Should we seek a Vatican-core summer?
Last Thursday, white smoke emerged from the roof of the Sistine Chapel, signalling to the world that the College of Cardinals had reached their decision. A new Pope was chosen—the inheritor of the seat of Saint Peter. Amidst the more traditional Catholic chants of ‘Viva il Papa’
GUILLOTINE: Modernity is inherently pornographic (Or, A Critique of ‘The Gooning Ideology’)
Foreword – A MODEST NOTE OF APPEAL Dear Citizen Lowenberg, Citizen Bilsland’s ‘The Gooning Ideology’ raises interesting ideas in light of Enlightenment republican virtues. However—it misses the point. The objective of gooning is never merely a ‘masturb
The nameless crime
This is not a Netflix show. On 24 April, 15-year-old Lorène was stabbed 57 times in her classroom in Nantes by 16-year-old Justin P., and died. Her killer then proceeded to another classroom, where he stabbed three more students, leaving one critically injured. Moments earlier,
The tradwife complacency pipeline
The internet loves girlhood. More specifically, the internet loves content about girlhood, most often accompanied by pictures of timid looking deer. There are lots of quotes from The Virgin Suicides and The Bell Jar and Little Women. There are lots of pictures of girls, too, if you keep looking.
Icon of the Week: Ruskin Artistic Football Club
‘Our legs are paintbrushes, the pitch is the canvas.’ This is a fitting motto for the RAFC, Oxford’s (and probably the world’s) only Artistic Football Club. But standing in the watch pitch at the team’s match in Uni Parks, it’s not the team’s visuals that are str
Bad Yuppies: A review of Closer
As the old adage goes: a dermatologist, an obituary writer, a photographer, and a stripper walk into a bar…Now substitute ‘bar’ for nineties Yuppie London, and you have Patrick Marber’s Closer, now adapted by Labyrinth Productions. What ensues is perhaps best described as a slow-burn
CRITICAL NOTICES: The Tempest, Bull, Suddenly Last Summer, Troilus and Cressida
The Tempest (Magdalen President’s Garden, 20th-24th May) The Tempest lends itself particularly well to a natural setting, and the walled garden at Magdalen provided an apt location for a production fascinated by control. When I took my seat, the glowing loops of LEDs and wiry ba
Blame neoliberalism for the rise of the far right—and everything else
On a particularly memorable occasion, caught between reading Atlas Shrugged and going to the pub, I found myself instead scrolling through Instagram. The algorithm—god bless it—directed me to the distant world of late bourgeois society, a generic meme account with a penchant for po
Behind the scenes of Closer
‘Whether you half arse it or give it everything, student drama will take up a lot of your time, so you might as well do a good job’. At this point in a theatrical career hurtling to the top, it is intriguing to pause and dissect Rosie Morgan-Males’ master plan. She is coursin
