Culture

By Alex Robson- Senior News Editor ‘L'homme est une idée, et une précieuse petite idée, dès qu'il tourne le dos à l'amour.’ (Man is an idea, and a precious little idea at that, the moment he turns his back on love.) -Albert Camus Wim Wenders’ chef d’eouvre, ‘Paris, Texas’ (1984), is a deeply powerful reflection of man. Overcome by loss, guilt, and isolation, our protagonist, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), must return to an equally dissociated and ever-changing Los Angeles to rediscover his family. As a prominent Euro-American picture, its plot becomes poetry, a protagonist lost in the vast, roseate and unchanging desert; a moving portrait that quickly resembles a Burroughs novel. It is both an ode to a time passed and a love letter to the importance of human interaction in an ...

By Ruby Day – Senior Culture Editor Loosely, there are two types of freedom: freedom to, and freedom from, which are distinguished as follows. ‘Freedom from’ refers to liberation from external constraints like censorship, fear of prosecution, and general protection from physical harm. To live in a state of ‘freedom from’ enables ‘freedom to’, in which individuals benefit from the ability to freely act and achieve their own goals through personal expression, autonomous life choices, and participation in democratic processes. In the UK, these distinctive freedoms live in tandem, typically permitting freedom of expression across all areas of society. In politics specifically, this concept is often prevalent as the basis for polarisation. Music has long been a popular conduit through...

Photo Credit: Jan Kahánek via Unsplash By: Kiera Garcia - Associate Culture Editor To get me through this new period of life, as a final year student, the works of Joan Didion have been my scripture. Recently, searching for a novel that would help me accept the coming changes, I turned to The Year of Magical Thinking. The Year of Magical Thinking consists of journal-like entries from Didion as she processes the year after her husband’s sudden death. The immediate change that comes from this event, as well as the changes that she faces throughout the following year, are explored in an almost circular fashion.   The first thing that stuck out to me about Didion’s account of her grief was her tendency to repeat phrases throughout the book, bringing the reader back to the s...

By Ruby Day and Kiera Garcia – Culture Editors The Orbital’s Culture Section was lucky enough to be invited to this year’s London Book Fair. Taking place in the spectacular Olympia Exhibition Centre in Hammersmith, the LBF is an annual event for the many moving parts of the publishing world to interact with each other face to face. For us as student journalists, the experience was eye-opening, to say the least. Varying from revelatory talks on publishing ideologies to the more realistic personal interactions, here are the five things we took away from the 2025 London Book Fair. The Talks: what did the LBF want us to learn? One main takeaway, clearly communicated by the London Book Fair, was that the publishing industry is becoming more inclusive by working to amplify diverse vo...

By Jessica L. Smith.With the recent release of Robert Egger’s ‘Nosferatu’, the timeless figure of the vampire has once again come to prominence. These blood-sucking, immortal, nocturnal figures have captured and haunted imaginations for centuries. Take Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s late nineteenth-century epistolary novel Dracula, or the mysterious, camp vampires that plague a small Californian town in the eighties cult classic ‘The Lost Boys’, to the compelling Cullen family in the infamous ‘Twilight’ series. We are no stranger to vampires, who have been meticulously explored throughout various forms of media and literature. Yet, if the vampire is already so well-explored, why are we still gripped by them?Vampire narratives can gather huge cult followings. Devoted and passionate fans en...

By Kiera Garcia - Associate Culture Editor Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club is one of the most critically acclaimed productions worldwide and I was able to see it performed on the West End this January. The production promises to draw you in with colorful numbers and enigmatic characters, and to leave you with a heightened awareness of how quickly one ideology can take over a country. For those unfamiliar with it, the play is set in Berlin in the 1930s, focusing on ‘The Kit Kat Club’, its host of dancers, enigmatic Emcee, and those who frequent it. The characters include Clifford Bradshaw, an American author, Sally Bowles, a British performer at the club, Fräuline Schneider, the woman who runs their boarding house, Herr Schultz, a boarder who ends up courting her, and Ernst Ludwig, a man...

By Rhian Kille The 67th Annual Grammy Awards included show stopping performances from artists like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii and Charli XCX that are all considered to have had breakthrough years in 2024-5. These artists have found mainstream success after at least a decade of hard work. But in many people’s eyes they have abruptly burst onto the scene, complete with a curated and distinct brand for music consumers to latch onto. This is a phenomenon that might seem to be the result of the increasing role that internet virality and eye-catching aesthetic now play in the music industry. But their performances speak to something much more timeless: theatrical spectacle.   In their one-off performances, Chappell Roan strides a 10 foot tall pink pony surrounded ...