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The Wynd Three Edition First Semester 2021 The Wynd

The Wynd The Team Editor in Chief Samuel Sandor Deputy Editor Eirini Vryza Opinion Editor Harriet St Pier Culture Editor Nadia Ash Contributors Samuel Sandor Harriet St Pier Danielle Parr Emma Downey Jennifer Winship Finn Fallow eld Nadia Ash Rory O Sullivan Angus Chambers Eirini Vryza Angus Chambers Morven Stewart fi Helen Lipsky

The Wynd Contents Opinion 1 Hitler s British Isles 1 The Importance of Economics in the Fight Against Climate Change 7 Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere the Reality of Growing Up Abroad 10 Why Is Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e Not Home 13 Culture 16 Baumbach Stories 16 Bela Tarr The Turin Horse 21 Droning On 24 Time Mortality and Creation in Jorge Luis Borges The Secret Miracle 27 I Think You Should Leave Why We Stay 29 Paul Thomas Anderson The Personality is in the Picture 34 Photography 37 ff Helen Lipsky Gateways 37

The Long Read Hitler s British Isles Hitler s British Isles The story of Guernsey s Nazi occupation and why it should encourage us to rethink British wartime narratives By Harriet St Pier Opinion Page 1 Opinion Neil Howard The Tunnel to Arch Bay Alderney 2013 CC Attribution 2 0 The Wynd

The Wynd O n the 4th June 1940 Winston Churchill gave his infamous address to the House of Commons ercely proclaiming We shall ght on the beaches We shall never surrender The speech described a nation that would never fall victim to Nazism such was the strength of its collective patriotism Following Allied victory in 1945 the concepts delineated in Churchill s speech transcended wartime propaganda and ingrained themselves in the British sense of history The unquestionable truth of Britain s unconquerable nature has since become inextricably linked with the examination of its wartime experiences Therefore the wartime experiences of Guernsey Channel Islands demilitarised by His Majesty s Government just fteen days after Churchill s infamous address and occupied by German forces for the next ve years have always been anomalous From 30th June 1940 until 9th May 1945 the Channel Islands British crown dependencies home to roughly 75 000 British citizens were occupied by vast numbers of German soldiers That is to say Nazi forces successfully controlled areas of British territory for the majority of the war Moreover in 1992 MI5 declassi ed a report which had investigated the conduct of occupied islanders in August 1945 detailing acts that ostensibly constituted Nazi collaboration and denouncing traitors at every turn Allegations which had been made against Guernsey s collaborators in the immediate post war period girls who slept with German soldiers informers pro teers and the controlling committee who exercised the functions of government during the occupation consequently gained historical legitimacy The story of Guernsey has been almost completely eradicated from the British wartime narrative Rather than recognise that the occupation of the Channel Islands is an example of British fallibility historians have traditionally sought to uphold the Churchillian paradigm and instead point to instances of Guernsey Nazi collaboration in order to pedal a quasi xenophobic narrative which argues that islanders were not truly British It is easier to point to the predominantly Norman character of Channel Islanders highlighted by the MI5 report than it is to tackle the image of Britain as the indomitable defender of democracy and freedom during the second world war By stipulating a narrative of islanders otherness this notion is protected This is hugely problematic It is no secret that traditionally histories of Britain have sought to celebrate its victories and conveniently forget its darker past For example nationalist histories of the Atlantic slave trade focus heavily on the role Britain played in abolishing slavery thereby absolving responsibility for the centuries long history of Brits committing atrocities against enslaved people Recent postcolonial histories have come a long way in dismantling this inherently awed perception which Britain has of its own past However when it comes to histories of the second world war notions of unconquerable British strength not only prevail but have ingrained themselves in English culture The narratives which describe Britain as the fi fi fi Page 2 fi fi fi fl Opinion

The Wynd superior unconquerable European power have played a signi cant role in shaping contemporary patriotism Furthermore the veracity of Guernsey collaboration has never been challenged A multitude of evidence letters newspapers diaries and orders provide insight regarding the intentions of islanders in partaking in collaborative actions as well as the dramatically unique nature of Guernsey s occupation circumstances Perhaps acts of Nazi collaboration were not the actions of a population su ering an inherent lack of Britishness Rather they were the reactions of unprepared isolated and inexperienced people when presented with decisions of extreme moral and physical di culty under circumstances of unparalleled peculiarity For example the MI5 report highlights girls who had relationships with German soldiers known derogatorily as Jerrybags as some of the chief o enders of social Nazi collaboration Some historians state that 70 per cent of Channel Islands women had romantic or sexual relationships with German soldiers resulting in as many as 900 illegitimate children born to German fathers If one is to de ne fraternisation as collaboration then women who sexually consorted with German soldiers from marriages to prostitution were Nazi collaborators However under Guernsey s occupation circumstances this is a partisan de nition The small population was stranded with inordinate numbers of Germans there was on average twice as many German soldiers as Guernsey residents and at one point the density of Nazi troops was higher than in Germany itself The avoidance of fraternisation between these two groups was therefore unequivocally impossible and it is na ve to claim otherwise Moreover the question of how these women aided the German war e ort might be asked how did Alice Thaureaux and her boyfriend Nicholas Schmitz seventeen year olds sentenced to death when exposed as lovers further Nazi ambition How did any woman in Guernsey by involving themselves with a German soldier express pro Nazi sentiment How did their actions facilitate the progression of Nazism Under any occupation conditions portraying these women as collaborators is dubious but in Guernsey s exceptional situation it is more so Not only are those perceived to have consorted unnecessarily with the Germans highlighted as evidence of collaboration additionally the lack of any resistance movements led by Guernsey s people is delineated as an example of their sympathetic inclination towards Nazism Between 1940 1945 no German soldier was attacked by a Guernseyman no attempts to overthrow the German authorities took place and there were no mass resistance movements as seen elsewhere across Nazi occupied Europe The notion that the implementation of Nazi policies on British soil was an uncontested process has encouraged some to argue that the absence of resistance indicates the subscription of Guernsey s population to the Nazi s ideolo y Historian Paul Sanders claims in his book The British Channel Islands under German Occupation that islanders diverg ed fundamentally from mainlanders of their assessment of Germans g fi fi ff ff ffi ff Opinion fi Page 3

Neil Howard The Bunker at Bibette Head Alderley 2015 CC Attribution 2 0 Again this fails to consider how fundamentally out of the question active resistance was under Guernsey s wartime circumstances On 19th June 1940 Guernsey was o cially demilitarised at which point all arms uniforms and equipment was handed in and 10 000 soldiers left to the British mainland to join H M s forces All means by which islanders might have violently resisted disappeared and no external help could be hoped for There was no mass resistance movement to parallel that of the French maquis however many small heroic acts of resistance did take place 4 000 Channel Islands civilians were arrested for resistive acts many of whom were deported to German internment or concentration camps in consequence Their actions took all forms hiding escaped Organisation Todt slave workers in their homes resisting the June 1942 order which con scated all radios by developing crystal radio sets painting the V for victory on German defences and refusing to cooperate with German orders or stealing German supplies By understanding Guernsey s exceptional occupation circumstances the concept of resistance can be rede ned and subsequently the argument that the lack of resistance movements in Guernsey indicated a Nazi collaborationist sentiment is repudiated Finally an action which is argued to demonstrate Nazi collaboration is the authorities registration of anti Jewish orders into Guernsey law In September 1940 the administration was ffi Page 4 fi Opinion fi The Wynd highlighting the lack of resistance as evidence of islanders profound realignment of beliefs as they adopted a penchant for Nazism

However it must be noted that there was no formal Jewish community on Guernsey and records indicate that the administration believed that there were no Jews in Guernsey when the rst measure was passed since they failed to consider those not practising Judaism but still qualifying as Jewish under the Nuremburg laws This was a fundamental oversight however it must be recognised that whilst under the terms of the occupation Guernsey s administration retained their positions and titles they did not hold any veritable power Obliged to register all orders of the German Commandant they legally had no grounds upon which to refute the antiJewish measures They perceived that resistance on their behalf would result in undeserved punishment for the whole population in particular the risk of bombing was a prominent and regular threat which encouraged their subservience Moreover as time progressed there was a gradual transfer of matters particularly matters so integral to the Nazi doctrine as anti semitism to the German authorities reducing the objection rights of Guernsey s leaders There is no evidence upon which to argue that they intended or expected the anti Semitist laws to escalate to the extremes they did By 1942 when it appeared deportation was a possibility they no longer held any powers of prevention however they sought to defend individual cases presenting reasons why people did not qualify as Jewish and saving many from persecution Guernsey s administration should have resisted anti Semitism to a greater extent and the failure to have done so has signi cant moral implications However there is insu cient evidence to suggest this failure was an expression of anti Semitism or pro Nazism it was the preference of practicality over moral obligation under circumstances of extreme di culty and isolation It is clear that Guernsey s wartime population did not ght the Germans on any of the island s beaches In many ways they surrendered they settled down lived alongside the Nazis for ve years and did their best to protect themselves and their families Demilitarised geographically secluded and overcome by German forces their leaders stripped of veritable powers and completely inexperienced in negotiating international a airs conditions were mentally and physically punitive Islanders did what they had to do to survive fi ffi fi ffi ff fi fi Opinion fi Page 5 fi The Wynd instructed to register the First Order relating to Measures Against the Jews in Guernsey s Royal Courts which demanded the registration of islanders who quali ed as Jewish under the Nuremburg laws The controlling committee obediently did so and subsequently 10 Orders Relating to Measures Against the Jews were rati ed into Guernsey law This systematic and legalised persecution culminated in the deportation of three Jewish women Therese Steiner Auguste Spitz and Marianne Grunfeld on the 21st April 1942 to Auschwitz Birkneau where they died In his book The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law David Fraser argues that the complete failure of Guernsey s authorities to oppose the introduction of these antiSemitic measures ran contrary to the principles of British Justice and indicated an unarticulated anti Semitic norm

The Wynd During the German occupation Guernsey s people committed several acts of a controversial nature some of which are by no means beyond moral critique However there is insu cient evidence upon which to argue that these were calculated expressions of Nazism Moreover the argument that they acted the way they did because they lacked some kind of inherent Britishness is baseless Rather the story of the occupation should encourage us to re evaluate the lens through which we view British history it suggests that German invasion in Britain would not in fact have been met with uniform resistance It is high time we abandon the antiquated myth of 20th century British superiority and deconstruct the wartime narratives which play such a signi cant role in shaping contemporary notions of patriotism ffi Page 6 fi Opinion

The Wynd The Importance of Economics in the Fight Against Climate Change By Danielle Parr Felipe Werneck Ibama Opera o Hymenaea Julho 2016 2016 CC Attribution ShareAlike 2 0 I t is no secret that politicians in recent decades have struggled with prioritising climate change over other major world issues despite years of scienti c evidence illustrating the critical importance of keeping global warming below 1 5 C This consistent lack of consideration for the future of our planet has spawned international climate conferences such as the UN s COP26 due to take place in Glasgow later this year which will attempt to cajole politicians into unilaterally agreeing to reduce carbon emissions Nonetheless despite these international attempts to reduce carbon emissions widespread evidence suggests that targets are on the whole not being met with governments tending to agree at the time to make a real e ort but not putting policies in place to encourage the shift towards a carbon neutral society fast enough Enter environmental economics The study of economics through an environmental lens attempts to weigh up the costs and bene ts to the environment of government policies a ecting almost anything in the natural world from plans to build a new dam on a river to attempting to save a certain species from extinction The idea of putting a monetary value on the environment ff ff fi fi Opinion Page 7

The Wynd goes all the way back to the father of economics Adam Smith In his seminal work The Wealth of Nations Smith grasped the fact that nature as the source of our shelter and sustenance needed to be protected for human prosperity Since then economists have once again dusted o the concept calling it natural capital with one study valuing the services nature provides from clean water to breathable air at more than 160 trillion There are some who believe that environmental economics holds the key to showing politicians the numbers they need to see in order to force through meaningful change during their short political terms President Joe Biden has taken this view as climate change is such a politically charged concept in the US On his Inauguration Day Biden signed an executive order instituting a raft of policies one of which directed his team to reassess the social cost of carbon SCC Whilst seemingly obscure this concept puts a number on how much damage a metric tonne of carbon dioxide emitted today will do in the future so that any climate policy s costs and bene ts can be assessed in the long run Biden s team explicitly called for considerations of environmental justice and intergenerational equity trying to take into account the perils of climate change for future generations Under Obama the SCC was 50 per tonne of CO2 under Trump it was slashed to just 7 Biden s administration announced an initial estimate in February of 51 but experts have produced a broad range of numbers some more than 200 and research is ongoing This SCC gure has a direct implication If for example the government were proposing new regulations for air conditioners at a projected cost of 40 million and economists estimated that the regulation would cut carbon emissions by 1 million tonnes at a rate of 51 per tonne this would mean about 51 million of bene ts which implies savings in the long run and the earth s natural capital being protected On the other hand a Trump era SCC would result in the costs of the regulation outweighing the bene ts and the policy would be abandoned Advances in environmental economics over the last few years mean that politicians are now able to factor into their assessments the chance of crossing certain environmental tipping points such as widespread melting of polar ice sheets that would cause sea levels to rise much more rapidly This enables them to estimate the potential damages that would result and leads to more nuanced conclusions on the e ects of policies However some have criticised the use of economic estimates for environmental costs and bene ts As mentioned previously estimates for the social cost of carbon greatly vary according to the model used These models require large assumptions on how trends in economic growth respond to climate change how trends in oil prices change as consumption changes and the costs of adapting to climate change s volatile e ects such as extreme weather events or moving people away from areas a ected by rising sea levels Environmental economics critics use these assumptions as ammunition for arguments against even bothering to estimate monetary e ects fi ff ff ff fi fi ff ff Page 8 fi fi Opinion

The Wynd of climate change and there is further ongoing debate regarding how society values future costs and bene ts now which is determined by what economists call the discount rate How society values future e ects on its children and subsequent generations is fundamentally a very di cult question to answer and economics has been plagued with arguments over how large the tradeo should be between money you have now or damages you feel now and those you may feel later Biden implicitly raised this discount rate issue in his executive order s mention of intergenerational equity whilst people who are alive now bear the costs of policies immediately some of the bene ts may not come for decades occasionally even centuries Beyond this debate it is clear that it is very di cult to argue objectively about how best to go about climate policy Environmental economics attempts to ground arguments in reality by putting the costs and bene ts of the crisis into numbers that governments businesses and everyday citizens can understand This is e ective up to a point but the assumptions which are made in trying to value events which impact the entire world in both the present and the future can wildly in uence any conclusions drawn That is to say questions of ethics can matter as much as questions of science and the decisions made about how to weight impacts on di erent communities as well as future versus present impacts are almost certain to alienate some readers of any economic study However evidently the climate crisis is fast approaching an ultimatum beyond which the earth s natural capital will be decimated for future generations beyond recovery Governments seem to be slowly waking up to this spurred on by huge societal activism movements within recent years and economics provides a method through which they can justify making large changes to policy provided that the correct assumptions about future costs and bene ts are made Economics will therefore be vital in the ght against climate change going forwards showing those that are sceptical that there really is no other option than doing something and doing it fast An ancient Greek proverb states that a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit Perhaps objectifying this shade in numbers will help governments plant more trees ffi ff fi ffi ff fi fi fi Opinion ff fl fi ff Page 9

The Wynd Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere the Reality of Growing Up Abroad By Emma Downey Emma Downey School International Festival I n fact on January 6th of this year an attempted revolution of sorts was live streamed While thousands of onlookers watched from outside the Capitol building thousands more saw the action unfold in real time over the internet Photo taken at St John s International School in Waterloo Belgium during the school s annual International Festival a day dedicated to celebrating the 65 nationalities of the school s students G rowing up in Belgium to Italian and British parents the question where are you from is never an easy one I am always either grossly simplifying my origin or telling strangers my whole life story Over the years this has both caused confusion and annoyance something many Third Culture Kids TCKs face as many people are not perceptive to the idea that not everyone has a clear nationality or hometown The term Third Culture Kids was coined in the 1950s by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem to describe children who spend their formative years in places other than their parents homeland According to a survey by Denizen an online magazine and community dedicated to people who grew up in multiple countries international school alumni or Third Culture Kids most of these children make their rst move before the age of nine and live in an average of four countries during their childhood years Page 10 fi Opinion

The Wynd Living abroad can bring many bene ts for these children TCKs are often very attractive to employers 85 speak two or more languages and they are more likely to have degrees and postgraduate quali cations later on in life compared to children who do not have such a multicultural upbringing According to sociologists David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken authors of Third Culture Kids Growing Up Among Worlds TCKs are also more likely to be more culturally aware and have a broader world view two qualities that are becoming increasingly useful in today s world Despite the large amounts of bene ts that come with being an expatriate s child Van Reken warns that being a TCK may cause a sense of rootlessness and restlessness with home becoming everywhere and nowhere This is something that Tanguy Charlier now 19 and a student at Exeter University felt after returning to his home country Belgium at the age of 16 after living in India and Singapore Tanguy now nds it hard to be satisi ed with staying in the place that his parents call home because it s meant to feel like home but something is o This is a phenomenon that many TCKs experience for various reasons For Tanguy it s just the fact that you long for a home and want to nd a comfortable place but at the same time you can never be satis ed just settling down in one place because we want to keep exploring the world and are drawn to a new adventure Belen Bricchi who at the age of just 18 has already moved nine times agrees She believes that TCKs nd it di cult to stay in one place because we are used to change and get bored of being in the same environment for too long Having lived in New Jersey Munich Buenos Aires Atlanta Mexico City Brussels London and Basel before moving to Durham North Carolina where she attends Duke University Belen has been introduced to many drastically di erent cultures which have impacted her outlook on life Belen also says that having to adapt to her new surroundings has a ected her personality Yusuke Osawa a Japanese student who was born in England and moved to Belgium before returning to the UK to attend Wellington College in Berkshire is now an undergraduate at the University of St Andrews in Scotland He has had a very similar experience to Belen In fact moving around made it harder for him to personally adapt to each place s respective culture Drawing from his experience Yusuke states that trying to adapt to the ways of life of a new place can also lead you to start losing your own identity in a way There are multiple theories concerning the formation of personality and identity Perhaps the most popular and prevalent one is the Identity Status Theory by J Marcia which dates back to 1966 According to Marcia there are two dimensions to the formation of identity the rst is exploration and the second is commitment He argues that someone who is just exploring and fi ff ff fi ffi fi fi ff fi fi fi fi Opinion fi Page 11

The Wynd never commits to one path will end up feeling as if they are in constant limbo almost stuck They have seen many paths but don t know which one to take In most cases people commit to an identity after exploring and nding what they feel is theirs in their late teenage years Expatriates however especially expatriate children can often really struggle with nding a singular identity which they believe ts them Many TCKs develop an identity that s rooted in people rather than places because as Yusuke puts it it doesn t feel like they re actually from their so called home due to the lack of interactions with the locals in the country but nowhere else feels completely familiar either Relying on people can also be di cult because many expatriates are on nite contracts often as short as two years forcing their children to leave friends behind and make new ones on a regular basis Caroline Tonglet a half Mozambican half Belgian 19 year old who has lived in South Africa Angola E ypt and Belgium before moving to Leeds England for university also thinks that it s harder to make friends with people that have only ever lived in their home countries Caroline feels that she can only really get along with people from an international background Personally I also tend to subconsciously gravitate towards other expatriate students especially since moving to university where most people I have surrounded myself with seem to have an expatriate background I think that this is largely because despite not always having a singular nationality to identify ourselves with TCKs do feel like we are part of a community of likeminded people that can relate to and bond with about being a citizen of everywhere and nowhere fi fi fi ffi Page 12 g fi Opinion

Why Is Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e Not Home Why Is Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e Not Home By Jennifer Winship T he detainment of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e is symbolic of the perpetual failings of Boris Johnson s conservative government After over ve years in Iranian prison it is clear that she remains there not because of a crime but because of a messy political game between the United Kingdom and Iran A game that has led to a woman missing her daughter s formative years and accumulating immeasurable costs to her physical and mental health That is not to mention the detriment which it has caused her husband daughter parents and other family and friends Her family in the UK have been ignored to such a gross extent that Nazanin s husband Richard is currently on his second hunger strike in protest over the government s inaction over his wife s imprisonment Just over ve years ago Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e was your typical hard working person She married her husband Richard in 2009 got her British citizenship in 2013 and was a new mother to 1 year old Gabriella Born and raised in Tehran Zaghari Ratcli e moved to London in 2007 after gaining a scholarship to study here The United Kingdom is where she has lived since then Indeed it is where she has worked where she got married and where she has become a mother ff ff ff ff ff ff Opinion fi fi Page 13 MrZeroPage Nazanin and Richard Ratcli e 2011 CC Share Alike Attribution 4 0 Image edited The Wynd

Garry Knight Richard Ratcli e 2021 CC Attribution 2 0 This begs the question of how the British government can so abjectly neglect the welfare and rights of one of its citizens Unfortunately it goes beyond ignoring the issue Rather politicians have actively in amed the situation and this has led to a deterioration in her treatment Most notably on 1 November 2017 Boris Johnson who was the British Foreign Secretary at the time said when we look at what Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e was doing she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it Zaghari Ratcli e was in Iran on holiday and had never worked to train journalists in the country These remarks put her at risk and four days later when she returned to court Johnson s statement was cited as evidence against her Johnson has never apologised for this and has since made no e orts to x his mistake or in any other way help her Page 14 fi fi ff ff ff ff fi fi ff fl ff Opinion ff The Wynd This all changed when Zaghari Ratcli e was detained in Iran on the 3rd of April 2016 whilst visiting her family over the Iranian New Year Although the reasons for her arrest were initially unclear she was sentenced to ve years in prison for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian regime During her ve year sentence Nazanin was placed in solitary con nement for almost 9 months was denied access to her lawyer and was only allowed limited contact with her family Zaghari Ratcli e s sentence should have come to an end on the 7th March 2021 However after removing her ankle tag it was announced that she has been given a second prison sentence of one year with an additional year that bans her from travelling Throughout this ordeal Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e has had no access to a fair trial

The Wynd The reason why Nazanin Zaghari Ratcli e is not home is a political one She is a pawn in the political game between the United Kingdom and Iran which spans back decades even to before she was born Nazanin s husband believes that his wife s release is dependent upon the interest on a 450 million debt the UK has owed to Iran since the 1970s There has been a legal dispute between Iran and the UK ever since 1971 when the Iranian government then under the Shah of Iran paid Britain for tanks and other arms as part of a 650 million deal When the Shah s regime fell Britain cancelled the undelivered part of the order and this led to the regime asking for a partial refund on undelivered tanks This is but one element in the political chess game going on at Nazanin s expense In April 2019 Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif proposed a prisoner swap between Zaghari Ratcli e and Negar Ghodskani an Iranian citizen being held in Australia on a US extradition warrant Iran wants to swap pawns Zaghari Ratcli e is the pawn the bargaining chip in a political game over which she has no control This leads us to the present where Richard Ratcli e is in the midst of a hunger strike asking for tougher action against Iran In April of this year the government did not even arrange for UK o cials to attend Nazanin s recent court hearing which might have ensured she got a free and fair trial The conservative government s inability to do anything at all to help Nazanin ZaghariRatcli e or her family re ects a complete lack of interest or in the most charitable interpretation a lack of power Either way it is a damning re ection of how the government treats its citizens Every passing day is another day Nazanin loses of her daughter s youth another day she loses with her husband and another day Boris Johnson and Liz Truss choose not to act Seeing as the political relationship between the UK and Iran is not improving it is easy to be pessimistic about when Zaghari Ratcli e will be able to return home However Richard Ratcli e and their MP Tulip Siddiq have continued to hold the government to account and we can be hopeful that soon Nazanin will be back in the United Kingdom and reunited with her family ff ff fl ff ff ff ff Opinion fl ff ffi Page 15

Baumbach Stories A defence of making lms about what you know By Finn Fallow eld Baumbach Stories fi Page 16 Culture Film Fraser Mummery Queensboro Bridge 2011 CC Attribution 2 0 Culture The Wynd

The Wynd N oah Baumbach is best known for his most recent lm Marriage Story 2019 an accomplished dazzling portrayal of a divorce that turns increasingly adversarial Despite following a tried and tested formula Marriage Story transcends being an archetypal genre lm by focusing on character Featuring an acting masterclass by both Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson who play Charlie and Nicole Marriage Story operates as a balanced sympathetic and remarkably perceptive portrait of their lives This approach is clear from the opening sequence of the lm where we hear very speci c loving observations read out by Charlie about Nicole and vice versa We are immersed in their lives from this moment on as a result not only of careerbest performances but also Baumbach s immaculate screenplay and careful direction Perhaps the lm s precision along with its convincing nature has led critics into the unfortunate trap of ascribing this success to the lm being autobiographical a story about Baumbach s own divorce It is not di cult to see why this link is so often made but it frequently leads to a much broader criticism that has plagued Baumbach throughout his career By consequence of his drawing inspiration from his own life and experiences Baumbach has been accused of making lms that focus narrowly on the trivialities of the lives of narcissistic creative class New Yorkers without o ering something universal Marriage Story has mostly avoided this accusation with critics too occupied by its strong plot and compelling acting but it has nonetheless tarnished the perception of some of Baumbach s other great lms notably Frances Ha 2013 and Meyerowitz Stories 2017 There is no doubt that Baumbach a Brooklyn native the son of a novelist who lectured at Stanford and a lm critic for the Village Voice makes lms about what he knows His breakout success The Squid and the Whale 2005 was directly inspired by his experience of his parents divorce at the age of 14 Many other recurring motifs in Baumbach s lmography are similarly personal His lms are frequently set in New York and often feature an East Coast versus WestCoast dynamic that is clearly familiar to him In Marriage Story for instance a signi cant contest in the custody battle is predicated on whether the family is an LA or New York family Baumbach uses the minutely speci c to convincingly address the universal thereby creating a unique story that s relatable to viewers regardless of personal experience This divide represents more than just a niche American cultural issue however It allows Baumbach to bring up subtler more universal questions about what we consider home and how it shapes our identity as we grow up It also functions as a means of providing easy laughs by appealing to a sense of regional competition that exists in most countries and cultures In fact Meyerowitz Stories starts with an extended sequence of Adam Sandler s character Danny stubbornly trying to nd a parking space in New York City while engaging in some classic dadtalk with his daughter about whether to take the bridge or the underpass to get between fi Culture fi Page 17

The Wynd Manhattan and Brooklyn Both clearly city speci c tropes they nonetheless represent universally relatable aspects of Sandler s character We ve all had experiences both of older relatives o ering patronising if well meaning travel advice and everybody knows the growing tension one feels when sitting in the back of a car searching in vain for a space to park Baumbach uses the minutely speci c to convincingly address the universal thereby creating a unique story that s relatable to viewers regardless of personal experience Danny s identity as a New Yorker is fundamental to the lm and represents the loyalty he feels towards his artistic father Harold Played wonderfully by Dustin Ho man he is an emotionally and physically unavailable man After divorcing Danny s mother Harold gives up on Danny Instead of returning his attention he attempts to win the a ection of his younger son Matthew from a second marriage Matthew acutely aware of his father s various aws escapes to LA and eschews the family s historic artistic a nity to instead go into nance and make money As you may have guessed Meyerowitz Stories is about a dysfunctional family A tightlywritten tragicomedy the lm details the various battles between members of an artsy and intellectual family that makes for easy comparison with Baumbach s own It is not hard to feel alienated by these pretentious and privileged characters whining about trivialities like supposed money problems while living in a beautiful New York townhouse and Harold s inability to achieve a solo sculpture exhibition after the moderate recognition he received at the peak of his career begins to fade Nevertheless these admittedly elitist plot points serve purely as material for Baumbach s characteristically cutting dialogue and as a means of delivering a more profound story Meyerowitz Stories is really about fatherhood how the failures of one father can trickle down and a ect the relationships of their children and grandchildren The trivialities that occupy much of the lm s focus are in the end red herrings Perhaps surprisingly given the amount of comedy in the lm Meyerowitz Stories o ers the most convincing and perceptive critique of toxic masculinity in lm I have encountered You wouldn t expect a clumsy quasi slapstick ght between Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler both fully suited to be one of the most heartbreaking in the lm but watching two men who were utterly incapable of communicating up until this point nally pour out their emotions makes for compelling viewing Smuggling these messages into the lm in this way ensures that Meyerowitz Stories never feels overly sentimental or contrived Instead its sincere and naturalistic approach trusts the audience to draw out these themes themselves It is also no coincidence that Baumbach joins a small group of brilliant directors and writers the Safdies and Paul Thomas Anderson are perhaps the only others to have managed to provide Adam Sandler with the means to convince us that he can be a serious and capable actor fi Page 18 Culture

Alcibis Downtown Los Angeles from 4th street bridge 2016 CC Share Alike Attribution 4 0 Frances Ha my favourite Noah Baumbach lm should further dispel the myth that Baumbach writes entirely and uncritically about or for himself A collaboration with Greta Gerwig who co writes and leads the lm it is perhaps the complete antithesis of Darren Aronofsky s psychological thriller Black Swan 2010 Frances Ha is a comedy drama about a mediocre ballet dancer coming of age in New York and discovering that perfection is overrated An altogether more wholesome a air than Aronofsky s tale of artistic obsession it details the close friendship between two women Frances and Sophie which comes under strain as the two are forced to move apart Frances is consequently forced to learn at 27 to gain some independence and gure out what she wants in life The lm begins with Sophie moving from a shared at with Frances in Brooklyn to Tribeca one of the most expensive boroughs of Manhattan In a constant struggle to pay rent due to her unreliable job with a dance company Frances is forced to move in with friends Lev and Benji in Chinatown Once again home is a central theme Frances nds herself constantly on the move not just between apartments in various New York boroughs but on a weekend trip to Paris a stay with her parents in Sacramento California and a stint at her alma mater Vassar The disjointedness of her living situation mirrors the existential crisis she appears to face Her new atmates Lev and Culture Page 19 The Wynd

The Wynd Benji are also typical Baumbach characters Benji doesn t appear to actually work complaining about money whilst relying on wealthy parents and oscillating between following and giving up on dreams such as writing for SNL hasn t it gone so downhill recently he complains Despite making lms that so frequently feature these kinds of characters Baumbach is unrelentingly critical of them Even if closely inspired by people in Baumbach s own life or a younger Noah himself their aws are made manifest These cleverly observed failings seem to make the characters not only more believable but even more likeable given the honesty of their presentation When Frances role in her company s Christmas show gets cut she is forced to stay with her parents in Sacramento Not only is this the location of her hometown but Sacramento is also the setting for Gerwig s later directorial debut Lady Bird 2017 These beautifully shot very intimate scenes were lmed with Gerwig s own family as actors and are a real high point of the lm They remind me of the brilliant ending of Lady Bird Christine asks her mother who is refusing to speak to her after she moved to New York for university over the phone Did you feel emotional the rst time you drove in Sacramento This line is spoken over a montage of shots of her driving which cuts devastatingly to her mother driving the same route The same a ection for Sacramento can be felt in these scenes of Frances with her family Later in another critical moment Frances works as a waitress and teaching assistant at her alma mater Vassar which happens to be Baumbach s own alma mater and rekindles her friendship with Sophie after a falling out The two most poignant chapters of the lm are both set in places very dear to Baumbach and Gerwig This love is both obvious in their portrayal and critical to their e ectiveness By now the Baumbach blueprint should be apparent he explores themes and messages that are universal with characters and places that are familiar and speci c to him This familiarity allows him to tell more thoroughly engaging witty and convincing stories than he could otherwise Whilst the setting of a Baumbach lm may be predictable the stories he tells are diverse and universal nuanced and self aware They are not the direct transplants of lived experiences that critics assume Baumbach himself has said in interviews that in Marriage Story he is no more Charlie than he is Nicole Each character is a concoction of traits that Baumbach has observed perhaps with occasional elements of himself mixed in Baumbach can cover ambitious topics friendship meaning and independence in Frances Ha masculinity fatherhood and family in Meyerowitz Stories and home love and failure in Marriage Story all by making lms about what he knows Page 20 fi Culture

Film Bela Tarr The Turin Horse Literature Bela Tarr The Turin Horse By Nadia Ash O By Nadia Ash n January 3rd 1889 in Turin Italy Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of Number Six Via Carlo Albert Not far from him a cab driver is having trouble with a stubborn horse The horse refuses to move whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it Nietzsche puts an end to the brutal scene throwing his arms around the horse s neck sobbing After this he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he loses consciousness and his mind Somewhere in the countryside the driver of the cab lives with his daughter and the horse Outside a windstorm rages Following this bleakly monotonous sequence The Turin Horse proceeds to tell the other side of Nietzsche s tragic descent into madness by following the life of the cab driver and his daughter Though rife with Nietzschean themes we hear no more of him throughout the rest of the lm being instead submerged within the daily happenings of the cab driver and his daughter as they endure their condition of poverty and squalor with bleak resignation The tale progresses with a profound lack of dialogue and auditory stimuli plunging us into the stark reality of their poverty it is as though we are there with them forced to endure the same austerity the same dismal tedium Nothing remarkable happens in their lives nothing punctures this sense of exhausting monotony they simply live toil and su er They exist This is an existence which is imposed upon them they have no hand in their fates they wield no will fi ff Culture Page 21 Yao Hui Bela Tarr 2011 Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 2 0 The Wynd

The Wynd of their own Each day spills by at the same sluggish pace the daughter its about the house cooking working and retrieving water from the well The father sits in restless silence staring out of the window trying fruitlessly to encourage the horse to leave the stable When they are hungry they eat the same boiled potatoes sitting opposite each other in the dim and feeble light of the oil lamp but rarely do they speak When they do the words seem somehow empty as though drained of all meaning only spoken to avoid some unarticulated taboo of silence Such is the existence that these two lead steeped in bitter monotony fatal complacency meek acquiescence It is this idea of eternal recurrence that Tarr s lm revolves around Each day passes in much the same way with a profound and complacent lack of will shown by both father and daughter They have submitted to this existence They do not acknowledge their own will to power Eternal recurrence is a notion that appears frequently in Nietzsche s works it is the idea that he claimed acted as the source for all other philosophies he gave life to It appeared rst in 1882 in The Gay Science a text which discloses his most personal philosophical thoughts and aphorisms Here he writes What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once more and innumerable times more and there will be nothing new in it but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you all in the same succession and sequence even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again and you with it speck of dust Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal con rmation and seal Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science Book IV Section 341 Nietzsche proclaims that to live a life worth living we must continue to strive and work for those desires and ambitions which inhabit us all We must live in such a way that we would gladly repeat each day for eternity satis ed in the knowledge that we have taken hold of the reigns of our own fate To live is to su er but to survive is to nd meaning in the su ering he argues In The Turin Horse Tarr has presented us with a depiction of the direst manifestation of eternal recurrence one in which life becomes hollow of passion a series of meaningless recapitulations of perpetual toil This drudging uniformity is exhausting but behind the characters meek resignation we occasionally still see glimmers of hopes sometimes even of dreams The father repeatedly takes the horse out over the hills heading away from the lonely desolate village but each time he falters and returns back to predictability and back to comfort however dismal that may be The daughter too is seen to strive for some change in ff fi fl fi fi fi fi ff Page 22 Culture

The Wynd this life of hers she stares morosely out of the window to that hazy distance where some other life lies in the uncanny realm of possibility Yet like her father she does nothing The complacency of the two characters with regard to their own fates feed into one another so that they seem to be perpetually trapped A glimpse of the alternative is shown at various points throughout the lm what life could be if they had the will to change their minds and attitudes When the neighbour comes knocking on the door in search of alcohol he launches into a monologue which disrupts the customary silence of the household He speaks of the storm which rages outside the windowpanes of a town nearby which was ravaged by the erce winds Everything is in ruins everything has been degraded he says This is not some kind of cataclysm coming about with so called innocent human aid On the contrary it s about man s own judgement over his own self which of course God has a hand in He goes on to speak of how man has brought this destruction upon himself how meaninglessness and listlessness have catalysed the world s dissolution People have become insipid and beggarly he claims waiting for things to happen rather than propelling those happenings themselves We wait for some external force to be our salvation rather than taking action and becoming our own salvation In this sense a kind of detached Christian symbolism is laced throughout the lm an echo of Nietzsche s own disillusionment with Christianity and the fatal complacency that it invoked for him The daughter is once shown to be reading from the Bible but she stumbles over her words and all meaning seems voided from them The servility of her role within the house could also be representative of the Christian emphasis on submission and servitude whether that s for God or for husband and father Her slavishly persistent domestic work comes into sharp and jarring contrast with her father s watchful mute silence When the horse refuses to eat for some unknown reason he merely persists in his previous attempts to coerce it we see no change in his methods for dealing with his misfortunes This is the cycle of eternal recurrence It appears that he only knows one thing force a fact which is laid bare through his reactions to the horse s stubborn inaction through his whipping of the creature and even through the way he eats with brutish ardour unlike the meekness of his daughter When at the end of the lm the lights go out and the two are plunged into darkness we see the bleak dangers of this kind of mentality of narrow persistence They try in vain to light the candle and neglecting to nd some other innovative solution they eat in darkness This time the potatoes are raw and the daughter stares without eating in speechless resignation at this pitiful and undeniable evidence of their austerity It is a dismal echo of the horse s own stubborn refusal to eat and a sombre portrayal of how easily one s existence can fall into this dismal cycle of eternally recurring compliance if one refuses to exercise their will fi fi fi fi Culture fi Page 23

Droning On How Earth Flipped the Idea of Heavy Music on its Head Droning On By Rory O Sullivan I t s the mid seventies and after a hard week s work at school you re round at your stoner friend s apartment to kick back zone out and listen to some good music After you ve given your favourite Zeppelin LP a quick spin he reaches into the depths of his dishevelled collection and produces a copy of Black Sabbath s Master of Reality The sleeve is decorated in bold purple and inky black print telling of the darkness held within As Tony Iommi s distorted down tuned blues ri s start to rip their way through your friend s tinny speaker system you quickly realise it s like nothing else you ve heard before Before you even get the chance to describe what you re experiencing your likely vest clad and bong clutching friend looks at you through squinted eyes and proclaims duuuuude this shit is heavy man Ten or so years down the line and Metallica release their gory thrash debut Kill em All and the exact same thing happens again Another couple of years after that and Slayer s proto death metal masterpiece Reign in Blood earns the same reaction By now a small global army of fellow headbangers has assembled with feverish passion for big ri s but a distinct aversion to deodorant in any shape or form You start to wonder just what is it that ties all these records together What is it that causes everyone your friend s THC soaked mind included to call a piece of music heavy ff Page 24 ff Culture The Blue Moon Review Music Dominik Matus Sunn O performing at Brutal Assault festival 2015 CC Attribution ShareAlike 4 0 The Wynd

The Wynd The most immediate answer might be to simply equate heavy to utterly intolerable Undoubtedly there has to be at least some kind of correlation between likelihood a metalhead praises something as heavy and likelihood a normal person will plug their ears yell turn that rubbish o and promptly vomit In this vein music played at the most bone shattering speed and breakneck intensity would take the crown for the heaviest In 1987 riotous Brummies Napalm Death took this idea to an almost parodic extreme with their track You Su er creating a song so bombastic it earned Guinness World Record certi cation for being the shortest and fastest ever created clocking in at 1 316 seconds Their virtually unlistenable aptly named grindcore style later spawned a series of unprintably named bands throughout the nineties and noughties that sought to emulate and top even that But this seems to miss the point Let s be honest a gormless shock value pissing contest where hairy men keep on trying to out extreme one another seems to have all but lost the magic of Black Sabbath s original formula Against this background in around 1989 guitarist Dylan Carlson decided to do things di erently Raised in Olympia Washington on the dad rock of AC DC and thrash acts of the eighties Carlson had also developed a budding interest in the work of minimalist composers such as La Monte Young Not so much a chalk and cheese combo as chalk and charnel Carlson recalls imagining the two styles intermingling in his head dreaming up ideas such as Oh what if we take a Slayer style ri and play it for 20 minutes at half speed The mad but brilliant thinking quickly snowballed and before long Carlson had entered the studio with bassist Dave Harwell under the name Earth with a vision of creating a record composed of one monolithic seventy three minute song a veritable ode to the idea of heaviness Whilst the constraints of taping technolo y at the time meant that Carlson s bizarre brainchild had to be chopped up into three separate songs the result was no less titanic Released in 1993 Earth 2 Special Low Frequency Version was hilariously simple in concept but ingeniously unique It consisted of what was essentially a never ending crushing passage of sustained sub bass guitar chords and ampli er worship that droned on for longer than an over friendly cabbie who s opening conversational gambit is and I tell you another thing right Each song on the record was more monotonous and drawn out than the last as if to keep pulling away the nish line the further you got towards it The opener Seven Angels plots a lethargic languid metal ri against an omnipresent droning canvas of crackling ampli er fuzz and by the time you ve reached the end of the closer Like Gold and Faceted the whole thing seems to have collapsed under its own weight allowing only for one note to ring out at teeth juddering volume for half an hour In this sense it s not metal music in any normal sense of the word or perhaps even music at all Rather it s more of a low pitched deeply oppressive noise a soundtrack to lull you into oblivion Being such a deliberately boring exercise you could be forgiven at this stage for dismissing it all as pretentious twaddle and demanding a collective removal of heads from arses and public ff fi ff fi fi ff g ff fi Culture ff Page 25

But a small crowd part turtleneck sporting ambient music nerds part greasy metalheads realised that what Earth had done went far beyond more than the sum of its parts In allowing the ri s to be stretched out longer than a bad American sitcom series what is going on inside the notes themselves becomes audible Carlson notes because of the way the human ear is built the overtone series begins to create melodies that aren t technically there Experiencing this phenomenon allows the distorted musical textures to ease you into a trance like state letting the sheer physicality of the sound induce you into some weird kind of meditation One particularly over enthusiastic review lining Earth 2 s sleeve stated Forget drugs and alcohol I am now very very mellow another simply MY TENSION HEADACHES HAVE DISAPPEARED In uenced by Carlson s work other bands later latched onto this idea and drone metal emerged as a concrete but marginal musical style Seattle drone doom duo and current genre agbearers Sunn O named after their brand of ampli er naturally have built upon the formula to heighten the already very ritualistic nature of the genre The presence of roomobscuring smoke machines and church choirs at their live shows are just two innovative ideas the band have experimented with On your way out of one of these shows you ll nd their merch store packed with T shirts emblazoned with slogans speaking of a similar kind of soundworship such as ever breathe a frequency and maximum volume yields maximum results Ethnographic and psychological studies of these concerts such as those contained in Owen Coggins book Mysticism Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal have demonstrated how show goers are often unable to describe their experiences without reference to the divine Although obscure the band have not gone unnoticed by music heavyweights however with Pulp s Jarvis Cocker and Talking Heads David Byrne both championing the group One heavy drone band Om named after the Hindu concept of the universe s natural vibration naturally even played a show in Jerusalem that reportedly lasted over ve hours Bringing something so in uential and inventive to the table or perhaps altar if we re now in full edged metal mode of heavy music has since garnered Earth 2 retrospective critical acclaim not to mention a perfect score from a certain shiny headed bespectacled YouTuber Ultimately then the album was a stroke of minimalist genius but most importantly it represents the purest and most distilled expression of the idea your stoner friend sought to describe when you rst heard his Black Sabbath LP all those years ago There s no two ways about it this shit is heavy fi fi fi Page 26 fl ffl ff fi fl Culture fl fl The Wynd exposure of the emperor s distinct lack of clothes The reaction at the time of the album s release certainly went something along these lines with eager crate diggers generally being left either ba ed frustrated or both Earth s label Sub Pop records was usually in the business of putting out the material of grunge bands such as Mudhoney and Nirvana so punters were understandably confused as to how to react to the droning beast that lay before them

The Wynd Literature Time Mortality and Creation in Jorge Luis Borges The Secret Miracle By Nadia Ash Levan Ramishvili Jorge Luis Borges at Argentine National Library 1973 2016 Public Domain Culture Page 27

T he Secret Miracle is a tale of temporal subversion Borges plays upon the intangible threads of time and reality crafting a world wherein nothing remains certain The surreal takes precedence over the familiar and in the style characteristic of writers of magic realism Borges leaves his readers reeling from his phantasmagorical universe Matters of mortality lie at the core of the tale For many of us although the prospect of death is a certainty it remains somewhat abstract a distant notion perpetually detached from immediate reality But to have a date attached to one s end is to face death as a tangible inevitability To experience time as something quanti able something limited and ordained to expire But of course it is not time that expires it is our own lives In The Secret Miracle Borges carves an intricate portrait of mortality and its connection with time This short tale encompasses a slice of time within the turbulence of Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia It is within this totalitarian backdrop that we follow the character of Hladik a Jewish writer who is sentenced to execution For Hladik his own life is one characterised purely by its end his fear of death governs him entirely Su ocated by this ceaseless terror he plays out in nite variations of his incumbent execution in his mind a compulsive form of torture perhaps or maybe an attempt to desensitise himself to his brutal reality Then bound by some absurd form of logic he becomes convinced that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it Thus he persists in brutal imaginings of his approaching death though they do little to di use his boundless dread The condition of the artist is emblematised through the character of Hladik after his initial terror rooted in the physicality of death he begins to lament over death as absence and emptiness a gulf which would endure upon the loss of his life But it is not loss of life so much as loss of meaning which torments him the notion of leaving nothing behind His very existence is justi ed by his creation For the artist to create is to immortalise oneself to perpetuate one s life beyond the grave Thus he yearns only for the chance to complete his last work a play which mirrors his own tussle with time and illusion The night before his execution he calls upon God If in some fashion I exist if I am not one of Your repetitions and mistakes I exist as the author of The Enemies To nish this drama which can justify me and justify You I need another year Grant me these days You to whom the centuries and time belong And in a distinctly Borgesian turn the surreal becomes enmeshed with reality God grants his prayer in a dream and time stutters to a halt Upon the moment of his execution Hladik is confronted only with stillness He alone remains mobile conscious living He has been gifted with the opportunity to nish his last creation to craft a legacy which will perpetuate his life in the minds and hearts of his readers Here Borges elucidates the nature of every artist and every person alike the existential fear of death as a nality binds us all we cannot seem to grasp the notion of utter disintegration both bodily and metaphysically For Borges art serves as a loophole a bridge between the dead and the living In consuming works of creation we resurrect the authors who have long since ceased to live It is the transcendence of art over time which enables the dead to continue to live among us This is Borges nal message to us upon the last pages of The Secret Miracle fi fi ff fi fi fi fi Page 28 fi Culture ff The Wynd

Television Television I IThink YouYou Should Leave Leave Why We Stay Think Should Why We Stay and Why You Should Watch It By Samuel Sandor By Samuel Sandor T im Robinson s Net ix original sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave the second season of which was released this summer markets itself as the show where guests spend each segment driving someone to the point of needing or desperately wanting to leave It s time we talked about why this has struck such a chord with viewers Why is it so funny Indeed more importantly why is it so incredibly cathartic Inevitably the result will instead be that over the following pretentiously constructed paragraphs I will methodically extinguish the humour of the show on every comedic level through over analysis but hey with any luck it ll be somewhat worth it The most immediately apparent level on which the show is enjoyed is held in common with pretty much all other cringe comedy shows A large part of why we watch such shows as The O ce unfortunately it doesn t go without saying that I refer to the UK version Fleabag and Arrested Development is for the same reason we used to watch You ve Been Framed We witness David Brent say something noxiously awkward or insensitive and through half clenched eyes and gritted teeth we smile inwardly and breathe a heavy sigh of relief thank Christ that s not me It s a form of schadenfreude Cringe comedy shows frequently transcend this level of enjoyment Fleabag perhaps the most e ectively but this sense of relief is perhaps the most fundamental mechanism of cringe comedy For this reason it s not particularly worthwhile analysing ITYSL in terms of this technique since it s not unique to Tim Robinson s style of comedy ffi ff Culture fl Page 29 The Wynd

The Wynd More noteworthy is the way in which so many of Robinson s sketches deal with arti ciality being unmasked the veneer of social acceptability being stripped away Robinson s characters will frequently use conversational buzzwords and workplace jargon in the openings of sketches only to have this fa ade cut through by their own actions This is fairly unique to ITYSL in the way it is used Most cringe comedies rely on characters not being able to fully assimilate into their environment they re outsiders In Arrested Development every single major character is a failure in their profession to some extent from Gob as the outcast magician to Tobias the useless actor Contrastingly the characters of ITYSL almost always start sketches with the appearance of complete normality Unlike the typical cringe comedy character they have the tools and ability to blend in in their environment they just seem consistently compelled to burn the bridges they apparently so easily constructed at rst Like moths to ames they cannot help but shirk their better instincts As a matter of fact the entire show begins in this fashion The very rst sketch of the entire show opens on two men sitting across from each other in a caf It s the end of an interview The typically stagnant tired milquetoast interview pleasantries are rolled out on both ends Robinson s character serves rst I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me swiftly following this with a bona de classic I hope to hear from you soon To the uninitiated it s hard to see from where the humour of this sketch will derive the interview is all but over and both men seem perfectly ordinary But the clean polished professional fa ade melts with the smallest provocation the caf door won t open when Robinson goes to leave and pulls the handle It becomes obvious that the door is a push and not a pull as Robinson s face rouges and bulges with veins while the hinges of the door grind This moment is played out with such intensity that one can t help but think that at least part of this tension comes not from the mundane embarrassment of the door not opening but from the jarring sensation of pleasantries melting away and the true self being laid bare But with the swift snap of the doorframe Robinson also snaps back into social acceptability Hope to hear from you soon he repeats At this point this vacuous phrase is almost a relief to hear it hides the aggression under the surface which was so unsettling to witness when it was unveiled The reason this sketch is both funny and cathartic is so simple it can easily go undetected One part of us understands Robinson s fa ade but another part hates it not just because it is the same rubbish we all nd ourselves spouting while thinking what an arsehole I sound like but also because we so often hear others churning it out and think the same about them It is therapeutic to see this fakery melt away and to be reassured both that this isn t how people really are but also that we all do this It is funny because it reveals a truth we all pretend not to know that none of us are how we pretend to be in professional and sometimes social life It is cathartic because it reveals that this is ubiquitous we are not alone That old piece of advice to imagine that the audience isn t wearing any clothes is the manifestation of this process of catharsis in the form of conventional wisdom it is comforting to know what lies beneath as long as the cover is eventually put back fi fi fl fi fi fi fi Page 30 Culture

The Wynd A similar e ect is seen in the third sketch of the rst episode of the most recent season Ostensibly an excerpt from some form of prank show something akin to Impractical Jokers Robinson s attempt at pranking a shopping centre degrades into a miserable diatribe about the idiocy of the prank and eventually his own unhappiness Behind the scenes prior to the stunt Robinson is all smiles and childish excitement This is gonna be so fun he promises to the viewer On seeing the latex mask he ll be wearing for the prank he gleefully announces look at this guy Imagine if this guy came up to you It is clear from the start that although he is keeping up appearances this is all pretty manufactured no more than any other prank show however I think it s widely accepted that anybody who lived their life with the ener y of an internet television prankster ought to be institutionalised and this sketch seems viscerally aware of the fact The viewer does not expect the meteoric descent that occurs however At rst Robinson merely complains of the costume s stupidity and of his own discomfort Things worsen however as he goes quiet and then meekly states I don t even want to be around anymore The sketch ends in unusually sad fashion and without any return to normalcy This is unsurprising however when one considers that this form of arti ciality that of fakery forentertainment is not at all ubiquitous There is no need like there was for the interview sketch for the mask to be returned to its place The viewer is satis ed and relieved to see the irritatingly jovial persona of the prankster torn down albeit while feeling a little sympathy for the plight of such a gure condemned to eternally pretend he s on top of the world when most of the time he s not even on top of the YouTube trending page There is an unmistakably Freudian sensibility in all this Robinson mines the dark impulses of us all to create comedy Freud argued that the real enjoyment of a literary work derives from the relaxation of tensions in our minds Maybe this effect is due in no small measure to the fact that the writer enables us from now on to enjoy our own fantasies without shame or self reproach Robinson seems to capitalise on this in no small way We all fantasise about the veils and facades of the world being torn down but fear the consequences ITYSL serves as a sort of sandbox where we can safely watch as these primal urges unfold behind the half millimetre barrier of the screen This is not the only unconscious neurosis ITYSL taps into however Robinson also frequently plays out intrusive social anxieties on screen Many of us will know the feeling of being in a social interaction and thinking to oneself what if I suddenly started screaming or what if I said something completely unutterable Perhaps not all people have experienced this but I have no doubt every person reading this article has at some point worried they were going to say something truly awful when they know that thing is something they d never say The characters of ITYSL often have no such anxiety or at least the urge is much greater than the anxiety Consequently they behave in ways many of us dread behaving like a spectacle which is paradoxically very satisfying to watch because it demonstrates how absurd such concerns are In the popular Dan Flash s sketch the second sketch from episode two of season two Robinson is dressed in a ludicrously busy and colourful shirt and continually disrupts the meeting until tensions reach a climax and he begins to rant about where he got the shirt from and why it s important that he spends the money given to him for food on additional shirts It takes almost fi fi fi g Culture ff fi fi Page 31

The Wynd nothing for Robinson to break down and take things far too far I regularly get overexcited about a new shop lm song I ve found and regularly do I subject those around me to impassioned lectures about said thing as I am quite probably doing in this very article Afterwards once the dust has settled and the red mist has ascended I often nd myself thinking god how long did I talk for and how insane did I sound ITYSL seems to say look maybe you shouldn t quite have provided a word by word lyrical deconstruction of a Phoebe Bridgers song at the breakfast table but hey it really wasn t that bad if you think you re as bad as this guy then you re wrong I know for a fact I didn t talk about Bridgers I Know The End with as much zeal or force as Robinson did Dan Flash s and that s reassuring because despite knowing deep down that I don t I do often worry I sound like a Dan Flash s customer Similarly the fth sketch of season two s opening episode also seems to assure the viewer of their distance from what is being shown on screen By pantomiming our social anxieties and thus showing how extreme they are it becomes evident that these anxieties are unfounded and unreasonable In this sketch the anxiety addressed is that of taking a joke too far The sketch takes place in a haunted house during a ghost tour The guide jokingly informs his tour group that this is an adult tour so we can say whatever the hell we want Polite soft laughter ensues Jizz Robinson mutters What it is unclear if the guide cannot hear or merely cannot believe what he has indeed heard Jizz like cum shot Robinson earnestly clari es You can say that because you said we can say whatever the hell we want he states defensively Over the course of the sketch this escalates until Robinson is asking lengthy expletive ridden questions about ghosts which are quite obviously just excuses to take advantage of the adult nature of the tour This does not go down as well as he had clearly hoped Not only does he earn the scorn of the entire group but eventually a lecture in a store cabinet from the guide telling him to stop swearing and asking meaningless questions Head hung low chastened and tearful Robinson returns His hand sheepishly raises from his side another question The guide gives him the bene t of the doubt and lets him speak has he learned his lesson we wonder to ourselves Do any of these he begins before pausing with the tentative nervousness of Caesar on the banks of the Rubicon fuckers he splutters to the general disgust of the room His question continues in a fashion I d rather not reproduce here but it doesn t get any less crude than how it begins Naturally the guide blows up Robinson now choking on new tears tries to explain somewhere our wires got crossed You re saying we re allowed to swear I m saying big fat load of cum and horse cock and you re getting mad The blatant absurdity in the logic of Robinson s damp eyed monologue is the key to understanding the power of this sketch We ve all found ourselves wondering if we took a joke too far or got too brazen with someone Sometimes we re right too occasionally our wires do get crossed and we fail to read the room What the ghost tour sketch does is show the most extreme nightmarish manifestation of such a mistake and shows how far from it we are Every viewer can see why allowed to swear does not translate to Robinson s rather colourful outburst and thus we feel fi fi fi Page 32 fi fi Culture

The Wynd subconsciously reassured that we wouldn t ever make a mistake of such magnitude Although we might worry that we are the ghost tour guy we see his utter misapprehension of acceptability and know we are not Robinson s ITYSL reaches into the belly of the beast of irrational social anxiety and instead of saving us from it simply tells us that the beast does not looks so big from the outside an encouraging thought and one that can t help but soothe self consciousness in the viewer I Think You Should Leave is so funny because it provides relief and through that laughter This relief comes both in the form of facades falling and in the form of our social anxieties being shown to be less justi able than we originally thought Each sketch is an exercise in toeing the line between being relatable while still being distant enough to not hit too close to home While nobody would want to watch as Robinson makes the exact same social mishaps and misjudgements they worry they ve made the appeal of watching those errors unfold in exaggerated fashion is almost universal You ll feel distant enough to laugh but close enough for catharsis Watch I Think You Should Leave and while you may think the characters you see on screen should leave you ll want to stay and watch Culture fi Page 33

The Wynd Film Paul Thomas Anderson The Personality is in the Picture By Angus Chambers J rgen Fauth Paul Thomas Anderson Daniel Day Lewis 2007 CC Attribution Share Alike 2 0 P aul Thomas Anderson made his classy debut 25 years ago with Hard Eight 1996 In the 25 years since he has not received nearly the commercial success that his lms deserve He s something of an outlier in the world of established directors in that he has never made or even come close to making a bad lm And yet he is still a relatively unknown face and name I saw a tweet recently where a girl studying Film Studies was the only person in her class to know who he was see erynscinema if you don t believe me I would like to say I m surprised but in all truth before I started watching lms regularly I was the same Somehow this masterful incredibly talented director has slipped under the radar of the public and indeed some self proclaimed lm bu s for 25 years While I doubt Anderson particularly cares I think it s a shame so I ve decided with his new lm Licorice Pizza coming soon to give him some free advertising as he won t do it himself to our 300 Wynd readers fi fi fi fi Page 34 fi ff Culture

Gage Skidmore Quentin Tarantino 2015 CC Attribution Share Alike 2 0 fi fi fi fi Culture ffi fi Page 35 ff The Wynd While Anderson has not received too much commercial success Quentin Tarantino who had similar origins in the industry has skyrocketed Both had their debuts funded by the Sundance Lab and both of their debuts were about low level criminals pulling scams and hustles with Hard Eight and Reservoir Dogs 1992 Their second lms were both frenetic chaotic dramas set in Los Angeles involving quirky characters criminal activity and exciting but dangerous lifestyles with Boogie Nights 1997 and Pulp Fiction 1994 both of which also make extensive use of popular music In fact arguably for the entire rst half of their careers Anderson and Tarantino made similar lms both stylistically and thematically Yet while Anderson s stock grew gradually Tarantino exploded into one of the most famous directors of all time a veritable Hollywood A Lister There are various reasons for this Tarantino himself making cameos in his lms Tarantino having the backing of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein and thus being able to attract more established box o ce stars or maybe just his earlier work being plain better I would argue however that a lot of it boils down to their personalities Tarantino is an eccentric character who has forced himself into the limelight with multiple interviews and tours where he has come across as incredibly passionate and energetic Anderson in contrast seems fairly normal which is paradoxically quite abnormal for a director He seems reserved and chilled out the kind of guy you would meet in a tutorial who is quite clearly the most intelligent person in the room but doesn t make a big deal out of it Personality and public persona are becoming an increasingly important thing for directors and it is no coincidence that some of the more popular directors now such as Tarantino Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan are well liked and known for their o screen appearances and endeavours not just for their lms

It thus should come as no surprise that Anderson has found such immense success working with Daniel Day Lewis Famous for being highly selective and having an incredibly immersive artistic process often staying in character for weeks on end the two are a match made in cinematic heaven Day Lewis is notoriously di cult to work with due to his frequently intense emotional connections to the characters he plays Anderson has said however in one of his few interviews that he actually nds the process quite enjoyable and the two of them get along smoothly when it comes to lmmaking It helps too I would imagine that the two lms they have worked on together There Will be Blood and Phantom Thread 2017 are detailed character studies Both collaborated on eshing out the ner characteristics to such acute detail and with such personal and emotional input that shooting owed naturally There Will be Blood and Phantom Thread are in my opinion his two best lms and possibly Day Lewis two best performances Paul Thomas Anderson makes technically awless stylistically assured and emotionally probing lms and his work is truly among the nest being made today I highly recommend giving him a go starting with Boogie Nights or There Will be Blood If you haven t heard of him then don t look him up or watch an interview watch his lms and get to know the genius behind the camera ff fi fl fi fl fi fi fi fi fi fi ffi fi fl fi fi ffi fi fl fi fi fi ffi fi fi fi fi Page 36 fl fi Culture fi fi The Wynd The reason I mention this is because Anderson unlike Tarantino has displayed growth and an increasing maturity in his lmography Anderson s work has become a re ection of his changing mental state and worldview as he has progressed After and in some respects including PunchDrunk Love 2002 the thematic and tonal elements of his lms have become far darker and more serious Fans of Anderson speculate he has never clari ed in interview naturally that something might have happened in his personal life between making Punch Drunk Love and There Will be Blood 2007 His dramatic shift in lmmaking style is one of the reasons I think Anderson has not achieved such widespread commercial success His lms are a meticulously personal ordeal he puts so much of himself into the lmmaking process that there is nothing left of him to o er the public Pieces of him are always traceable in his work indeed you can learn more about the man from his lms than you can most other directors Anderson s predicament is perhaps comparable to that of Nic Pizzolatto who was showrunner and sole writer for True Detective The rst season directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga was an astounding commercial and critical success The next two left much to be desired Pizzolatto has spoken about the creative process of the rst season whereby he spent six months alone in his o ce reading philosophy and writing the screenplay Every idea he d ever dreamed up every observation he d ever made and every facet of his worldview was pumped into this rst series meaning that when he came back to writing he had nothing left to give Likewise Anderson puts everything he has into his lms a fact re ected not only by the tonal and thematic progression of his oeuvre that has mirrored his process of maturing as a person but also by his di culty to communicate himself outside of his art In this sense he s a member of a dying breed Anderson makes lms for the sake of making lms The emotional output of this kind of creative attitude is so exhausting that going on talk shows to market himself seems pointless his lms say enough

Photography Helen Lipsky Gateways Photography Page 37 The Wynd

The Wynd Photography Page 38

The Wynd Page 39 Photography

The Wynd Information The Wynd is a semesterly newspaper written by students of St Andrews University If you would like to subscribe to our publication please visit www thewynd co uk and ll in the form at the bottom of the home page Likewise if you would like a physical copy of this paper these are available for order on our home page too You can contact us at sas34 st andrews ac uk or through the contact form on our website Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to contribute a piece of non ction ction or photography to the paper fi fi fi Page 40

The Wynd Page 41 Cover Photo by Samuel Sandor 2021