Culture

By Rhian Kille One thing about me, is that I love going into an art gallery and seeing a painting from the 1890s by a mentally ill Norwegian man and saying to my friend: ‘that’s sooo girl-coded!’ For some of you there is no convincing needed (the photo dumps look lovely by the way) but for others I think it’s so easy, when approaching ‘fine’ art or art history, to worry that you just don’t ‘get’ it. A similar mystique exists around poetry – these artistic mediums have gained a reputation for being inaccessible and pretentious. Especially since there is often a financial cost to galleries making this intangible barrier, well, tangible. People don’t look for fine art outside of galleries because the spaces seem elevated and impenetrable. The physical isolation associated with fine art...

By Madeline Sidgwick-- Editor-In-Chief ‘The Hour’ is one of those TV series that has you intrigued immediately; combining a Russian spy mystery, romance, and the impeccable aesthetic of journalism in the 1950s.The shows two seasons revolve around a fictional current affairs program, The Hour, at the BBC in the 1950s-60s. Journalists aspiring for more, Bel (Romola Garai) and Freddie (Ben Whishaw) work with the smooth talking Hector Madden (Domonic West) to expose alleged government corruption and, as they argue, essential censorship that the BBC is under at the hands of government. The show also follows the mystery of a professor stabbed on the London Underground, but I will allow you to watch the series for yourself to find out where that leads. Despite facing negative reviews for ...

By Ruby Day -- Senior Culture Editor Cult Classic: noun “A work of fiction that is extremely popular with a select audience but may or may not be successful at the time of the work’s original publication.” Some of the best films I’ve ever seen are ‘sleeper hits’. Pieces of media that, on release, weren’t commercially profitable, but have garnered fascination and devotion in successive years. At the heart of a cult classic is unconventionality in its purest form; subcultural, hyper-specific, often anti-establishment concepts brought to life on the big screen. Other key features of the sleeper hit include distinctive aesthetic styles that dedicated fanbases emulate and relate to, original storytelling that can admittedly lead to misinterpretations, and ‘iconic’ characters and dial...

People have been insecure since the dawn of time, that’s undeniable. Women have donned makeup, shaved their legs, and styled their hair in elaborate updos as far back as the Greeks and Romans (if not longer), and men have sought after the perfectly sculpted physique for just as long. Yet, the emergence of social media has undeniably exasperated this need to be beautiful to a dangerous extent. With eating disorders, steroid abuse, and plastic surgery on the rise people have never walked the line of self-hatred and vanity so precariously before. In the age of social media, it is impossible to go unnoticed. Even if you were to spend all week in bed, stuck in an endless cycle of scrolling and liking, you are being perceived by others. Even without the need for commenting or posting, you ...

By Jessica L. SmithFor me, modernity means a new era of literature.Every year new novels are released, new authors rise to prominence, and readers are enchanted by a new defining year of literature. The possibilities feel endless and overwhelming, like the feeling when you step into a bookshop and have no idea where to start searching.At face value, discussions of modernity tend to overlook the art of writing and authorship with a focus instead on technology and media, making it easy to forget how the art of literature continues.Three defining books of this modern era of literature that have struck a chord with me include Elena Ferrante’s 'My Brilliant Friend', Bernardine Evaristo’s 'Girl, Woman, Other', and Hanya Yanagihara’s 'A Little Life'. It is quite telling of this new era of litera...

Photo Credit: Samantha Gades via Unsplash By: Kiera Garcia - Associate Culture Editor Over the past few years there has been an emergence in media, both traditional and non-traditional, to tell a story about someone or to be someone who lives a life portraying themselves to be of a different, typically lower, socio-economic background than they are.  One of the pieces of traditional media that really brought this discussion to light was Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s film of the summer from last year. The movie follows Oliver Quick, an Oxford student who claims to be from a humble background, who quickly attaches to the wealthy Felix Catton, eventually securing an invite to his large family estate for the summer. The movie itself deals with many nuances of socio-economic differ...

By Ruby Day -- Senior Culture Editor The British Museum might just be my favourite place in the world. It’s a transformative building, with a bewilderingly huge collection that can take the visitor anywhere from Anglo-Saxon England to prehistoric Japan. It’s possible to spend a whole day within its walls, and only see half of what’s on display. Even then, the public only has access to an estimated 1% of the museum’s full collection. To view and interact with so much world history, so easily, is an immense privilege; a privilege that comes at a very heavy cost. However awe-inspiring or endlessly fascinating, the British Museum’s size and scope is owed to centuries of colonisation, theft, and imperial vanity. Considered by some to be ‘an active crime scene’, the collection of roughly ...

We have all encountered someone vain. Perhaps someone we know personally, a celebrity we’ve come across, or a fictional character. More often than not, they get under our skin. Film characters are no exception to this idea of vanity. These are the characters that make you want to throw your popcorn in the air or your remote at the TV. We might love to hate them, or just simply hate them, but they add a certain undeniable quality to a film; the quality of being human. Whilst we might never admit, or openly embrace it, we are all a little vain. That’s what makes us human. Yet, do we really need these vain film characters? What do they add to a film? Let’s take a look.Starting off strong with a classic vain character: Gaston, the arrogant antagonist of the 1991 animated Disney film 'Beauty a...