Lifestyle:
Steve Jobs
The story of Apple and its founder
Screen:
Coverage of the BFI Film Festival 2011
Books:
The Man Booker Prize
Exeposé page 14
page 22
page 24
Monday 24 October 2011 • Issue 584 • www.exepose.com • Twitter: @Exepose
House rents unaffordable Campus plagued by Photo: Henry White
Helen Carrington
PRIVATE accommodation in Exeter is the ‘most unaffordable’ in the South West, according to a report by the housing charity Shelter. The report comes only weeks after student accommodation in Exeter was named the most expensive in the country outside of the capital. Shelter has stated that young couples and families entering the property market for the first time are also struggling to afford the area, and many are considering relocation. Shelter has classified rental property as ‘unaffordable’ if the rent is greater than 35 per cent of the average local take-home pay. In Exeter, the average rent is 46 per cent of the average pay, while in Cornwall and East Devon, rents are 40 per cent of local pay.
IT issues
Henry White Editor
“It was undeniably difficult for small societies and created traffic jams around the hall” Ellie White, RAG Officer
“Landlords have taken advantage of the competition by raising prices, as students have been willing to pay”
Michelle Jagger, Support Services Manager at the Students’ Guild Mike Northcott, Lettings Manager at Exelets, an accommodation agency set up by the Guild, commented: “Some years ago, there was simply less student accommodation, supply outweighed demand and so rents increased. “The shortage of property meant that landlords could get away with charging expensive rents for accommodation that was nothing special, which Exelets does not condone. “This year we have seen a slight shift in the market and there have been many properties that are still vacant. Continued on page 4
Free
The research conducted by Shelter has raised awareness of the housing crisis currently gripping Exeter City and the country at large
EXETER’S IT network failures have left thousands of students and staff unable to access materials online or connect to the internet on campus. The most recent problems have affected the student portals ‘My Exeter’ and ‘ELE’ as well as numerous wireless networks around Streatham Campus, with services being intermittent, frequently interrupted or failing to operate entirely. On Tuesday 18th October, the Guild’s website also suffered a significant connectivity issue for most of the day, which left many Society Administrators unable to communicate with their membership. Numerous societies were rendered inoperable, unable to send or receive messages and run the online side of their society. Speaking for the Guild, James Eales, VP Academic Affairs, said: “We have highlighted to the University the importance of establishing a robust IT infrastructure. There are issues maintaining the standard of service students expect and this should not be allowed to continue.” He went on to say: “We have identified this as a priority area of investment as the reliance on online resources means we must have a robust system.” Several lectures had to be cancelled or dramatically changed as slides and notes were trapped on the system and students struggled to view or submit course materials on the ELE service. A spokesperson for the University’s IT department said: “IT sincerely apologises to students for the disruption.” Continued on page 2
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Features
P 10
Features asks: Would marriage bring the ultimate equality for gay people in Britain?
Music
P 18 Music review Laura Marling’s recent gig at Exeter Cathedral.
Arts
P 26 Arts unravel the relationship between creativity and science.
Video Games
P 30
Video Games dissects the goriest games in history for Hallowe’en.
Editors Ellie Busby & Henry White editors@exepose.com
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News Editors Joe Johnston & Hannah Sweet news@exepose.com
Features Editors Clare Mullins & Sam Lambert features@exepose.com
Lifestyle Editors Cyan Turan & Zoe Dickens lifestyle@exepose.com
Music Editors Andy Smith & Amy Weller music@exepose.com
Books Editors Tom Payne & Esmeralda Castrillo books@exepose.com
Screen Editors Tori Brazier & Luke Graham screen@exepose.com
Arts Editors Zoe Bulaitis & Laura Stevens arts@exepose.com
Video Games Editors Jess Leung & Alex Hawksworth-Brookes games@exepose.com
Sports Editors Rachel Bayne & Andy Williams sport@exepose.com
Photography Hannah Walker photography@exepose.com
Advertising Stuart Smith S.C.G.Smith@exeter.ac.uk (01392) 722432 The opinions expressed in Exeposé are not necessarily those of the Exeposé Editors nor the University of Exeter Students’ Guild. While every care is taken to ensure that the information in this publication is correct and accurate, the Publisher can accept no liability for any consequential loss or damage, however caused, arising as a result of using the information printed. The Publisher cannot accept liability for any loss or damage to artwork or material submitted. The contents of this, unless stated otherwise, are copyright of the Publisher. Reproduction in any form requires the prior consent of the Publisher.
News
24 october 2011
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Aaron Porter fights for students
Joe Johnston & Hannah Sweet - news@exepose.com
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Exeter students nominated to carry Olympic flame in 2012 Joe Johnston News Editor
NOMINATIONS for inspirational students from Exeter to become Olympic Torchbearers have reached into the hundreds. Thursday 13 October saw the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Future Flames campaign come to the Forum Piazza on Streatham campus. Approximately 750 people attended the event and had their photo taken with the Olympic Torch and the campaign’s flagship red bus. James Fox, VP Participation and Campuses, has celebrated the success of the event: “Having the Olympic Torch on Campus was amazing and will hopefully give a number Exeter students the chance to run with the Torch when it comes back to Exeter next May.” Eliza Doolittle, a firm supporter of the nominations campaign, has said: “It’s great that Coke is giving young people the chance to be involved in something as amazing as the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay. “Everyone needs to nominate the Future Flames they know.” The deadline for nominations is Tuesday 20 December and people can still nominate themselves or others until then at www.cokezone.co.uk/students.
Photo: Joshua Irwandi
Nominations for Olympic Torchbearers are open until Tuesday 20 December
IT services are ‘sorry’ Continued from page 1
“The increased load [of MyExeter traffic] caused the disruption but despite this, MyExeter statistically has a good performance record, averaging 98.5 per cent. Over the coming months and years we will be making improvements to the reliability and performance, investing £20 million in upgrades.” Many students have been left frustrated by the problems. Matt Bevan, a Third Year Law student affected by the crashes commented: “If Exeter is going to compete in the Top 10, let alone world rankings, it must get its infrastructure and administration sorted first. The summer seemed long enough to test connection capacity to ensure these problems don’t arise.” In a separate incident on Monday 17th October, the University Library had to issue a warning to students after detecting systematic downloading of the online journal ScienceDirect by computers situated off campus. Over 800 downloads were made within one hour and, although believed to be an isolated incident, the journal owners raised the alarm with the Library. In a statement, the Library stressed it was a rare occurrence and that “the Library is working closely with Exeter IT to identify the source of the downloads and take action.”
Student runs Ultramarathon for Cancer charity Peter Collins AN Exeter University student has completed a 100 kilometre run to raise funds for research into the prevention and cure of brain tumours. Tom Boland, a third year student, ran the Norfolk Coastal Ultramarathon as part of an effort to raise money for the Brian Cross Memorial Trust, taking almost £4,000 for the charity. The long distance run is over twice the length of the more famous London Marathon, and some sections include difficult terrain, such as a shingle beach. Mr Boland completed the run in ten hours and 36 minutes, coming fifth. He described the experience as “incredible,” and plans to undertake a similar challenge next year. Rosie Cross, Exeter student and representative of the Trust, supported Tom
during the run. She said: “[Tom] made it look so easy, he came in after 50km and cut off all the blisters.” Mr Boland disagreed: “There were times that I just wanted to sit down and die.”
funding, despite being the biggest child cancer killer in the UK. Last year it presented over £200,000 to a specialised cancer unit at the Uni-
versity College London. Mr Boland wanted to assist the charity in its work, collecting donations from his blog ‘itry2runfar.blogspot.com’. Photo: Tom Boland
“Tom made it look so easy, he came in after 50km and cut off all the blisters”
Rosie Cross, Brian Cross Memorial Trust Representative James Fox, Vice President for Participation and Campuses, congratulated Tom as “a credit to himself and to the Students’ Guild”. The Brian Cross Memorial Trust works to further the understanding of brain tumours, a disease that receives one per cent of UK cancer research
Tom Boland has already raised £4,000 for Brian Cross Memorial Trust from the run
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Exeposé WEEK Four
News
House ejects disruptive attendees at nuclear debate Photo: Fiona Lally
very poor behaviour witnessed.”
Lizzie Mackley Senior Reporter ENVIRONMENTALISTS were removed from the Parker Moot room last Friday when they caused unprecedented disruption during a debate on nuclear energy hosted by the University of Exeter’s Debating Society. The guest speakers were taking questions when three women from Bristol arrived and began heckling guest speakers and audience members. After numerous unheeded warnings from the chairman, Ben Jones, President of Debating Society, had them removed by security staff under police supervision.
“I made the determination that the only way of protecting the right to a free and fair debate was to have them removed” Ben Jones, Debsoc President
Three protestors were removed from last Friday’s Debsoc debate on nuclear power
Jones told Exeposé: “When it became clear that the three environmental protestors were not willing to allow other people to express their opinions, I made the determination that the only way of protecting the right of the audience to a free and fair debate was to have them removed.” Jones added: “There was a large round of applause when the hecklers were escorted out, showing how fed up the audience had become with the
Exeter City Football Club team up with University Rachel Bayne Sports Editor EXETER CITY FOOTBALL CLUB has struck up a new employability partnership with the University. The partnership will allow students to work with the club in projects involving crowd behaviour research, engineering, strength and conditioning. Students from the College of Social Sciences and International Studies will conduct research into the fans’ motivations, while the College of Life and Environmental Sciences will work with the youth team on performance analysis and sports psychology. The College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences will look into the development of e-ticketing at the club and how to improve the draining and irrigation at St James Park. Paul Blackmore, Head of Employability and Graduate Development at
the University, commented: “These projects will provide our students with essential work experience whilst dealing with a commercial client.” The scheme will also offer invaluable help to a club with severe funding constraints, which relies on charitable donations and funding from the fans. Julian Tagg, CEO of Exeter City FC added: “We are keen to improve things in various areas of the club and this broad-based partnership will enable us to tackle several projects at
once. By working together we hope to raise the profile of Exeter throughout the world.” Exeter City FC has also reduced the price of student tickets in the Big Bank Stand to £5, which are available to buy from the box office in Devonshire House, or from the ticket booth on Match Day. The Club’s bar has also set up a partnership with Arena for predrinks on Mondays from 7pm. Photo: Exeter City FC Press Office
It is hoped that the new partnership will increase employability for Exeter students
“I was shocked at this heavy handed and draconian approach” Keith Taylor, MEP for the Green Party
Lauren Hitchman, who has attended the weekly debates for the past three years, told Exeposé: “I have never seen such disrespect for the speakers, the Chair, or the audience. You could tell they weren’t actually there for the argument”. Of the 150 strong audience only Keith Taylor, MEP and speaker for the proposition, protested to their removal. He said: “I was shocked at this heavy handed and draconian approach which sat ill with my understanding of how a debating society meeting should be conducted and I walked out in support of the ejected audience members.” Before he left, Roger Helmer, MEP and speaker for the opposition replied, “If you’d behaved like that in the European Parliament, you’d have been removed too.” Jonno White, Debating Society Chairman, told Exeposé that the women “were there to cause trouble.” “Something that made me quite proud that evening, however, was that of all of the students in the audience - every single one of them acted in a dignified manner in otherwise tense circumstances. “The only people who showed no respect and acted like children were
indeed the fully grown adults.” The motion ‘This house believes nuclear power is unsafe’ was eventually defeated. Jones told Exeposé: “By the end, four out of five people voted in favour of nuclear power.” Nigel Knee, Head of Nuclear Policy at EDF Energy and speaker for the opposition, told Exeposé: “This is an important issue worthy of intelligent and informed debate. Exeter students want the facts and are not impressed by ‘greenwash’.” In his blog, Helmer wrote: “I think that my side would have won the debate in any case on the merits of the argument.
“I have never seen such disrespect. You could tell they weren’t there for the argument”
Lauren Hitchman, student and regular debate attendee “But I am equally certain that the antics of these green zealots inclined the audience against the motion.” Knee, who recognised the protestors from other events he had attended, said: “I was impressed by the way the chairman retained order throughout”. The security staff were hired for the debate as a precaution in light of the recent protests at the Hinkley Point EDF Energy nuclear plant in Somerset, where 200 people protested for nine hours on Monday 3 October.
4
News
Local burglaries on the increase IN recent months, the number of burglaries in the region has risen by almost 14 per cent. There were 259 domestic burglaries in Exeter this year; an average of nine per week. This week alone there have been 14. Recently there has been a spike of burglaries and car break-ins in the Old Tiverton Road area of Exeter, which has a large student population. Items stolen include laptops, phones, iPods, iPads and other small electronic items. PC Ian Lugg has advised students to lock their doors, close windows, and not to advertise times when they will be out of the house or leave items on display in vehicles. Students can currently get their valuable items marked with a permanent UV pen by PC Lugg, and these pens will be made available to all University security staff in the near future. Contact PC Lugg: ian.lugg@devonandcornwall.pnn.police.uk.
Exeter firms save Christmas lights EXETER’S Christmas lights will once again light up the city centre during the festive season. Local businesses have stepped in to donate both money and expertise after budget cuts meant that the City Council could no longer afford the cost of the lights and switch on ceremony. Cash donated by South West Communications will be matched by money from the council, and Marsh Barton electrical firm Sungift Solar has offered to put the lights up for free. However, John Harvey, City Centre Manager, said that this year’s intervention is only a “one-year solution.”
24 october 2011
Chivalrous crickets astound scientists Mike Stanton RESEARCHERS at the University of Exeter have discovered a new trait in crickets that had previously been thought to be unique to humans. The results, published in the journal Current Biology, are contrary to the popular belief that chivalry is a characteristic exclusive to humans. The scientists spent three springs in Northern Spain using genetic tagging, known as genotyping, to track and record a population of Gryllus Campestris crickets, giving them a better understanding of their private and natural lives. Researchers from the University discovered that although both sexes of the cricket are at equal risk of being eaten by predators, when in a couple, the male’s chances are significantly higher. This was found to be due to males allowing
the females priority when returning to the burrow. However, as suggested by Dr. Rolando Rodríguez-Muñozof, of the University of Exeter, the “chivalrous acts may have ulterior motives.” This is because although the male dies, the female is carrying his sperm which ensures his DNA lives on. Claire Brimilcombe, a biology stu-
dent at the University, commented: “These findings are very interesting as they open up other possibilities that haven’t yet been discovered relating to the behaviour of insects.” To collect the data the team took tiny DNA samples, used 96 cameras and microphones and glued tiny numbered placards on the crickets, allowing them to analyse their lives and behaviour.
Photo: Nature Photo CZ
The research has overturned the notion that chivalry is exclusively a human trait
Freshers Ball makes a welcome return to campus Jess Rayner ON the evening of Wednesday 12 October, hundreds of students gathered in the Great Hall for this year’s Fresher Ball.
“It was great to see so many freshers enjoying the night ”
James Fox, VP Participation and Campuses This year’s event returned to the canpus after being held off campus at the Matford Centre last year. Tickets for the ball had sold out
before the end of Freshers’ Week, and entertainment on the night included a casino and performances from the University Jazz Orchestra, amongst other acts. James Fox, VP Participation and Campuses commented: “The Noisettes and Faith SFX put in fantastic performances and were highlights of the evening. It was great to see so many freshers enjoying the night.” This feeling is shared by many of those who attended. Caroline Saunders, a first year Psychology student said: “It was a really fun and sociable night. I loved the atmosphere with everyone dressed up and thought the live music was really entertaining.” However she
also commented that: “It was quite pricey so a free drink or some food would have made the ticket better value.”
“It was quite pricey. A free drink would have made the ticket better value ” Caroline Saunders, first year Psychology student
The Ball was spread across the Great Hall, the Terrance Restaurant dining room and the newly refurbished RAM Bar. The next big event is the Safer Sex Ball, which will take place at Westpoint Arena in early December.
Exeposé
Students ‘willing to pay’ high rents
Continued from page 1
“Hopefully this will have a knock-on effect and over the next few years we will see a price freeze on student accommodation.” Michelle Jagger, Support Services Manager at the Students’ Guild, believes students rushing into the housing process are also to blame for high rent costs across the sector. She said: “Landlords in certain areas have often not had to advertise properties. Word of mouth between students has made these properties highly competitive. “Landlords have taken advantage of the competition to raise prices as students have been willing to pay.” She continued: “Once other landlords are aware that students have been willing to pay these prices, this in turn has pushed up prices across the sector. After all, landlords are in the market as a business, not as a service provider, so why should they charge less than their colleagues?” Emma Heath, a second-year student, commented: “I can’t believe my maintenance loan doesn’t even cover the basic rent, never mind bills or anything else. I tried to get fairly cheap accommodation, and even working two part-time jobs, I struggle to pay the rent.” Emma Payne, VP Welfare and Commmunity has stated: “We are encouraging students to be more savvy renters, not to compromise on quality but to take their time and look for the best deal. “We are hoping that this year will set a precedent, putting the consumer in control.”
Forum enters final stages as roof is lowered into place
Photo: University Press Office
Guild pushes for society sign-ups THE Guild has announced a drive to increase the number of online society sign-ups. This follows mixed success at the Activities Fair, with hundreds of students signing up, yet a number of societies having problems with the new system. Sara Bennett, Guild Activities and Volunteering Manager, is keen for more students to browse and join societies through the Guild’s new website. She said: “We are incredibly lucky to have such a diverse range of active societies. There’s something for everyone and joining couldn’t be easier.” Anyone who wishes to sign up to a society should visit www.exeterguild.
107 supports held the roof in place while the grid-shell structure was constructed and clad in a protective membrane to make it watertight. The process took 24 hours in total
5
Exeposé WEEK Four
Meet your Student Entrepreneur in Residence Hannah Sweet News Editor A NEW position, Student Entrepreneur in Residence, has been created at Exeter University to help support student entrepreneurs. The position has been developed in partnership with The Students Guild, Peninsula Innovations and The Annual Fund, and aims to inspire, motivate and enable Exeter University students to start companies and undertake enterprising initiatives. This year the role will be filled by Exercise and Sports Science graduate Tom Carrington Smith. Carrington Smith co-founded UniSport, a sports media company, with fellow student Matt Brookland whilst still studying at Exeter. UniSport is now the UK’s leading student sports media network. Tom told Exeposé: “This role is a great opportunity to share the experience I went through last year when starting my own company, UniSport. I’ve already met some amazing students who have started their own businesses and it’s great that there is now a support system in place for those students with entrepreneurial ambitions.” Funding was recently granted to Nicole McMurray for her up-cycling fashion company Roses Are Rubbish. This is the first business to be funded following Tom’s appointment as Student Entrepreneur in Residence. Joe Pearce, Business Support Manager for the Innovation Centre, commented: “It is great that the University
Photo: Hannah Walker
is taking such a proactive stance in supporting student enterprise.” He continued: “The role of the Student Entrepreneur in Residence is critical in inspiring current undergraduates to pursue their business ideas; as Tom was in their shoes only a few months ago he really understands where they are coming from.”
Tom Carrington Smith, Student Entrepreneur in Residence
Tom Carrington Smith is Exeter’s first Student Entrepreneur in Residence
Student numbers increase University staff may strike Azrina Shaharuddin IN the last ten years, the number of students studying at UK universities has increased by almost a third and the number of non-EU international students has doubled, according to a new report. The report, Patterns and Trends in UK Higher Education, shows that there are around 2.5 million students studying here annually which shows a 28 per cent rise from numbers ten years ago. According to the University of Exeter website, in Exeter there are approximately 17,000 full time students, 25 per cent of whom are international. James Eales, VP Academic Affairs, said: “The increasing number of International students at Exeter has brought tremendous academic and cultural benefits to the University and city. The establishment of International societies has allowed students to increase their involvement with different cultures and experience some terrific events. Eales continued: “It has also been a significant contributory factor in establishing Exeter’s place in the World
University Rankings. As part of this it is pleasing to see Exeter’s partnership with INTO going from strength to strength, signifying a desire to continue this growth and performance.” Joel Khaw, President of the International Student Council, said: “The increase in international students benefits the university and the country as a whole. Essentially, the fact is that international students have contributed greatly to the country’s economy.”
“Essentially, the fact is that international students have contributed greatly to the country’s economy”
Joel Khaw, President of the International Student Council However, the report also stated that the UK’s share of the international student market has reduced, and that student visa changes may result in a greater loss of market share in the future.
National Student News ‘Drunkorexia’ epidemic hits UK
“It’s great that there is now a support system in place for those students with entrepreneurial ambitions”
Exeter is one of only a few universities in the UK to employ a recent graduate, who is also an entrepreneur, to promote student enterprise. Pearce added: “With the support coming from the Guild, EGD and the Alumni team, the University of Exeter could lead the way in supporting the growth and development of student entrepreneurs.” A range of sessions and events highlighting the help available to students with business ideas will be held during ‘Global Entrepreneurship Week’ this year, running from 14 – 20 November. Tom will also be holding drop in sessions every Tuesday at The Works and can be contacted on tom.cs@spaceforsuccess.co.uk.
News
Tom Kelly LECTURERS at the University of Exeter, along with 67 of the UK’s top universities, have threatened a “sustained campaign” of industrial action in the escalating dispute over pensions. Members of the University and College Union (UCU), including staff in Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter and the London School of Economics could refuse to mark students’ work, miss meetings and work only contracted hours if the strikes go ahead. The dispute concerns changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), which the UCU states will force their members to work longer for less pay. Changes to the pension scheme will put new members on a career-average, rather than final salary pension. James Eales, VP Academic Affairs said: “We support the on-going negotiations and hope that an amicable solution can be reached on this issue. Our priority is to avoid a situation where our students’ studies are adversely affected.” Around 40,000 UCU members will be affected by the changes. 90 per cent
voted against the changes, with 80 per cent voting in favour of industrial action. Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the UCU, said: “Despite our best efforts to resolve this dispute, we cannot negotiate with an empty chair.”
“Our priority is to avoid a situation where our students’ studies are adversely affected” James Eales, VP Academic Affairs
Universities and Colleges Employers Association said: “The changes to the scheme were approved by the USS trustee board, which includes UCU representation, on 9 June. This followed exhaustive negotiations and consultation.” This dispute is separate from the row over pay, affecting all university staff. Balloting will open on 28 October and close on 17 November.
A GROWING number of university students are missing meals so they can drink more alcohol at night. The rising trend termed “drunkorexia” was discovered by researchers at the University of Missouri in the United States. “Drunkorexia” affects as many as one in five students, with females three times more likely to have the disorder than men, according to research. Reasons given for skipping meals by the students surveyed included saving money, controlling their weight and getting drunk faster. Warnings that the epidemic has spread to the UK have been rejected by Pete Mercer, Vice-President of the National Union of Students. He has said in a statement: “All behaviour that involves excessive alcohol consumption is of course very unhealthy and anyone who wishes to reduce their calorie intake should consider cutting back on alcohol and continuing to eat healthily. “Anyone who has any worries about their alcohol consumption should talk to Drinkaware or their students’ union who will be able to give them advice and support.” Drinkaware and the NUS are currently working together on a ‘Why let good times go bad?’ campaign to advise students to eat before going out to “help keep your night a good one.”
UCL leads the way in degree reform UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON is scrapping traditional degree qualifications in an effort to reverse grade inflation. UCL will stop distinguishing graduates with first, second or third class degrees and will instead be trialing the American style ‘grade point average’ (GPA). Malcolm Grant, the Provost of UCL, stated: “The public assumes there is a national exam process but there is not. Every institution determines its own proportion of grades. Perversely, award inflation has been fuelled by league tables which give points to those universities with higher proportions of the top grades. “Award inflation over the past three decades has led to student performance being essentially recognised by classification into only two main groups: first class and upper second class honours. “It is a crude and undistinguished model.”
6
Comment Exeposé
Living in rented housing is a key part of university experience - a rite of passage. However, the availability of decent, affordable housing in Exeter is decreasing rapidly. This is a burning issue for students, especially as most students’ maintenance loans do not cover their accommodation expenses.
“The decrease in the student maintenance loan has left many unable to cover the cost of a term’s rent”
In a recent report, private housing in Exeter was named the most unaffordable in the South West. House prices and rents have been rising across the UK, and Exeter is no exception. The shortage of student property has allowed landlords to charge expensive rents for standard student accommodation. The search for houses has been creeping forward each year, with students house-hunting at the beginning of term one. The pressure to find a house
continues to increase, which results in students rushing to sign for houses that are beyond their price range. Landlords are thriving in this current climate of panic-buying, as they are able to charge expensive rents to eager and worried students. The decrease in the student maintenance loan this year and the subsequent rise in house prices has left many unable to cover the cost of a term’s rent, let alone pay bills, buy food and have a social life.
“Private sector landlords and Estate Agents are in the process of pricing many students out of the market” Both the private sector and Estate Agents are in the process of pricing many students out of the market. There is an underlying trend that students want to live close to campus, but many students will be pushed to their financial limit if they want this necessary, yet privileged, location.
Internet infrastructure is crucial to university life This week, Exeter’s IT department has apologised to students after more problems have affected the system.
“MyExeter has a 98% success rate. The 2% it spends offline is the issue” The beleaguered network, which seems to have never truly recovered from the virus attack in January 2010, has suffered significant loss of connection this term.
Many students were affected by vital services suffering down-time, such as ELE and MyExeter. As stated by the service, MyExeter does have a 98 per cent functionality rate, but the 2 per cent it spends offline is the issue that affects students most. With increased reliance on online services for academic tasks, these problems need to be reduced. Exeter is a top ten university, and our internet facilities should be of a higher standard to make sure that vital resources are always available.
Thanks to all those who helped proof this issue:
James Crouch, Imogen Crookes, Fiona Lally, Kate Gray, Ben Winsor, Mark Carvell, Amelia Jenkinson, Callum McLean, Maddie Soper, Ciara Long, Ben Pullin, Michael Young, Lorna Girt, Emily Tanner, Annette Zer, Matt Bugler, Tom Oberst, Nicola Elder, Sophie Beckett, Esther Privett, Rebecca Lodder, Josh Irandi, Joe Platonoff, Izzy Capel-Timms, Rose Razzel, Francis Brown, Will Kelleher, Jack D’Arcy, Joanna Clifford, Imogen Watson, Ronald Liong, Chloë Parkin, Chloë Riddle, Nicole Mascarentias, Tom Bond, Matt Bevan, Tom Nicoll, Matt Edbrooke, Jasmine Gardosi, and members of the Exeposé Editorial Team
Editors: Ellie Busby & Henry White Deputy Editors: Ellie Bothwell & Rosie Scudder editors@exepose.com
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Will the library ever be quiet?
The Exeter Student Newspaper
Are we out-pricing ourselves?
24 october 2011 Exeposé
Rebecca Lodder
I am sure that most of you are well aware of the fact that there are building works happening on campus - you really don’t need me to tell you that. However, it doesn’t mean we are any less affected by them now than when they first began. I perhaps naively expected much of the work to be well and truly over by the time we returned from the sum-
mer, what with the opening of the INTO building. I am most disappointed with the fact that whilst Level 1 in the library is now up and running, so are the building works on the level above. I did not check the noise meter provided on the University website but it looks to me as though the library will, ironically, never be ‘quiet’. There is obviously a limit to how quiet the building works can be, but I was subjected to over two hours of banging and drilling. It reached such a crescendo at one point that I was forced to listen to music to drown out one noise with another. I know that I cannot make any difference to the
schedule that is aiming to be finished in January, but I can ask that something be done about when the construction is taking place. The University has stated: “Wherever possible, we will undertake noisier works at non-peak times”, but perhaps they can inform us in advance as to when these times are? Maybe we could be given a day in the week when there will definitely be no noise? Thankfully there are only a couple more months left before the Main Library will be completely refurbished, but until then I’m going to have to search out places to work where I can actually hear myself think.
Where is our affordable accommodation?
Alasdair Wood The old Lafrowda blocks may have the aesthetic appeal of something between a Victorian prison and an East European block of flats, but replacing them should not be seen as some form of progress for the University. The ugly architecture is compensated for by the great people that live there, but I am not compelled to defend the place out of any strange sense of loyalty. No, the problem is the simple lack of cheap alternatives. Exeter suffers from the reputation of being an overly middle-class university with, unfortunately, evidence to back up this reputation. Research by the Sutton Trust showed that a meagre 1 per cent of students come from deprived backgrounds where they would have been given free school meals. Only Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol have a worse record. The University is also repeatedly forced to admit that, yet again, it has missed its ‘Access to Fair Education’ targets. Despite coming from a middleclass background myself, looking at the price of accommodation was the first thing I considered because I expected that a university ‘down South’ would be too expensive to live at. Lafrowda made Exeter a possibility, and I wasn’t even put off on the Open Day when a fellow prospective student rushed out of a corridor exclaiming that she would pay the extra not to live there. I’ve been lucky in having the cheapest undergraduate accommoda-
tion on campus, at just £77.63 a week, as my Lafrowda flat is surrounded by the looming building work, which will soon be its future replacement. Residents in old Lafrowda flats away from the building work must pay £92.61, which is horrifically excessive considering they must also wake up to grey brick walls every day and fight over just two ovens between 12 people. The replacements are unnecessarily luxurious and their cost reflects this; £123.83 a week, a sum that would be instantly off-putting for many prospective students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
As prices go up every year it is possible that next year there may be little or even no undergraduate accommodation for less than £100 a week. With fees rising to £9000 a year the University cannot hope to ever achieve fair access; students with tight budgets will opt for leading universities further North that have much cheaper accommodation. The University is in danger of gaining a reputation for elitism unless it immediately addresses our urgent need for affordable accommodation. Photo: Simon Dewhurst
Lafrowda accommodation, old and new
Exeposé WEEK four
Comment
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The Internship Debate: Are unpaid internships unjust?
YES Sam Lambert Features Editor
The fundamental belief in the West is that we live in a society in which progress drives us towards a better, increasingly modern world. Yet, while areas such as technology seem to be surging forward, there are others, key to the success of future generations, that seem to have regressed, due largely to what can only be labelled as exploitation. Unpaid internships are rife in a post-recession Britain where the boom years of Blair’s Labour seem a distant memory. Spreading through industries and roles, the “opportunity”
NO Annette Zer
THERE is rarely a topic that diverges students’ opinions as harshly as that of internships. After having spent three months interning at a newspaper in Germany, I decided it was time to take sides. My mind is strongly set towards the positive side of internships. Most students are scared by other peoples’ experiences of serving coffee and sorting the boss’ mail. But talking from the perspective of a person who ignored all the prejudices and bravely threw herself into the unknown world of internships for the first time, I can assure you that I neither felt exploited nor frustrated during the internship. Especially when it comes to finding my dream job in journalism, it is essential to take a look behind the scenes and dive into the journalistic writing process through daily practice
to work, for it can be called little else but work, for free has expanded from receptionist to that age-old favourite, the general office-hand. Companies relying on unpaid labour? That’s Britain in 2011, and it is, quite frankly, appalling. I have spoken to friends after their unpaid work whose ‘bosses’ have told them outright that they played a key part in their business. Industries have, for some time now, relied on unpaid labour to keep their figures in the black. With the government not doing anything about it, it is getting worse. The latest trend is to refuse even to pay for travel expenses, or cap it at unrealistic amounts. Why would they pay anyway? People are flooding them with letters, phone calls, emails, and more phone calls, to have an opportunity to experience an industry or fill a space on their CV. It is nearly as much the fault of those queuing up to do these placements as the companies themselves and the support of professionals. To be honest, I struggled to switch from the academic writing style to the journalistic way because up until then, I hadn’t had much experience beyond a specific type of essay writing. For this kind of experience and practice, my internship was invaluable. Setting aside the fact that I was not rewarded with money at the end of my three months, I still got to take home an awful lot of helpful experiences, an overflowing folder of references and a portfolio of articles that will definitely come in handy when applying to further internships and eventually jobs. It does not make a lot of sense to dwell on supposed unfairness when an internship can provide you with responsibilities, new challenges and importantly, the feeling of enjoyment from finally being in the environment you always wanted to experience but never dared to. I say, if internships get you a bunch of self-written high standard articles, newly-made contacts and the chance to push and develop your talents, take it and do not turn away from the opportunity.
and those people, of which there are many, are making it increasingly harder for the rest of us to elbow our way in. There is often no official application process for many of the unpaid internships, particularly at smaller companies. People who are not necessarily the best candidates for their roles are pushing ahead of others who may trump them in skill because companies are not paying HR or Recruitment to sift through applicants with a toothcomb.
“It is nearly as much the fault of those queuing up to do the placements as the companies themselves”
To work unpaid you must fit a criteria as long and socially exclusive as the diversion around the Forum Project, but it basically involves bow-
NO Alex Carden
The debate on unpaid internships is one which I have unfortunately found myself on the ‘wrong’ side of. It is easy to label anyone who tries to defend them as out of touch, or simply a ‘toff’. It is also difficult to find any defences for them. This is reflected in the unusual nature of my arguments; they may seem more like excuses rather than arguments for the practice. Firstly, let us consider the fact that self-perpetuation is, by nature, selfperpetuating. By this I am referring to the arguments made about how unpaid internships can only be afforded by those with wealthy parents, and since they are the only ones who can afford to work as an unpaid intern, they are the only ones who get the placements, become rich, have children who can work as unpaid interns and so on. This is obviously a bad cycle; I will not
ing down to the company’s every demand (I cannot call them an employer since you’re technically not employed by them). You must also have the time available, the cash ready and preferably a good number of connections. For those lucky enough not to have to sandwich their placement between weeks of paid work during “holidays”, as long as you have the determination, it seems, you can be sure to fill your schedule with unpaid work, much to the glee of bosses. I know many people who have done these placements and aren’t in the criteria above. They are hardworking people. It just frustrates me that they’ve abandoned sense. They don’t seem to mind having no rights, no protection, no representation and a willingness to do menial tasks that won’t ever further a career, all for the company name to appear in black font on their CV, because that is often the real reason they’re there. A common argument for unpaid
internships is that making them paid would be more limiting and less of them would be available. Companies will not change the number of paid positions they advertise just because there are less unpaid people around in fact there would probably be more. The competition will just be tougher and fairer, and rightly so. Clear limits need to be set. Anything other than shadowing, where your purpose is to learn or gain skills that do not directly allow that employer to gain from you at that time, is wrong. The minute you begin running around collecting coffee, ringing clients, going to fashion shoots, inputting data etc., you are working and you should be paid. What next? Pay for your internship. Let companies profit not only from your time but your money. The government needs to wake up and stop this before it gets any worse.
attempt to defend it. But if the government did call for an outright ban on internships, which became law, the self-perpetuating problem would not go away. It is naive to think it would. Parents with contacts will always help their children get an edge on the competition. All that will happen is the line between ‘work-experience’ and ‘internship’ will blur until instead of a solution to the problem we have just renamed it.
is desired? With youth unemployment already at high levels, and graduate employment nowhere near as good as it was in pre-recession days, surely any legislation against any practice that helps graduates get a foot on the ladder, gain skills and get a feel for the environment they would like to work in is madness? But, I hear some cry, if it only allows some graduates those things then the system is unfair! Better off without it! Well, the system is unfair. But the way to rectify it, I would suggest, does not lie in legislation. The Higher Education Council provided nearly 14 million pounds for internships between 2010 and 2011. Surely increasing its funding is a far better way to allow disadvantaged students access to internships rather than banning them all together? Necessary funding could come from companies at a smaller cost than it would be to employ staff on minimum wage. I would very much hope that any proposal to ban internships considered alternatives before trying to enact anything into law. There are many students whose careers it will directly affect, and I would suggest not for the better.
“Surely any legislation against a practice that helps graduates get a foot on the ladder, gain skills and get a feel for the environment they would like to work in is madness?” The other possible response to this theoretical ban, from companies, would be to follow the letter of the law and ban the practice; what company would desire extra expenditure on untrained staff in the current economic climate? But is this really what
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24 October 2011 Exeposé
Comment
BPong: a watered down sport? Will Jones
President of Pong Society WHEN most people hear the words ‘beer pong’ they think of alcohol, kids trying to get drunk and some game they’ve heard of from America. When I hear the words ‘beer pong’ uttered, I think of the sweat, determination and the hours of practice that have been put in place in order to make the last shot. Ask anyone from the Pong Society what it feels like to make a redemption shot to send the match into three cup pong, and they will express jubilation comparable to the feeling of scoring a goal with the last kick of the game to send it into extra time. This is the view that we are trying to create here at Exeter. I have had an immense struggle
with the Students’ Guild to try and establish Pong Society in compliance with their drinking rules. We can only call ourselves Pong Society and our events BPong, as well as only allowing water in the cups (with the allowance of a side drink that actually makes the sport more hygienic). Current perceptions of the sport are skewed by the American ‘Frat Life’ that people hear about and see on television, but it is substantially deeper than that.
“It it is a legitimate sport, it just happens to involve alcohol”
Walkabout Exeter shared the same vision as Pong Society, and have invested £600 to buy six professional tables for our sport, whilst the cups and balls are brought in from America. When anyone new comes to one of our sessions they see that it is a legitimate sport, it just happens to involve alco-
“Current perceptions of the sport are skewed by the American ‘Frat Life’ that people see on television, but it is deeper than that”
hol. We have created a safe environment comparable to no other society. When students come to Walkabout for the first time they are not scared of the unknown, they are in fact welcomed. This relaxed atmosphere and mix of students has created instant camaraderie within this brand new society. As a society, we have 85 members and are continuing to grow. As well as our society, the sport is growing elsewhere in the country. Manchester, Lincoln, and Swansea also have official Beer Pong societies, with UCL, Bath, Loughborough, Durham, and Bristol all having underground
societies trying to break through. As President of Pong Society, my goal is to have a University Beer Pong Championship held here at Exeter. Teams
from all over the UK will compete, challenging the prevailing opinion and truly solidifying Beer Pong’s status as a sport.
Letters to the Editors
Send your letters to editors@exepose.com Re: ‘The new RAM: unequipped and underwhelming’ (Comment, p7, Issue 583) Exeposé Last week’s Exeposé Comment article condemned the new RAM for a multitude of sins, many of which were not grounded in fact and were grossly misinformed. Luke’s first dissatisfaction was regarding the RAM’s seating arrangements. Yes, the “long trestle tables” which were broken, dangerous and uncomfortable have gone but they’ve been replaced with new seating on the terrace. Luke goes on to state “there is also less seating inside”. This is interesting when you consider that there are actually 100 more seats inside the RAM. The quality of service is the next issue to be raised by Luke. He states that the bar is understaffed and that this has led to long queues. Would you not expect to queue at a bar during Freshers’ Week? I certainly queued at the RAM and at the bars in town for a considerable amount of time during my Freshers’ Week. Luke’s next condemnation is the lack of condiments and cutlery. Yes, sometimes the bar has run out of condiments, but when it’s been brought to the attention of the staff, it’s been replaced when it’s been available. Perhaps if students weren’t so wasteful with what they take, the lack of condiments wouldn’t be a problem. Similarly, during Freshers’ Week, it is true that the bar ran out of Coke for a while. Luke states that this is unacceptable because staff should have anticipated a large number of students on campus. I’m sure they did
expect a large number of students and ordered appropriately, but to expect sales to go up from last year’s Freshers’ Week by 500 per cent would have seemed mad, even if it did turn out to be accurate! The food was addressed next. According to Luke you can no longer get food in the evening. This is misinformed, as the kitchen is open until 9pm – later than it was open in previous years. He also criticises the fact that the burger meal deal is the same price as last year, but no longer comes with chips. Valid point, except that the quality of the food has improved, and therefore the price of it has gone up respectively. I feel like it’s not even worth addressing Luke’s point that there was flour on the burger bun because, well, it’s a burger bun, and they have flour on them. Luke concludes by criticising the prices of the RAM, stating that it’s cheaper and more convenient to go to the Vic or the Impy. Drinks at the Vic are not cheaper than at the RAM and also, the Vic only received one star in their food hygiene evaluation by the FSA, whereas the RAM got five stars. I know where I’d rather eat… Yours sincerely, Felicity Bains Re: ‘The Activities Fair disappoints’ (Comment, p6, Issue 583) Exeposé Baffling though it is, people have found something else to complain about, this time the new sign-up system at the Squash. Evidently the
Squash was a great success, and simply because students preferred to enjoy the sunshine and freebies rather than sign up to certain societies is no proof that the barcode system is bad. Newer societies such as Hide&SeekSoc probably did better out of the system, with our page on the Guild website giving us greater publicity, and allowing those who couldn’t find us at the squash to join us online. Just as simple was sorting out my society’s finances, because we didn’t have to! Organising money is one of the main issues for societies, so the fact that the Guild sorted most of the money made sure that students know their money is safe. Numerous complaints were made about the queuing system as well, and no one likes queuing, but if students didn’t want to wait for half an hour they could have left, gone to the lovely new RAM and returned later. Either that or sign up online. Surprisingly people seemed confused by the actual barcode system itself. If Benjamin Jones is not aware of barcodes, or how they work I’d refer him to Eugene F. Brighan’s The Barcode Manual, it’s a real pageturner. Shops seem to cope just fine, and it’s patronising to students to say they won’t understand a system that’s been the norm for the past 25 years. As President of the Debating Society surely he should be able to weigh up the pros and cons and come to a reasonable conclusion. Undeniably the Squash didn’t harm signups: why else would there have been a record breaking 12,000? No president can now blame the new system for their societies own poor sign-ups when many other socie-
ties flourished. The thing is, people are bound to complain, it’s human nature, but really, the Guild should be praised for trying to progress and find new innovative ideas to encourage student participation. Yours most dearly, Thomas Alexander Oberst, President of Hide&Seek Society Re: ‘Where do our fees go?’ (Comment, p7, Issue 583) Exeposé “Providing nothing or little in return” is, perhaps, more of an appropriate statement regarding the level of participation indicated by students unable to actively engage with university democratic procedures. Following Henry White’s Comment article, I think it is only fair to clarify a few issues which, had a little effort towards enquiry been made, could have been unearthed before such an attack. Firstly, these packs were offered as a direct response from previous student feedback as a way of making relevant material apparent. The distribution was thus made as extensive as possible, available on ELE to all, with the print shop offer added for students’ own convenience. Certain modules are not teachable from a single textbook, largely because of the level of their innovation, and, consequently, such material as was made reference to is taken from numerous other sources and collated by diligent staff members. To imply that this effort of guiding students is anything but worthy of their salaries
is unfair. Plus, given the variety of different texts included in each pack, the department is simultaneously preventing us from buying even more individual books. By them paying for the copyright from CLA instead they are thus saving students money. If, however, this is still not viewed as enough, had the Guild been consulted, it would have been revealed that there are an increasing number of movements in relation to course costs since the changes to fees. And yes, the University are cooperating with such requests. English students, however, are probably not the ones who need to be worrying most - other subjects with field trips, lab equipment etc will most likely be the ones needing the University’s energy. Prices within English have actually reduced across the years, the Director of Education informing me that during her time studying one book could cost 110 per cent of a week’s rent. Along with each subject’s finance, however, consider the greater university costs: maintenance, running counselling services, AccessAbility resources, employability, cleaning and portering, IT staff, training and equipment, the Library (staff, stock and other equipment) and all other administration. As well as Exeposé itself. The list goes on. Besides, all university institutions have courses requiring similar costs. This is a nationwide issue, not an issue to be directed towards a £9 reading pack. Yours sincerely, Imogen Sanders, SSLC English Chair
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Features
24 october 2011 Exeposé
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Britain’s cuts hit those most vulnerable
Hannah Brewer on how Coalition cuts are abandoning the mentally ill Photo: Hannah Walker
Culverland Road roof-top occupation on Friday 7 October
WHEN a naked man climbed onto the roof of a student house in Culverland Road at the start of October, Exeter made a rare appearance in the national headlines. Close up pictures of the man, who stayed on the roof for nine hours, were published on the Mail Online and propagated through social networking sites. Once again, the media failed to look beyond sensationalism to the explicit cry for help that was being made. The man has committed similar offences
on four previous occasions and is wellknown to the police. He is mentally ill and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. He had been refusing to take his medication, was high on amphetamines and was living rough at the time of the offence. Immediately after the incident, the man was placed on police bail due to the damage that he caused to the roof. The man’s reoccurring offences call into question the standard of care available for the mentally ill in this coun-
try. One in four people in the UK have mental health issues; depression affects one in five people at some point in their lives. Despite the prominence of mental health issues, sweeping changes to public policy and public services this year have seen the deterioration of care and support for the mentally ill. Cuts to public spending have meant that mental health services all across the country are losing funding. While problems of mental stress spike as the economy plummets, local authorities are seeing their social care budgets slashed. This October, Manchester council announced that its mental health sector would be facing cuts of £2 million as part of its £109 millions saving plan. Services to treat the mentally ill are disappearing when they are needed most. Changes to the welfare system mean people with mental health problems are beginning to lose crucial benefits such as Employment and Support Allowance. The government has said that it will cut 20 per cent of the Disability Living Allowance budget and will only continue to support those with “the greatest needs”; yet, it is unclear who will continue to receive such funding. The future of other benefits, like Disability
Living Allowance, is also uncertain. Legal aid services are heavily oversubscribed. The legal aid budget is to be cut by £350 million. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will restrict the availability of legal advice to the homeless and the unemployed - the most vulnerable people who most need such assistance. Not only will this increase mental anxiety, with no access to expert advice, but legal inequality may worsen.
“Cuts may save money in the short term, but will mean a far greater economic, social and human burden in the future”
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is to drop depression (the most common mental illness in the UK) from its list of indicators to assess the quality of service provided by family doctors. Losing these indicators risks a significant loss of incentive for GPs to focus on mental health concerns - the gap left by these indicators could well be filled by non-
Love and Marriage: Does God distinguish?
Daniel Dennis on Britain moving a step closer to Gay Marriage Photo: Getty
FOR many people today it seems that to be homosexual is to prevent one from being “religious” or, more properly, engaging fully in a religious community. Whilst it is true that the safe places for homosexual and bisexual men and women to practice their faith, regardless of their sexuality, are growing in number (particularly in the Church of the West), it is also true that many understand that being homosexual or bisexual is to contravene scriptural understandings of sexuality. It is therefore considered a moral depravity. This develops a situation in which many gay and bisexual people think it out of the ordinary to hear that I am a gay Christian. The normal response is shock,
or even sometimes the implication that I am somehow morally depraved to consider myself of similar faith to those who so often condemn and deny the expression of homosexual love. It would be a stupendous task to attempt to discuss the many arguments and reflections of sexuality in Christendom alone, but be assured that any internet or library search will result in
“Many gay and bisexual people think it out of the ordinary to hear that I am a gay Christian”
thousands of references. Whilst years have been spent, and much ink spilt, in this discussion of scriptural understandings of sexuality invoking the names of Bishop Spong, Bishop Robinson and other influential theologians, it has been postulated that such understandings hold little relevance to the acceptance of homosexual love because of the different definitions of sexuality addressed.
It has been argued that the definitions of antiquity in many different ‘moral’ areas transcend time and culture. An example of this is the concept of slavery, which was often supported by texts of antiquity and unquestionably supported by so many groups of people throughout the West, both faithbased and secular. However, as society’s ‘moral’ understandings and definitions of human freedom and equality changed with time, so too did the understandings, and therefore social acceptance, of slavery. In the same way, the applications of ‘moral’ code regarding homosexuality must change when the definitions are no longer as they were. Does this devalue the texts of antiquity? Not in the slightest, they are incredibly important documents that are littered with testimonies and examples of different understandings of the Divine and are still relevant to the development of today’s response to the Divine. However, the laws and values developed because of these understandings of the human person were most probably compromised by societal experiences and what was therefore con-
sidered to be rational reasoning. Today’s emerging consciousness rejects the dying definition of homosexuality: that homosexuals are either choosing to engage in a repugnant lifestyle or are mentally depraved and should be cared for as such. This definition gave way to the construction of the stereotypical homosexual, as one who is a sexual deviant uninterested in (or perhaps even incapable of) sanctified love.
“Homosexual love should be embraced by the arms of sanctified celebration”
Today it is understood that homosexuality is not a lifestyle of mental depravity. It may be more appropriate to remove the term ‘lifestyle’ from the homosexual person, as it is implicit today that sexuality is part of a person’s life. Heterosexual or homosexual, period. Whether the institution of marriage for one person is completely secular and for the other is that of utmost faith-based expression, the definition is reminiscent
mental health-focussed incentives. Deteriorating support for the mentally ill is one of the most drastic yet unreported consequences of the public spending cuts. Organisations such as the Mental Health Foundation (the UK’s leading mental health research, policy and service improvement charity) are therefore developing a range of self-management interventions for people with psychiatric diagnoses, such as the publication of self-help booklets and self-management courses. By cutting the funding to health services, the government is in fact exacerbating the huge economic and social burden of poor mental health on the economy: an estimated fifth of lost working days each year are due to anxiety and depression, for example. Simon Lawton-Smith, Head of Policy at the Mental Health Foundation, accurately concludes that “It is dangerous to disinvest in mental health provision, especially when so many people are feeling anxious about losing their jobs and their homes. Cuts may save money in the short term, but failing to support people with mental health problems now will mean a far greater economic, social and human burden in the future.”
of the sanctified: between the persons involved, with or without reference to the Divine. Whilst is it a “good gesture” of the State to offer equal legal status to same-sex couples, the withholding of the sanctifying expression of love that marriage gives pulls antiquity’s archaic and culturally-bound definition of sexuality from its watery grave and, time and again, misapplies it to the lives of people today in a desperate and frantic act of condemnation and control. Homophobia in its truest form. It seems that the dying definition of the homosexual, as well as its stereotypical image, is being supported by the withholding of the only means that would exemplify the (already obvious) differences between the two competing definitions of what it is to be homosexual: sanctified love. Homosexual love should not be tolerated; it should be embraced by the arms of sanctified celebration, as all love should be.
Exeposé WEEK FOUR
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Features
Occupy London: ‘This is what Democracy looks like’ Rob Sturgeon, on the protest movement that has gone international Photo: Nathan Meiger
Protestors on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, London
LAST Saturday, some 4,000 radicals met at St Paul’s Cathedral to protest against corporate greed, bank bailouts and wage inequality. There are as many reasons to protest as there are individual protesters, who bring experience from all backgrounds to unite against corruption. Though prevented from occupying the London Stock Exchange, the camp has settled around the corner. It is a festival of new ideas, a vision of the future, and it invites you to get involved. The occupation wants to rethink our democracy. They believe our votes are essentially worthless because big business and the media have more say in what government is elected than any individual voter. Voter turnout never represents all opinions, and choosing between a red box and a blue box (with support falling for that traitorous yellow
box) is no longer enough. They want to be heard, they want to take part and they want to be involved. An African proverb circulated after the summer riots which stated, “If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth.” In the midst of that destruction, it is all too easy to place blame on the rioters. Yet if people do not feel they have a stake in their society, why should they work to sustain it? Why pay taxes to a government that wastes their money on worldwide warmongering and cuts services for society’s most vulnerable people? “It seems ridiculous that we give our money to a cabinet of millionaires,” says one anonymous protester, “for them to then apportion that money unevenly back to the people. They decide public
Fox Hunted
spending in the most vaguely democratic way possible: the majority of a largely apolitical constituency elect an MP, who can then disregard their election pledges and vote as they please on legislation that directly affects those original voters. It seems we are voting our freedom away every four years.” The occupation is a model for democracy in itself. Like the rest of the occupation movement that is sweeping the globe, decisions are made by consensus, not the ‘tyranny of the majority’ that we’re used to. Everyone has a veto and can block proposals they disagree with. Proposals can be made by anyone. Those attending the general assembly split into small groups to discuss ideas in further depth and raise any issues they find. Everyone has an equal say, and a spokesperson for each group then presents all ideas to the meeting. Consensus democracy doesn’t only occur at the general assemblies. “The consensus democracy on the stairs was amazing,” says protester Craig. “When the police started pushing people down the stairs, swarms of us took a stand against them. We sat down in front of them in peaceful protest, blocking any further shrinking of our space. When others came and criticised our protection of a seemingly inconsequential area, we spoke with one voice to defend our principles. We did not want the police to control our movement, so by staying in place we were showing our solidarity and consensus with each other.” Real democracy is not the movement’s only aim, however. They want to join together with people across the
world and have planned occupations in 951 cities, occuring on every continent except Antarctica. They aim to include all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities, disabilities and faiths. The voices of the 99 per cent must be centred if we are to truly understand the nature of the problem and what action to take. They add that the world’s resources, rapidly depleting as they are, should be used to help people, not for profiteering corporations or waging wars abroad. Banks and corporations are running the world. They control the economy, lobby the government to legislate in their favour and influence public opinion by controlling large sections of the media. The top one per cent of earners have an average household income upwards of £2.6 million. The other 99 per cent, meanwhile, are paying for a cri-
sis they did not cause. Those with the broadest financial shoulders are bearing the smallest load under Cameron’s austerity measures. The occupation is a protest against the corruption, the cuts, the greed and the selfishness. They believe we can build a better world, and it starts at St Paul’s. Like the occupation on New York’s Wall Street, this protest continues to grow despite pitiful media coverage. It even has a website and a Twitter feed (search ‘occupy LSX’), which has recently posted their demands. Anyone can visit, learn about consensus democracy, listen to music and poetry or take part in the organisation of further actions. This is a base camp for future action against austerity. This is the new home of radical ideas in the UK. This is the headquarters of the changes we want to see. Photo: Wasi Daniju
Democracy in practice at the protest camp
It is the British media, not Liam Fox, who have made the real error, James Roberts argues DAVID CAMERON once said that Labour’s hunting ban made him ‘furious’. But perhaps the relentless tabloid hounding of Liam Fox will make David Cameron think again about the merits of the regular political hunt that goes on in our modern media age. For the Prime Minister of this digital age, master of the rolling-media plastic smile, one can only begin to imagine how David Cameron’s face might have contorted with disbelief as he watched the baying press destroy the career of his Defence Secretary. Within a few hours rumour became headline, headline became investigation and, after seven torturous days, Liam Fox was pushed to fall on his sword and offer his resignation. This was a personal disaster for Dr Fox, a public relations disaster for the ultimate PR PM and, possibly most of all, it was a sad day in the annals of British participatory democracy. What Dr Fox did is irrelevant. What is important is that, in the space of a week, a newspaper offensive tumbled one of this country’s most senior Ministers- not for mismanagement, malpractice nor misconduct- but simply at the prospect of mistake. For those seven days, our press became judge, jury and eventual executioner for a Secretary of State that was respected as a hard worker, careful
tem than his political failings. Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we think this is the politics we want. Perhaps we should ask ourselves - as the nation of Gladstone and Disraeli, Churchill and Attlee, Thatcher and Benn - why we elect the Tony Blairs. The story of Liam Fox, along with those of a few of his Parliamentary colleagues, represents the essence of a truly meritocratic, virtuous democracy where neither council nor country estate may bar one from political office. Equally, the fall of Dr Fox represents the very heart of a democracy in decline.
Werritty and Fox at the Gulf Research Centre, 2007
administrator and thoughtful manager throughout the Ministry of Defence. A former GP and Civilian Army Medical Officer, born and raised on a Scottish council estate, many might say Dr Fox was the opposite of the archetypal modern politician. We can be certain that his downfall registered no more clearly than in the minds of the spin doctors, special advisers and, most of all, modern archetypal politicians. Despite his apology, an inquiry and a promise that he would never allow such a lapse of judgement again, journalists were determined to see Liam Fox go.
The worrying implications of this press frenzy should echo in our minds, just as it reverberates now around the corridors of Westminster to remind each and every one of our elected representatives that they could always be next for the media witch hunt. After decades of media management at the heart of government, is it any wonder that the great statesmen of old have been replaced by an elected elite political class of PR men? The Camerons, the Blairs, the Mandelsons and the Alastair Campbells. Perhaps, therefore, the fall of Dr Fox tells us more about our own political sys-
“The press became judge, jury and eventual executioner”
With participation in political parties plummeting and turnout on a downward trajectory, it has been the meteoric rise of the media moguls which has dominated modern politics and as a result we have not seen, and may never see again, the conviction politician uninhibited by the news cycle. Politicians like Liam Fox are not the models of manufactured perfection that we are expected to demand, but they are our politicians. Theirs is the politics of the conviction. For Dr Fox, now he will return to
the backbenches in the hope of a future minor Ministerial role or become a rare dissenting voice in the sea of compliance behind the front benches. Like so many before him, he may simply become another nondescript Tory MP for the Home Counties. Yet it is the contribution of politicians like him which remind us of the evils of a manipulative media, as much as it also reminds his fearful Ministerial colleagues: Liam Fox’s resignation reminds all of them to live in fear of the hunt. With a single case of poor judgement Fox left his scent for the predators of the mass media and has paid for it with his career. As a state-educated former leadership contender against David Cameron, devout Roman Catholic and former GP, Dr Liam Fox overcame all the odds in achieving high office and, in doing so, provided a semblance of hope that spin had not killed the politics of conviction. But with his resignation, we move one step closer to government by headline. The media foxhounds set after the former Defence Secretary have indicated who truly sits in the saddle of our political system. It is a pity that David Cameron was not more furious at the hunting of his Cabinet colleague. It is a shame that the British people allowed Fox to be hunted.
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24 october 2011 Exeposé
Features
The fight against the death penalty must continue Tom Jeffery looks across the Atlantic to different ideas of an ultimate justice
IN politics, the term ‘bloodlust’ is usually used in rather a colloquial way, to describe a particularly heated or, on occasion, vitriolic exchange between two politicians or perhaps someone’s cast iron determination to see something through. Not normally is it used in its traditional and very much more literal sense which conjures up images of crowds baying for blood in an ancient Roman colosseum. However, if you’ve been following American politics recently that image may have sprung to mind more than once. In a recent Republican presidential debate, the hot button topic of the death penalty was brought up in response to a story that Texan Governor and presidential candidate, Rick Perry has au-
thorised nearly 250 executions during his time in office, more than any governor in the state’s history. As the question was asked, a cheer rose from the crowd, culminating in a huge round of applause for Perry and a huge round of applause for the state sanctioned death of hundreds of people. This is why the term bloodlust is so appropriate, because that crowd seemed genuinely enthused, excited and proud that Perry had authorised the execution of these men and women.
“The response to Governor Perry’s execution record shows that the death penalty in America is still widely popular” The response to Governor Perry’s execution record shows that the death penalty in America is still widely popu-
Texan Governor, Rick Perry, is running to be the Republican Presidential Candidate
lar, enjoying the support of two thirds of American voters. They’re joined by other countries such as Iran, North Korea and China, all of whom view death as ‘the ultimate justice’. Aside from the blatant hypocrisy that murder should be punished by murder, the fact remains that in America, innocent people are routinely executed. You have your murderers, your rapists, your arsonists and then your innocents; all killed in the name of good ol’ American justice. Since 1979, over 100 people have been exonerated from death row, either post execution or whilst waiting to be killed. Just last month, Troy Davis, a man from Georgia, was executed despite a staggering amount of doubt about his guilt, an execution which caused international outrage. Before that, in 2004, there was Cameron Todd Willingham from Texas, executed for arson in a fire that killed his two children. Whilst on death row a commission made up of prominent scientists was set up to examine his case and came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no evidence to suggest arson saying: “There’s nothing to suggest to any reasonable investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire.” Days before the committee was about to report on its findings it was dissolved, leaving what was more than likely an innocent man sitting, waiting for his death. But even if you put aside the number of innocent or potentially innocent people who have experienced this ultimate justice, it still isn’t right, not even for cases in which guilt isn’t in doubt. It is obviously understandable that people feel so much anger for the disgusting and heinous acts that so many of those executed had committed, anger enough that they want nothing more than their death. Yet this bloodlust, understand-
How do we judge guilty?
able though it may be, must be controlled. However, it is important to realise that those who take a pro death penalty stance do so for a number of reasons aside from retribution. There are practical arguments put forward which state that the execution of dangerous criminals benefits society as a whole rather than simply the victims of their crimes. For example, one of the main arguments cited is that the death penalty acts as an effective deterrent: people would be far less likely to murder, steal or rape than they would if there were not such severe consequences.
“The world, not just America but all the other countries that carry the death penalty, have to rise above the need for such violent retribution”
The financial cost of the death penalty as opposed to ‘life without parole’ is also the subject of much contention, with many arguing that although, in the short term, sentencing someone to death is more expensive, the long term costs of keeping someone in jail for possibly upwards of 50 years far outweighs the cost of a single execution. Why should taxpayers’ money be spent on looking after scores of criminals when that money could be spent benefiting the lives of law abiding citizens? As Chris Clemm, an American attorney rather controversially put it: “Executions do not have to cost that much. We could hang them and re-use the rope.”
These claims have however been disputed. One of the most vocal civil liberty groups in America, The American Civil Liberty Union, stated “There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime or murder rates than states without such laws. On the financial side, although life without parole may cost more, surely it should be impossible to put a monetary price on a human life. Many argue that to simply reduce whether someone lives or dies to numbers on a balance sheet is highly unethical and shouldn’t even be considered. The issue of the death penalty then is undoubtedly a highly complex issue. Politically, emotionally and morally charged, it shows no sign of disappearing. That does not however mean that it shouldn’t. Amnesty International put it perfectly: “The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state”. They are right. The world, not just America but all the other countries that carry the death penalty have to rise above the need for such violent retribution and find the moral authority to respect the lives of even those who have shown such abhorrent disrespect for the lives of others. We as a people are better than that. We are better than murderers, better than those who think that they can play God with people’s lives. We are better than executions, better than the death penalty and undeniably better than cheering and glorifying the systematic death of others. In the name of simple human justice and simple human dignity, the death penalty must go.
After recent high-profile cases, Cyan Turan, Lifestyle Editor, questions the guilty verdict AS I write, Amanda Knox is settling back into Seattle life having been acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, the Leeds University student who was found with her throat slit whilst studying abroad in Perugia in 2007. ‘Foxy Knoxy’, the media’s moniker for Meredith’s Italian housemate, spent four years of a 26 year sentence behind bars for a crime she did not commit. The original DNA samples that formed the crux of the prosecution’s original case have been hailed as unreliable. Ironically, their unreliability was also the weapon which the defence successfully wielded during the appeal. Amanda Knox, the enigmatic American woman, painted as a sex-crazed, manipulative seductress by the world’s press, was thought to have played a part in Miss Kercher’s murder. Crucially, however, it appears that nobody knows for sure. It seems the only thing we can be sure of is that the Italian justice system failed Meredith’s family. There may never be a definitive answer to the question: who killed Meredith Kercher? One might imagine that had Miss
Knox been convicted of murder in a court of her native America, she may not have been around to appeal against her prison sentence today. Whatever you may think, and I do not wish here to muse upon the likelihood of her culpability, our society is presently faced with a dangerous and potentially explosive quagmire: do we still believe in innocent until proven guilty? And when do we trust that guilt is proven?
“Do we still believe in innocent until proven guilty? When do we trust that guilt is proven?” Evidently, cynics might argue that an American investigation and trial might have seen fewer bungles than that of the proceedings under the Italian system and therefore led to a more certain verdict. However, another strikingly similar event of the past few weeks
should inform our better judgment. The state-authorised murder of Troy Davis in Georgia just over a month ago serves as an uncomfortable reminder of the fate that could have befallen Amanda Knox. Speculation is the spine of this piece, but when justice is similarly the backbone of a fair and safe society, we must confront the values that we live by, and engage with the authorities that uphold them. On 22 September this year, Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection for the 1989 shooting of police officer Mark MacPhail. Davis was convicted for the murder in 1991, but had always protested his innocence. After a last minute attempt by Davis’s lawyers to halt the execution, he was eventually killed despite protests from across the world. Just as there remains substantial evidence upon which one might have upheld the Knox verdict, there was plenty to suggest that Troy Davis was innocent. Yet one met a brutal end, and the other has been freed to live what is tantamount to a normal life. Where do we draw the line? Of the nine witnesses who testified
against Davis, seven withdrew their statements, saying that they were pressured into making their original testimony. One of the remaining two witnesses emerged as the principle alternative suspect: Sylvester Coles. Nine witnesses have signed affidavits implicating Mr Coles. There was and remains no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime, and another witness testified that she heard Mr Coles confess to the killing. However, despite these protestations, the state of Georgia sanctioned Troy Davis’s execution. There is compelling, though circumstantial, evidence which would imply that Amanda Knox murdered Meredith Kercher. Mixed traces of Knox and Kercher’s blood in the bathroom of the house they shared and bloody footprints left by Knox and her co-accused former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito pointed to their guilt. Knox originally stated that Patrick Lumbaba, the boss at the bar where she worked, was the murderer, but she withdrew this statement, later saying that she was with Sollecito at his house. Sollecito said he was playing computer
games on the night of the murder, but this was disproved by experts. The truths as we should officially believe them are that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent and that Troy Davis is guilty. However, popular opinion points to a divided and undecided public. There is doubt in both cases, yet doubt has led to two very different outcomes. In a world where every individual has identical human rights, how can this be? As a society, we no longer believe in innocent until proven guilty; we don’t trust the verdicts reached by the courts of the state. It certainly leaves the victims’ families feeling conflicted, being forced to believe the answer of the state, yet never wholly convinced that they have the justice and closure that they so desperately want. When people can be executed and go free on uncertain grounds, and the public can’t rely on the very system that’s supposed to protect them, isn’t it time that we took a long, hard look at what justice really means?
Exeposé WEEK FOUR
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Features
Protection of our countryside is paramount
Oscar Warwick Thompson gives five reasons why new Government Planning Policy falls short
ON the post-war meddling of Westminster in the planning of the English countryside, George Orwell remarked: “They were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, upon no such pretext except that they had the power to do so.” Fast-forward half a century, and his warning on the countryside’s future is eerily prescient, as the coalition announced in July the publication of the draft document, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which explicitly endorses “that the default answer to development proposals is yes.” This hint of a free-for-all for developers has inflamed the passions of an army of campaigners, who take issue with the presumption in favor of development, the removal of the national target for recycling brown-field sites, and the bill’s vague nature, predictable given that it is a mere 50 pages. Admittedly, the current framework, at 1,000 pages, is overly bureaucratic, yet this is no excuse for the entire dismantling of the planning system. There are countless reasons why the NPPF legislation would irreparably damage the countryside. Outlined here are five reasons why the government should perform a policy u-turn, and why it appears to be backtracking from the proposed reforms. 1. The Environmental Repercussions of the NPPF Although the government insisted that England’s green belt would be protected under the planning reforms, there is overwhelming evidence pointing to the contrary. Sites of special scientific interest (SSSI’s), home to the nation’s most important wildlife habitats and
most naturally beautiful areas, would be threatened; among them the Taw Torridge estuary in Devon, the dwelling for large numbers of wading birds. Other areas affected include Sydenham Hill Wood, in Southwark, a haven from the hustle and bustle of London. Additionally, Local Wildlife Sites, which make up 2,745 square miles of land and account for 41 per cent of England’s lowland meadows, would be endangered. Nathalie Lieven QC, who successfully opposed Heathrow’s third runway, has conducted much of this research, along with fellow QC, John Hobson, one of England’s leading planning lawyers. According to them, the NPPF would significantly weaken protection of the green-belt. 2. The Economic Argument (or lack thereof) of the NPPF Building on England’s glorious countryside is not a solution for the chronic shortage of affordable housing. There is no correlation between liberal planning laws and strong economies (see Ireland for instance, with its indulgent development boom). Property developers, who sit on approximately 160,000 acres of land, and have planning permission for 300,000 homes, are contributing to the housing deficit. Why not build there and on brown-field areas, rather than opening up new green-field sites? Furthermore, a weakening of planning guidelines would not result in developers rushing to build homes for lower income folks, as they prioritize profits. The number of new homes in England has fallen to its lowest level since 1923, yet there is land already available to build on.
Anarchy in the UK
3. The Current System Favours Developers and Businesses Proponents of the NPPF can take immense comfort in how England’s present developing rules overwhelmingly favour developers and business. For instance, a developer whose proposal is rejected by the local authority can repeatedly appeal, resubmitting amended plans or even the original after a period. Many big businesses, like Tesco, who can afford high legal fees, repeat this process until they crush local resistance. The lack of the right of appeal once permission is approved further stacks the deck against local communities, even in cases when the council has a commercial interest in the development. One can apply to the high court for a judicial review of the decision, but bizarrely only on grounds of improper procedure. The government’s claim that it empowers communities is complete bilge, particularly as it includes a top-down override clause blocking communities from halting developments that contradict core principles of the draft policy, such as default approval of development. 4. The Ambiguity of the NPPF For campaigners, the definition of what constitutes sustainable development epitomises the NPPF’s hazy nature. The reforms appear to have forgotten to provide a concrete definition of what sustainable development actually means! The clarity of definition is key to the proposals, as it will inevitably lead to mix-ups over the interpretation of the law, which in turn will cause expensive and lengthy appeals.
John Rhodes, one of the four planning policy authors, admits that without greater clarity the framework could be viewed as a ‘developers’ charter’ and would offer a ‘blank cheque for planning lawyers’.
5. Our countryside is valuable in its own right Now more than ever, open spaces are under constant threat from developers. Their importance cannot be understated, as they are one of the most unique aspects of Britain. It seems ludicrous that the government would even consider destroying one of England’s single greatest assets, particularly for such little benefit. Living near green spaces has noted health benefits; reducing mental anxiety and increasing well being. The outstanding beauty of our countryside attracts tourists and residents alike. Thankfully, it is these arguments
The Taw Torridge Estuary area in Devon could be under threat
Is there such thing as being outside the system, asks Helen Carrington ‘ANARCHY, nothing else compares’. Probably some of you have noticed the scrawled message on the wall on Hoopern Lane as well, and I never pass it on my way into the city centre without wondering who wrote it and why. Are they a bored student, a liberal activist or an employee? If so, does this make them an oppressed anarchist, or a poseur? Anarchism is a political philosophy that endorses freedom from authorities. The word was originally a synonym meaning ‘chaos’ or lack of order, but Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan, used the term in 1666 to describe a country free from government and hierarchy. The idea was linked to liberalists and antimonarchists, but became more widely used to mean a rebellion against the controlling rule of a society by those in charge. While anarchy is generally accepted to be an unachievable and unrealistic concept, some anthropologists have suggested that in certain circumstances, anarchy may actually be a more efficient method of social organisation. It could be argued that the cost of a government often outweighs the benefits, and evidence such as the MP expense scandal does
nothing to contradict this. But does the realism of anarchy really matter? Anarchy is not an opposing political viewpoint, or a genuine possibility in the United Kingdom, at least not in the foreseeable future. It is a movement that has been taken up by Liberalists and rebels alike. Anarchy is a subject used as material by the arts world, and its influence can be seen from Orwell’s 1984, to the artistic movement of Surrealism, to the ‘f*ck the system’ Punk revolution of 1976. The movement of Punk Rock began among the disillusioned youth of the 1970s, and aimed to move away from contemporary mainstream culture and the hippie years and political idealism of the 60s. Many of the slogans of the punk movement were found in first-wave Punk music, and nothing summed up the nihilistic attitude of Punk anarchists more than the Sex Pistols’ ‘No Future’. An important feature of the rebellion against order, systems and capitalism was an increased focus on self-production, self-employment and the ‘DIY ethic’. Many Punk bands self-produced their tracks and distributed them informally. Bands often performed basement shows rather than in established venues in an at-
that appear to be shifting the government towards a u-turn, as evidenced by David Cameron’s apologetic letter to the National Trust and conference announcement to free up public sector brown-field land for development on a “build now, pay later” basis, a more reasonable measure to kick-start the nation’s house-building program, while ensuring the beauty of rural England is protected. Nevertheless, the default presumption in favour of development remains the most controversial element of this debate, and could transform the Conservatives into the enemies of conservation, a far cry from their traditional commitment to England’s countryside. Above all, it would make a mockery of the party logo, the green oak tree, and it is about time they swiftly announced yet another policy u-turn.
tempt to break away from consumerism, and a way of existing outside the music ‘system’. However, the first-wave anarchic punk band Sex Pistols struggled to build a reputation without signing to a record label, and were eventually signed by the multinational record company E.M.I. The Sex Pistols are often viewed as pioneers of the punk movement, and original Punk in its purest form.
“A movement that has been taken up by Liberalists and rebels alike”
Perhaps the most famous Sex Pistols lyric, “I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist” shows that the Sex Pistols clearly viewed themselves as followers of the anarchist philosophy, yet even they were unable to stay outside the mass commercial music industry. Obviously anarchy and Punk are not the same thing; anarchism existed before the Punk movement, and exists after its demise. However, it begs the question: can anyone really be ‘outside the system’? As I trudge down Hoopern Lane at
a ridiculous time in the morning to my Saturday job, I often see that graffiti and wonder if it’s even possible to be a true anarchist. Anybody working a job is obviously within the career system, young people are within the education system, those who make their money by illegal means are within the penal system, those who are married or joined are within the legal system, and everyone is within the social system. An employee may choose to leave his job, to escape the business system. But from there, where does he or she go? Claiming benefits places them in a position reliant on the government, and selfemployment is virtually impossible without some involvement of sponsors, local businesses, not to mention customers. A person cannot follow a religion, marry or vote without entering a system. So if everyone is within the system, does this contradict the anarchic philosophy and the attitude of punk? Perhaps the true meaning of being an anarchist is to accept our place within the system and under the government, but to respond with anger and frustration rather than resignation.
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Lifestyle
Zoe Dickens & Cyan Turan - lifestyle@exepose.com
24 october 2011
Exeposé
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Charting the fruition of Apple APPLE: A Timeline
1976: Apple I – the first Apple computer. 1977: Apple II – the first massproduced computer to be considered a success. 1983: Lisa – the first Apple computer with a graphical user interface, one of Apple’s early failures. 1984: The original Macintosh – the original all-in-one form factor computer that inspired the iMac. Ad campaign includes the Orwellian “Big Brother” ad. 1985: Steve Jobs left Apple over conflict with then-CEO John Sculley. 1989: The Macintosh Portable – the first portable Apple computer, which led to the first Powerbook in 1991 (which in turn led to the first MacBook Pro). 1993: Apple Newton – the first Apple tablet. Discontinued in 1994. 1994: Apple Quicktake – their first foray into digital cameras. 1995: Apple Bandai Pippin – Apple’s attempt at a gaming console (think Xbox, but designed by Apple). 1996: Steve Jobs returns, takes over as CEO in 1997. 1998: The iMac G3 – with the iconic translucent coloured casing, allowing you to see the insides of this CRTbased all-in-one. 1999: The iBook G3 – clamshell shape, and coloured casing. 2001: Original iPod launched with 5GB of storage space. 2002: The iconic iMac G4 with the dome-shaped base and swivelling monitor. 2003: iTunes Music Store, which later became the iTunes Store with the arrival of videos, apps, and books. 2004: iPod mini – a shrunk-down iPod. 2005: Mac Mini, iPod nano and iPod with Video. 2006: Apple transitions from the IBM/ Apple PowerPC CPU to Intel, releases an entire lineup of Macs on Intel CPUs. 2006: The start of the “Get a Mac” ad campaign, featuring John Hodgman and Justin Long in the US, and David Mitchell & Robert Webb in the UK. Cue parodies. 2007: Original iPhone, Apple TV and iPod touch, as well as the birth of iOS. 2008: MacBook Air, the “Unibody” MacBooks and the birth of the App Store. 2010: iPad - Apple’s second attempt at making a tablet. 25 million shipped, as of Jun 2011. 2011: Siri - the voice assistant in the new iPhone 4S, announced days before the day Steve Jobs passed away.
Matthieu Perry and Ronald Liong look at the evolution of the iconic technology brand WHEN the brand name Apple comes to the mind of most people today, they think of the more contemporary, unique products they have most recently brought onto the market, such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod, but the company brought the world groundbreaking products long before that. Despite Apple’s present day image of being a cutting edge, smart and artistic company, the business had very humble origins. Their first model, the Apple I, was a hobbyist product, designed by Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, and launched in 1976. The Apple I came in a kit and had to be assembled by the buyer him or herself. A year later the Apple II was launched. A far more successful successor, which was sold already built and boasted good performance for its time. Computers of that era had some very major setbacks. To simply run a program, users had to use command-line interface, typing complex computing language on the screen. Learning such language was time consuming and required a huge amount of ‘geekiness’ to use even the most basic of functions. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to revolutionise the market by designing a computer for the mass market, one which was simple for a typical member of the public to use and didn’t require a university degree to operate. This aim became a reality in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh. It might not sound like much today, but it was the first production computer to use a mouse and with that mouse came graphic-line interface (where the user could click commands on a screen rather than laboriously typing them). However, Apple’s intentions to enter the mass market were no more evident than their memorable Superbowl advert aired in the same year.
“Apple products were becoming cult classics of the modern era”
Throughout the rest of the 1980s, the Macintosh continued to develop and with it an entirely new concept of work emerged: desktop publishing. Users could now create entire typed documents on their computers at home with ease and Macintoshes were found in offices and home studies across the world. During the 1990s however, Apple’s fortunes took a turn for the worst. Jobs had left the company in 1986, working instead on other projects, most notably his management of Pixar Studios. During that time Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, had set out to take Apple’s share in the market by producing a cheaper alternative, first seen with the release of Windows 3.0.
Microsoft had offered something that Apple did not: constant and profound software development and versatility. At that time Apple, just like they still do today, only allowed their software and operating system to be used on machines that they had manufactured, but they did not offer substantial hardware products. Microsoft concentrated mainly on software development, allowing the hardware development to be undertaken by more specialist companies such as Intel and IBM. The end result was a product that could outperform the Macintosh in computing performance by offering greater processing power and more memory, on top of an operating system that allowed the user to do more. During the mid-nineties, perhaps one of Apple’s most disastrous projects was their foray into the video games console market with the Bandai Pippin. The plan was for it to be a crossover between a home computer and a games console, but the end product was a failure. The concept lacked the direction to attract a target audience, instead clumsily releasing hardware that suggested it would be for adults (like a keyboard and floppy disk drive) but most of the 18 English language games released were educational titles aimed at children. It was overpriced ($699 on release date, double that of competitors’ consoles) with a controller that was difficult to hold and a library of unimpressive games from second-rate developers. The console failed to sell 50,000 units, mainly due to its inability to compete with the more established and technologically advanced consoles of its competitors, Sony, Sega and Nintendo. Consequently, Apple were losing customers at a rate of knots and desperately needed to introduce innovative products for it to survive. Jobs returned to the company in 1997, bringing with him the technical expertise and drive to motivate the company to come up with brand new ideas. After a year, the first line of iMacs was launched. These computers looked radically different to their rival counterparts, getting rid of bulky processing units and replacing the typical beige casing with a range of colourful alternatives. Apple had been given a facelift, transforming its image into an arty and colourful company in a matter of months. The iMac name and concept still exists today although it has evolved considerably in that time. Apple released quicker and smoother operating systems and began opening up more to third party developers. Sales figures rose, giving them the confidence to open dedicated Apple stores worldwide. Stores with their own resident ‘geniuses’ and with demonstration models waiting to be tried out by potential customers. The enterprise was becoming a commercial giant.
Apple was regaining a foothold on the market and making up ground it had lost to Microsoft. By 2001, it was ready to tap into markets previously unexplored by that of its most fierce rival, the music industry. The iPod revolutionised the way people listened to music. MP3 players had existed previously, but the iPod offered a much sleeker way of selecting tracks by introducing the click wheel, a much more efficient means compared to previous buttons and control sticks. It also boasted a much larger storage space, the original being able to store up to 2000 songs.
“The Mac continued to develop and with it a whole new work concept: desktop publishing”
Not only did Apple try to steal the music player market share, it wanted to dominate the entire music industry through the iTunes store, another commercial success (the total number of songs downloaded passed the 15 billion mark this year). Ten years on and many reincarnations later, in the nano, touch and shuffle forms, the iPod is still going strong. 2007 saw not only the launch of the iPhone but the emergence of a totally new phenomenon. The queues of eager customers outside Apple shops waiting to get their hands on the latest handset created a ‘cult of Apple’. The company was gaining a devoted fan base which was not just numerous, but becoming mainstream. Apple products, especially the portable models, were becoming cult classics of the modern era. With the release of the iPhone, Apple also opened up an entirely new market completely on its own: Apps. The creation of the Appstore for iPhone and iPad allowed huge third-party development for Apple’s portable technology and with it, created a wealth of entrepreneurs earning profits for the software they created for them. Although other companies have tried to follow in Apple’s footsteps, the most notable being Google’s Android and Samsung’s Galaxy tablet, no rivals have been able to match Apple’s share in the market. So with the passing away of Steve Jobs, the future of the company, along with the types of innovations that they will introduce in the future remains uncertain. Apple has emerged as a frontrunning company, but needs to ensure it employs a developer of similar entrepreneurial skills if they are to stay there. If that person is not found, then the next brilliant mind of the computing world could be waiting in the wings, ready to start selling his or her innovations.
Exeposé week Four
15
Lifestyle
“The unnecessary problems with... buses” Lifestyle’s new columnist, Thomas Ling, on chavs, OAPs and unfortunate accidents
HELLO and welcome to my first column! Every issue I’m going to talk about the unnecessary hardships that have to be endured in everyday life, meaning that the more painful something has been to me, the more entertaining it will be for you. Probably the best place to start this painful journey is one of my most fundamental problems: buses.
“He told a series of jokes like: ‘What’s your favourite TV show? Dislocation Dislocation Dislocation?’”
My problem originates from the ‘cool seats’ at the back of the bus, characteristically known for harbouring nests of terrifyingly aggressive adolescents. Their tinny R&B tunes, tracksuit-rustling and terrible haircuts regularly haunt my
nightmares. The anti-social youths and their mindless aggression scare me silly and I’m extremely conscious not to draw attention to myself in order to avoid a predictable nasty confrontation. I just can’t help thinking that if Rosa Parks had attempted her heroic bus sit-in today that she would find the stagecoach mandem retorting “y’startin blud?!” in her direction before throwing the nearest blunt object into the back of her head. I really want to say that the chavs are the main cause of my fear, but it’s my bus medical trauma that really troubles me. One sunny Monday afternoon I ascended to the top level of a double-decker bus to find the back seats empty. “Hurrah!” I thought as I clambered past several elderly passengers, “I shall sit at the back and everybody here will know that I am truly the King of Cool on the route 101!” Unfortunately, biology failed me and as I sat down my kneecap horribly dislocated. Just by sitting down, my kneecap
Your problems solved “Dear Lifestyle, I have a simple problem: I go out too much. I just can’t stop myself, and hate the feeling that I might miss something or be left out the next day. I’m heading into my final year and I know I need to knuckle down but this doesn’t seem to be stopping me from prioritising clubbing over work. How can I achieve a healthy balance of the two? Yours, Distracted Finalist”
Lucy Sargeant GOING out can be as gripping as any other addiction. Drunken highs and remorseful lows; sleeping through another 9am. Break the habit. Reflecting on nights out (at least those you can remember), few fall into the ‘absolute cracker’ cat-
had actually spun to the side of my leg (The doctor later informed me that this was due to a naturally flawed shinbone). It’s truly a horrible injury and anyone who’s experienced it will tell you that the pain is beyond imagination. However, most people who have encountered this agony will have achieved it through playing sports like football or rugby and not by simply sitting down on a bus. To makes matters worse, my fellow aging passengers were all half deaf so my cries of pain were ignored for a minute before I actually managed to get anybody’s attention. I then had to wait another excruciating few minutes for an elderly lady to slowly work herself down the stairs to alert the unaware driver. I have no idea to this day why she took so long. Why would somebody who can’t navigate stairs sit on the top deck of the bus in the first place? My only conclusion was to think that the pensioner in question must have in fact been trapped
up there for years, banished to circle the same dismal bus route forever. So eventually, the driver was alerted to my embarrassing circumstances. The bus was stopped and everybody was forced to wait for my ambulance. All of these previously peaceful passengers were now staring at me as if I had slapped their faces with a thong belonging to Eric Pickles. I was pretty sure this was the most embarrassing moment of my life. I wanted to apologise for my terrible choice in knees, but the malice in the pensioners’ eyes stopped me from saying anything.
“Just by sitting down, my kneecap had actually spun to the side of my leg”
As if the staring contest with the granny mob wasn’t bad enough, the driver found my pain absolutely hilari-
ous. He told a series of jokes including: “What’s your favourite TV show? Dislocation Dislocation Dislocation?” Despite his insistence on how amazingly side-splitting this joke was I felt the strong urge to violently gouge out his cheery eyes so he could take a first-hand look at his own nobbish behaviour. Luckily for him, I didn’t get an opportunity to do so as the ambulance had just arrived to whisk me and my runaway kneecap to hospital, thus ending my trauma. The hospital and relocation of my kneecap was relatively pain-free in comparison to the humiliation of the bus itself. As my dreary mother drove me home, my leg now in a cast, I thought there was at least a powerful moral to this story: trying to be cool will mean you will look like an inconsiderate arse. Whatever the painful lessons learnt, I still have a horrible Vietnam-style flashback of the incident every time I encounter a bus filled with elderly passengers.
Aunty Lucy and Uncle Ian are here to help egory. Many are just a waste of time and money. Plan fewer nights out, but make them epic. Get all the best people together for the best nights. Earn a reputation for organizing top nights out and everyone will follow your schedule; hence no more being left out of morning-after-tales. Suggest chilled nights in togetheryou’ll be surprised how many people are up for it. Think of all the work you could get done on a hangover-free morning! Alternatively find yourself a hot girl/boy friend to have naughty nights in with, its what most of your friends are going out on the hunt for anyway!
Ian Whittaker WORK vs. play. The right thing vs. the fun thing. In truth there’s nothing wrong with going out; all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy as they say, and having a social life is undoubtedly important. Your thirst for clubbing is
Campus Style Spotter
OUR roving photographer and style aficionado, George Connor, brings you the best style on campus!
Winter Coat Special [Left] Name: Tristan Bradshaw Studying: History of Political Thought, Masters. Where is your coat from? “It’s from the German Democratic Republic!” Who is your style icon? “I’d say Johnny Depp.” [Centre] Name: Nicola Elder Studying: Psychology, 1st year. Where is your coat from? “It’s from Primark.” Who is your style icon? “I really admire Emma Watson’s style.” [Right] Name: Anna Sharp Studying: Business, 1st year. Where is your coat from? “I bought it in China before I came to the UK.”
only a problem if it gets in the way of your grades. If you’re still achieving what you want then carry on clubbing! Realistically however, you will not reach your potential without putting the work in and this means fewer nights out, unless you fancy a career podium dancing at the Ministry of Sound? So limit your nights out to once or twice a week, your friends must be in a similar situation so decide on a plan together, so you don’t miss out. Or try nights in with your friends, you’ll have longer to work in the evenings and should be in a better state to study in the morning! Win win!
24 october 2011 Exeposé
16
Lifestyle
Baking a difference to British life
Cyan Turan, Lifestyle Editor, talks to the Great British Bake Off’s Holly Bell about the baking revolution
UNLESS you’ve been on a different planet for the past couple of years, you’ll have noticed that there’s been something of a baking revolution afoot in British kitchens. Cupcakes, sponges, bread – we’re all at it. So much so that the final of the BBC television programme the Great British Bake Off, which has just finished its second series, notched up a massive five million viewers. It’s cute, quaint, and seems to be just what this country needs. Lifestyle caught up with the runner-up of this year’s show, Holly Bell, to see what all the fuss is about. If one well-known newspaper columnist is to be believed, this is ‘Puddies for Hoodies’ at its finest. So does the baking phenomenon have anything to do with reuniting ‘Broken Britain’? “The summer of unrest that the UK experienced meant that people were kind of ripe for a bit of wholesome fun,” says Holly. “That’s it in a nutshell. It’s just a really nice programme with lots of really normal, nice people. It’s quite gentle in its approach and I think that after the summer that the UK had, it was actually perfect.” Evidently, the London riots are a point of comparison. There’s no easy solution to the problems that arose in August; this isn’t a race to ready, set, bake the recipe for social success. However, there’s no doubt that the GBBO has captured the imaginations of millions of Britons. The popularity of baking is also practical: “Part of it as well is that people don’t have as much money any more,” Holly continues. The viewing figures certainly point to a show which got people inspired to get back in the kitchen: “It grew a bit organically because it was the second series, but the viewing figures are nuts. You don’t expect 3.9 million viewers for a first episode on BBC 2 - I don’t think anyone expected it really. Everyone knew it would be successful as the production team are so slick and the way it’s run is just amazing but it does make you slightly quiver. You think ‘Really? That many people?!’ When I go
Holly Bell, second from left, with some of the other GBBO contestants and presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins (front)
out people do come up to me, my first response is ‘How do they know who I am?’ and then I realise, and I’m like, ‘Oh, of course!’” The show is filmed at Valentines Mansion and Gardens, Essex. “It took six weeks to film eight episodes. We filmed at weekends, two days of filming and then you go home and practise for the next week. It was hard work but it was really enjoyable as well.” Talking animatedly about the GBBO, mother-of-two Holly recalls learning plenty of baking lessons from the judges, royal baker Paul Hollywood and the doyenne of home baking, Mary Berry, and the other contestants. “There was such a wealth of knowledge there. It was fantastic to have all these people that were so passionate about baking. I made some really good friends there as well. Jo, who won, I speak to almost every day. We get on really, really well - she’s lovely. Urvashi and Ian went out in the third week, but I really got on with them. Ian is hilarious; he used to have everyone in stitches. I’ve been out
Sex-on-the-Exe
for lunch with Rob too. Everybody got on very well but obviously some people are more friendly than others.” Perhaps the reason why people love baking is because they can improve on their mistakes and keep practising, but I imagine it must have been hard being judged on something that you love doing: “I don’t find criticism easy to take,” says Holly. “I don’t think many people do, if they’re honest. It is hard, but you do have to take it on the chin. They are the experts, and even if I didn’t always agree, I would think ‘Well, you are an expert’.” “I read English at Liverpool University and I’d write an essay which I thought was fantastic and then I’d get the marks back and actually it wasn’t as fantastic as I thought. You look at it and go ‘Hang on a minute, you’re right, of course you’re right, you’re the expert!’ I think doing your best is a good way to look at it, but to do your best you also have to push yourself a little bit.” Anyone who watched the show will remember Holly’s perfectionism, turning
An Anonymous Student gets unwanted attention at the Freshers’ Ball SO it all started at pre-drinks before the Freshers’ Ball. A few people came to our flat, including friends-offriends that I hadn’t met before and he was one of them. As with all the other ‘new faces’, we were introduced and exchanged the standard “What course are you studying? Where are you staying? Where are you from?” etc. After our initial meeting we did not speak again; in fact, I didn’t see him again until we reached the Ball. However, judging by his behaviour he had done some serious drinking in the interim. I was greeted with what he must have thought to be a seductive wink, followed by some rather alarming hip wiggling in my direction. Hav-
ing pushed through the crowds in the Great Hall to meet the rest of the group we were in a rather squashed spot, so it was unfortunately hard to escape his grasps – and I mean GRASPS. My friend, valiantly attempting to ‘cock-block’ had to prize me forcibly from him. Yet he still did not abandon his attempts, despite my subtle hints that we were not quite on the same wavelength - practically yelling: “I’M NOT INTERESTED.” We were surrounded by several kissing couples so, obviously taking inspiration from them, he began putting his face very close to mine and ‘gazing’ in to my (incredulous) eyes. However, the worst was yet to
come. Once the Ball had finished we all teetered back to my flat where we decided to cook the standard postnight-out pizza and chips, and eventually, everyone began to filter off. He (who I thought by now had finally given up/had been distracted by food) asked innocently to use my toilet before he left. Thinking it too rude to say no I showed him where it was, and went in to my room to take off my shoes (leaving my door firmly ajar). I heard the toilet door open behind me, and turning to say a relieved “goodbye” I received the shock of my life: he had shuffled out with his trousers around his knees, wearing a condom and was looking at me expectantly.
out great bakes every week. It might surprise a few to know that pie week was her favourite. “I’m actually more of a savoury person than a sweet one,” she says. “I love anything with blue cheese and caramelised onions and I made a pie which was a Stilton, onion and potato pie and that is my kind of food. I also really enjoyed making pork pies, as that’s something I’d never, ever do at home.” I could talk about the Great British Bake Off forever, but I want to distil what it is about the present moment that’s got people so into home baking. Is it nostalgia, I wonder? When our lives are flooded with technology, does baking give us what we need in order to retain a sense
of normality? “I’ve been really surprised by how many young people follow me on Twitter and by how many people in their early twenties are getting into baking. In your teenage years you forget and then you come back to these things and there’s a sense of nostalgia. It’s heart-warming when you can do something that reminds you of home. “University can be really tough. I really missed the familiarity of my hometown and my parents’ house, so I started to cook. I did roast dinners for people in halls and I look back now and think about why I did it and I think ‘God, it’s so obvious’- to recreate some kind of homely atmosphere, because halls can be quite sterile.” It strikes me that people bake at home because they desire a balance between old and new. “People want their iPhones and iPads and they want to bake. It’s like there’s a sense of security from baking your own cakes at home and then tweeting about it afterwards! I hope that people continue to do the homely things that keep them grounded because it’s so easy to become wrapped up in technology.” And there we have it: baking offers salvation from our crazy, mixed-up modern world, riots and all. But what does the future hold for Holly? “I’m writing a book at the moment and I’m in the process of setting up a cupcake baking and decorating school, which is exciting,” she says. “I blog and tweet and try and keep up with all of that. I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I’m not complaining at all.” Read Holly’s blog at www.recipesfromanormalmum.com and follow her on Twitter: @HollyBellMummy
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18
Music
24 october 2011
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Upcoming Live Reviews Laura Marling, 28/10 - Cabaret Vol- Exeter Cathedral, taire, Cavern 14 October 29/10 - Indie Club, Cavern
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WITHOUT introduction, Laura Marling and her seven-piece band opened with the jazzy and assertive ‘The Muse’. The brassy instrumentation, confident tone in her voice and final assertion: “I’m nothing but the beast / And I’ll call on you when I need to feast”, demanded silence. It is clear that Laura Marling is a far cry away from the meek and fragile hopeful who greeted us with the sweet sounds of Alas I Cannot Swim back in 2008. While her on-stage interactions were as shy as ever, and aesthetically she has almost come full swing (blonde hair now falls on her tiny shoulders), musically she has a new-found authority. Third album A Creature I Don’t Know, of which we heard the majority, is her most assertive record to date, and it was showcased perfectly live. ‘The Beast’ built up to a forceful cacophony of strings and percussion, in arguably what is one of the darkest tracks of her career. Don’t get me wrong though, her softer side is equally as breathtaking. ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ was delicate and understatedly beautiful, smoothly morphing into the more feisty ‘Salinas’, whilst ‘Night After Night’ cemented Marling as a wonderful storyteller. As well as presenting tracks from her new record, she played lots of old favourites. ‘My Manic and I’ was transformed live with the band’s quirky instrumentation a refreshing touch, whilst Christmas song ‘Goodbye England
24/10 - Original Sin Presents GoldFish with Special Guests Killa Wolf Gang, S.C.U.M. Kela vs Ami Carmine, and Niki & The Dove, The Lemon Grove Exeter Phoenix, Original Sin are putting on what is set 02 October to be an amazing night of house and dance music which is being headlined by the fantastic GoldFish. A duo from South Africa who have smashed into the international dance circuit, playing in Ibiza’s super club Pacha, supporting David Guetta and having had massive sell out shows in Sydney Opera House, Miami and Glastonbury. And they are now coming to Exeter. GoldFish are set to deliver an electric live performance, with a huge sound pushing the boundaries of dance music by mixing up live jazz instruments with powerful electro beats. Their sound oozes funk, soul and can’t fail to make you dance. The support for this event is equally worthy of mention, acclaimed Beatbox champion Killa Kela and Basement Jaxx lead vocalist, Ami Carmine.
Despite continually managing to showcase fresh and poised new pop music, the NME Radar tour’s dwindling ability to fill big venues showed no sign of abating at its opening show at Exeter this month, barely managing to even speckle the Phoenix’s floor with showgoers. This clearly doesn’t faze openers Niki & The Dove, their elfin cyber-shaman Malin Dahlström unfalteringly channelling as much ethereal vigour through her impassioned vocal delivery as if the twenty-odd early birds in front of her were a writhing mass of thousands. Her eerie Fever Ray-esque robotic-bass during ‘Mother Protect’ is later soared aloft by a booming Kate Bush vigour, in turn tearing itself into a fervid squall in the closing track. Together with band mate Gustaf Karlöf’s vast web of synths, pops and echoing vacuums, the band’s icy, allencompassing yet far-removed live sound serves not only to delightfully invigorate
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(Covered In Snow)’ was spine-tinglingly heart-warming. The Cathedral setting was visually magnificent and acoustically stunning, inspiring both a sense of intimacy and awe. Every nuance of her voice (and there are many) was amplified so her cries echoed even more powerfully and her whispers resonated even more delicately. In the middle of the set the band left the stage and she performed a series
of songs with just her acoustic guitar and her voice. As the set drew on the distance between Laura Marling and the audience narrowed, as though she was telling a story with a group of followers who were engaged intently. The Cathedral was part of the conversation too, with odd noises and bells joining in occasionally, which Marling paused to hear, awe-struck. After a brief ‘Cathedral facts’ interlude from her bandmates (both amusing
and educational) the band accompanied Marling again in playing the final songs of the night. The evening ended with the uplifting ‘All My Rage’, in which Marling sings: “I leave my rage to the sea and the sun”; the cathartic act of story telling ends with exultation.
the audience but render their charming gratitude and childlike joy all the more comically unsettling. Gustaf breaks fifteen minutes of crowd-pacifying tension by chirping in a thick Swedish accent ‘Is everyone is having a good time?’ while Malin, oddly touched enough to ‘do a ballad’ for the small crowd, emphatically thanks everyone for ‘putting up with it’.
complete with Adams-family wardrobe and individually distinct impractical haircuts, their set evolves gradually into epic closer ‘Whitechapel’, whose triumphant melodies finally break some light through the murk. Wolf Gang’s headline set ultimately sheds all the dry ice and smog with their luminous symphonic pop, puppet-master Max McElligott bounding onstage to churn out a series of lithe would-be-anthems, finally complementing the demographic of the majority present, to their evident relief. A slightly stripped-down live sound brings the band’s numerous infectious choruses to the fore, which – despite drawing potentially unfavorable attention to the somewhat wearying frequency of index-finger-pumping poloshirt-lad ‘whoo’ hooks – makes undeniable McElligott’s immense aptitude for attractively-woven pop arrangements. The NME crowd goes home satisfied, but it remains to be seen whether the tour will do for these bands what it once did for Friendly Fires, La Roux and Anna Calvi.
COMPETITION
“A stripped-down live sound brings infectious choruses to the fore” Second act S.C.U.M. meanwhile waste no time cajoling the audience, instead proceeding to slog out their mire of abusively-affected guitars, screeching retro keyboards and strobe lights immediately after shuffling dejectedly onstage. Try as you might to allocate the macabre art-rockers their own playing field, they do very little to dispel the obvious question: ‘What am I meant to be getting out of this that I don’t already from The Horrors?’ Like a play-by-play reproduction of said band’s Primary Colours,
CALLUM MCLEAN
ELLIE BOTHWELL DEPUTY EDITOR
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19
Exeposé week Four
Cloud Control, Cavern, 27 September
AFTER a long summer break away from the charms of Devon, I headed to my favourite Exeter venue with eager anticipation like one who is about to meet an old friend. However, this was no usual drunken Saturday night affair - I was going to see Aussie quartet Cloud Control on the first night of their UK autumn tour. Proceedings began with folk trio Woodford Green, whose chilled out rhythms lulled the crowd into a dreamlike state. Their cover of Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’ was an original and cute touch in the wake of the celebration of 20 years since Nevermind. Goth-infused
indie duo Big Deal were up next, exhibiting hazy guitars and girl/boy vocals which seemed to be the theme of the night. As the venue filled up Cloud Control took to the stage armed with their laid-back brand of trippy rock. Frontman Alister Wright was wide-eyed and smiley whilst 60s clad Heidi Lenffer was cool and confident behind the keyboard, hitting the keys and shaking the tambourine with enviable ease. Delicate ‘Ghost Story’ translated wonderfully to the live stage in all its echoey glory whilst ‘This Is What I Said’ was reminiscent of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’, merging Alister’s highpitched vocals with upbeat percussion, a smattering of worldbeat and a few half-spoken lines for good measure. Infectious single ‘Gold Canary’ showcased their beautiful three-part harmonies, with Alister’s falsetto, Hedi’s richer tones and bassist Jeremy Kelshaw’s deep echoes combining perfectly. Their psychedelic pop was paired with dream-like movements which saw them bounce across the Cavern stage in unison. Although reaping the rewards of mainstream success in their home country, Cloud Control are relatively unknown in the UK and their gratitude throughout the show was touching. After the energetic performance they put on tonight I expect a surge in their UKbased fans. And that’s regardless of Alister’s beautifully chiselled jawline. ELLIE BOTHWELL DEPUTY EDITOR
album REVIEWS The Rip Tide Beirut ZACH CONDON, the visionary behind the world-folk-indie project Beirut, is an incredible man. Able to play a swathe of instruments, and packing a powerful, romantic voice that tells stories from his travels, Condon has been making his unique music since he was 15. Having dropped out of university to experience Europe, making Beirut’s breakthrough efforts in the process, The Rip Tide sees him return to America. The Balkan wails have gone, replaced with a sound that evokes classic American pop. Lead single ‘East Harlem’ bounces along on a piano and ukulele chord progression, whilst Condon’s voice laments the vast distances of America. The introduction of triumphant brass blasts halfway through the song, however, turn it from a lament to a hopeful anthem. Condon’s hometown, Santa Fe, provides the name and inspiration for a slightly experimental song on the album, with a distinct electro feel. In terms of accessibility, ‘Santa Fe’ is probably the strongest song on the album, and feels a long way from Beirut’s forays into Balkan folk. Indeed, the album’s comparative accessibility and pop style gives it a distinct American feel. Condon’s ability to reflect his surroundings in
his music is impressive. Reference is made to his travels and his return to home in ‘Vagabond’, a catchy and romantic song that beautifully combines a simple piano riff and brass, but is interrupted by an electro-inspired bridge that feels somewhat out of place. However, it is the slower songs of the album that really showcase Condon’s talents. The title track ‘The Rip Tide’ blends warm piano and brass, with a violin chord jumping across the music. Condon lays harmonies of his voice over each other, creating an interesting dynamic. The end trumpet wail oozes romance and longing. ‘Goshen’ begins as a stripped-down love song, with just vocals and piano, but builds to a melancholic climax. This compares to the brass-heavy, lumbering opener ‘A Candle’s Fire’, one of the strongest songs on the album. It’s hard to pin down what is so appealing about this song, but the huge array of instruments on display just seem to blend seamlessly. By contrast, the album is closed by the fragile ‘Port of Call’, the ukulele mingling with Condon’s request to “be fair to me”, before ending in haze of trumpets. It is a fitting end to a fantastic, if short, album that cements Beirut as one of the most interesting, talented and beautiful bands around.
BEN WINSOR
Bombay Bicycle Club, O2 Academy Bristol, 12 October WITH great excitement we hopped on a train to Bristol to attend the hotly anticipated gig everyone wanted a ticket for, the instant sell-out, band of the moment, Bombay Bicycle Club. It’s fair to say we were feeling pretty swag as we strolled into the venue having managed to get ourselves on the guest list. Waiting for the band to grace the stage with their presence, there was a huge buzz amongst the excited crowd. Interestingly it wasn’t just a bunch of students crammed into the venue but there were a significant number of older punters, proving how far Bombay Bicycle Club’s material has reached in a relatively short space of time. This widespread appeal can be credited for their meteoric rise that has accompanied their most recent release A Different Kind of Fix. They are a rare example of a band who have managed to achieve success in the mainstream with constant Radio One air time yet remain unaltered by the fame. Having seen them three years ago playing to about 50 people in the rain at a festival, it’s clear that little has changed, they still deliver each track with a powerful energy, never ceasing to demonstrate the skill and mastery with which they play. The performance kicked off with ‘Shuffle’, a thrilling start, which was met with an electric atmosphere, confirming the overwhelmingly positive reception of their most recent material. Every track that followed, the band at-
Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm Benjamin Francis Leftwich FOLLOWING the release of his debut album Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm earlier this year, Benjamin Francis Leftwich has been hailed as one to watch in the up and coming months. The 21 year old singer/songwriter from York has recently risen to fame in the folk/acoustic industry through the high radio profile of his previous singles ‘Atlas Hands’ and ‘Box of Stones’. Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm was recently named Album of the Week on Radio One and XFM, a testament to its increasing critical acclaim. Performing at festivals including Reading, Leeds, Bestival, Green Man
Music
tacked with equal levels of vigour and dedication, especially drummer Suren de Sarem, who thrashed out thundering beats with his admirably ripped biceps (we felt this was a point worth noting). They slowed down the tempo with stripped back renditions of tracks from second album Flaws proving their ability to switch with ease from their punchy, beat driven songs such as ‘Always Like This’ and ‘Magnet’ which dominate the sound of I Had the Blues But Shook Them Loose to the softer acoustic feel of tracks such as ‘Ivy and Gold’. Steadman’s vocals combined with the gentle backing of Rose’s delicate cooing, enchanted and mesmerised the audience. Lucy Rose accompa-
nied them throughout most of their set, prancing around and shaking her tambourine to the cries of: “We love Lucy”; she was definitely a hit with the indie mass of very sweaty, moshing boys. The crowd in the pit were so mental we were forced to retreat to the safety of the slightly older, rhythmic head-nodders nearer the back. However, this was no calmer - the girl next to us was busting out some interesting moves that may have led to the injury of those surrounding her. It was scary, but a part of the madness and highly charged mood that had swept through the O2 with Bombay’s arrival.
and Glastonbury, Leftwich has emerged as one of the most talented acoustic acts of the year so far. This release is a beautifully composed debut album that remains consistently captivating throughout its ten tracks. Whilst love, of the unrequited kind, is a central theme throughout the album, Leftwich manages to capture the more simple side of life within his melodies. Stories of friendship, travel, memory and discovery are interlaced with his smoky vocals, gentle rhythms and poignant lyrics, and make for a far more complex album than it may originally seem. The mesmerizing ‘Atlas Hands’ is just one of the album’s little gems, mixing Leftwich’s dreamlike voice with soft female vocals to create a sense of passion and intensity. ‘Box of Stones’
is equally charming with its delicate seafaring sound and yearning violin accompaniments that wouldn’t be out of place on The O.C. soundtrack. ‘Shine’, his forthcoming single due for release on November 7th stands out as one of the best tracks on the album. Perhaps the most upbeat, it is an ode to the hope of finding true happiness: “I hope you find what you’re looking for, so your heart is warm forever more.” Last Smoke Before the Snowstorm is a pastiche of perfectly plucked guitar strings, ethereal harmonies and intimate lyrics that will leave a smile on your face and hope in your heart, long after the final track has finished.
the track. From a soft and understated beginning it builds to the climactic chorus packed with pent-up emotion, feeling more like an expulsion of relief combined with a chanted mantra. As ever, Welch’s lyrics shine without trying to be too clever for their own good. Supposedly written about being hung-over, standout lines include the verse’s close: “Cause I like to keep my issues strong / It’s always darkest before the dawn.” The melody immediately sticks, yet avoids the trap of falling back on the catchy-pop-song formula; it’s a much more subtle earworm. This track will no doubt become a stable of concert
set-lists and its intensity will only multiply within a live setting. The bridge does feel slightly out of place, despite a continuation of Welch’s fabulous lyrics (“And I’m ready to suffer and I’m ready to hope / It’s a shot in the dark and right at my throat”) but only because the verse and chorus move so effortlessly into one another. Overall, Florence and the Machine have struck gold with their latest endeavour. If this is a taster of things to come, Ceremonials may well be as sure a hit as Lungs.
AMY WELLER MUSIC EDITOR
ELIZABETH LUMB
SINGLE REVIEW Shake It Out Florence and the Machine HAVING solidified her position as one of the best British female talents in years, it’s unsurprising that Florence and the Machine has received such widespread commercial success. With little material since 2009’s breakthrough Lungs, Florence Welch and her ensemble return with ‘Shake It Out’, the lead single from their upcoming album Ceremonials, released October 31st. With a backbone of rhythmic drumbeat in the band’s signature style, Welch’s strong and piecing vocals carry
MADDIE SOPER
20
Screen
24 october 2011 Exeposé
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NEWSREEL
If you are a fan of superhero movies, it’s time to get excited. Firstly, the trailer for Disney-Marvel’s massive movie experiment, The Avengers, is now online and looks pretty awesome. In addition Shane Black, director of Iron Man 3, has announced that a teaser trailer for the flick will be shown after the credits of The Avengers! April 27 can’t come soon enough... Equally, people whose interest is peaked by the aforementioned might be interested to know that comic book don Stan Lee has been tipped for the Visual Effects Society Lifetime Achievement Award, and about time, many would argue. And now for something completely different: musicals! The cast list for Tom Hooper and Cameron Mackintosh’s hotly-anticipated screen adaptation of mega stage success Les Misérables grows ever longer with the news that Anne Hathaway is set to join in the umm... fun as Fantine, alongside powerhouse Hugh Jackman as main Jean Valjean and his angry fellow Aussie Russell Crowe as arch-enemy obsessive Javert... Hey, he can totally method this one with all that rage! As Hallowe’en draws ever closer, we do hope that you’ll be cracking out some good viewing material, be it semi-Christmasical with The Nightmare Before Christmas, old-school with The Omen, or completely classic with some Hammer Horror or a touch of Boris Karloff... enjoy! Also, one final plug from us: to stay up-to-date on the latest Screen news and writing opportunities, follow us on Twitter (@ExeposeScreen) and join our group on Facebook. Until next time...
Tally ho! Downton Abbey caught in line of fire James Crouch explains Downton Abbey’s virtues...
AMASSING ever more awards day by day, it’s been just over a year since Downton Abbey graced our screens with its presence. Now it’s back for a new series that so far has not disappointed! But why is this hark back to the past the best British drama in 30 years? First off, don’t labour under the impression that it is merely part of our supposed national obsession with “the good ol’ days.” Downton is a success because it is quite simply a superbly crafted drama, from casting to screenplay, direction and, of course, acting. Almost like a fast-paced action film, not a minute is wasted in pointless scenes or time-filling natter. Every line tells a story, or enhances our understanding of the relationship between the characters. It is one of “those” series where nodding off for five minutes is not an option, and why would you want to when supposed calamities and scandals are never far away? Of course, the danger with all dramas that push the sensation factor of their storylines is that it becomes fanciful and breaks the suspension of disbelief; but Downton Abbey never has. What’s on the screen is always exciting, with gasp-inducing twists and nailbitingly tense crunch scenes. But, however much you’re surprised, you’re never left feeling that it was too far from reality or real life. Add to
this fast-paced element a touch of humour and the well-chosen barbs of the Dowager Countess (veteran actress Dame Maggie Smith) that pepper the show - including her genuinely asking “What is a weekend?”- and you get a recipe for pure Sunday evening delight. Fortunately, there is no commentary on the class struggles of the day from any particular side. Although it’s impossible to ignore the pressures of the time, they are entirely portrayed through the focus of the interactions between all involved. It serves to give depth to what would otherwise be just another costume drama, but also to give it the widespread appeal that it has. The second series now showing has made a remarkable transition to a massively changed setting where the old certainties of Downton are no longer there. So far it appears to have worked, and the charm is as present as it ever was. But there is a different vibe to the new series, perhaps more dark and serious. But rather than drive viewers away, it appears to still have us glued to the telly as we watch the cast roll through the next chapter in the life of Downton Abbey.
Liam Trill tells us why he won’t be watching Downton Abbey...
DOWNTON ABBEY is probably rubbish. It’s probably a very familiar, expensively garnished waste of primetime telly space. It’s on ITV for a start, meaning frequent breaks in which Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith lie to us about shopping at Waitrose. It’s almost certainly an unimaginative regurgitation of Upstairs Downstairs, maybe a depressing example of ongoing elitism and perhaps a bit dull. If I’m hedging my bets here it’s because technically I’ve never actually watched it. But at the moment there are several good reasons to be proud of my resistance. The alternatives at 9pm on a Sunday couldn’t be worthier of attention; the last series of Spooks on BBC1, an enlightening documentary about lan-
Films to see before you graduate: Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Director: George Armitage Cast: John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Dan Aykroyd (15) 107mins
ASSASSINS, mid-life crises and high school reunions aren’t normally fused together for comedy, and as such, Grosse Pointe Blank is a uniquely funny movie. Martin Blank (Cusack) is an assassin who finds killing people for a living to be a bit of a drag: he’s more depressed than he’d like to be, scratching around for happiness in a profession where job satisfaction is not getting charged with murder. Ineffectually trailed to his hometown
of Grosse Pointe by CIA agents and business rivals, Blank has an assignment to complete, as well as attending his high school reunion. Striking up an awkward reacquaintance with Debi Newberry (Driver), the girl he stood up at prom, he struggles to find catharsis as he wrangles with the morality of doing his job and his own personal issues. His stupor isn’t helped by his attempts at nostalgia: his house is now a supermarket, his mother has dementia, and his father is dead. Happy families it’s not. Needless to say, neither the reunion nor the assignment quite go to plan, and carnage ensues. You shouldn’t watch this film because of its sharp dialogue. You shouldn’t
watch it because of the hilarious pseudobanter between Grocer (Aykroyd) and Blank, two rival assassins whose jocularity veils their complete lack of a moral compass. No, you should watch this film for the performances of Cusack and Driver.
“Don’t tease me, you know what I do for a living”
Cusack, the man who made me want to try kickboxing and buy a boombox after watching Say Anything, delivers a performance of true wit and understatement. Cool almost to a fault, his natural
ability to deadpan almost anything (he also co-wrote the screenplay) is mixed here with an emotional side to his seemingly cold character: Blank is desperate for redemption, and Cusack drags the audience with him in his search for it. Minnie Driver is her usual sassy self, but also displays a vulnerability in her portrayal of Debi that sets her apart from the classic love interest: she may get the guy but whether or not he’s right for her is another question entirely. George Armitage directs a sharp, cultish black comedy that everyone needs to see, if only to recognise just how cool Cusack is.
OWEN KEATING
guage from Stephen Fry on BBC2 and this new high concept series called Big Brother on Channel 5. (Just to clarify, I’m joking, let BB rot!)
“Do we really need yet another period drama?”
Then there are the evils of the show itself. Some might say that nine million people coming back, week after week, can’t be wrong. But do we really need yet another period drama? Can we really be so blind to the greedy, narrow, elitist agenda of supposed national treasure Julian Fellowes, Downton’s creator? Don’t new writers and ideas deserve a chance instead? Isn’t it a crime to choose a pretty but plain stately home over car chases and gunplay in Spooks? Of course, I entertain the possibility that Downton Abbey might be good. There’s no doubt that us Brits excel at this sort of thing because they draw uniquely on our own history. The Americans lack the class and experience to pull it off. But Spooks beat the Yanks at their own game of excitement, so anything detracting from its grand farewell is a pest in my book, a typical household bug I’m bored of tolerating. Shun Downton Abbey and encourage someone to throw a tarantula into your room. Trust me, that’s more fun than it sounds.
Exeposé week Four
Tyrannosaur
Director: Paddy Considine Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan (18) 91mins
THIS film is not for the faint hearted. Previously known as an actor, in Tyrannosaur Paddy Considine tries his hand at directing for the first time. The results are sickening and powerful, like watching a horrific car crash in slow motion. The grim, breadline community he creates is so unremittingly bleak that you wonder if any reality can be this bad. Sadly, you know that it can, and it is this knowledge that creates much of the film’s power. Tyrannosaur is led by the captivating Mullan as Joseph, a widowed alcoholic with overwhelming anger problems. His face is an intriguing canvas of barely suppressed rage that he fights against every second, a bomb that ticks away until he explodes into the senseless violence that is the currency of his community. He preys on the weak and hates himself for it, but backs down from the morally justifiable confrontations which he should arguably accept. Trying desperately to escape the grip of his anger, one incident leads him to Hannah’s (Colman) charity shop. The following conversation typifies his internal struggle, switching from goodhumoured wit to blunt profanity. It also
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leads him reluctantly away from his solitary path, chosen because “everyone’s got their own problems and I don’t want to have to deal with them.” Hannah is in a painfully familiar situation, with abusive and controlling husband James (Marsan) waiting for her at home, and he is the real villain of the piece. You can see that Joseph is really trying to change, but James just acts remorseful to ease his guilt. Here is a true monster, bullying and battering his wife in some of the film’s most shockingly violent moments. Colman’s acting in the aftermath is spectacularly heart-breaking. Beaten, bruised, alone and with nowhere to turn, she is trapped and silently screaming for help.
“Tyrannosaur is like watching a car crash in slow motion”
At times it feels the moral of the film is that everybody is an evil scumbag, but enough light and redemption shines through to nurture some hope. The ending is satisfying as well, with a quality twist, the kind that makes so much sense once revealed. Some scenes felt needlessly horrific, but ultimately true to the world Considine has created in his powerful and thought-provoking debut.
TOM BOND
Johnny English Reborn
Director: Oliver Parker Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Rosamund Pike, Dominic West (PG) 101mins
ACCIDENTALLY pushing his boss’s cat out of a top-storey window, the bumbling agent Johnny English returns to our screens after eight years. After a spectacularly embarrassing incident in Mozambique, the disgraced former agent has been hiding in Tibet studying Zen Buddhism (and how to get kicked in the balls). Once MI7’s best agent, Johnny English (Atkinson) is then called back to help foil a plot to kill the
Chinese premier. Johnny English Reborn is very much a Bond-spoof, featuring girls, guns, impossible gadgets and even a similar title role. It is, however, a little subtler than Austin Powers. Sometimes you’re not sure if it’s mocking Bond, or just the spy movie genre generally. Unlike Bond though, he has no idea what he’s doing and confuses the gadgets with amusing consequences. However I did feel that Mr. English was a little too competent to be the idiot we all love. At the start, English is told “with age comes wisdom”, and he uses his brain far too much. In a chase sequence in Hong Kong, the fleeing assassin climbs over barbed wire fences, jumps
Midnight in Paris
Director: Woody Allen Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates (12A) 94mins
FROM the opening montage of shots across Paris, both tone and stage are set for ninety minutes of excellence. After a dip in form, Midnight in Paris sees Woody Allen reasserting himself as the master filmmaker he is. Owen Wilson stars as Gil, a successful scriptwriter, seeking to abandon Hollywood in favour of penning his first novel - much to the dismay of his fiancé (McAdams). Yet when the clock strikes midnight on a moonlit Parisian corner, Gil is whisked off into 1920s Paris: a world of cocktail parties, artists, vintage cars, and a plethora of historical figurers - featuring among others Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway (a brilliantly
funny Corey Stoll), T.S. Eliot, and both Fitzgeralds. Immersed in his dream era among his idols, Wilson’s portrayal of Gil’s creative discovery is pleasantly sincere in a film that relies upon his performance for its believability. Playing to a script that is clearly more than a touch autobiographical and self-indulgent, Wilson channels Allen perfectly throughout (only he’s slightly less Jewish). Marion Cotillard shines as exotic stranger Adriana, played with just the right levels of coyness and boldness in all the right places, and Michael Sheen is, as ever, wonderful as Paul, a character so painfully exhausting you want to smack him over the head with his many doctorates. The moral of the movie is clear: nostalgia infects us all, and the present will always seem dull as each generation harkens after some long lost golden
Melancholia
Director: Lars von Trier Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg (15) 136mins
EXQUISITE, operatic, moving, beautiful… words perfectly applicable to parts of Lars von Trier’s new film. Note my aversion to saying ‘the whole thing.’ Unfortunately, von Trier doesn’t succeed in keeping up his standards throughout, unlike the madness of his last feature, Antichrist. We open on about five minutes of supremely stunning images; baroque tableaux, meticulously constructed and lovingly edited, slowed-down to the point that movement barely registers – we watch in awe as planets crash together and end all things. Von Trier revels in the tremendous beauty of total apocalypse, and has conceived one of the most heartstoppingly perfect pieces of cinematic art in recent histYeah, that’s right. It’s an Art Film. There is so much ‘Art’ on screen here, so much von Trier-esque melancholy, existentialism and slow, enflamed off-camera gazes. And for the most part, it works. However – particularly during the second half, focused on Claire (Gainsbourg) – the pace truly lags as we’re hit with some increasingly dreary anticlimaxes. After the opening, we follow Justine (a very serious Dunst) on her wedding
off buildings and climbs down scaffoldings whilst English walks through the nearby door, uses a ladder and gets the lift. It really should have been the other way around. For those who disliked the first film, this is just a laborious extension of poor comedy, but for those who love the Mr. Bean style of humour, this is one hilarious rollercoaster of a film. Either way, the critics all seem to agree that the sequel is better than the original. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Rowan Atkinson fans will love the usual array of slapstick antics.
JON MINTER
age where they feel they truly belong. The past may appear more alluring, but it’s only a re-examination of it that makes it such. There’s plenty of romance and comedy, and an extensive array of location shots, along with a theme that’s not brilliantly subtle in its execution - but forgivably so nonetheless. I may have been just as seduced by the beauty and magic of Paris as both Gil and Allen are, but with this film that’s partly the point. Overall, it remains witty, charming, and hugely enjoyable: it’s not quite Annie Hall, but it’s still Allen at his best.
MADDIE SOPER
night as she encounters sudden melancholia and heavy doubts. This section is excellent, efficiently paced with just the right amount of protracted depression. The supporting cast – John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling, Alexander Skarsgard – flesh out proceedings, injecting both pathos and laugh-out-loud comedy. It is, however, with the focus on Justine’s sister Claire, and the arrival of Obvious Pathetic Fallacy, the planet ‘Melancholia,’ that interest starts to wane. For those unfamiliar, Melancholia materialises just outside our atmosphere, threatening the end of
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Earth (sidenote: why is this a common theme for 2011? See also: Another Earth and Transformers 3). Perfectly interesting plot conceit, but the problem is, for clear thematic reasons, von Trier purges the entire cast, paring it down to four people for the second hour. Goodbye variation. Ultimately, despite an excellent turn from Kiefer Sutherland as Claire’s hubby John, there is only so much melancholia one can take as Justine’s descending gloom is balanced only by Claire’s despair. No doubt the acting is great (particularly Gainsbourg’s absolutely haunting spasm of panic in the final shot), but centre stage here is not so much the moody characters as Manuel Alberto Claro’s pitch-perfect cinematography (and maybe Kirsten’s boobs). You know a film is ‘serious’ when it forces you to gaze firmly at the top of the screen lest the row behind realise what you’re really looking at. Von Trier, however, keeps all his seriousness on the surface, coming across rather posturing. Style over substance, then; but it’s the style that makes these worthwhile. Catch it while it’s still on a big screen and bask in the only real Art of this ostensible ‘Art’ film.
CALUM BAKER
What I’ve been watching: Dollhouse IN some lonely, oft-forgotten corner of your not-so-distant televisual memory you’ll probably find Dollhouse, a show created by the brilliant Joss Whedon and penned by a host of TV’s best, most road-hardened writers. It also starred the peachy Eliza Dushku. Quite honestly, the production framework was impeccable. So what the hell went wrong? I am a fairly extensive Whedon aficionado, ever since those days when Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to be shown every evening on BBC2. Whedon was responsible for Buffy, its sultry spinoff Angel and the cult smash Firefly. Although his shows have infamously never gone down amazingly well with the television networks, Whedon’s writing has nonetheless continuously been praised for its sharp wit, irony, vision, and its effortless crafting of strong, believable characters. But thanks to the premise of the show itself, that’s exactly what Dollhouse lacks. It’s about an
organisation which programmes individuals known as Actives (or Dolls) with temporary personalities and skills. The Dollhouse serves a number of wealthy clients, who use the Actives for a variety of purposes. The lead character is an Active called Echo (Dushku) and the series is supposed to follow her journey towards self-awareness. But it just takes too damn long – there’s only so many times you can stand watching Echo mope about blank-faced wearing an American Apparel top while the weak supporting cast bumble around her. The premise, although interesting, does not serve the purpose of a drama very well at all, which is a shame since Whedon is renowned for creating very strong female lead characters. The first series, particularly the first few episodes, are virtually impenetrable – not only do the episodes follow a tiresome mission-of-the-week structure, but the writers fail to inspire any interest in the Dollhouse. The characters are utterly characterless, and the very premise in its purest essence is actually quite laughable. Buffy never insisted on taking itself so seriously. Any Whedon fans will probably like Dollhouse but find it disappointingly offsetting. The producers and writers had a brilliant idea somewhere, it just never came to fruition exactly as they’d have hoped.
TOM PAYNE BOOKS EDITOR
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24 October 2011
Exeposé
London calling: it’s the B Luke Graham and Tori Brazier, Screen Editors, report on the 55th BFI London Film Festival THE BFI London Film Festival runs from 12-27 October this year and will show, in total, more than 300 shorts and features. These range in subject and size from highly anticipated and star-focused projects, such as The Ides of March (see next issue), to smaller documentary features such as Sing Your Song, which follows the career of celebrated singer Harry Belafonte as both performer and social activist. Here are the highlights of our first week at the prestigious film festival, which include some cracking efforts from both British and international teams: Opening the festival was the international effort 360, from director Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and writer Peter Morgan (The Queen). This ensemble piece uses a circular structure, with symmetry between the opening and closing dialogue and shots. 360 begins with a Slovakian woman (Lucia Siposová) embarking on a career in prostitution, and rapidly introduces us to more characters, as the focus moves around the world, with the idea that one small action can have life-changing consequences. All the characters are connected in tenuous ways, each representing a different form of love: physical, sexual, paternal, unrequited, and even taboo. In 360’s press conference, Morgan said he was attempting to portray love in the story as contagious and international. Made up of short vignettes between characters, it also seemed to suggest that love is selfdestructive and dangerous. The problem with ensemble pieces of this type, as in He’s Just Not That Into You, is that there is not enough time for characters to develop properly, and so many scenes lack dramatic weight. Weisz and Law are only on screen for about twenty minutes in total, and their characters are rather inconsequential in comparison to the broader story.
“Weiz and Law’s characters seem inconsequential in 360”
Despite these gripes, the dialogue is good and the acting spectacular, especially from the film’s lesser known stars. Ben Foster is also fantastic as a reformed sex offender, struggling to control himself, and Anthony Hopkins (apparently literally playing himself as he did not want to create a character) shines as a grieving father. Another big gun at the festival was Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut, Coriolanus, the release of which sees the end of the actor’s long journey with the Shakespeare project, started when he first played the role on stage over a decade ago. With his considerable pulling-power, Fiennes has managed to assemble an impressive cast of starry Brits including Brian Cox,
Gerard Butler, James Nesbitt and, in perhaps the performance of the entire film festival, Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, Volumnia. Adapted for the screen by John Logan, the film is set in “a place calling itself Rome”; clearly a Balkan state of recent times. Coriolanus (Fiennes) is a decorated war hero but unpopular with the people of the city due to his abrasive and tyrannical manner, and it is their support that he must capture in order to become consul of Rome. He must also face trouble in the shape of his sworn enemy Aufidius (Butler in his first credible film for a while), who, as a Volscian, is engaged in a territory dispute with the Romans. With cinematography from Hurt Locker’s Barry Ackroyd providing the film with a gritty, realistic edge, and Logan’s editing down of Shakespeare’s words to an impactful minimum, Coriolanus is well-adapted as a modern war film. This is, however, not one of the Bard’s most accessible or popular plays, being heavy on politics and violence, and less so on characterisation. Redgrave and Fiennes are the exceptions with juicy parts, but Jessica Chastain has a tough time of being Coriolanus’ woefully under-written wife, and many other stars must simply do the best that they can with what little they’ve been given. Shame is Steve McQueen’s second directorial feature and collaboration with actor Fassbender, and together they tackle the challenging topic of sex addiction. According to McQueen, Shame is based in New York solely because no one in Britain would talk about this still ‘off-limits’ issue, but America proved much more accommodating. Shame sees Fassbender deliver a blistering performance as Brandon, an Irish-American professional successfully hiding his compulsions until his equally-troubled sister imposes on his half-hearted hospitality. The film then follows Brandon’s life as it collapses inwardly, threatening to destroy him and all the things which he no longer considered valuable in his deteriorating state. Mulligan plays excellently against type as Sissy, a flaky individual, semiaware of her brother’s condition but too self-involved or afraid to confront it directly. The two have an electric but uneasy chemistry that brilliantly highlights Brandon’s fear of intimacy, and provides the film with a sharp sense of underlying danger and unpredictability. The solid supporting cast includes Badge Dale as Brandon’s boss and closest friend, who tellingly assumes Brandon’s “filthy” hard drive at work must be the fault of his intern. The film bears what is fast becoming a hallmark of McQueen’s in its intensely long, uninterrupted shots, be they emotional, as with Sissy’s
singing, or daring, as with Fassbender’s several minutes of completely ‘Fassout’ footage. There is fantastic, emotive music to fit well with these engaging shots, and co-writers Abi Morgan and McQueen throw a slight curve ball at the denouement of the film to ensure that Shame is never a predictable or safe watch; rather courageous and affecting, if not pioneering.
“Shame is never predictable or safe but courageous and affecting” Another British film of note at the festival was Sket, from newcomer Nirpal Bhogal and the producers of Kidulthood. This gritty drama explores inner city gangs against a soundtrack of hardcore rap and dubstep. The hook is that it follows an all-female gang dishing out severe beatings to any men that piss them off. Although the trailer suggests this is a high-octane and brutal film, it’s actually a lot more intelligent than that. The film focuses on Kayla (Kelly), a Newcastle girl who’s moved to London and is full of anger. She finds a release by joining a girl gang led by Daze (the brilliant and menacing Emma HartleyMiller). At the same time we meet drug dealer Trey (Ashley Walters) and his partner Shaks (Steele). Trey is losing his grip on his operation and takes his anger out on a random stranger, resulting in her death. The stranger is Kayla’s sister, and Kayla is now out for revenge. The storyline following Shaks and Trey is fascinating, mainly due to the pair’s amazing acting. The main story is…not so good. Kelly delivers her lines like a dead horse, and her characterisation is all over the place and frustrating to watch. The film’s violence, considering the subject matter, is underwhelming. Evident heavy cuts have also been made to the film, giving the characters too little time to breathe or bond. Sket comes together in its third act, avoiding clichés and allowing you to invest in the characters. It is a confident directorial debut from Bhogal, whose extensive use of close-ups allows his actors to really inhabit their roles and bring them to life. Moving onto the continent now, we come across an impressive entry into the French film canon at this year’s festival in The Kid with a Bike. There is indeed, funnily enough, a bike featured in the story, but the film is about so much more. Lost boy Cyril is shunned by his father and placed in an orphanage before being fostered by kindly hairdresser Samantha, who he randomly clings to at a doctor’s office when he is running away from his carers. This is, however, no airbrushed or glamourised ‘Hollywood’ version of two people building a loving bond: Cyril is a boy with great anger who has been badly treated in the past, and this shows in his behaviour- there is no sudden or easy transformation.
Exeposé week Four
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FI Film Fest. 2011 There are unexpected moments of lightness in The Kid with a Bike, howeverit’s not all doom and gloom. Cyril’s friend ‘Wes’ (Egon Di Mateo) amusingly demonstrates the origins of his nickname, and there is an enjoyable motif throughout the film of Cyril having to repeatedly rescue his bike from the clutches of the same boy, who is hellbent on owning it. The Kid with a Bike features stunning performances from all members of its cast, in particular the young Thomas Doret as Cyril, and Cécile De France as Samantha. Their initially fractious relationship seems true-to-life and develops in an incredibly moving way. The film’s swelling musical theme is equally moving, although (in my only criticism of the picture) criminally underused in this ultimately rewarding viewing experience. The Bird, however, is unfortunately the kind of French film that could put you off French films. Glacially paced, it’s likely to send you to sleep.
“The best set piece of the film is the cardinals’ mass volleyball tournament”
In the film we follow Anne (Kiberlain), a young woman coping with loss who has shut herself off from the rest of the world. She lives alone, barely interacting with her co-workers and rebuking all male attention. Upon discovering a small pigeon trapped in her wall space, she decides to keep it inside her flat and befriends it. This is the only memorable part of the film, as the bird is well trained and very cute; however, nothing else happens. There is the suggestion that the bird might only exist in her head, as a coping mechanism for her grief that leads her to venture back into the real world, giving her confidence again, but it’s not fully explored and what starts out as The Tell-tale Heart, with eerie noises emanating from the wall spaces, ends up being anti-climactic. It’s just so boring! Kiberlain is a great actress, but isn’t given much of any consequence to do. A real disappointment. Continuing on with the Gallic theme, Tales of the Night is an adorable French animated movie. Its style draws upon traditional shadow puppetry, and so all the character models are entirely black and contrast pleasingly with the incredibly bright and detailed backgrounds and sets. This style of animation is very refreshing, although not perhaps as detailed as the more standardised Disneyesque form. As all the characters move in 2D though, this is surely one of the most redundant 3D films ever: the 3D appears to be there just to add depth to each scene and to make the subtitles pop forward. The film uses a framing device of a small theatre group spending its evenings devising new plays to tell seven tales based on myth, fairy stories and morality tales. Each story has its own
aesthetic and style taken from a range of places, such as Medieval Europe, Asia, Jamaica and South America, with some truly psychedelic backdrops and beautiful imagery. The intention is to get children interested in history and different cultures and it could well be successful in that regard. It’s fun to watch without being too taxing on the brain, although the moral at the centre of each tale is at least a little thought-provoking and original. If you’ve got a kid brother or sister, or would like to watch something sweet with your other half, it’s definitely recommended. Our final film of this issue’s special takes us slightly further east to Italy with We Have A Pope, an enjoyable mess of a film that never quite works as well as it could. Following the election of a new Pope by the cardinals, the successful candidate (Michel Piccoli) suffers a crisis of confidence, refusing to go onto the balcony to make his inaugural address, and eventually disappearing from the Vatican altogether. It is a refreshing idea to humanise the highest echelons of the Catholic church, and the gentle manner in which humour is wrought from the situation is not at all derogatory for the institution, despite some attacks on the film by various Italian religious authorities. There are many genuinely humorous moments in the film, including the set-up of the scene where the cardinals are voting as one reminiscent of an exam hall, all answers being covered, pens being nibbled, worried glances being exchanged…Most of the other moments revolve around the fantastic character of director Nanni Moretti, who also stars as the ‘non-believer’ psychotherapist called in to help the Pope Elect deal with his ‘issues’. Moretti’s character is then also responsible for the organisation of a mass volleyball tournament between all the cardinals in the most memorable set piece of the film. Sadly, We Have A Pope then begins to follow a standard story arc, letting itself sink into sub-par fare after such a fantastic start and premise, and lending the film an uneven feel. It becomes slow-moving and turgid before ending abruptly with an incredibly predictable conclusion, which effectively snuffs out its flame of originality and flare.
“The Bird is a French film that could put you off French films for good”
So there you have it: our first-week foray into the world of a busy and bustling international film festival: London can certainly attract ‘em just like the cream of the crop in Cannes, Venice and Toronto!
Read more about the 55th BFI London Film Festival in the next issue of Exeposé, when we will be reviewing, amongst others, The Ides of March and A Dangerous Method.
Screen’s Quick Casting Call:
360
Director: Fernando Meirelles Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz 115 mins
Coriolanus
Director: Ralph Fiennes Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Vanessa Redgrave, Gerald Butler 122 mins
Shame
Director: Steve McQueen Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale 99 mins
Sket
Director: Nirpal Bhogal Cast: Aimee Kelly, Riann Steele, Ashley Walters 83 mins
The Kid with a Bike
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne Cast: Thomas Doret, Cécile de France, Jérémie Renier 87 mins
The Bird
Director: Yves Caumon Cast: Sandrine Kiberlain, Clément Sibony, Bruno Todeschini 96 mins
We Have a Pope Director: Nanni Moretti Cast: Michel Piccoli, Nanni Moretti, Margherita Buy 104 mins
Tales of the Night
Director: Michel Ocelot Cast: Julien Béramis, Marine Griset, Michel Elias 84 mins
Screen
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24 october 2011
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Turning over a new leaf?
This year’s Man Booker long-list featured an eclectic mix of diverse fiction and new, undiscovered writers. The winner, Julian Barnes, was announced last week
James Green looks at a new literary prize, set to rival the Man Booker... THE Man Booker Prize has been rewarding the “very best book of the year” for over 43 years now, but last week it received its greatest challenge yet. Dissatisfied over what they perceive as the tendency of the Man Booker to “prioritise a notion of ‘readability’ over artistic achievement”, a group of writers, publishers, agents and critics have announced a new prize for fiction, under the working title of The Literary Prize. Speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair, they said its aim will be to award novels that are “unsurpassed in their quality and ambition.”
“The prize throws down a gauntlet to the Man Booker’s longuncontested dominance in recognising the best in literary excellence”
Understandably, the reaction from those affiliated with the Man Booker has been less than warm. Ion Trewin, administrator of the prize, branded the group’s accusations as “tosh”, and Stella Rimington, the prize jury chairman, though she didn’t directly criticise them (the announcement came days after she gave an interview with The Guardian) said it was “pathetic that so-called literary critics are abusing my judges and me”. The new prize throws down a significant gauntlet to the Man Booker’s
long-uncontested dominance in recognising the best in literary excellence. Its reputation has been damaged recently by ludicrous offshoots (the “Man Booker Best of Beryl”, in which the late author Beryl Bainbridge competed against none other than herself for an award) and by the judge Chris Mullen declaring that stories should “zip along” (presumably so he could zip away and do something other than reviewing books). The announcement of a new kid on the block merely rounds off what has been a disastrous year for the prize. However, even if you think that the accusations against the Man Booker seem a tad harsh (after all its recent winners include Wolf Hall, The Finkler Question and The Gathering – hardly titles that can be breezed through), the introduction of a new prize can’t do the industry any harm.
“If the ambition to be different is upheld, it should bring more excellent novels to the public’s attention” Does the literary landscape have room for another prize? Well that depends on how much the organisers decide to break away from the existing crowd. Its scope will certainly be much wider than the Man Booker’s – any book
published in the UK will be eligible, opening up the floor at least to American authors (it remains to be seen whether it will consider translations, as the Dublin Literary award currently does). If its ambition to be different is upheld, it should bring more excellent novels to the public’s attention and encourage to great writers. If nothing else, just the prospect of a rival should move the judges of the Man Booker to cut out the distractions and make them focus on picking the very best novels, for the benefit of booklovers everywhere – which is the most important service a prize can perform. More details are forthcoming, but the intention is to have the first prize awarded in 2012. Julian Barnes (pictured) is this year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize
...and what the critics said Yes, the Man Booker No, the Booker should prize has had its day - stay, a new prize time for a new prize would be unnecessary “The Man Booker opens up a completely false divide between what is high-end and what is readable, as if they are somehow in opposition to one other” Andrew Motion, ex-Poet Laureate
“It is a sad day when even the Booker is afraid to be bookish … People want to think. They don’t want to be patronised” Jackie Kay, poet
“We liked the idea of a prize where excellence was the criteria”
Andrew Kidd, founder of the new prize
“It’s nothing to do with a fall in standards; it’s about discovering new authors”
Ion Trewin, Booker Prize administrator
“If it’s making literature as a concept more acceptable to more people, then that’s a very good thing” Stephen Kelman, author
“It’s pathetic that socalled literary critics are abusing my judges and me. They can’t stand their domain being intruded upon” Stella Rimington, Chair of the Judges
Exeposé week Four
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review Wild Abandon
Joe Dunthorne
Hamish Hamilton ISBN: 0241144060
AFTER the success of Dunthorne’s debut novel Submarine, released in 2008 and recently adapted for screen by director Richard Ayoade, this summer’s follow up, Wild Abandon, was released with the weight of expectation from fans of the young author’s first book. Once again Dunthorne takes his readers back to the familiar Welsh settings of Submarine to tell the tale of siblings Albert and Kate, living in a hippy commune on the Gower Peninsula with their family and an assortment of unusual characters, ranging
lives & lit Ella Williams on Irvine Welsh - Scotland’s best kept secret
from their father’s drug addict friend Patrick to a young mother who seems to believe that one day soon the world may end.
“Wild Abandon was released with the weight of expectation from fans of the young author’s first book”
As with Submarine, familiar and universal themes of growing up and the difficulties of family life are tackled, albeit in an unusual setting. Kate is 17 years old, on the verge of adulthood and eager to move on from her childhood at the commune, whilst her younger brother Albert escapes into his own world of apocalyptic futures as the marriage of their parents and the future of their home, the commune, begins to crumble around them. The characters are generally lik-
A GRITTY, humorous novelist, Irvine Welsh paints his readers a grim but somewhat beautiful picture of life in Scotland and Europe. Born in Leith in 1958, Welsh relocated to North London in his early twenties. Throughout the first half of his career he drifted between different music communities (Scottish punk and North London house), into delinquency and criminal activity, to some housing renovation and council based work before finding solace in writing. Growing up in the 1980s, Welsh is no stranger to the socio-political problems circulating in the late 20th century. His work plays with political ideas of deprivation and the frustration of the underclass, flirting with the subversive, using comedy and farce as a means to provide insightful snippets into the gloomy drug culture of a dark, sinister youth. Welsh first came to my attention thanks to the widespread success of Danny Boyle’s adaptation of Trainspotting. Laden with classic performances from Ewan McGregor (Renton) and Robert Carlyle (Begbie)
able and entertaining although none are quite as spectacular as Dunthorne’s debut protagonist, Oliver Tate. The closest the novel gets to such a protagonist is Albert. The sections in which he is involved are the peak moments of the book; there is significant humour to the young man yet also a depth to his character and his story. Particularly in the climatic scenes at the final all-night rave, where Albert stands torn between the rapidly changing reality of his early youth and his fictitious creations of the future, which is rather moving. Ultimately, Wild Abandon is a book about universal themes with an entertaining plot. It will have something that most of its readers can enjoy and understand, be that the difficulties of married life, family struggles, growing up or just crazy parties on a secluded Welsh commune! Emily Tanner Boyle does justice to the book- and not just because it holds one of the best soundtracks of all time - despite some pivotal differences. Trainspotting transports the reader far past Boyle’s glorification of criminality into a deeper world of deprivation and misery. However, there is also an element of comedy, characterised by the raw Scottish dialect with which Welsh marks his novels, which is diluted and even lost in the cult film. Rebel Inc even went so far as to provocatively exclaim that Trainspotting “deserves to sell more copies than the Bible”. The Acid House is similarly genius in its ability to capture a seedy Amsterdam; Welsh’s characters are almost caricatures, captivating a reader through a combination of fascination and fear. He is an excellent read and a prominent author for the literary use of dialect. Books such as Pimp: The Story of My Life - Iceberg Slim signal Welsh’s support of novels that allow the public to voyeuristically experience a fictional underworld half fantastical, half factual.
FEATURE
Leah Devaney, a study of nostalgia... but was the Potter Generation always as good as we remember? SOME people call us the Y Generation, as in “Why should I?” or the Baby Boomers Part 2, but a generation is defined as an age group united by a common thread or experience, and our generation is far more magical than any of these: we are the Potter Generation. I can’t remember where I was when the first Harry Potter book was released, but I remember its effect on me, sat in my Year Three classroom while the teacher read to us from The Philosopher’s Stone. I remember the first Book Day after The Philosopher’s Stone came out when every single girl in the school had come as Hermione: black cape, wand and crimped hair. For thousands (probably millions) of children like me, Harry Potter changed our lives; even before anyone could possibly know how much of a success it would be, countless children were being utterly enchanted by the world of Hogwarts. It made no difference what any literary critic might say, for us it was earth-shattering, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Books
get past the fact that it’s badly written, and that there are far better stories out there that never really got noticed. Yet, maybe it is ok for Generation Potter to despise what made them. I hate the fact that post-puberty the acting in the films reaches the brink of terrible, and that the series took so long, and that J.K. Rowling copped out of a decent ending and gave the final book the awful, turgid one it has. For me Harry Potter was never about the films; it was the simple magic of how it made me feel as a child. For many others it will always be about the films, and maybe that is what Generation Potter are entitled to hate so much. For Generation Potter the magic of The Philosopher’s Stone will never be replaced, because it is the pure, untainted magic of childhood, the moment that you know will define you forever, and maybe this is another good reason why it’s ok to hate it. If the opening lines of the first book define the childhoods of an entire generation, then the closing credits of the final film mark its ending, and so we are allowed to hate it because deep down we all knew that Potter would always lead to this. Childhood is over for the Potter Generation, and we all realise, finally, that the world of Hogwarts is not real, and that it is finally time to grow up.
“I can’t get past the fact that it’s badly written, and that there are far better stories out there ”
The first film was the next groundbreaking act to befall Generation Potter, and maybe this is what changed my relationship with it and made it all the more complicated. Because the weird thing is, I can write with such passion about the day Harry Potter changed my life but I’m not sure if I actually like it. As a child I loved and devoured Potter, but I’m not sure how I feel about it anymore. I just can’t
Epilogue . . . reviews of essential literary classics The Secret Agent (1907) Joseph Conrad
Penguin Classics ISBN: 0140620567
MURDER, espionage, terrorism. Conrad’s world-renowned novel The Secret Agent is treated as an archetypal thriller. Conrad’s book immerses us in the gritty London of 1886 and explores the already existing tensions between the east and the west. As a spy for the Russian embassy Mr Verloc poses as a powerful, behind the scenes anarchist. Conrad shifts from character to character, sculpting as he goes the underworld of London, and exploring the incredibly close
connections between the highest and the lowest sections of society. More than this, behind all the tension and in the shadow of such characters as the chemist and bomb-maker The Professor, or the stereotypical policeman Chief Inspector Heat, Mr Verloc has a family. As well as his wife, Mr Verloc provides for his mother-in-law and his extra sensitive and socially challenged brother-in-law.
“The book immerses us in the gritty London of 1886 and explores eastwest tensions” It is these background characters who provide the emotional and moral provocations for the reader. They offer a visceral and irreversible view of hu-
man frailty. Away from the emotional and moral trauma that this novel incites, Conrad also provides plenty of action. As his characters depart from rational action, as their lives are pervaded with fear and rebellion, they begin to lose control and we are entangled in a series of murder, escape and betrayal stories. Although admittedly shocking and at times repulsive we are kept on tenterhooks throughout most of the book- a definite page turner. However, amidst its wonderfully captivating plot line - which is especially impressive considering the period it was written in and the fact that Conrad was not a native English speaker - there is still room for criticism. His characters, although perfectly constructed, are not pleasantly original, with the exception perhaps,
of Mrs Verloc. All the official politicians we meet are as one would expect; self-interested, self-righteous and male. The Russians are the evident antagonists and the anarchists a doomed movement. This last group is typically all talk and no action.
“Amidst its wonderfully captivating plot-line, there is still room for criticism”
Winnie Verloc therefore is arguably the most successful character in the originality and approachability of her portrayal. She commences as a kind, simple, dutiful wife, but in the final pages, which revolve around her, she is a frustrated murderer, tortured
by loss and desperate for male protection that she looks for through sexual possession. It is a world dominated by males but she is the only character strong enough to fight for what she believes in and for her loved ones, the loss of her brother Stevie being what pushes her over the edge. Joseph Conrad is celebrated because of his astounding ability to submerge the reader in media res not only as far as the characters’ lives are concerned, but as this novel exemplifies, in the ambience and history of an entire epoch. It is an incredibly enjoyable and challenging read and its inspiring qualities are highlighted by the author’s own irregular background. ESMERALDA CASTRILLO books editor
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24 october 2011 Exeposé
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The beauty of science? Zoe Bulaitis & Laura Stevens - arts@exepose.com
Exeposé Arts explores the relationship between creativity and science; from da Vinci to CT Scanners
ART REVIEW
Before the Crash: Art and Science Collide @ Exeter Castle 15 - 20 October
WHEN art and science collide, what is created? This is an intriguing question for the basis of an art exhibition as on the surface they are such drastically different disciplines. Yet on contemplation both have the potential for discovery, whilst constantly evolving around a changing society. The exhibition appears quite promising on arrival at the castle, with an expansive sculpture by Ludwika Ogorzelec hanging in the sky. A twisting creation of plastic threads and angular lines, it is impressive from afar and from underneath. Walking under it, you can’t help but get the feeling you’re crossing over into some new territory. You later find inside it is not quite so. Perhaps it is asking too much of a small exhibition in Exeter to convey the magnitude of a topic with the words ‘crash’ and ‘collide’ in the title, but it is certainly ambitious to do so. You cannot deny that it is an interesting subject for an exhibition. But when you see gi-
ant limestone reproductions of pollen grains, you ask yourself, is this the best that there is to offer? They almost look like something you would buy in a garden centre. Maybe the problem is that when science and art meet, you are left with neither. Science is just a means to an end.
ART ATTACK
“When Art and Science meet, you are left with neither”
If you are interested in new ways of creating art then there is definitely something worth your while inside. One artist uses a CT scanner whilst another manipulates data to create sound that accompanies an oddly absorbing video involving a fish tank. On the whole though, the exhibition has rare moments of affect. Science and technology are surely to become indispensable in experimenting with different art forms but it is currently the catalyst in a muted explosion. RACHEL SAMUEL
ART FEATURE
The Sensation of Success MANY questions surround the field of art, few being more elusive than ‘What is it?’ However, this is far too big a question to answer without delving into philosophical depths which the vast majority of us could not hope to understand. Instead, we can think of art as a simple manifestation of enjoyment and talent. Having something ‘down to a fine art’ is
a phrase we are all familiar with and accept readily in our daily discourse. Yet I sometimes feel we fail to register just how important it is to find this thing that each of us has a knack or ‘artistic’ flair for doing. Whether it be computer programming, playing chequers or watching films, we
all gain specialist knowledge from that one activity that makes our spine tingle. That single mode of relaxation or exhilaration, which like no other, we have mastered. So perhaps we are not the most revered theatre critic or famous skateboarder on the planet. Nevertheless it is important to recognise those abilities which make us as creatively excited as Van Gogh may have been when painting his masterpieces or Mozart during his compositions. Being creative is about seeing beauty in things which other people may or may not appreciate. Often the artist is said to get ‘into a rhythm’ where he/she is within the realms of creating something they might later take pride in. Any form of art can have this effect on someone. For example, a good chef will combine ingredients to taste and produce the most stunning of dishes when they are really passionate about the raw material food-
stuff they are using. Discovering something new can spark that excitement which is synonymous with art. Pure fact can never give us the same pleasure that learning and applying a new skill gives us. At its most base form, learning to walk could be described as an art. We all know the ecstasy of a parent when their toddler takes its first steps. And the same goes for any activity which you find gives you that same thrill.
“Being creative is about seeing beauty in things which other people may not appreciate”
Of course art is not purely constituted by a burst of enthusiasm; this is just the beginning. Beyond here it is the individual’s responsibility to become the ‘artist’ and hone their passion with some sort of intention to become better and more accomplished in their field. CLAUDIA HOGAN
WE asked students what they thought of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing Vitruvian Man to discuss the relationship between art and science: poles apart or inextricably combined? Also, how relevant is a piece of art that is hundreds of years old? Henry White: Worms and can springs to mind when you ask that question. I think the double helix of DNA looks cool, or architectural drawings, so why can’t they be classed as art? Jessica Leung: Classical art is definitely still relevant to this day as it helps us understand the cultures of the artists from the past! Alice Scoble-Rees: I think it’s a shame more artists don’t have a grounding in classical work these days; detailed knowledge of anatomy etc. It would probably make their departures from it better. Nick Vines: Forgive me if I’m wrong but I swear this wasn’t supposed to be a piece of art, its original purpose was
supposed to be a demonstration of anthropometrics and what the ‘standard human form’ was. Calum Baker: A fair amount of exciting contemporary artists are actually electronics whizzes. They may be more Skynet than profound philosophers, but look fantastic. But traditional art is ALWAYS relevant. Historical-cultural knowledge is what prevents empty Solipsism.
“Do art and science have to be kept apart?” Zoe Bulaitis: Art is a science. Even something as basic as colour combination on canvas can act as a catalyst and change the end result. Rob Vile: So much of science is about creation and stretching the limits of the imagination, just like art. Da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist, why should the two be seperated? Tori Brazier: Da Vinci’s da bomb. ‘Nuff said.
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Exeposé week Four
Arts
THEATRE feature
Musical Theatre’s Dark Awakening MUSICAL theatre has never been so popular, it seems. The productions in the West End and on Broadway are growing more diverse than ever, and musical theatre has made a comeback on the small screen. The hordes of adoring ‘Gleeks’ prove that popular culture is never too far away from the musical genre. The increasing popularity of musicals has allowed the production of pieces created to explore the darker expanses of society within a familiar and comfortable genre.
“Art allows those on the edge of society to come to the centre of the stage”
In the last century, musical theatre has blossomed into a worldly, wise medium, evolving from the Victorian music hall into a genre associated with frothy tuneful fun that has today grown up into an arena for contemporary social comment. Disney’s feature-length musical animations paved the way for popular television hits such as Glee and Fame!, and the likes of High School Musical. Its popularity has soared through industryleading figures such as Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, with long-running productions such as Chicago and Les Misérables.
So, as a society we’ve grown to embrace the once humble musical. Why is this important? Well, in short, musicals have become a vehicle for tackling difficult social issues. Even as early as the 1930s and 40s, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s American musical South Pacific was exploring difficult racial issues which even ‘straight’ theatre would have found difficult to address. Musicals in recent years have explored the balance of shock value for audiences against producing quality entertainment. Productions such as Avenue Q, Jerry Springer: The Opera, Rent, Spring Awakening and Hair explore issues including religion, social class, the Vietnam War, AIDS, suicide, homosexuality and abortion in a very upfront way that often ruffles a few feathers.
“Placing AIDS on stage forced the audience to confront the stigmatized disease”
How do they do it? Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, a musical essentially about the murky cost of capitalism, is bloody and gory at every turn. Sondheim engages his audience with music and gore through the lens of 19th century Fleet Street, but he also makes us confront capitalist avarice and revenge. Similarly, Lloyd-Webber’s Jesus Christ
Superstar, now one of the most popular musicals ever written, was branded blasphemous and was infamous for explicitly showing the crucifixion of Christ and the 40 lashes. What was Lloyd Webber doing? He was bringing to life something at the core of our culture, our religion, and it was suddenly alive and passionate onstage.
“Musicals are now a vehicle for raising difficult social issues” The relentlessly popular Rent intimately details the battle against AIDS in 90’s New York. The stigmatized disease is right there in front of us, inescapable on the stage. There are countless more examples of challenging content coming from the West End and Broadway reaching more and more people, year on year. It’s important for musical theatre to continue to grow and expand in today’s cultural climate. Art is about representing what we see in a way that makes us face up to it. It’s singing about the marginalised, revealing the cracks in society, and challenging our everyday misconceptions. It’s social commentary, it’s making money, and it’s putting the dark corners of our society in the limelight.
KATHARINE BARDSLEY
Comedy review Ed Byrne: Crowd Pleaser @ Exeter Corn Exchange 12 October
WHEN Ed Byrne arrived at the Corn Exchange on a cold Wednesday evening, the comedian had already been on tour for months. Taking to the stage with sincere enthusiasm, he commented that “Osama Bin Laden was alive when I started this tour” before proceeding to deliver a set as fresh as if it were his opening night. Byrne is clearly a comedian at the top of his game. Having made it through comedy’s rite of passage with appearances on Mock the Week, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and having sat on Graham Norton’s sofa four times for a television audience, it would be foolish to deny that Byrne has made it big.
“I have been on tour so long, Osama Bin Laden was still alive when I began!”
His stage presence was an unusual mix between a confident performer
and a nerdy teenager. He promised the crowd “these jokes all work” and then delivered an elaborate joke culminating in a sock full of semen. This weird mix somehow worked, and Byrne had the entire auditorium laughing (and groaning) throughout his epic twohour comedy set. He is living proof that at least in comedy, you can carry off a well cut suit with a haircut that looks like a hobbit’s.
“Byrne is proof you can carry off hair that looks like a hobbit’s” His set leaped across topics from politics, to popular culture, to his domestic life. As a new father, the excitement of parenthood is clearly of particular interest to Byrne at present. He joked about the physical conditions of his wife and young son admitting: “I live with two people and they both leak.” This endearing (and disgusting) insight into life at casa Byrne only added to the comedian’s Irish charms, winning the adoration of the crowd. Byrne did not cease to entertain throughout the set, with joke after joke securing his success on the stage.
“Ed Byrne is an anagram for “Be nerdy” A particularly effective joke was Byrne’s admittance that he “was a nerd at heart,” and the revelation that the proof of the nerd was in his name - Ed Byrne. After a moments pause he revealed the pièce de résistance of the set – his name was an anagram for “be nerdy” – and explained that the fact he worked this out proves it to be entirely true. He then continued by describing a meeting with two scientists from the Hadron Collider who he admitted were much “better” nerds than he was. Having asked them what part of the Collider they worked on, being unable to understand it himself, they said: “Well what we
do is...” Byrne then went on to recount the descripton as sounding like “R2D2 having a stroke.” As the lights fell, and Byrne returned for a deserved encore, he left us with a final plea – “nerds need love too”. It is clear however that this nerd has the love of the audience in Exeter, his wife and son and is sure to win the love of nerds worldwide.
ZOE BULAITIS ARTS EDITOR
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24 October 2011 Exeposé
Theatre review Tartuffe @ Northcott Theatre 11 - 15 October
IT takes a lot to make a 300 strong audience roar with laughter at virtually every line, but that was the feat accomplished by the English Touring Theatre’s production of Tartuffe, which has been adapted by Roger McGough and showed last week at Exeter’s Northcott Theatre. The premise of Molière’s play is wonderfully simple: an imposter, Tartuffe, worms his way into
an aristocratic French family, beguiling the grandmother and her son. The other characters, however, are not fooled, and the ensuing action encompasses their calamitous struggle to expose Tartuffe’s trickery. The performance, in a word, is hilarious. One only wishes that this review could rhyme too. The English Touring Theatre’s actors clearly revel in their roles. McGough’s adaptation of Molière’s classic is composed entirely in rhyming couplets, apart from Tartuffe’s lines, which imbue the play with a drama that is at once flamboyant and fluid. The raucous rhyming script pushes the action along at an energetic pace, with the cast teasing every nu-
ance from McGough’s lines. Annabelle Dowler, who plays interfering housekeeper Dorine, puts in what can only be described as a stonking effort, behaving as a go-between and mediator between the rival sides of the family.
“I’m lying on my back / Like an open sandwich, a savoury snack” But that’s not to say that the play’s 17th century origins are lost. Just when the characters seem in period, in swoops a quip that brings it bang up to date. As Elmir tricks Tartuffe into ravishing her in a bid to prove his deceit, she begs: “I’m lying on my back / like an open sandwich, a savoury snack.” Moments like these are frequent and side-splitting, a roaring audience doing justice to McGough’s flair for encapsulating the sardonic. Cleante, another Dorinelike character with a penchant for delivering pitch-perfect comic wisdom, played
by Simon Coates, times his lines beautifully: “What is it about this interloper / That goads you into faux pas after faux pas?” Much of the performance’s humour comes from Molière’s cynicism about religious institutions, a viciously funny current which landed the writer in more than a little hot water during his career. Despite being a favourite of Louis XIV, Molière was often critical of authority, weaving his scepticism through the words of his work. Tartuffe justifies his abhorrent actions with lines such as “I do it purely for heaven and the good of my neighbour,” ironically juxtaposed against his adulterous pursuit of the voluptuous Elmir.
“Viciously funny cynicism of religious institutions ” For a play that caused uproar when it was first published, the union of Molière and McGough in Tartuffe now seems wonderfully relevant. There isn’t a review in the world that could do justice to this sparkling play- perhaps a mark of only the very best productions. CYAN TURAN LIFESTYLE EDITOR
Bikeshed Theatre in the spotlight: This week’s best performances The House of Bernada Alba @ Bikeshed Theatre 11 - 15 October
IN a small stone theatre with a minimalistic set, REDCAT’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba carries us straight into the four walls of a house in Andalusian Spain. The story is one of repression and claustrophobia, and for once, it is truly astounding how little is lost in translation. The spirit of Lorca is captivated by Kim Hicks who plays the servant Poncia. Her presence fills the stage with a vulgar
no-nonsense attitude of the harsh conditions of working life. Spanish idioms are smoothly dropped into the dialogue and Poncia’s characterization is that of the stereotypical Spanish woman in every respect, from her constant concern with Christianity to her hypocritical love for gossip. The setting and costumes go from black to white and back again, hinting at the great contrast between the outside and the inside, the free and the constrained, the dark and the light.
“It is brimming with madness, desire and repression creating an explosive combination”
The entire play is shadowed by a white screen at the back of the stage that echoes ecclesiastical and flamenco style songs, as well as showing impacting images of dark, passionate women - the release of the imprisoned spirits of the household. This artistically conveys the multiple unwanted presences inhabiting the apparently desolate and isolated household. Although daring, this method is extremely effective in the portrayal of Bernarda’s mad old mother who she keeps locked up. She is overall a potent presence, one that won’t give herself up to the torturous principles of so-called ‘decency’ with which Bernarda justifies
her eight-year long lock-in of her daughters. Bernarda has five daughters all of whom are in their 20s or early 30s. None of them have ever married or been free to enter the game of courtship. Mostly due to Bernarda’s intense fear of public opinion, they live in isolation. The staging at the Bikeshed of such a play that centres around the consequences of isolation powerfully transmits the panic felt by these women. The fear of never being able to become fully developed women, being able to raise children or maintain a household, but just as importantly, never to maintain sexual intercourse with a man, pervades. The House of Bernarda Alba is brimming with madness, desire and repression- an explosive combination. Overall, this mise-en-scene of Lorca’s play by a cast of five in the most simplistic of settings is superb. The mélange of Spanish and English is perfectly balanced to save the cultural background of the play, yet allow it to run fluently through each and every scene. If you like Lorca, are curious about Spanish culture or are simply interested as to what goes on in women’s minds when they are left alone, it is definitely a play not to be missed! ESMERALDA CASTRILLO BOOKS EDITOR
Alice’s Adventures in the New World @ Bikeshed Theatre 4 - 8 October
AS soon as the lovely girls of the ‘Fluff’ theatre company marched past us onto the stage, I knew I was in for a treat. Littered with catchy tunes, cheeky one-liners and some superbly comical accents, Alice’s Adventures in the New World is a fantastic theatrical romp. Don’t even think about being put off by the political nature that this piece likes to play up. The all-female group may have a feminist raison d’être, and there are obvious allusions to their politics in the play. Yet, as much as it appears that they wanted to make the play about politics, it doesn’t come across as a reason for seeing it. I would recommend the play as a great work of humour, not as cutting edge politics. This comedy predominantly comes from the
CREATIVE CORNER The sky is seeping Into the horizon, As the coast gives itself up To winter fog. The air is thick And prickles my lungs With icy sharpness. The beach huts are frost bitten And splintering: Crying for a lick of gaudy paint Before July sails in. Seagulls are silent, Gliding wherever the cold wind Takes them, Too exhausted to fight it. I walk along the stretch of sand. Frozen silver grains crush Beneath my shoes, And then I reach The rotting breakwater. Limpets and barnacles, Blind, cling to the Abandoned planks. They’re being devoured By the whiteness of the waves Which break and hiss As they try to reach me, None succeeding. So they retreat, cowering In shame Until summer arrives Upon clear blue skies. Charlotte Dallin revolving door of minor characters, and each actress is recast thoroughly well, each coming into their own with every new role they take on. The regular and quick recycling of cast though leaves you pining for a whole list of eccentrics to return to the stage to make you laugh. However, like the very best of comedy series, no-one outstays their welcome on stage and as much as it feels you feel deprived of another giggle, it only serves to provide us with a new face and part of the story to hear. The plot line itself isn’t the best ever, and the conclusion of the main plot line of ‘where is my mother’ as well as – what I thought to be – a rushed final twist after what felt like a more natural end, were handled far from perfectly. But regardless, it doesn’t detract from the experience of sitting through the play, as absurd as it may sound, and definitely does nothing to dent its charm. So if you get a chance to see it again, don’t pass it up! JAMES CROUCH
lemon grove
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Video Games Alex Hawksworth-Brookes & Jessica Leung - games@exepose.com
24 October 2011
Exeposé
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In emergency: FREAK OUT. BUTTON MASH. Exeposé Video Games exhumes the scariest games from years now gone... you have been warned F.E.A.R.: PC/360/PS3; Oct 15 2005
THIS game is one of the most utterly terrifying things I’ve ever played. An old roommate of mine took to turning the lights off when we played late at night with the sound on loud, and I basically wet myself every time something scary happened, and then didn’t sleep.
The game takes place in the featureless office building of Armacham Technology, where weird things have been happening. The player, as a new member of secret government unit First Encounter Assault Recon (or FEAR for short), is deployed along with Delta Force units to combat the paranormal threat. Thus begins a story that is half firefight, backed up with good shooter mechanics, and half terror, backed up by THE SCARIEST LITTLE GIRL IN THE WORLD. EVER. I would never play it again. The game isn’t just gore (although so many Delta soldiers die that the developers felt the need to apologise to the unit), nor is it just things jumping out of cupboards (although when they do... *shudders*). It works mainly on a psychological level, using sound and ambiguity to force the player’s imagination into overdrive. If you want to give yourself a real scare this Halloween, load it up, turn the lights off and have fresh underwear ready. You have been warned.
LUIGI’S MANSION is far from the scariest horror game ever made, if it can be called a horror game at all. It certainly doesn’t stand up there with your Resident Evils and your Silent Hills in terms of scares and thrills. None of that matters though as this is a masterful creation that is incredibly good fun once you get stuck into it. As Luigi, you explore a fantastically designed haunted mansion, capturing ghosts and retrieving treasure as you search for your missing brother Mario. The character design is great all round, but Luigi himself is a work of genius, with his varyingly nervous or confident whistling and surprised yelps setting a great tone for your exploration. With some subtle music adding to the game’s atmosphere, the game would be perfect were it not for its short length. However, this ultimately prevents the game from becoming tedious and makes for a very complete and satisfying gaming experience. Much like the characters themselves, Luigi’s outing here is sadly overshadowed by the admittedly superior Mario games, but don’t let that put you off playing this underrated gem or its upcoming, long overdue sequel.
ALEXANDER CARDEN
Jack D’Arcy
“I basically wet myself every time something scary happened”
Resident Evil 4: Wii; June 28 2007
Luigi’s Mansion: GameCube; May 3 2002
‘IS it too scary?’, I remember was the vexing question asked by so many concerned parents when Resident Evil 4 was released back in 2005 on GameCube. It’s actually not so bad, but those opening scenes, when you’re left with little more than a handful of bullets in a deserted farm town thriving with chainsawwielding milk maids... well, I think it’s safe to say the genius of RE4 derives not from its psychological discreetness but its open sense of tension and danger. It used new and inventive modes of gameplay to generate unprecedented realism, proving that horror games could do much more than merely rely on shadowy visuals, enigmatic voice-overs and creepy butlers (I’m looking at you, Tomb Raider). It’s great, skilful, and terrifying gaming that, for once, doesn’t rely on the psychological unknown.
Tom Payne BOOKS EDITOR
Top 5...
Most stomachchurning game kills
5
Fallout New Vegas: Bloody Mess Perk
Bloody Mess basically makes killing people more fun than it already is. You’ll find yourself randomly slaughtering civilians just to watch them ex-
plode into a meaty paste. The mixture of disgust and wonder as that eyeball flies across the screen in slow motion really is a special feeling.
4
Dead Island: The Ripper
No list of gory glory is complete without a zombie game. Stick a circular saw on top of a baseball bat and what do you get? A British summer’s worth of raining blood and a good few severed limbs.
3
Mortal Kombat 9: Mileena Fatality
It’s almost impossible to choose one of Mortal Kombat’s infamously OTT fatalities. In the interest of equality, I’ve chosen one of Mileena’s – because girls are gory too! In the mother of all mixed signals, she throws two knives
into her victim’s chest and then kisses him… before tearing his head from his shoulders and gorging herself on his face. Right…
2
God of War 3: Killing Zeus
After a truly epic boss battle, you throw down your blades for a little bonding session with Daddy. This involves viciously pounding him in the face over and over again – spicing things up with the odd knee to the head and smashing his features into a handy rock. The screen starts to fill with blood and you still can’t stop pressing Circle, raising some serious questions about yourself.
Kane, a simple melee attack results in my character’s thumbs stabbing repeatedly into my enemy’s eyes, gouts of blood spurting all over the screen. I genuinely screamed. It was brilliant! For the sheer shock value and the fact I spent the next twenty minutes whimpering, Killzone 3 claims the top spot with a clear message: gore is good. Jonathan jenner
The Suffering: PS2, Xbox, PC; May 14 2004
SINCE Halloween is now drawing around again it would be a personal travesty for me not to unearth a criminally underrated game, Midway’s The Suffering. ‘Criminal’ seems to be the operative word here, as The Suffering has you playing as the death-row inmate Torque, awaiting execution on the grim Carnate Island. Fortunately, however, an earthquake occurs just as you arrive, unleashing chaos and allowing Torque to escape. Unfortunately, it also releases a horde of Hellraiser-esque monstrosities, intent on turning everyone into bloody chunks. There are three main reasons why the game kicks ass. Firstly: the aforementioned monsters; instead of random bits of tentacles and teeth (looking at you, Resident Evil), each creature is instead themed around various methods of execution. The marksman, for example, represents death by firing squad, being a bullet-riddled and blindfolded corpse with a battery of rifles. Secondly: the gameplay. For those of you who love the psychological horror of the Silent Hill series but can’t get over the awkward controls, The Suffering is a crisp, sharp looking shooter with immensely satisfying action. Finally there is Carnate itself – one of the most interesting parts of the game is learning the history of the cursed island as you traverse its varied locales. I could mention other aspects (the morality system and the fact that you get to turn into a savage monster) but all that needs to be said is that if you own a PS2, you owe it to yourself to pick this up for Halloween. James Dyson
Exeposé Video Games asks ‘What Have YOU Been Playing This Week?’
Let us know on Facebook and Twitter
Zoe Bulaitis: “Alchemy on Android because it’s so addictive and I just made the wheel - much more productive than real life.” Marcus Beard: “I no longer have time for video games since I started University. I haven’t even finished Gears 3.” James Roberts: “Oblivion - always!”
Killzone 3: Eye Gouge Melee
Anna Sophia: “Ocarina of Time, because as a child my next door neighbour had it and would never let me play and now I am a grown-up person, I can play it all the time.”
And our winner is… the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen! On an innocent playthrough of the beta with my friend
Kate Gray: “Majora’s Mask, because I just don’t feel like my lunar cycle is terrifying enough.”
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Exeposé week Four
review
FIFA 2012: EA; 360/ PS3/PC Sept 30 2011
I, LIKE many avid footie and gaming fans, have spent countless winter nights shouting in both joy and frustration at this series which first hooked me in 2000 (the golden era when you could tackle the keeper). 12 games, three consoles and 12 years on it still has me coming back. FIFA 12 has the biggest changes to date, with the introduction of the impact engine, new career modes and new multiplayer features.
“Wayne Rooney break dancing on top of Ashley Cole was particularly hilarious”
Firstly, the gameplay resembles the standard FIFA style but with enhancements. Crosses are more realistic and volleys are actually possible now, resulting in some of my most magnificent goals of the past twelve years. The controls are easy to pick up for new players and still retain the complex moves and skills more experienced players like myself love showing off with. The result is a control system that pleases everyone. The largest change to FIFA 12 is the introduction of the impact engine. While not perfect it has made defending much more realistic and much less frustrating. Plus, when it does have the odd glitch the results are often hilarious (my best one being Wayne Rooney
review
Dark Souls: From Software; Namco Bandai; 360/PS3 Oct 7 2011
‘Prepare to die’ is the strangely threatening tagline used to market Dark Souls, the follow-up to the infamously difficult Demons’ Souls. In an era where accessibility and userfriendliness are buzz words, Dark Souls takes a turn in the opposite direction. Here, difficulty is a selling point.
break dancing on top of Ashley Cole). As always with FIFA, the presentation is beautiful. The players’ faces look fantastic - even Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant has been included. Overall the graphics make it a pretty handsome game to play with some spectacular goal camera angles and player expressions.
“Defending is now much more realistic”
Having played the 11 previous FIFAs I came to find manager mode tedious and repetitive. However, with FIFA 12 they have mixed things up with just enough tweaks to make the career mode fresh. These changes include an all new scouting system, better news reports, random events and all sorts of other little details. These may not sound like much, but when it comes to playing the game you really appreciate the fresh new features and layout. The multiplayer is, as always, easy to use and sticks to classic FIFA options of setting up a match and online tournaments. Ultimate Team is also back with its massively exaggerated stats and trading card system that keeps you coming back for more. All of these features reinforce what was already a strong multiplayer mode. Overall FIFA 12 has, in my opinion, been the most revolutionary FIFA game to date, pleasing both new players and the veterans. So I say get the lads (or ladies) in, grab a beer and have a kick around on the best 8/10 football game to date. Alex Phelps
I’ll make one thing clear now: you will die. And you will die a lot. On my first play-through I died several times before I’d even cleared t he ‘tutorial’ level. Then I died about a hundred times before making it to the first boss fight. Death is an integral part of Dark Souls; it’s how you learn,
review
RAGE: id Software; Bethesda Softworks; 360/PS3/PC Oct 7 2011 DOES id Software’s latest venture resemble RPG heavy Fallout, or gun-mad Borderlands? It’s neither. RAGE may look familiar with its society-turned-brown colour palette, but this FPS/RPG genre hybrid has always rather awkwardly stood on a ‘let’s tell stories / more death please ‘floor of indecision. RAGE however, has decidedly taken the middle-ground. This effectively ends up as wild, flailing attempts at dialogue, usually resulting in a mellifluous “mutants-are-bad-makethem-dead-with-your-gun-please” monologue. Combat is where the game really stands out amongst its ill-shapen counterparts; the guns aren’t just necessary enemy-delete buttons; they’re actually fun to use. The weapons themselves are frequent staples of any FPS you might find; the close-up, the middling and the far away one. However, here they have been slightly tweaked to add often amusingly brutal and inventive skirmishes, that more than make up for a severely lacking narrative. This comes in the form of increasingly crazed ammunition ranging from the killburst – justifiably described as ‘bullets within bullets’ – to the dynamite bolt, which is good news for torque bow fans. It’s a pity, then, that id Software has missed out on such a great opportunity by having added only co-operative and racing modes into its multiplayer menus.
improve and ultimately triumph over your deadly obstacles. No other game has ever managed to give me such a sense of accomplishment; Dark Souls achieves this by providing one of the most challenging experiences of the generation; every fallen enemy, every step towards your objective represents a personal triumph. However, for the entire duration of the game I never felt as if I was being punished, or having the impossible asked of me; even the most formidable of enemies can be defeated with the right combination of skill and tenacity.
Video Games
As with any game set in Post-Apocalyptia you’re going to need a way to get around those dreary wastes. You’ll be pleased to know that RAGE has brought vehicles into the mix, thus ending the hours of sewer-travel for your guntoting avatar. Your four wheeled friend comes in the form of a buggy reminiscent of those in Borderlands. Despite the coming and going of doomsday, the race scene seems to have only got better. With the introduction of land mines, pulse cannons and rocket races, the game certainly picks up with its Mario-Kart-forthe-mad transport tussles. Technically, the game excels; the debut of the id Tech 5 engine certainly creates the best looking game on a console since L.A. Noire. The abilities of this new engine are impressive, with highly detailed hand-drawn environments, resulting in minimal tiling. However, this new software may be ahead of its time
when concerning consoles. The game’s charitably phrased “open world”, 12 hour campaign and intense texture popin is more indicative of next generation DLC than a full-blown AAA title. Overall, RAGE is a fairly varied experience that reveals more unfinished ambition than being merely rushed.
Dark Souls is commendable for offering more than a stern challenge to players; there are some genuinely inventive gameplay mechanics on display. Bonfires work as checkpoints; rest at one to level up, recover your life and enjoy a brief respite from a harsh world. The next time you die, this is where you will restart from, which is convenient, because whenever you rest at a bonfire all the enemies respawn, ready to kill you in a multitude of ways all over again. The real achievements are to be found with online play; ghostly figures of other players can be seen crowded round bonfires, and pools of blood reveal the final moments of unlucky adventurers. If you’re feeling charitable it is possible to leave glowing messages on the floor, in the hope that your words of advice will save another player from a harrowing demise. It’s even possible to travel to other players’
games and aid them against some of the more horrific encounters that Dark Souls has to offer. The lack of voice and social interactions reinforces the game’s perpetual aura of solitude. This sense of singlehandedly facing innumerable, deadly foes in an inhospitable world is expertly crafted; a minimalist score adds tension with every clacking footstep and rattled breath, whilst a wide variety of stunning environments keeps the gameplay fresh throughout a mammoth playtime. Secret areas and objectives, along with an incredibly deep character development and weapon crafting system, mean that there is far more to do than simply grind through multiple death scenes. There are a few stumbling blocks, however; the plot is non-existent – although I didn’t find this an obstacle to enjoyment – and the game suffers from terrible slow-down in busy areas. Dark Souls is not a game for everyone; there is very little in the way of instruction and guidance, and the game makes it clear from the start that it is not offering an experience to be enjoyed casually. However, for those who want a challenge, Dark Souls offers an absorbing and original experience.
6.5/10 cameron ward
8.5/10 Alex hawksworth-Brookes Video games editor
? www.sweetspot.com
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Exeposé week Four
Hartpury trample EURFC Photo: Simon Dewhurst
EUGC thrash Plymouth Golf
Tom Thornhill EUGC Media Officer
Tackle on the sideline at Topsham Sports Ground with the reds of Hartpury ready to pounce on the green machine
Rugby
Simon Dewhurst Reporter Exeter University RFC 1 XV were left disappointed after losing 40-22 to Hartpury in their opening game of the 2011/12 season. A heavy rain shower thirty minutes before kick-off at the Topsham Sports Ground made early conditions difficult for handling and running rugby. Exeter adapted quicker and soon had the first opportunity to score but Rhys Morgan’s penalty hit the post. Morgan soon made amends for this miss to put Exeter 3-0 up after Hartpury conceded another penalty for offside. The next twenty minutes saw the game being played in midfield with lots of errors from both sides, perhaps resulting from a lack of match practice. st
“Exeter University RFC 1st XV were left disappointed after losing 40-22 to Hartpury in their opening game of the 2011/12 season” The match kicked into life in the last ten minutes of the first half with Hartpury scoring a try against the run of play in the right hand corner. This was followed by two further converted tries from the away side, putting them 21-3 ahead. EURFC responded to the Hartpury onslaught by going very close in the corner before winning a penalty five metres out. This led to Matt Chambers driving over from short range for Exeter’s first try of the campaign. Morgan added the extras, resulting in a 21-10 scoreline at
half-time in favour of Hartpury. The entertaining rugby on offer continued after the break with Hartpury scoring straight from the restart with a lovely flowing move that was finished in the corner by their winger. The game was then held up for over five minutes when the Exeter hooker had to be treated for a serious ankle injury. Despite the interruption both teams continued to battle hard. Enthusiasm boiled over when a Hartpury player was sin-binned for a slap, setting the scene for a second half which contained many scuffles between the sides. Exeter attempted to use the man advantage and got close to the Hartpury line on several occasions but could not add to their score before he returned. With Hartpury back to full strength, they soon showed their dominance again with their full back adding another try following an excellent counter attack. EURFC did not go down without a fight though, as an Ant Hitchcock try and a superb individual score from Mike
Pope reduced the deficit to eleven points. However, the result was soon put beyond doubt when another slick Hartpury move led to their sixth try of the afternoon, once again converted by their impressive fly half to make it 40-22. This was the final score of a pulsating match that was watched by over 50 supporters.
“A Hitchcock try and a superb individual score from Pope reduced the deficit to 11 points” Director of Rugby, Keith Fleming, cut a frustrated figure on the touchline and afterwards blamed the defeat on a combination of ill-discipline and poor defence. Fleming promised that the team would work hard to improve over the season and try to consolidate their position in the BUCS Premier South A division. Photo: Simon Dewhurst
Sport
A cloudless sky presented the back drop to a flawless start in the new season for Exeter University’s 1st Team. After a heart-breaking end to the 2010-11 season, a sound thrashing of Plymouth was vital in order to gain a strong foothold in the South West Premier League. EUGC did not disappoint. Out first was team captain Laurie Potter. After a traditionally nervewracking first tee shot, the captain settled into his groove, and numerous birdies against Plymouth’s strongest team member helped Potter to dominate his match from the start. The match ended in EUGC’s favour, 1-0. It was Danny Vallis who followed, bringing his ‘A’ game to Dawlish. The ginger duel was short-lived, however, as Vallis put in an impeccable performance. With three birdies and no bogeys on the card, it was Danny who prevailed, winning 5&4. Jack Irwin was in the number three spot. Another fine performance helped him find victory on his debut for the first team. A silky-smooth swing and unimpeachable concentration levels
meant that the opposition didn’t stand a chance, and the match came to a close in the latter stages of the round, clearly in Exeter’s favour, 2 up. EUGC’s number four was Yorkshire lass, Alison Knowles. Alison was arrow-straight from the tee, and her needle-sharp short game contributed to her easy win over Plymouth’s pastcaptain, 3&2. It was Tom Thornhill who played in the penultimate position for Exeter. In a match that saw few halved holes, Thornhill managed to claw back the front nine to a score of 1up, and a solid few holes in the middle of the round meant that the game came to a close, with Exeter gaining another vital point. With the overall score currently standing at 5-0 to Exeter, the pressure of a flawless day fell onto Chris Fleming’s shoulders. After a strong start to the season, Fleming’s confidence was high, and this was reflected in his performance. An overall score of three-under, including an eagle on the twelfth hole, was more than enough to ruin his opponent, 6&5. After an annihilation of Plymouth’s first team, the Green Army will take a great amount of confidence into their second match against UWIC in November – another opportunity for a 6-0 domination.
Exeter City falter again Football
Josh Irwandi Reporter Exeter City lie at the bottom of the League One table with only eight points from twelve matches played. As they hosted Huddersfield Town on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the Grecians looked to bounce back from their string of poor form. However, their game plan was undone as a rampant Huddersfield ran them ragged to a 4-0 victory courtesy of a Jordan Rhodes hat-trick – his second against Exeter, having scored the first exactly two years ago. Exeter started the game well as they tried to keep the ball in the opposition area. Exeter’s new signing Guillem Bauza and loanees, Jake Taylor and James Dunne, made some good combination play which looked to threaten the Terriers, but Huddersfield’s solid defence prevented anything from happening. Exeter couldn’t have wished for a worse start when, having too many men forward, Huddersfield skipper Peter Clarke launched a long ball to Jack Hunt on the right flank. Hunt crossed the ball to an unmarked Alan Lee who tapped it in at the eighth minute. Huddersfield kept the pressure on Exeter, playing most of the time in Exeter’s half. The pressure paid dividends when, on the 26th minute, Lee worked the ball through the midfield, supplied the ball to the left of the penalty box, leaving Jordan Rhodes one-on-one against Artur Krysiak, 2-0 Huddersfield.
Exeter managed to make a few good chances as well. After a goal-mouth scramble from David Noble’s corner, Bauza mustered a shot from 12-yards, but Huddersfield goalkeeper Ian Bennett parried it away. A few minutes later, Steve Tully’s crossed to Nardiello, but his header went over the bar. Huddersfield, however, nearly made it three when Lee’s header clipped the crossbar. Exeter started the second half well enough, though Krysiak’s hamstring injury saw him replaced by Pidgeley. They were back into attacking mode when Nardiello’s attempt on goal went wide and Bauza’s was saved. Exeter nearly caught Huddersfield napping when Nardiello scored, but it was ruled offside. Rhodes then scored his second goal on the 65th minute. Substitute Lee Novak received Calum Woods’s throwin, turned in, and crossed the ball for Rhodes who headed it into the bottom right-hand corner. Rhodes finally completed his hattrick just a few minutes before the final whistle. Danny Ward crossed into the box from the left flank, the substitute goalkeeper Pidgeley misjudged the flight of the ball, and Rhodes was clinical in front of the goal, tucking it away to Exeter’s far post, his 10th goal in four games for both club and country. Exeter manager Paul Tisdale, speaking to BBC Radio Devon, said: “We had patches of good play, but the scoreline tells the story. Our season is not going to be judged on today’s game, and we just have to keep believing and hopefully we’ll get there (to avoid relegation).”
24 october 2011
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Sport
Exeposé
BUCS Surfing 2011 Also in Newquay Fistral North the news...
Volleyball update Volleyball
Andreas Pfleger EUVC Club Captain Exeter University Volleyball CLUB started their 2011/12 season in style with just under 100 people joining the club, following the tremendous success of the two freshers’ week taster sessions. Held on Monday 3 October at St. Luke’s Sports Centre, both the men’s and women’s trials brought in an unprecedented number of players along with a very high standard of play. There was plenty of talent on the court that night which resulted in healthy competition for the BUCS squad spots available. Even with BUCS spots up for grabs there was no tension on the court, with everyone looking to have a good time and enjoy the sport. Coaches James Annells (3rd Year Exercise and Sports Science) and Luke Ducker (3rd Year Law) put both new and returning volleyball players through some testing drills and challenging exercises in order to see some of the immense talent on dis-
play. Among those at the gym on Monday were freshers, second years, third years, and post-graduates; returning players from last year and volleyball players back from years abroad. The participants spanned the entire spectrum of university students. Following last year’s perfect season (100 per cent wins in the league) the men’s BUCS team is now in the First Division of the BUCS Volleyball competition and looking to continue their winning ways this year. Newly promoted, the University of Exeter will now compete against other men’s teams in the First Western Division including Bath, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Southampton and Bristol. The sport of volleyball tends to attract a very international and globally diverse crowd, and Exeter is no exception to this. As with previous years, players hail from all four corners of the world, with the BUCS men´s and women´s sides alone consisting of players from Austria, Belarus, Belgium, China, Croatia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland, Spain and Thailand.
Exeter University Cycle Club carry on climbing Cycling
Peter Medhurst EUCC Treasurer Students from the University have, in the past couple of weeks, taken part in two local hill climb events. Top finishers in each were Boris Hutchings finishing 6th in the notoriously steep Peak Hill climb and Peter Medhurst finishing 3rd in the local Exeter Wheelers climb up Pennsylvania Road. On Saturday 9th October, three riders had an early and cold start as they headed to Sidmouth where the event would begin from. The Hill climb event is the shortest form of cycle racing, with riders setting off at minute intervals as they are timed to the top. Dependent on the hill, it is typically a 5-6 minute all out effort to push yourself over the line, and Peak Hill in Sidmouth was no exception. When it’s time to kick off from the bottom of the hill, the adrenalin is at its highest as you sprint off, feeling good for now. As the hill kicks up to its steepest of over 20 per cent you find yourself running out of gears, gasping for air and your heart pumping ferociously in an at-
tempt to provide your legs with enough blood to keep going. Every instinct tells you to slow down, but you must push on, overriding the pain. As the top beckons into view you make one last ditch effort for the line. Once crossed you collapse onto your bike, heart on fire, legs aching and with a taste of blood in your mouth as you wonder; what was the point? The time. The one satisfaction that you can receive after the event is how you have achieved compared with other competitors. In the Peak Hill climb, Boris earned the bragging rights, beating George Humby by 1 second and Peter by four as the riders wound up 6th, 7th and 8th out of 40 competitors. The next weekend a strong showing of ten riders took part in the local hill climb run by the Exeter Wheelers CC up Pennsylvania Road, on the far side of the University hill. Out of 30 riders we placed four inside the top ten, with the majority setting times under six minutes; a valiant effort! If you are interested in joining us on a ride we go out twice a week and have a range of off-road rides too, check us out at http://exeterunibikeclub.webs. com/ or search for our facebook group!
Surfing
Seth Coombes Surf Club Captain LAST weekend, Newquay’s Fistral Beach played host to the BUCS Surf Championships, as 350 of the UK’s best student surfers descended on the legendary Cornish location for a weekend of surf, sand and sunshine, all in order to battle it out over the coveted title of BUCS Surfing Champion 2011. The competition is one of the biggest in the world in terms of numbers of entries and saw a huge variety of talent ranging from people taking part in their first ever surfing competition to professional athletes who perform at the very top level of British surfing. Running on from our victory with the girls team last year, Exeter University
Surf Club were keen to show other universities around the country that we can still perform at the top level of student surfing. The first day of competition went down in small but clean surf with very strong off-shore winds. This made performing technical manoeuvres difficult, as it was very easy to be blown off the back of the waves by the easterly gales. Despite this, the vast majority of the Exeter team made it through Round One with only three of our guys and two girls bowing out in highly competitive heat draws. Round Two commenced on the following morning and to the happy surprise of all the surf had picked up to a decent 3ft and the winds had dropped off providing perfect rippable surf. This allowed some of the top flight surfers to literally fly with radical ag-
gressive moves above the lip and aerial manoeuvres abound.
“Round Two commenced the following morning and to the happy surprise of all the surf had picked up to a decent 3ft”
The level had discernibly stepped up and all but a remaining three guys (Michael Duncan, Andy Thompson and Ryan Hanley) were knocked out, although our two remaining girls (Rosie Ellis and Jenny Briant) saw off their challengers to make it to the next round. Round Three went down in the afternoon and unfortunately our last male competitors missed the opportunity to carry on in the
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Exeposé week Four Photo: Jenny Mamby/Unisport Online
Crossword
No. 24 by Clare Mullins
Across 1. Who you gonna call? (5,7) 7. Poison (10) 9. Huston – Actress in the Addams Family (8) 11. Spooky (5) 15. Person able to cast out the Devil (8) 17. Comet, Nimbus, Cleansweep (10) 19. Misguided doctor in Mary Shelley novel (12) Down 1. Small mischievous creatures (7) 2. Young man in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ (7)
championship. Rosie and Jenny, however, were unstoppable and saw off any competition that threatened to get in their way to progress to the final day of competition.
“The surf continued to build but the winds had changed direction, blowing stiff onshores, making it hard to predict waves”
On Sunday the surf had continued to build but the winds had changed direction and were blowing stiff onshores, making it messy and hard to predict waves that could make the paddle out a real effort if you were caught in the wrong place, particularly for Jenny who was riding a nine
foot one inch longboard. Nevertheless, both girls continued in good form and got the waves when they needed them, making it through to the final. Having two Exeter girls in the final was a massive success as it was, and we were really proud to have these girls along. They put in such a great effort and surfed with composure and skill throughout. In the last heat of the day they were up against two girls from Plymouth, Jen Head and Holly Donnelly. Holly, a sponsored rider, was quiet for the first half of the heat until she opened up on a couple of long rides, tearing them apart. Rosie and Jenny both caught waves good enough to see them get 2nd and 3rd respectively. Competitive surfing is always somewhat of a lottery and if they
had been fortunate enough to be sitting in the place for waves that had showed more face who knows what could have happened, but, nevertheless, they both showed that they fully deserved their podium finishes.
“Rosie and Jenny were unstoppable and saw off any competition that threatened to get in their way to the final day of competition”
Their efforts got Exeter to the second place spot in the team division and racked up those much-loved BUCS points for Exeter’s long term goal.
Sport
3. Naughty (3) 4. The Sixth … (5) 5. Separatist organization recently announcing a ceasefire (3) 6. Series of American Horror Movies (6) 8. Without formal training (7) 10. Young man in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (7) 12. Sparkly undead (7) 13. Orange squash (7) 14. Disembark (3,3) 16. Die [slang] (5) 17. Heavy-bodied serpent (3) 18. Suffix linking boogeys, spiders and bats (3)
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Sport
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MOnday 24 October 2011 Exeposé
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Slam-dunk for Exe against Plymouth Basketball
Photo: Josh Irwandi
EULC topple Oxford Lacrosse
Andi Kazeroonian EUBC Publicity Officer
James Please EULC
Exeter mEN’S Basketball 1st team entertained Plymouth in the BUCS season opener. With a new look to the side, which included seven debutants and newly installed Coach Gran, and their recent promotion to the 1st division, the team opened the season with a bang - beating Plymouth 81-66 at home. A gritty start to the 1st quarter saw neither side making much of an impression with their offense. However, it was a disciplined defence that saw Exeter take a 7-0 lead within the first few minutes and this excellent defensive display continued throughout the course of the game. Although Plymouth boasted a taller team, this didn’t prevent a dominant display from American forward and debutant Eric Halverson and fellow fresher Paul Anstiss. Constant power moves in the post, dominant rebounding and a great defensive shift from both proved too much for the side from Plymouth who were looking out of their depth, giving Exe a 16-8 lead at the end of the 1st quarter. Much of the same continued throughout the 2nd quarter where the full court press of the constantly rotating Exeter five seemed too much for Plymouth. Plymouth created numerous turnovers, which Exeter thoroughly took advantage of. In particular, Eric Halverson was a constant menacing presence in defence, as well as being powerful on the attack. Alongside Paul’s strong moves in the post this saw Exe not only take a dominating lead but also put Plymouth into deep, foul trouble. This paid dividends at the closing seconds of the half where Paul was fouled on his buzzer beating effort, sinking his free throws, giving Exeter a well deserved 42-19 lead. The second half started off with a bang, with guard Ben Hall’s emphatic two hand dunk off the steal from the inbound pass, however this display of dominance was not to be the theme of the second half, with Plymouth digging deep and coming up with some big shots to win the third quarter, leaving Exeter up 60-44 at the end of the third. Nonetheless, continued dominance from Paul in the post, an incredible shooting display from Grant Evje and Plymouth’s main threat were silenced by last year’s defensive player of the season Ben Hall; who proved too much for the Plymouth side, getting Exeter off to a winning start in the BUCS season.
Freshly mown, newly painted and after a long summer break, the green grass of Duckes Meadows welcomed the return of the Men’s Lacrosse 1st team. Riding on a wave of confidence from last season and with the efforts of a tough pre-season program fresh on their mind, the men in green marched out against a strong and skillful looking Oxford University 1st team. Even before the game had begun, the Exeter team looked slick, professional and game-ready. Under the leadership of their new captain James Please, the excitement and anticipation showed right through the ranks. New players Henry Vaughan, Chalie Higson-Smith, Rich Stevenson, Rex Carter and Alex Calver, all making their 1st team debuts, were buzzing with the desire to stamp their authority on the game from the outset and show that whilst many names on the teamsheet may have changed, Exeter’s hardearned winning reputation was still in safe hands. Oxford were slow to get going, the few hours spent in a crammed minibus had clearly taken its toll, and Exeter were there to jump on the opportunity from the outset. Just a few minutes after the whistle, Nick Kempster made a long run from the halfway line, using his speed and trickery to beat the Oxford defence and finish with punishing efficiency. The Exeter dominance continued throughout the first 20 minute quarter, with a display of great shooting from the attack, and unmatched speed from the midfield. Oxford did try their best to reply, and at times managed to beat the league’s best keeper, Nima Barzin, but more often than not, the defence led by Tom Loake crushed their attacking efforts. The defensive unit showed little sign of weakness, holding back wave after wave from the boys in blue and supplying a formidable foundation from which the Exeter attack could build from. This opening fixture also saw the dazzling debut of two new imports to the club. Fresh from across the Atlantic, David Weise and Alex Warehime showed a display of superior skills and power through the match, both finding the net on numerous occasions and adding a little injection of red, white and blue into a green dominated game. With a close final 20 minutes, and a gutsy display from the entire team, Exeter came out 9-6 winners. With goals from seven different players, it will certainly send out a message to the entire league that there is one team to fear who are the best in the South West.
Exeter University take charge of the hoops against BUCs rivals Plymouth in the opening game of the 2011/12 season