Page 670 – Cherwell

Review: ANIMA by Thom Yorke

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4th September 2019

‘Give me a goddamned reason not to jack it all in’ Thom Yorke sings on The Axe. Yorke may find some solace in the results of his fourth solo effort, ANIMA. Working again with producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke has honed his electronic sound. The songs have an energy and drive which is new to Yorke’s solo work. Inspired by his interest in sleep and the unconscious, the album explores alienation with the modern world and paranoia in a collection of songs which forms a highly listenable, and at times moving, mosaic.

The formula remains similar to albums The Eraserand Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes in its fundamentals. Processed beats and synths are overlaid with Yorke’s discordant musings on a damaged world. Could there be a risk then that Yorke, so long a pioneer in alternative rock, is playing it a little safe?

A comparison with his previous work, 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, suggests not. That record’s soundscape had a frighteningly claustrophobic feel. Imagine listening to Kid Afrom ten feet underwater and you’re nearly there. The track Pink Sectionsounded like a swarm of bees amassing round your head at a funeral. By contrast, ANIMAis beefier, more expansive and the song-writing more ambitious. There is definite progression here.

The standout is seven-minute epic Twist. This began life as two songs, Twistand Saturdays, which Thom would often play into each other during live shows. The transition is marked by a piano’s decisive appearance around the four-minute mark, which augments a rattling drum beat, before synths swell upwards. Yorke paints a lonely picture down below, ‘A boy on a bike who is running away. An empty car in the woods with the motor left running’. His rejection of his outward appearance, ‘Look, this face, it isn’t me’, puts the emphasis on his inner self, his anima.

Yorke’s delivery here, using a lower register than we’ve seen in recent work, is thankfully typical of the album. The thin, high voice he deploys in Unmade, of Suspirium,oron much of Radiohead’sA Moon Shaped Pool (see True Love Waitsor B-side Ill Wind), is nowhere to be found. Instead, he’s almost speaking over the music, allowing the beats, painstakingly cut up and re-packaged by Godrich, to do much of the talking.

The gentle humming pulse of Dawn Chorus’s synth follows Twist. Written originally for Radiohead during the In Rainbowsyears, this houses the album’s most affecting lyrics, which are made prominent by the song’s simple construction. First, Yorke recalls the city-worker monotony of No Surprises, ‘You quit your job again, and your train of thought’, then becomes tenderly sentimental: ‘If you could do it all again? Yeah, without a second thought’. Finally, he envisions ‘spiral patterns, of you, my love’. In Yorke land, this is disarmingly romantic.

But Yorke never strays far from thoughts of paranoia, and these emerge in menacing, Burial-esque closer Runwayaway. After an intro of ambient guitar noodling, a voice whispers incessantly, an urgent warning, ‘Thisis when you know who your real friends are. Who your realfriends are.’ It’s very creepy stuff, but a provocative glimpse into the nature of a disturbed mind.

There’s some less-than-stellar songs here too. The opener, Traffic, doesn’t really go anywhere, and the squawking synths of Not the Newsgrow wearisome quite quickly. The drum beat of I Am a Very Rude Personis also rather monotonous, though possibly reflects the uncaring, insular persona of the speaker. ‘You don’t mean a thing, but it won’t bother me’ this character sings to himself. Change up the beat to please the listener? Never!

As though the music weren’t enough, the album is accompanied by a one-reeler film of the same name directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, released on Netflix. Starring Yorke,this three part essentially modern dance performance, choreographed by Damien Jalet, is overlaid by three ANIMAsongs, Not the News, Trafficand Dawn Chorus. We initially seean army of commuters robotically twitching and marching through cavernous underground spaces. The protagonist, one of their ranks but on a mission to rescue a bag that’s gone astray, is sucked into their at turns pathetic, exhausting and menacing routines. Eventually he is released, waking on top of a drain. For the final five minutes he rediscovers his humanity to the warm sounds of Dawn Chorus, twirling with and playfully embracing his partner, played by Yorke’s girlfriend Dajana Roncione. This touching and heartfelt scene is a window on carefree intimacy which few must have thought Radiohead’s frontman would ever choose to create.

ANIMA, with Yorke’s other albums, sits in a niche Yorke has made entirely his own. By virtue of Yorke’s lyrical input, it’s more emotional and personal than Aphex Twin or Autechre but just as delicate and carefully produced. Much of the Radiohead fanbase was never won over by Yorke’s previous solo efforts, but ANIMAis more accessible and more human – there is hope yet. For those who enjoyed The Eraser andTomorrow’s Modern Boxes, ANIMAbuilds on them, as Yorke recommends in Dawn Chorus, ‘this time with style’.

Damian Collins: emergency legislation needed for a snap general election

Simon Hunt

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2nd September 2019

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Damian Collins: emergency legislation needed for a snap general election

Conservative MP Damian Collins has expressed concern over whether electoral rules have been sufficiently strengthened in time for a snap general election later this year.

In an interview with Cherwell, Collins, who chairs the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, expressed doubt over whether current electoral rules would prevent a repeat of the 2016 scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data. “If a snap election were called, we would need emergency legislation to amend our electoral law to create rules on social media campaigning that are fit for purpose,” Collins said.

“Current rules and limits around political donations can be easily evaded through making online donations from multiple countries using different currencies – we urgently need new electoral rules to change this.”

Mr Collins did not go so far as to oppose the idea of holding a snap general election later in the year: “An election would only take place if parliament cannot sustain itself. If this happens, then a general election must take place.”

The Conservative MP had previously written to co-founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, requesting that he travel personally to Westminster to answer questions from MPs. So far, Mr Zuckerberg has not accepted this request.

“Mark Zuckerberg is ultimately responsible for what is going on inside Facebook,” Collins told Cherwell.

“Those who have been sent to the committee as representatives of Facebook have been unable to answer many of our questions, which is why we need Zuckerberg himself to come to Parliament to answer them.”

Mr Collins expressed support for the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue parliament. “What the Prime Minister is seeking to do is force parliament to make a decision,” he said.

“The time for open ended debate has come to an end. We need to make a decision about what to do, not just spend more time talking about it.”

Calls for reform to rules on election campaigning had been made following the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018.

The Politics of Palm Oil: Emissions, Orangutans and Brexit

Opinion

Pippa Barlow

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1st September 2019

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The Politics of Palm Oil: Emissions, Orangutans and Brexit

The Malaysian Government has launched an aggressive retaliation to the European Union’s recent revision of its Renewable Energy Directive. The new EU regulation is set to completely phase out biofuels, whose emission-saving properties are negated by the carbon emissions they create through indirect land use change, by 2030. Palm oil biodiesel is one such biofuel. Malaysia, which accounts for 28% of global palm oil production and 33% of palm oil exports, views the exclusion of palm oil from renewable energy sources as the start of a bigger environmental attack on its lucrative commodity.

Palm oil has long been known for its ties to deforestation with the resultant decimation of the orangutan population being but one of many consequences. Yet, as the supermarket chain Iceland found out last Christmas when their evocative ‘rang-tan’ advert was pulled from the air for being too political, the palm oil industry does not like being challenged.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has labelled the EU’s decision regarding palm oil as a “grossly unfair, misguided policy”. He argues that the policy, rather than attempting to counter climate change, is only protectionism, aimed at supporting European farmers producing sunflower and rape-seed biofuels. He has denounced the EU’s stance on palm oil as “modern colonialism that has no place in today’s world.” He has threatened to raise tariffs on EU dairy imports and urged Malaysian airlines to stop purchases of European Airbuses in favour of Chinese models. What began as an environmental issue is devolving into a full-on trade dispute.

And one is not hard-pressed understand Malaysia’s outrage. Estimated to account for 3.8% of the country’s GDP, and supporting four million people throughout the country, palm oil is viewed, certainly in the eyes of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), as “a pillar of the Malaysian economy”. The MPOB also makes a fair point in stressing the productivity of the crop, which at 4.03 tonnes of oil per hectare per year far exceeds the productivity of its European counterparts sunflower and rapeseed at 0.6 and 0.8 tonnes respectively. The hypocrisy of the EU is also undeniable: its recent trade deal with the South American bloc ‘Mercosur’ clearly paves the way for expansion of the meat industry, whose greenhouse emissions far eclipse those of palm oil.

Yet the environmental damage the palm oil industry has inflicted is also irrefutable. The EU’s report reveals that from 1989 to 2013, 45% of the palm oil expansion was onto land that was previously rainforest. It also underlines that, despite the productivity of palm oil, the draining of peat land in palm oil plantations leads to significant carbon emissions. The MPOB’s claim that the “Malaysian palm oil industry is very well regulated and current practices remain committed towards the three components of sustainability” sits uneasily with the numerous accusations of worker exploitation as well as the illegal culling of orangutans. Unless sustainability efforts are taken seriously, the industry only promises to cause more environmental damage.

Moreover, Malaysia’s pro-palm oil campaigning has been undermined by its own hypocrisy and deception. Campaigns such as “Farmer’s Unite”, which claim to be representing the plight of small-scale palm oil farmers, have been exposed as being funded by government agencies charged with promoting palm oil.

The United Kingdom has recently found itself in the cross-hairs of this ecopolitical dispute. Malaysia has offered the UK a promising post-Brexit trade deal on the condition that it breaks with current European Union policy on the palm oil trade. Painting this as a “historic opportunity”, Mahathir Mohammed is clearly capitalising on the UK’s weakened diplomatic position. In many ways, however, it would be short-sighted of the British government to pass up this opportunity. It is naïve to believe that boycotting palm oil in the West will make the issue just go away; Malaysia is already preparing a back-up export relationship with China. Moreover, signing this trade deal would allow the UK to keep continued pressure on sustainability advances in the Malaysian palm oil industry. It would also, however, serve to further widen the already cavernous schism developing between the UK and the EU.

Understanding the palm oil industry is therefore not as simple as some would have us believe. While evocative adverts featuring orangutan orphans paint the issue as ethically black or white, the political reality of this natural resource is highly contentious and Britain’s decision on how it approaches future trade relationships with Malaysia will be a significant diplomatic marker.

Indeed, how the government responds to the Malaysian proposal could set a precedent for UK-trade deals in the post-Brexit era. The Malaysian Government will certainly not be the last to attempt to cement their own trade interests using Britain’s post-Brexit instability.

“Love will always win” – Paris celebrates Pride

Culture

Jeevan Ravindran

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31st August 2019

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“Love will always win” – Paris celebrates Pride

“I knew when I was around five and a half years old that I liked girls, but I didn’t know what it meant and how it was going to affect my life,” says Louise Turazzard.

The 38-year-old is one of tens of thousands of people who have turned out on the streets of Paris to celebrate Pride, or “La marche des fiertés” in French – a day which belongs to the LGBTQ+ community and gives them a chance to express themselves in the most public way possible – with a celebration of love, dance, music and festivities that has now spread around the world.

This year’s Pride parade in Paris includes floats by companies including national rail service SNCF, Delta Airlines and Air France, as well as floats just celebrating queerness and freedom – with people dressed in a huge array of costumes from angel wings to hot pants shaking their hips to the rhythms of the tunes blasted by the float’s DJ.

Turazzard comes to Pride almost every year, and says the event just keeps getting better – “It changes every year. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, and I think there are more young people here now. Pride used to be a bit more serious.”

This year, she’s come with her girlfriend, Delphine – the two have been together for two and a half years and say they’ve come to show the dignity of the queer community, and to support the freedom to own your sexuality.

She’s not alone in this sentiment – many participants in this year’s Pride have come bearing signs with slogans such as “This is my freedom, look after your own” and “Lesbianism is not for male porn” – people are here to own their sexuality and be proud of it.

The couple say they haven’t experienced any issues with people refusing to accept their relationship, but 28-year-old Elisabeth Chiaverini points out that many haven’t been so lucky, referring to the case of a gay couple in England who were attacked during a journey on a London bus.

28-year-old Melania Geymonat and her girlfriend Chris were beaten on the evening of May 30 after they refused to obey a group of men who commanded them to kiss. The widely reported attack resulted in the arrests of four young men, and Geymonat told the BBC it was the first time she had ever been attacked for her sexuality.

“It touched everyone,” Chiaverini says about the attack, which made headlines in France too. “Gay people suffer. There was recently a gay couple who were attacked in the 10^th arrondissement (of Paris). I think it’s incomprehensible to attack people on the basis of their sexuality.”

Chiaverini is an ally who attends Pride every year in support of her father, who is openly gay. After her parents separated when she was around ten, her father came out to her and her siblings when she was twelve. Whilst her siblings took the news badly at the time, Chiaverini accepted his sexuality, having already suspected that this was the cause of her parents ‘separation, and she has been his steadfast confidante for the last sixteen years.

“Even though I’m heterosexual, I put myself in the place of gay people and I think what they have to go through isn’t fair,” she says. “Your sexuality only concerns you. No one has the right to judge you and you shouldn’t be ashamed.”

As she has lots of gay friends, Chiaverini says she has sometimes encountered situations where her friends were attacked – including once in her birthplace of Corsica. As she walked down the beach with two male friends who happened to be dating, they were verbally attacked by an acquaintance of hers.

“I went back and asked him, ‘What did you say?’ and he said he wasn’t talking to me. I said, ‘No, but you were talking to my friends.’ He said he didn’t have an issue with me, but I asked him why he had a problem with my friends. He had around 20 of his friends with him and we could have easily been beaten up.”

Chiaverini says this Pride has been particularly special for her because she had an emotional encounter with a mother and her 10-year-old son who had come from the suburbs to attend the event.

“He´s gay, and he was really unhappy about it, you could see it. But his mother supports him to death, she brought him here to show him he was normal. I spoke to him and told him, ‘You’re 10 and it’s hard now but it’s going get better in around four or five years.’ I don’t know if it’s going to help him but I’m so happy I got to speak to him.”

This story shows just how difficult it is to be gay, she says – even though he’d dared to be open with his mother, he knew he would be in trouble if the news spread at school – and Chiaverini says people need to own their queerness just as she owns her heterosexuality.

Exactly five months before Pride, on January 28, the French government launched a campaign in schools to educate youth in schools and increase LGBTQ+ awareness, the “Everyone Equal, Everyone Allied” campaign. In an accompanying statement, the Ministry of National Education said it was vital to ensure a “serene environment for all.” In a statement addressed to LGBTQ+ students on May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, Minister for Education Jean-Michel Blanquer said the structure of education “is here to listen to you, understand you, help you and protect you.”

According to French non-profit organisation SOS Homophobie, 2018 showed an increase of 38% in homophobic acts in schools from the previous year, and a study by French polling firm IFOP recorded 18% of LGBTQ+ students claiming they had been insulted in the last 12 months. The same study said 72% of students identifying as trans classified their school experience as “bad” or “very bad.”

Homosexuality has been legal in France since 1791, a good 176 years before it was legal in Britain. However, it was only in the 1980s that equality began to become a reality, with the overturning of an “indecent exposure” law which often criminalised homosexuals, and the equalising of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual couples. Same-sex marriage became legal in 2013, and the country is widely regarded as being LGBTQ-friendly, with the capital even being home to the queer district of Le Marais.

However, the IFOP study reported 59% of participants saying they had previously made active behavioural changes to avoid homophobic aggression, with 43% of participants saying they had felt afraid to kiss their same-sex partner in public, and 41% of participants saying they had felt afraid to hold their partner´s hand.

Despite these difficulties, Pride in Paris remains the biggest in the country. The first ever parade held in 1977, just seven years after the first ever Pride parade in New York City in 1970. In 1969, the American megacity bore witness to the Stonewall riots, pioneered by the local queer community, which changed the face of the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and are still remembered today as being a defining moment for the queer community worldwide.

Singer Bilal Hassani, one of the headline performers at this year’s Pride in Paris, is quickly becoming one of the country’s most iconic LGBTQ+ icons. The 19-year-old, who is openly gay and usually performs in a blonde wig and makeup, represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest this year singing the song “Roi” – meaning “King” – which encourages people to embrace their differences. Despite facing a wave of homophobic abuse leading up to the contest, Hassani took a defiant stance, writing on his Instagram page that he “did not listen” to the haters and “kept following my dreams.”

Enzo Vasse, a 16-year-old student, also doesn’t shy away from owning his identity, saying he doesn’t define himself. He’s come to Pride for the first time with a group of friends, who are carrying the trans flag.

“I’ve come to defend LGBT rights,” he says. “It’s primordial. The principle is that they’re still a minority and somewhat niche. Most people are okay with it now but what they don’t realise is that anyone could be gay.”

Reflecting on what he makes of his first ever Pride, Vasse says, “It’s cool. It’s really festive and I really like it. It’s quite representative, there’s everything here.”

However, the queer community in Paris and elsewhere in France continues to face certain difficulties. One particular issue, which is a talking point at this year´s Pride, is assisted reproductive technology, or Procréation Médicalement Assistée (PMA) in French. This is not yet accessible to everyone, with lesbian couples and single women struggling to gain access.

This becomes a focal point at this year’s Pride, as activists takes to the stage to start up a rallying call for everyone to be allowed access to the technology. The call is met with deafening cheers, and attendees wave their banners reading “PMA for everyone.” This struggle seems to be finally bearing fruition, as Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced in June that a law guaranteeing access to all is in the making.

As the parade comes to an end and masses of people gather in front of the main stage at République square, a presenter comes onstage and reminds them of the three minutes of silence held earlier for their queer comrades who have died, and now asks them to make one minute of noise, so that “people in countries that aren’t as lucky as we are can hear us.” Hundreds of red balloons are later released into the air as a DJ set comes to an end.

“We need to remind ourselves why we’re fighting and why we’re together,” Delphine says. Turazzard concurs, saying there needs to be solidarity and unity between different groups. “Love will always win,” she says with a smile.

The article above was amended on 13/9/19.

Street food: Genuine or gentrified?

Beatrice Barr

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31st August 2019

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Camden Market in Central London has always been famous for its street food. It was the kind of food that was as likely to give you the culinary experience of a lifetime as it was to leave you with diarrhoea – often, it would do both. But in 2016, the food court of Camden Market was taken over by Kerb Food: a chain of self-described ‘new kind of street food markets’ taking over the London street food scene. And just like that, out went the questionable meats and in came the allergen warnings and gluten free burgers. This all sounds good, right?

But the sanitisation of Camden Market wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past few years, street food markets of a similar ‘new kind’ have popped up all over London: from the Gherkin, to King’s Cross, to Victoria — anywhere that London hipster-types will pay £8 for a falafel wrap. Between 2017 and 2018, Kerb’s revenues doubled. Our very own Gloucester Green may retain its charm for now, but it’s a small step from smoothies, gourmet chips and cauliflower pittas to full-blown dystopia.

Look, I don’t know if you’ve ever come across a bubble waffle, but their popularity sums up the modern street food scene pretty well: covered in cream, Nutella, ice cream and occasionally made with avocado (!?), they’re a food made for instagram not the taste buds. And, along with charcoal soft-serve (did someone say glorified Mr Whippy?) and Yorkshire pudding wraps (!), they populate the London street food scene today.

I should confess at this point that when I say London hipster-types, I am more or less describing myself. I am the target market for these vendors: I choose my food based on aesthetic value far more readily than I’d prefer to admit to, and I religiously check the Instagram geotag of a restaurant before I eat there. Regardless, even to me, the archetype of this target market, the street food craze has somewhat lost touch with reality.

There are, of course, places which have got the balance right. Dumpling Shack, in Spitalfields, somehow balances deliciousness with a solid Instagram presence, and it manages to achieve the one thing for which all street food vendors are desperate: authenticity. The same can’t be said for the countless ‘boutique’ burger joints at every market in London — though that’s not to say I wouldn’t try them.

The sanitisation of street food isn’t just about Instagram; it’s about class and culture. Street food has existed throughout British history, but boomed with immigrant populations: Indian curries, Chinese takeaways, filled bagels from Jewish delis. It’s this authenticity which every vendor tries to capture today — with varying levels of success. Such an obsession with authenticity which tells us so much about why street food is popular today, and among whom it’s popular: sanitised street food is also about sanitising culture, capturing the bits we want to enjoy while hoping we can get away without the rough bits around the edges. It’s about trying to capture the tastes of the street food Camden used to have, without the risk of diarrhoea. And inevitably failing.

Modern street food isn’t evil: it’s not cultural appropriation at one end of the spectrum, nor is it usually bad cuisine at the other. But it does say something important about the sanitisation of class and culture: the more we seek our food for its aesthetic value alone, the more the ‘authentic’ and collective experience of eating disappears, and the further we drift from the cultural experience that street food once was.

This Way Up (2019)- Review

Culture
Film

Molly Innes

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30th August 2019

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Content Warning: Mental Health/ Depression/ Suicide

I’m not sure there has ever been a period where television has been this brilliant. Perhaps not since The Office, Little Britain and Peep Show were airing during 2003 have we seen such a bombardment of great TV. But much has changed in the 16 years since 2003: I’m now actually old enough to watch these shows (and decide that the awkward men in them are a bit annoying not endearing), Doctor Who came back, and most importantly – Women are actually at the centre of the new age of TV, and we’ve moved past the idea of ‘female’ as a genre too. Thank God. ‘Female’ constitutes a genre as much as bread constitutes a food group: it isn’t. (but that doesn’t stop me eating it with every meal.)

In the same breath this year we’ve had Derry Girls, Fleabag, Back to Life, GameFace, Killing Eve, and now – This Way Up. The answer to all my prayers. The best year of my life and it’s only August!

This Way Up is, and I know how dramatic this sounds, the best thing ever. The most accurate and relatable depiction of mental health recovery I’ve ever seen. The rawest, most open and honest portrayal of the insides of many of our brains. And it’s bloody funny.

The show focuses on Aine (Aisling Bea) who we meet leaving a rehabilitation clinic following a ‘teeny little nervous breakdown’, aided by her older sister Shona (Sharon Horgan). The opening scene sets up the dynamic of the sisters: Aine knows what she wants (a kit-kat in a jacuzzi, neither of which were available in the clinic ) and Shona wants to help her, by giving ‘business feedback’ to a worker in the clinic who probably just wants to get on with her day in not the happiest environment. I loved Horgan in Pulling and Catastrophe, and have long been a fan of Bea’s stand up. Seeing them together like this is fantastic – Bea wrote the show, whilst Horgan’s company Merman produced it. It’s also great to see Channel 4 airing an Irish led show following Derry Girls, ensuring that the former wasn’t a novelty.

Comparisons to Fleabag have been made, obviously – wow! A woman! Talking openly about mental health and having sex! – however, and despite my love for Fleabag, one of the endearing and more relatable qualities of This Way Up is that it isn’t ‘posh’ in the way Fleabag veers on being. In one scene, Aine rings up her therapist in an emergency, but only reaches the receptionist, telling them: ‘‘I’ve just shoplifted a smoothie so I’m feeling a bit…actually can I speak to Helen about this not you’. Bea shows the reality of mental health: you can’t always get an appointment straight away, if at all.

Aine works as a TEFL teacher, and within her classroom we see a diverse mix of people trying to learn English. In episode two, Aine takes one Bulgarian student, Victor, to the hospital believing he has been the victim of a racially motivated attack, when in fact a brick fell on him whilst at work. The nuance in the humour as Aine navigates her job and the current social and political climate highlights how a show can play into political correctness in a sensitive way whilst keeping the humour too. The protagonist doesn’t always have to be the best when they’re trying their best.

Anyone who has faced their own mental health crisis will probably know how funny it can be. The dark joke in a quiet room that you know is hilarious but doesn’t quite land because, well, jokes about depression aren’t actually that funny to everyone. Aisling Bea plays on this. Lucy Mangan writing in the Guardian points out that ‘It is a drama (it is only a comedy-drama if you are one of those lucky people who has never experienced the eternal truth and saving grace of real life – that the worse things get, the better the jokes become; you can’t separate them by so much as a hyphen)’. Mangan is quite right, and the label ‘comedy-drama’ perhaps indicates as much as the label ‘female’ does in television, i.e. not a lot.

A scene in the first episode shows Aine going from laughing in the mirror to being crouched on the floor crying, in what looks like a panic attack, within seconds. Perhaps this scene best highlights the ease at with Bea takes the audience from comedy to drama and back again, but always keeping them intermingled and never separated, because it is impossible to take one away from the other.

Songs to Sell Your Soul To

Kavya Deshpande

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30th August 2019

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Listen to Kavya’s playlist here

“Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world’s for you, and (worse) The unbeatable slow machine
That brings you what you’ll get.”

— Philip Larkin, ‘The Life with a Hole in It’

“If you look at life like rolling a dice, then my situation now, as it stands – yeah, it may only be a 3. If I jack that in now, go for something bigger and better, I could easily roll a 6… I could also roll a 1. OK? So, I think sometimes… just leave the dice alone.”

— Tim, The Office

A person grows up when they realise that one day, they will be fifty. It’s not a new thought – most people have spooled out in their heads a few decades of unlived history during quiet moments. But it surprises you nonetheless because this time it comes with feeling, so that for the briefest second, you are fifty, and instead of carrying thirty years of imagined happenings you’re simply carrying thirty years. You don’t feel much else, aside from their lack of weight and distance.

But back when you were seventeen and scouring the notable alumni section of every college’s Wikipedia page, there were things to be done. Double acts propelled to the Fringe, plays written and performed to agents sitting in the darkness at the back of the Pilch. Unmade paintings that are now interred in a sixth-form sketch you have pinned up in your room (the occasional compliment from a visitor is inevitably met with the reply, “Yeah, thanks, I haven’t drawn anything in a while”). Writing. The instrument you’ve never found the time to touch.

Ennui, the recognition of delusion, and a polite rage directed singularly at yourself: these are all feelings that have been captured by music for years. Springsteen did it for factory boys building street engines in nowhere-towns, Bowie for budding androgynes shedding off school blazers in the chrysalis of English suburbia. It’s a little more difficult to find a soundtrack for staring at a spreadsheet, or staring at the number of Tube stations remaining until you arrive at the place where you stare at spreadsheets.

I wouldn’t claim that this playlist comes close to rearticulating those moments which much- needed romanticism. What I hope, however, is that you might find something on here that reminds you that a life constructed in-between office small-talk and the depressingly- glorified concept of a weekend is no less a life than the kind presented in art. That there is still dignity to be found in stability.

Oxford ramps up protest against no-deal Brexit

News

Luke Dunne

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29th August 2019

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Oxford ramps up protest against no-deal Brexit

Amidst national uproar, protestors who oppose Boris Johnson’s shutdown of parliament gathered in Bonn Square, Oxford, before marching to the Town Hall last night.

Witnesses report the crowd holding pro-EU banners, including the slogan ‘Stop the Coup’, as well at Union and EU Flags.

Dr Graham Jones, who chairs the Oxford region of European Movement, the independent pro-Europe activist group, said the following;

“We’ve come here spontaneously, from many different backgrounds and we span three generations. We are here to tell our Oxfordshire MPs that they must resist this abuse of powers (sic) by whatever means necessary.”

“this is the greatest issue facing our country since the Second World War and our elected representatives have the right and the duty to debate it”.

This protest comes only days after Oxford MP Anneliese Dodds signed the cross-party Church House agreement to block a no-deal Brexit. Ms Dodds said, “I’ve signed it because of depth of feeling of my constituents against a no-deal Brexit, especially in relation to the impact on BMW in Cowley, scientific research and our EU citizens in Oxford”. She was one amongst around 160 MPs who are understood to have signed the agreement at the time.

Photo by Jonathan Black

The fractured mind, literature, and society.

Olivia Wrafter

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28th August 2019

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$The fractured mind, literature, and society.$

“I felt the narrowing of my life to a very fine point. A hard triangle of a life over and me sprawled at its peak, hopeless and lost.” – Russell Brand, describing a mental breakdown.

This ‘narrowing’ of life is something that resonates with the intensity and inexorably singular atmosphere of mental illness. Yet, the ‘hard triangle of a life over’, for Brand, was perhaps a life over, but not life over, and the triangle ultimately widened again, opened up to the waxing and waning vicissitudes of a life continued in recovery from mental illness. Yet, this solipsistic image of experience under the influence of mental disorder, is one that recurs throughout literary thought.

Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar writes;

“If Mrs. Guinea had bought me a ticket to Europe or a round-the world-cruise, it wouldn’t have made one scrap of a difference to me. Wherever I was sitting – on the dock of a ship or outside a street-café in Paris or Bangkok – I would still be under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. The bell jar wadded around me, and I couldn’t stir.”

The oppressive image of the bell jar and the vacuum of mental illness is perhaps the most effective and poignant description of this aspect of the human condition to have ever been penned. Yet Plath’s novel was frequently described as her “usual use of ‘every facile bit of her own experience’ or a ‘horrific autobiography’”, with Plath herself describing the work as “a potboiler”.

Such authorial dismissal of literary creation, coupled with the efforts of Ted Hughes and Plath’s mother, caused her work to become obscured under a cloud of author-criticism. Biography became the explanation for Plath’s texts and critics have seen her work as a quasi-diary which fails to move beyond self-record into the realms of literary merit. Worse still, mental illness in Plath becomes explained away as merely a vessel by which other, ‘more important’ (and thus surely the intended subject matter), social and cultural phenomenons are explored. Esther Greenwood’s depression becomes a symptom of societal oppression of women, of her disrupted relationship with the father figure, and most cuttingly, even her own genius. Inherently, we should balk against this. When the images of suffocation appear again and again in Plath’s work, such as in Ariel, where she described the “stasis in darkness” of depression, how can we not seriously consider the reality of depression as just that, a reality?

A similar problem reoccurs in literary works today. The works of millennial poets such as Charly Cox and Rupi Kaur cause mental illness to become subsumed and lost within the expansive layers of modern society. The recent rise and undeniable success of ‘insta-poetry’ signals only a new method of blame displacement in the presentation of mental illness through literature. Just as Sylvia Plath’s work was debased by a refusal to acknowledge and accept the reality of mental illness within her work as an entity in its own right, insta-poets such as Charly Cox present mental illness as consubstantial with today’s society, and thus diminish its significance.

Although the new-found prevalence of mental illness in literature does help to dismantle the stigma around it, the presentation of this work against the background of technology and modernity raises issues. By synthesising the reality of mental illness with the medium of social media, these topics inherently become presented as interweaved with the society that propagates platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Perhaps such a perspective in itself is one that merely applies context criticism and by doing so, misses the point of these poems. However, when the success of poetry relies upon and is intrinsic to the aesthetic form in which it is presented, the form becomes just as critically important as the words on the screen.

Instagram in particular, problematises this issue. The beautiful images of poems set against the marble background of a coffee shop table, the camera just allowing into the frame the feminine image of a vase of roses, perched delicately next to a perfectly prepared flat white, is the world against which these poems are backdropped. The world these poets choose is very much the modern one and this necessarily entails current society and all its issues and vices. So, when Cox posts images of her poetry, beautifully scrawled and nestled amongst stylised pictures of her and her London Gen-Z lifestyle, she presents her poems, and thus their content as a mere facet of modernity. Instead of achieving the critical perspective of poems such as T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, on modern society, her poetry becomes synthesized with the medium of social media and so does her presentation of mental illness.

This ultimately begs the question, is mental illness a symptom of society? Many would say yes, arguing as Eliot did that today’s vacuous society is leading to the breakdown and disintegration of human relationships. But does this cause mental illness? In my opinion, no. It might worsen it, but it does not predicate it. For me, the logical fallacy here brings us back to Plath. Mental illness might not be helped circumstance, perhaps even triggered, but it is a veritable reality within itself, not a mere symptom. Plath surely would always have suffered the breakdowns that she did, irrelevant of circumstance, as would have her fictional creation Esther Greenwood. And so, to present mental illness in such close proximity with society, is to do what critics did to Plath; to blame, and to move away from the truth of mental illness that we are still unprepared to accept as a society.

Plath, Brand and Cox all have the same mental discordance in common, they all sought or seek to express and describe the experience of mental illness, and this in itself points to the intrinsic and ever-present nature of mental illness. Historically, it has always existed and will continue to do so. It will not simply disappear through social discourse as writers such as Cox suggest is possible. Maybe, by sharing an image of one of her many poems unravelling depression she gives comfort to someone experiencing similar emotions. But, by participating in a dichotomy of innovation and reaffirmation of existing norms, by balking against intolerance but doing so within a medium that thrives off the issues Cox raises, her sentiments become trivialised. Ultimately, in poets like Cox’s work, through the use of form, mental illness becomes a derivative of something else: our dissatisfaction and disillusionment with modern society. What we must remember however, is that it is this disillusionment that constitutes the brand that influencers like Cox exploit (remembering that she is, after all an influencer and not just a poet). In many ways then, Cox is no better than influencers like Florence Given; those who sell an ideology, however appealing and fitting to their following, to the swathes of followers that buy into their message.

Cox tells us to not allow social media to define us, to depress us in its unrealistic expectations. But in the next post, she gets hundreds of likes on a picture of her in a beautiful dress or advertising her latest collaboration. Which Cox do we listen to in this situation? The majority listen to both, thinking that they are rejecting the disposable lifestyle and image Instagram can promote, whilst styling themselves on the poet herself and perhaps even purchasing a pair of poetess endorsed high heels. Maybe, if we were to read Cox’s poetry without looking at her Instagram, there might be a different line of argument to take. But when most of her readers have become aware of her poetry through her Instagram, that’s a hard challenge to undertake. The difference between Cox and Plath, is that Plath never asked for her biography to be interlinked with her poetry, but Cox readily associated it through the medium she chose.

The greatest Ashes innings ever?

Sport

Tom Ashley

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28th August 2019

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At 16:17 on a warm summer’s Sunday in a sold-out, sun-kissed Headingley, Ben Stokes achieved the impossible. His Cricket World Cup final exploits six weeks ago had already ensured his place in English cricketing history, but this was something that little bit extra special.

Sport can do things to you that nothing else can. Test cricket, the Ashes – they can do things to you that no other sporting occasion can.

The beauty of the purest form of cricket is that it is a marathon, not a sprint and momentum can swing in an instant. On Friday England were abject, bowled out by Australia for 67 and facing the prospect of the old enemy retaining the Ashes before the end of August. Even when the Aussies were bowled out for 246 in their second innings, anyone who tells you they thought England stood a chance is a liar. How could a team who played so many poor shots and collapsed with such ease, possibly pull off the highest run chase in English Test cricket history, and the third highest of all time anywhere in the world?

Ben Stokes didn’t really care about all that. He didn’t even care when he reached his 50, or his century. There was barely a flicker of acknowledgement when the Headingley crowd rose as one to illustrate their adoration for Stokes. He was focused only on the part of the scoreboard that displayed the number of runs England needed to win, to achieve the impossible.

That said, part of the reason Sunday 25^th August will forever be etched into the memories of English cricket fans is partly because of Stokes’ personal story. These past 6 weeks have been quite simply incredible, playing the pivotal role in England’s first ever World Cup win and then single-handedly saving the Ashes. But it hasn’t always been so rosy for the Kiwi-born all-rounder.

On the field, Stokes was distraught in 2016, when his final over in the T20 World Cup final was hit by Carlos Braithwaite for four consecutive sixes to give West Indies the title.

More importantly, off the field, following an ODI against the West Indies in September 2017, Stokes was arrested after a street brawl near a nightclub in Bristol. Video footage was then released which showed Stokes punching two men. Despite protesting his innocence, Stokes played no part in the 2017-18 Ashes series Down Under and his long-term place in the side came under intense scrutiny.

Stokes was charged with affray in January 2018 and eventually acquitted in August last year. A month later Stokes was reprimanded by the England and Wales Cricket Board for bringing the game into disrepute and retrospectively banned for eight matches.

It’s hard to believe that twelve months later Stokes has now ensured his presence on the pantheon of British sporting legends. He’s certainly up there alongside fellow cricketing all-rounders Botham and Flintoff, up there with greats from other sports such as Bobby Moore, Jonny Wilkinson and Andy Murray.

For a cricketer famed for his attacking style of play, the very fact he had remained at the crease for so long in England’s second innings is testament to his fierce determination and focus.

His 219-ball knock had so many different parts to it. On Saturday evening, coming in during the last hour of play, Stokes knew that his only goal was to just not get out. Come the end of play, he had faced 50 balls and scored 2 runs. For a man who holds the record for England’s fastest ever Test double century, the fastest ever Test match 250, the highest score for a Test batsman batting at number six and the most runs scored by an individual in the morning session of a Test match, staying patient while leaving and defending was extremely impressive.

On Sunday, following Joe Root’s early dismissal, Stokes was joined in the middle by Jonny Bairstow. Between them they attacked the new ball, sharing a stand of 86 before Bairstow was caught by Marcus Laubschagne off the bowling of Josh Hazlewood.

Once Bairstow was back in the pavilion, Stokes showed maturity and intelligence by slowing down once more and not giving his wicket away. However, nobody could stay with him at the other end. Jos Buttler was run out for 1 and Chris Woakes departed for the same score. Jofra Archer offered some brief respite, but he was caught on the boundary for 15 and Stuart Broad lasted just two balls. Suddenly it was 286-9 and England still needed 73 runs, with just 1 wicket remaining.

At this point Stokes started batting in a world of his own. No matter what Australia’s impressive bowling attack threw at him, he simply hit them all over the place. Nathan Lyon is a world-class spinner, yet Stokes treated him like he was a village part-timer. At one point he reverse-swept him for six, the ball landing right in the middle of the Western Terrace, much to the delight of the locals in there who were around eight pints deep at that point.

Off the last 42 balls, Stokes hit 74 runs. At one stage he hit 28 off 8. He reached his century, but cared not one jot. His job was only complete once he had, once again, dragged England over the line.

It would be amiss not to mention the heroic performance of Jack Leach at this point. He dutifully faced 17 balls over the course of his hour at the crease, scoring just a single run. It was his one run that tied the scores and allowed Stokes to blast one final ball from Pat Cummins and achieve the impossible.

It was a game of unparalleled ups and downs, twists and turns, highs and lows. For Stokes it was the final chapter of his own personal redemption. No matter what happens in the rest of this series, the cricketing summer of 2019 will forever belong to Benjamin Andrew Stokes. If the Barmy Army get their way, come next year it will be Sir Ben. Not that the title matters really. After all, sport can do things to you nothing else can. Test cricket can do things to you that no other sport can. Ben Stokes can do things nobody else in the world can.

UrbanObserver

Oxford's oldest independent student newspaper, est. 1920