Category: Perspective

By Matty Timmis

Now I am not trying to insinuate that being a beatnik is akin to a quasi-religion or a cult; such blind faith, such lack of curiosity, must be diametrically opposed to whatever it may be. Neither am I claiming Jesus was a promiscuous, drug taking chancer scraping together a living with his questioning ideas – that’s for you to judge. What I am trying to communicate is the strange belief in the journey you have to embrace, finding satisfaction in the fact you may never reach your destination, that whatever you are travelling toward may well be a mirage. Implicit in that piece of mind is the notion that you never look in the rear view mirror, that the visceral feeling of movement is sacrosanct, that the horizon, whipping towards you, is all that really matters. As Kerouac said, “nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road”.

We met in a very suitable jumping off place, a hostel come campground in a Munich park, heaving with hippies, faded upholstery, guitars and fire pits. Miles and Rory arrived replete with a large tin containing 400g of Golden Virginia and an ambitious quantity of drugs they had smuggled up their arses. We were down and out now, so 10 euro a night to stay in the 100 man communal tent seemed exorbitant. We schemed to pitch our tent in the adjoining campground after dark, hopefully making it free. The problems began after some hash, many steins, and a dismally German dinner consisting solely of sausages; we were hopelessly drunk and it was far too dark to pitch our tent. Luckily, a French man we had been jamming with that evening offered us the underside of his truck to protect us from German weather adversities. We settled down then, taking care not to smash our heads on the axel or the shock absorbers inches above us.

Slightly groggy and a tad grimy, we convened in the morning to formulate a plan. We had come here as ‘beatniks’, with a suitably elusive goal, to find a very special place called the rainbow. We soon learnt however that we were entirely in the wrong part of Germany, the rainbow currently taking place in the black forest in the North. We had to make our way up the length of much of the country, but buses and trains were soon out of the question on account of price, besides we had a beatniks faith, the logical thing to do was to hitchhike.    

Before we departed, ebullient and expeditious, we paid a visit to Aldi where, for cultural as much as economic reasons, we decided to steal as much as we could carry. Sitting at the suburban bus stop out front we inspected our plunder, tucking into a pasta-meat tin. This was not an elegant sight, necessitating a jagged stabbing through the lid, then raising the can to one’s lips, sucking up the cold oily fluid and gelatinous pasta, hoping not to choke on the circumspect white meatballs that bobbed ominous in the broth. Such slurping debauchery felt like a probing of the nihilist depths of counterculture, feeling greasy sauce dripping down from my mouth and off the end of my chin, soaking across my shirt, all whilst 4 or 5 elderly German ladies looked on in stupefied horror. We then jay walked, much to their chagrin, across the street and fixed the traffic with our salute, outstretched thumbs of faith upon the road.

We soon found our first lift, a cherry red convertible AMG Mercedes we both sneered at and revered, our driver the kind of suave, bourgeois epitome we wanted to despise. I suspect however he picked us up for our strange spectacle; 3 shambling beatnik protégés, standing on a small road in hope of a ride 500 miles north. He certainly couldn’t take us that far, apologetically explaining he was only going about 2 miles further. No matter, it was a tantalising start to the journey, top down in the afternoon sunshine,  tearing down the street, elated with the simple speed and power of a snarling engine. Thus deposited at a junction, we made our communion with the road again.

This time we were less successful. Hours went by, our food reserves depleted, and we began to feel the burn of the road in the barren afternoon heat. To restore our faith in the journey we blasted not the frantic amphetamine jazz of our bible, but Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again’ and Canned Heats ‘Going Up the Country’, dancing deranged in the oozing tarmac. Eventually a Mini pulled over and picked us up, transported us a short distance, and ejected us in a cramped and now noxious smelling car at a shopping centre 5 miles further north of Munich. With the now necessary addition of beer, we found ourselves another lift, dourly confident we would still be in Bavaria in the morning.

We were dropped amongst billowing smoke stacks and gurgling, besmirched factories; a desolate industrial estate just a stone’s throw from the first concentration camp, Dachau. At least we had beers now, and the promise of a huge truck stop nearby. In our desperation to escape Bavaria and avoid bedding down in the stark landscape, we rapped on the window of any cab that showed some semblance of occupancy, enquiring in whatever languages we could cobble together if they could take us North, all to no avail. At this point we were weary, particularly tired of lugging our cumbersome packs around with us. But our faith was not to be dimmed and the road, in its clemency, now designed us with the blessing of an abandoned Ikea trolley with which we could cart our bags.

After a final, pleading attempt at hitchhiking in the ebbing sun’s hazy light, standing stately by an arcing flyover, we accepted our hobo fate. Between the autobahn and the industrial estate lay a scraggly patch of brush and woodland, into which we flung ourselves, building a fire and bracing for the night. It was not a comfortable or pleasant sleep, our tent pitched atop a bush, the air within swarming with insects, and the nerves from a recent scabies scare passing between us. A fraught atmosphere helpfully exacerbated by a feral sounding party in the nearby lorry park, it’s strange music throbbing like a ketamine fuelled nightmare amongst the clang of heavy industry.

We felt the down and out sting implicit in ‘beatnik’ when we woke. Our faith in the road was waning, and after failing to secure a lift for the entire morning we felt prepared to abandon it, deciding in anguish to catch a train back to nearby Munich. After being bollocked by a passerby for pushing our trolley off a small bridge in sacrificial farewell, we found ourselves at the station feeling wretched. Across the track was a similarly ragged figure waving at us, squinting in the midday sun. We recognised him for one of the hippies we had met in Munich, someone also planning on attending the rainbow. We regaled him with our pitiful story. Illuminating us with a wry grin he explained he was there to catch a ride north with a girl. He offered to enquire about our situation, and soon we had secured a lift exactly where we wanted to go. We repented, the road had provided.

This lady had the trusting faith of a beatnik, happily driving with 4 men she didn’t know across the country in her friends knackered 2002 Golf. Little more than an hour into the journey, she asked if any of us could drive. I was the only one who had a licence and so she asked me if I had ever driven on European roads before, and if I was happy to drive uninsured. I assured her that I was an experienced driver, but the truth was I had only driven on the motorway once, a long time ago. I was wholly enraptured with faith in the road though, setting off zealously on the derestricted autobahn in blazing afternoon sunshine. I considered it a moral obligation to drive quickly, but, at one point, emerging from a tunnel onto a soaring empty bridge in the shimmering gold of sunset, Rory put on The Prodigy’s ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and my foot turned leaden. I ragged that ancient old banger to 115, shuddering and groaning as if it were about to disintegrate. 

Our faith was truly vindicated, as we swept shambolic, beatific through the sun dappled valley.

By Sam Unsworth

Ridley Scott has released two major works in the last two years, that being Napoleon (2023) and the latter being Gladiator II (2024). Both have been contentious for their lack of historical accuracy that toy with the audiences’ suspension of disbelief. But I would like to question whether these are fair attacks at what are successful films or are we simply looking for ways to pick apart a once great director whose works are slowly diminishing in quality? I will warn here for spoilers. 

Gladiator II is no doubt a high-octane action thriller but perhaps what made this only a mediocre re-hashing of its predecessor is not actually because of its lack of attention to detail. Now, to start with the most obvious, the presence of sharks in the Colosseum. Quite obviously ludicrous. It is clear that this would be a logistical nightmare now, let alone in Ancient Rome. Yet I think that this is simply too easy a shot to take at Scott, the man behind Alien (1979), who is asking his audience to suspend their disbelief. Does the presence of great whites add a further jeopardy to the games? That if one of the gladiators fell from the boats then they would be killed also? Honestly, yes. I would argue that here Scott is not looking to be accurate – he is purely looking for an enjoyment factor. 

In Gladiator II Scott understands his audience and wants to provide action and violence that is there to entertain, almost like being put into the seats of the Colosseum yourself. If you had watched the first film you would have seen gladiators fighting tigers and each other, so would we ask that Scott just remade this with different characters? The different games, such as the sea battle or the rhinoceros being ridden, made the film interesting for a returning audience, as well as a newfound fan base. Gladiator II is meant to entertain so maybe we should set aside our historian’s viewpoint and enjoy the film as it is, at heart, a fiction. 

However, this, I doubt, can be said for the Roman newspaper appearing before the printing press. These kinds of throwaway inaccuracies are what harms Scott’s film as it is simply unnecessary, disengaging the audience. One of the first attacks I read on the film was about Denzel Washington’s casting; yet, I find it a weak jab at the film. Washington portrayed the villain Macrinius who ascends to the top of Roman aristocracy and was possibly the saving grace of the film, which was riddled with average performances and even more average screenwriting. The argument against casting a black man in this role holds so little water that it can really be disregarded due to the distinction between Roman and Barbarian and nothing more. So, we should also take into account who we listen to when we are told a film is inaccurate. 

In contrast, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is not a fictional tale. It is a true story with real people and real struggles, hence the inaccuracies do not aid the story but in many ways diminish it. Why was Joaquin Phoenix cast to play Napoleon at both Toulon and Waterloo? Why was Josephine presented as being younger than Napoleon himself? Setting these aside, the inaccuracies do, at times, undermine the genius of Napoleon’s military strategy, especially at Austerlitz. Scott portrays a hilly area with deep lakes where cannons fired onto retreating Russian forces, drowning the majority in the frozen lake. Now, like Gladiator II, this looks incredible cinematically; yet, it simply is not true. Where Gladiator II is a fiction so we can toy with the truth, Napoleon’s story is not. Napoleon’s tactical genius is reduced by fake geography and over-exaggeration. Moreover, the way in which his forces attack in disarray bears no resemblance to the ordered formations of Napoleonic warfare. This is where I believe accuracy matters because Napoleon is, at heart, a biopic about the life of a great person, that, in reality, does not need increasing for cinema, given how impressive a story it is in and of itself. The audience of this film, while also for the masses, would surely have appealed to historians as a homage to a great military leader, yet Scott seems to neglect this core part of the viewership. 

There are times, though, where historical inaccuracy can be done extremely well and to good effect. This is particularly evident in Brian Helgeland’s A Knight’s Tale (2001). In this film, set at a medieval jousting tournament, both the costumes and set design were incredibly accurate, and adhered to the source material of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Yet, the one distinct difference is in the music. Helgeland and Burwell, the musical director, utilised classic rock music such as Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” to create a crowd atmosphere the audience would be familiar with. This is a great example of understanding one’s audience and using inaccuracy to build emotion and allow a modern audience to connect with a wholly unfamiliar world. 

Inaccuracy has its place in historical film, but I find it must be done with reason. Does it evoke emotion? Does it connect with an audience? Does it truly enhance the story? Gladiator II, for all its flaws which are many beyond its accuracy, is arguably made better by its wildly over-the-top display of the Colosseum, much like A Knight’s Tale is enhanced by its modern soundtrack. Yet, in the genre of biopic, I believe Scott takes inaccuracy too far and ultimately it is detrimental to the final work. 

By Sam Pesez

Let’s be clear from the offset on how faith, in a religious sense, is conventionally defined. It is a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion based on spiritual conviction rather than proof, or – alternatively phrased – a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Throughout this article, I will stray away from this conventional definition as I seek to redefine faith as not being limited simply to a conviction, trust, or a belief: however difficult to pinpoint, it is so much more. I endeavour to show that the problem of the objectivity or subjectivity of faith is one which must be wrestled with precisely because faith is something far greater than a belief: it is something innate and all-consuming. To address these poles of the argument, definitions of objectivity orbit around phrases like “freedom from bias”, “impartiality”, or “independent from the mind”. On the other hand, subjectivism is rooted in the notion that knowledge is merely based on one’s own perspective or experience – that there is no single or external truth and that the only thing that we can be sure of is our own cognition. This framework is a necessary arena in which to play out the rest of our debate.  

The reconciliation of faith and subjectivism is a matter which troubles me almost daily. As a person of faith who believes in God, was raised in a Catholic household, still goes to church weekly, and prays often, the idea of subjectivism is something which I find a frequently unavoidable stumbling block. I am often sat thinking that to have faith – particularly a religious faith – one should view it as objective. One cannot have faith if they do not see it as objective; I see both ideas as inseparable. Because if I were to have a faith but not see it as objective then it would cease to be a faith in itself: I would not  “believe” in “it” enough. The faith would be reduced to an idea, a thought, a predisposition to a way of thinking, or a philosophy of life personal to oneself. This would neglect the fact that faith is a relationship. I have faith in my friends to be there when I am going through hard times. Everyone’s faith, regardless of what it is, is something which is lived: it is alive, not just a way of living. I would not be able to hold my faith if I did not sincerely think that what I am believing in is objective.  

Yet this is where I find the obstacle. I remember that I am 1 of over 7 billion people in the world who also have their own faith, whether it be Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist,  Hindu, spiritual, agnostic, or even atheist. Each of these 7 billion-plus people in the world are all equally convinced that their faith is the right one and is the objectively correct “faith”. This leads me to ask the question of who is right. And I can say with quite a lot of certainty that, if you were to pose this question to each person on this planet, the vast majority of them would reply with their own sense of utter justification, “I am right”. This leads me to a second question. How can faith be objective if each individual of a multitude of different faiths believes that they are right? Can everyone’s individual faith be true but faith still be objective? These are questions which I do not know the answer to; though I still find myself accepting that whilst I truly believe that my faith is correct, everyone is entitled to their own faith. I do this in the humility that I do not believe they are right but also simultaneously accept that they believe that I am not right. Admittedly, it is paradoxical. 

If we were to apply the same thought process to any other belief, such as a political view, there would be no issue with this because everyone is entitled to their own point of view on some things. It is perfectly acceptable for a right-wing activist to think they are correct as it is for left-wing activists to think they are also correct. But like 1+1=2 is seen as objective, I sincerely believe that faith requires a higher threshold of certainty – one must be sure beyond all reasonable doubt. One person’s faith on this planet must be the objectively right faith. But whose is it? I believe that mine is. But so will a Muslim, or an atheist, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Sikh, and the list goes on. This does not solve the problem because we will be stuck in this unending cyclical loop of never knowing who is truly right. And then we may never know until we die, but then what does that solve? 

To tackle this problem of faith and subjectivism we need to dig down further into what we mean when we are talking about objectivism and subjectivism. I do this bearing in mind the eventuality that we will have to suspend both concepts of subjectivism and objectivism by the end of this article, as they will become too constraining. We may be led to having to accept other concepts such as universal acceptability or individuality.  One’s automatic response to the definition of objectivity would be that faith therefore cannot be objective because one would assume that faith is intrinsically linked to the mind, to bias, to a way of thinking. However, I am inclined to disagree with this point of view because, as I discussed earlier, I believe that a faith ceases to be a faith if it is reduced to a philosophy of life. Faith is something which goes beyond our material existence on this planet. Even the atheist, who may deny the existence of the soul or the supernatural, would have to accept that when thinking of faith we are dealing with something beyond the mind or our day-to-day cognition.  

Faith is something which nestles at the core but is simultaneously not part of us. It is something which we do not have control over for we cannot force ourselves into believing something or choose to believe something which we fundamentally do not and cannot physically or mentally accept. Why do some people have a religious faith and some do not? Why do some people convert to a religious faith but others do not? I would argue that if faith were to be part of the mind, everyone of shared faith would have to think the same way about everything: they should vote for the same political parties, eat the same food, have the same routine, have the same likes, dislikes, and desires. Yet this is not the case. Even in groups of faith there are significant divisions. In Christianity there are Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and Evangelicals. In Islam there are Sunni and Shia. The list goes on. This leads me to the idea of individuality – the idea that faith is so unique and personal to the individual. As a Catholic, despite having the same intrinsic beliefs as other Catholics, such as in the existence of God or Jesus’  resurrection, I would not be surprised nor troubled by the fact that other fellow Catholics might have different visions of who God is or different philosophies of life.  

Isn’t this just subjectivism, I hear you ask? On this I would have to strongly disagree with you because anyone with a religious faith, or without one, would strongly refute its subjectivity because for the individual the faith is grounded in an external and objective truth. I could personally list off a multitude of reasons, experiences, facts, external and objective truths to defend my faith. Faith for the individual is anything but subjective.  

It is at this point that I would like to introduce an idea which can reconcile subjectivism, objectivism, individualism and universality when it comes to faith. It is the metaphor of faith as a moon. Faith is the moon which orbits the earth and to which each individual has access to if they so wish to if they were to just look up at the sky on a clear evening.  Like the moon, which each individual will see at a different angle, shade, orientation or colour based on where they are standing on the earth at a given moment (and based on their individual perspective, eyesight or state-of-mind) we may consider faith.  

I truly believe that each of us sees a sliver of our moon. Like faith, some will sometimes see more of it, some will sometimes see more clearly but some will sometimes not even bother to look up (or will only see the dark side of the moon). This reconciles objectivism with subjectivism because whilst faith (the moon) is objectively present and an external, object truth, the angle of the moon or what we perceive of the moon at any given moment is subjective to the individual. No individual is or must be right or wrong about the side of the moon they see or their faith. They are simply seeing a different part of the moon to others. The same analogy can be extended to groups of people, who are looking at the moon through the same lens of their telescope. Without delving too deeply into the metaphor, it is scientifically known that the moon itself does not produce its own source of light but reflects the light of the sun onto us. The same can be said about our moon-like faiths; we see merely a reflection of something greater, and far too complex for us to look at directly. Our temporal beings can only interpret what we see from our own perspectives. Further questioning is required to understand the true nature and source of the light which reflects onto our moon like faiths. However, there is an element of peace, acceptance, truth, and accuracy in this analogy because when it comes to faith it is not about who is better or who is right but about your own faith: or rather, how you are positioned. 

Without descending too far into relativism, faith is influenced enormously on the  country or culture we live in. Christianity has become predominantly a Western religion. Islam is an Arabic religion. Hinduism is a South-East Asian religion. Everyone’s faith is grounded in their culture, country, language, and way of life which gives nuance and application to their lives. Each faith has its own cultural nuances, practices and traditions which are entrenched in its place and culture. It is as if the same book were to be translated in different languages. Sometimes when books are translated words,  phrases, or analogies may be lost in translation – particularly if it has been translated back and forth over millennia. Ultimately, we are reading the same book and looking up at the same moon.  

Forgive me if this is a cop out. But I believe that debates over subjectivism and objectivism or who is right and wrong are fruitless and unnecessary. All they do is sow division when none is needed. I have a monotheistic faith in the Christian God and in Jesus as do millions of other Christians who share my faith and see the same part of the moon as I do. This does not take away from the fact that there are billions of other people in millions of different groups who see a different side of the moon. My faith is true and right but so is theirs and this does not and should not take anything away from each other’s faith. Nor should this detract from the notion that we are all entitled to convince and testimony to others to see the moon from our own perspective. Nor should this stop us exploring other sides of the moon to see if there is a side of the moon which we believe is more accurate or representative. Faith is such a deeply personal and all-consuming thing, and I would encourage everyone to dig deeper to explore their own faith and be more open-minded regardless of which religious faith, or lack of, they land on.

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

‘I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.’ – FLEABAG.

“Where’d you just go?” – HOT PRIEST. At the heart of Fleabag’s awkward sex scenes, off-hand quips, and family rifts lies this most important question: “Where” is Fleabag going? Often described as a ‘tour-de-force’, the fever and frenzy of Fleabag lies in the show’s refusal ever to stop. Fleabag narrates her own life whilst the action around her continues, rapidly focusing in and out of these two spaces, hanging between the balance of the two. But this constant momentum never falters or halts, seemingly in perpetual pursuit of whichever destination Fleabag is aiming for, regardless of the chaos surrounding the tracks. The confessions of Fleabag still echo – confessions we have taken to be ‘honest’, ‘feminist’ windows of clarity about ourselves, about womanhood under the strain of the 21st century. But, what if Fleabag never tried to “go” to us in these moments of fourth-wall fragmentation? What if we were not just spectators, but Fleabag’s new best friend, or Fleabag’s psyche? Fleabag doesn’t define our role, our role is irrelevant; our connection to Fleabag is the destination. 

Bertold Brecht redefined the role of the audience under his pioneering theory of ‘epic theatre’ isolating the audience and manipulating the tether between audience and actor. There is no set power. No set control. In one scene the audience is held by a leash only to be holding the leash over the actors the next. The audience’s perception and jolting of the stage allows for art to be transformed, making it “not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”. Fleabag’s first televised word is “you”;  Fleabag effortlessly seizes you, hurtling you along with her. I have yet to find someone who wants her to let go, who finds her immediate intensity overwhelming. The connection we create with her by becoming “you” is non-confrontational and seemingly natural.  We are “you”. But who is “you”? “You” is deictic and cannot exist outside of the context Fleabag has placed it in, thus redefining the audience, not as spectators of her so much, but also spectators of ourselves and how we draw these connections with others. “You” is a role waiting to be filled, reflecting Fleabag’s loneliness, but also the show’s examination of connections. We are an undefined role to her. We don’t exist to her outside the ramblings of her mind. We aren’t her confidants. We aren’t her attempt of rationalising her behaviour through finding a common, shared experience of “you”. We are the glance she gives in the mirror, the raised eyebrows we give when eye contact flits to another. We are figments of her perception and an example of the very extremes of connections. 

“I am obsessed with audiences,” confesses Waller-Bridge in her introduction to the play’s script. The audience isn’t trying to be won, bought, or rationalised by Fleabag – our connection with her exists out of a compulsion to distract and input. The original play reads like the fumbling mind palace of post-embarrassment realisation, provoked by flashing a loan manager. Whilst there is no explicit direction to suggest this, the play is split into thirds: meeting the manager, acting as a descent into Fleabag’s mind with the manager just being a voice we hear and process; Fleabag’s inner monologue where time seems to stop as we enter her hysteria; resuming and returning to the manager and the blur between monologue and naturalism. The middle part, which is the main part, is a dialogue with herself where she is frantically self-criticising and searching for the right answer, getting lost in her memories along the way, where she distracts herself from the situation at hand with macabre intrusions. 

My attempt at watching Fleabag aged 16 threw me into a spiral of over-analysis. Who was I meant to be connecting with during the dialogue? Where is Fleabag going and where do I break? My countless rewatches of the show couldn’t answer it. With every run I found myself addressing different people and changing the levels of connection I held with the audience, loosening the leash on a line before clinging onto it for dear life the next.  There is no clear consistency; you, Fleabag, must decide what information is going to directly connect to the front row.  Waller-Bridge wrote a script that rigorously demands you to perceive yourself through connection. The play cannot function without the understanding of it. The realisation is she is not speaking to us, but herself, addressing us as a distraction from the mess and trying to realise which response to her life will make the best connection in order to move forward. In the same way that we can’t make eye contact when stressed, feel the need to fiddle when anxious, or fidget when bored, Fleabag speaks as a way to distract herself.  Her mind is boiling over, and we are her thought process and intrusive comments, before choosing to turn the heat off or scream. We are the distraction taking her out of the constant momentum of her life, allowing her to live in her head and her body. We are both being taught by Brechtian whispers about our connections and are being used, obsessionally, by Waller-Bridge’s hunger for extreme connectivity.

“I’m not obsessed with sex. I just can’t stop thinking about it” confesses Fleabag, almost immediately after showing us a racy night of anal sex whilst meeting us for the first time. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s intention for Fleabag to explore “power, control, people trying to hold everything together”,  is to be realised, this is achieved through Fleabag’s connection with us, and with sex.  

FLEABAG -I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like. What to hate. What to rage about. What to listen to. What band to like. What to buy tickets for. What to joke about. What not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in. Who to vote for and who to love and how to…tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong.

Her confession epitomises the experience of operating in extremes. Clinging on to sex, people, whatever, obsessively, acts as a way to find a calling. An honest distraction, a pause, in her life. The sex is complicated, hot, raw, confusing, tender, and tangled much like her connection with us.  The hunt for sex is often seen as a game, a mission. Take Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress. “Let us sport as we may” for the victory of pleasure. Pleasure that is won through an art of persuasion and flirting,  a series of steps and follies to achieve, a game we’ve knowingly played for millennia. For Fleabag, sex is the final destination, acting as her “someone to tell me” when she has no one.

 Fleabag operates in extremes; extreme honesty, extreme connection, the extremes of sex. Fleabag goes from sex as a constant distraction, to celibacy.  After a night that left me a confusion of anger, grief, loneliness and fear, I took the same vow, albeit brief. Abstinence, however, cannot miraculously solve everything, and once sex enters your life, it is difficult to get it to leave; that part of yourself grows into a nagging obsession but in a new unrecognisable form of relationship. Celibacy acts as a stopgap for this higher calling Fleabag craves, as it comes with its own rules, regulations, and restraints. A primal direction, like intrusive thinking to the point of dissociation or mindless shagging, to keep you in line. But, for Fleabag, as for me, this change is still a distraction. She repeatedly turns to us, gushing over “his [HP’s] arms” on the way to a Quaker meeting. We are her distraction, her loophole, so that she can explore a new connection, whilst retaining the habits of old connections. We aren’t the connection with a being outside of herself that can “tell [her] how to live her life”, as we are part of her life.

Despite the distraction of sex, Fleabag continues to talk to us during it. The connection is stifled, unable to reach its full potential causing her to connect elsewhere. When Fleabag finally has sex with Hot Priest she doesn’t want to be distracted. She doesn’t want us, actively pushing us away, shutting the door on us as if we’ve walked in. A new, full connection has been formed. One that she wants to wholly cherish and not leave. One she wants to be completely present for. Slowly,  we see her cutaways become less frequent during scenes featuring the two of them. She is letting us go, she is not letting her perception and the intrusions of her mind limit her. The connection with us is re-evaluated towards the end of series two, and we see her relationship and use of us change. She isn’t moving on from hijacking us into being her therapist, because we never were that to her, she is choosing to be present, to make lasting connections, and to stop making the most lasting connection and presence in her life the way she responds to life outside of herself.  The context of her “you” has changed; we still exist to observe her, but we are no longer invited into the inner sanctum of her mind. To escape the distraction of self-dependence. To teach us to live presently. To “shape” the way we perceive ourselves and our love. 

Image from the National Theatre 2019 production poster at Wyndham’s Theatre, London

Edward Bayliss

You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

(“Postscript”, Seamus Heaney)

Excuse my crude misuse of the English language, but to see something’s beforeness, duringness, and afterness in the space of a few seconds is beautiful. To have its shape, its colour, and its detail, all at the mercy of distance and speed is beautiful. Some things are better seen fleetingly, in a moment, in a movement. 

Here in “Postscript”, Heaney celebrates the pleasures of driving, or more particularly, the pleasures that the car windows afford. He feels the welcome impact of ‘big soft buffetings’ that ‘come at the car sideways’. These buffetings are images of objects seen through the vehicle windows, shifting and turning as the car sweeps along the Flaggy Shore of County Clare. I say images, because what Heaney sees are different representations of the object, and never the simple fact of the object itself. 

Heaney is ‘neither here nor there’, almost as though he is driving at night. It feels exciting but also dreamy and unreal. Things are ‘known and strange’; we might imagine salt, rain, and grass on the air, playing against each other in an eddy of aromas. And, what about depth of view? It seems silly to say, but a hedgerow immediately beside the road (in the foreground, if you like) appears as a blurred flash of green and grey, pleasingly anonymous to us. Something further away, say a house nearer the horizon, moves more slowly on its conveyor belt, is seized more easily by our sight. First, we see its red brick, grey slate gable for a second, then its East facing façade comes into view – maybe it has round windows, or a gutter hanging loose from last night’s wind. Last, we see a packed dirt path moving from its porch into a well tilled field – the sum of all these parts painting a greater and more intriguing picture, a picture that shifts and surprises. 

It’s at the overlap of craft and chance that the ‘heart is caught off guard and blown open’. You have the constant and intelligent movement of you and the car treading tarmac in a regular rhythm – one that we’re all too familiar with. Your feet press at the pedals, while your fingers snatch at indicator arms and gear shifts. Then we look to the outside, to this assemblage of images which grow and shrink, dancing in curious patterns; all dependent on their place on the plain. This is the ‘chance’ or the coincidental, with the former being the ‘craft’. Fantastically, this seems to me to hold a mirror to Heaney’s poetic method. In an essay for The Guardian, Heaney once said:

‘I think the process is a kind of somnambulist encounter between masculine will and feminine clusters of image and emotion.’

This masculine will is both metaphorically and literally the ‘vehicle’ on which the feminine clusters of image (shifting objects on our plain of vision) ride. And this car isn’t the futurist Marinetti’s ‘roaring motor-car which seems to run on machine-gun fire… hurled along earth’s orbit’; it’s existence is more dependent. It doesn’t attack Heaney’s countryside; it absorbs it, just as you do.  

Your eyes never land squarely on an object as its edges aren’t fully there – they tilt and blur as you move past them. The form of a tree might fold into dozens of different shapes in a constantly altering state of animation. Its limbs bend and contort and cut the sky at changing angles. This is a stunning quality that is so often overlooked, and one that can only be seen in so small a span of time. 

Better than staring at a dead end object ad infinitum, I think. 

Too often we stare too long and too hard at things – let’s watch pictures play on their plains. That’s why it’s ‘useless to think you’ll park and capture it more thoroughly’. So, let the scenes outside the car window wobble on your palm, if only for a second, and we might then enjoy a fuller and brighter picture from the passenger seat. 

By Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini

“Many things might be regarded as the hallmarks of this competition, but the eagerness to embrace change isn’t one of them” – Jeremy Paxman, 2020.

“University Challenge. With your host” … “Bamber Gascoigne” interrupts my father, tea in hand, settling down for some Monday night armchair quizzing. For my father, the host will always be Bamber, whereas I am part of the newly inaugurated Amol generation. We, like thousands of other families, groups of students, and housemates, up and down the country, see each era of University Challenge as part of the Monday night ambience – consistently transmitting throughout the school year, consistently baffling us, and consistently challenging the random pockets of seemingly useless information we have stored away. But how does one graduate from the sofa to the lightbox adorned desk?

The team from Durham University is representing an institution famed for its cobblestone streets, a beautiful array of colleges, and the worst nightclub in Europe. Its recent academics include Joe Ancell, historian, flautist, Greek dictionary, and expert climber; Emilia Brookfield-Pertusini, Elvet Riverside’s noisiest shoe wearer, anti-Dickens advocate, and fashion secretary; Jake Roberts, their captain with a profound ability to store away information on both Dutch masters and long dead physicists; Luke Nash, our physical incarnation of Merlin Bird ID, and enthusiastic social sec; and James Gowers, football trivia coach come step-in Paxman, and reserve player.

 “How many do you reckon you can get?” James asks his grandmother, setting up the competition UC emits into living rooms, each viewer tempted by the allure of the small intellectual victories a correct starter buzz can provide, and “watching to be impressed”, as James reveals, by the spectacle of intelligence and reflexes on display. For a show that has cemented itself in pop culture history for having 14 letter Greek words as answers, being gifted a round that fits your unique knowledge-scape seems almost miraculous – spurring your viewership forward. Post-UC Twitter, a place that has become both coveted and feared by us as our broadcast date draws ever nearer, feeds this excitement, no matter how high or low your score. One thing UC has taught us is to be content with your knowledge and take pride in it. Until a recent shift, the consensus of the show was something, as Luke put, where students in “dodgy fashion and unironed shirts” battled for academic valour with highly classical questions and antiquated answers. Now, however, the academic valour is something to play with, enjoy, and laugh about. Correct answers may not be derived from the most lucid stream of consciousness, you may be reeling the answer in from a vault of facts originated through 1am doom scrolling and not from a sophisticated book, however, “does it really matter where knowledge comes from?”, mulls Jake, “if your answer is still right?” When we, from Jake’s living room during Monday evenings in deep January, buzzed in with a correct answer, we still got to experience that pride and satisfaction that we’ve felt for years watching the show, even with our filming date looming above us. Knowing that your answer to a question derived from an offhand comment from a lecturer, or that the composer of the music round bonus came to you from a Wes Anderson soundtrack, you realise it doesn’t matter at all where knowledge is gathered as any knowledge is celebrated here.

Quizzing prowess is often celebrated in this country with jackpot prizes, rounds of pints, scampi fries, and bragging rights. “It’s quite easy to get yourself involved” according to James. After all, who doesn’t love a pub quiz? The arguments over a sticky pub table over the right answers are “fundamentally intertwined with British pub culture”, says Luke. Mates, UC inclined or simply up for some fun, gather together for some knowledge-based rivalry. The Old Elm Tree became our pre-UC watching haunt, suggested by Luke due to its boast of hosting a challenging pub quiz that confuses both students and professors. For the rest of my team University Challenge wasn’t a graduation from South London pub quizzes, but the next step in their quizzing journeys. Luke and Joe had both been part of competitive quizzing teams at school and met James and Jake at Durham Quizbowl. Imported from America, Quizbowl is a place where the questions are cryptic, varied, and rapidly fired at contestants. Universities face off at large-scale tournaments that attract hundreds of quizzing students, who can be recognised from a UK quizzing leaderboard, featuring alongside Chasers from ITV’s The Chase. “Sport-like quizzing”, as Jake put it, seemed to me like UC on steroids, a far abstraction from the pub quizzes I was familiar with. However, my first visit to Durham’s Quizbowl practice as part of my preparation for the show was a warm welcome into the quiz-world that UC, in part, has helped cultivate. 

When telling people about my imminent airing I’m often eagerly asked “did you win?” and “what do you win?”. Whilst a BBC contract guards the answer to the first question, the latter is nothing, which is often met with confusion. UC offers simply bragging rights, your lightbox nameplate, and a trophy for your institution. Whilst the quiz being televised for the scrutiny of the nation, or your university being reigning champions at the time of filming, does set some lofty expectations, the stakes themselves aren’t high; it’s all for some light entertainment and a good story at the end of it. Quizbowl echoes this friendly form of quizzing, even when the questions are harder than UC ones (difficult to imagine, I know). We laughed over clues that were painfully directed at American players and were nonsense to us, we poked fun at the absurdity of some of the bonus round categories, and we traded tips on how to learn more random points. During filming Jake and Luke recognised many of our competitors, both in the greenroom and on the airing series, from Quizbowl – showcasing the breath of this community, both in knowledge and location. As a nation we love quizzing, and from pubs, schoolrooms, studios, and unoccupied seminar rooms, we know how to have fun with it – something the Amol era of UC has nurtured.

“You are people of ignorance too” responds Paxman to a slightly bemused, slightly terrified team of KCL’s brightest. Paxman approached the “smart ass” teams he was presented with with the contempt of a Victorian schoolmaster. Unapologetic. Scathing. Formidable. The Paxo era is noted for its presenter’s brazen approach. Being fans of the show, we were unsurprised to hear he would be stepping down, yet looking back, we were all at a loss for who would take his place. No one would be like Paxman. But, the show didn’t need another Paxman. During his later series, more and more questions began to reflect the more diverse university courses on offer, like animation or game design, allowing more students to be included in the game than before, keeping UC in the quizzing zeitgeist.  “Paxman’s snobbery was part of the appeal” confesses Luke. But, “Amol was definitely more welcoming” admits Luke, with Jake adding that “he didn’t have to be so friendly during filming…”.  The show is still fiercely mind boggling, but what we came to realise as our anki-decks piled up by the thousands, is that it is just fun and games – especially when the history of house music round briefly became memed and remixed. Amol asks about mascots and adds in quips about his own favourite musicians and philosophers during filming. Off-camera he talks about his lunch and jokes around with us. The days of stuffy Oxbridge teams in St.Michaels jumpers gifted by their grandmother’s Christmases ago are firmly behind, instead, one could even describe the new UC look as cool, with contestants and presenter alike having as much fun as possible when faced with difficult questions, 5 different cameras, and Roger Tilling’s voice booming around the studio.

***

I signed up for University Challenge, partly, as a joke. During my rather structureless gap-year, University Challenge’s consistent Monday night slot became a weekly marker and something I looked forward to returning to after work. My good friend Olivia had started English Literature at Oxford, and I received an enviable text, ‘Just did the University Challenge application test, I got 11…’. I never anticipated that my desire to send a similar text back, and to laugh about our lacklustre performances of academic rigour, would lead to me texting her ‘I MADE THE TEAM????’. We found out we made the team in the last week before Christmas, each nursing various stages of hangovers and being unable to contain the excitement. “UC kind of felt distant, [something] that just happened on TV, and that other people did” recalls Joe, my fellow Fresher on the team; it had never occurred to us that this is something that people actually applied to do. But now we, being newly inaugurated university students, could be challenged, and so we applied for the written test. Our first challenge would be to find these testing sites. “I couldn’t actually find my way to Mary’s and bumped into Jake who was also a bit lost” admits Ancell. This would become a theme of ours as our team would learn to navigate Manchester train stations, the maze of Media City, and the eternal corridors of the studios whilst all being a bit lost and clouded by the excitement and fear of the questioning that would come.

The “distance” of UC kept us in a perpetual state of amazement. Post-dinner revision slots  in the tucked away desks in St. John’s library, I would look out at the dark Durham sky, depressed with the blues of January, and catch my reflection. An array of flashcards in front of me, of which our collective pile of cards and Ankis reached 8000 –  “is this really happening to me? Am I now a person who is on a show like this?” I still can’t believe it, and neither can the rest of us realise “how the hell”, as Luke put it, got to this point. I probably won’t until I see myself on the TV; the same TV that has projected all those “distant” UC students and stars on a Monday night, will soon bare my face too, and maybe that will make it less distant. The Media City Holiday Inn, our refuge during filming, echoed this distant, start-struck bewilderment down its corporate corridors. We couldn’t believe that Amol Rajan and Roger Tilling (an actual man not just a voice) were eating breakfast on the table across the room. The evening before in the bar we scouted out other suspiciously studenty groups of 5 that appeared, a sort of celebrity gracing the air, as we realised these people were here, taking time off uni for a reason that had to be kept secret, now part of the same club as us.

Before filming you aren’t told who you’re playing, you have a time and that’s it. The team you just brought a drink with could very well be the team who thrash you the next day for millions of people to watch. This “distance” between you and the people of University Challenge never really leaves, even when Amol is joking with you behind your respective desks during a filming break, or when you buzz in and hear your name, or when the iconic theme tune blares through the studio to count the cameras in; you can’t help but laugh with complete amazement.

Keeping the team a secret has been “almost impossible” admits Luke. Seeing five students tapping a table in the SU cafe and blurting out answers to questions read from a brain-sized book probably did look slightly suspicious. For once we weren’t allowed to give the correct answers, having to hastily reply “quiz” when people would ask how we all knew each other when we bumped into each other in Jimmies, or were asked by friends at the Trevelyan College pub quiz. 8 months since filming we can now share our starters for 10 with you on Monday the 7^th of October, BBC 2, 8:30pm. For now, it’s goodnight from the Series 31 Durham Team, goodnight, and goodnight from me too, goodnight.

By Chloe Stiens

The Last Dinner Party, in the months leading up to the release of their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, seemingly appeared from nowhere. Their hit song, Nothing Matters, suddenly reached 16th on the UK singles charts, while videos from their gigs proliferated on Tiktok. In consequence, everyone from Tiktok reviewers to respected music critics have attempted to account for their rapid rise to success, looking everywhere but at the music itself.

Like breakout act Wet Leg (also fronted by women) they have been labelled ‘industry plants’ by internet critics, an allegation that mainstream news outlets have done little to disprove. Critics have pointed to how The Last Dinner Party got a major record deal (Island Records) before releasing a song as evidence. This is true; the band did not release music independently to be scouted by an A&R representative trawling Spotify playlists or trending Tiktok sounds. Rather, they performed. The band, made up of Abigail Morris (lead vocals), Lizzie Mayland (guitar, vocals), Emily Roberts (lead guitar, mandolin, flute), Georgia Davies (bass), and Aurora Nischevi (keyboards, vocals), refined their sound and image by performing throughout 2022, so that by the time they entered the studio, they were, in effect, fully formed and clear in their artistic intention. This contrasts to the almost-overnight success of other Gen Z stars like Pink Pantheress, who went viral on tiktok making music at home. That is not to say that Pink Pantheress does not deserve her success; however, The Last Dinner Party’s success is not only down to their talent and good luck, but also their hard work.

That is not to say that the band is not lucky. Morris’ parents sent her to Bedales, a private school. Although Morris undoubtedly benefited from this education and the in-school musical opportunities it afforded her, its relevance on her musical output ends there. We cannot allow her musical talent to be entirely attributed to privilege, as if her academic education somehow gave her the unique voice and the commanding stage-presence she is known for. Certain reviewers have used Prelude to Ecstasy’s sonic grandeur as evidence of an inescapable privilege, suggesting that the album-opener ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ conjures up Saltburn-esque images of wealth and decadence, aligning the band with the over-privileged Catton family while ignoring what the band have actually cited as their intention and influences. The Last Dinner Party have said that they wanted to create something ‘gothic and romantic’ (Rolling Stone). They are a Gen Z band; they aimed for a decadent ‘aesthetic’ as suggested by their name, one informed by the 19th-century literature both Morris and Davies study at university, or at least by the 21st Century impression of it. This baroque fantasy is evident in their lyrics, costumes, and the maximalist and classically-influenced production of the album. Perhaps Emerald Fennel wanted to recreate a similar ‘aesthetic’. However, the implication that Morris’ private school education is responsible for the creative direction of Prelude to Ecstasy is unfair. That said, I acknowledge that perhaps critics are more concerned about the success and number of privately-educated musicians in comparison to their state-educated counterparts. But the answer is not to damn any musician who was lucky enough to benefit from a musical education, but rather to defend music education from further cuts. In 2022, 179 independent schools enrolled students for A-level music, compared to just 69 secondary comprehensives (classical-music.uk), while children from well-off families are more likely to benefit from private instrumental lessons. Thus, the underfunding of the arts is creating a two-tier society in which music is only available to children whose parents can afford it. If we want the ratio of privately-educated to state-educated musicians to balance out, we must do more to make sure all children have the same musical opportunities.

However, there is more than a hint of sexism in the consistent attention paid to Morris’ upbringing and in the attribution of the ‘industry plant’ label, both of which imply that The Last Dinner Party’s success is due to factors other than the quality of their music. Their male counterparts are not undermined in this way; take, for example, King Krule, who attended the BRIT school. The BRIT school is a state school, but students there benefit from the industry connections that are so essential to getting your music heard. Or, Bakar, who attended a boarding school in Surrey. Neither of these London Indie stars have had their schools placed before their talent in terms of their success. Moreover, critics point to class-based privilege in music while ignoring the difficulty of being a woman or non-binary person in rock. Mayland, Roberts, and Davies, (guitar and bass guitar) have all become rock guitarists in a world that, when they were children, almost completely aimed the instrument at men. In the early 2000s, girls were pushed towards other, usually classical, instruments by the complete lack of non-male rock guitarists in the media. Even Roberts initially started learning classical guitar, which she did not take to (she credits her later ‘acoustic’ guitar teacher as ‘the reason I’m still playing guitar’) (guitar.com). Not much seems to have changed; St. Vincent (Annie Clark), ranked 26th by Rolling Stone in their list of ‘250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time’, is still not a household name. If girls do play guitar, they are often pushed into the solo ‘singer-songwriter’ bracket as opposed to lead guitarist. To have a band in which neither the lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, nor bassist is a man is extremely rare. Rarer still, to be taken seriously as a rock band without a male member, and as band singing about feminist themes when 43% of the British public (and 52% of Gen Z) say ‘we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men’ (Kings College London). If critics are going to point out class-based privilege, it is only fair to also draw attention gender-based discrimination too.

So, instead of dismissing The Last Dinner Party as privileged industry plants, let’s pay attention to their music. If we want to uncover what has made them who they are, let’s look to Nischevi and Roberts’ musical backgrounds of classical and jazz, and Morris’ and Davies’ literary inspiration. They cite Kate Bush, Queen, Florence and the Machine, and David Bowie as influences. They met at university in London, and became friends attending gig at the celebrated venue ‘the Windmill’ in Brixton. They are extremely talented, clear in their vision, and have worked hard to produce an album so good that their critics are forced to fling labels at them instead of finding fault with the music itself.

Image Credit: DORK

By Cosmo Adair

To idealise: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart. (Martin Amis)

There’s a mobile-game called New Star Soccer in which you’re a ludicrously gifted footballer – the sort for whom ninety goals-a-season constitutes a meagre return. As well as the more obvious gameplay (football), you encounter a sequence of in-game choices. Should you cheat on your girlfriend? Or go to the casino with your teammates? Or buy a sports car? You face all the no-win quandaries of a thick and morally bereft noughties footballer. 

Tough as being an adulterous spendthrift with a celestial right foot might be, it’s light work compared to dealing with the press. For post match interviews, several boxes appear on the screen, containing trivial if absurdly meaningless quotes. The boxes flash quickly in a sequence. In spite of how sheerly unmemorable the phrases are, you have to remember the order before tapping it into the phone. It comes out with, say, ‘Over the moon, y’know, great feet for the big lad, um, game of two halves,’ after which the press will be delighted. But if you mix up ‘y’know’ and ‘um’, for instance, then the Fourth Estate will come for your head. It’s deliberately comic, whilst not unrepresentative of most football-speak, the language in which a person with as quick and sybaritic a lifestyle as Kyle Walker comes across as impossibly dull. Not all the dullness is in the tone; in fact, most of it’s in the language. Football-speak is cliché, whether that’s the monotone reflections of the above, or else the cringe-makingly brilliant commentarial flights of Peter Drury which, for all their purported originality, still brim with cliché. Football-speak is inseparable from cliché. I think that is why we are so fond of it. 

I had planned to write this in the snottier voice of one who abhors the debased language with which the mobs discuss their footy-ball. But after the most basic preliminary research, I encountered that ‘Football Clichés’ are a well-trodden topic of discussion. There is a book, a blog, a podcast, and even an article in The Guardian—all by the same man, Adam Hurrey, a writer at The Athletic. 

In his book Football Clichés, Hurrey finds them endearing. They have ‘unhelpfully negative connotations,’ given ‘[they imply] a lack of original thought, of stifling stereotype.’ He acknowledges that football-speak can be guilty of this at times. But, ‘For 150 years, it’s been somebody’s job to relay what happens within the ninety minutes of a match and, as that coverage now reaches saturation points, a reliable formula for succinct description of the sport has become vital.’ So, they become a cipher through which fans, players, managers and commentators can speak. According to Hurrey’s helpful definitions, ‘The ball is in the net’ means it’s ‘Not strictly a miss, but if ‘the ball is in the net’ there’s a fair chance the goal has, in fact, been disallowed.’ Or else, a ‘Host of opportunities’: ‘Hosts tend to be fairly undesirable collections of missed opportunities or absentees from the first team.’ Hackneyed phrases are instead condensed, efficacious means of communication.

But Martin Amis makes the opposite point. More generally, clichés are ‘dead words’; they lack ‘freshness, energy and reverberation of voice.’ A cliché undermines our capacity for sincere thought and feeling. This is true. If you doubt me, you need only call to mind ‘Take Back Control,’ ‘Get Brexit Done,’ or ‘Make America Great Again,’ which testify to the hypnotic effects of sterile language. Those phrases attest to how, in losing freshness, cliché becomes ‘herd writing, herd thinking and herd feeling’. Hurrey says something similar; only, he gives it a positive spin. In football, clichés act as a ‘leveller—enabling conversation between those relative novices who believe the problem with Arsenal is that they try and walk the ball in and those who feel it’s a little more complicated than that.’ In a sense, then, it’s a kind of esperanto—a simplistic, classless language with which the herd can low.

If you’re unsure of how to use ‘the herd instinct’ in a sentence, the Cambridge Dictionary gives the example of ‘In large crowds, such as at a football match, the herd instinct often kicks in.’ Cliché is the language of the herd and, for better or for worse, football is a herd sport (playing it, watching it, talking about it). The worst moments of following football are bound up with the herd (mid-morning drunkenness, beating-up the French or anyone for that matter), but so too are the positive ones. In the subjugation of self to the crowd, in the Dionysian loss of identity, you become a part of an intoxicatingly cohesive, classless whole, which doesn’t care who you are but rather who you support. 

Reviewing a book on Hooliganism in the 80s, Amis described how its author ‘wrote the book because he liked it, too. He liked the crowd, and the power, and the loss of self.’ To succumb to a crowd, you must shed the uniqueness of your language and your personality, which cliché enables you to do. So, whilst clichés are no less crass when they’re referring to football, they’re somehow less immediately negative. The herd, in football, is more ambivalent—neither good nor bad. Cliché is the same. To idealise: football is cliché.