tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/review-8242/articlesReview – The Conversation2024-03-28T12:21:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2267682024-03-28T12:21:09Z2024-03-28T12:21:09ZRenegade Nell: Sally Wainwright’s highwaywoman series is a swaggering caper of a show<p>“Little word of warning. You don’t want to mess with me”, Nelly Jackson tells highwayman Isambard Tulley in the opening minutes of Renegade Nell. The Disney+ fantasy adventure series is the latest show from Happy Valley writer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-valley-the-art-of-sally-wainwrights-perfect-tv-ending-199616">Sally Wainwright</a>.</p>
<p>Nell has inadvertently stumbled on Tulley and his gang robbing a group of wealthy travellers in the woods. The date is 1705 and Nell is returning to her family tavern in Tottenham, widowed, after her husband, Captain Jack was “blasted in half at the Battle of Blenheim”. </p>
<p>Despite this horrifying set of circumstances, Nell (or Nelly as her family call her, much to her annoyance), is remarkably upbeat, her cockney wit as quick and cutting as her sword skills.</p>
<p>The series sets up a story world inhabited by characters that are smart, resourceful, camp, canny and highly amusing. While tragedy and greed take up space in the dark edges of the plot and the minds of the show’s villains, it is humour that occupies its centre. </p>
<p>This comes courtesy of both Wainwright’s sharp writing and the performances of Nell, played by Louisa Harland of Derry Girls fame, and Billy Blind, her magical, pint-sized spirit, played by comedian and actor Nick Mohammed. </p>
<p>Mohammed purposefully uses his most famous comedic creation, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofVcaQQJlMc">Mr Swallow</a>, in his role as Billy Blind, drawing on both Mr Swallow’s squeaky voice, and his pattern of biting off more than he can chew. </p>
<p>Harland’s performance as Nell is equally magical, driving the narrative at breakneck speed. Her supernaturally powered fight sequences are something to behold, and she showcases a multitude of accents, from contemporary cockney to “posh” Scottish. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Renegade Nell.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Sally Wainwright’s safe hands</h2>
<p>Sally Wainright, the creator, executive producer and writer of the first five episodes of the series, is largely considered a safe – and extraordinarily capable – pair of hands. Wainwright is most well-known for Scott & Bailey (2011), Last Tango in Halifax (2012), Happy Valley (2014) and <a href="https://theconversation.com/gentleman-jack-a-gripping-19th-century-tale-of-one-womans-bravery-in-sex-and-politics-116868">Gentleman Jack</a> (2019). </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/happy-valley-the-art-of-sally-wainwrights-perfect-tv-ending-199616">Happy Valley: the art of Sally Wainwright's perfect TV ending</a>
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<p>Renegade Nell sees Wainwright parry with and between genres, themes and styles for which she is less well known. The magic realism and playful spirit that frames Renegade Nell may feel worlds away from Happy Valley, but – as with Wainwright’s indomitable women characters and frequent focus on class inequalities – magic realism does have precedence in her back catalogue. </p>
<p>Wainwright’s reimagination of the three Brontë sisters in the BBC film <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04cf4wv">To Walk Invisible</a> (2016) included scenes of the siblings as children, their heads adorned with <a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/uX6o4CDWUgYzdyaZ6">burning crowns of fire</a>. Renegade Nell has a similar interest in the magical relationship between three extraordinary but very different sisters.</p>
<p>The show is a magical mix of Wainwright’s previous creative expertise. Its adventure is drawn from Jane Hall (2006) and comedy from Bonkers (2007). It has period costume and a musical score reminiscent of Gentleman Jack and magic realism from To Walk Invisible. </p>
<p>Then there’s the determination and resilience from Happy Valley, and the focus on family, care, community and class that was inherent to Wainwright’s soap opera writing for Coronation Street.</p>
<h2>A class act</h2>
<p>Alongside its interest in women and the inequalities they experience and battle to overcome, a theme central to Renegade Nell is <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-55506-9">social class</a>. </p>
<p>With Nell as our guide, the structural inequalities between the wealthy and the poor are aligned directly to power and its abuses. The law, Nell tells us, “is made by the toffs, for the toffs”. Ending up on the wrong side of it, she talks to Billy Blind, joking and lamenting in equal measure: “How come I’ve ended up so far on the wrong side of the law?” </p>
<p>In response, Billy suggests, “Maybe when someone like you ends up on the wrong side of the law … there’s something wrong with the law … and maybe me and you was supposed to do some disruption to redress the balance.”</p>
<p>Their work to redress the balance, alongside an exceptional cast of supporting characters, explores the corruption of government, the control of the news and questions of truthful and objective reporting, poverty and gender-imbalanced opportunities. </p>
<p>Though the setting in 16th century England provides a sense of temporal distance, the contemporary relevance of the issues explored are unlikely to be lost on viewers, who may well be inspired to join Nell in kicking up a rumpus.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Johnson is affiliated with the Royal Television Society, as Vice Chair of the Yorkshire RTS branch. </span></em></p>The Disney series is a magical mega-mix of Sally Wainwright’s greatest hits.Beth Johnson, Professor of Television & Media Studies, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236552024-03-10T22:48:00Z2024-03-10T22:48:00ZBell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is side-splittingly funny – yet some of the magic is lost<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580594/original/file-20240308-18-hd5iby.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C14%2C1885%2C1264&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Matu Ngaropo and Ahunim Abebe in Bell Shakespeare s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Photo by Brett Boardman</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Shakespeare’s delightful A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a perennial favourite – and the production run by the Bell Shakespeare company (first prepared in 2021 but hindered by COVID lockdowns) is a swift and pared-back reimaginingreimagining of the play.</p>
<p>It follows the comedy of four lovers – Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius – who are lost in a forest and get tricked by the fairies, King Oberon, Queen Titania and the impish Puck. </p>
<p>The play also features the bumbling mechanicals – a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows-mender, a tinker, a joiner and a tailor – who meet in the forest to rehearse a play to perform at the upcoming wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta. </p>
<p>This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/25/10-of-the-best-plays-within-plays">play within a play</a>, performed at the end, has always brought the house down with sidesplitting laughter, and this show is no exception. It must have been just as hilarious during the play’s first performance, if it’s true that Shakespeare <a href="https://www.rsc.org.uk/a-midsummer-nights-dream/about-the-play/dates-and-sources">wrote it</a> to be performed at an aristocrat’s wedding.</p>
<h2>Finally, Shakespeare for the whole family</h2>
<p>Bell Shakespeare promotes the show as “fast, funny and family-friendly”. This is welcome news for theatregoing parents. Few of Shakespeare’s plays are suitable for children, despite there being a significant market for Shakespeare-related books and activities designed <a href="https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-for-kids/">for young people</a>. </p>
<p>My two boys received a storybook version of Shakespeare’s plays from family members some years ago, but it’s a delicate operation to tell bedtime stories about the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fratricide">fratricide</a> in Hamlet, the domestic violence of Othello, or the romantic suicides of Romeo and Juliet. </p>
<p>Certainly, Shakespeare’s delightful comedies lend themselves more readily to the young. So taking Bell Shakespeare’s promo at its word, I took my son Heathcliff, aged 9 (who contributes to this review) to the show.</p>
<h2>Powerful presence onstage</h2>
<p>Seasoned playgoers will be thoroughly impressed by the vibrant and engaging performances of the cast, who make Shakespeare’s language (and their connections to it) ring as clear as a bell. This is harder to achieve than it sounds. </p>
<p>The delightful charisma of Matu Ngaropo as Nick Bottom (the weaver) positions him as a type of leading man. A galvanising force, Ngaropo combines refined flamboyancy and outrageous sensitivity to keep the audience firmly in his pocket. </p>
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<span class="caption">Matu Ngaropo was a galvanising force onstage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Ella Prince is subtle in their rendering of Puck, the sprightly spirit – so watchable in their intriguing silences and confusion when manipulating mortals.</p>
<p>Richard Pyros gives a commanding performance as Oberon: fastidious and curious, with a propensity for bellowing through the forest. Imogen Sage also shows tremendous range by delivering a sultry Titania, a restrained Hippolyta, and a librarian-esque Quince. </p>
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<span class="caption">Ella Prince as Puck, Imogen Sage as Titania and Richard Pyros as Oberon in Bell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Finally, the four comic lovers: Hermia (Ahunim Abebe), Helena (Isabel Burton), Demetrius (Mike Howlett) and Lysander (Laurence Young), give feisty performances wholly committed to the verse.</p>
<h2>A subtle set and costumes</h2>
<p>This is Bell’s national touring play for 2024, and the <a href="https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/2024-midsummer-dream-design-inspiration">set design</a> by Teresa Negroponte centres around a dilapidated wooden construct that looks like the roof of an old barn tipped on its side.</p>
<p>But despite this dynamic set (which might double as the shipwreck from The Tempest), there are no leaves or any sort of greenery to help indicate most of the play is set in a forest – no sylvan milieu. </p>
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<span class="caption">The set, which resembled a rundown wooden barn, didn’t effectively depict the play’s setting in a forest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<p>Indeed, this production seems, in several instances, to presuppose the audience’s familiarity with the play. This can prove confusing for newcomers to Shakespeare.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/2024-midsummer-dream-design-inspiration">costumes are</a> intriguing and subtle if you know the play, but may also be too realistic – too bland and “everyday”. This made it difficult for young people to recognise the kings, queens and fairies.</p>
<p>For example, there was nothing fairylike about the fairies, whose costumes were almost always plain black, with no hint of glitter or sparkles in sight. </p>
<p>As Heathcliff commented: “They all changed into black clothes and called themselves fairies […] I didn’t know they were meant to be fairies until the second half […] they looked more like ghosts.”</p>
<p>“Thou shall wear <em>not</em> black costumes for fairies,” he added.</p>
<p>With actors needing to double (and sometimes triple) character roles, they quickly don a new coat, scarf or hat. But again, these distinctions may be too subtle for newcomers to recognise. </p>
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<span class="caption">Laurence Young and Ahunim Abebe played Lysander and Hermia, two of the four comic lovers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
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<h2>Heathcliff’s highlights</h2>
<p>While the acting proved second-to-none, many typical features of this famous play were absent. Heathcliff found the play “entertaining, but not laugh-out-loud funny”.</p>
<p>His favourite parts were the “horse’s head”, the slow-motion sequences, the fake swords used in the ridiculous staging of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyramus">Pyramus and Thisbe</a> at the play’s end, and “the man playing the princess” (with hairy chest exposed) – which he thought was funny but a bit odd.</p>
<p>Yet, the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe at the end delivered on its promise. Many of the audience members doubled over in stitches, throwing their heads back with laughter. </p>
<p>I’ll remember this show for the many exemplary renditions of the famous characters, but while Shakespeare’s script is itself family-friendly, the play can be confusing when many of its typical features are <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136330433/view">pared back</a> to the bone. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-50-shades-of-shakespeare-how-the-bard-sexed-things-up-106783">Friday essay: 50 shades of Shakespeare - how the Bard sexed things up</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirk Dodd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I took my young son Heathcliff to the show, and his perspective helped me see it through a kid’s eyes.Kirk Dodd, Lecturer in English and Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229332024-02-23T15:22:21Z2024-02-23T15:22:21ZLegion: Life in the Roman Army exhibition delivers exciting finds but fails to go beyond stories of men and weapons of war enough<p>The life of a Roman soldier was full of risk, danger and camraderie, but it could also be beset with loneliness. Many soldiers joined in order to build a better future for themselves. We know this was the case for Claudius Terentianus.</p>
<p>Terentianus was a marine who was later transferred onto a legion, a more prestigious unit consisting of Roman citizens. He went on to serve in Syria and Alexandria before finally retiring in the village of Karanis, Egypt.</p>
<p>Terentianus was one of hundreds of thousand of men who served in Roman armies but we know a lot about his experiences thanks to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24518619">papyrus letters</a> written early in the second century to his father Claudius Tiberianus. Terentianus’s experiences are at the centre of the exhibition Legion: Life in the Roman Army at London’s British Museum. </p>
<p>The British Museum’s first <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/legion-life-roman-army">major exhibition devoted to Rome’s armies</a> explores the experience of military service, from enlistment to retirement. The exhibition features collections of military equipment, inscriptions on stone and unique finds from across the Roman Empire.</p>
<p>The structure draws on a fairly traditional research approach focused on tracing careers of military men, and on study of military equipment. It was through work on military equipment that stories of individual men started emerging. These stories were told through personalised items, name tags and hand-made repairs. Legion: Life in the Roman Army reflects these approaches, if imperfectly. </p>
<h2>A ‘greatest hits’ selection of Roman military finds</h2>
<p>The opening panel sets the tone of the exhibition by focusing on the imagery of military might on Trajan’s column, a landmark of ancient Rome, and introducing the exhibition’s protagonist. The exhibition’s prominent theme is the story of Rome’s legions as the first professional army and of Rome as a highly militarised society. </p>
<p>The exhibition’s narrative starts with the tale of young men taking risk, pinning hopes of improving their livelihoods and gaining citizenship on military service. The exhibition doesn’t shy away from exploring the violence of frontiers, showing from the beginning stories of lives cut short through conflict. </p>
<p>Some highlights of the artefacts on show including items from the musuem’s own collection, such as a crocodile leather scale armour, a selection of Oxrynhous papyri and an eye catching single red wool sock. It also features loans of some of the most spectacular Roman military finds from Northern England and Scotland, tombstones from Mains and Bonn (Germany) and military equipment from the battlefield at Kalkriese (Germany). </p>
<p>Most striking, however, due to their totally unique nature and extraordinary preservation are loans of material from Dura Europos, Syria. On loan from Yale University Art Gallery, these include the only surviving example of a painted shield and a full horse armour, among other objects.</p>
<h2>Rich in finds, but poor in diversity</h2>
<p>The exhibition is rich in finds, but fails in its representation of the social diversity on the frontiers and a distinction between life on campaign and life on a settled frontier.</p>
<p>It would have been good to see more context behind how military communities functioned within local societies. For example, curators could have further explored the lives of people not directly in the army, but associated with it such as suppliers, enslaved people and civilians living near military sites.</p>
<p>Enslavement is alluded to in personal stories, including that of Abbas, a boy whose purchase by a legionary is attested on a papyrus and the story of an enslaved concubine, turned freed woman and wife, Regina. However, this could have been pushed further. Some estimates of the numbers of the extended communities easily match or surpass the number of actual soldiers.</p>
<p>Throughout the three panels on fort life, women are featured only in relation to the men in their lives. They are deceased daughters of soldiers, wives, or concubines. It would have been interesting to juxtapose these with evidence of economically independent women such as <a href="https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue17/4/2.3.html">Belica</a>, an innkeeper, or women who asserted their agency, such as <a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0078%3Abook%3D4%3Achapter%3D19">Sosia Galla</a>, wife of a legionary legate tried for treason.</p>
<p>Sex work and gender-based violence are not addressed explicitly either. A panel above the fort life section mentions Terenatius’ wish to purchase a concubine, but nothing of the accompanying text puts this in context. Instead, the visitor is shown a birthday invitation from Sulpicia Lepidina, who was a wife of a military commander from Vindolanda, a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England, offering a more comfortable vision of women’s lives on frontiers. </p>
<p>As an expert in Roman frontiers, it was incredible to see so many world famous artefacts I have researched in real life, but I worry the narrative they have woven includes too many blindspots that perpetuate ideas around the might of Rome’s legions. It preserves a horrified fascination with the “boy’s toys” of warfare, while obscuring the issues of inequality and social and gender diversity.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Walas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are some incredible rare finds on show at this exhibition but it fails to depict a more diverse life in and around Rome’s armies.Anna Walas, Honorary Research Fellow and Community Archaeology Liaison Officer, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219112024-01-26T11:06:10Z2024-01-26T11:06:10ZThe Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists exhibition review: a look at the art that made the kid’s books iconic<p>The Ladybird books, first published in 1914, helped millions of children learn and love to read over the decades. These hardback, pocket-size books, with bright and interesting artwork on the front, are pretty distinctive. You might have had one in your childhood, or seen one of the many spoofs put out by the original Ladybird publishers in recent years.</p>
<p>They were among the first books made solely with the child reader in mind and featured vivid, detailed and true-to-life illustrations and text simply and articulately expressed by experts in their field. The design of the original books has become iconic, with their full-colour illustrative style and simple typography.</p>
<p>The artwork is central to the success of the books, and to the enduring love many have for them. A quirky and original exhibition at <a href="https://www.victoriagal.org.uk/event/wonderful-world-ladybird-book-artists">Victoria Art Galley</a> in Bath is celebrating the artists that are responsible for Ladybird’s distinctive look. It has been curated by collector and researcher Helen Day, who became fascinated by the books after seeing her baby so engaged with the artwork on the pages of these old stories.</p>
<p>“I began as a collector but my interest soon broadened into a desire to understand better the social history that the books contain,” Day says in an introduction to the exhibition. She created a <a href="https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/">website</a> and heard from a variety of people who were eager to share their own Ladybird experiences and stories.</p>
<p>The exhibition features a compelling assembly of books, artefacts, proofs, letters and original artwork by some of the most highly regarded Ladybird artists of the mid-1900s – such as <a href="https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/john-berry/">John Berry</a>, <a href="https://www.martinaitchison.co.uk/">Martin Aitchison</a>, <a href="https://frankhampsonartwork.co.uk/">Frank Hampson</a>, <a href="https://www.thecharlestunnicliffesociety.co.uk/ladybirdbooks.html">Charles Tunnicliffe</a> and <a href="https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/harry-wingfield-we-have-fun/">Harry Wingfield</a>. Many of them exhibited at London’s prestigious Royal Academy and exquisite originals of some of their work hangs on the walls here.</p>
<p>The intriguing biographies and often humorous quotes and anecdotes from these artists tell the story of the growth of a Loughborough printing company into the iconic imprint of children’s publishing. Such was its success, by the mid-1970s Ladybird was selling millions of copies of its Key Words Reading Scheme books. The series featured the characters Peter and Jane. They were known as the kids next door – which they quite literally were, as they were based on the neighbours of illustrator Harry Wingfield.</p>
<h2>A host of inspiration</h2>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttMW4D7nY8&t=197s">interview</a> with TV presenter Richard Wyatt, Day noted that: “in the wartime, paper rationing meant that normal work dried up, but they discovered if they took the largest sheet of paper available at the time, and folded it … in a particular way … you could make an entire mini Ladybird book from just one sheet of paper. That was the winning formula. Suddenly, the brand, the format and some amazing individuals was the sort of chemical combination that sparked off this huge success.”</p>
<p>One of those amazing individuals was editorial director Douglas Keen, who commissioned the artists for the books he conceptualised right up until Ladybird was sold to Pearson, owner of Penguin Books, in 1973. Day notes in the exhibition introduction that Keen had enviable instincts for pairing the right illustrator with the right project.</p>
<p>The most fascinating part of the exhibition is the collection of photographs of the locations, families, friends and neighbours who inspired the illustrators. The roughs of the final illustrations are pinned next to the original artworks, which sit alongside the pages of the books in which they were printed. Eric Winter, who illustrated many of the Well-Loved Tales books, sometimes used his wife as a model. Seeing a photograph of her alongside Winter’s final painting of <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/196216/well-loved-tales-cinderella-by-ladybird/9780723281443">Cinderella</a> is a delight.</p>
<p>There are 500 books on the walls and 200 available to read. There is even a life-sized model of Tootles the Taxi from one of Ladybird’s most popular books, Tootles the Taxi and Other Rhymes, in which to read them. Younger visitors will love the interactive activities – dressing up in clothing featured in Ladybird books, drawing book covers to display on the noticeboard and completing a discovery trail around the gallery.</p>
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<p>Seeing the early decades of Ladybird’s history is a reminder not only of how important it is to publish inspiring content, but also that children’s books should reflect the diverse world we live in. With a 100 years in children’s publishing behind it, it is still growing in important ways.</p>
<p>Ladybird is still publishing books and still helping children learn and love to read. Today’s Ladybird artists come from all over the world, reflecting a variety of cultures, ethnicities and differences. New generations of children can see themselves in the pages of books that they, too, will love and reread. </p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:s.stewart2@bathspa.ac.uk">s.stewart2@bathspa.ac.uk</a> is affiliated with:
Society for Young Publishers South-West (I'm a mentor)
Society of Authors
I am an editorial freelancer for Penguin Random House Children's Books (which includes Ladybird), HarperCollins Children's Books, Macmillan Children's Books and most of the other global publishing houses.</span></em></p>A loving look at the artists who made the children’s publisher so popular.Samantha Stewart, Lecturer in Publishing, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179952023-12-15T13:02:46Z2023-12-15T13:02:46ZEntangled Islands exhibition explores the history of Irish people in the Caribbean – an expert review<p>A new exhibition at Epic, Dublin’s Irish emigration museum, explores connections between Ireland and the Caribbean. <a href="https://epicchq.com/entangled-islands/">Entangled Islands</a> aims to tell “the stories of a wide range of Irish people who traversed and settled in the Caribbean”, while also outlining “our intersecting histories of colonisation and resistance”.</p>
<p>The exhibition was partly inspired by growing academic research into connections between Ireland and the Caribbean in the last 20 years. Such research, as the exhibition explains, “complicates understandings of the Irish diaspora as a historically marginalised people”. The <a href="https://epicchq.com/entangled-islands-bibliography/">extent</a> of this scholarship is clear across the exhibition, although the tone is accessible throughout.</p>
<p>One prominent theme is a reevaluation of Ireland’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The topic has previously been tackled in books such as <a href="https://books.google.ie/books/about/Ireland_Slavery_and_Anti_Slavery_1612_18.html?id=mToWDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1812-1965</a> by Nini Rodgers (2007) and <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526150998/">Ireland, Slavery and the Caribbean</a> (2023), edited by Finola O’Kane and Ciaran O’Neill. </p>
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<p>The exhibition focuses mainly on the stories of individual Irish people in the Caribbean, with some limited exploration of the wider context. While there are references to the positions of power many Irish people held under the colonial system, the extent of this fact – or its brutalities – do not occupy a large portion of the exhibition.</p>
<p>For example, an early panel explores Howe Peter Browne, the second marquess of Sligo, who became governor of Jamaica in 1834. This is a significant date given that the <a href="https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/explore-by-time-period/georgians/1833-abolition-of-slavery-act-and-compensation-claims/#:%7E:text=The%201833%20Act%20outlawed%20British,the%20Services%20of%20such%20Slaves'.">Slavery Abolition Act of 1833</a> was coming into effect when he arrived. </p>
<p>The exhibition makes much of the fact that Browne would have to enforce the new laws of the act, which required the “formerly” enslaved over the age of six to work 40.5 hours unpaid per week for four to six years. It notes that, Browne, like other enslavers, received compensation for loss of “property”, while also mentioning that Browne supported abolition. </p>
<p>Images on the panel of enslaved people suffering punishment on a treadmill and Brown’s ancestral home, Westport House in Mayo, are suggestive of the interrelationship between the horrors of enslavement and the Irish upper classes. Though nothing in the accompanying text makes this explicit. </p>
<p>Browne is positioned in a post-emancipation framework and portrayed somewhat positively, far from the way he is <a href="https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526151001/9781526151001.00026.xml">described by</a> Finola O’ Kane as a “less-than-mature” marquess, with “a mixed reputation as an improving landlord”.</p>
<h2>The Irish slave myth</h2>
<p>The exhibition is more explicit is in its discussion of the “Irish slave” myth. This refers to an online misinformation meme that <a href="https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:20525/">falsely claims</a> Irish people were enslaved in the Americas but have managed to succeed, nevertheless. </p>
<p>As one exhibition panel explains, the myth “persists in the face of contrary evidence”. The exhibition declares that: “White nationalists and racists, in particular, have seized on the myth in an attempt to undermine the unique suffering of enslaved Africans.” </p>
<p>The strength of this statement is notable, but perhaps because the meme remains most popular <a href="https://limerick1914.medium.com/all-of-my-work-on-the-irish-slaves-meme-2015-16-4965e445802a">in North American territories</a>, rather than in the UK and Ireland, a sense of distance allows for such unequivocal language.</p>
<p>There is a close attention to language across the exhibition, such as the consistent use of “enslaved”, in place of “slave(s)”. This is welcome and reflects reconsiderations, both in academia and beyond, of the extent to which the transatlantic slave trade was foundational to the making of modern Europe. </p>
<p>The layered meanings of “entangled” in the exhibition’s title are evident in the exploration of a number of connections from journalistic, to literary, as well as enslavement and colonialism. </p>
<p>At the same time, as the exhibition shows, there have been moments of solidarity between Ireland and the Caribbean, regions connected by their colonial pasts. Abolitionists such as Dubliner James Field Stanfield and Belfast man Thomas McCabe feature prominently, the latter ensuing an all-island perspective is included. </p>
<p>The visit in 1791 of Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved man whose <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/34285/the-interesting-narrative-and-other-writings-by-olaudah-equiano-ed--vincent-carrett-intro-and-notes--vincent-carrett/9780142437162">memoir</a> would become a key text for the abolitionist movement in Britain, is also described.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Entangled Islands has interesting stories to tell about specific people from Ireland in the Caribbean. There’s journalist James O’Kelly and his time in Cuba. And Kay Donnellan and Eleanor Frances Cahill, teachers from Ireland who became involved in the country’s labour movement. There’s also a nod towards Che Guevara’s <a href="https://www.thejournal.ie/che-guevara-irish-roots-3754700-Dec2017/">Irish heritage</a>, via his grandmother.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the exhibition, there is a turn towards literature. Figures such as St Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott and former poet laureate of Jamaica Lorna Goodison are showcased as poets who have drawn inspiration from Irish writers such as <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2022/07/05/james-joyce-in-the-caribbean/">James Joyce</a> and W.B. Yeats.</p>
<p>The exhibition ends with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gGmmuPyE8&ab_channel=EPICTheIrishEmigrationMuseum">video</a> of four young mixed heritage Caribbean-Irish people talking about links between the two regions. They discuss both the racism they experience in Ireland and the interesting points of contact they find here with the Caribbean, from language to music. It is both joyous and confronting in equal measures and is an important addition to the story.</p>
<p>On the whole, this is a necessary and worthwhile exhibition that has fascinating stories to tell about the Irish in the Caribbean, which are often not widely known. More pressure could have been placed on the portrayal of Irish enslavers, but nevertheless, visitors are likely to come away with a fresh perspective. Entangled Islands is a well-researched, interesting exhibition that ends by echoing the idea of Irish and Caribbean entanglement into the present day.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Howley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One prominent theme is a reevaluation of Ireland’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.Ellen Howley, Assistant Professor in the School of English, DCU, Dublin City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178432023-12-04T16:08:12Z2023-12-04T16:08:12ZAll the video games shortlisted for the 2023 Game Awards – reviewed by experts<p><em>Six games were shortlisted for game of the year at the 2023 Game Awards – the industry’s equivalent of the Oscars. Our academics reviewed the finalists ahead of the ceremony, which revealed Baldur’s Gate 3 to be the winner. You can read our <a href="https://theconversation.com/baldurs-gate-3-wins-game-of-the-year-at-2023s-game-awards-219519">full review of it here</a>.</em></p>
<h2>Marvel’s Spider-Man 2</h2>
<p><em>Platform: PlayStation 5</em></p>
<p>Modern life is tough. Maintaining the perfect work/life balance, managing your bills and other priorities – it’s complicated stuff. Add saving the world to that list, and Spider-Man has quite the calendar to manage. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 brings us two Spider-Men – Peter Parker and Miles Morales – as they balance the challenges of life with being superheroes. </p>
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<p>There have been countless superhero games, but few like this one. It balances a rich story with classic and complex villains such as <a href="https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Sergei_Kravinoff_(Earth-616)">Kraven the Hunter</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/venom-an-excellent-superhero-film-perhaps-best-not-experienced-in-4dx-104557">Venom</a>. The fast-paced combat is almost balletic – webbing up a manhole cover and flinging it at a villain feels oddly beautiful. Then there’s the open world, a near-perfect replica of New York densely packed with people, life and – of course – super-villains. </p>
<p>It feels less like you’re playing a game, and more like you’re entering someone else’s world for a short period of time – and I love it.</p>
<p><em>by Theo Tzanidis, senior lecturer in digital marketing</em></p>
<h2>Super Mario Bros. Wonder</h2>
<p><em>Platform: Nintendo Switch</em></p>
<p>Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the first traditional side-scrolling Super Mario game since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdZU1vhxkg8">New Super Mario Bros. U.</a> in 2012. A side scrolling game is one where the player is seen from a side-view camera angle and the screen follows the player as they move from the left to the right of the screen – the classic Mario format. </p>
<p>Wonder, however, is not a reinvention but a remix, crystallising the gameplay of the original <a href="https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/arcade-archives-mario-bros-switch/">Mario Bros. arcade game</a> (1983), the experimentation of New Super Mario Bros. U (2012), with nods to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nW9o6M5zFo">3D World + Bowser’s Fury</a> (2021).</p>
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<p>With 40 years of muscle memory accumulated, playing the latest 2D platformer will instantly feel familiar. However, skill, memory and mastery quickly give way to impulse and adaptability with the activation of Wonder Flowers – in-game tokens that alter the game mechanics. Wonder is brilliant – a return, an extension, an update that mixes and remixes its history in ways that are, well, wonderful.</p>
<p><em>by Michael Samuel, lecturer in digital film and television</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-super-mario-bros-movie-dont-watch-it-for-the-story-but-for-how-it-successfully-represents-gameplay-203592">The Super Mario Bros. Movie: don't watch it for the story but for how it successfully represents gameplay</a>
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<h2>Baldur’s Gate 3</h2>
<p><em>Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows, macOS</em></p>
<p>Baldur’s Gate 3 is a computer role-playing game set in the world of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dungeons-and-dragons-licence-changes-threaten-the-fan-community-the-game-relies-upon-legal-expert-explains-199327">Dungeons and Dragons</a> – the fantasy tabletop role-playing game where players choose their adventure and dice rolls determine outcomes. The game features a rich narrative that explores themes of mass displacement, religious fanaticism, political corruption and the allure of absolute power. </p>
<p>While players are free to choose their own moral pathways through this thorny terrain, the team mechanics and the dynamic ensemble cast imply that interdependence, solidarity and trust are the compass points that should guide us. </p>
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<p>Players recruit a diverse band of adventurers to aid them on their travels and each ally has their own compelling backstory, beliefs and goals. Forming friendships – and potentially romantic relationships – with these brilliantly written characters makes every narrative decision feel meaningful and every dice roll feel fraught.</p>
<p>The strengths of Baldur’s Gate 3 are its deft oscillation between immersive role-playing, strategic turn-based combat and careful resource management – in conjunction with its beautiful, expansive gameworld. I don’t really have anything bad to say about it. Having completed a single-player run, I am now hugely enjoying playing in local co-op mode with my partner and I can see myself replaying Baldur’s Gate 3 several more times. </p>
<p><em>By Emma Reay, lecturer in games studies and game design</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/baldurs-gate-3-wins-game-of-the-year-at-2023s-game-awards-an-expert-review-219519">Baldurs Gate 3 wins game of the year at 2023's Game Awards – an expert review</a>
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<h2>Resident Evil 4</h2>
<p><em>Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC via Steam</em></p>
<p>This remake of Resident Evil 4 had much to live up to. The <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/game/resident-evil-4-2005/">2005 original</a> represented a substantial departure from the atmospheric horror of its forebears towards action-driven gameplay. And what action! Our hero, Leon, rampages his way across a sepia-drenched Spanish village, in his quest to rescue the president’s daughter from the hands of a diabolical cult leader.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Resident Evil 4 trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Leon’s gung-ho intervention is assisted by a splendid armoury of handguns, shotguns and the occasional heavy ordnance. No mere shooting gallery, Resident Evil 4 updates the visceral combat with considerable aplomb, where combat arenas demonstrate highly dynamic and escalating scenarios. Firearms and their corresponding upgrades provide nuanced choices with regards to power, precision and clearance. Understanding the intricacies of combat guides the player’s journey – first fearful, then fearless. All told, Resident Evil 4 is an unforgettable Spanish holiday.</p>
<p><em>Reviewed by David Stevenson, assistant professor in the school of film</em></p>
<h2>Alan Wake 2</h2>
<p><em>Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC</em></p>
<p>Alan Wake 2 marks a significant shift from the original game’s action-adventure mechanics to a narrative-driven survival horror. Players alternate between Alan – trapped in The Dark Place since the first game – and new protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson, who is investigating the enigmatic town of Bright Falls. The game oscillates between the two characters, balancing Saga’s investigations with Alan’s nightmarish experiences in the surreal New York of The Dark Place.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Alan Wake 2 trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>While the original game’s combat returns in a refined form, Alan Wake 2 focuses more on puzzle solving, aligning with the game’s mysterious tone. Enhanced by stellar audiovisual design, the game firmly immerses players in an unsettling atmosphere which constantly sees them question reality with the game’s frequent interplay between gameplay and live action cut scenes. Modern game development techniques like ray-tracing and asset streaming further support this immersion, allowing players to fluidly switch between protagonists and settings at will.</p>
<p>Alan Wake 2 not only surpasses its predecessor, but also pushes the survival horror genre’s boundaries, with game studio Remedy proving once again its dedication to creating polished, haunting and memorable gaming experiences.</p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Adam Jerrett, lecturer in computer games technology</em></p>
<h2>Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</h2>
<p><em>Platform: Nintendo Switch</em></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-review-a-masterclass-in-rewarding-curiosity-205797">Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</a> is the Terminator 2 of sequels. It takes everything its predecessor, <a href="https://www.ign.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild">Breath of the Wild</a>, did right (vast exploration, diverse combat and compelling story) and enhances all of them. The addition of the highly contrasting Sky Islands and Hyrule Depths, as well as the difficult to manage Gloom debuff, adds a whole new challenge to exploration never before seen in a Zelda game. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Alongside this come old enemies with fresh new looks and combat styles, along with the multitude of new monsters to discover as you run, swim and glide through Hyrule. The game does suffer from the same occasional frame rate issues as its predecessor, but not often and it does very little to detract from the spellbinding gameplay. Do not just take my word for it, this game is well worth picking up and experiencing for yourself.</p>
<p><em>Reviewed by Henryk Haniewicz, game developer and research fellow</em></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our academics review the finalists ahead of the announcement of the winner on December 7.Theo Tzanidis, Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, University of the West of ScotlandAdam Jerrett, Lecturer, Faculty of Creative & Cultural Industries, University of PortsmouthDavid Stevenson, Assistant Professor in the School of Film, Trinity College DublinEmma Joy Reay, Lecturer in Games Studies and Game Design, University of SouthamptonHenryk Haniewicz, Game developer and research fellow, University of SouthamptonMichael Samuel, Lecturer in Digital Film & Television, Department of Film and Television, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2164692023-11-01T11:35:18Z2023-11-01T11:35:18ZDear England: ‘feelgood’ Gareth Southgate play reviewed by a sports coaching expert<p><a href="https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/dear-england/">Dear England</a>, a play about football manager Gareth Southgate, immaculately encapsulates the light and dark sides of the game.</p>
<p>At the start of the play – which recently transferred to the Prince Edward Theatre – Southgate watches his earlier self <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pytk8d_yBTI">missing the crucial penalty against Germany</a> that sent the men’s England team crashing out of the Uefa Euro tournament in 1996. It’s an old wound that refuses to heal. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Dear England.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The loss sparked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iikWy2iwFeM">dejected England fans</a> to vandalise German cars, and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/dear-england-prince-edward-theatre-review-joseph-fiennes/">burn Southgate effigies</a>. Despite his emotional baggage, circumstances thrust Southgate into the managerial role 20 years later. </p>
<p>The play shows how he selected a young, talented, multicultural squad. But also how he sensed that for them to survive the pressures of expectation, he needed to cultivate <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Slater-3/publication/342530780_LEADERSHIP_AND_SOCIAL_IDENTITY/links/5efa0ea245851550507b2ffd/LEADERSHIP-AND-SOCIAL-IDENTITY.pdf">a supportive, collective culture</a> that transcended violent, racist, hyper-masculine football narratives.</p>
<h2>Sport on stage</h2>
<p>Portraying football on stage is tricky, but the superb staging – featuring a centre circle and a hovering illuminated halo intimating the iconic Wembley arch – provides an evocative setting. </p>
<p>Joseph Fiennes’s portrayal of Southgate is masterful, embodying his essence with nuanced mannerisms and timbre, without resorting to caricature. Southgate is portrayed as self-deprecating, an unlikely leader and a reluctant figurehead. Brought in to provide stability, he enacts revolutionary change.</p>
<p>Playwright James Graham’s script is witty. Harry Kane’s (Will Close) depiction as an awkward communicator with a curious voice steals the most laughs. This poignantly pays off later when the audience is humbled by listening to the character lamenting that people denigrate him for his vocal shortcomings. </p>
<p>Jordan Pickford’s (Josh Barrow) character adheres to the stereotype of the goalkeeper as a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdqcCARcDDY">crazy man</a>”, but is amusingly endearing. A liberal amount of swearing had the audience creasing up, while epitomising the gritty underbelly of football. There was a broad range of famous character cameos, adding interest and jovial familiarity, but sometimes smacking of <a href="https://theconversation.com/spitting-image-the-puppet-satire-that-captured-thatchers-britain-107241">Spitting Image</a>.</p>
<h2>Southgate’s tactics</h2>
<p>The play also explores the existential crisis of what it means to be the England team. In an age of increasing societal division and inequality, who and what do the team want to be, and represent? </p>
<p>Southgate urges the players to contribute to the vision and take responsibility for co-constructing a modern football identity. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17430437.2020.1810021">Their challenge</a> is to move beyond the football superiority complex of the past, to forge a spirit of togetherness and belief.</p>
<p>Psychologist <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/21/meet-pippa-grange-doctor-helped-transform-england-football-team/">Pippa Grange</a> (Dervla Kirwan) is recruited to help players confront their fears and confide in one another about insecurities. Southgate displays much soul-searching in overcoming his own traumas, and in attempting to bind the group together. Grange’s character is almost a manifestation of Southgate’s consciousness, as he attempts to enact change in himself and others.</p>
<h2>Penalties in the play</h2>
<p>Penalties, the ultimate high-pressure football test, are a significant part of this drama, acting as a vehicle through which Southgate encourages the players to <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Fear_Less/NqGwDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Fear+Less:+How+to+Win+at+Life+Without+Losing+Yourself&printsec=frontcover">fear less</a> and to find strength and love in unity. </p>
<p>England broke their run of bad penalty shoot-out luck under Southgate in the 2018 World Cup. But they then lost the subsequent one in the Euro 2020 final, where Southgate’s decisions unintentionally exposed unsuccessful penalty takers Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/12/football/england-racist-abuse-bukayo-saka-jadon-sancho-marcus-rashford-euro-2020-final-spt-intl/index.html">to racist abuse</a>.</p>
<p>In Dear England, Southgate comes across as a quietly heroic, decent man, cultivating a culture where players are empowered to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029220301497">take the risks necessary</a> to achieve greatness. Ultimately, Southgate and England learn how to play with joy, lose with dignity, survive trauma and emerge in more meaningful roles. </p>
<p>For Southgate that means supporting others compassionately to achieve in the psychologically safe environment he did not experience himself. </p>
<p>We still lack the unwritten final act denouement, which for England managers is rarely satisfying. Euro 2024 is likely to be Southgate’s last tournament as national manager, but he will surely embrace the challenge, and try once more.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, Dear England is a feelgood play, as evidenced by the enthusiastic standing ovation, clapping and singing of Sweet Caroline at the performance I attended. Dear England exceeded my expectations, and its unusual fare might attract a non-traditional theatre audience to bravely shelve their doubts and with an open-heartedness, connect with a different story.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The play captures the light and dark sides of the beautiful game.David Turner, Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2152062023-10-10T15:22:09Z2023-10-10T15:22:09ZPhilip Guston: controversial delayed Tate show asks ‘what would it be like to be evil?’<p>American painter <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/philip-guston">Philip Guston’s</a> (1913-1980) work was filled with creative innovation. But the paintings he is best known for are the series of cartoonish hooded figures begun in the late 1960s.</p>
<p>Guston called these painted characters “<a href="https://www.artnews.com/feature/philip-gustons-kkk-paintings-history-meaning-1234572056/">hoods</a>”. They represented members of Ku Klux Klan (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ku-Klux-Klan">KKK</a>), an organisation that had haunted him since childhood. Painting these figures, Guston wanted to explore the idea of evil. “What would it be like to be evil?” he asked himself.</p>
<p>In Tate Modern’s vast Guston retrospective, which runs until February 25, the “hoods” occupy just one room out of 11. But Guston’s nuanced engagement with racialised evil caused a contentious three-year delay in the exhibition opening. </p>
<p>Produced in collaboration with three major US museums (the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), the London showing of Guston’s retrospective was originally slated for 2020.</p>
<p>In the atmosphere following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-why-the-sight-of-these-brave-exhausted-protesters-gives-me-hope-139804">murder of African American George Floyd</a> by a white police officer in Minneapolis, <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/postponed-philip-guston-show-will-now-open-2022-museums-say-1919119">Tate announced that</a> the show would be postponed until “we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the centre of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted”.</p>
<p>Tate was accused of <a href="https://artreview.com/patronising-postponement-of-philip-guston-retrospective-causes-outcry/">patronising its visitors</a>. The exhibition’s curator Mark Godfrey <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/mark-godfrey-leaving-tate-1950948">condemned the decision and resigned</a>. Rumours swirled about Tate’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/26/sense-or-censorship-row-over-klan-images-in-tates-postponed-show">alleged intolerance</a> of internal dissent.</p>
<p>Tate director Maria Balshaw <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/10/03/postponed-philip-guston-survey-finally-opens-at-tate-modern#">now claims</a> that the delay allowed time for additional research into Guston’s depictions of the KKK. This is borne out in the exhibition, which begins by establishing key facts about Guston and his artistic commitment to condemning racism.</p>
<h2>Guston’s early work</h2>
<p>Born Philip Goldstein, Guston – whose later name change masked his Jewish identity – was the son of immigrants who had fled persecution in present day Ukraine. His family settled in the US as the KKK and racialised violence were on the rise. </p>
<p>Guston’s childhood was <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-my-father-philip-guston">financially constrained and marred by family tragedies</a>. Largely self-taught, he worked through his fears by drawing “conspiracies and flogging and cruelty and evil” and demonstrated a prodigious artistic talent. This is evidenced in the exhibition through early works including <a href="https://ocula.com/art-galleries/hauser-wirth/artworks/philip-guston/mother-and-child/">Mother and Child</a> (1930), painted when he was just 17.</p>
<p>From here the exhibition proceeds chronologically. We accompany Guston through his experiments, first with surrealism, then with political murals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="black and white photo of Philip Guston working on a mural with a group of children looking on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552591/original/file-20231006-27-dto2px.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Philip Guston working on a mural with a group of children looking on (1940).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.aaa.si.edu">Archives of American Art</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Footage specially shot for Tate’s exhibition shows <a href="http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/items/show/14352">The Struggle Against Terrorism</a> (1934-35) a monumental, collaboratively made protest mural that Guston painted in Mexico. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, encouraged by his high school friend and fellow artist, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jackson-Pollock">Jackson Pollock</a> as well as <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/willem-de-kooning-1433">Willem de Kooning</a> and <a href="https://www.nga.gov/features/mark-rothko.html">Mark Rothko</a>, Guston began painting abstract compositions. In 1962, he received his first major retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum which included several paintings shown in the Tate exhibition, such as <a href="https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/19024/passage">Passage</a> (1957-58).</p>
<h2>‘What if I died?’</h2>
<p>The global political turmoil of the late 1960s – addressed by the work of a younger generation of emergent “contemporary” artists – marked the end of a line for Guston’s generation. Pollock died in 1956, killed in an <a href="https://www.grunge.com/939772/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-jackson-pollock/">alcohol-fuelled car crash</a>. Rothko <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/26/archives/mark-rothko-artist-a-suicide-here-at-66-mark-rothko-abstract.html">took his own life</a> in 1970. De Kooning <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/153331750201700512">succumbed gradually to dementia and isolation</a>. Guston began again.</p>
<p>“What if I died?” Guston mused, perhaps thinking of these friends. “What would I paint if I came back?” </p>
<p>From the late 1960s, he abandoned abstraction, restricted his palette to mostly pink and black and began to work on the “hoods”. As younger artists <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-art-of-the-photograph-the-photograph-as-art/2021/04/15/5668ef7e-626f-11eb-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.html">fixated on photographic mass media</a>, Guston invoked the comic strip <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-gender-fluidity-of-krazy-kat">Krazy Kat</a>. He borrowed its strong black outlines and simplified forms to depict the Klansmen. </p>
<p>A mob of them cruise in a ludicrously cartoonish vehicle in <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/philip-guston-city-limits">City Limits</a> (1969). A single “hood” meditatively smokes and paints a self-portrait in <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/philip-guston-the-studio">The Studio</a> (1969). The “hoods” inhabit a sickly, empty city painted in <a href="https://cdn.jewishboston.com/uploads/2022/06/09_City-729x486.jpg">City</a> (1968) like unctuous tiers of strawberry blancmange, or a repulsive mountain of tumbling pink flesh.</p>
<h2>Introducing the ‘hoods’</h2>
<p>First exhibited in in 1970, the “hoods” had a hostile reception. Discouraged, Guston stopped painting for over a year. He spent the time travelling and finally settled in upstate New York, where he worked in seclusion until his death.</p>
<p>In spite – or maybe because – of the crisis incited by the “hoods” critical rejection, the paintings Guston made next are a tremendous synthesis of his preceding work.</p>
<p>Powerful colours return, along with forms that are recognisable, but dreamlike and strange. In one room, his large canvases are juxtaposed with ink drawings made in collaboration with his partner, the poet and painter <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_McKim">Musa McKim</a> (1908-1992). </p>
<p>McKim composed words around which Guston drew: “I thought I would never write anything again”, says one. “Then I put on my cold wristwatch.”</p>
<p>The final room in the exhibition is filled with work done at night and dominated by the colour black. <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/90583/couple-in-bed">Couple in Bed</a> (1977), painted after McKim suffered a stroke, shows the pair apparently asleep. Guston clings to McKim, clutching his paintbrushes and still wearing his “cold wristwatch”.</p>
<p>After seeing Guston’s Tate retrospective, I led an undergraduate seminar analysing the New Right’s political rhetoric. The discussion turned to memes and how their crude comic simplifications serve far-right agendas well.</p>
<p>The exchange made me think back to Guston’s <a href="https://ocula.com/art-galleries/hauser-wirth/artworks/philip-guston/blackboard/">Blackboard</a> (1969) a painting of three hooded Klansmen on a schoolroom board. Did Guston mean to show the educational apparatus that engenders racism? Or was this a prompt to think about the interpretive frameworks that get placed around controversial works of art, including his own? </p>
<p>I’d like to think it was both. Guston wanted to pass on tools that we could use to take apart everything – form, colour, identity, politics – and to help us put it back together, in an improved form.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Carolin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Guston’s complex engagement with racialised evil caused a contentious three-year delay in the exhibition opening.Clare Carolin, Senior Lecturer, Art and Public Engagement, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147532023-10-09T17:19:19Z2023-10-09T17:19:19ZThe Tony Blair Rock Opera features bagpipes, Lady Macbeth and a wrestling match with Gordon Brown<p>If you’re looking for subtlety and sophistication, Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s <a href="https://tonyblairrockopera.co.uk/">Tony! The Tony Blair Rock Opera</a> is probably not for you. It starts – literally – with a bang and careens through a hectic hour and a half of high-energy songs and skits. </p>
<p>The committed cast are happy to provide their audience with caricatures, as opposed to characters. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Prescott">John Prescott</a> (Rosie Strobel) is portrayed as a professional northerner, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robin-Cook">Robin Cook</a> (Sally Cheng) as a priapic ginger gnome, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cherie-Booth">Cherie Blair</a> (Tori Burgess) as a sharp-tongued Scouser – you get the picture.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Tony Blair Rock Opera.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Although the occasional joke misfires (blind <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Blunkett">David Blunkett</a> walking into a door frame, really?) and some of the actors’ accents are as woeful as the deliberately dodgy wigs they whip on and off, it works on its own terms.</p>
<p>The music and the lyrics might not be that memorable, but the songs rhyme well. In the run up to the 1992 election, for example, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Neil-Kinnock-Baron-Kinnock-of-Bedwellty">Neil Kinnock</a> (Martin Johnston) sings: “We’ve been waiting in the valleys, I’ve been storming it at rallies.” And <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-princess-dianas-death-came-to-define-tragedy-for-the-media-82939">Princess Diana’s fatal accident</a> is neatly, if rather bluntly, summed up as “the chauffeur was smashed, no wonder he crashed”. </p>
<p>And they cohere nicely – perhaps even especially – when they stray beyond the bounds of good taste. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Osama-bin-Laden">Osama Bin Laden</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/saddam-hussein-how-a-deadly-purge-of-opponents-set-up-his-ruthless-dictatorship-120748">Saddam Hussein’s</a> numbers (the latter done via a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Groucho-Marx">Groucho Marx</a> impression) are a case in point.</p>
<p>The occasional cameos are particularly well done (Britpop’s Liam Gallagher was a favourite of mine), the impressively athletic choreography is basic but effective and one or two of the set pieces work particularly well. The momentous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/06/labour.uk">Granita deal</a> (at which <a href="https://theconversation.com/gordon-brown-political-giant-and-wasted-talent-at-the-same-time-34673">Brown was persuaded</a> to give Blair a free run at the leadership in the wake of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/12/newsid_2550000/2550803.stm">John Smith’s untimely death</a>) is staged as a wrestling match complete with ropes and shiny leotards. Believe it or not, this actually conveyed what was allegedly discussed and agreed during that dinner pretty accurately.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-princess-diana-story-why-everyone-has-their-own-version-82224">The 'Princess Diana story': why everyone has their own version</a>
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<h2>The show’s limitations</h2>
<p>So far, so good(ish), then. But there are some downsides. The most obvious is that in order to get most of the rock opera’s jokes, you probably had to be there – “there” being the 1990s and the early 2000s. Those under 50 might struggle to appreciate some of the political and cultural references, unless they’ve done or are doing a politics degree that covered the New Labour years.</p>
<p>Having not only lived through them but taught them, too, I had no trouble. But that didn’t mean I had no problems with the show.</p>
<p>First and foremost, it fell into the trap of inferring that Blair (Jack Whittle) was driven almost entirely by his love of the limelight. As a result, he is portrayed as an amoral airhead throughout – a puppet whose strings were pulled by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Mandelson">Peter Mandelson</a> (Howard Samuels). </p>
<p>In reality, I suspect even Blair’s toughest critics wouldn’t deny that his extraordinary powers of communication rested not just on his natural charisma but on a penetrating intelligence, too. Nor would they deny he was animated by a passion to do what – by his own lights anyway – was right.</p>
<p>Whether that sense of moral purpose (misguided or otherwise) deserted Blair once he left Downing Street and entered the shadowy world of high-paid, globetrotting consultancy is another story. But it’s a story that the authors (who were apparently determined not to write something too long) stop short of telling.</p>
<p>Other all too familiar tropes are much in evidence. Mandelson, who is effectively the narrator of the show, is predictably portrayed – albeit with considerable aplomb – as some sort of vampire or Mephistopheles. And by the same token, Cherie, although wonderfully played, is presented (not for the first nor, I suspect, the last time) as Lady Macbeth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Gordon Brown comes over (very amusingly, as far as the audience were concerned) as a stereotypical angry Scotsman. <a href="https://twitter.com/campbellclaret?lang=en">Alastair Campbell</a>, for good or ill, only gets a brief walk-on part, coming on, complete with kilt and bagpipes, after the ghost of Princess Diana has – bear with me – persuaded Blair to sex up the “dodgy dossier”.</p>
<p>My main gripe, however, was with the supposedly showstopping last number. Blair, not unreasonably, reminds the audience that 9.5 million of us voted him in for a third term, notwithstanding his decision to go to war in Iraq. The song that follows declares that “The whole wide world is led by assholes”, accompanied by pictures of a bunch of strongmen leaders from around the world.</p>
<p>To equate the UK’s prime minister, however little one may think of him, with the likes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-recap-kim-jong-un-visits-putin-for-arms-for-tech-talks-while-kyiv-urges-west-for-longer-range-missiles-to-aid-counteroffensive-213603">Kim Jong Un</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bashar-al-assad-13775">Bashar al-Assad</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/vladimir-putin-6680">Putin</a> seems, to me at least, a category error. And, even if you disagree, the underlying message merely serves up more of the populist take on politics that, frankly, we could probably do with rather less of these days.</p>
<p>That said, if you happen to be in Liverpool for the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/conference/">Labour Party conference</a> next week, don’t miss the chance to go see it at the city’s Playhouse. You might not love it, but there’s no way it won’t leave you laughing.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Bale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Written by comedian Harry Hill, it’s a hectic hour-and-a-half of high-energy songs and skits.Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151242023-10-09T12:21:14Z2023-10-09T12:21:14ZThe Exorcist Believer: a real priest on why the film is ‘potentially dangerous’<p><em>Warning: this review contains some spoilers for The Exorcist: Believer.</em></p>
<p>Nobody who watches <a href="https://www.theexorcistbeliever.movie">The Exorcist: Believer</a> could claim that they didn’t get what they expected when they bought their ticket. </p>
<p>Two children experiment with the occult and inadvertently open the door to demonic forces that rapidly overwhelm them. They disappear for several days, and when they are eventually found, they display erratic behaviour that rapidly escalates into uncontrollable violence. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Exorcist: Believer trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Their parents seek to discover the cause and reluctantly conclude that the answer lies in something supernatural and evil. They all struggle to reconcile what they are experiencing with their various worldviews, before eventually calling in the service of spiritual experts to perform an exorcism. As the events play out, there is a liberal splattering of gore, with the obligatory twisting heads and spewing of foul liquids.</p>
<h2>The power of unity</h2>
<p>It is striking that these elements mirror what was presented to audiences in the 1970s with <a href="https://www.bbfc.co.uk/education/case-studies/exorcist">the first Exorcist film</a>. Even the central theme of “belief” is nothing new. A priest undergoing a crisis of faith is the central protagonist of <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/327714/the-exorcist-by-blatty-william-peter/9780552166775">William Blatty’s original Exorcist novel</a>. </p>
<p>There are some aspects of The Exorcist: Believer that do reflect its 21st-century context, however. The team of exorcists who battle the demon are drawn from a variety of religious backgrounds and act together in a common cause. The message is that these believers have much more that unites than divides them. </p>
<p>Haitian spiritual practices and African-American root doctor traditions are presented as aligned with light, rather than darkness. This is extremely welcome. Given the amount of media that treats black and indigenous religion as sinister and even demonic, this positive portrayal is a commendable choice. </p>
<p>Equally, the decision to have Christian characters of various denominations stand alongside one another, as well as the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/hoodoo-in-st-louis-an-african-american-religious-tradition.htm">traditional African American healer</a> character, makes a powerful statement about community and togetherness.</p>
<p>But this homogenising approach is also problematic. The film asserts that exorcism exists in every culture and suggests that all people engaged in it are effectively doing the same thing. In reality, this is an oversimplification – with some potentially dangerous implications.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-exorcist-at-50-a-terrifying-film-that-symbolises-the-decline-of-americas-faith-and-optimism-212039">The Exorcist at 50: a terrifying film that symbolises the decline of America's faith and optimism</a>
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<h2>And the dangers</h2>
<p>The term “exorcism” can be appropriately used to describe rituals from many global traditions, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-law-in-context/article/exorcism-and-children-balancing-protection-and-autonomy-in-the-legal-framework/BE26F1BC2394D4F76BF02BF88A769D73">if it is defined as</a> a practice that aims to free a person, place or object from a negative spiritual influence.</p>
<p>However, this very general category contains hugely diverse ideas. There is immense breadth in both underpinning belief systems (which span almost all forms of spirituality, including Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Islam, Wicca and Hinduism) and also the means used to expel the malevolent spirit. </p>
<p>These distinctions matter. Especially when it comes to weighing up the balance between autonomy and protecting the person in real-life exorcisms.</p>
<p>Any legal framework that respects democratic and human rights supports freedom of belief and cultural diversity. But it must also protect those not fully able to advocate for themselves. This means decisions have to be made about when to permit exorcism rituals involving children and adults suffering from mental illness or impaired capacity. </p>
<p>When making these decisions, both the nature of the exorcism rite and the beliefs surrounding it are critical.</p>
<p>Some cultures see possession as an unlucky accident that can happen to anyone. Whereas others regard it as the result of either some deliberate act of wrongdoing or inherent flaw in the character – or even soul – of the supposedly possessed person. </p>
<p>Some faith traditions consider afflicted people dangerous, leading them to be shunned or even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/01/she-was-demonized-nicaraguan-woman-dies-after-being-thrown-into-fire-in-exorcism-ritual/">attacked</a>. In such circumstances, cooperating with a proposed exorcism ritual may be a person’s only option for reintegration within their community.</p>
<p>Also, some traditions believe that an evil entity is capable of hijacking a human body, suppressing the will of the host. In these circumstances, any resistance to the exorcism may be understood as coming from the spirit, rather than the person, and therefore ignored. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if the victim of possession is thought to retain some residual will, then any reluctance to participate in exorcism may be treated as evidence of a desire to choose evil.</p>
<p>It is also important to appreciate that modes of exorcism vary enormously – from quietly spoken prayers to violent assaults. Dangerous or abusive practices may also be employed. People may be encouraged – or forced – to ingest substances that are either harmful or risky because of the dose or manner of administration. </p>
<p>There have been exorcism-related deaths caused by salt poisoning, dry-drowning from <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31337466">water</a> and even a near-fatal dose of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-61651857">intravenous drugs</a>.</p>
<p>Taking all of this into account, conveying the message that exorcism is an essentially positive and universal practice shared by many cultures, is potentially dangerous. </p>
<p>Of course, cinema-goers are capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction and nobody would suggest that the Exorcist films should be treated as documentaries. But pop culture does influence people’s perceptions.</p>
<p>Public authorities do not always fully understand the beliefs and practices of minority groups, and this can cause problems. They may incorrectly perceive a situation to be risky and intervene when it’s unnecessary. Alternatively, a vulnerable person may be left without help because police or social workers misguidedly construe harmful practices as acceptable due to the cultural context.</p>
<p>These kinds of mistakes have contributed to preventable exorcism-related deaths, including <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c5edeed915d696ccfc51b/5730.pdf">those of children</a>. The Excorcist: Believer’s treatment of exorcism as a simple and benign phenomenon spanning cultural and religious divides isn’t accurate, or even desirable – even in the context of a horror film.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Hall is a priest in the Church of England</span></em></p>There is a liberal splattering of gore, with the obligatory twisting heads and spewing of foul liquids.Helen Hall, Senior Lecturer, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2151872023-10-09T10:13:45Z2023-10-09T10:13:45ZFair Play: Netflix drama reveals the dark side of being a woman in the financial services industry<p><em>Warning: this article contains minor spoilers for Fair Play.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81674326">Fair Play</a> follows a young couple working as analysts at a high-flying, ruthless asset management firm in New York. They work hard and play hard while appearing to support each other’s careers. </p>
<p>But their relationship is in breach of company policy, so they keep it quiet, despite living together and getting engaged. As a portfolio manager is fired, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) hears a rumour that Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) may be offered the role. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Fair Play.</span></figcaption>
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<p>They celebrate the rumour the same evening with booze and sex. However, it is Emily who is summoned to a bar in the middle of the night and told she’s being promoted on the back of her excellent résumé and performance. Luke is given the role of her analyst and now works for her. From here their dynamic unravels. </p>
<p>Fair Play portrays the darkest side of the financial services industry: the greed, the fear, the inappropriate behaviour and the frivolous spending. </p>
<p>Despite her excellent performance, Emily struggles to feel she deserves the promotion – and so does Luke. It was much easier for them to celebrate the rumour of his promotion than the fact of hers. </p>
<p>While at times supportive, Luke finds it impossible to believe that her promotion was based on merit and pushes outdated gender stereotypes onto her. At his worst, he accuses Emily of sleeping her way to the promotion.</p>
<p>There is an air of Emily feeling lucky, instead of deserving, to be promoted. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Finance-Addressing-Inequality-in-the-Financial-Services-Industry/Baeckstrom/p/book/9781032055572">Like many real women</a> in the financial services industry, she struggles to know how she should act. Without other female role models – but plenty of alpha male ones – her confidence in who she is and how she should act is extremely fragile. </p>
<p>A derogatory comment about her dress code sends her into despair, trying to select office outfits that send the right message. This struggle is unsurprising given <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-the-power-suit-for-women/">the short history of women’s business attire</a> compared to men’s. </p>
<p>Observing her confidently delivering her well-researched opinions in meetings and making brave trading decisions is promising. Watching her celebrate with the senior, all-male team in a strip club and getting involved in derogatory, sexualised stories about women is revolting.</p>
<h2>The real finance industry</h2>
<p>The alpha male dominance of financial services and the historical exclusion of women mean it’s a relatively new domain for women. In the US, where Fair Play is set, women didn’t gain the legal right to be members of the New York Stock Exchange until 1967. And it wasn’t until 2021 that <a href="https://www.citigroup.com/global/about-us/leadership/jane-fraser">a woman took charge</a> of one of the top 30 global banks.</p>
<p>Regardless of how talented she is, it is understandable for a woman to feel more unstable about her position as she rises in the ranks. In banking, successful women are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/27/was-alison-rose-held-to-higher-standard-because-woman">scrutinised more harshly</a> than their male counterparts. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Finance-Addressing-Inequality-in-the-Financial-Services-Industry/Baeckstrom/p/book/9781032055572">As I show in my research</a>, when it comes to financial services we are predisposed to think talent plus hard work equals a lucky woman, and that talent plus a good contact network equals a successful, powerful man. </p>
<p>Despite outperforming colleagues, women like Emily can at times feel that they do not deserve their promotions. However, when it comes to men, people tend to see potential because they expect potential. Many women and men want to change this.</p>
<p>Fair Play leaves the viewer feeling hopeless about the possibility of inclusive and fair financial services careers and personal relationships. It signifies how extremely difficult it is for people of all genders to break through entrenched negative gender roles. </p>
<p>Financial services is an extremely powerful industry, without which our society cannot function. It is also the best-paid industry, yet has the second <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/uk-gender-pay-gap-banks-pay-women-less-than-two-thirds-of-mens-earnings.html#:%7E:text=The%20finance%20sector%20reported%20the,according%20to%20a%20CNBC%20analysis.">largest gender pay gap</a> (after education). It therefore has a responsibility to set the standard for inclusive and fair practices. </p>
<p>Challenging outdated gender stereotypes through reverse messaging and fair treatment is a better strategy than creating a new generation of alphas of all genders. To work well, we need supportive structures both at home and in the workplace and a culture that evaluates and rewards people based on their potential and contributions – regardless of gender.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ylva Baeckstrom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the US, where Fair Play is set, women didn’t gain the legal right to be members of the New York Stock Exchange until 1967.Ylva Baeckstrom, Senior Lecturer in Finance, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148832023-10-05T15:03:00Z2023-10-05T15:03:00ZBlack Sabbath – The Ballet: a heavy metal expert reviews this ‘spectacle of entertainment’<p>Ballets are typically performed to the enchanting and distinctive melodies of classical music, not the emphatic beats and supersonic volume of heavy metal. But it’s the music of heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath that scores Birmingham Royal Ballet’s new show, <a href="https://www.brb.org.uk/shows/black-sabbath">Black Sabbath – The Ballet</a>, which is currently showing at the Theatre Royal Plymouth before moving to London’s Sadler’s Wells. </p>
<p>Ballet, and the classical music that usually accompanies it, symbolises elegance and sophistication – the epitome of high culture. Heavy metal music is <a href="https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/164/6/The%20Construction%20of%20Heavy%20Metal%20Identity%20through%20Heritage%20Narratives%20A%20Case%20Study%20of%20Extreme%20Metal%20Bands%20in%20the%20North%20of%20England.pdf">often regarded as the exact opposite</a>, and its fans have been treated in a similar fashion: viewed as unsophisticated. </p>
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<p>When I was doing research on identity expression in heavy metal music for my PhD, I was often met with apathy from people who did not care about the music or the culture. They’d ask: “Why bother doing research on this?” </p>
<p>I must admit that going into Black Sabbath – The Ballet, I had my own doubts. My knowledge and experience of ballet was nonexistent, and I was expecting little more than some dancing around to Black Sabbath’s music. But I was very pleasantly surprised that it was more than that – it was a spectacle of entertainment.</p>
<h2>Performing the ballet</h2>
<p>A short piano introduction to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TJkO9VNxwk">Iron Man</a> (1972) opens the show, as dancers dressed entirely in black enter the stage. Then, a guitarist – dubbed the Guitar Spirit – plays the chords to Iron Man, now accompanied by the orchestra. The dancers cavort around him, picking him up and carrying him around the stage as he plays. </p>
<p>As the song finishes and fades, an orchestral cover of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lejk2BmBbvk">Solitude</a> (1971) accompanies two dancers sharing a kiss that lasts throughout the song. Their bond is only broken by the return of the Guitar Spirit, now playing the riffs of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOTIIw76qiE">Paranoid</a> (1970). </p>
<p>The second act features voiceovers from members of Black Sabbath, including an account of guitarist <a href="https://www.thaliacapos.com/blogs/blog/black-sabbath-s-tony-iommi-and-the-accident-that-created-heavy-metal">Tony Iommi’s factory accident</a> which affected his guitar playing – and how he persevered through this struggle. There’s also commentary about the band <a href="https://loudwire.com/ozzy-osbourne-fired-from-black-sabbath-anniversary/">parting ways with lead singer Ozzy Osbourne</a>, their rise to fame, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jun/06/black-sabbath-cocaine-private-plane">struggles with drugs and alcohol</a> and the subsequent difficulties of stardom. </p>
<p>This act, telling the story of four young men from Aston in Birmingham becoming musical icons, concludes with a powerful orchestral arrangement of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYZE4vKDqzs">Sabbath Bloody Sabbath</a> (1973). The story is told clearly, underpinned by sombre and melancholic orchestral music that successfully adds a sense of nostalgia. </p>
<p>The final act focuses on the legacy of Black Sabbath, their influence on heavy metal music, how music brings people together, and how the band is celebrated all over the world. It includes a nice flute piece inspired by the connection the band shares with its fans, accompanied by some occasional light, rhythmic drum beats to perhaps emulate the conditions the band experienced working in a factory before their rise to fame. </p>
<p>Then, the Guitar Spirit returns and the mood of the music changes. Playing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAEqXqTTRVc">Laguna Sunrise</a> (1971), the Guitar Spirit and a dancer take turns to command the audience’s attention. The music builds up in a grandiose interplay with the orchestra – everyone plays their part to lead the audience to the climax of the ballet. </p>
<p>As Paranoid begins to be played for the last time, Iommi himself takes to the stage in a surprise appearance (he only appears in a handful of performances of the ballet) and rocks out with the Guitar Spirit. </p>
<h2>A fitting celebration</h2>
<p>Black Sabbath – The Ballet beautifully coalesces the elegance of classical music and ballet with the gritty and aggressive nature of heavy metal music.</p>
<p>Ballet may look fluid and effortless, but it demands years of hard physical and mental work. In this way, it mirrors the experience of being in a band: hard work which eventually results in success, despite strain and downsides. The fusing of the classical orchestra with the music of Black Sabbath makes this ballet a phenomenal experience. </p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas Schulz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The elegance of classical ballet beautifully coalesces with the gritty, aggressive nature of heavy metal music.Douglas Schulz, Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139072023-09-28T15:52:36Z2023-09-28T15:52:36ZThe surprisingly punk fashion of the Bloomsbury set, including Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell<p>Scrupulously researched and curated by fashion journalist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/charlieporter">Charlie Porter</a>, <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/exhibition/bring-no-clothes-bloomsbury-and-fashion/">Bring No Clothes: Bloomsbury and Fashion</a> has opened at <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/about-us/">Charleston’s</a> new spaces at Southover House in Lewes. The exhibition brings together original garments, paintings, photography and spoken word to explore how the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bloomsbury-group">Bloomsbury set</a> continues to inspire fashion more than a century later. </p>
<p>Charleston was once the home and studio of the painters <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/people/vanessa-bell/">Vanessa Bell</a> and <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/people/duncan-grant/">Duncan Grant</a>, and a gathering space for the artists and writers who came to be known as “the Bloomsbury set”, including <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/virginia-woolf">Virginia Woolf</a> and <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/people/lytton-strachey/">Lytton Strachey</a>.</p>
<p>First, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mrkimjones/?hl=en">menswear designer Kim Jones</a> transposes the works and designs of artist Duncan Grant into prints and patterns for his <a href="https://www.charleston.org.uk/stories/dior-x-duncan-grant-x-charleston/">Dior summer 2023 collection</a>. Jones’s hand-knitted rendering of Grant’s design for a fire curtain at Sadler’s Wells Theatre (1930) brings out all the campness of the artist, playfully reinterpreting the language of cubism to become kitsch. </p>
<p>Another designer on display, <a href="https://www.jawaraalleyne.com">Jawara Alleyne</a>, models his work after painter Vanessa Bell’s “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453043/bring-no-clothes-by-porter-charlie/9780241602751">slapdash style of throwing clothes together</a>” by fastening them with safety pins. </p>
<p>Sadly, we have no evidence of Bell’s cut-up method as we learn (from a rather matter of fact page in the diary of Charleston’s housekeeper Grace Higgens) that her clothes were burned after she died. But <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453043/bring-no-clothes-by-porter-charlie/9780241602751">according to her granddaughter</a>, historian Virginia Nicholson, Bell’s safety pins belong to the “family mythology”.</p>
<p>The exhibition also shows a handbag Bell made and a rags rug, still on the floors at Charleston. Repurposing and recycling clothes and cloth represented, for Bell, an ethical choice. It was an affordable alternative and a way of creating meaning through making. </p>
<p>What is interesting about the use of safety pins is that they not only give discarded garments a new lease, but they also mean the pieces could be dismembered again. Alleyne’s designs and installations draw out a punk attitude from Bell’s safety pins, which is lost in the representation of the Bloomsbury style as reassuring, crafty and quaint. </p>
<p>This spirit chimes with Porter’s reading of the legacy of the Bloomsbury group’s <a href="https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/15089/the-bloomsbury-group-bring-no-clothes-book-charlie-porter-interview">penchant</a> for “anti-fashion: something that looks so wrong, it’s right”.</p>
<p>The vivacity of Bell’s self-fashioning – captured in a rarely seen portrait by Grant – shows the wildness of her eccentric colour and pattern combinations. Her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, once rather harshly <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300244113/the-bloomsbury-look/">responded</a> to her clothes designs for the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/o/omega-workshops/story-omega-workshops">Omega Workshops</a> (a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury group) by saying they “almost wrenched my eyes from the sockets”.</p>
<p>Photos of Woolf from 1923 from the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/journal-of-lady-ottoline-morrell-june-1923-with-photographs-and-accounts-of-virginia-woolf">journal of Lady Ottoline Morrell</a> display more fashion audacity. She pairs the floral swirls of her shawl with the lines of her dress, flaunting clash and tension in her clothing. </p>
<h2>Under the influence of Bloomsbury</h2>
<p>What is it about the fashion of the Bloomsbury group that continues to resonate today? In a recent examination of Bloomsbury’s experimental attitude to dress, art historian <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1qVaxyceRk&t=11s">Wendy Hitchmough argued</a> that it is their interest in a certain “bohemian latitude, and the capacity of dress to signal alternative values”. </p>
<p>The absence of a substantial representation of items from the Omega Workshops in this exhibition, marks its desire to move away from a history of modernist dress and instead “<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453043/bring-no-clothes-by-porter-charlie/9780241602751">get closer to a garment’s wearer</a>”.</p>
<p>The exhibition introduces the group’s urgent rethinking of gender, sexuality and queerness as a way of life, without downplaying the fact that in spite of their <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-the-bloomsbury-group/bloomsbury-and-empire/471BE8C34FDA9554D4A2F47E45729872">anti-colonial stance</a>, they never examined their white entitlement. In fact, they profited from the repetition of orientalist and <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/movement/primitivism/">primitivist tropes</a> within modernism. </p>
<p>The Bloomsbury group’s distaste for formality helped to set the foundations for how we dress today. But it is important not to forget how this rested on some significant precedents. </p>
<p>The exhibition positions the members of the Bloomsbury group as standing up against the military inheritance of the three-piece suit, cinched waists and constrictive undergarments. But there is a general sense that everything vaguely late-Victorian stands for the patriarchy. This means important connections are lost with the <a href="https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-new-woman">New Women</a> and the feminists, the vegetarians and antivivisectionists, the yogi and the sandal wearers of the previous generation. These groups paved the way for the revolution in clothing championed by the Bloomsbury set. </p>
<h2>The sandal-wearers</h2>
<p>One such sandal-wearer was the lesbian collector, avant-garde novelist and poet <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjZlZPowbaBAxUzVUEAHXxpBLYQFnoECFUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Fbiography%2FGertrude-Stein&usg=AOvVaw2NJevA83lBIYRpeINGy-HV&opi=89978449">Gertrude Stein</a> (1874-1926). Her roomy brown corduroy gown, monumentalised in a <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488221">portrait by Pablo Picasso</a>, must have made an impression on Bell. She <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300244113/the-bloomsbury-look">purchased a similar dress</a> after she visited her in 1913.</p>
<p>In Florence in 1904, she and Woolf had also met the writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vernon-Lee">Vernon Lee</a> (1856-1935) whose unique look <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8365.12727">encouraged a sense of ambiguity</a> about her gender identity. Not to mention other radically dressed figures from the era known to the group, like <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp01984/radclyffe-hall-marguerite-antonia-radclyffe-hall">Radclyffe Hall</a>, <a href="https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/annie-besant">Annie Besant</a> and <a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/carlo-levi--597289969328628621/">Filippo De Pisis</a>.</p>
<p>The modern designer <a href="https://ellaboucht.com">Ella Boucht’s</a> bodacious suits for queer, trans and non-binary clients – on display at the exhibition – are arguably influenced by kinship with these historical trailblazers, rather than solely, as the exhibit text says, “through opposition to the patriarchy and power within tailoring”. Sometimes queer liberation is not measured by the freedom to undress, or underdress, but its opposite. </p>
<p>When the <a href="https://thelondonmagazine.org/article/essay-queer-spaces-bloomsbury-and-the-bright-young-things-by-nino-strachey/">Bright Young Things</a> – a generation of gender non-conforming painted boys in London, Paris and Berlin – entered the scene in the 1920s, the meaning of the suit was completely unsettled.</p>
<p>By overstating the Bloomsbury set as standing alone against the conservatism of early 20th-century British society, Bring No Clothes sometimes suffers from an anxiety of influence. It is exciting to imagine the group in an agonistic relationship with history capable of inspiring posterity, but this is deaf to their dialogue with their contemporaries and predecessors.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesco Ventrella does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Bloomsbury group’s distaste for formality helped to set the foundations for how we dress today.Francesco Ventrella, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2117602023-08-17T13:50:41Z2023-08-17T13:50:41ZEye of the Storm: Netflix’s pandemic melodrama highlights the humanity of healthcare workers<p>Netflix’s Taiwanese drama, <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81707591">Eye of the Storm</a>, is the latest cinematic depiction of a pandemic. But rather than focus on COVID, it tells the story of the 2003 Sars epidemic through Taipei City Hospital’s Heping branch. This real event, where a devastating outbreak led to the hospital’s lockdown, serves as the film’s backdrop. </p>
<p>While the eye in a storm is often deceptively calm, this hospital is chaotic. Drawing inspiration from previous medical thrillers like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g">Contagion</a> (2011), Eye of the Storm has all the tropes of a medical drama. But the story is also peppered with melodramatic nuances, creating what I call a “medical melodrama”. </p>
<p>At its core is Dr Xia Zheng (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3120588/">Po-Chieh Wang</a>), an accomplished but self-absorbed surgeon who unexpectedly finds himself trapped within the confines of the quarantined hospital. A noble male nurse, An Taihe (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10695104/">Tseng Jing Hua</a>) and empathic surgical intern, Dr Li Xinyan (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10221960/?ref_=tt_cl_t_4">Chloe Xiang</a>) offer contrast with his character. </p>
<p>Adding another dimension to the story is Jin Youzhong (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3570428/?ref_=tt_cl_t_3">Simon Hsueh</a>), a tabloid journalist with an insatiable appetite for an explosive story on the outbreak. These protagonists represent the diverse spectrum of emotions and responses in the face of pandemic adversity.</p>
<p>Like standard melodramas, the film’s narrative is built around Dr Xia’s transformative journey. From his initial characterisation, driven by personal ambitions and ego, he evolves into a beacon of hope and selflessness. </p>
<p>He altruistically joins forces with Youzhong, the tabloid journalist, in a desperate effort to uncover the identity of patient zero. While this forms the backbone of the story, the subplot – the love relationship between Taihe and Dr Li, disrupted by the former’s infection – intensifies the film’s emotional tension.</p>
<h2>Making the medical melodrama</h2>
<p>So how does Eye of the Storm’s medical melodrama work? The film exposes viewers to emotional scenes. One striking moment depicts a distraught child pounding on an intensive care unit door, desperate to see her critically ill mother. Later, there’s a heart-wrenching scene in which a couple parts ways atop the hospital roof, amid a torrential downpour. </p>
<p>The film employs a wide range of cinematic techniques to heighten these emotional moments. Most notably, it uses extreme closeups and first-person shots, which are achieved with a shaky, handheld camera. Furthermore, the haunting soundtrack and gruesome depictions of medical procedures sharply emphasise the characters’ physical and psychological turmoil.</p>
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<p>These strategies are not purely aesthetic. They help the audience to commemorate their own lost ones and remember the lessons learned in the COVID pandemic. </p>
<p>I believe Eye of the Storm is deliberately melodramatic in order to facilitate catharsis and allow viewers to release repressed emotions. Our everyday, “ordinary” experiences of the pandemic – such as mask wearing, hand sanitising, quarantining, temperature checking and lockdown – are rendered extraordinary through the show’s melodramatic amplification.</p>
<h2>Successes and shortcomings</h2>
<p>Eye of the Storm isn’t perfect. The dynamics between characters – especially the ties binding Dr Xia and Youzhong, or the romantic connection between Taihe and Dr Li – are hasty and underdeveloped. An obvious example is a head nurse who abruptly shifts from leading a strike to dutifully caring for patients. </p>
<p>The film also concludes with an ambiguous ending, leaving viewers yearning for clarity, especially given its real-life inspirations.</p>
<p>That said, Eye of the Storm is a valuable contribution to the pandemic genre within Chinese cinema. Contrary to films like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NncdLxzFCPg">Chinese Doctors</a> (2021), which leans heavily on hero-worship, Eye of the Storm refreshingly highlights the humanity and vulnerabilities of healthcare workers. This Taiwanese production, in its focus on the internal dilemmas of medical professionals, offers a stark contrast to the overtly propagandist flavour of mainland Chinese films.</p>
<p>At a deeper level, Eye of the Storm is a commentary on press freedom. Through the journalist character, the film recalls the tragic tale of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9157019/">Li Wenliang</a>, the whistleblower of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan, China. His warnings were stifled and he was chastised for spreading misinformation by the government, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51403795">eventually succumbing to the virus</a>. </p>
<p>The audacity of the film to represent a journalist investigating the origins of an outbreak would be unthinkable within mainland China’s stringent censorship. This distinction doesn’t just create a dramatic arc, but underscores the profound ideological and political divergences within the Chinese-speaking region.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wayne Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ordinary, everyday experiences of the pandemic, such as mask wearing and quarantining, are rendered extraordinary through the show’s melodrama.Wayne Wong, Lecturer in East Asian Studies, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103982023-07-26T15:04:23Z2023-07-26T15:04:23ZGrenfell: in the words of survivors – new play is an angry demand for accountability<p>The National Theatre’s new play, <a href="https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/grenfell-in-the-words-of-survivors/">Grenfell: in the words of survivors</a>, written by Gillian Slovo and directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike, aims to offer a voice to survivors of the fire. </p>
<p>This is a “verbatim play”. Often focused on communities that are marginalised or excluded, verbatim theatre emerged in the 1970s. It uses the words of real people as the basis for theatrical performance. The inclusion of “word for word” elements from conversations in these communities allows verbatim to explore a range of social and political issues and offer a voice to unheard perspectives.</p>
<p>On June 14 2017, a fire broke out in Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey residential housing block in North Kensington, west London. The tragedy claimed the lives of 72 residents of the tower. Over the six years since the fire, Slovo has conducted in-depth interviews with survivors and the bereaved, alongside members of the wider community living and working in the shadow of the still-standing shell of the building.</p>
<p>Grenfell expertly combines verbatim performances drawn from first-hand accounts with a film made by the survivors in their ongoing campaign for justice. The play recounts the events leading up to the tragedy and the night of the fire itself as well as the ongoing activities of the communities decimated by its impact.</p>
<p>Also threaded through the play are staged excerpts from the transcripts of the <a href="https://www.grenfelltowerinquiry.org.uk/">Grenfell Tower Enquiry</a> (2017-22). These integrate the tribunal theatre approach which is often traced to Nicholas Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/jan/17/race.world">The Colour of Justice</a> (1999) at the Tricycle (now Kiln) theatre about the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993.</p>
<p>Grenfell is not the first time the National Theatre has created a performance designed to platform and interrogate urgent issues and tragic events. Its staging of David Hare’s <a href="https://www.ijicc.net/images/vol11iss7/11714_Amer_2020_E_R.pdf">Stuff Happens</a> (2004) used material from the public inquiry to examine the Iraq War. Verbatim commentary taken from interviews with former British Rail employees in Hare’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2004/jan/14/theatre.politicaltheatre">The Permanent Way</a>(2003) chronicled the disastrous repercussions following the privatisation of the railways.</p>
<h2>The challenges facing verbatim theatre</h2>
<p>Even with its ideals and dedication to foregrounding truth through the voices of those involved, verbatim methods do raise ethical quandaries.</p>
<p>Creating theatre from the words of “ordinary people” can run the risk of speaking for the marginalised people theatre makers aspire to “give voice” to. Done without sufficient care, verbatim might appropriate their stories, or paint those it apparently “speaks for” only as victims. </p>
<p>Verbatim theatre may lack nuance in its depictions, suspending its subjects in a traumatic moment, or a position of grievance or helplessness. Its necessarily selective approach will also cut some voices out altogether.</p>
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<p>Grenfell aspires to navigate these and other challenges by offering the “story weaving” approach described in theatre academic and playwright Amanda Stuart-Fisher’s book <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14t47dd">Performing the Testimonial</a> (2022): </p>
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<p>Personal and communal narratives become layered upon each other, working together in an interconnected process in order to enact a collective story.</p>
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<p>The script’s various threads are skilfully sliced and spliced by the creative team, creating an enthralling and deeply affective three-hour piece of theatre that invites the audience into the narrative, emphasising the collective values of <a href="https://grenfellunited.org.uk/">Grenfell’s community</a> and seemingly extending them to us.</p>
<p>Among the play’s many strengths are the company’s respectful approach and connection to the survivors they depict, and its care for the audience. Actors introduce both themselves and the characters they are playing. “My words are taken from interviews with Natasha, and with her consent,” actor Pearl Mackie explains. We are warned of what to expect – “there will be no depictions of fire” – and invited to seek help if what is shared is overwhelming.</p>
<h2>Never Forget</h2>
<p>In this production the tragedy of Grenfell remains understated, leaving room for the audience to fill in the gaps. </p>
<p>The survivors’ remembrances culminate in a sensitive yet truly harrowing account of the catastrophic fire. Movable archive boxes marked with the number of each flat, act as building blocks of various locations in the minimalist set and also contain the sombre relics of the fire. A vacated seating bank, illuminated from above, honours those that were lost.</p>
<p>The skilfully directed ensemble cast demonstrates a love and connection that emulates the mutual care of the Grenfell community, helping each other with on-stage costume changes, and so tight they almost seem to finish each other’s sentences. Each lighting change, each sound effect, is achieved with nuance and meticulous attention to detail that was woefully lacking in the dereliction of duty shown by the authorities to the residents.</p>
<p>In the end, a terrible truth emerges of a shockingly remiss and cost-cutting culture of decision-making, where racism and poverty determined the degree of care and attention residents received.</p>
<p>Our own work on <a href="https://theverbatimformula.org.uk/">The Verbatim Formula</a> research uses elements of verbatim with communities of young people who have experienced social care. We found that verbatim performance not only provide a platform for voices to be heard, but can also be a powerful form of accountability and a provocation to action.</p>
<p>Grenfell continues the tradition of verbatim theatre as an acute critical and political form that enables the National Theatre to fulfil its unofficial remit for staging “<a href="https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us/our-history/">state of the nation</a>” drama. </p>
<p>The audiences remains in the light for much of the play. At the end, they are asked to participate in an act of communal theatre-making that positions each person as an active part of the survivors’ ongoing fight for justice. We too, the survivors tell us, must remember.</p>
<p><em>Grenfell: in the words of survivors is on at the National Theatre until August 26 2023.</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvan Baker , Royal Central School of Speech and Drama</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maggie Inchley receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her work on The Verbatim Formula. </span></em></p>A powerful play that puts the voices of the people first.Sylvan Baker, Senior lecturer, Royal Central School of Speech & DramaMaggie Inchley, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2100692023-07-19T14:04:10Z2023-07-19T14:04:10ZGreta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is a ‘feminist bimbo’ classic – and no, that’s not an oxymoron<p><em>The following article contains spoilers for Barbie.</em></p>
<p>For some, Barbie is the ultimate “<a href="https://www.thewomens.network/blog/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-girlboss">girlboss</a>” – she’s glamourous, successful and owns <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-barbie-dreamhouse-so-creepy-an-expert-in-the-uncanny-explains-208801">her own DreamHouse</a>. For others, Barbie represents an outdated female stereotype – a “blonde bimbo girl in a fantasy world”, according to Aqua’s 1997 hit song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhrYis509A&ab_channel=AquaVEVO">Barbie Girl</a>. </p>
<p>Just ask the man with the megaphone stood outside the press screening of the new Barbie film that I attended in Leicester Square. Vehemently protesting the film, he insisted that Barbie is a bad role model and a danger to young women.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Barbie.</span></figcaption>
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<p>But Barbie fits perfectly into director Greta Gerwig’s repertoire of women-focused stories, which includes two Oscar-nominated coming of age films, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4925292/">Ladybird</a> (2017) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3281548/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Little Women</a> (2019). Gerwig is a feminist filmmaker whose characters are curious, transgressive and rebel against their restrictive circumstances. Barbie is no exception.</p>
<p>The film follows Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), whose perfect life in Barbieland is gradually falling apart because the humans playing with her in the real world are sad. Her arched Barbie feet become flat, she gets cellulite on her thighs and becomes troubled by thoughts of death. </p>
<p>With the help of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) – comically styled as if a child “played with her too hard” – Stereotypical Barbie is tasked with entering the real world to find her human family and solve their problems.</p>
<p>The film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zIf0XvoL9Y">opens with a parody</a> of a famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> (1968). The world is thrown into disarray when a giant Barbie doll lands in the desert like a UFO. Through Helen Mirren’s terrific narration, we are told that the inhabitants of this barren wasteland are a hoard of little girls who only have baby dolls to play with. The girls are liberated by the arrival of their exciting new friend and, tired of playing at being mothers, they smash up their bland baby dolls for good.</p>
<p>This opening positions Barbieland as a feminist utopia. In Barbieland, women can do anything: become president, win literary awards and throw fabulous parties.</p>
<h2>Barbie in the real world</h2>
<p>Gerwig’s take on Barbie is timely. My research explores the recent feminist reclamation of the “bimbo” figure. On TikTok, the <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/12/10217066/tiktok-bimbo-gen-z-trend">#Bimbo trend</a> sees feminine-presenting content creators <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/23/the-bimbo-is-back-and-as-a-feminist-i-couldnt-be-more-delighted">reclaiming</a> the once derogatory “bimbo” label and aesthetic. Instead of abandoning femininity to succeed in a patriarchal society, bimbo feminism embraces femininity while supporting women’s advancement.</p>
<p>In the real world, Barbie is shocked to find that things are a little different than in Barbieland. She is harassed while roller skating and catcalled by male construction workers. A <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds">2021 survey</a> found that four-fifths of young women in the UK have been sexually harassed in public spaces. While Barbie says she feels “ill at ease” in these situations, Ken (Ryan Gosling) feels “admired”.</p>
<p>When Barbie finds her human family, she is met with hostility from teenage daughter Sasha, who claims that Barbie is nothing more than a “professional bimbo” whose perfect body and privileged lifestyle have been making women feel bad about themselves for decades.</p>
<p>Like real women, Barbie is faced with objectification and criticism. The film knows its audience and makes smart and accurate commentaries about women’s experiences.</p>
<h2>Ken’s rights</h2>
<p>In Barbieland, Barbie’s beach-dwelling boyfriend is “just Ken”. In the real world, he discovers a society where men reign supreme. It is not long before Ken’s endearing innocence is tainted by a concept that is novel where he comes from: patriarchy.</p>
<p>Ken becomes intoxicated by male dominance and the film takes every opportunity to lampoon it. Ryan Gosling excels in these comedy moments. At one point, Ken barges into a hospital and demands to perform surgery despite having no qualifications – other than being a man of course.</p>
<p>Back in Barbieland, Ken enforces his own vision of patriarchy. Every night is “boys night”. Every Barbie exists to be ogled, serve beers and nurture men’s fragile egos. Under Ken’s rule, the former female president of Barbieland serves drinks to macho guys on the beach. The all-female Supreme Court are demoted to a cheerleading squad.</p>
<p>In her 2020 book <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Men-Who-Hate-Women/Laura-Bates/9781398504653">Men Who Hate Women,</a> founder of the <a href="https://everydaysexism.com/">Everyday Sexism project</a> Laura Bates examines what she terms the “manosphere”. In other words, the many faces of radical misogyny in modern society, from <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17907534">men’s rights activists</a> to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08912432221128545">incels</a>. </p>
<p>In its portrayal of the Kens, Gerwig’s film confronts the manosphere head on. Much like the men who are indoctrinated into these radical groups, the Kens are led to believe that their rights are being eclipsed by women’s and find themselves conforming to toxic male stereotypes to regain a sense of control.</p>
<p>Gerwig’s Barbie does a stellar job of exposing how damaging patriarchal ideology is to society. While the film obviously appeals to women, it is men who really need to watch it. Barbie makes a point that Leicester Square-megaphone-man really needs to hear: it’s not a Barbie doll that threatens women’s rights, opportunities and safety – it’s the patriarchy.</p>
<p>Barbie is one of the most surprising and daring films of the year. What could have been a frivolous flop succeeds in being a substantial, important and poignant piece of filmmaking – as well as tremendous fun to watch.</p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight,
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harriet Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While the film obviously appeals to women, it is men who really need to watch it.Harriet Fletcher, Lecturer in Media and Communication, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077652023-06-16T10:11:20Z2023-06-16T10:11:20ZThe Flash review: Michael Keaton’s Batman is the real star of this DC multiverse mashup<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>The Flash is one of DC’s most versatile superheroes. First popularised in the 1940s, the speedster’s mantle has been worn by multiple characters in the comics – most famously Barry Allen and Wally West, but also the female Flash, Chinese American <a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Ho_(Prime_Earth)">Avery Ho</a>. These Flashes have appeared not just in their own comics, but across the DC comics universe from <a href="https://teentitans.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page">Teen Titans</a> to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cxixDgHUYw">Justice League</a>.</p>
<p>Director Andy Muschietti’s new film, The Flash, is Warner-DC’s attempt to wrap up DC Extended Universe of films (DCEU) directed by Zac Snyder, which started with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY">Man of Steel</a> in 2013. At the same time, it is launching James Gunn and Peter Safran’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/james-gunn-dcu-announcement-batman-superman-new-dc-slate#:%7E:text=%22Superman%3A%20Legacy%22%20will%20bring,released%20on%20July%2011%2C%202025.">new DC Universe</a> of film and TV as they take over as the heads of DC Studios. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Flash (2023).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Muschietti’s plan is to smash together – quite literally – previously unconnected film worlds from Warner-DC’s long history of superhero film and television adaptations, creating something new from everything old.</p>
<p>Some may see these colliding worlds as necessary to distract from the <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/ezra-miller-allegations.html">slowly amassing flow of accusations</a> laid at the feet of The Flash’s central star, Ezra Miller. Indeed, Warner-DC has largely used another actor to promote The Flash: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzb7Q7HAIi8">Michael Keaton</a>.</p>
<p>Clever uses of stunt teams allow Keaton, the now 71-year-old star of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgC9Q0uhX70">Tim Burton’s Batman</a> (1989) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Too3qgNaYBE">Batman Returns</a> (1992), to return to active duty as the dark knight in The Flash after a 30-year absence. </p>
<h2>Serving the fans</h2>
<p>Time travel is central in The Flash. Deft storytelling uses spaghetti metaphors to explain the complexities of messing with timelines. Slipping through the flow of time using the “<a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_Force#:%7E:text=The%20Flash%20Vol%202%20%2391&text=The%20Speed%20Force%20is%20a,grants%20all%20speedsters%20their%20power.">Speed Force</a>” (which grants him access to extradimensional energy), Miller’s Flash goes back in time. </p>
<p>He saves his mother’s life, but causes a rippling impact along a multiverse of timelines that takes the Flash out of the DCEU and drops him into the world of Keaton’s Batman.</p>
<p>The result is by turns a bombastically nostalgic and watered-down variant on Burton’s earlier blockbuster films. The Flash relishes in nostalgically recreating Burton’s Batcave, augmenting its gothic-industrial aesthetic with CGI bats which are more reminiscent of director Christopher Nolan’s cycle of Batman films. But, The Flash also tamps down the gothic flourishes that have made Burton a world-renowned director.</p>
<p>The Batcave is explored by two versions of Barry Allen/Flash, after an accident in the time stream deposits the original Allen into an alternate world. After meeting himself, the two travel to find Batman at his home in Wayne Manor. </p>
<p>Discovering the Batcave, the younger version of Allen gleefully pulls a dustsheet off the Batmobile prop from Burton’s 1989 film. As he does so, he wistfully remembers seeing the Batmobile on television. Fan-serving moments like these abound as The Flash reaches out to audiences who grew up watching Burton’s Batman.</p>
<p>Muschietti makes great use of these nostalgic cameos. Fans of comics are also rewarded with new twists on old favourites, such as an aside to the Superman-as-Soviet-superhero comic <a href="https://www.dc.com/graphic-novels/superman-red-son">Red Son</a> (2003), when Batman and the Flashes go to rescue a Kryptonian held in captivity by the Soviets.</p>
<p>Likewise, the film’s plot borrows elements from the <a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Flash:_Flashpoint">Flashpoint comics saga</a> from the early 2010s. Among other scenes, these comics inspire one of the film’s more gruesome sequences, which shows the “original” Allen performing Frankenstein-like experiments on himself in an attempt to regain his powers.</p>
<p>These allusions, twists and borrowings culminate in a sequence of superhero cameos. As the original Allen confronts his limitations as a superhero, Muschietti places the Flash’s personal revelations against a backdrop of colliding worlds that contain what look like digitally scrolling film reels. </p>
<p>These filmstrips contain past DC superhero adaptations, reminding audiences of every incarnation of the DC universe’s favourite characters, from George Reeves’s 1950s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxL46STIZB0">television Superman</a> to Christopher Reeve’s 1970s and 80s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprJvYKz3QQ">Superman blockbusters</a>.</p>
<p>Standing out among these myriad superheroes – the true star of The Flash, despite its title – is Keaton’s Batman. It is Keaton’s narrative arc and catchphrases (“You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts.”) that echo down the timelines of Warner-DC history and leave a lasting impact. </p>
<p>The film is even structured to give Keaton’s performance greater resonance. Early portions of sometimes silly superhero humour give way in the film’s second half, where Keaton’s razor-edged, comedic yet gothic darkness allows the film to gather emotional depth.</p>
<p>In mining Warner-DC’s iconic film and television history, The Flash is able to smash together a pantheon of screen superheroes. As it works to reset the core Warner-DC universe, The Flash’s colliding worlds remind audiences of why they love superheroes such as Batman and Superman in the first place. In doing so, it shifts away from the grim tone of the old DC Extended Universe, injecting hope (and humour) into the new one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rayna Denison is affiliated with University of Bristol. </span></em></p>It’s Keaton’s razor-edged, comedic darkness that allows the film to gather emotional depth.Rayna Denison, Professor of Film and Digital Arts, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027232023-04-13T03:59:27Z2023-04-13T03:59:27ZBinding Ties explores celebrated artist Catherine Opie’s world of transitions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520407/original/file-20230412-22-r07o9w.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C2986%2C2375&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catherine Opie/ Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oliver breastfeeding. Oliver at five dressed in a tutu. Oliver at ten with his pet mouse in his vest pocket, an exquisite re-staging of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lady-with-an-ermine-leonardo-da-vinci/HwHUpggDy_HxNQ?hl=en">Lady with an Ermine</a> from 1489. </p>
<p>These portraits of Oliver, the son of Catherine Opie, one of the world’s leading photographic artists, are among the highlights of <a href="https://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/catherine-opie/">Binding Ties</a>, the first Australian survey exhibition of Opie’s work at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne.</p>
<p>All three Oliver portraits use the art historical device of construing the sitter’s identity through allegory. Opie is expert in bringing out photography’s antecedents in the old masters or what we now call legacy media.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520437/original/file-20230412-24-x6x5c1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine Opie. Oliver in a Tutu (2004)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Drama and emotion</h2>
<p>In the large-scale oval portraits of Opie’s friends and artistic peers, painterly references are repeated photographically. Sharp contrast of light and shadow - the chiaroscuro effect made famous by Caravaggio - creates drama and emotional effect. </p>
<p>In the magnificent Thelma and Duro (2017), an older African American couple are royally illuminated in black space, their eyes staring out of the frame in opposite directions as though they were at odds with each other. Thelma’s fingertips press hard on top of Duro’s right hand, his left hand free to assume the mannerist poise of a Renaissance prince.</p>
<p>In the oval portrait of Rocco (2012) we can see the trace of transition scars beneath “Tender Hearted”, the large breastplate tattoo that runs across the sitter’s chest. Rocco’s portrait visually mirrors the Opie self-portrait in which “Pervert” has been cut into her skin, a scarification ritual that brings out the innate capacity of the human epidermis to record change across time. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520446/original/file-20230412-18-na4zcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine Opie. Rocco (2012). pigment print.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Skin is on display in many of the Opie portraits, less as a metonym of race than as a thing that captures our difference from each other and ourselves as we wear and tear and toughen our way through life. Whether acne, stretchmarks and rosacea, or the piercings, tattoos and facial hair in which we electively dress our nakedness, Opie’s camera regards scars as signs of human dignity turned out for shared yet intimate apprehension.</p>
<p>For this reason, it is best to skim the didactic panels that point us towards symbolic meanings and simply look at the people and scenes before us in the way that Opie would have encountered them.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520450/original/file-20230412-28-cehqyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine Opie. Self-Portrait / Cutting (1993)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dykes, drag and trans portraits</h2>
<p>At the centre of the exhibition are the iconic portraits Opie created in the 1990s among her queer community in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Photographed against her signature brightly coloured backgrounds are leather dykes, drag performers and transgender friends, including her long-time collaborator Pig Pen. </p>
<p>Opie and her friends resist normative sexuality, gender stereotypes and the binary of gender categories. They use gesture, posture, dress and adornment to assemble ever-shifting identities for her camera. </p>
<p>While it would be easy to view these works with the casualness of contemporary understandings of queer sexuality and gender fluidity, these portraits were made in the 1990s when AIDS was the <a href="https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline/">primary cause of death for Americans aged 25 to 44</a>. </p>
<p>Like the earlier work of <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-mapplethorpe-and-me-86465">Robert Mapplethorpe</a> and Nan Goldin, Opie’s portraits took a leading role in bestowing agency to the queer community by allowing them to see themselves as they wanted to be seen. </p>
<h2>History and iconography</h2>
<p>It is commonly thought that the most powerful portraits are made by photographers who know their subjects intimately. </p>
<p>While Opie’s photographs of her friends and family support this theory, how do we explain the portraits of high-school footballers that are among the most powerful in the Heide survey? These sweaty young athletes decked out in grid-iron armour with exposed midriffs and burgeoning six-packs are not obviously Opie’s fellow travellers but they each also testify to the ongoingness of transition.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520455/original/file-20230412-20-si4ugp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine Opie. Kaine (2007)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other iconic inclusions are the three classical self-portraits that command the middle gallery. Saturated in art historical references and Christian iconography, each portrait subverts the traditions it exemplifies. </p>
<p>In Self-Portrait/Pervert (1994), Opie plays with the sumptuary codes of wealth and prestige by facing the camera half-naked, her head covered in a leather BDSM hood. The ornate tattoo across her bleeding chest is stylistically linked to the decorative floral curtain behind her, while her strong arms display 23 surgical needles pinned through her skin like ornamental jewellery. </p>
<p>In Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993), the artist’s back, also bleeding from a childlike drawing etched into her skin, shows a stereotypical family scene in which the stick figures roles of mother and father are taken by two mothers. Rather than celebrating <a href="https://www.rainbowfamilies.com.au">rainbow families</a>, the scarification records the deep grief Opie felt at the demise of her long-term relationship and with it her domestic hopes.</p>
<p>The next year we see her as Bo (1994), her mustachioed male alter-ego. Then, precisely ten years later, her familial longings are realised in the double portrait of Opie breastfeeding her immaculate son in Self-Portrait/Nursing (2004). </p>
<h2>A bit of everything</h2>
<p>The Heide exhibition has tried to capture Opie’s 40-year oeuvre by including a bit of everything. There are seascapes with surfers from 2003 and more recent large-scale photographs of monuments and sunsets, some of them deliberately blurred. </p>
<p>There are several landscapes of a swamp (look out for the hidden owl) and three stop motion animations that are political responses to global issues of the day. </p>
<p>None of these capture the aura of Opie’s portraits. Her gift is to photograph people. She has a way of lighting her subjects, making them glisten, appear electric or serene but always human. Given this is Opie’s first survey show in Australia, a more in-depth approach focusing on continuity rather than novelty might have been warranted.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520465/original/file-20230412-24-zzl9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catherine Opie. Untitled #7 (Swamps) 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The most puzzling and unconvincing inclusion is The Modernist (2017), a grainy black-and-white film made up of 852 still frames that casts the now middle-aged Pig Pen in the unappealing role of an arsonist hell-bent on destroying the modernist architectural icons of LA. An odd exercise in ambivalence about artistic success, the film is at odds with Opie’s unassuming mastery of documentary photography and portraiture.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that Opie is a multifaceted artist. But given how much work was not on display, the spaces dedicated to the film, the surfers and the animations might have been better used to show more photographs from the oval portrait series or more domestic scenes with Opie’s family.</p>
<p>For not much more than the price of an Uber to and from Heide, you can purchase the artist’s monograph from the bookstore and explore the full breadth of the human photographic connections that have made her such a celebrated artist and recorder of life as transition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lee Wallace receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a project with Annamarie Jagose on the couple, an investigation of commitment and durability in the era of marriage equality.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cherine Fahd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Binding Ties is the first Australian survey exhibition of Catherine Opie, one of the world’s leading photographic artists, at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne.Cherine Fahd, Associate Professor, Visual Communication, University of Technology SydneyLee Wallace, Professor, Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2032542023-04-04T15:06:04Z2023-04-04T15:06:04ZAshish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender exhibition – a glittering testament to a fashion genius<p>The first retrospective exhibition of the fashion designer <a href="https://ashish.co.uk/">Ashish Gupta</a> has opened at London’s <a href="https://www.wmgallery.org.uk/">William Morris Gallery</a>.</p>
<p>As an expert in fashion marketing (and a proud owner of a number of Ashish’s renowned shimmering <a href="https://www.wmgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions-43/ashish-fall-in-love-and-be-more-tender">sequined skirts</a>) I was greatly excited by the prospect of the show.</p>
<p>When the day of my visit came, not only was I was able to immerse myself in Ashish’s wonderful creations, but I had a chance encounter with the designer himself. He told me that the skirt I had chosen to wear that day (a sparkling green fish print fabric, covered in iridescent sequins) was from one of his earliest collections.</p>
<p>It was in 2021, 20 years after Gupta founded his label eponymous label, Ashish, that the Morris Gallery’s curators Roisin Ingleby and Joe Scotland conceived the exhibition. Ingleby told me of the hours of joy they had spent in Ashish’s London design archive, selecting the 60 designs that would eventually be showcased through the exhibition.</p>
<p>As a designer, Gupta is celebrated for colourful, glamourous, extravagant designs realised through detailed craftsmanship. Up to 30 garments are handmade each season. They are <a href="https://bricksmagazine.co.uk/2022/11/13/ashish-gupta-on-expressing-identity-through-art/">made to order</a>, with a limited run on designs, ensuring exclusivity and longevity. </p>
<h2>From a Delhi boy to the king of sequins</h2>
<p>Ashish Gupta was born in Delhi to GP parents. His first exposure to fashion was through a copy of Vogue magazine that his mother had “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/07/ashish-gupta-colour-and-sequins-are-my-response-to-our-terrifying-world-">smuggled into the house</a>”.</p>
<p>At his strict Catholic school, <a href="https://www.lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/11/04/ashish-gupta-designer-indian-manufacturing/">Gupta was bullied</a> and fashion and cinema became his escapism. </p>
<p>Having initially studied fine art in India, he moved to London to study fashion design at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2000. He remembers the then course director, <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/louise-wilson">Louise Wilson</a>, giving him the best possible advice: to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/07/ashish-gupta-colour-and-sequins-are-my-response-to-our-terrifying-world-">dream</a>. </p>
<p>The colour, sparkle and sequins which have come to define his work ever since are the realisation of that dream.</p>
<p>When Gupta’s eponymous label was discovered by the famous <a href="https://www.brownsfashion.com/uk/sets/browns-focus">Browns Focus boutique</a> on London’s South Molton Street, he was launched from making clothes for friends into the <a href="https://showstudio.com/contributors/ashish_gupta">international fashion industry</a>.</p>
<p>Gupta is now considered a pioneer in the way his designs challenge heterosexual, masculine stereotypes and explore the role of clothing in <a href="https://bricksmagazine.co.uk/2022/11/13/ashish-gupta-on-expressing-identity-through-art/">making political and social statements</a>. </p>
<p>This exhibition focuses on the stories told by his creations, demonstrating fashion’s power as a form of cultural commentary.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A colourful shirt dress hangs on a mannequin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/519261/original/file-20230404-28-iuma7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ashish’s Wax Print Dress on display at the exhibition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>One of the earlier pieces on display is a Dutch Wax Print Dress (2005), a celebration of London’s multicultural heritage. The dress is made from African wax print fabric – a material with a complex colonial history – and embellished with sequins.</p>
<p>In the same room is Ashish’s <a href="https://www.brownsfashion.com/uk/shopping/ashish-immigrant-t-shirt-11786702">Immigrant T-shirt</a> combined with a more traditional South Asian embroidered red skirt and veil from his 2017 spring/summer collection. </p>
<p>This collection was the first to explicitly reference his experience as an emigrant by combining elements of western dress and eastern influences.</p>
<p>Designed during the time of Brexit and the <a href="https://www.jcwi.org.uk/the-hostile-environment-explained">British Home Office’s hostile environment policy</a>, this collection explored the emotional impact of leaving home and beginning life elsewhere. Throughout the exhibition are designs that pay testament to Gupta’s belief in equality and inclusive representation.</p>
<h2>Crafting cultural commentaries</h2>
<p>The cultural and political narratives that define Ashish’s creative storytelling are on show through the combinations of craft skill, materials, sequins and hand embroidery, throughout the exhibition.</p>
<p>Sequins have become Ashish’s signature style and far from <a href="https://www.fashionabc.org/wiki/ashish-gupta/">cheap embellishments</a>, they represent a technical art form, enabling a different way of working with fabric.</p>
<p>Ashish’s garments are hand made in India using <a href="https://www.lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/11/04/ashish-gupta-designer-indian-manufacturing/">traditional artisinal craft skills</a>.</p>
<p>Many of the garments on display highlight Ashish’s play on traditional craft through the embellishment of sequins, including crochet and Fair Isle knitwear. </p>
<p>On display in the centre of the opening room is the designer’s adaptation of a high vis jacket, with a lumberjack shirt and jeans from the 2010 autumn/winter collection. Here, the addition of sequins play with heterosexual norms.</p>
<p>The second section of the exhibition centres on the <a href="https://10magazine.com/ashish-ready-to-wear-aw17/">Yellow Brick Road</a> collection from autumn/winter 2017, which was inspired by the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. </p>
<p>These pieces feature multiple versions of the Rainbow pride flag, to form a collection that celebrates people of colour and queer communities.</p>
<p>The final section of the exhibition showcases the skill of hand embroidery on display in Ashish designs. </p>
<p>A highlight for me was the dressing gown created using <a href="https://www.culturalindia.net/indian-crafts/zardozi.html">Zardozi</a> – a south Asian embroidery technique using gold thread.</p>
<p>This fascinating exhibition presents the wonder of Ashish’s creativity and highlights the power of garments to convey stories and meanings. The glittering genius of combining sequins with traditional craftmanship has Gupta firmly on fashion’s catwalk of fame.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.wmgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions-43/ashish-fall-in-love-and-be-more-tender/">Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender</a> is a free exhibition, on now at the William Morris Gallery, London, until 10 September.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naomi Braithwaite does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new exhibition pays homage to the king of sequins, who combines detailed, traditional techniques with unconventional materials.Naomi Braithwaite, Associate Professor in Fashion Marketing and Branding, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2014292023-03-14T16:05:37Z2023-03-14T16:05:37ZSasha Huber’s You Name It: Swiss-Haitian artist renegotiates colonial history in activist exhibition<p>In 2008, <a href="http://www.sashahuber.com/">Sasha Huber</a>, a Swiss-Haitian multimedia visual artist based in Finland, began a project to challenge the problematic legacy of Swiss-American glaciologist and natural scientist <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/3/18/louis-agassiz-scrut/">Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)</a>. </p>
<p>Agassiz was a devout creationist who lectured on his belief in racial segregation, defended slavery and propagated the unfounded idea that races were different species. These racist ideas have been dignified and normalised through the commemorative naming of seven species and more than 80 places. Astonishingly, these include one on the <a href="http://wenamethestars.inkleby.com/feature/4839">surface of the moon</a>, another <a href="https://wenamethestars.inkleby.com/feature/81">on Mars</a> and his audacious self-naming of a mountain in Switzerland – “Agassizhorn”.</p>
<p>A solo exhibition titled <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/exhibitions/sasha-huber-you-name-it">You Name It</a> – which brings together a selection of Huber’s art works that act as challenges to historical, systematic, scientific racism – has been at the <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/exhibitions/sasha-huber-you-name-it">Autograph</a> gallery in London since November 2022. </p>
<p>The exhibition has been curated around the question: <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/exhibitions/sasha-huber-you-name-it">Who and what do we memorialise and how?</a> Conceived as a touring show, its first manifestation was in <a href="https://www.kunstinstituutmelly.nl/en/experience/17-sasha-huber-a-solo-exhibition">Rotterdam</a> in 2021, where it was simply billed as Sasha Huber: a Solo Exhibition. It then moved to <a href="https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/you-name-it">The Power Plant</a> in Toronto in 2022, where it acquired its current title.</p>
<p>Since November 2022, the show has been based at Autograph, whose director, <a href="https://www.worldphoto.org/node/398">Mark Sealy</a>, has long been concerned with western photographic practice being “<a href="https://lwbooks.co.uk/product/decolonising-the-camera-photography-in-racial-time">used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent regimes</a>”. This abiding concern is evident in this exhibition.</p>
<p>In 1850, Agassiz commissioned the studio portraitist <a href="http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=3617">Joseph T. Zealy</a> to make a set of <a href="http://www.daguerreobase.org/en/about-this-project">daguerreotypes</a> of enslaved people on the Edgehill plantation in South Carolina. This included a Congolese man, Renty Taylor, and his daughter Delia, as well as five others. </p>
<p>Agassiz used the images to support <a href="https://eps.harvard.edu/louis-agassiz">his theory of the inferiority of certain ethnic groups</a>. The subjects were required to pose naked for three full-length views: front, rear and side. These are thought to be the first photographs of enslaved people.</p>
<p>Huber’s engagement with Agassiz began when she was invited by historian and activist Hans Fässler to join the “<a href="https://blackcentraleurope.com/sources/1989-today/from-agassizhorn-to-rentyhorn-2008/">Demounting Louis Agassiz”</a> campaign. In 2008, Huber undertook a symbolic renaming of Agassizhorn. Accessing the mountain top by helicopter, she marked the summit with a plaque bearing a new place name, Rentyhorn, honouring the enslaved man pictured by Zealy. A film of <a href="http://www.sashahuber.com/?cat=5">this renaming</a> anchors the exhibition.</p>
<p>Many other “reparative interventions” – Huber’s term – have followed. They take different forms, including places marked by colonial history far away from Switzerland. In each case Huber takes care to ensure that the project is devised with sensitivity to the given location or issue being addressed, drawing on indigenous knowledge and customs.</p>
<p>For example, Huber describes how in <a href="https://www.cntraveler.com/story/why-referring-to-new-zealand-as-aotearoa-is-a-meaningful-step-for-travelers">Aotearoa</a> (the Maori name for New Zealand) she worked with “Maori people in the area” on an intervention to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=732n08fZDik&t=450s">symbolically un-name and cleanse</a>” the so-called Agassiz Glacier for a film titled: <a href="https://www.av-arkki.fi/works/karakia-the-resetting-ceremony/">Karakia The Resetting Ceremony</a> (2015).</p>
<h2>Creating “pain-things”</h2>
<p>Huber has also created numerous pieces using her signature “<a href="http://www.sashahuber.com/?cat=10010&lang=fi&mstr=10009">shooting back</a>” technique, in which “metal staples [are] ‘shot’ onto wooden boards” using a semiautomatic staple gun. This produces images and textured surfaces to represent key perpetrators and artefacts associated with colonial atrocities.</p>
<p>In one example, <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/content/images/editorimages/a%20-%20new%20structure/exhibitions/2022/sasha%20huber/tailoring-freedom.jpg">Tailoring Freedom – Renty and Delia</a> (2021), Huber has combined “shooting back” with new photographs based on the original daguerreotypes taken by J.T Zealy. </p>
<p>These are some of the most poignant photographic portraits I have ever seen. The figures seem to look back at us from across the far distance of time and place. Now “dressed” in carefully researched attire, Huber has afforded both father and daughter the dignity lost when the original photographs were made.</p>
<p>At first, Huber used this as a “weapon” of resistance, however, more recently the technique has taken a more restorative turn: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My shooting of staples has sought to enact a stitching of colonial wounds. It was a way for me to make visible and tend to those wounds. I started to call my works <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/blog/tailoring-freedom-bindi-vora-in-conversation-with-sasha-huber/">‘pain-things’</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You Name It includes two new pieces of work commissioned through Autograph’s “Stranger in the Village” project. The African American novelist <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/baldwin-switzerland">James Baldwin’s</a> essay of the same name explores his distressing experiences in an all-white village in Switzerland in the early 1950s.</p>
<p>Baldwin encountered such a high level of curiosity in himself as a person of African descent – not least in his skin colour – that it left him feeling isolated and alienated. The essay, which investigated the racialised body, marked a turning point in his writing.</p>
<p>These new pieces by Huber, continue her exploration of memorialisation. <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/sasha-huber">The Firsts by Tilo Frey</a> was made in tribute to the Cameroonian-Swiss politician Tilo Frey (1923-2008), who campaigned for women’s rights and suffrage in Switzerland. </p>
<p>The other honours <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/commissions/sasha-huber-khadija-saye">Khadija Saye’s You Are Missed</a>, an “artist, activist and carer”, who died with her mother as victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, London, in 2017. They will join <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/projects-research/amplify">Autograph’s collection</a> with its “unique focus on black experiences and politics of representation”.</p>
<p>Huber’s art is startling for many reasons. Grounded in thorough research and motivated by a commitment to “reparative intervention”, she succeeds in forcibly addressing the legacies of western colonialism. At the same time her art – which can be understood as a form of <a href="http://www.sashahuber.com/?cat=10095&lang=fi&mstr=37">activism</a> – constitutes a positive renegotiation of this history. </p>
<p>As Huber’s partner, Petri Saarikko, <a href="http://www.sashahuber.com/">has said</a> of her work: “You’re lifting rocks from the past to build a bridge for the future.”</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=732n08fZDik&t=450s">You Name It</a> is showing at <a href="https://autograph.org.uk/exhibitions/sasha-huber-you-name-it">Autograph</a> London until 25 March 2023 before moving to Turku Art Museum in Finland from June-September 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darcy White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sasha Huber’s work often involves renaming colonial landmarks, including a mountain in Switzerland.Darcy White, Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1995352023-02-09T15:50:28Z2023-02-09T15:50:28ZWomen Talking – a radical film that reimagines how cinema can be made<p>Words matter. They give expression to our experiences, allow us to tell our stories and make sense of our place within the world. With language comes the ability to speak: to speak for, and to speak out. To name injustices and imagine alternative futures. The radical feminist Audre Lorde tells us that <a href="https://silverpress.org/products/your-silence-will-not-protect-you-by-audre-lorde">our silence will not protect us</a>, that we must turn our silence into words, and those words into action.</p>
<p>The director Sarah Polley’s Women Talking follows a group of women as they find the language to talk about their experiences of violence and collectively imagine a future that might bring an end to the harms they have endured at the hands of men. Based on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/10/women-talking-miriam-toews-review">Miriam Toews 2018</a> novel of the same name, both the film and the book are an imagined response to a series of real-life sexual attacks on a group of women in a Mennonite community in Bolivia.</p>
<p>The film is set almost exclusively in a barn in which the women of the colony hold a secret meeting to determine whether to stay or leave following the attacks. Crucially, the women are unable to take the minutes of their meeting, as they can’t read and write, reminding viewers of language’s power to exclude; that language is man-made and so serves those who created it.</p>
<p>Cinema, like the written word, has long been the province of men. Since the days of the studio system (around 1917-1960) women have been systematically excluded from <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/feminist-film-studies/9781904764038">significant creative roles</a> and continue to remain a minority when it comes to <a href="https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022-celluloid-ceiling-report.pdf">directing and producing</a>. Women Talking is therefore a remarkable film in that it is both written, directed and produced by women.</p>
<h2>Rewriting the rules</h2>
<p>As is so often the case in filmmaking, the gruelling shooting schedule, often on location miles from home, prevents many – typically female – caregivers from assuming the role of director. </p>
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<p>A mother of three young children, Polley expected only to write the film and <a href="https://johnaugust.com/2023/the-one-with-sarah-polley">hand the project over</a>. However, producers Frances McDormand and Dede Gardner were keen to have Polley at the helm. To facilitate this, a radical shift in established creative practices was required.</p>
<p>Together, McDormand, Gardner and Polley rewrote the masculine rules of filmmaking.</p>
<p>A feminist ethics of care was placed at the centre of their process. Polley ensured that they kept to ten-hour working days to allow cast and crew appropriate rest times. This also ensured that those with caring responsibilities could take breaks whenever needed. They also hired a therapist who remained on set throughout filming. The result, <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a42787088/women-talking-jessie-buckley-claire-foy/">according to cast and crew</a> was a nurturing and safe set.</p>
<p>Polley extends the same level of care to her audience. The film does not linger on the brutality of the attacks. Instead, the focus is on the myriad responses to such an ordeal – and completely without judgement.</p>
<p><a href="https://johnaugust.com/2023/the-one-with-sarah-polley">Polley reportedly</a> made the conscious decision to make the film “placeless”. She refuses to orient her audience by naming a location in which these attacks take place – though crucially we are given a time, 2010. The aim was to force all contemporary patriarchal societies and systems to recognise their complicity in violence again women and girls, rather than dismiss the horrific attacks as the product of a specific national, cultural or religious context. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A director talks to the cast." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509165/original/file-20230209-26-k77w1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Director Sarah Polley talks to the cast of Women Talking.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.upimedia.com/libraries/2/titles/1077/assets">Orion Releasing LLC</a></span>
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<p>The #metoo movement made clear that gender-based violence holds no boundaries and exposed the film industry itself as a hotbed of abuse. In <a href="https://theunspeakablepodcast.libsyn.com/sarah-polleys-hollywood-debut-a-candid-conversation-with-the-canadian-star">a recent interview</a> with Meghan Daum, Polley reflects on the movement, which she believes has “stalled”. She says that while it illuminated the scale of the problem, it is important not to “get stuck” in the “helplessness and rage” but imagine “what a future might look like”. </p>
<p>Women Talking is an exploration of the possibilities and difficulties of imagining a future free from violence, both on and off screen. It captures the messiness of collective action and the beauty of solidarity in such a way that leaves the audience hopeful for what might be possible, while under no illusion of the struggle and sacrifice it will take to achieve it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Warner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women Talking is a meditation on how we tell stories of rape and a thoughtful exploration of how films can be made.Helen Warner, Lecturer in Cultural Politics, Communication and Media Studies, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1959312022-12-12T19:02:52Z2022-12-12T19:02:52ZSex, comedy and vulnerability: Latecomers on SBS is an important shift in disability representation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500211/original/file-20221211-90998-uu5no9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3994%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The SBS drama Latecomers is an insightful, witty and superbly produced exploration of the fragility of human life and the fear of rejection that accompanies the human need for intimacy. </p>
<p>Starring <a href="https://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/2896591/angus-living-life-to-the-full/">Angus Thompson</a> (as Frank) and <a href="https://hannahdiviney.com/">Hannah Diviney</a> (as Sarah), actors with cerebral palsy, the show’s most distinctive appeal is how it explores the fear of rejection which accompanies all attempts at intimacy: successful or otherwise. </p>
<p>Globally, the screen industry has struggled to employ actors with a disability. Films such as Breathe (2017), Me Before You (2016), Margarita with a Straw (2014), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and many others all employ actors without a disability in disabled roles.</p>
<p>Latecomers, however, stars actors with a disability playing characters with a disability. It is a joy to see. </p>
<p>Actors with a disability need to be included in screen media more often. Latecomers is particularly important because of the way it considers sex, pleasure and disability.</p>
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<h2>Disability, sexuality and sex in Australian cinema</h2>
<p>Perhaps the one of the most significant early Australian films about living with a disability is <a href="https://shop.nfsa.gov.au/annies-coming-out">Annie’s Coming Out</a> (1984), an adaption of a book written by Rosemary Crossley and Anne McDonald based on a true story exploring the life of children with a disability who are institutionalised by their parents. </p>
<p>Annie’s Coming Out was significant because of the performance given by Tina Arhondis, an actor with cerebral palsy who was cast to play the role of Annie. </p>
<p>The film follows Annie’s institutionalisation and misdiagnosis as intellectually and physically disabled, before the realisation she has no intellectual disability. </p>
<p>Her physical therapist fights to have her released and succeeds. </p>
<p>The history of institutionalising people with a disability in Australia begins with colonisation. European settlers brought their asylums with them. Intellectually disabled people together with physically disabled people were also included in these group homes. By 1841, one eighth of the population in South Australia <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2021-11/Research%20Report%20-%20Disability%20in%20Australia%20-%20Shadows%2C%20struggles%20and%20successes.pdf">relied on public relief</a>. The Adelaide Destitute Asylum was full beyond capacity.</p>
<p>Similar reliance on asylums characterised life for people with any kind of disability in Perth (Freemantle Asylum), Melbourne (the Ballarat Asylum and later the Kew Idiot’s Ward), Sydney (Parramatta, Callan Park, Gladesville Asylums). Intellectual disability was slowly extracted from psychiatric illness in the late 19th century. </p>
<p>by the year 1887 an estimated 7,722 Australians were <a href="http://chartsbin.com/view/eoo">registered</a> as “insane”“, but institutions still housed people with "incurable” disabilities and women who had post natal depression. For example, in 1898 children with intellectual disability began being moved out of the <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/sa/biogs/SE01279b.htm">Adelaide lunatic asylum</a>. </p>
<p>It was not until the 1970s that institutional living began to be critiqued. De-institutionalisation took place unevenly over the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255716547_De-institutionalisation_The_move_to_community_based_care">195,243 people</a> lived in health and welfare institutions in Australia. By 1991, this number had dropped to 168,940 and it continued to fall. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/by-naming-pennhurst-stranger-things-uses-disability-trauma-for-entertainment-dark-tourism-and-asylum-tours-do-too-185581">By naming 'Pennhurst', Stranger Things uses disability trauma for entertainment. Dark tourism and asylum tours do too</a>
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<p>The film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154378/">Dance Me to My Song</a> (1998) also looked at women with disabilities in institutional living facilities. Written by the late Heather Rose, an actor and screen writer with cerebral palsy, the film explores Julia’s sexuality and her complicated relationship with her abusive carer. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wdv.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Royal-Commission-into-Violence-Abuse-Neglect-and-Exploitation-of-People-with-Disability-Group-Homes-Submission-Word-Version-1.docx">rates of sexual abuse</a> of women with disabilities in institutional living facilities in Australia were alarming. Primarily instigated by male carers working in institutions, <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2021-10/EXP.0066.0002.0035.pdf">the forced sterilisation</a> of women with disabilities in institutions became a way of “managing” – hiding – this abuse. </p>
<p>If women could not become pregnant there was no material evidence the abuse was taking place. Women were not only stripped of the right to choose to have sex, they have their reproductive rights taken away in an effort to cover up systemic sexual abuse. </p>
<p>Even today, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309728772_Disability_and_child_sexual_abuse_in_institutional_contexts_Royal_Commission_into_Institutional_Responses_to_Child_Sexual_Abuse">one in four</a> Australian women with a disability have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15, compared with 15% without disability.</p>
<p>This is the context in which Latecomers’ presents its exploration of disability and sexuality. </p>
<p>Just as Dance Me to My Song spoke to themes of power, sex and sexual control, Latecomers looks at the role of sex and sexuality in the lives of disabled people. But here, we get to join in with friendships, humour, the fear of rejection and the excitement of sex. We also get to laugh at the failure of sex at times. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500218/original/file-20221211-94217-p3m533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hannah Diviney and Angus Thompson in Latecomers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Renata Dominik/ SBS</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-matters-is-hope-freedom-and-saying-who-you-are-what-lgbtq-people-with-intellectual-disabilities-want-everyone-to-know-184555">'What matters is hope, freedom and saying who you are.' What LGBTQ+ people with intellectual disabilities want everyone to know</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Witty approaches to disability and sex</h2>
<p>Latecomers begins with a date. Angus Thompson’s Frank doesn’t care about a nice meal, or interesting conversation, Frank just wants to get drunk and get laid. </p>
<p>In trying to achieve these goals, Frank is keen to pursue the strategy made popular by generations of Australian men – tell Hannah Diviney’s Sarah she is “unfuckable”.</p>
<p>This statement has a complexity specific to Sarah and Frank’s disabilities that makes it more powerful than it might otherwise be. However, women who are both disabled and not disabled will relate.</p>
<p>These relationships are complicated by power relationships surrounding disability and these tensions play out as the show continues. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Renata Dominik/ SBS</span></span>
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<p>Sarah ditches Frank for a nice guy, (Patrick Jhanur) who likes her for her wit and intelligence and who doesn’t want to tell his mates all about sex. In a media landscape characterised by sexual fantasies, I am personally relieved to see a sex scene that is not played out between two able-bodied white people.</p>
<p>It is a welcome change to see disabled people enjoying sex on screen. May we see much more of it. </p>
<p>Latecomers is a tonic for the pain and loneliness that is part of all our embodied lives – and an important step forward in how the stories of people with a disability are told on screen. Released in the same year that neurodivergent actor Chloé Hayden from Heartbreak High won the AACTA best actress audience choice awards, Latecomers signals a shift in consumer taste.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Hickey-Moody receives funding from funding from the Australian Research Council. She grew up in Australia with a father who was severely disabled and has been researching questions of disability, gender and representation since her late teens.</span></em></p>Latecomers looks at the role of sex and sexuality in the lives of disabled people.Anna Hickey-Moody, Professor of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1951412022-12-02T06:50:24Z2022-12-02T06:50:24ZNetflix’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover reduces this tale of class conflict to a simple love story<p>It is easy to understand the appeal of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) for filmmakers. The issues the novel addresses are so rich. Written in response to the general strike of 1926 in the UK, the story examines the sources of class enmity and imagines how it might be overcome through tenderness, touch and sex.</p>
<p>Many, including the author Doris Lessing, have argued that Lady Chatterley’s Lover <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/15/classics.dhlawrence">can only be understood</a> in the context of its time and societal stresses. However, this latest film version strips out the social context and class detail of the novel and with them go most of the psychological complexity of the characters, leaving simply a love story with a happy ending. </p>
<p>In the book, Constance Reid, who has been raised in a bohemian upper-middle-class family, marries the aristocrat Clifford Chatterley. Shortly after their marriage, he is paralysed from the waist down in the first world war. On his father’s death, he becomes a baronet and takes Constance to live in his ancestral home in the Midlands (Wragby Hall), also taking ownership of an adjacent colliery in the village of Tevershall. </p>
<p>His injuries mean that Sir Clifford is unable to father an heir, so he coldly suggests that his wife gets pregnant by another man. However, rather than simply sleeping with someone from their social circle she starts an affair with her husband’s gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. </p>
<p>Mellors is working class by birth and preference but has moved into the middle class through education and his promotion to the rank of lieutenant in the army. Like Constance, Mellors is unhappily married and displaced between classes. Together they must struggle to overcome their deeply-ingrained class attitudes, and it is a painful and unresolved process. </p>
<h2>Playing down class tensions</h2>
<p>The novel was written in three wholly different versions between 1926 and 1928, and each one reflects <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA608502056&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00114936&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ebf815a29">Lawrence’s pessimism about the future</a> of England and his fear that a class war was imminent.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/the-general-strike.htm">The general strike</a> was called to try to force the British government to reverse both pay cuts and worsening conditions for miners. Coal seams had been depleted during the war and production was at an all-time low in the early to mid-1920s. A reduction in wages was proposed to maintain profits. </p>
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<p>In the novel, there is an atmosphere of simmering unrest between the mine owners and the colliers. Sir Clifford plans to further mechanise his colliery, replacing men with machines. He seeks to develop coal by-products to maximise income. Local pits are only working for part of the week, and socialist and even Bolshevist ideas are gaining traction with the miners. </p>
<p>In this film, industrial unrest is condensed to a passing street protest. The brief glimpse we get of the mining village (Tevershall) makes it seem more like a pretty Dorset village in a Thomas Hardy novel than a Midlands colliery town in the 1920s.</p>
<h2>Flat characters</h2>
<p>The worst flattening of the novel comes in the film’s depiction of the class struggle between Constance and Mellors.</p>
<p>In the book, Lawrence’s Constance Chatterley is empathetic towards Clifford’s servants and staff and she takes an interest in the plight of his workforce. But, at times, she tends to stereotype the working classes and revert to a learned form of snobbishness.</p>
<p>We see her inner conflict play out when she first views Mellors washing at the back of his cottage in Wragby wood. It is a confusing encounter, which arouses class-based disgust while also confronting her with feelings of physical attraction. </p>
<p>On one level he is “merely a man washing himself! Commonplace enough, heaven knows.” But on another, it is “a visionary experience” which hits her “in the middle of her body”. The film’s Constance Chatterley suffers no such inner dilemma. She merely views the man and giggles. She doesn’t need to root out any internalised class prejudice.</p>
<p>Lawrence has Mellors speak two languages: a Derbyshire-inflected regional speech and dialect and received pronunciation. Mellors and Constance have to find a middle ground beyond the divisions of class and language. They achieve this by mimicking one another’s language and laughing away their differences. </p>
<p>Constance comically imitates Mellors’ regional speech patterns and he teaches her new meanings for the proscribed words “cunt” and “fuck” which transform them from terms of abuse into poetic words for sex and the mysterious experiences of the body. Mellors, in turn, lets down his psychological barriers, coming to see her not as “your ladyship” (an embodiment of the Chatterleys and the ruling classes more generally) but as Connie. </p>
<p>They jokingly call their sexual organs “John Thomas” and “Lady Jane”, parodying names and titles. He gradually finds a language with which to respond to Connie as a woman he loves rather than a lady he serves. </p>
<p>In the film, however, this is all gone. Mellors speaks throughout with the same slight regional inflexion. There is no linguistic readjustment required. The only resentment he seems to feel is irritation when she first asks for a key to his hut or temporary outrage that he has been used when she tells him she is pregnant.</p>
<p>At one point in the movie Sir Clifford’s nurse, Ivy Bolton, even says outright: “This is a love story.” In terms of the film, she’s absolutely right. </p>
<p>There are things to enjoy. The music is atmospheric and hints at emotional depths and nuances that the script skates over. The scene in which Connie and Mellors cavort naked in the rain has a joyous sensual quality. This scene reminded me a little of Lawrence’s paintings <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/Paintings-D-H-Lawrence-David-Herbert/10050748097/bd">Dance-Sketch and Fire-Dance</a>. </p>
<p>But the characters are so flat that those who have read the novel will be disappointed and those who haven’t will wonder what all the fuss was about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Harrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>D.H. Lawrence’s book is a seething commentary on class, exposing his fears for Britain’s future. But the film is a romantic period drama.Andrew Harrison, Associate Professor in English Literature, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756322022-03-03T04:14:54Z2022-03-03T04:14:54ZThe responsibilities of being: Jessica Au’s precise, poetic meditation on mothers and daughters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446704/original/file-20220216-25-6uxhcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C9%2C2103%2C1389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tokyo snowstorm, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jessica Au has been appearing on the Australian literary scene for quite some time now. I first noticed her work in the noughties: short fictions published in Overland and Wet Ink, stories with well-crafted sentences and engaging characters and an aesthetic that leaned toward stillness and dissociation. </p>
<p>She didn’t publish much, or not much that I found, before or after her first novel, Cargo (2011), another book I would encourage people to read. I think it is fair to say she is not prolific. <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/alluring-tokyo-story-brings-jessica-au-an-international-writing-prize-20220203-p59tkv.html">She has conceded that she is a “slow writer”.</a> But the writing is worth the wait. Au’s new book, Cold Enough For Snow, has already won the inaugural <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/novelprize/">Novel Prize</a>, and been published in fifteen languages. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Cold Enough for Snow - Jessica Au (Giramondo)</em></p>
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<p>Cold Enough For Snow is a little book, so short (at 97 pages) that it hasn’t bothered with chapter breaks, but is structured more in stanzas, or perhaps stations. </p>
<p>The narrator and her mother travel through Japan on a short holiday, visiting destinations – art galleries, historic sites, parks – in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and elsewhere. They are travellers characterised by what seems a careful relationship with their surroundings, and with each other. Mother and daughter seem to connect only <em>en passant</em>, as is hinted in the first paragraph of the novel, where the narrator senses her mother’s fear that if they are separated by the Tokyo crowd, “we would not be able to make our way back to each other, but continue to drift further and further apart”. </p>
<p>Drifting, whether together or apart, is what it felt like to move through the novel’s pages. But it is not a thoughtless or oneiric drifting. It is characterised by an intense focus on what most of us mostly ignore – the utterly quotidian. </p>
<p>There is no enthusiasm for cherry blossoms or temples here; there is, however, close attention paid to the colour of the glaze at the bottom of a rice bowl, the texture of curtains in a hotel room, the way garments in a clothing shop sway on their hangers, and the splash of rain on the ground, “which was not asphalt, but a series of small, square tiles, if you cared enough to notice”. </p>
<p>The narrator recounts such details with precision, as though she is looking for somewhere to locate her own cares, working out how and what to be in the quotidian world, and how to love effectively. </p>
<p>Cold Enough For Snow is also a mother-and-daughter story. The narrator has visited Japan previously, with her partner Laurie, and “it was like when we were children again, mad and excitable, endlessly talking, endlessly laughing”. Though she had wanted to have the same sort of experience with her mother, theirs is a companionship marked by silence, or the exchange of small banal comments: “I asked her what she had thought of today, and she said it had been very nice.” </p>
<p>On the one occasion she asks her mother about her beliefs, the response is not encouraging: “She said that she believed that we were all essentially nothing … there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain.” The narrator responds with silence, then: “I looked at my watch and said that visiting hours were almost over, and that we should probably go.” Intimacy avoided. </p>
<p>What it might mean to be a mother – ethically, ontologically – demands the narrator’s close attention because she and her partner are discussing starting a family. For them, this means more than having a small person to love, or expanding from two in the house to three; it means more than sleepless nights and nappies and all the appurtenances of parenthood. Although, as she says, the idea of having a child is “as lovely and elusive as a poem”, she is also deeply conscious of the responsibilities of parenthood: </p>
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<p>I knew that if I had a daughter, she would live partly because of the way I had lived, and her memories would be my memories, and she would have no choice in that matter.</p>
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<p>It is perhaps not surprising, then, that she is ambivalent about being a mother, and about being a daughter. After all, “My lecturer had said to us once that parents were their children’s fate.” This is a weighty consideration. </p>
<p>Yet the narrator seems, at last, to reach a sort of accord. In the final paragraph, while they are preparing to go back to Australia, she observes her mother as an object, an artwork: “she sat as a statue might have sat … She had too the quality of a sculpture.” </p>
<p>But she sees too that her mother is an ageing woman. In the penultimate sentence, her mother says (in what I think is the only direct dialogue in the novel), “Could you help me with this?” And she does help her. The novel ends at this uncertain but somewhat optimistic point. We move through our generations, connected through all our ambivalences, the uncertainties and unknowns. And at the end, we can connect, if only through our capacity to help and be helped. </p>
<p>The density and the, dare I say it, magic of this book is how it weaves together a somewhat chilling distance with a close and sympathetic attunement to the lived world. It rejects the consolations of plot and – in conventional terms – character. </p>
<p>It provides instead a sort of pentimento made of words, all allusion and invocation. It is like a poem or, as many critics have said about this book, a meditation. They have offered phrases like “beautifully observed”, “hypnotic”, “calm simplicity”, and (from Helen Garner): “So calm and clear and deep, I wished it would flow on forever”. </p>
<p>I wished that too; but I think it ends at the right moment. It does not precisely let go of its concerns, but it gestures toward the clarity and complexity and confusion of the world. It orients the narrator, and maybe the reader, toward to a fresh way of seeing, and a fresh way of considering the responsibilities of being, and being alive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Webb receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>In Cold Enough for Snow, the award-winning author’s careful attention to detail, precise language and sympathetic sensibility animate a reflection on intimacy and intergenerational tensions.Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1643582022-01-19T18:59:03Z2022-01-19T18:59:03ZFrom fear to connection, dynamic MENTAL exhibition explores a colourful spectrum of experiences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411792/original/file-20210719-27-a03fea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C3%2C2381%2C1585&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wheel by Hiromi Tango and Dr Emma Burrows (2021)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Science Gallery/Alan Weedon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: <a href="https://melbourne.sciencegallery.com/mental">MENTAL: Head Inside</a>, curated by Tilly Boleyn.</em></p>
<p>After three false starts due to lockdown, the Science Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, MENTAL: Head Inside, is opening at its new space in Carlton. </p>
<p>The gallery is one node in a global network of youth-focused spaces that playfully kicks down the walls between art and science.</p>
<p>Previous Science Gallery exhibitions — BLOOD, PERFECTION and DISPOSABLE — were held in different temporary locations. Curated by and for young people, MENTAL is both a homecoming and a housewarming in an airy, purpose-built space.</p>
<h2>Confronting and comforting</h2>
<p>Two years in the making, MENTAL was curated in defiance of the pandemic by a team of professional curators, an advisory group of young people and experts. The works on display are the fruits of an international open call on the expansive topic of the human mind. They invite engagement and interaction rather than chin-in-hand appraisal.</p>
<p>Although the exhibition explores the mind’s many dimensions, it tilts toward timely issues of mental health. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="young person looks into mirrored chamber" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411791/original/file-20210719-23-1makdpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Isolation Chamber by Rory Randall and Indigo Daya (2021).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Science Gallery/Alan Weedon</span></span>
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<p>The most confronting is Rory Randall and Indigo Daya’s Isolation Chamber, a recreation of a seclusion room for involuntarily detained psychiatric patients. The practice is due for elimination following the Royal Commission into Victoria’s mental health system. </p>
<p>Visitors can enter and experience the pinned helplessness of being surveilled from many angles by those outside. Like many other exhibits, visitors can also record their reactions.</p>
<p>Emily Fitzsimons’ Cushions, knitted in the form of assorted pills, reflect on the role of medication in mental health treatment.</p>
<p>Relief of another sort is offered by Wemba Wemba and Gunditjmara artist Rosie Kalina’s Respite Space, a sanctuary where the mental health of First Nations people is front and centre.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-pop-psychology-can-it-make-your-life-better-or-is-it-all-snake-oil-158709">The rise of pop-psychology: can it make your life better, or is it all snake-oil?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Fear and influence</h2>
<p>Selfcare4eva has Mary Angley and Caithlin O'Loghlen inhabit an in-gallery bedroom in their quest to become famous wellness influencers. A frenzy of wellness-related video and image content creation is promised, to which visitors can add when the artists surrender the room to the public.</p>
<p>The richness of human emotion presented extends beyond wellness, of course. Zhou Xiaohu’s mesmerising Even in Fear has a weather balloon inflate menacingly within a pink, vaguely ribcage-like enclosure. Some may find the suspense frightening, others thrilling.</p>
<p>Fear and nightmares also animate some of Indigenous artist Josh Muir’s sumptuous visual designs and soundscapes in Go Mental. The dreamlike feel of his work leads into the visual and auditory distortions and trippiness of Nwando Ebizie’s Distorted Constellations. Like several of the exhibits, hers is <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/there-is-no-normal">partnered</a> with an ongoing research project.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dark red room with projected eye ball on wall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411793/original/file-20210719-17-1l6oon4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail from ECHO by Georgie Pinn (2021).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Science Gallery/Alan Weedon</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Gut feelings</h2>
<p>Music is also central to Sophia Charuhas’ Microbial Mood. A live experiment tests whether different kinds of music differently influence the growth of gut bacteria, collected in petri dishes above a set of speakers. The artist speculates future music could be used to enhance health by fine-tuning the gut-brain connection.</p>
<p>Emanuel Gollob’s beautiful sea-sponge-like robot in Doing Nothing with AI is also responsive, moving slowly and sinuously to relax the viewer. A headset transmits the brainwaves of observers as they admire the strange seaborg.</p>
<p>Nina Rajcic’s remarkable Mirror Ritual generates a personalised poem based on the visitor’s facial expressions, read as they front a mirror. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman reads poem in mirror" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411794/original/file-20210719-15775-1h73gew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mirror ritual by Nina Rajcic and Seansilab (2021).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Science Gallery/Alan Weedon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/personalities-that-thrive-in-isolation-and-what-we-can-all-learn-from-time-alone-135307">Personalities that thrive in isolation and what we can all learn from time alone</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Meeting of minds</h2>
<p>Mental life happens inside our heads, but several exhibits recognise the importance of interactions between minds. Hiromi Tango and Emma Burrows’ Wheel invites visitors to try out a rainbow-striped hamster wheel, exploring how social rewards promote exercise.</p>
<p>Georgie Pinn’s Echo uncannily dramatises the experience of empathy. The visitor listens to another person’s story while looking at their face. Gradually their own face appears to take over the narrator’s.</p>
<p>The opposite phenomenon is presented in Your Face is Muted, by computer scientists Tilman Dingler, Zhanna Sarsenbayeva, Eylül Ertay, Hao Huang and Melanie Huang. The difficulty of maintaining online video conversations when faces become hard to read is illustrated dramatically in this interactive exhibit. Anyone who has experienced a patchy video conversation will relate.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="old green rotary phone on pedestal." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411795/original/file-20210719-17-o6yt3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is there anybody there? Rachel Hanlon’s Hi Machine – Hello Human (2021).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Science Gallery/Alan Weedon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/child-mental-health-how-acting-out-during-covid-can-be-a-coping-mechanism-and-what-parents-can-do-to-help-158083">Child mental health: how acting out during COVID can be a coping mechanism, and what parents can do to help</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Rachel Hanlon’s charming Hello Machine, Hello Human allows visitors to initiate a spontaneous phone call with another person … or does it? Hanlon’s work is an artistic rendition of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/">Alan Turing’s famous test</a> of whether a machine can pass as human.</p>
<h2>Colour and movement</h2>
<p>Overall, the exhibition has a sense of lightness and dynamism. There are gobs of colour everywhere, darker nooks to explore, and high ceilings and abundant natural light. </p>
<p>At a time when the importance of STEM education is almost universally acknowledged, if not adequately funded, STEM needs to show itself as welcoming, open and attractive. If we want young people to engage with science and technology, they must be able to see these fields not as obscure bodies of knowledge and mechanical methods but as pathways to creative discovery.</p>
<p>By showcasing the works of diverse young artists and scientists who collaborate to explore the issues of the day, MENTAL delivers a powerful message on the value and creative possibilities of science. It is an exemplary exhibition that deserves a visit, whether you are 15, 25 or 85.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://melbourne.sciencegallery.com/mental">MENTAL: Head Inside</a> runs until June 18 at Science Gallery Melbourne.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam works for the University of Melbourne, with which Science Gallery Melbourne is affiliated, and has in the past consulted on an unpaid basis with the gallery.</span></em></p>A youth-focussed exhibition about experiences of mental health is interactive and expansive, kicking down the barriers between science and art.Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.