Zahir 7.2

7.2

Spring 2012

The Zahir

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Culture Magazine

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The Zahir

7.1 7. 2

Contents / Issue 7.2

Winter2012 2011 Spring

Significant? This was undoubtedly the most appropriate theme for this issue. It’s my first magazine as editor; a prospect that was daunting enough when I was first elected and never ceased to horrify me, so it’s significant that I managed to keep it together long enough to see the publication of this issue. For this I have to thank deputy editor, Oli Wheatley, who never falters with ideas and has the essential ability to laugh through the terror. He is the man with the parachute. Both of us are indebted to former editor, Joe Walsh, whose guidance has proved invaluable. This issue promises great significance in the form of the new editorial team. I am extremely grateful for their unremitting dedication and the vast array of uncensored discussion that they have unearthed. Opinions are in full flow in this edition. Controversy is bound to confront you. Is it unnerving? Great. We want hardened views, not drivel. Refute in an article for our next issue. Do you despise the change in design or the introduction of the photograph spread?

I want to hear. zahir@yusu.org.

(Although you’re wrong about the photographs.)

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The Zahir Is Lovingly Edited By...

Editor: Helena Davies Deputy Editor: Oliver Wheatley Literature Editor: Sophie Taylor Deputy Literature Editor: Jamie Beckett Art Editor: Ed Grande Film Editor: Alex Cochrane-Dyet Music Editor: Ed Grande Politics Editor: Josephine Harmon Deputy Politics Editor: Beau Rahim Photographer: Jack Western Illustrations: Beau Rahim

FILM

POLITICS

ART

4 5 6 8

19

Transform

30 Ambition

20

Creativity

31 Hidden

21

Repetition

Oscar Hardship Tasteless Trash

22

Letterbomb

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Alternative

As we progress past the award ceremonies that accompany the start of every new year, the imbedded issues that lie within the film industry have arisen once again as critics, commercial agencies and film studios struggle to promote their favourite films and undercut their rivals.

Subtle advertising, political agendas and imbalanced censorship are only a few of the problems that pervade the industry, but because this increasingly dominant cultural medium is often viewed as mere entertainment these problems remain hidden. In this edition we explore some of these current issues as Sophie Taylor assesses the controversy surrounding the recent biopic release ‘Iron Lady’, Olga Feodoridi takes an alternative perspective on Spielberg’s ‘War Horse’, and Alex CochraneDyet explores the political side of the Oscars.

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Sokal

LITERATURE

MUSIC

9 10 11 12

25 26 27 28

Waugh Liberty Rebel Inkling

This term the Literature section of The Zahir offers an eclectic take on all things literary. Jamie Beckett’s mad and dangerous piece delivers an intriguing insight into the poetic powerhouse of Lord Byron. Though the bookish calendar seems to have been occupied with the weight of Dicken’s 200th birthday recently, we have taken time to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Evelyn Waugh, who gave us works such as ‘Brideshead Revisited’, ‘Vile Bodies’ and ‘Officers and Gentlemen’. The final piece of the section investigates the ‘Because I am a Girl’ charity anthology, with an interview from ‘Chocolat’ author Joanne Harris, providing her opinion on the influence of literature in the third world.

In spite of the ubiquitous mid-year blues, Politics boasts a solid selection of insightful articles this issue. Zahir is a fantastic forum that looks beyond the sphere in which we live - collectively as students, personally and as the citizens of individual states. You’ve seen the placards: YUSU elections will inevitably appear in every Politics supplement on-campus. Despite my cynical urges to discreetly side-step what so many students see as a popularity contest (perhaps depressingly true of Parliament), it’s clear that politics permeates every aspect of life. Look to our website for coverage of YUSU elections.

Changing perceptions is the name of the game for this section of the edition. We look at the contentious issue of sampling in hip-hop, and how it is a frequently misunderstood and undervalued art form.

We also reconnoitre our often disrespectful attitudes to live music, and the dynamic between the performers and the performed to. The rebirth of folk music is questioned, or the branding as folk music per se, is brought under scrutiny and we question whether it should be or deserves to be in keeping with such musical heritage.

Feature 13 14 15 16 18

Traitor Revelation Accused Tents

Like Duty Howl Transition Battleground

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Art critics have always essayed to define art through both its artistic and social context. This arts section of The Zahir focuses on these matters, and wrestles with how these shackles can influence the perception and definition of art. Notions of beauty has been a pertinent area of discourse in art history, and we explore whether Jenny Saville is working within these conventional ideals, or indeed painting against the potentially dogmatic history of beauty. We also look at how art is existing within our present society, and our access to it, and if we can ensure that for as many of us as possible, we can maintain Keats’ ideal that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”.

The Zahir

7.7.1 2

Hardship.

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

Film

OSCAR

It is quite true to say that animals very materially helped to achieve victory in the Great War.

Major General Sir John Moore

Alex Cochrane-Dyet says, ‘Don’t be a woman.’

Following the 84th Academy Awards ceremony last month, the most prestigious and lucrative awards ceremony worldwide, it is perhaps time to reflect on the best cinema of 2011. However, there really is no need.

Anyone serious about winning an Oscar always waits until only shortly before the awards ceremonies commence in Los Angeles to release their film. So we only really need to reflect on our favourite films that are currently still in the UK cinemas -The Descendants for example. This is one of the golden rules of Oscar winning. In fact, it would probably be possible to construct a framework, a framework as confining as the one most Hollywood script writers use to produce mainstream blockbusters, with which one might win an Oscar.

mentally or physically handicapped will be sure to increase your chances (see ‘Rain Man’, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, ‘Forrest Gump’). Bearing in mind that the majority of the voters are actors or directors themselves, making a period piece about film-making itself (‘The Artist’) is also sure to do well. You have two choices for the end of the film: it can either be uplifting or depressing. Whichever you choose, essentially you have to make the audience cry. You may even be able to make it simultaneously happy and sad (‘Gladiator’), for example by liberating your minority group via the death of a good man. This is a great way to hedge your bets.

Be careful with sex and violence. Too much and it won’t be considered but too little and the audience will get bored. You need to scatter enough swear words to get past the PG rating but not enough to achieve a realistic depiction of real life. That would be offensive. In terms of production, you are going to need a lot of money, so you need to know the right producers. If you want your film to win numerous awards then don’t hire actors who are unpopular in Hollywood, like Leonardo DiCaprio (despite ‘Shutter Island’, ‘Catch Me If You Can’, ‘Gangs of New York’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Inception’, ‘Titanic’ and ‘The Departed’ he is yet to pick up an Oscar). Spend a lot of money on the sets, costumes, editing and music (the more of each the better). With the rest of your money hire publicists to promote your film during Oscar season. This is crucial. And don’t forget to make friends with as many high-profile academy members as possible. If you can,

Firstly, don’t be a woman. The ‘Hurt Locker’ was the only film ever to win that was directed by a woman. In fact, you probably shouldn’t really focus your story on a woman either. Films with a female main character rarely win. It’s OK to have an all-male cast (‘Twelve O’Clock High’). Obviously don’t make a foreign film – they aren’t even considered.

What you’re going to need for the script is an Oscar vehicle. If you’re a fan of comedy (‘Amelie’), animated (‘Toy Story 3’), horror (‘Psycho’), sci-fi (‘Inception’), or more artistic films (‘Requiem for a Dream’) then you’ve got no chance. Find a decent drama, ideally with a historical piece with bibliographical aspects, in which an oppressed race, drug addict or minority group is reconciled with society. Moving misrepresentations of the

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Schematic, underdeveloped story and characters hide behind Spielberg’s Hollywoodization… beautiful landscapes and remarkable cinematography distract from empty an story line...

These are fair assessments of the recent release ‘War Horse’.

secure an academy screening and take out some ads in the Hollywood trade press.

Sending a DVD to every voting Academy member, appearing on various talk shows, and featuring on various magazine covers might also help. Once you’ve done all that simply prepare a speech and don’t forget to thank absolutely everybody, except for the publicists.

“Films with a female main character rarely win.”

But what if one looks at the film from a different perspective? Not as story but as parable: not a story about friendship but a parable about a New War; about a New World.

The part played by animals in the Great War often seems to be forgotten, or at best, only briefly mentioned in books about the conflict. The total number of animals employed by the various fighting forces has been estimated at 16 million. At the outbreak of war, the British Army had only 80 motor vehicles but over 25.000 horses. The first hint Spielberg gives of this New War is when British cavalry, wielding swords, charge the German artillery position. Here the antithesis between animal and machine is first introduced, and machines secure their first victory. The reality that cavalry units were forced to dismount as the war progressed demonstrates cavalry’s place in the world was dramatically changing.

The main purpose of the horse was not to fight side by side with human, but to work behind the scenes. The British Army was almost entirely dependent on tens of thousands of workhorses for the movement of its artillery on the Western Front, most of whom were often worked to exhaustion. A reporter with Daily Mail wrote during the war:

Olga Feodoridi explores the subjugation of horses in the Great War fronted by the recent film ‘War Horse’.

The confrontation between horse and machinery in the film could be understood not as a set of events but as an allegory for nature against a new, man-made world.

This parable is well-defined, in what is presented as the culmination of the film: a scene in which horses face the tank. Here one can appreciate Spielberg’s genius.

Instead of music he contrasts only the pure sound of horrified whinnying against the metal screech of the tank. He places a horse into a trench, cowering from the approaching machine, and in the final moments the horse flees in panic and fear through the battlefields, trenches, barriers. The sheer terror of the animal represents not just the horse’s fear of death, but a turning point in the human history. It is the point when nature had to surrender to the human technology.

One should not forget that the underlying theme of ‘War Horse’ is the theme of friendship between man and beast. Despite the sentimentality of the film, and the oversimplified storyline, it still explores this important aspect of the Great War in a remarkable way. Many soldiers became deeply attached to their horses during World War I. As a reporter during the War wrote -

Our horse artillery bumped and lurched and tore their way forward over holes and dykes and deep mud and slush. Picked teams of splendid horses, excited as hunter on a hunting morning, dragged their hearts out in this noble adventure and an hour before the German charge was ready, the guns were unlimbered and in position..

Who said horses were no use in war? We have lost noble animals, but they have done their part indeed.

This new purpose is clearly portrayed in the film, when horses struggle through rain and mud to pull a heavy gun up a hill. The brilliant filming of scene is a very powerful and realistic depiction of the suffering the animals underwent during the Great War.

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On campaign, riding and tending the same horse for months on end, sleeping in the open only a few yards behind the picket lines at night, and suffering the same privations, the soldier came to regard his horse as almost an extension of his own being. Men who times of shortage or danger had shared rations with their horses or even risked their lives to save them from danger – as had many soldiers – could not come to part without real sorrow.

The Zahir

7.17. 2

Film

Winter Spring2011 2012

Sophie Taylor joins the iron tongues lashing over the Thatcher Film controversy.

‘The Iron Lady’ caused quite a stir even before it slammed its way onto the silver screen, drawing with it a magnitude of crowds and a sell-out record of £2.2 million profit in its opening weekend. The film charts the present-day life of the 86-year old Margaret Thatcher, the former Tory prime minister, with flashbacks to her eleven year stint at No. 10, as she battles with dementia.

Streep’s performance was mesmerising, held together with a fragility both beautiful and devastating, in what I can only describe from experience as a faultless depiction of the mental illness.

hair. I give the director Phyllida Lloyd credit that this hysterical, half-starved, stay-lace ripping trope was not intended in such a way.

Yet, needless to say, I left with a bitter taste in my mouth which had no conjunction with the salted popcorn.

From the opening scene, in which Thatcher shuffles down a busy London street to pick up a pint of milk (which, now I think about it, is as likely to happen as Anne Widdecombe qualifying for the 2012 Olympics), I was struck by the overwhelming proportions of Hollywood versus this seemingly ‘weak and feeble woman’. The result made my skin creep.

I felt decidedly uncomfortable in a later scene in which Thatcher rushes about her home, tormented by the lingering presence of her dead husband’s voice, and desperately turning on appliances to drown out the sound. The phrase ‘in bad taste’ has been splashed across the media pages about this film with ironclad precision and I whole-heartedly agree.

Not that I am condoning the decisions made

by Thatcher in the 1980s, with her choice to massively underfund the NHS, or her prejudice towards the south-east of England.

Nor do I agree with the poll taxes which lead to catastrophe for workers in the North of England. However, I would still concur with the words of the former Foreign Secretary Lord Hurd - that the film presents a ‘ghoulish spectacle.’

Some have condemned the picture as attempting to portray the ex-Tory leader in a forgiving light, whilst others, such as Telegraph critic Max Pemberton, believe its depiction of dementia “makes voyeurs of us all”. I disagree with the latter statement, since I regard anyone who draws enjoyment from someone in the state of psychological decline mentally damaged themselves. However, there is something distinctly Victorian, and by that I am not relating to Dickensian fireside meetings and bridge playing games but elements both puritanical and repressively chaotic, in the film’s done-to-death depiction of a tender woman’s tender mind. It revels in her weakness, whilst shying away from her years in power. I do not deny that the media loves to capture women in the process of mental breakdown, one horrific example being Britney Spears’s infamous public deterioration in which she shaved off her

“The phrase ‘in bad taste’ has been splashed across the media pages with iron clad precision.”

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T A S T E

L E S S

“It draws shameful notice to society’s attitude towards elderly people.”

These elements should always take precedent above ticket sales and commercial hampers.

Dementia is a serious issue, and yes I do believe it is imperative that the media takes the time to represent the lives of individuals suffering due to the disease. I do not deem coverage of dementia as shameful or believe that the ailment itself should be rendered a taboo subject. My opinion is based upon no political drive, save for the inherent sense that all human beings harbour the universal right to consent, which simply has not been met.

In January, Streep appeared on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC 1, defending the film as an attempt ‘to look at (Thatcher) as a human being at the end of her life and to imagine what it felt like to be her’.

My qualm with this statement is that it draws shameful notice to society’s attitude towards elderly people and mental disorders as a whole, here regarding Thatcher as though her life is already over and her present existence therefore insignificant. Streep goes on to comment, ‘I would hope that if she did see it that she would understand what we were after’. This sentiment is all very well, issuing from the mouth of Meryl Streep, but in a world of cut-throat blockbuster producers and corporate profit, I have my suspicions that not everyone involved had such Robin Hood intentions. The fact is, Thatcher cannot give her consent to the film, despite the exceeding discomfort of members of her family, including her children Carol and Mark, who have refused to attend any private screenings. Had Thatcher been my friend or relative I would have been appalled by the poetic license drawn in the film’s portrayal of her declining state. Dementia is a difficult issue; it is absolutely heart-breaking, and very personal to those immersed with it on a day to day basis.

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Britain, as a country, seems to bear an awful, unflinching tendency to brand its female political leaders without extending this treatment to the same extreme to its masculine counterparts. Elizabeth I, as head of both the church and state, was typified as ‘the virgin queen’ or else the Amazonian princess beneath an inch-thick corselet of sexualised steel. Victoria was similarly and unsmilingly displayed with her prudish convocation of buttons fastened up to the throat, whilst Thatcher has become immortalized as ‘The Iron Lady’, complete with the hard-boiled, bloke-in-a-dress persona of a tyrant dispossessed of heart or sense. It is all too convenient for society to demonise a woman driven by ambition and assertion, especially in politics, which has only recently ceased to compose a government of singly white, middle-class, middle-aged, boater-wearing men who are quick to condemn the grocer’s daughter for ever managing to don the cabbage leaves and get her hide into parliament. I still stand by my guns - that though inherently imperfect, Thatcher demands dignity and respect. She exists as a powerhouse in British history: a sensationalist, the first female prime minister and a leader with a strong, if unfulfilled, dedication to the public services.

The Zahir

7.1

7. 2

Winter Spring2011 2012

TRASH?

Ellie Swire scrutinises rip-off screen productions of imaginative literature and questions our inability to be separated from the original.

accounts, hated the film version of his book, which transformed his novel into something almost unrecognisable from what it had been, yet his view is not one that we can say is shared by the majority.

‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Wuthering Heights’, even ‘Twilight’…These are only a handful of popular films adaptations which have triggered potential debate on whether books should be made into films or left alone for readers to enjoy privately. If the medium of film can never truly capture the essence of the book, should directors avoid using them as a basis? Does it spoil the story, which has been created to be read on a page, not watched on a screen? But then again, what if the film is better than the original novel?

Surely then there must be some sort of defence in transforming our favourite books into an impressive cinematic experience?

It would seem that the answer is both yes and no.

It is true to say that the film rarely reflects the book exactly; directors cut ‘crucial’ sections or else twist the story slightly to fit their own purpose, therefore creating a film that does not accurately mirror the book. Likewise, an actor or actress may not conform to our expectations of how their character should appear. We become horrified to see the characters that we were able to picture so clearly in our heads, emerge as something completely different on screen. And apart from our own disappointment, critics have argued that in the case of great literary classics, the film can potentially prove damaging, as it encourages people to watch the film instead of attempting to read the book.

Of course it should be conversely pointed out that films can also help to share these great classics with a wider audience and through a greater awareness, individuals may even be persuaded to read the book. In any case, there exist films which are undoubtedly superior to the book on which they were based. I take ‘Shrek and ‘Mary Poppins’ as only two examples of this. ‘Shrek’ the movie is obviously a far greater success than the book written by William Steig in 1990, while the Mary Poppins of P.L.Travers’ novel is remarkably different to the loveable nanny immortalised by Julie Andrews. Travers, by all

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But perhaps it is necessary to review the way in which we approach the film adaptation. I would agree with the point that the book offers the reader opportunity to imagine and interpret the world of the characters for themselves, while the film interprets the text in a singular form, which may or may not correspond with the interpretation of the reader. But instead of criticising the film for not fulfilling our expectations, we should distinguish the film not as a prescriptive image of what the book portrays, but another understanding of how it might be interpreted.

Once we recognise this, it might be possible to identify and appreciate the version that the director creates – he might pick up on a detail and rework it in his own way. Just as the plays of Shakespeare are continuously reworked and adapted in different ways, so too should novels, experimenting and representing the original in different shapes, without losing touch completely with the central core. Books are never static; they can always be re-interpreted and analysed and should be. If we viewed each book in the same light, then it would make discussion very boring.

Likewise, we should respect films as being the creations of the directors and allow them license to experiment, rather than stick rigidly to exact representation of the book, a task which is in itself an impossible feat, as there cannot be an exact representation; everyone’s view is different.

Maybe the answer is to appreciate the point that books and films are two very different art forms that should not be compared to each other. It can of course be distressing to see our favourite novels become so far removed from how we might see them, but this experience can likewise be liberating if we are prepared to open up our minds to different interpretations.

WAUGH.

One of the great concerns in literary criticism is over the role of the author when one interprets his work, and whether such a work is completely separate from its creator.

Roland Barthes famously pronounced ‘the death of the author’ in his essay of the same name, arguing that ‘to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text’ and to study ‘his person, his life, his tastes, his passions’ would result in a ‘transparent allegory of the fiction’.

Whilst Barthes’ argument has its merits, in the case of some literature, turning to the history of the author can prove to be an enriching and perhaps revealing experience. Perhaps one of the greatest authors to use his own life and experience to shape his writing has to be Evelyn Waugh, a man who reused and reinvented his life throughout his novels to great success.

Born in 1903 to a somewhat wealthy family in London, Waugh went on to attend Lancing College in Surrey. This was notably instead of the preferred Sherborne School, since his brother Alec had been expelled because of homosexual relations, and he would use his experiences of ‘love and bitterness’ at the school to write a semi-autobiographical work ‘The Loom of Youth’ (1917), starting a Waughian tradition of turning one’s life into novels of personal resonance.

Evelyn Waugh then attended Hertford College, Oxford, on a scholarship, a place which would have an overwhelming influence on his love letter to youth and memory, ‘Brideshead Revisited’ (1945). He also befriended a group of aesthetes known as ‘the Hypocrites’, which included Harold Acton and Brian Howard, and whom all no doubt became the model for the wonderfully eccentric character of Anthony Blanche in ‘Brideshead Revisited’.

Right from his first novel, ‘Decline and Fall’ (1928), we see the facts of Waugh’s life being turned into fiction. After unfairly becoming the victim of drunken prank, Paul Pennyfeather is sent down from Oxford and resorts to teaching at an isolated Welsh boarding school. In real life, Waugh’s own career at Oxford met a similarly shameful end when he obtained a third class degree,

Literature

Alex Edgerton pieces together the inspirations for the work of Evelyn Waugh.

a feeble distinction for a scholar, and hence like Paul Pennyfeather became a schoolmaster, instead of pursuing his studies at Oxford further.

However, whilst teaching, he began to write extensively, and would eventually have his first novel ‘Decline and Fall’ published in 1928. During this time, he had also immersed himself in the society of the ‘Bright Young People’, a name given to the decadent group of aristocrats in London, whose behaviour epitomized the arrival of ‘the Jazz Age’. Waugh would base his next novel ‘Vile Bodies’ (1930) on this debauched company, the title itself summing up his mixed feelings about them, whilst the meaningless engagement of the novel’s protagonist Adam Fenwick-Symes and the self-absorbed socialite Nina Blout was largely shaped by Waugh’s own failed marriage to Evelyn Gardner between 1928-9.

Following the success of ‘Vile Bodies’, Waugh began to explore places outside of England for inspiration. He travelled as a newspaper correspondent to Africa, most notably visiting Abyssinia, which became the inspiration for Waugh’s next novel, ‘Black Mischief’ (1932). The book itself is a comic tale of a newly crowned emperor in the fictional African state ‘Azania’, whose strange native customs were modelled on those of Abyssinia, whilst some of the novel’s plot details were ‘manifestly taken from recent Ethiopian history’ according to his biographer Christopher Sykes.

Waugh then looked to the other side of the Atlantic for his next expedition, spending the first half of 1933 in South America. Once again, Waugh incorporated elements from his trip into his next novel, ‘A Handful of Dust’ (1934). The continent itself became the scene for its second half and the sinister figure of Mr Todd, whose love of Dickens keeps the protagonist Tony Last trapped in the jungle, was based on a real-life rancher called Mr Christie whom Waugh encountered on his travels.

The arrival of the Second World War would shape much of Waugh’s subsequent writings.

Many of the characters in ‘Put out More Flags’

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EVELY

(1942) were based on the evacuees Waugh met during war-time, whilst the prologue to ‘Brideshead Revisited’ (1945) is said to be lifted almost directly from his diaries. Waugh would also go on to write a trilogy of novels, ‘Men at Arms’ (1952), ‘Officers and Gentlemen’ (1955) and ‘Unconditional Surrender’ (1962), entitled ‘Sword of Honour’ that largely reflected his own war-time experiences.

After the War, he visited America in early 1947 to discuss a film adaptation of ‘Brideshead Revisited’, and it was his visit to the Forest Lawn burial ground in California that would inform and become the setting for his next work, ‘The Loved One’ (a mortician’s jargon for a corpse). The blackly comic novella brilliantly satirises American attitudes to the dead, and most hilariously, their pets.

Throughout the 1950s, Waugh’s health began to deteriorate, both mentally and psychically, and his visits to various hospitals became more frequent. On the encouragement of psychiatrists, he wrote ‘The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold’ (1957), which Waugh himself admits is closely autobiographical and based on the fear that his mind was giving way. This was to be an ‘ordeal’ that he would struggle with right up to his death in 1966.

Although Waugh would angrily claim that ‘nothing is more insulting to an author than to assume that he is incapable of anything but the mere transcription of what he observes’, there’s no denying the influence his own life has on his novels. It would be fallacious to claim Waugh’s novels were ‘mere transcription of what he observes’, but instead what Waugh does is retrieve memories, moments and perhaps feelings from his life and travels, crafting them into stories that have become some of the finest pieces of modern English literature.

The Zahir

7.1 7. 2

Literature

Winter 2011

Spring 2012

LIBERTY

L.B. REBEL Jamie Beckett admires Lord Byron’s bad boy image.

Sophie Taylor asks can literature liberate with Chocolat author Joanne Harris?

As a writer, I am constantly spellbound by literature’s capability- its power to transform, to mutate and mutilate, to evoke persuasion, its penchant for time-travel, as well as its faculty of immersing a narrative in any place, real or imagined. Writers can twist the strings of fate of any of their characters, create allusions, illusions...but isn’t all this figurative- fragments of life boiled down to figments of the imagination? Can fiction really help to cancel out fact?

‘Because I am a Girl’ is a charity anthology for Plan UK, co-written by seven different authors, including ‘Trainspotting’ writer, Irvine Welsh, journalist Tim Butcher and author of ‘Chocolat’, Joanne Harris, who have all drawn inspiration for their short stories from their experiences of projects in the third world. As the collection first came to the shelves, I was struck with the question of whether the anthology could ever be effective in dealing with such urgent real-life issues such as rape and domestic abuse: whether this genre of literature could ever truly liberate? And so I travelled down to Christchurch College in Oxford for the preliminary book launch to see what the writers had to say for themselves.

I have always been dubious of these people in the public eye, of Z-list Fearne Cotton lookalikes who simper away on Children In Need about addressing women’s crises whilst a week later they can be seen on daytime TV plugging their new bunny-girl calendars. Perhaps it was a certain cynicism on my part which made me suspect that these writers may be nothing more than flimsy do-gooders, flapping about their CVs and hoping to find their way into the next band-aid video.

I have been involved with the charity Plan UK for five years, in my sponsorship of a young girl from Togo. The donation she receives goes towards the education of herself and her sister, as well as providing

essentials to her small rural community, such as stationery and French language books to the local school, and paying for vaccinations and mosquito nets. To some extent, I failed to see how the writer’s involvement in this cause could improve the lives there, as well as regarding the great expense of flights and accommodation as perhaps being better spent on direct aid to local communities. Despite being entrenched in the pre-deadline panic of her new novel, the sequel to ‘Chocolat’, Joanne found the time to talk to me about her involvement with the anthology and Plan projects. Her short story, ‘Road Song’, depicts the Togan settlement of Lomé, which she visited for a brief period in 2010.

What were your experiences of Togo?

“I spent a week there, mostly with a family in the north of the country. I lived with the family, cooked with them, chopped wood with them, talked to them, shared their lives.

In the community I was looking at some of Plan’s local projects, including schools, small finance schemes and schemes for hygiene, inoculation and anti-circumcision propaganda. I talked to a lot of people, especially girls, to get some idea of their lives and of the problems they were facing.”

What inspired the ideas behind ‘Road Song’? “‘Road Song’ was based upon some interviews I did with young girls who had been lured away from their families by traffickers, on the promise of a better life. They had all come home, many after having been abused or trafficked as prostitutes.”

Did you see your work in these communities and with the anthology, actually make a difference to people’s lives?

“Unlike crisis organisations like MSF (which I also support) Plan makes long-term differences to mostly stable countries still in development, rather than offering crisis aid in war-torn countries. It’s a long, sensitive process, trying to change customs and beliefs that have endured for generations.

Plan works with village elders, educators and families to try to combat some of the less 10

appealing tribal customs, things like female circumcision, for instance, to persuade people that children must be valued and that girls especially, have as much potential for improvement, education and usefulness within the community as boys. Things are changing, with Plans help. But it all takes effort and time.”

The overriding impression I drew from this brief interview with Joanne Harris was that, in a country of wild lions and tropical disease, the true threat to women was the intangible, that of the tradition of brutal initiations of female circumcision, rape and child trafficking. The question still stands: can literature liberate? I know it can. I am inspired on a daily basis by what I read in the newspaper, of real-life stories of men and women living everyday under unimaginable threat. I could pore for days over letters from the little girl I sponsor, the drawings of her family, her teachers and her friends, scrawled beside accounts of her time in school and the stories her mother reads her as she is tucked up in bed. Speeches, as self-standing works of literature, have the capacity to move and stir us. After reading ‘Because I am a Girl’, in which tragedy and comedy run alongside each other in a somewhat brutal fashion, I couldn’t help but be touched by the optimism of the young girls and the importance they placed upon their education, who were both inspired and provided inspiration to the writers who came into their community. The anthology introduced me to a cruelty I had no idea existed and expectations of women that only subsisted to my mind as being deeply rooted in the past. After the conference, not a single audience member made it through the doors without purchasing a copy of the anthology. It appears that in Mark Twain’s world where action tends to speak louder than words, attitudes remains the most important thing, which, when changed may also end antagonism. The anthology itself engenders the long-term aid necessary to alter long-held beliefs, which can only ever be more influential over time than a large pay cheque.

Lord Byron has maintained a bad-boy status for centuries, not necessarily regarded as the best of the Romantic Poets, but certainly the most infamous. The oft-quoted Lady Caroline Lamb notoriously described Byron as “mad – bad – and dangerous to know”, and her position as his one-time lover, changing to that of a life-time stalker, perfectly represents our obsession with the man. Yet why is it that this needy poet – awkwardly club-footed, eccentrically aggressive and demonstrably and unacceptably promiscuous – should become such a cultural icon?

Byron’s defiance was formed through his opposition to figures of authority as well as the confines of social convention. Although intelligent and widely read he was a poor and unruly student, at one point composing scurrilous poems about his headmaster before dragging his desk into the school hall and setting it alight. This attitude continued at Cambridge, where he flouted a rule against students keeping dogs by instead keeping a large tame bear.

Byron’s first major satirical work, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), demonstrates both his passionate nature and verve for the vitriolic, responding to a review against his early work which he thought to be unjust. In a bold and defiant sweep of humour and scorn, Byron takes on not only his critic but the whole of the literary world in an audacious response to the Edinburgh Review, a scholarly magazine.

“But yet, so near all modern worthies run, ‘Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun:

“her position as his life-time stalker represents our obsession with the man.”

Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike, Our bards and censors are so much alike.”

Mimicking the style of the Augustan poets whom he lauded through rhyming couplets and epic language, it may be suggested that the biting nature of this work smacks of immaturity; a venting of adolescent fury.

Yet his unflinching boldness and – possibly misguided – comments on contemporary literary figures represent the fearlessness which drove the formation of an icon. Here is a young and relatively inexperienced outsider, refusing to ingratiate himself with the arbiters and residents of his own poetic world – a man defiant and daring to act outside the safe borders of convention and the hated “cant” of his age.

The public appeal of such affront and open rebellion is mirrored in today’s society, where boundaries of convention are constantly being thrust further, the media being spurred by the perceived need to allay fears of stagnation and rouse excitement or unease in the public mind. The comments and criticisms of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers were vindicated through the satire’s huge popularity; a reception which became the norm for the poet’s publications.

Despite the distaste which he had for being regarded as a popular author, writing for a wage, his works sold extremely well: driven, in part, by his infamy. On returning from a particularly debauched Grand Tour of Europe – during which time he managed to swim the Hellespont, drink with an Eastern despot and reportedly sleep with over 200 women – the release of his semi-autobiographical narrative Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) was met with massive regard, selling out its first run within three days.

The man did not fear controversy, but seemingly aimed for it. On attaining the Barony of Rochdale, Byron used his right to sit in the House of Lords as a way to advocate radical ideas, notably in defending the Luddite movement from oppressive

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legislation. Here he also supported one of his most infamous idols, Napoleon Bonaparte. Byron controversially admired the strength and power of England’s greatest enemy and after his defeat at Waterloo publically mourned the loss, even ordering a perfect replica of the despot’s coach to be made for a tour around Europe. In the face of the jingoistic feelings of nationalism following Waterloo – popular sentiments which Byron admonished – this was quite a statement.

As a figure of recklessness and passionate volatility, we may regard Byron as a cultural icon bereft of substance, adhering merely to a popular taste for radicalism which is highly superficial. We may question whether such notoriety was merely an affectation or publicity drive – like many rebels, Byron still enjoyed the acknowledgement of the society which he radicalised. Nevertheless, his passionate temperament was more than just a foppish illusion.

In the epic poem, Don Juan, Byron criticises a simple lust for fame: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their “midnight taper,” To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.

Lord Byron followed his own passions throughout his life not being driven or controlled by social expectations. His passionate and idealistic nature was typified in the final years of his life, where he fought and died for the cause of Greek independence over Ottoman rule. He was horrified by the wasted passion and nobility of the ancient world, then reduced to rubble and driven to slavery by higher authorities.

We admire Lord Byron not just for his bad-boy image, but for the deep and passionate resolve which he carried with him throughout an interesting and varied life. His notoriety, like his poetry, is timeless.

7.1 7. 2

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

INKLING

Michael Tansini learns how not to worry about the absent elves.

As a literature student, the question ‘So what books do you like?’ comes round as often as the disbelieving snort chemistry students emit when I admit the number of contact hours I get. How I respond and which “worthy” literary authors I choose is very important. Though in the world of literary criticism, “cultural and contemporary contexts” are important buzzwords to emphasise the subjectivity of the genre - that one man’s Tolstoy is another man’s trash - this question is mostly used to show off.

Yes, you are saying, to the approving nods when you name this author or that, I am a bona fide Renaissance Man, aware of culture, whose knowledge of the English canon marks me out as an intelligent sort, likely to get on that all-important graduate scheme.

No person readily admits to their love of Dan Brown and if they do the corollary words ‘throw-away’ and ‘holiday reading’ aren’t far behind.

Yet I have a confession to make.

Though I read poetry, plays and prose, and can spiel my Prufrock with my Pardoner, my first, true, literary love, will always be the genre of fantasy. Derided and consigned to its own little niche shelf in Waterstone’s, it is still seen as a geeky unattractive pursuit for teenagers who never got onto the 1st XV, or managed to find a girlfriend. More often than not, these judgements are made by people who have never read a fantasy book, or struggled through fifty pages of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ and have gone “it’s all walking” and not given it a second thought.

But even a cursory look at fantasy would disprove this notion that it is all about elves and singing. (Though this is not to deny these tropes exist.) For a long time the

genre lumbered under the great influence of Tolkein, who took existing ideas of the fantastical and truly made them his own. But most people, when pressed for their ideal of Tolkein, would respond something along the lines of “elves, dwarves, Gollum”. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ –and indeed, if you have the mettle, ‘The Silmarillion’- hinge on the idea that while good defeats evil, good itself can be corrupted and changed from what it was.

The scene when Frodo and his companions return to the Shire from Mordor – only to find it an industrial wasteland, mauled of its innocence, was omitted from Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptation. Maybe this was because its problematic conclusion could not fit into a film trilogy that already had too many endings, yet it is these problems which fantasy now struggles with.

Many are now aware of George R.R. Martin’s ongoing epic, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, from the television adaptation of the first book.

I read the first book in the summer of 2003 and so engrossed was I in the story of scheming Lords, wayward-warriors and the political intrigue of nations that seemed as real to me as real-life conflicts. What Martin takes is the every-day world that Tolkein alludes to and explores it, not shying away from the misery or brutality. If you haven’t read them, don’t be put off by the intimidating density of these books – the pages fly by.

Yet Martin is not the sole rider of literary merit from the fantasy stable, merely the harbinger. R. Scott Bakker’s ‘Prince of Nothing’ trilogy is a fantastic rival effort, switching earnestly from determinist philosophy to the personal fears and concerns of its cowardly fat wizard, Drusas Achamain. If it sounds pretentious it is a little, but its continuous inquiry into how politicians and nations act the way they do asks deeper questions than most people would expect.

Apart from telling a good story, fantasy has often confronted issues more serious

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Feature

literature has shied away from. The best example of this is Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The novels focusing on the belaboured Ankh-Morpork City Watch have confronted the realities of immigration in a society in flux, and the tolerations and dealing with religious fundamentalism in a way that few others have managed. Other books, such as ‘Small Gods’, have addressed the idea of religious belief in a manner that neither preaches from the pulpit nor avoids key issues. It criticises not religion in particular but the attitudes from the minority that can foster entrenched reactionary, bigotry in the majority, whether that belief is in a god or the lack of one. It is worth remembering, in an era that increasingly tends to the reactionary, that tolerance is a two-way street.

I have only dipped my toe in the vast waters that constitute fantasy. I have not even mentioned science-fiction, which perhaps, thanks to the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick – and their subsequent cinematic adaptations – has a begrudged respectability that fantasy lacks. Yet while fantasy provides escapism in its vast doorstopper novels, it confronts it in others.

Fundamentally fantasy, through the allegory of a different world, allows authors to confront realities that cannot be addressed in a normal universe.

This is not a recent trend; Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea series, ostensibly for children, entrances with its depiction of a world that balances on a tightly-woven equilibrium, where every person and object has a normal day-to-day world, and their true word, a word of making that is their name on a more fundamental level of being.

The description of these words and the use of them, such as when the wizard Ged confronts the Dragon of Pendor, Yevaud, is truly breathtaking. Perhaps this could sum up fantasy as a whole – what is seen on the surface is only the edge of a greater, more encompassing reality.

We need something to engage our brains and emotions, to enrage us, to make us passionate, even violent. We need to feel like something is stopping us from where we want to be, otherwise we will realise that we are not there for a reason. We need something to fight for, and someone to fight against, otherwise we’re lost.

“LIKE”

The Zahir

Helena Davies assesses the significance of social networking and its overpowering effect on humanity.

The majority of us own a social networking account, most of us will log in daily and will be guilty of posting a trivial update that breaks one of the nine rules that makes a good post or “tweet”. American researchers, who established these rules, found that posts that whine, overused hashtags or reported people’s current whereabouts were three of the nine habits to avoid in a tweet. Recent research has shown that a staggering 130 million tweets that are posted on Twitter each day are not worth reading. This surely applies to the majority of status updates on popular social networking site Facebook, where we probably all have “friends” that will feel the need to inform us when they are washing their hair or when they have “logged in” to Cafe Rouge.

Perhaps many of us are guilty of committing this social networking faux pas that causes our friends to remove us permanently from their home feed or in extreme cases to “unfollow” or “de-friend” so that we cease to bore them with the innate details of our lives. The question is why we have come to deem ourselves so significant that we feel the need to publicise our every move and even more importantly why we feel that our “friends” or followers will relish in this insight to our lives.

The influx in reality television and the curiosity surrounding celebrity lifestyles has undoubtedly fuelled this obsession to know more about people’s lives and align ourselves to these celebrity lifestyles resulting in devoted social networkers to post minute by minute updates of their lives to satisfy our supposed intrigue. According to the nine golden rules of what makes a good tweet, even trivial posts from celebrities fails to provoke interest.

So whilst it has been deemed that the tweet about tidying our room or what TV programme we might be watching might not be significant, the concept of social networking and the uniting of people on these sites are significant. For example the concept of “like” on Facebook is one that gives an idea of social patterns, however as the social network has expanded this has increasingly become taken advantage of by brands who want to increase their “likes” in order to enhance interest in their product or service. Consequently many companies are bribing consumers for their “like” in return to enter competitions or receive vouchers. Italian restaurant Prezzo was one of many brands to recently offer the chance to win an ipad 2 in return for a “like” on their page, this has recently been replaced with a competition for a spa holiday. Undoubtedly Prezzo must be delighted with the tactic that has earned

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them nearly 120,000 “likes” to date. However with these kinds of tactics being ensued, how much can we now trust the value of a “like”?

Although social networks may have begun with the initiative of creating social groups online that were for the purpose of recreational use, recently social networks Facebook and Twitter have been at the centre of political affairs. Arguably this is due to their complete integration into our daily lives. During the riots in Britain last August Facebook was used to create groups such as “Smash Down in Northwich Town” to arrange meeting places for rioters and it was also used to post photographs of rioters with their stolen goods. Consequently, whilst Facebook was used to direct the riots it was also used by the police in the aftermath to gather information to find rioters and evidence to convict them.

Similarly during the violence in Libya last year, Facebook and Twitter was used to rally support, post information about demonstrations, upload images and videos of the bloodshed but most dramatically, these social networking sites gave people who normally would not be heard in these situations, the chance to voice their opinions. NATO openly admitted that tweets were being monitored in Libya to help assess which areas should be targeted in missile and bombing attacks. These recent events show the impact that the availability of social networking is having on a world wide scale. The tweets and posts on these events also helped the international media to issue frequent reports and closely follow any changes.

Yet social networking is coming into question as to whether it has become too powerful and needs to be controlled and censored, which in turn evokes the question of whether censorship of social networking sites will harm free speech and fundamental rights. The infringement of the super injunction exposing Ryan Giggs on Twitter as the footballer having an affair is one of a number of cases that has led to Twitter to consider enforcing a system that would censor tweets that would break gagging orders in certain countries. The offenders will be informed that their post breaks the law of that country and would not allow other followers in that country to view the tweet but would not restrict users in a different country where it did not break the law to continue to access it.

Censorship will be brought into question in many cases where our free speech is limited but then there are also the cases where people fail to censor themselves enough. In February, CNN presenter Rowland Martin was suspended when some of his recent tweets during the Superbowl were deemed homophobic. Social networking has become very important because of its integration into our everyday lives; however its ability to create change and its overwhelming power in recent events that expand further than its recreational use has seen it evolve into a significant force.

The Zahir

7.1 7. 2

Winter Spring2011 2012

DUTY? Danny Williams queries our unerring faith in trial by peers.

Trial by jury is a concept that is deeply entrenched within the judicial history of the UK and to the everyday observer; it is a fair way to judge the actions of those who break the law.

To be ‘tried by one’s peers’ is regarded as the sacrosanct right of any citizen of the UK. Indeed, any keen spectator to the vast number of legal dramas we are exposed to on a weekly basis could be forgiven for assuming that trial by jury is the only method employed to try suspected criminals. It is however, only in the minds of the untrained public that jury duty is one of the pillars of our criminal justice system. In legal reality however, its importance has been wildly overstated and it is a concept worthy of serious re-examination.

Fundamentally, it seems only right that if someone is accused of causing harm to the public, it naturally follows that his reckoning be at the hands of those same people the criminal law aims to protect. The fatal flaw in this logic is that members of the jury are lay-people; they have no legal training. This leaves us with all manner of undesirable situations.

One such situation is where the jury decides to overturn a law which they perceive to be unjust, effectively overruling parliament. This is a concept known as ‘jury equity,’ and has the practical consequence of moving

“the belief that trial by jury retains the same value it had in the past is preposterous.”

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laws along a path that their makers never intended. Whilst I accept that there will always be a degree of injustice within our legal system, it is a step too far for twelve untrained jurors to take the law into their own hands and allow for emotion to cloud their judgement, a problem only exacerbated by the fact appeal courts rarely overturn decisions made by a jury, so sacrosanct is its reputation. If the right outcome is reached, jury equity can work to the advantage of the law, but the more likely result will be that the law is fundamentally changed and becomes harder to apply in other cases.

The inexperience of jurors is particularly problematic in the face of complex cases. Take, for example, the Harry Redknapp tax evasion case. The Judge who presided over that case was quoted as telling the jury to keep their minds from footballing matters and to keep their eyes “on the ball.” Although I’m not suggesting that this applies to all jurors, it is probable that at least one or two of the members of the jury would have some footballing prejudices that could have influenced their judgement. We would hope, of course, that this wouldn’t matter, and the random process of jury selection would render this insignificant.

But with the passion football evokes, it is not unreasonable that such prejudice could have been a factor. Of course, there is a possibility that the judge might be an Arsenal fan, but his experience and extensive legal training - particularly in the complex world of tax law - would mean it far more probable he render an impartial and informed verdict than the jury.

All things considered, the belief that trial by jury retains the same value it had in the past is preposterous. Rather than be an integral part of our criminal justice system it increasingly appears redundant, kept only alive by legal dramas and egalitarian idealism. It would be in society’s best interest that all criminal trials are presided over by a judge who has been conditioned to only consider the facts of the case that the law should permit. Significance should not be attached to the right of the British citizen to choose to be tried by his peers, for his peers come from all walks of life bar one: no jury member will ever come from a background of legal education, and that is perhaps the biggest flaw of all.

Feature

HOWL. Stephanie Milsom suffers a bout of existentialism.

and televisions, and to be honest, I’d like to drink something that isn’t tea. I’m aware i could do most of that here, but I feel it would be distinctly less exciting somehow.

Lately, within the depths of my increasingly messy ‘student study bedroom’, I’ve found myself seriously thinking ‘what’s the point?’

Not in life - I’m not that morose. In fact, maybe it is in life, but not in the way you probably think. I know I’m spinning an old yarn here, but I’ve only recently become aware of the fact that everyday, I wake up twenty minutes later than I should, rush to my lectures, drink tea, stroll home, drink more tea, maybe watch something on demand, probably do a bit of sewing (laugh all you want - I’m addicted), then lay my head down for a usually less-than-adequate night’s sleep. Lather, rinse and repeat; over and over again. Occasionally the details change, of course; this time last year I was drinking tea in Lincoln, not York, but the structure is still the same. I can’t help wondering - perhaps naively - is this it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy – terribly, wondrously, fantastically happy in fact with my lot in life - but I don’t do half the things I could. I’ve been on holiday, yes, but I’ve never really travelled. I’m not a Gap Yah kind of person, but I’ve come to the realisation that I’d like to experience this world before I leave it. I’d like to go somewhere where I don’t have to use a pound coin or a euro, I’d like to meet people who don’t own laptops and mobiles

And then there’s my future to think about.

For years I’ve had it all planned out: graduate from university, get a job, get married, have children, retire, die - you know the stuff. But I, peculiarly, have decided to plan my life backwards. I want a big family, so I need a good job. If I need a good job, then I need a good education, and a good start in life. I’ve decided all this, and only now realised that this essentially means my life’s purpose is to constantly improve my C.V. Work experience + good degree = good job. Good job = good wages = nice house. Nice house + good wages = ridiculously large family. You get the idea.

It seems to me that, when I die, people won’t gather around my tombstone to lay flowers, they’ll gather around my C.V., to nod and point in all the right places, to judge me on my experiences and exploits. They won’t read ‘birth-death, dearly beloved, a star shining in heaven ... ‘; they’ll read ‘graduated University of York with (hopefully a good mark!) ... employment history: 2009-2011 cleaner ...’.

I’ve mentioned this thought to my friends, and they tell me ‘that’s good! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a good life and something to show for it’. But it’s less than that. It really does feel like I’ve been put on this earth to enter the competition for who can make the best C.V. It’s an aspiration that will never stop until I retire.

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Part of me doesn’t see the point. I’ve contemplated a thousand times packing it all in and becoming a waitress, but I suppose the grass is always greener isn’t it? That old chestnut. If I left my books behind and worked for a living and bought a house and became a ‘real adult’, I’d want more. I’d wish I’d given myself the potential, the chance, to be something better than a shop assistant, which would probably be my inevitable choice. Maybe, the whole point is that you should just get on with it. What’s the point in striving for better, bigger things when there’s plenty of fantastic stuff right here? There are some truly beautiful things in the world; beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful music, beautiful food – beautiful life. Maybe I don’t need to go somewhere else to find it all. And maybe, wherever I am, I’ll always want more.

“What’s the

point in striving for better, bigger things when there’s plenty of fantastic stuff right here?

”

7.1 7. 2 Winter 2011 Spring 2012

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His photographs vividly portray the contrasting locations and evoke the concept of time evolving.

Jack Western documents the significant changes effecting Langwith College .

Transition.

The Zahir Feature

The Zahir

7.1 7. 2

Winter Spring 20122011

Battleground.

Oli Wheatley discusses the importance of using the right sort of language.

In 2008, American psychologist Drew Westen published a book entitled, ‘The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation’. In it, he argues that when we vote, we do so on an emotional – and not a rational – basis.

Whilst facts and figures are useful, they are cold in comparison to the passionate fires which more emotive language can awaken, and thus, to win an argument in politics is to win the heart, not the mind.

Democratic opponents as ‘murderers,’ men and women who are happy to kill your unborn children, whilst dressing their stance in the familiar rhetoric of ‘the right to life’ which Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

In comparison, when Democrats talk about being ‘pro-choice,’ they just end up looking uncaring, unprincipled and aloof.

The rational virtue of either argument is irrelevant: in the rhetorical and emotional stakes, ‘pro-choice’ is no match for ‘murderers.’

This is a truth that conservatives, unlike liberals, realised long ago and have used to their great advantage. Year after year, conservatives have repeated and reiterated the same lines to such an extent that in our brains, networks have been created between the term ‘liberal’ and a whole range of negative terms. Bruno Gianelli, a fictional Democratic political consultant in the American political drama, The West Wing, captures this reality succinctly when he turns to a colleague and shouts:

We see the same thing if we take 9/11.

President Bush used it as a springboard to begin his ‘War on Terror,’ a phrase many derided as exceptionally stupid, even for his historically low standards. In fact, it was an inspired choice. In the aftermath of that terrible day, it was very difficult for anyone to oppose Bush. The implication of a ‘War on Terror’ is, of course, that if you’re against it, then you’re on other side, that you’re soft on terror. Any Democrat who took a stand against the White House’s crusade was quickly branded ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘un-American.’ Thought about rationally, these arguments are as stupid as they are insulting.

But these were not rational times.

“We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said ‘liberal’ means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on communism, soft on defence, and we’re going to tax you back to the Stone Age, because people shouldn’t have to go to work if they don’t want to.”

Alone, these cleverly phrased arguments are damaging. But hammered home, as Republicans have done over the past few decades, and they start to form a narrative – soft on terror, weak on defence, unprincipled on abortion - which is thoroughly destructive to the Democratic cause. That only one Democratic President has been re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt is testament to the effectiveness of the Republicans’ spin machine.

Gianelli speaks to an important truth: the liberal brand has become so damaged, so smeared, so completely gutted of credibility that liberals no longer dare call themselves ‘liberals’, they’re all ‘progressives’ now.

Conservatives have achieved this victory through a clearer recognition of how the voter’s brain engages with politics.

When Republicans talk about issues, they frame them in the language of morality and values. Democrats tend – with the notable exceptions of the likes of Presidents Obama and Clinton – to appeal to rational, enlightened arguments. They also tend to lose.

There is a way for the Democrats to fight back, but they need to take lessons from the Republican playbook. When discussing abortion, rather than presenting an ambivalent position, they need to present a principled one. If a Republican is arguing in favour of a law banning abortion outright, Democrats need a strong response. Westen offers a potential riposte:

Abortion provides us with a good example.

Republicans – particularly the more extreme ones – often take an absolutist stance on this issue, but they do so by couching their position in the right language. Shamelessly, they brand their

“My opponent puts the rights of rapists above the rights of their victims, 18

Politics

guaranteeing every rapist the right to choose the mother of his child. What he’s proposing is a rapists’ bill of rights. My opponent believes that if a sixteen-year-old girl is molested by her father, she should be forced by the government to have his child, and if she doesn’t want to, she should be forced by the government to go to the man who raped her and ask for his consent.”

It’s not pretty, but it’s effective. It induces gut-level revulsion and leaves no one in any doubt as to where the Democrat stands.

There are some – invariably those from the self-righteous Left – who will argue that in doing this, you’re ceding the moral highground. But in truth, you only cede the moral highground when you stop convincingly arguing for your conscience.

You don’t send a soldier into war armed with a spear when the enemy are armed with machine guns.

The same could have been done by Kerry against Bush in 2004. When the Republicans were charging with him being unpatriotic and un-American, he should have turned around and pointed out to the electorate that: “Mr. Bush has never felt a bullet whizzing over his shoulder or a piece of shrapnel lodge in his leg. He never knew what it was like to dodge a bullet because, when called to duty, he dodged the draft. This meant someone else got shot at in his place. And the same goes for his draft-dodging vice president, who not once, not twice, but five times had “other priorities” than to defend his nation when called to duty.”

This would have severely undermined Bush’s claim to patriotism, and would have reminded the electorate that Kerry truly knew what it meant to be at war. Rather than running from an issue that Democratic strategists believed fatal territory for their candidates, they should face it head-on.

Candidates with the courage of their convictions – rather than their pollsters’ – are always more electable.

Spin Pitman searches for a new direction with Compass.

T R A N S

“They’ve done some brilliant work around the concept of ‘the good society’. “

Once again we’re living under a Tory government. This is the first one I can recollect. My earliest political memory is the day after Tony Blair’s election. It’s a weird memory to have, aged four, sitting on my primary school assembly floor. I remember the sense that my teachers had voted for the new government, because they were teachers and the new government was one that teachers would support.

Looking back now at the footage of the fresh faced prime minister, of election broadcasts and campaign speeches, I can’t help but be impressed, seduced even – especially when I add that to the tangible benefits that the last Labour government delivered for me and my family.

But, and this is a pretty big ‘but’, look at where this revolution has left our politics. We now very much live in a political environment where the voter is treated as the consumer.

Where policies are written by polls and lack principles. All the while, we now live under a Conservative government. Not only are there liars in power, but they are liars that have utter contempt for our society. The Labour party that brought a generation of hope and euphoria left office with that same generation in despair, devoid of the belief that our politics could do better. The much discussed and overanalysed leadership debates of the 2010 general election showed how close all three parties had become. In their market theory drive to obtain the central ground they’ve forgotten what politics is for in the first place.

What people desperately need is for politics to regain a sense of authenticity. We need a politics that truly cares about people, but also about the planet – which is crucial to ensuring a prosperous society in the long term.

As we build up such a political vision in a way that’s relevant to our times we will

It is time for the Democrats to get dirty and appeal to the hearts of the American people and not to the minds of the intellectual few.

They are the party that shares the views of the majority of Americans, they just need to learn to articulate them. Until this happens, the bastions of conservatism are going to restrain the liberal agenda, and America is going to continue to fall short of its great and profound promise.

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need to synthesise concepts from a variety of viewpoints. The status quo we’ve been left with 40 years after Thatcher came to power has left an ideologically hollow middle ground that provides very little hope or prospects for a positive future.

Synthesising the politics of social justice with the politics of sustainability and the demands of climate change mitigation throws up a number of hurdles, but also many opportunities. While the Green Party has naturally been doing this for years, the former Labour pressure group Compass has more recently got in on the act. They’ve done some brilliant work around the concept of ‘the good society’, the intersection of green and red politics – with case studies on our European neighbours, as well as looking at some of the day to day battles of politics such as the campaign against payday loan companies and the large price rises of the big six energy companies, which always seem to be accompanied by large profit announcements.

It’s this that has driven me towards Compass, an organisation that recognises we are greater than the sum of our parts. It was born as a Labour pressure group by those frustrated with the direction of New Labour but recently opened up its membership as it realised the Greens were closer to its core values then Labour. They’re working hard on the synthesis of red and green forms of thinking – recognising more than any other group I’ve encountered the importance of both these strands of thought in developing a positive vision.

The starting point they’ve developed provides a useful way for the two groups to work together and exchange ideas. This is exemplified in the University of York Living Wage campaign which is coordinated by both Labour and Green Party members. Working together in this way can make us all stronger.

It can highlight the differences in policy and opinion between the two parties, but when these are resolved or openly recognised it provides a better space for the left to move in the future. With this we can see a glimmer of hope for the future of a stronger and more visionary democratic left.

creativity

The Zahir

7. 2 7.1

SpringWinter 2012 2011

Beau Rahim questions Qaddafi’s régime as pure destruction.

On 20th October 2011 Colonel Qaddafi was killed in Libya, forty two years after he took to power. News stations released rebel mobile phone footage of his bloodied corpse dragged by the feet of Libyan NTC fighters. The reaction of our NATO states was one of disinterested jubilation; it was the victory of Democracy over Tyranny. Initial reports said he was dragged outside, beaten, his clothes ripped off and shot by a rogue gunslinger in the frenzy.

Is this Creative Destruction? For a “new Libya” to be born the “old Libya” must be destroyed.

Libya before Qaddafi was in borderline poverty, the monarch King Idris did not inspire his people. Qaddafi was the natural creative reaction to the Royal decay. We cannot believe our mass media in demonising political opponents (the links between Mr.Murdoch and Parliament demonstrate this all too well).

Qaddafi began as a reformer; he empowered women’s rights in divorce and inheritance, newly weds were paid $50,000 as aid for starting their family, oil and bread were subsidised, literacy rates and the country’s wealth experienced a boom.

I see Qaddafi’s accession to power as an example of greatness in leadership (comparable to Napoleon’s, Stalin’s, and even Gandhi’s), for the simple reason that it was bloodless. Sun Tzu believed that “ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.” Qaddafi’s coup d’état had no reported incidences of violence, it was Creation-without-Destruction, if you will. It was a perfect event with a leader of a revolution that was going forward into the “Ideal State.”

Unfortunately, the “Ideal” is forever imprisoned

in our individual minds, although no one has the same ideal. Thus Qaddafi had to take a necessary decision in enforcing his ideal on Libya to keep the decaying effects of dissidence at bay, he used both cunning (through informants and spies) and strength (“liquidating” political enemies). This is why our media calls Qaddafi the dictator with an “iron fist,” he was essentially too idealistic to be agreeable and after 42 years of his rule peace and subservience grow tired and conflict must eventually arise.

In the playground of politics the big kids did not like Muammar, he was a Socialist, oil rich and weapons rich. The “mad dog of the Middle East” was accused of sponsoring terrorism (by countries that have overtly supported the training and funding of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan to terrorise Soviet invaders).

But the worst threat to the world powers and central banks was Qaddafi’s creative plan of a new currency, the Gold Dinar. For African and Arab-Muslim nations, this would render the Dollar useless in oil and, according to RT “shift the economic balance of the world.” Qaddafi’s demise was in the waiting.

The scene was set, world powers and the Libyan people grew restless; the NTC and no-fly zones were the natural destructive reactions to a successful, creative individual.

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Democratic ideals of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are beautiful concepts used by us to veil Destruction’s inherent link with the Good we aspire to. The price for freedom is heavy. Qaddafi’s destruction shows us that great men must fall in order to make way for a new product of creation.

The last audio message by Qaddafi I remember hearing ended with three defiant barks; “alet alman! Alet alman! Alet alman!” (“Go forward! Go forward! Go forward!).

Is Creation-without-Destruction ever possible? And can Peace ever be possible?

While Man has progressed a thousand-fold, Humanity ceaselessly stands still against the currents.

“I see Qaddafi’s accession to power as an example of greatness in leadership.”

Boundaries Politics

Is science, and the scientific community, truly objective? Whilst science purports to be objective, and remains one of the best methods to increase humanity’s knowledge of the world we inhabit, the application, discussion and reporting of science is subject to the paradigms and popular philosophies of the dominant culture of society. E.H. Carr said “Every human being at every stage of history is born into a society and from his earliest years is moulded by that society” and Chomsky argues that the terms of public debate are framed by the media’s reporting.

Consequently I propose that to look at the findings and use of science, in particular the social and life sciences, without looking at the cultural context of the research and how these findings are reported, is to ignore the possible subjectivity, and its use in manipulating societies and cultures.

From the refusal of mainstream science to challenge certain assumptions, whether those are economic assumptions of infinite growth in a finite world, or the assumptions of submission to authority as innate, science can be used as a tool to support the dominant culture of the day, and not as a force for progress in society. In fact, many new findings, even those acclaimed and celebrated by the scientific community, come from outside the field that these new ground breaking findings apply to. Take, for example, Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize winning work on the Tragedy Of The Commons, where she argued that the humans would not act under the assumptions of mainstream economics. Instead they cooperate with other people who share the same resource, showing that people could manage a shared resource sustainably, in the absence of government or free market forces.

David Graeber also challenged the assumptions of economic thought, disputing the assumption of mainstream economics that societies moved from barter to money to credit by showing that there was no empirical basis for this assumption, and evidence that this assumption was demonstrably false. Graeber argued instead of barter systems, societies had a complex system of gift economies, where resources were exchanged between members of society under the basis that the recipient would later repay this exchange, and that debt arose as a method of societal and moral control, with money arising much later.

Both of these researchers came from outside the field of economics, Ostrom being a political economist and Graeber being an anthropologist. By refusing to accept the assumptions which govern the field their research took place in, both Ostrom and Graeber show that other scientists’ research is crippled by their refusal to seriously examine assumptions.

Mainstream ecology and conservation science refuses to challenge the assumptions of economics, for example that infinite growth can occur in a world of finite resources. In doing this, ecology and conservation science is hampered and cannot truly act in a way that can conserve and protect the environment we rely on. It is under threat by the very systems ecology and conservation science refuses to challenge. Forms of ecology which do question this, such as Bookchin’s social ecology, which argues that the ecological problems of today are caused by social problems such as the ones I have already listed, are instead ignored by many scientists.

Milgram’s famous experiment, which he claimed showed a submission to authority regardless of culture, only sampled from American males. The experiment found that a majority of these individuals would deliver lethal doses of electricity to humans they had never met. To claim that a blind acceptance of authority is natural, not a product of nurture, but to only use people who have been raised in a culture which requires acceptance of authority to succeed and progress in society supports my argument that the society a scientist was brought up in influences how they conduct their research.

Many people have misinterpreted Darwin’s ideas regarding evolution as support for the Hobbesian idea of “war of all against all”, using Herbert Spencer’s famous quote of “the survival of the fittest” to argue for a rugged individualism of competition, with cooperation being ignored or ridiculed.

However, both Darwin and other scientists, contemporary to Darwin, such as Kropotkin, argued that human society’s history is characterised by co-operation as much as competition. In the Descent of Man, Darwin argues that to refuse these altruistic instincts is to remove the best part of our nature.

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Andrew Nesbitt calls for scientists to see past their limits.

Kropotkin, a Russian biologist, conducted research shortly after reading Origin of Species, into species in Siberia. Kropotkin found that, instead of “nature red in tooth and claw”, as was the prevailing Victorian opinion, that co-operation was just as important as competition. Applying this idea to human society, Kropotkin found that mutual aid, co-operation which was beneficial to all parties, was found throughout human history, with resources being shared between humans and societies and groups being formed to manage and share these resources. However, these ideas have been largely ignored, with history and the foundations of society instead painted as one of constant conflict and violence. Whilst I do not dispute that conflict and competition have been a driving force in evolution and the formation of societies and nations, to ignore mutual aid and co-operation is to paint a one-sided and false picture of history.

As Zizek said “words are never “only words”; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do”, the discussion of only certain findings is used to support, or to manufacture consent for the favoured ideas in society, limits how society can progress.

When findings that challenge these ideas are ignored, it becomes hard to challenge these ideas. If these ideas have no empirical basis, and are damaging, they should be challenged. In this way, science acts not as the progressive force of which it is often thought of, but as a force to protect the status quo.

LETTERBOMB

The Zahir

7. 2 7.1

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

Politics

Alternative.

Josiah Mortimer explores York’s vibrant history and asks why it’s hidden.

Alfie van den Bos finds radicalism lacking.

So he writes an article about it.

Move over, Trotsky.

Where are all the anarchists? I laughed when my friend first expressed this lament, but I am now beginning to see his point. I live on campus, study a politics related degree, and would like to think that I am active in the student political community, but have yet to meet a single anarchist. There is very little common ground between anarchism, the classic radical ideology, and my own ideas, yet still I find the lack of them and other supporters of radical political ideals on campus, greatly troubling. There are certain stereotypes of university life that have been completely accurate, mainly on the social and alcohol-related side of things, but the political stereotypes of students holding radical, and refreshingly divergent, even unrealistic, ideals, has not materialised.

Of the political societies on campus, none have developed any thinking that I would describe as refreshing or different, they boringly stick to rigid, predictable ideals and party rhetoric. You generally either have annoying right-wing libertarians who ‘troll’ the other parties because they arrogantly believe that their views are objectively superior, or dull ‘liberal-lefties’ who spew out the latest Guardian hypocrisies. And even these groups are depressingly inactive, rendered impotent by a small membership, excess bureaucracy, and most of all, a large mainstream student body who simply don’t care.

Helping out at the refreshers fair, so many simply walked by the political stands, showing little interest, mainly out of a need to be polite, or, perhaps more admirably, simply telling the truth that they did not really care, or that they just followed their parents mainstream political opinions. All too often did I hear words like “but I’ve always voted for X” or “my parents vote for X and so do I” or the classic “I would vote/campaign for Y but they’ll never get anywhere”. Instead they rushed off to buy twee, ‘ironic’ posters at the sale, or join the latest fringe sport fad.

Obviously I am not demanding that everyone has the same interests as I do and no one wants the likes of “Rick from the Young Ones” a hypocritical politico who holds radical views just to be trendy and will base his social preferences on his politics. Indeed this is not the impression I want to get across, I have met this ilk of person, those who will actually reject potential friends just because of their political views, and they are perhaps far worse than the indifferent students described above.

Nonetheless, forgiving the cliché, university is meant to be a time of independence and broadened horizons. A rare time when we are developed enough to enjoy life as much as anyone, but are largely free from the responsibilities of tax, family and society.

Thankfully, we have not forgotten the physical or social side of this, eating and drinking excessively, without thought for the future consequences, is a part of growing up that should be celebrated, within reasonable limits. Yet the academic or philosophical side of this freedom seems to have disappeared.

Holding political and ideological opinions that are perhaps too radical, too unrealistic is also an important part of character development. One learns more about oneself and eventually gains a greater understanding of life, why the world is as it is, and hopefully, begins to come to terms with reality. But if this is not achieved, if we always hold the same mainstream opinions, dictated to us by the media, society will lose the vital capacity to question established truths and people will become even more disconnected from political life, both of which have terrible implications for the future of an open society.

This is not to say that there is no hope. I have met fairly interesting politically minded students and enjoyed debates that have really made me re-evaluate my own views. But there are just too few of us. For most people here political debate is reduced to recycling dull mainstream rhetoric based on

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“The political societites on campus boringly stick to rigid, predictable ideals and party rhetoric.” what they’ve read in the media. In politics seminars, no one has an actual opinion, the reading is discussed obviously, but no one declares a passionate view on the topic, they simply regurgitate the views of the authors on the reading list and hope they can get by saying as little as possible.

As a result there are no new ideas. I worry that when our generation takes up the reigns of humanity, we will not have any solutions, any new modes of thinking, to solve the great problems of our day. Instead we will just let ourselves be told what to do by those who claim, wrongly, to know better.

Indeed, I am writing this not to call for more views similar to my own or for those that criticise the mainstream, but just for something different. Fascist, socialist, anarchist, deep ecologist, theocrat, whatever, just something from outside the mainstream, something that evokes the spirit of free thinking that academia used to represent.

Until then, I must ask again, where are all the anarchists?

In 1821, the York Herald commented on the ‘‘well-regulated, peaceable aspect which this city uniformly wears, so entirely free from those alarms and that severe distress which pervade other parts of the country”. True, perhaps, at the time. But the city’s history since then hasn’t been all that temperate.

1839. 5000 people attend a mass Chartist meeting in York and begin the foundations of a movement in the city. August 1841 – Feargus O’Connor, leader of the movement at the time, is released from York Castle jail.

O’Connor had been imprisoned for his role with the group of radical men who had one key demand - the right to vote, which was limited to wealthy property-owners. In 1842, Chartist-inspired strikes break out across Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.

By August, a general strike is called and a hundred cotton factories stand still, and workers vow not to return to work until the ‘People’s Charter’ is made law. Yorkshire has a lot to do with what has been described as ‘the first large scale politically conscious movement’ of the working-classes, and the fight for the vote. And not just the male vote, either. York played its part in the Suffragette movement, with an office on Coppergate from 1910 until the end of the campaign, while the spring of 1914 saw women turn a York Minster service into a ‘prayers for prisoners’ protest in support of the incarcerated Pankhurst, then on hunger strike.

Not to forget Joseph Rowntree, the York Quaker who pioneered social justice and poverty reduction and left a legacy of four trusts that remain centred in York today.

His aim was to treat not the ‘superficial manifestations’ of inequality, but the root causes. It wasn’t just about making chocolate (yes, he was that Rowntree). It was his legacy, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that published the first major report into the social causes of the August riots last year, and pointed to mass unemployment and the post-industrial breakdown of communities as causes.

That’s why a group called York’s Alternative History are spending the year organising events related to the political underbelly of the city. Set up in February, the aim is to ‘create spaces where York’s histories of activism, protest and radicalism can be shared and debated’ and to put the politics in this year’s celebrations. That means delving into the anti-war demonstrations, poll tax riots and university occupations to bring a spark of radicalism to the festivities.

York might be a small city, but it’s easy to forget its Castle jail once held hundreds of political prisoners, and that Clifford’s Tower If you’re wondering why all this is important, was once the ‘safe house’ of France’s Queen York is celebrating 800 years of existence Maria while she bolstered the Royalists during as a self-governing city this year, after the the Civil War. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that granting of a royal charter by King John in York, at the time the ‘northern Royalist capital’, 1212. 800 years that have seen the city at the is celebrating the Queen’s jubilee this year. centre of the English Civil War, the political And York Council can of course be expected capital of the country, the scene of Chartist to put on apolitical events. York’s Alternative rallies and imprisonments, mass strikes and History however, as a group seeking to add a anti-Iraq war school walkouts, thousandstwist to ‘York 800’, is undeniably a good idea strong trade union demonstrations like that March will see teachers and lecturers striking of November 30th and home to groups again, the Living Wage campaign is set to like Food Not Bombs, who use the tons of challenge the staggering university pay gap, thrown away supermarket food to feed York’s and who knows - there might well be more homeless. You’d think at least some of these campus occupations, anti-cuts protests and a events and features of York’s history would summer (term) of discontent. York might not get a mention in celebrations this year. But have the ‘well-regulated, peaceable aspect’ instead there’ll be a chocolate festival and a we once thought it did. celebration of the Queen’s jubilee. Fun stuff if you’re a sweet-toothed monarchist, not so fun if you want to delve deeper into York’s political past.

EBORACUM 23

The Zahir

7. 2

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

7.1

SOKAL.

Seduction is very much part of our collective life. We are seduced by ideas that are damaging to us and have market value to the people conveying them. We are communicated to - but not involved in a dialogue. This is the problem for anyone who suggests we have a liberal and democratic society: paradigms are political in that they influence how we feel and think of ourselves and other social groups. We consume these paradigms but have no hand in creating them. And this is my caveat for this issue.

Women are seduced by the pendulous, pert breasts we come to expect ourselves to have in order to have an acceptable body image. The “configuration that does not exist in nature” (Germaine Greer) of hard, pert breasts floating below the neckline of an emaciated female, is a sight with which women are bombarded constantly.

Invariably, it is is an image created to sell beauty products - which are marketed as solutions to the female problem of ‘nature’.

This paradigm of female beauty is not female; not only does it not exist naturally in females, it is a profitable myth for male shareholders selling beauty. Not only are models encouraged to treat their bodies as saleable, the female customers of breast augmenters treat their bodies as material that must be artificially reconstructed to be acceptable. Artificial breasts are augmented not simply as vessels for male pleasure but to be affirmations of female identity. (Their ‘pert-ness’ indicates to me that this is not an originally female fantasy either.) Even the city as a physical settlement is saleable as a platform for profiteering. Buildings and billboards are filled with images of unattainable female bodies. I recently heard two neanderthals in VBar bemoaning the “oppression of men” in “female-dominated industries”. What they didn’t realise is women do not dominate industries: they support them. Women are customers who exercise no power. They consume paradigms, not create them.

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Music

Josephine Harmon gets a load off her chest.

How can entire populations of women tolerate this image of the artificial woman, when their bodies are so obviously different? The problem is that these images are ubiquitous: billboards are everywhere.

A recent poll indicated that the average Western woman sees around 233 adverts a day. No wonder women accept that they are born deficient and require artificial procedures to correct them.

A similar thought occurred to me about religion when I was in York Minster recently. Consider its sweeping, giant arches. Its lengthy, sacred silences. The grotesque paintings showing orgies of fat-bottomed cherubs and pallid saints. All are part of the performance of religion. In my experience of the Catholic Church - a highly ritualised denomination - religion sells a sensation. Preaching captures the essence of Christianity, as an institution that communicates ideals in which the recipients have no hand in shaping. Within the ‘sacred’ environment you are at the base of Christianity’s power structure.

You must recognise your inherent inadequacy and seek an artificial solution of grovelling and ritual to resolve it. It’s all the more undignified to consider that the congregation’s self-loathing manifests itself - I believe - in the desire to have a quasi-orgasmic experience of the sacred.

Wallowing in holiness is much like a visit to the cosmetics department of Boots: it’s not something that makes you feel good necessarily but reassures you that you’re seeing to your deficiencies. Both are a bit like knocking shops - absolutely obsessed with sex.

the tip of the power structure. I find this impulse deeply damaging. To submit to God’s police state, and to accept that your natural condition of sin predisposes you to thoughtcrime is not right. As the late, great Hitchens used to repeat, within the Christian mind we are born sick and commanded to be well. The fact that Christianity’s ‘moral claims’ have nothing to do with immorality and everything to do with policing the behaviour of congregations - (think of homosexuality and pre-marital sex, which are victimless crimes) - does not figure in the way people think of this religion. Religious authorities continue to seductively mis-advertise its paradigm as preaching morality.

My caveat is that we, the 99%, are constantly prescribed ways of being that have nothing to do with our wellbeing. Our brains are constantly fried by messages and advertisements that influence our ways of thinking of each other, without the hope of communicating back. The politics of gender and to morality are hugely important, and both are communicated through undemocratic mediums.

Seduction is very much based on violence. The Nordic peoples regarded rape as more permissible than seduction, because although rape robs a woman of her body, and seduction robs her of her mind as well. The seducer intends to rape and his victim merely accepts/enjoys her victimisation.

Edward Grande takes issue with the new folk on the block.

TRAITORS

The history of folk music is often associated with an overt political stance and didactic intellectual sentiments. Yet its renaissance in recent years which has permeated mainstream charts with pseudo-folk music in a guise which is devoid of such tropes. The social protest songs of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan feel long done, and one wonders how such monolithic figures would view selffashioned folk bands such as Mumford and Sons. Would they see them as contemptibly contrived, or somehow retaining the essence of their past music? Exploring such a question can have its merits.

that “action is the antidote to despair”, through her music. At a march for civil rights in Washington in August 1963, the pair – Dylan’s reputation not yet cemented – performed in front of the thousands of protesters, and from henceforward were linked to the plights and protests of such Americans. A large number of their most seminal recordings are such ‘protest-songs’, and songs such as “The times they are a-changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” are formative members of the western canon.

And here we come to those singers and groups that are branded ‘folk.’ Sometimes by themselves, sometimes by critics, and sometimes by listeners, yet they precipitate a number of questions: have they redefined the genre? Or has the very term ‘folk’ been so bandied around that it retains only a semblance of what it previously defined?

Bob Dylan described his attraction to folk music, and what compelled him to write such songs, as being found in the fact that folk music was “more of a serious type of thing. The songs were filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings”. He was drawn into it as he felt that it interacted with the listener on a sentimental and intellectual plain, rather than the rock ‘n’ roll of the time which he saw as simply Hedonism that held “great catch phrases and driving pulse rhythms” at its core. Through these “great catch phrases,” Dylan notes how the rock ‘n’ roll music of the 1960s was construed to capture public support, but actively revolted against such consumerism, and felt – or rather may have wanted to feel – that “I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio”.

Artists that fall under this ambiguous genre of ‘folk’ such as Noah and the Whale and Mumford and Sons, seem to have in many respects retrograded the tropes the genre has hitherto held dear. Instead of the reserved and often poignant songs of Diamond or Dylan, these artists reveal at best contrived sentiment, and at worst unashamed frivolity. But the public devouring of such releases is clear in impressive chart sales.

Songs by these artists – indeed, whole albums – are embarrassingly self-absorbed, a far cry from the aforementioned politically motivated singer-songwriters. Of course it can be posited that all art is self-absorbed, but these recent neo-folk releases seem to be entirely divorced from the social context they are written in. Sentimentalists will defend them as “timeless expressions of the human condition” or some other tosh, but they are undeniably not in keeping with the socially minded folk music of the 1950’s/60’s/70’s.

The problem may lie in the critical misclassification of these new artists more than any damning criticisms of their artistic merits, or lack thereof. Yet my real contention rises from their elevating to a pedestal of what should be celebrated as some of the most powerful of twentieth century music.

Donning an archaic waistcoat and growing a beard, or having a violin in one’s band does not constitute replicating one of peaks in popular music.

Dylan actively revolted against consumerism.

“I had no songs in my repetoire for commerical radio.”

Yet this music which strived to forge a more private relationship with the listener, also paradoxically believed music to have the potential for important wide-reaching social change. Indeed, one of Dylan’s compatriots in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, Joan Baez, fervently expressed her belief

Could this be any truer than of us?

My biggest problem with the Christian mindset has been that virtue is to deliver yourself up to the patriarch sitting at

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7.1 7. 2

REVELATION

The Zahir

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

The cliché is familiar: progressive rock, with its copious capes and pretentious lyrics, was a dinosaur slain by punk – honest music, made by good down-to-earth rock ‘n’ rollers. I put it to you that the above is fallacy. That punk never killed prog rock. That prog changed and progressed, outlasting punk. I posit that this was never even the aim of punk. Punk’s fight was elsewhere, and it is only due to lazy journalism and revisionist history that the ‘facts’ we have come to know are treated as gospel.

But, with your mind suddenly filled with images of anarchy, Mohicans and phlegm, I hear you cry: ‘Punk broke in 1976, sweeping away the old farts of prog’. Indeed, this is widely accepted, but even a most cursory glance at historical fact shows prog was busy elsewhere when punk broke, and then proceeded to return stronger than ever.

By 1975 the major players in prog were incapacitated. Emerson, Lake and Palmer were on hiatus. Yes were on tour. King Crimson had ‘ceased to exist’ the previous year, and with Genesis beginning their long, painful slide into banality, Peter Gabriel licked his wounds and prepared for his future solo career.

Francis Stevens revisits Prog Rock, and completely ignores the Bible.

The popular musical landscape of the time was barren (recent repeats of Top of the Pops from the era confirm this). Filled with trite whimsy and the final excretions of music hall and vaudeville, it was a void that needed filling. The rot in the charts is emblematic of the troubles gripping the country at the time. The governments of Heath and Wilson had crippled the country, people taking comfort in mumsy light entertainment (and bloody legs and co). It was this blighted isle – plagued by strikes, shortages and the three day week, that punk was rebelling against. The anger was cultural and political, not aimed at some hippies singing about mushrooms, man.

At this point I feel it is important to define what I mean by progressive rock. True prog rock is an ethos. A belief that music can, indeed should, be made that strives for the new - that pushes it just that bit further. That incorporates different musical textures and patterns, music that pushes the technological boundaries of the medium and explores the human condition. Attempting to prove that music is an art form.

Genuine progressive rock fulfils all of these criteria.

Listening to classic music of the genre the above becomes clear – no two bands sound the same, but they all are capable of producing music that is no longer It is important to remember this definition of prog when discussing the punk sea-change. Yes, the particular style of ‘prog rock’ of the early seventies was dead by 76/77, but of course it was – the ‘genre’ (if indeed we can really think of it as such) moved on. Listen to Peter Gabriel’s early solo

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albums, to David Bowie’s late 1970’s output, to the incarnation of King Crimson born in 1981 – using our definition, they are all prog rock. The music supposedly being destroyed had dodged the charge of the punk brigade and progressed.

As such, to envisage punk in direct opposition with prog is anachronistic as humans battling dinosaurs.

The supposed rage and vitriol expressed by punk musicians towards prog was a cheap trick employed by the music press and the industry itself to make the new punks seem more exciting – more dangerous. Danger sells in this line of work, and everybody knows it.

In reality however, the punks had an admiration and debt to prog rock. Before anyone was demanding anarchy, the proggers were truly doing what they wanted, regardless of whatever anyone else wanted of them – how can anything be more punk than that? Without Jethro Tull or Peter Hammill there would be no Johnny Rotten.

Rat Scabies of the Damned is a confirmed fan of Phil Collins. The Clash released ‘Sandinista!’ in 1980: a triple album no less self-indulgent than Yes’ infamous Tales from Topographic Oceans.

Punk’s image was manufactured for selling records and Vivienne Westwood’s designs. Punk of this type was very much style over substance. All about the filth and the fury – but not the music. How many people can recall any of Sham 69’s tunes?

The more creative bands of the era beg the question – can such a thing as ‘prog-punk’ exist?

Can music fulfilling our prog criteria also maintain the immediacy and rawness of punk? The prog ethos can be applied to any genre. If Magazine, PiL, or any of a whole host of other so called ‘postpunk’ bands aren’t prog then I’ll eat my mellotron.

Howard Devoto or David Byrne’s lyrics are no less pretentious than Peter Gabriel’s, but I would suggest equally compelling and enlightening.

Prog and its history are in dire need of a reassessment. The concept of what prog truly means needs to be understood. Forward thinking, creative and progressive music is alive and well today, well outliving ‘real’ punk (whatever that is). It is because of our desire to compartmentalise everything and have our lives be ubiquitously neat and categorised that we focus so much on genre.

But prog rock is not a genre. Not really. It is music made by creative people in an attempt to get that bit closer to perfection, to art, to God. Whatever you want to call that something deep in the human psyche that leaves us with a desire to create the transcendental, or die trying. Popular music is an art like all others, and prog rock is just an example of artists making art. The resilience of the human spirit that means you just can’t kill it. Peter Gabriel wrote perhaps the perfect prog epithet in 1973: - “The sands of time were eroded by the river of constant change”.

Music

Accused.

Joseph Jack Evans unpicks the myths of jazz sampling in hip-hop.

From allegations of intellectual property law breaches and plagiarism, to accusations of lack of creativity and pure laziness, the notion of sampling music has been subject to years of criticism from all angles. But what’s on the other side of the coin? Is sampling instead a celebration of compositions that had particular cultural impact? Is it a producers way of paying homage to those who paved the way for them? Hopefully this short celebration of the art of hip-hop sampling will answer these questions in the affirmative and dispel any doubts over its validity as an artform.

producer duo Gang Starr ripped a simple 3-second sample from John Dankworth’s upbeat jazz number “Two Piece Flower” in order to create a song very close to his heart, “Above the Clouds”. Premier has nothing but respect for the legacy of Dankworth and wants to promote the 1927-born artist’s catalogue of work as well as to learn and create from it. Premier has opened my eyes to an amazing artist I was previously unfamiliar with, continuing his legacy and keeping his music alive and relevant; how this can even remotely be seen as cashing-in or selling-out is beyond me. Premier also recently starred in a project named Re:Generation where he took a crash course in classical music learning how to lead orchestras and write classical music to further expand his musical premise. This has inevitably led to him creating music through remastering and sampling classical music in a hip-hop environment. Artists such as Madlib and Premier are some of the most vastly disciplined and talented musical brains ever to release their creations to the masses, I just sincerely wish more people would appreciate their artform rather than dismiss it.

My unparalleled love for the hip-hop sample resurfaced stronger than ever after recently watching a documentary following the on-tour lifestyles of artists signed to Stones Throw Records.

This included English underground sensation MF DOOM and American rap superproducer Madlib, who together made one of the most critically acclaimed hip-hop albums of the last ten years: Madvillainy. One particular scene pictures Madlib in the famous Cosmos record shop in the Richmond Hill district of Ontario, Canada, explaining his love for the art of sampling. Madlib has a Gene Ammons record from the 1940s in one hand and a Muhal Richard Abrams record from the 1950s in his other hand. These are musicians who were geniuses in their own right, but probably never even thought once in their lifetimes about hip-hop – indeed Ammons sadly died when one of hip-hop’s most notable forefathers, Afrika Bambaataa, was only four years old.

But artists such as Madlib still manage to rework their masterpieces and render them relevant to modern times, which keep the genre alive behind the cloudy haze of major-label consumerism.

Indeed, sceptics of the sample will call it lazy and unimaginative; and admittedly it can be. Take the well known example of Kanye West’s sample of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” on his Graduation album; which in itself was already a somewhat docile sample of the classic Edwin Birdsong number Cola Bottle Baby. Or consider Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgetting” that would eventually be lazily sampled to create G-Funk classic “Regulate” by Warren G. Of course the most offensive and frustrating sight is reading comments such as “this totally ripped off Kanye” attached to the original works. In these cases, I can completely understand the doubts surrounding sampling, but when it’s done correctly the results can be beautiful. For example, in a recent interview with Soul Culture Media, hip-hop producer Ninth Wonder responded to critics claiming that samplists lack creativity by citing what is believed to be one of the best hip-hop

Despite totalitarian attitudes from closeminded hip-hop naysayers echoing ‘sampling is plagiarism’, sampling is in fact a mailing of appreciation from the hiphop producer to the original composer.

For example, DJ Premier of the rapper/

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samples of all time, and challenging any producer – old or new – to recreate such a feat. The song in question – produced

by Pete Rock – was called “T.R.O.Y: They Reminisce Over You”, a tribute to Troy Dixon from the group Heavy D & the Boyz. Its story shows just how powerful sampling can be. A then-depressed Pete Rock heard the beautiful “Today” by Tom Scott and fell in love with its baseline and saxophone riffs. Sampling those elements, he created a new beat to which his partner C.L Smooth rhymed over paying homage to his late friend. Pete Rock recalls that upon hearing the final track in the studio, the whole team broke into tears to celebrate the life of Dixon. This not only paid homage to Dixon, but also celebrated the works of Scott.

Finally, allow me to mention possibly the most highly regarded hip-hop samplist of all-time, J Dilla of Slum Village. The Village’s first major release – Fantastic, Vol. 2 – is a masterclass in creating smooth hip-hop beats from sampling jazz and neo-soul.

The most notable track from that particular record – “Fall-N-Love” – is a beautiful hip-hop reinterpretation of Diana in the Autumn Wind by Gap Mangione, a sample that encapsulates all I have discussed above. Dilla continued to promote his love for jazz sampling in creating his seminal album Donuts, of which the backstory is incredible. Whilst suffering from terminal illness, Dilla’s colleagues delivered a sampler and a small collection of records to him in hospital. He created and compiled 31 new instrumentals from around 50 samples and released them a mere three days before his death to critical acclaim.

Dilla genuinely lived and died with his artform, and his work deserves nothing less than unnecessary stigma being attached to it.

If Premier, Madlib, Pete Rock, Dilla and the other great samplists have taught me anything, it is that sampling is a relatively unappreciated artform and one that should be more recognisable. The myths surrounding this artform can often be true when consumers look in the wrong places, but on the whole they are harmful to its reputation. True artistic sampling is worthy of the masses attention without any doubt and I would recommend any of the artists mentioned above.

TENTS

The Zahir

7. 2 7.1

SpringWinter 2012 2011

Around five hundred days ago, Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts partied its way to its fortieth anniversary.

One hundred and thirty five thousand people paid a fair sum of £185 to spend up to 5 days in a tent with several hundred bands playing night and day to keep them entertained.

Now whether this sounds like your idea of a great way to spend your summer or some kind of torture technique, music festivals of all sizes have, on the most part, been on the rise these last few years, and have grown in popularity with both the consumer and the consumed. The former gets a chance to relax in a field with your favourite bands and/or to go “mental”, while the latter gets another way of both promoting their act and extending their business.

But what I’d like to take a look at is how things are from the band’s perspective.

Getting on the festival circuit is what most bands need to do these days; with decreased revenue from physical music releases, digital sales providing them with very little share of the profit and piracy showing no signs of stopping, artists need more ways of making money. But this takes them to pretty varied places, with some

“Surely

bands are left wondering whether anyone really cares about what they’re playing?

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varied crowds too. Take for instance the two music festivals I went to this summer past: Benicassim festival on the coast of Spain, and Green Man Festival in Wales. To say these festivals have a different atmosphere would be the most modest description I could provide: they are at opposing ends of what I would say is the scale that the mainstream festivals tend to sit between. On one side, we have Green Man; a fairly peaceful festival, focussing on indie and folk music with a few electronic twists and turns, but nevertheless a very family friendly frolic in a forest – or more accurately, the beautiful Brecon beacons.

Benicassim, on the other hand, is not somewhere I would take a young family for face painting and Chinese lanterns. Plonked on the outskirts of a smallish town-come beach resort, Bencassim effectively imports the English and Irish once a year to destroy the local surroundings, throw up on the majority of greenery struggling on the scorched terrain, swear at some locals for not understanding what a kebab is, then leave the residents to clean it up ready for next year. But don’t worry, Mumford and Sons are there to guide you through it all.

I wouldn’t give any prizes for guessing which one I preferred, but what I’m more interested in is which one the bands prefer. There were a few crossover acts that I happened to catch at both festivals, along with some acts I have seen elsewhere than the Spanish heat. Elbow in particular I have seen several times, the last time being before Benicassim in the O2 arena in London, with a huge but very respectable crowd. In Spain, sadly this

Music

Rory Foster gets annoyed at people who aren’t quiet for bands.

Even when he’s in Spain. was not the case. I accept that it is generally accepted that bands have gig playlists, where there will usually be an audience which is there for you and only you, and the paying customers are therefore ready and waiting for you to play the whole dynamic spectrum of your songs back catalogue. Whilst at a festival one expects more of a “greatest hits” deal, as most likely half your crowd is there waiting for Tinie Tempah or some other chart garbage. But to be honest a lot of the time at Benicassim the crowd mocked the bands through the level of respect shown through their levels of chatting.

This is acceptable if it’s Pendulum or the first band on for the day, but it is beyond the pale when you’ve got bands such as Portishead or Elbow are playing; bands that have a lot of respect and a pretty huge fan base to boot, and leads you to wonder why people are there.

This is evident from the reaction on-stage.

Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, normally a happy and bouncy leadman full of stories and jokes, spent most of his set worrying about people getting crushed at the front of the audience and looking miserable. When the band attempted to play “Mirrowball” – one of their quieter and slightly lesser-known songs – it was barely audible over the general chit chat and chanting reminiscent of football derby.

Green Man on the other hand was full of bands expressing their love for the festival and the crowd. With acts such as Laura Marling getting such a good reception that there was almost perfect silence throughout her entire set, on the main stage.

This thus created both a better experience for the listener and a better performance by the artist.

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I accept that there are certain bands and festivals which specialise in particular genres which lead to certain crowds. In Benicassim, for example, bands didn’t start playing till late at night, with the headliners tending to start around midnight or 1am. Clearly they’re going for more of a party atmosphere, however due to the 30 degree heat during the day, they’d be pushed to put people on any earlier.

In the end I think it says more about us as a nation that we’ll pay a lot of money to go and smash up a bit of another country for a few days. Potentially I was simply ignorant of the kind of crowd Benicassim would attract. I still can’t deny that I had a great time, when there are one euro bottles of sangria round the corner, there was no way I wasn’t going to.

But surely bands are left wondering whether anyone really cares about what they’re playing, or whether they’re just the soundtrack to three drug-fuelled nights in a row. Does it even matter? Maybe next time they should just bring a CD along and a drum kit and press play, and watch everyone have a good time. It seems to work for Chase and Status.

“It says more

about us as a nation that we’ll pay a lot of money to go and smash up a bit of another country for a few days.

”

The Zahir

7. 2 7.1

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

Ambition Edward Grande explores the politics of a newly cosmopolitan art world.

On the 5th February, a quite remarkable exhibition ejected its final visitors. Heralded for shedding new light on a monolithic figure of European art, the National Gallery’s exhibition of da Vinci transgressed boundaries, both politically and artistically.

Essaying to bring forth how da Vinci was thinking about his works while in Milan, the exhibition was also indicative of a continuing move to a much more cosmopolitan attitude to art.

A host of the most preeminent European museums and galleries are embarrassingly full to the rafters of the spoils of war and remnants of colonial exploits. The sphere of power has been determinably in Europe’s favour as works such as the bust of Nefertiti stands in the Neues Museum in Berlin, and the Elgin Marbles are displayed in our own British Museum. There are, of course, sound and sensible arguments for keeping such works in these established institutes, but they are also systematic of how art has been a currency of power which Western powers have been incredibly protective over. For the last two centuries especially, art as symbols of national power has permeated and been intricately linked to how it has been viewed, but such an attitude is waning.

The “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan” exhibition shows quite alternative sentiments. The two rivalling and vastly different copies of “Virgin of the Rocks” have never before been seen side-by-side, and it is a hugely symbolic act by the Louvre to lend one of their most prized works. Indeed, the version commonly on show in the National Gallery is systematic of past attitudes, having found its way to England through the machinations of nobles through the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

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But, besides whatever financial incentive, the lending of works such as “Virgin and Child” by The State Hermitage Museum of St Petersburg truly shows the raison d’etre of this exhibition was primarily an exploration of the art, and political prerogatives have been left out in the cold. National boundaries of art ownership seem momentarily transgressed as – almost regardless of the origins –there is a far-reaching, recognised ambition for works to be brought under one roof.

The same can be said for the seminal Monet exhibition in Paris in 2011-12. The primary aim for this exhibition was to provide visitors with a staggering number of Monet’s in one sitting, the onus being on a cumulative impression of an artist, rather than focus on one masterpiece. Though limited in its number of paintings through an institutional rivalry with the Musée Marmottan Monet, the curators secured loans from other galleries to provide a display of Monet’s works which hadn’t been seen on such scale for over generations.

Monet projected his motives for his works to be viewed collectively in his Orangerie in Paris. Arranging his Nymphéas series of watercolours in his chosen way, and in the conditions he desired in the 1920’s.

Political motives and national prejudices are becoming more and more cast aside. No longer symbols of past historic and economic power, exhibitions and galleries have found ways to navigate around the stigma of legacy. The true vested interest has swayed in favour of granting works to as wide an audience as possible. Monet’s ideals are being increasingly realised on an international scale.

Hidden.

Art

Hidden Lizzie Baxter searches for beauty in the grotesque.

Beauty is something which seems to have been hotly debated through history. A physical beauty, natural or metaphorical; we all have our own opinions on what it is.

The contemporary artist Jenny Saville revels in this concept and appears to attempt to skew our thoughts and present to us a new concept of ‘the beautiful’; one which is arguably grotesque and ambivalent.

A twisted torso, fleshy face and bulbous limbs: on first inspection the word grotesque screams out at you. This is not conventional beauty.

stare and scrutinise, while they appear to leer back sometimes mockingly, at other times squirming at their stripped down states. We are the voyeur, and unapologetically so; we thrive on viewing these curiosities and we thrive and delight even further by the state of the models. One metamorphoses from the viewer to the critic.

I’m not sure I could honestly say these figures were conventionally beautiful. When observing them I admittedly shudder at their crude and unnerving states yet find myself beguiled by something. They are quietly and individually beautiful in their own right.

Their power and dominance within the exhibition room radiates an internal essence of beauty, one that could be posited to be far more attractive than that of a conventionally beautiful image today. We can be quick to judge and we are always, though perhaps unknowingly, casting our judgement on people’s physicality’s. “She is fat. He is spotty”.

We are all guilty.

In fact, most would argue that there is nothing beautiful about Saville’s giant works at all. Her female nudes appear to erupt and burst from the canvases, shocking its viewer, whilst quietly and subconsciously forcing them to question how we perceive beauty.

She strips down conventions, and portrays her nudes as figures which plainly stare back at you, powerful in expression yet humbled in their perched states. With little background imagery to distract the eye, the viewer is confronted by a mass of flawed flesh, creased by life experiences but the works remain monumental in their own right. They are quietly and unknowingly powerful, stoic in some senses yet also awkwardly introvert in others.

The ‘beauty’ of Saville’s work therefore, is its ability to make us stop, stare and ultimately re-evaluate our perceptions of beauty and its differentiation from the grotesque. Can something so grotesque actually turn into something beautiful? Saville’s answer?

Can Saville’s works be described as the modern day advertisement for real, honest beauty, or simply an unnerving portrait of the naked figure? Her work has been described by some as grotesque, by others as erotic, and by some as unashamedly profound. Yet is it the case that we feel a sense of unease when viewing these nudes, because we are thrown from our comfort zone and forced to face the unconventional? Alongside this, we become the voyeur, critiquing the figure’s every flaw or perfection. The subject has no way of defending itself, and we are free to

Perhaps it is possible.

Saville does not believe or is interested in ‘admired’ and ‘idealised’ beauty. She is instead interested in breaking down boundaries and reconstructing a tradition stemming from classical antiquity. We are so used to the ‘body beautiful’ that we forget realities. The naïve and vulnerable states of her women are far from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” for example, and though admittedly one really cannot compare the two ideas, it is arguable that there is a comparative factor to them both. Venus is a vision of perfection, her porcelain style figure positively glowing, ethereal in

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quality, whereas Saville’s nudes are crude and imposing. Both show however, a passion and striking resilience to the scrutinising gaze of the viewer; a façade which disregards outside forces.

Saville’s hyperbolised figures allude with great frankness the differentiation between the way women are perceived and the way that they feel about their bodies. A brash and almost inhuman physique, with great folds and crevasses of skin, these women behold a lifetime of expressions, experiences and realities.

In “Branded” the fleshy masses are inscribed with adjectives boldly facing the intimacies of these women. ‘Supportive’ scrawled across a breast, ‘irrational’ etched on the other and ‘delicate’ are amassed on the flabby stomach. Yes, these women do present to the viewer a powerful message, and although their beauty is questionable, we relate and rise up to an equal level to these figures.

For Saville, conventional notions of beauty have become so bounded around they have lost all meaning and worth. In their own grotesque way, they go to provide a sense of a united front, a reference point for all women. And that in itself is beautiful.

“Can something so grotesque actually turn into something beautiful?”

The Zahir

7.1 7. 2

Winter 2011 Spring 2012

www.zahir.org.uk 32