Business Predictions for 2022

Business and Finance: Our predictions for 2022

To bring in the new year, your editors have made 5 predictions about the business world for the next 12 months. We are not making any promises; these are just bits of rational forecasting combined with a dash of wishful thinking.

1. UK markets will cool down

After a pandemicrelated dip in 2020, the FTSE 100 has reached prepandemic levels; the M&A market boomed throughout 2021; and tech IPOs in London proved explosive. With the Bank of England raising interest rates for the frst time since the start of the pandemic, this year seems an opportunity for the markets to cool their expansive growth.

2. Clean and Green innovation will continue to grow

Funds have refected a gradually more serious attitude to climate change, with ESG investing predicted to reach $1 trillion by 2030. Across the UK, the electric vehicle market can be expected to grow with the introduction of Clean Air Zones (such as the one coming to Oxford), further bolstering growth. People will be looking for stable, long-term investments. Clean and green innovation will be the way to go.

3. Artists will take further fnancial control

Elite flm-makers are fghting back against studio control. Adele recently infuenced Spotify. Taylor Swift took on PE funds and her old recording label. As independent music artists continue to grow, and social media allows for the rise in content creators more generally, we can expect these shifts in ownership of art to start trickling down to the smaller players.

4. Global investing in biotechnology will not lose steam

As of October 2021, venture capital investment in biotechnology sector has reached $44.6 billion globally—that’s 1.3 times the previous year’s total. Investors are not only excited about vaccines, but also its supply chains, technologies broadly applicable to COVID-19 and other diseases, as well as lab space. Eased clinical approval regulations in the US and Europe, deployed in response to the pandemic, also don’t appear to be tightening soon. This friendly combination of money and rules might be a catalyst of continued innovation.

Cell-Based meat: A Potential Boon for the UK Economy?

Zoe Rhoades speaks to Ivy Farm Technologies about the future of the cell-based meat market in the UK.

Winston Churchill once said, “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”. Perhaps he had foresight in areas outside of politics, but today the cultivated meat industry has huge potential, and even the most conservative global projections suggest sales will be over $100 billion by 2040.

Cultivated meat is an alternative to traditional meat that is grown in a lab using the cells of a live animal. These cells are obtained by performing a biopsy, from which stem cells are extracted, manipulated, and replicated using a scaffold to direct their formation into a meat-like product. The fnal product is further manipulated to make it taste like meat which we would obtain from traditional farming practices. Ivy Farm Technologies is an Oxford spinout, founded by former engineering DPhil student Russ Tucker and Associate Professor Cathy Ye, using the technology of continuous cell replication for production of cultivated meat. They argue that their technology is unique from that of competitors because of its distinctive scaffold system, from which growth results in a continuous harvest of cells, and its lower production costs.

Last year the spinout commissioned the consultancy, Oxford Economics, to produce a report laying out the dynamics of the cultivated meat sector. The report estimates that the global demand for cultivated meat would be about £10.3 billion, with consumer spending in the UK being between £850 million to £1.7 billion by 2030. The industry alone is expected to contribute between £1.1 and £2.1 billion of gross value to UK GDP. So, what does this contribution consist of?

The frst component is the direct sale of cultivated meat products. This is expected to generate between £290-574 million for the UK economy. The industry’s spending on goods and services in the UK supply chain is expected to add between £414-829 million and the fnal £369-738 million accounts for wages paid to individuals involved cultivated meat industry and relevant supply chains.

Secondly, the cultivated meat industry is expected to generate between £266-523 million and this would be able to provide an annual salary for the equivalent of 5,000-10,000 teachers in UK schools, or 6,000-12,000 nurses if we assume the constancy of salaries offers the benefts of country’s dependency on imports, food security, and ensuring that UK farming is maintained to high standards. However, the report does little to address how traditional farms will be affected by the

cultivated meat industry, and it is unclear if the economic benefts reaped can help traditional farms become more sustainable in the transition. The CEO of Ivy Farm Technologies, Rich Dillon, explains that this report is the “missing piece of the jigsaw that fll in the economic benefts to the UK” and that if the approval can be obtained from the FSA, the UK may become a “powerhouse for alternative proteins, exporting our products and technology across the globe and reducing the UK’s reliance on imported meat”.

To gain access to the UK market, cultivated meat would be classifed as “novel foods” and companies would be required to complete a full application set out by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA). However, this requires a thorough submission of administrative data, information about the novel food, certifcates, along with scientifc reports and opinions. As a result, the FSA’s process can take between 18 months to 3 years to approve new products. Other challenges include meeting safety and ethical concerns around taking a biopsy in an “invasive and non-consensual procedure”. The UK FSA needs to look at the advantages of being a ‘frst mover’ in the cultivated meat industry and streamlining its regulatory applications process to make it easier for startups to sell their products to UK consumers. Neglecting this urgency means losing out on billions gained from frst mover knowledge. Image Credit: Ivy Farm Technologies

“The UK may become a ‘powerhouse for alternative proteins’.”

5. Media proprietors will face a misinformation metastasis

One year after rioters stormed the US Capitol Building, there is still a lack of regulatory mechanisms addressing misinformation or concerted efforts to stop it from propagating at its source. Misinformation does not deter user consumption or engagement signifcantly enough (be it a breach of democratic institutions or a raging pandemic) to disincentive its continued tolerance on social media networks or news channels. Unless this something dents their advertising revenues or ratings, if applicable, they’ll probably just shrug and move on.

Quick Takes

“Goldman Sachs has told clients that bitcoin “will compete with gold as ‘store of value’”, citing its $700bn market capitalisation.”- Elizabeth Howcroft, Reuters

“The City of London is in danger of becoming a sort of Jurassic Park where fund managers dedicate themselves to clipping coupons rather than encouraging growth and innovation.” - Paul Marshall, Financial Times

“Although the headlines say a split verdict in the Elizabeth Holmes trial, it’s still a big win for prosecutors. She now faces a realistic 10 to 20 years in federal prison, based on sentencing guidelines. Far from a tie.” - Dave Aronberg, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida

Masthead

SENIOR EDITORIAL TEAM

Jill Cushen (she/her), Charlie Hancock (she/her), Estelle Atkinson (she/her), Maurício Alencar (he/him), Thomas Coyle (he/him), Flora Dyson (she/her), David Tritsch (he/ him), Katie Kirkpatrick (she/ her)

NEWS

Meg Lintern, Pieter Garicano, Humza Jilani, Daniel Maloney, Isaac Ettinghausen

COMMENT

Sonya Ribner, Vlad Popescu, Zoe Lambert, Isobel Lewis

FEATURES

Leah Mitchell, Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson, Hope Philpott, Mia Hynes

PROFILES

William Foxton, Issy Kenney Herbert, Niamh Hardman, Klemens Okkels

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Jennivine Chen, Milo Mee

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Khusaru Islam, Hung Jen Wu

CULTURE

Clementine Scott, Jimmy Brewer, Anna Mayer

STAGE

Rebecca Walker, Dorothy Scarborough

FASHION

Ciara Beale, Madi Hopper, Iustina Roman

MUSIC

Flynn Hallman, Zachary Sutcliffe

FILM

Wang Sum Luk, Caitlin Wilson

BOOKS

Elena Buccisano, Eliza Browning

LIFE

Michaela Esau, Aikaterini Lygaki, Lucy Dunn

THE SOURCE

Anna Roberts, Shiraz Vapiwala, Thomas McGrath

SPORT

Edward Grayson, Oliver Hall

FOOD

Maisie Burgess, Rose Morley, Mille Drew

PUZZLES

Ifan Rogers

CREATIVE

Zoe Rhoades, Rachel Jung, Heidi Fang, Benjamin Beechener, Mia Clement

Cherwell’s view on the beginning

Jill Cushen (she/her), Editor-in-Chief

Being a stereotypical English student, I have an app which notifies me of the ‘Word of the Day’. I read this every morning in an attempt to rekindle my intellectual curiosity, something which Oxford often manages to stamp out. On new year’s day, I was greeted with the word ‘ouroboros’.

Odd, you might think, for that to be the year’s first word of the day and something akin to intellectual wankery for me to discuss the significance of it here. But it’s a symbol which is particularly relevant at the dawn of a new year and is fitting for this week’s theme of ‘Beginnings’.

The ouroboros is a symbol with Greek and Egyptian roots depicting a snake or dragon eating its own tail. It represents the eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation. There’s something beautifully melancholic about a beginning because it’s also the end and the ouroboros perfectly captures this. The symbol is not representative of being stuck in a cyclical pattern, or remaking the same mistakes, but rather, about the unity of all things and how change does not wipe away what has come before.

With a new year, and a new term, comes pressure to improve but accepting who we already are is surely more important. All of us, this paper included, will undoubtedly make mistakes this term but each day offers a new beginning and the chance to learn from yesterday.

That’s exactly what Charlie and I have aspired to do this term, not to give you a new Cherwell but to learn from past experiences and guide the paper through the next period of inevitable change and evolvement. We will, however, following the sage advice of Michael Crick on this edition’s back page, try to take ourselves a little less seriously!

takes a considerable amount of time to put the paper together every week. I’m not just referring to the number of hours we spend grappling with InDesign late into the night. Our ears and inboxes are always open to new stories and ideas, and we’re anways looking ahead to our next print edition.

Is it a lot of work? Yes. But there’s a special camaraderie which comes from the responsibility of handling this paper. It’s that camaraderie, and the shot of dopamine you get from seeing your name in print, which keeps people coming back. Jill and I have been working here for over a year, and have seen many faces come and go, and many others catch Cherwell fever and stay on. So here’s to the begininng of a new tearm, a new staff, a new team, and a new chapter of Cherwell!

Charlie Hancock (she/her), Editor-in-Chief

When does term actually begin? It can’t be Monday of first week, thanks to the special kind of hell which is balancing collections with writing your first week essays.

For Jill and me, Hilary term arguably began in early December when we found out that we’d be taking the reins of this newspaper. I was taking a snowy stroll through Radcliffe Square when my phone pinged with the news. It was all rather cinematic. Once my elation (sorry to anybody in the surrounding libraries who heard my cheers) began to clear, the realisation that this is a huge responsibility began to sink in. Cherwell, with its one hundred years of history and fiftystrong staff, became ours to guide through the next champter of its second century, and hopefully not into the murky waters of our eponymous river.

We students journalists often get told we take ourselves too seriously. Maybe there’s some truth to that, and I’m certainly not the person to persuade you otherwise. But it

Leader: Oxford and the sustainable transport in our world

Maurício Alencar (he/him), Deputy Editor

Guilty petrol-fuelled cars drive past the sign ‘Welcome to the City of Oxford. A Cycling City’ every day. Little has been done to stop this reckless attempt at invasion. Yet, the city itself has maintained its sustainable and healthy green-green-green image. Anywhere between Worcester College and the roundabout (most of which is famously a Zero Emission Zone), cars are rare. Cyclists are everywhere, “helmet-on!” and “getsome-lights!” hecklers stand by Sainsbury’s Local 24/7, a man rides a gigantic unicycle past Magdalen Road Tesco every now and then, and pedestrians sneer at gullible tourists who bought a City Sightseeing bus tour around the city centre. Clean, efficient Oxford leads as the example to the world’s costly and pollutant transport networks.

That is, within the flat valley that spans somewhere between the god-forsaken roundabout and far treks beyond the train station. If you’re up in Cowley, like I am, you will know that the three-way choice to East Oxford is not all smooth riding. The cycle up Headington Hill is a cruel Tour-deFrance sweat-off. The gradient up Cowley Road is acceptable, though still gruellingly unpleasant and unpredictable after a long day’s work, not to mention the sheer number of crossings. Iffley Road is the optimal route up, albeit a serious detour for some. At some point over the course of many upward journeys, you may start to realise that your slightly shady £40-deal bike is facing its limits. While your fitness levels may surpass the average of the university’s croquet team, the English weather is sure to guarantee some wet n’ wild surprises throughout the year.

That may sound cynical, but such petty frustrations with bike travel suggest why cycling can only ever be so popular among populations. The pandemic was supposed to be a unique opportunity to transform metropolitan cities around the world into metropolitan parks. Sneaky hills may be but one of the several reasons why cycling has not grown as much as it should have. Other reasons may include potholes, poor cyclist protection from cars, and possible drowsiness from the scents of car exhaust.

Public transport exists. Hop on Oxford buses which (explicitly) only accept Brookes student cards and **not** Bod cards. Pay

nearly £3 for a journey that you could have used to cop yourself a Tesco meal deal. The stealthy parasite that is public transport payment is mentally draining. Plus, given the infrequency of some bus routes, the narrowness of gaps buses often have to squeeze through, and the awkward limb-shuffles your body makes when making eye contact with other members of the general public, waiting on a bus in traffic is not very enthralling.

The elephant in the room when discuss-

“At some point over the course of many upward journeys, you may start to realise that your slightly shady £40-deal bike is facing its limits.”

ing environmentally sustainable modes of transport are planes. They are planet killers, but air travel provides a unique experience not many other modes of transport can offer: everyone faces the same way, the sound effects are soft on the ear, the views are always spectacular, and, oh yes, they connect people from across the globe. If Earth is at odds with planes though, then we all are.

That brings us to cars. Cars’ glamorous allure is still too much for the sinful man. One’s control of the road, the radio, and the service station reflects one’s independence and authority. You are in charge. You are supreme. If you do not have a driving licence, you are weak, unworthy, even pitiable. Haha!

Luckily, electric cars are soon coming to a garage near you. From 2030, there will be a ban on selling petrol and diesel cars. God save the Queen. We all will live.

However, more environment-linked problems may arise in the future from the production and use of electric cars. Several problems regarding high costs, lithium waste, and charging points have not been resolved yet. So, do I buy some Tesla shares or not?

The question is whether it has all been left too late. The answer tends to be yes, we most certainly have. While we’ve been dilly dallying away at playing war and what not, the planet’s climate has been getting on with ‘changing’. Transport accounts for over one fifth of the planet’s carbon emissions.

At the beginning of every Oxford term, like hundreds of other students, I am in one of those guilty cars passing by the ‘Cycling City’ sign. This awkward paradox– driving into Oxford- ‘a cycling city’, never fails to confuse me a little. How else do you expect me to take 10 boxes of clothes, books, folders, pans, tea sachets, toilet paper, shampoo, a bit of booze and a dramatic amount of football memorabilia in and out of the ‘cycling city’ every term?

CUL CHER

BEGINNINGS

CONTENTS

CULTURE 12 | New Year’s resolutions: On the art of failing 12 | Discovery or rediscovery 13 | Dirk Bogarde’s psychosexual nightmare

MUSIC 14 | In conversation with Manmzèl

FILM 15 | Rewriting the detective story for the modern age

THE SOURCE 16 | As the smoke burns down to my fingers by Alex Bridges

BOOKS 18 | The 22 books on my TBR list for 2022

STAGE 19 | Cabaret & Spring Awakening: The art of reviving musicals

FASHION 20 | The dark side of coquette 21 | A Euphoric fashion commentry on our generation

FOOD 22 | It all begins with breakfast

COVER ARTIST

Mia Clement

As a geographer and ecologist this Culcher theme of ‘Beginnings’ immediately brought up the imagery of a seedling sprouting upwards, finally reaching above the undergrowth of vegetation to capture Sunlight. The colours and inspiration were taken from my very own oak sproutling in my garden, with darker tones as it was tucked away beneath a mesh of dead leaves and brambles. We can choose our beginnings, whether it’s reaching a goal we thought was out of reach or the start of a new day.

New Year’s resolutions: On the art of failing

Coco Cottam discusses the inevitable impossibility of our goals for the New Year.

On New Year’s Eve, frantically cobbling together a resolution that might actually be doable, I went through my diary from 2016 and found an entry of old New Year resolutions. What surprised me was how little my goals had changed. ‘Eat healthier’, ‘spend less time on my phone’ and ‘read more’ are all equally as applicable five years later. So what’s the point?

What originated in promises of good conduct to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, as a means of gaining favour for the year, survives as an industry of juice cleanses, Chloe Ting and publishers’ reading lists of ‘Books to Change Your Life’.You might have made some mental goals before midnight, or contributed some flimsy ambitions to a conversation about self-love, or maybe even written a list in your notes app (that vast, interminable junkyard), but the chances are you have, or will, fall behind. I will be the first to say that I lasted an embarrassing three days on a goal to exercise daily.

And there’s a strong argument for the futility of New Year’s resolutions. A 2016 study found only 9% of Americans who made New Year’s resolutions felt they were successful in keeping them by the end of the year. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz writing for The Guardian argues that social determiners inhibit our ability to commit to New Year’s resolutions, with factors like economic background found to impact the success rate of weight-loss goals.

Perhaps we should listen to Virginia Woolf, who in 1931 resolved to have none, but to be ‘free and kindly’ with herself. Anaïs Nin concurred, ‘I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticising, sanctioning and moulding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.’ The shining star of New Year’s Eve timeline was Sarah Lazarus’s tweet, ‘no new years resolutions. it is the circumstances turn to improve’.

And yet, there’s something quite lovely about a planet of people collectively making ‘impossible’ goals. As a child, I believed wishing on fallen eyelashes would make those wishes come true. Older and somewhat wiser, I’m fairly certain this isn’t the case, but I still wish on them. I think there’s something useful in asking yourself what you want most in your life at that exact moment. Sometimes it’s a cheese toastie and sometimes it’s a twomonth holiday to Bermuda.

G.K. Chesterton writes that ‘Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.’ Perhaps then, the annual attempt to verbalise what you really want is just as important as actually carrying it out.

Discovery or rediscovery?

Noah Wild explores the potential triumphs and pitfalls of making one’s debut as an artist.

One of the films expected to win big during the approaching awards season is The Lost Daughter, the first film from actor-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal. Greeting Netflix on the final day of 2021, it seems aptly placed at the beginning of the new year, considering how central critical discussion has been about this being Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut. A profile in The Observer by Wendy Ide specifically explored her transition from ‘difficult’ acting roles to ‘lauded Hollywood director’. Critics are suckers for feature debuts, perhaps attracted to the energy that is created when a new voice seems to shake up the status -quo. In fact, the BAFTA, Grammy and Forward Poetry awards all award artistic debuts in isolation. There is a euphoric wonder spun when artists like Billie Eillish and Dua Lipa emerge with albums so assured and confident that they immediately dominate over experienced, veteran creatives, or when debut works with less than universal acclaim are celebrated by the niche who wish to state, ‘I liked them before they became cool’. The artistic debut has always acted as a magnet, in the sense that where critics seem to take pleasure from attempting to be the first to celebrate new voices in the field.

In the literary world, one of the most assured debuts of recent years has to be Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends which marked her as a one of the most distinctive of modern novelist to watch. This is perhaps partly due to the fact that it didn’t read like a debut at all. Yes, her voice seemed refreshingly new in perspective and tone, exploring the life of a generation only beginning to be written about. But Rooney’s style is so assured and confident, her characters so audaciously complex, varying on the brink of being unlikeable, that it seems you are reading a much more experienced novelist. As Zadie Smith reflects, “‘I love debuts where you just can’t believe that it was a debut,” – a fitting statement from an author whose own arrival with White Teeth in 2000 grappled with 150 years of history, whilst exploring themes of family, cultural alienation and religious isolation, a set up that would scare even the most accomplished writer. Both these authors have since become such a part of the cultural landscape that it seems odd to think they haven’t always been with us. Rooney’s second book, Normal People, seemed to look in the face of that ‘difficult second album’ mantra and ask the publisher to hold its beer.

Yet, whilst magnets attract, they also repel. Debuts often create an uncomfortable alienation in audiences, where arriving to break down the status quo causes more enemies than admirers. The Daily Mail called Sarah Kane’s play Blasted ‘a disgusting feast of filth’ in 1995. It is now one of the most celebrated artistic debuts in theatre, forcing respected critics like Michael Billington to apologise for being ‘rudely dismissive’ of the play. Here, the debut provided critics with a unique angle of attack, where the Sunday Times snarked that Kane ‘has a lot to learn’; as if believing you can write a play is in some way arrogantly overconfident. To Kane, the notoriety to her arrival as a playwright was as much a springboardweight as a burdensome springboard, first performing her fourth play Crave under the pseudonym Marie Kelevdon to distance herself from the notoriety surrounding her work. Throughout the entirety of her all too short career, she struggled to break away from the reputation impression Blasted had forced onto her.

Moreover, the seeming glorification of the debut seems alien to the actual physical act of artistic creation. Prior to every first film, most directors will have completed countless shorts, most writers countless rejected novels, every musician abandoned songs. The debut is only the first moment the world itself is made aware of the artist, it is the first time that widespread judgement is invited. It is, far more like the arrival of Daphne to the London social scene in the first episode of Bridgerton than a birth of artistic endeavour. The debut lies in the presentation, not in the creation.

In fact, for Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter is not a debut but a new beginning, since her experience as an actor is surely long-term work experience for directing. The film is best released at the turn of the into a new year to poetically foreground this fact, a theme frequently found within the film itself as character’s strive for reinvention. Similarly, Kane found a stylistic new beginning in Crave. As such, the new year is a time not of launching something new but of resetting and reconsidering; you can only build on what you have done previously. Like the new year, each new work is a second chance to affect your audience, cast out old themes that seem more stale than exciting. It seems no surprise that Sally Rooney has chosen to focus her latest book, Beautiful World, Where Are You? on the problems of sudden fame –, it highlights that debuts are indeed more problematic for an artist than we often think.

Dirk Bogarde’s psychosexual nightmare

Katie Kessler examines the career of actor Dirk Bogarde and his

CW: Mentions of drugs, psychological abuse and suicide.

There are two types of creative genius. There is the kind that can turn their hand to any theme and bring it to beautiful fruition. Think Shakespeare, the Beatles or Beethoven. The second type ploughs a single furrow many ways, telling one story: themselves. Every song Nina Simone sang throbbed with the pain of the African-American struggle, every Haruki Murakami protagonist has the same taste in music, and every Hitchcock protagonist has the same taste in blondes.

But what about actors? Can an actor — a job that by definition demands disguise in service of someone else’s vision — continue to tell the story of themselves? I can think of at least one actor who did just that for most of his career: Dirk Bogarde.

Dirk Bogarde was one of Britain’s most beloved leading men in the 1950s, nicknamed ‘Idol of the Odeons’ for his slew of performances in matinee pulp produced by the Rank Organisation. In the 1960s he turned his back on romantic fluff in favour of a series of darker and more complex roles, including his best known role in Death in Venice. The latter part of his life was largely spent in a peaceful farmhouse in Provence, living with his partner, Anthony Forwood, and writing an impressive quantity of memoirs and novels. His autobiographies are witty collections of anecdotes and reflections on his early adulthood, his acting life, his experience of France and much more. Not a single one alludes to the fact that he was gay.

Dirk Bogarde did not come out during his lifetime. In 1986, not long before inviting TV chat show host Russell Harty to his home for an in-depth profile, he destroyed a host of letters and diaries in a bonfire in his back garden. With this act the details and exact nature of their relationship died with both parties. But for almost anyone who knows one thing about him beyond his name and occupation, Bogarde’s sexuality is of little doubt. This is largely down to anecdotal evidence provided by many of his contemporaries and close friends and John Coldstream’s biography. However, these posthumous affirmations alone do not account for how vividly Bogarde’s perception as a gay man has persisted in public consciousness. I would maintain that despite his reticence on the subject in interviews, Dirk Bogarde was always telling the story of himself. Partly in his books — as he archly commented to Harty in that same profile, “you’ve got to read between the lines” — and, most remarkably, in his performances.

You do not need to look far for overt examples of this. After his breakaway from Rank, he took the highly controversial lead role in Basil Dearden’s 1961 film, Victim, famously the first English language film to say the word ‘homosexual’ on screen. Radically sympathetic in its portrayal of the torment of gay men being exploited by blackmailers while their very existence was criminalised, the film was a monumental risk that Bogarde took with passion and enthusiasm. He even penned a crucial scene himself, where his character Melville a d -mits the truth to his wife, that he desired the young man who was blackmailed into suicide. “You won’t be content until you’ve ripped it out of me,” he says. “I stopped seeing him because I wanted him.” Bogarde would consistently single out Victim as his proudest screen achievement, not least due to its role in changing anti-gay legislation by swaying public opinion enough to pass the Sexual Offences Act in 1967.

Melville was the most overt and positively depicted role in a long line of queer and queer-coded characters in Bogarde’s repertoire. There was the terminally ill Aschenbach in Death in Venice, silently tortured by his longing for a beautiful youth, the subtly camp and unrepentantly wicked protagonist of Cast A Dark Shadow, the far less subtly camp and outrageous villains of Modesty Blaise and The Singer Not The Song, and the sinister Barrett of Joseph Losey’s The Servant. What is remarkable is seeing Bogarde’s face on so many of them after he had established himself as Rank’s goto man for a handsome heterosexual lead for most of the ‘50s. Yet even in these earlier performances, you’d find the textbook cinematic codes that would fly over an unheeding viewer’s head: a fraught and loveless marriage here, an offhand reference to interior décor there, his trademark saucy eyebrow quirk persisting through it all.

But when I talk of Bogarde ‘telling the story of himself’ through his performances, I’m not just talking about a few quirked eyebrows and suggestive comments. What shines through in so many of his films is compelling bitterness. Within the Wildean wit and affable flamboyance was a cold, grudge-bearing streak: he had a number of fellow actors and directors whom he inexplicably viciously turned against, including John Mills and Richard Attenborough. This dichotomous personality may have been forged in the threefold fire of unresolved trauma from WWII, the stress of keeping his sexuality a secret in the public eye, and the buttonedup gentlemanly affect he perfected. “I didn’t make it this far by being cuddly and dear,” he said in response to Russell Harty commenting on his prickliness. Flashing one of his charming, withering smiles, he added, “People need to be taught a lesson sometimes.” It is these glimpses of venom that I find alluring about Bogarde, and it’s that that I look for in his performances.

This quality was picked up while he was still performing under Rank. While his reputation as a smiling leading man throughout the fifties has prevailed, a quick look at his filmography from the time reveals that he was also often taken on for villainous or otherwise dark roles, such as the murderers on the run in Hunted and The Blue Lamp. Even his heroic characters are sometimes betrayed by a certain artificiality and aloofness in their eyes, something that film production duo Powell and Pressburger noticed with displeasure about his performance as the daring Major Patrick Lee Fermor in Ill Met by Moonlight. In the ‘60s he began to embrace that inner darkness, opening the shutters to allow a look into that well of rage. We see it in the righteous anger of Victim, but arguably in more fascinating detail in The Servant. Barrett is a character plucked from the abyss, the trickster in a fable made nightmarish. The titular servant enters the home of a layabout young aristocrat, Tony. He asserts his power and ultimately manipulates Tony into a pit of debauchery and degradation for his own pleasure.

The film is a heady, psychosexual feast that hinges on Bogarde’s mesmerising performance. In the film’s early sections, he is reserved, a little effete, quietly deferential to his master’s wishes but particular about his own tastes, especially where decorating the house is concerned. His malice first reveals itself in small shows of passive aggression, and then in sudden shifts into gleeful sexual rapaciousness once he and the maid are alone together. The two devolve into childlike states, playing schoolyard games, petulantly lashing out one minute and falling into each other’s arms the next. Once Tony has been reduced to a drugged up, placid doll, Barrett looks at him with unmasked pleasure, affection and sadism mingling sicken-ingly on his face. He is an agent of havoc whose intentions are never fully revealed, and in lesser hands could be nothing more than a fixture of horror, but in Bogarde’s, we see a soul twisted by a life of repression and resentment.

Ultimately, that is the singular story of Bogarde’s career: the vengeful anguish of repression. The Servant makes that anguish its curdled centre, resulting in a desire that only knows how to destroy. In Barrett, Bogarde luxuriated in a side of himself that he could allow to be cruel, lascivious and ungentlemanly. And even more satisfyingly, he could direct that malice towards the walking metaphor for English polite society, pushing it to the ground to lie at his feet. Throughout his career, that dark desirous side would imbue his screen presence with an arresting intensity that always said: this is my story.

“Ultimately, that is the singular story of Bogarde’s career: the vengeful anguish of repression.” Image Credit: Film Star Vintage/CC BY 2.0 CULCHER EDITORIAL

In a corner of my living room at home there is a shelf, crammed with the oversized, colourful spines of photography books my dad has accumulated over the years. It is funny how, even into adulthood, the urge to buy toys never deserts one. The need is satisfed for some by the purchasing of expensive motor vehicles; for others by the hoarding of lavish jewelry. For Dad, it is met by the acquiring of glossy photography books.

Toys though they may be, they are nevertheless excellent ones. My dad’s collection at home is marked by a strong affnity towards the American street photograph. Street photography is an improvisatory business; capturing people and objects in natural, unposed states, drawing out – poignantly, tenderly – ludicrousness in the everyday. Their range of subject is broad, and distinctly American: bustling New York Streets, sun-bleached towns, and vivid, personal portraits. Events photographed are usually feeting, existing no longer than the moment at which they were captured. The refection of a pedestrian’s face in a shop-front; the alignment of a lorry with a billboard with a window.

Take, for example, a picture by Walker Evans entitled 42nd Street, dated 1929. It shows a woman, heaped in dazzling fur, gazing stonily towards the camera (I cannot tell whether she is looking directly at the lens, or just to the left of it.) She is outside, and behind her automobiles hum past in close rank. Her face is framed from above by the cutting horizontal of a bridge; to the right by the vertical of a staircase. The woman’s indifferent (or is it angry?) expression is unchanging – but this jars against the vivacity of the depicted scene. The picture is frozen, but is straining to move, to escape the moment. From my English living-room, I am able to look at this woman, this healthy, emotive woman – perhaps thirty years old – who will now be dead. Somehow, a person’s instantaneous glance has been brought within my smelling-distance, across the Atlantic Ocean and through ninety years of history.

Or, consider William Eggleston’s photograph, Memphis, c. 1969. A print of this picture, framed, sits on the wall of my living room. It has surveyed my breakfasts, lunches and teas for years – I have seen this photograph thousands of times. Taken from low on the ground, it depicts, side-on, a child’s tricycle, coloured an ebullient green. The trike looms, taking up most of the frame. In the background, squat beige houses paint a picture of unglamourous suburban life. Between the tricycle’s legs, a shiny, sixties car fts snugly in its garage. I can imagine the smirk on Eggleston’s face as he sits, looking over his photographs, and sees the car, subordinate to the tricycle. The child’s toy; the adult’s toy. The child is the father of the man: in an unsuspecting suburb of Memphis this truth was caught on camera.

Jimmy Brewer Culcher Editor