open by a huge, torn scrap of paper from Albert’s sketchbook, on which drawings are portrayed and pained letters are scrawled. As another death plagues the battlefield, its jagged edges are tainted by blood seeping through the paper, before the red splatters evolve touchingly into poppies. 

​This is a special play that pulls you along through the mud, trenches and barbed wire of World War One, as you experience every emotion from despair and fear, to laughter and hope. It leaves you in No Man’s Land as the curtain falls, unsure whether to feel satisfied with the uplifting conclusion, or despondent due to the tragedy that had to be experienced in order to get there. ​

1...589590591...2,518Page 590 of 2,518

Support Student Journalism

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

Donate

Explore

Follow us

More

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

Website by James Ashley