Icon of the Week: ‘Disgusted of Christ Church’

If you’ve ever been cornered by someone really Isis-pilled— an Editor-in-Chief, perhaps, or the Dept. Ed. in charge of the cult that is Features, you’ll know that This Magazine is no stranger to the public eye. Anyone who’s ever been trapped in an unbearably self-referential conversation at an Isis party— the one your coolest, artsiest, most insufferable acquaintance dragged you to before immediately abandoning you to talk about how Art Is Dead, darling in the smoking area— has heard about the time we were prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. Or the time we were bailed out by Elizabeth Taylor. Or banned in Germany. Or mocked in The Daily Mail (admittedly a more regular occurrence than the first four).

 

As far as any Isis writer is concerned, including this one, it’s our history that makes This Magazine so special. We are, after all, THE LONGEST-RUNNING INDEPENDENT STUDENT MAGAZINE IN THE UK. As THE LONGEST-RUNNING INDEPENDENT STUDENT MAGAZINE IN THE UK, we have a wealth of creative legacy to draw on. The Isis, like any other major publication, goes through ups and downs. When you stand on the shoulders of such literary giants as Evelyn Waugh, Sylvia Plath, Terry Jones, and Richard Ingrams, it’s easy to feel that our glory days of relevance are behind us. We may be THE LONGEST-RUNNING INDEPENDENT STUDENT MAGAZINE IN THE UK, but does older really mean better? Do we generate conversation? Are we really journalists? Do people even care about what we publish? Are we relevant?????????

 

This week’s Icon has done our Senior Editorial Team a great favour by washing all of those silly and introspective fears away, freeing up our valuable time for some much-needed self-congratulation on how much more talented and intellectual we are than the average Oxford student. Let’s paint the scene: a clear blue sky. Oxford’s dreaming spires gleam in the sunlight. A tortured intellectual lounges in the Christ Church JCR, reading through the backlog of Isis biweekly newsletters (first one coming Week 2, by the way!). A paper is crumpled in a fit of rage— no. Of wrath!

 

Our intellectual luminary knows what they must do. Frantically, they exclaim: ‘SOMEONE GET ME A PEN!’ A brown felt-tip is acquired. The JCR descends into hushed rapture as everyone quiets, knowing that they are witnessing a truly rare thing being birthed from our intellectual’s precocious pen: long-form criticism.

 

Finishing with a flourish, the intellectual folds the note into the shape of an envelope. Their brow begins to glisten with sweat as they make the arduous trek from Christ Church to Lady Margaret Hall. Nothing will stop them— not the barrage of bicycles on St Aldate’s, not the torrent of tourists traipsing down High Street. At last! The final destination is reached. Taking a moment to appreciate the tremendous significance of this moment, the moment A Critic is born, the intellectual kisses the note with a reverence borne from their rage. ‘Take this,’ the intellectual tells the Porters. ‘Take this— and put it in Gruffydd Price’s pidge.’

 

Below is a picture of this most revered artefact.

 

In case you can’t be bothered to read all of that: this week’s Icon does NOT appreciate the newsletter’s ‘In the Archives’ series that pulls out amusing quotes and graphics from past issues, daring to take up as much as a whole quarter of a broadsheet page. This practice angers our Icon very much, who implores us ‘to contribute more new works and make something interesting and worth reading.’ Our Icon seems to be unaware of our termly print editions and our near-daily online uploads, declaring that ‘even if the radical left-wing takes that made your magazine so famous back in its controversial heyday are dead, your present authors [an American?] need not be so braindead that they do not put pen to paper at all.’

 

Perhaps our Icon has a point— we here at The Isis love to drawl on about our unique legacy, as THE LONGEST-RUNNING INDEPENDENT STUDENT MAGAZINE IN THE UK. Maybe we’re forgetting that our legacy isn’t static. We continue to shape it now, with every piece we publish. Long after we’ve graduated, sold our souls to the corporate machine, found our selves on adult gap years in Bali and then been extinguished in the AI proletarian revolution, young Oxonians will creep into the Union Library and have a flick through The Isis’ archives. What legacy will those bright-eyed student journalists inherit? It is, at the moment, up to us.

 

One thing is for sure, though: we must be doing something right if we incensed a member of the House to use their kid-gloved hands for something useful, put actual pen to actual paper, and use their daily constitutional to courier hate mail over to a historically women’s college.

 

So thank you, ‘Disgusted of Christ Church’, for reminding us that themes may come and go, podcasts may launch and fail, and budget sheets might tip out of balance— but The Isis will always be one thing: relevant.

 

Words by Kalina Hagen. Image by Gruffydd Price.