scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9
NEWS
S C A N
S T U D E N T C O M M E N T A N D N E W S
SCREEN
An Interview with Alan
Rusbridger
F A S H I O N
& B E A U T Y
A24 Saint Maud Reviewed
F A S H I O N
& B E A U T Y
Waste in the Beauty Industry
SCAN Special Issue:
Black History Month
ARTS AND CULTURE
S P O R T
M U S I C
The 5 Best Horror Games for
Spooky Season
Football Fan Culture in Lockdown
Interview with Bastille
guitarist, Will Farquarson
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 2
C O N T E N T S
EDITORIAL TEAM
NEWS Pg. 3-5
The Future of Journalism: An Interview with Alan Rusbridger
A Brief History of America’s Civil Rights Movement
Interview with Noah Katz on the Definition of Antisemitism
A Peek Into The Life & Legacy Of Thurgood Marshall
COMMENT Pg. 6-8
Why You Think Feminists Are Crazy (And Why They Aren’t) Making Role-Play Accessible for ND Players
Why I Can’t Support J.K. R*wling
Interview with a Student OnlyFans
BLACK HISTORY MONTH Pg. 9-11
Understanding Microaggressions The Life and Legacy of Audre Lorde What is White Privilege?
Bee on the BAME Attainment Gap
Being Black in Higher Education
ARTS & CULTURE Pg. 13-15
5 Best Horror Games to Celebrate the Spooky Season Review: Hamnet
Interview with author, Andrew Miller
Covid-19 Cannot Stop Student Creativity – An Interview with Lancaster University Art Society
MUSIC Pg. 16-18
The Joy of Making Playlists
Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension: A Break-up with the Past
Bastille back with ‘survivin’’: An Interview with band guitarist, Will Farquarson
SCREEN Pg. 19-21
Horror: The Genre with the Best and Worst Remakes
Did James Bond kill the cinema?
A short introduction to Scandinavian TV David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet Reviewed
A24’s Saint Maud Review
FASHION & BEAUTY Pg. 23-25
There is only so much cosmetics can conceal: highlighting the waste problem in the beauty industry.
Our Favourite Outfits from Emily in Paris
Kenzo Takada: A Tribute
Why You Should Wear Sunscreen Every Day – Yes, Even in Winter Francesca’s Beauty Files
LIFESTYLE Pg. 27-29
Essay Writing: My Tips and Tricks
How We’re Making the Most Out of this Year
Interview with a student addict
PHOTOGRAPHY Pg. 31-32
How Truthful Are The Things We See?
Lancaster’s Autumnal Beauty Spots
SPORT Pg. 33-35
The Return of Female Football’s Golden Era – A Likely Prospect or Hopeful Optimism?
Goals, Glorious Goals – has the Premier League season started as good as they say it has?
Football Fan Culture in Lockdown
The 12th Man: The Influence of No Fans in Football
Getting the ‘Nick’ of Squash
Want to get involved? We’re always looking for writers,
photographers and more - email the relevant section
editors below to register your interest, or head to the
‘Groups’ section of our Facebook page to join sections
that you’re interested in.
Editor
Erin Wilson
scan.editor@lancastersu.co.uk
Associate Editor
Jodie Reeve
scan.associateeditor@lancastersu.co.uk
Carolynne Editor
Lauren Banks
scan.carolynne@lancastersu.co.uk
Online Editor
Sophie Tomlinson
scan.onlineeditor@lancastersu.co.uk
Carolynne Online Editor
Jonathan Robb
scan.carolynneonline@lancastersu.co.uk
News Editors
Tom Burgess and Syed Ahmed
scan.news@lancastersu.co.uk
Comment Editor
Beth Train-Brown
scan.comment@lancastersu.co.uk
Sport Editors
Sam Stewart
scan.sport@lancastersu.co.uk
Arts & Culture Editor
Megan Jones and Maddy Jeffrey
scan.arts@lancastersu.co.uk
Music Editor
Oli Middleton
scan.music@lancastersu.co.uk
Screen Editor
Rhys Wright
scan.screen@lancastersu.co.uk
Fashion & Beauty Editor
Rhian Daniel
scan.fashion@lancastersu.co.uk
ERIN WILSON
Editor |
EDITORIAL
To begin, I want to thank my amazing team for putting together another fab issue. Special thanks
to Tobias Max Kafula for guest-editing a Black History Month themed section!
As we head into another lockdown I hope everyone is managing to keep as safe as we can wherever
you are in the world, hopefully SCAN can offer some respite in these increasingly crazy times!
The first month of back-to-uni-life has certainly been a turbulent one, I’m sure none of us never exepected
that our time at university would be conducted via a computer screen or that seeing those
we care about would be marred with so much worry.
I want this to be a message of reassurrance - life may look different, feel different and be different
at the moment, but we are still here. If you need a friendly face or article, I hope you can find such
amidst the pages of SCAN. If you are still here, so are we :)
Lifestyle Editor
Jennifer Kehlenbeck
scan.lifestyle@lancastersu.co.uk
Head of Photography
scan.photography@lancastersu.co.uk
Head of Marketing
Lilli Reuss
scan.marketing@lancastersu.co.uk
The Editorial Committee above is responsible for all content
and production of SCAN. Compliments, comments and complaints
to be addressed to Editor in the first instance. The Editor-in-Chief,
Shannon McCaul, is responsible for all legal matters
and significant reputational harm and can be contacted
at su.vp.societiesandmedia@lancaster.ac.uk
Printed by Mortons
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 3
N E W S
The Future of Journalism- An Interview
with Alan Rusbridger
Image courtesy of International
Journalism Festival via Flickr
Tom Burgess
NEWS EDITOR
SCAN had the pleasure of interviewing the
former chief editor of the Guardian newspaper,
Alan Rusbridger, to discuss the future
of journalism and challenges for the profession.
Journalism is a popular, if slightly daunting,
career path for students of all disciplines
from English Literature to History and
Politics. Rusbridger has seen the profession
change from a print-based monopoly on
information, to the present reality of 24/7
news coverage which is predominantly online.
The factors that made journalism the
career for Rusbridger still hold true today
through the vocation’s ‘variety’ and sense
of duty to ‘bear witness to the world’. In today’s
media landscape there are so many
different interpretations of what ‘journalism’
actually is that it is difficult for the journalists
themselves, never mind the public,
to define what it is that journalism does.
There is a staggering gap between how The
Sun views journalism and the New York
Times- ‘If there was that degree of difference
in brain surgery people would be saying how
can I trust that when you can’t even agree
amongst yourselves’!
The solution to defining journalism lies in
another problem for the profession going
forwards- how to separate proper journalism
from fake news. There is a tendency
among journalists to laugh at social media’s
citizen journalism as opposed to professional
work- there is a belief that the public will
miss journalists if they cease to function.
‘That message isn’t going through’ as people
don’t consider journalism to be the vital
service that it is. According to reputable
measures of trust ‘journalists tend to be at
the bottom’ and this poses a genuine threat
to democracy. One of the key pillars in a democracy
is a strong and independent press
that can hold all other forms of power (and
fellow media institutions) to account. People
are just more skeptical of newspapers
along with journalists as they are not the
sole gatekeepers of information anymore,
as they were in the age of the printing press.
Rusbridger said that ‘a lot of that is really
healthy’ as journalists can’t ask for ‘blind
trust’ while warning about the failings of
citizen journalism and social media.
Rusbridger explained that there is a key
distinction between ‘subjective and objective
journalism’. If you asked an American
journalist which category journalism falls
into they would say that it was objective.
In the UK most journalists would say ‘that’s
b****cks, the moment I choose my first sentence
in my story I am making a subjective
choice’. There needs to be a serious rethinking
of how journalism changes to gain the
trust of the public again, there needs to be
analysis ‘of how and why we do things’. The
younger generation is vital as they are ‘not
asking for £40,000 a year’ and can help ‘reframe
and remake’ how journalism is done.
Rusbridger acknowledged how different it
was to get into journalism compared to how
it used to be done: ‘work for the local paper
for three or four years and if you are lucky
you go and work for Fleet Street’. While
‘everything has changed’ it is clear that it is
not all bad news for prospective journalists
looking to break into the field. While the
traditional route is now nearly impossible,
due to the ever-decreasing numbers of local
papers, there are numerous opportunities
presented by the new digital world. Today,
anybody can write, challenge, and commentate
on the events of the world- Rusbridger
said that ‘you can get on anybody’s radar’.
This is a far cry from the world where people
had to get their news from newspapers and
only then what the editors of those papers
deemed important. As technology rapidly
advances new opportunities for the younger
generation are presenting themselves.
Rusbridger highlighted that only the young
have the ability to capitalise on these openings
as we ‘haven’t got any money’ and can
act as the disruptors which established organisations
cannot.
The advance of technology also poses the
potential for an existential threat to journalism,
in the form of AI. While we are not
nearly at the stage of all-powerful AI, there
are already algorithms that can report on
sports matches reliably and efficiently. Microsoft
recently made 27 people redundant
in the UK as AI filled their places. While this
is a justifiably terrifying prospect for aspiring
journalists it can present progress and
improvement instead of the end of journalism.
While sports commentary and story
selection maybe soon the domain of algorithms
Rusbrisger thinks it has the potential
to free ‘up money for what has to happen’ in
areas such as investigative journalism. He
commented that while AI may reduce the
number of journalists but there will always
be ‘lots of things that do require the human
brain’.
‘There isn’t enough money or security in it
if you’re not incredibly committed’ was Rusbridger’s
advice for up and coming young
journalists- you’ve got to see it as a ‘vocation’
and a vital public service which is increasingly
important. ‘You have to be realistic
looking at the media landscape and
thinking where you fit into it’ whether that
be starting up a local paper in Lancaster as
the current coverage isn’t good enough or
using new technology to invent new ways of
spreading information and news. In a way,
it has never been easier to get your words
into print, which Rusbridger emphasised as
‘it is really important to build up an archive
of what you do’. As it is so much easier to get
your voice heard, you’ve got to prove that
it is a voice worth hearing in the quality of
your work.
The future looks uncertain for journalism
as the old economic model of selling newspapers
and getting revenue from advertising
dries up. It is more important than ever
that young journalists take up the cause
of spreading reliable information that can
help shape the discourse around issues that
affect humanity’s future such as climate
change and coronavirus.
Rusbridger asserted that ‘it matters if we
believe that the fires sweeping through the
West Coast of America are caused by poor
forestry management or climate change’. If
we dismiss these fires as many media outlets
have done and simply say it was poor
forestry management then no policy changes
will occur, it will be put down as a human
error. Rusbridger pointed out that if what
is actually causing the increasing fires and
hurricanes is climate change, it could prove
‘cataclysmic to the human species’ and journalists
need to point out the facts of the
situation. There are more issues, such as the
ongoing pandemic, that require accurate
and informative journalism. In summary,
there truly has never been a greater demand
for the younger generation to invigorate
journalism and show people why it is a necessary
public service.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 4
N E W S
A Brief History of America’s Civil Rights
Movement
Image courtesy of Voices, Film
and Television
Sam Turner
America’s rich history of civil rights
activism is one that must be looked
back at and celebrated, both during
Black History Month and also
in daily life. The trials and achievements
of the movement have secured
its prime position in the history
of world politics, ushering in
our modern-day moral and legal
groundwork.
They also, now more than ever, hold a place
in current affairs, as the problems faced by
the Black Lives Matter movement and black
people in the current day strike an eerie
chord that echoes recent history.
Although the roots of the movement date
back to the Civil War and before, when activists
and the oppressed fought for basic
human rights under the shadow of the slave
trade, it is the Civil Rights movement of the
1950s to early 70s that won the modern legal
freedoms against a segregated society,
unwelcoming of reform.
Since the early 1900s, groups like the NAACP
had been working against racism and prejudice,
securing major legal victories against
voting discrimination and holding one of
the first civil rights marches in 1917, commonly
known as the ‘Silent Parade.’ However,
it was during the 1950s & 60s that they,
among others, began to force society into a
previously unseen and unimagined realm of
liberty for Black Americans.
By 1955, the voice of Rosa Parks and the
death of 14-year-old Emmett Till, which was
legally unanswered for by the accused, reverberated
through the homes and minds of
the country. Their voices, or lack of, became
catalysts in initiating a ‘golden age’ for civil
rights, calling for racial equality and legal
justice.
Victories for the NAACP followed, such as
the landmark 1954 Brown v Board of Education
decision that outlawed segregation
in public schools, and the 1950 decision to
desegregate railroad dining cars. Early legal
triumphs were important in countering the
de-jure segregation in the South,
Concurrently, whispers of the name Martin
Luther King Jr began to emerge. In 1957, after
the NAACP’s Montgomery Bus Boycott,
resulted in the desegregation of busses in
Montgomery, the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) broke onto the
civil rights scene.
Dr. King and the SCLC became the bridge
for civil rights between the minor victories
of the 1950s to a decade of revolution in the
60s. They were bolstered by the actions of
50,000 (mostly student) supporters in February
1960, who took part in “Sit-ins,” as they
filled up segregated seats in restaurants and
transportation, asking to be served.
With the support of the new and charismatic
President Kennedy, the movement saw
paramount victories in the early 1960s. The
further desegregation of Southern transport
in 1961 and the 1963 March on Washington
were key in garnering support for the movement
on a global scale. However, despite the
Civil Rights Movement’s growing momentum
and renown, federal power and many
Americans still refused to listen.
With the assassination of President Kennedy
in 1963, there was a forced change
from a period of cohesion. Groups like the
NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and CORE who once
shared almost identical morals and means
of securing rights, saw a division in ideology
and methods.
This was often exemplified by the efforts of
Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, two
historic civil rights leaders who were pitted
against each other in the media due to their
contrasting ideologies of nonviolence vs aggressive
resistance to the system.
Both saw success, with King and the SCLC
winning victories in their 1965 voter registration
campaign and their march from
Selma to Montgomery, which allowed President
Johnson to push the 1964 Civil Rights
Act through Congress, as the televised
march drew media attention and backlash
when peaceful protesters were attacked by
police and locals.
Whilst the SCLC and Dr. King worked with
the president to secure these rights, Black
suffering due to institutional problems,
such as poor living conditions for African
Americans in inner-city Ghettos, sparked
action from more radical groups.
Riots broke out in cities across
America between 1964 and 1968,
initiated by wrongful killings of
Black Americans, police brutality,
and the assassination of Martin
Luther King in 1968.
These years of perceived fragmentation
were a reaction to continued oppression
and an exemplification of the lengths the
movement was forced to pursue in order to
achieve basic human rights. Despite media
and historical condemnation, more radical
opposition was essential in pushing for further
federal action in the form of the 1968
Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination
regarding the sale, rental, or financing
of housing on the basis of race, religion,
national origin or sex.
In addition, much of the less-radical activism
of this period has also been lost in the
media portrayal of violence and aggression;
grass-roots groups like the Black Panthers
sought to resolve economic racial disparities
in inner-city areas, proposing a 10 point
program for systematic reform and with
their 1969 “Free Breakfast for Children” program.
At its peak, the program fed 20,000
children across 19 states and was a precursor
to the federally funded 1975 breakfast
scheme.
However, there is an unnerving parallel between
the 1964 Harlem riots, sparked by the
murder of James Powell, a teenager who was
shot dead by the NYPD, and May 2020 protests
at the wrongful killing of George Floyd.
The face of recent history can clearly be seen
today, attesting to the vitality of remembering
the past of the Civil Rights Movement.
In conclusion, with all things considered,
these groundbreaking victories for civil
rights must be at the forefront of modern
memory and celebration. However, the
repetition of the past in our modern age of
furthered equality begs the question, how
much has actually changed?. It challenges
us to think about how the world can continue
to move forward when leaders and individuals
are intent on committing actions
that belong only in the dusty pages of history.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 5
N E W S
Interview with Noah Katz on the Definition
of Antisemitism
Tom Burgess
NEWS EDITOR
SCAN had the pleasure to interview Noah,
the Campaigns Officer for the Jewish Society,
regarding the open letter to Andy Schofield
(the Vice Chancellor/VC) concerning
the acceptance of the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition
of antisemitism.
The open letter ‘is a definition of discrimination
against our minority community’
that Noah believes is ‘necessary because
antisemitism is such a unique form of prejudice
and because it is ingrained in so many
things’. Lancaster University is one of many
universities across the country that have yet
to accept this definition, despite a recent
letter from Education Secretary Gavin Williamson
about the possibilities of cuts to
funding if the definition is not accepted.
Noah explained that ‘people aren’t always
clear on what it is to be antisemitic’ and that
by having a definition it ‘restricts hate speech
in the sense that it is able to give a definition
of what hate speech would be’. When
asked whether antisemitism is overlooked
in comparison to racism, homophobia and
islamophobia the answer was an emphatic
‘yes, 100 percent’. Noah mentioned that antisemitism
is often presented as the views of
‘fringe groups’ but that recently there have
been incidents at Warwick University and
with Professor Miller at Bristol University.
In these instances appalling views are being
presented with the defence of being allowed
due to free speech. Noah said that they are
just continuing ‘age old antisemitic stereotypes
that literally date back to the Middle
Ages’.
Noah was keen to emphasise that ‘people
day to day will not see a difference. It’s
the fact that if an incident was to happen, it
would be dealt with in the proper way’. In the
statement by the Jewish Society it mentions
that there has been opposition to this definition
being accepted on the grounds of free
speech. In the statement there is direct reference
to the fact that this definition ‘does not
restrict valid critique of the State of Israel’
and Noah made it clear that by adopting this
definition ‘we’re not trying to stop conversations
at all’. It does say that the definition
will ‘stop those who mask their Antisemitism
with anti-Israel rhetoric’.
At the end of the letter to the VC it is made
clear that this definition has been adopted by
British Jewry, the NUS, the major UK political
parties, the British government, 35+
international governments and over 30 UK
universities. This is not a radical or unprecedented
step to take- even ‘our rivals at York’
have adopted this definition! There is currently
a petition to sign to show your support for
the adoption of the IHRA definition- hopefully
this will show the VC and university as
a whole that among the student base there is
widespread support for this change.
IThe university statement regarding this issue
mentions being ‘committed to building
a diverse, inclusive environment’ which is
‘free from prejudice’. There is an ongoing
review of the ‘University’s policies to support
equality and diversity’ and they add that
‘more formal consideration of the IHRA’s
definition of antisemitism may take place as
part of this’. However, ‘no specific timetable’
has been set yet although ‘the matter will be
discussed by University management in due
course’.
Image courtesy of Noah Katz
A Peek Into The Life & Legacy Of Thurgood
Marshall
Syed Adan Ahmed
NEWS EDITOR
At a time like this, we take a look at the life
and legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the first
Black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore,
Maryland on July 2, 1908, to William and
Norma Marshall. From a very young age,
Marshall’s parents instilled in him a deep
sense of appreciation for the U.S. Constitution
and for the principle of rule of law. He
also learned how to debate at a very young
age as a result of his father taking him and
his brother to watch judicial proceedings.
Fast forward to 1930, Marshall enrolled himself
in Howard University School of Law and
it was here that his personal views on racial
discrimination were strongly influenced by
Charles Hamilton Houston, the law school’s
Dean. Three years later, in 1930, he graduated
magna cum laude (with distinction)
and stood first in his law class. After graduation,
he started a private law practice in his
hometown of Baltimore.
A year later, he successfully represented the
National Association for the Advancement
of Coloured People (NAACP) in the discrimination
suit Murray v. Pearson and thus
began his long affiliation with the organization.
He was appointed as the Chief Counsel
for NAACP at the young age of 32. In this
capacity, he argued numerous civil rights
cases before the Supreme Court ranging
from Smith v. Allwright in 1944 to Sweatt v.
Painter in 1950, winning 29 of the 32 cases
that he took part in.
But his most historic and consequential case
came in 1954 when he represented Oliver
Brown, an African-American father in a case
against the Topeka Board of Education. This
case, titled Brown v. Board of Education
founds its way to the Supreme Court which in
1954 passed the landmark ruling that judged
racial segregation in schools a violation of
the U.S. Constitution and thus ordered the
desegregation of American schools.
Image courtesy of Jim Bowen via
Flickr
As a testament to Thurgood Marshall’s legal
intellect and competence, President Kennedy,
in 1961, nominated him to the U.S.
Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and later
in 1965, President Johnson appointed him as
the Solicitor General of the United States. In
this capacity, he represented the government
in 19 cases and won 14 of them. He later remarked
that this was the best job he ever had.
Four years later, in 1967, upon the retirement
of Justice Tom C. Clark, President Johnson
nominated and the Senate confirmed Thurgood
Marshall to the highest court in the
land. During his time on the bench, he compiled
a liberal record that included strong
support for the constitutional protection of
individual rights and opposition to the death
penalty. His philosophy of judicial activism
was eloquently described by this quote of his
“You do what you think is right and let the
law catch up”.
After serving on the bench for 24 years, Justice
Marshall retired from the court in 1991
due to failing health, and the vacancy thus
created was filled by Clarence Thomas who
was nominated by President George H.W.
Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in
the October of 1991.
Two years into his retirement, Thurgood
Marshall passed away on January 24, 1993,
due to heart failure at the age of 84. After laying
in state in the Great Hall of the United
States Supreme Court Building, he was buried
in the Arlington National Cemetery in
Virginia.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 6
C O M M E N T
Why You Think Feminists Are Crazy (And Why They Aren’t)
Lucy Whalen
3 years ago, I was sat in school adamantly
denying being a feminist to some boys.
They’d been talking about feminism in a way
that was anything but positive and then felt
the need to ask the girls in the class if they
identified with this strange, unknown creature.
The first couple who had the audacity
to say yes were greeted with mocking laughter,
so when they came round to me, my
natural reaction was to say no.
But I didn’t just say that to avoid being
laughed at; I actually thought that my response
should be the correct answer.
“Feminists hate men” and “they’re just being
irrational at this point” were arguments that I
heard pretty frequently growing up.
Yet, what I’ve come to realise since then is
that this isn’t what feminism is all about.
Ever heard of a misandrist?
This is a term used to describe people who
are strongly prejudiced against men – so,
like, the opposite of a misogynist but equally
as bad.
In contrast to this, feminist leader Bell Hooks
defines feminism as “a movement to end sexism,
sexist exploitation, and oppression.”
Sounds pretty different to aiming for the next
matriarchy...
But how come people still think feminists are
‘crazy man-haters’?
Well, let’s start at the beginning.
In the 19th and early 20th century, feminism
started to take shape as women began campaigning
for some equal rights, primarily the
right to vote. This is what is known today as
first-wave feminism.
However, this move obviously wasn’t liked
much by men in power at the time. (There
were those in favour of women’s suffrage,
such as David Lloyd George, who served as
British Prime Minister from 1916-1922, but
many weren’t.)
In 1914, one of the key figures for shaping
public health in the USA, William T. Sedgwick,
argued that women shouldn’t be allowed
to vote because it might render them
infertile. Eighty years later, television evangelist
Pat Robertson claimed that feminism
was nothing more than an “anti-family political
movement.” See a connection?
Many also believed that science backed up
their arguments. So, many of the women
fighting for change were seen as trying to
defy the laws of nature – which, in reality,
was just a society made by men, for men.
But there are other reasons for why feminists
are still sometimes seen as crazy.
Suffragettes were often portrayed
as fanatical for wanting
to defy the foundation
of this society. For example,
there’s a striking postcard
from the earth 20th century
of a screaming baby, throwing
a tantrum whilst yelling,
“I want the vote!”, clearly
suggesting that giving women
such a right would be just
as productive as giving it to
a child.
In other words, a woman
Image courtesy of Beth Train Brown
wanting power was not easily associated
with a woman in her right mind, and some
of those views that we thought had died out
after women gained the vote have instead
been drip-fed down the generations to the
feminism of our age.
I’m not trying to pretend that feminism is
perfect, but the majority of feminists want
nothing more than equal rights for themselves
and to support equality for others, too.
The last thing they want is hatred, anger, and
division.
Is that really so crazy?
Marah Johanna Koster
As a role-play game-master, it is said that, as
a group, you create the story.
Though that is not the limit of a gamemaster’s
job. You must make sure everyone is
comfortable and feels safe. Here are some
tips to help, especially in regards to neurodiverse
or traumatised players – because tabletop
is supposed to unite people in having fun.
Everyone has a burden, some more than others.
The term neurodiverse means deviating
from the norm. Keep in mind that people are
not at fault for their mental health and they
may need help, assistance, or warnings
As an umbrella term, neurodivergence can
include any kind of mental health issue, disorder,
or untypical traits. It doesn’t mean
you have to be a champion of understanding
every detail, but awareness, some preparations
beforehand, and keeping their comfort
in mind can really help. Most players will
work together with you so make sure they
feel trusted and have a place to talk about it.
Making Role-Play Accessible for ND Players
to exclude. This could be anything triggering
or traumatising. A trigger is something
that brings up past trauma and, of course,
we don’t want that. It is important to know
those words, events, topics as well as possible.
It doesn’t mean you should feel terrible
for slipping up once but try to memorise it
before every session.
Soft limits are less problematic but important
nonetheless. These are things that make you
or your players uncomfortable – this could
include themes like child abuse or certain
crimes. If someone asks for children to not
be victims or monsters, that is valid. You are
a team and want the best story for each of
you while staying on healthy grounds. Never
break those promises or they won’t trust you
as GM.
The next tip would be to give them the option
to pause or leave the game at any time, even
without explanation. It might be because
they feel triggered, unwell/uncomfortable,
or overloaded (this might often be the case
with autistic players.) It is crucial to check on
them and see if they need any kind of help or
to be left alone.
- Sound – make sure you have no
heavy background noises. Ask before
using any music/sounds for effect.
- View – if you have material to show,
digital or physical, make sure everyone
understands and can read it. Create
maps that point attention to the
most important things: doors, NPCs,
route, etc. Ask before using any pictures
that could incite disgust or fear.
- Names – make sure to use their
preferred name and their correct pronouns.
Make it a routine to check-in and, of
course, explain the difference between
in and out of character; that they can
use it any time by saying it. Ask for
feedback after a session: the more you
know the better you can make it for
them.
Image courtesy of Marah Johanna Koster
It is always a good idea to do a ‘session
zero’ to discuss those things. I like to start
by asking my players what topics they want
These are some possible issues to be aware
of for neurodiverse players can include:
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 7
C O M M E N T
Why I Can’t Support J.K. R*wling
Image courtesy of T_Majorie via Flickr
Rhys Wright
SCREEN EDITOR
If you’ve seen Twitter lately, you’ll have
noticed the inescapable uproar surrounding
a figure I used to respect and admire,
She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
For those blissfully ignorant, the notoriously
queerbait-y author of Harry Potter
came out of the closet herself – as a
transphobe.
Let’s break it down from the beginning.
First of all, if you happen to think that
specifying pronouns is political correctness
gone mad, or that deadnaming a
trans person is acceptable, or approve of
any other practice that denies trans, nonbinary,
and other gender-nonconforming
people of basic human dignities and recognition
then take a hard look at yourself.
Like most people of our generation, I idolised
You-Know-Who for years. I bought
countless Harry Potter books, films, and
merch, but it was her Twitter presence that
made me question my role in making her
several hundred pounds richer.
It was two years ago when I unfollowed
her. I’d noticed her unconstructive manner
of engaging with people online: if someone
had an interpretation of her books she
disagreed with she would shut them down
and insist they were 100% wrong, if someone
pointed out ret-cons in her works she
would refuse to admit it, and if anyone was
especially critical of her work they would
find she had blocked them. It was a harbinger
of things to come and convinced me
of her defensive approach of responding to
any criticism.
Her prior relationship with the LGBTQ+
community has been always been misguided
at best and exploitative at worst.
For over a decade now she has reaped the
benefits of queerbaiting by claiming some
of the Harry Potter characters are gay but
never in the actual texts, gaining social
praise for inclusivity without having to depict
queer characters in her work.
And when she wrote Professor Dumbledore
and his ex-lover Grindelwald into
her latest Fantastic Beasts film, their relationship
was scarcely even alluded to. Is
it really representation if it’s retroactive
and missing from the text itself? Many
suspected this queerbaiting was a way of
gaining the queer dollar without scaring
off the homophobic dollar, but who knows.
And then came what her spokesperson described
as a “clumsy and middle-aged moment”
when she liked a tweet calling trans
women, “men in dresses.”
Many were keen to give her the benefit of
the doubt but earlier this year she doubled
down on the trans-exclusionary rhetoric,
and every voice condemning her actions
seemed to fuel her vitriol. It started when
she tweeted in response to an article using
the term ‘people who menstruate’, insisting
that the proper term is women, even
though there are trans men who still menstruate
and countless women (post-menopausal,
pregnant, pre-pubescent, and many
others) who don’t menstruate.
Many then began to ask a simple question:
does she recognise trans women as
women, yes or no?
In her characteristic refusal to listen to
criticism, she dove headfirst further into
trans-exclusionary rhetoric, writing halfbaked
essays attempting to portray her beliefs
as rooted in reality and to conflate all
the criticism with abuse.
Her arguments that she is a ‘victim’ of cancel
culture and censorship are both laughable
and insulting. Firstly, she is not being silenced.
No one disputes that she cannot say these
things, she has a right to free speech and is,
disappointingly, using it and her influence to
further normalise abuse against an alreadypersecuted
demographic.
Secondly, people condemning her statements
and subsequently refusing to support her verbally
or financially is not ‘cancel culture.’ It’s
people putting their money where their mouths
are and refusing to endorse anyone who would
deny basic rights and recognition to another
human being.
Like most celebrities with a large following,
she has received threats of violence online.
These threats are a fringe group claiming to
speak for the mainstream, they do not represent
the trans rights movement (just as R*wling
does not speak on behalf of feminism). Threatening
anyone with violence is not okay but
claiming that these threats are representative of
all criticism she has received is untrue. She’s
not a free-speech martyr. She used her platform
to spread hate and misinformation and others
are using their platforms to condemn it.
The problem with the discourse around You-
Know-Who is that it mostly concerns the problems
she has faced as an individual and not
the detrimental effects on the trans community
caused by people of immense influence normalising
prejudicial stereotypes.
Judith Butler said it best in an interview I heartily
recommend you read: “[I]f we are going to
object to harassment and threats, as we surely
should, we should also make sure we have a
large picture of where that is happening, who
is most profoundly affected, and whether it is
tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It
won’t do to say that threats against some people
are tolerable but against others are intolerable.”
But the most baseless stereotype she has perpetuated
is the dressed-to-kill type, the harmful
belief that some trans women and cis men may
use access to gender reassignment or genderneutral
spaces to infiltrate cis women’s toilets
and changing rooms for sexual pleasure.
In her most recent book, R*wling employed the
trope of the perverted serial killer who dresses
as a woman to stalk and kill cis women. This
trope, popularised by films such as Dressed to
Kill and The Silence of the Lambs, has no basis
in reality and actively harms public perception
of the trans community. And let’s not forget the
irony of her publishing this book under a male
pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, also the name of
a notable conversion therapist.
In truth, trans people are more likely to be assaulted
in changing rooms rather than the other
way around because laws preventing them
from accessing the space for the gender they
present as marks them out and endangers them.
You-Know-Who can say what she likes and
still be a multi-millionaire, she can enter any
toilet or changing room without realistic fear
of being assaulted, she can go to any country
her passport will allow and be given legal recognition
as a woman and face no fear of being
called insane or dangerous or even be at risk of
execution.
She will never face people refusing to acknowledge
her as a woman, and she will never understand
the physical and mental strain of gender
dysphoria and transitioning, or the normalised
abuse that she is participating in.
So, think about that the next time you want to
spend £32 on a licensed Potter wand.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 8
C O M M E N T
Interview with a Student OnlyFans Image
courtesy of OnlyFans.com
Beth Train-Brown
COMMENT EDITOR
So, tell me a bit about OnlyFans
for those who aren’t familiar with
the site.
[Piri]: So, OnlyFans is a website for those
who want to sell premium content – it can
be anything but I’m assuming you want to
talk about the porn side! Customers can pay
monthly to subscribe and view the content.
You can upload anything you want – from
normal photos to lingerie photos, and sexually
explicit content.
How did you get into it?
[Piri]: I always wanted to try it but I was
always in relationships. However, I had a
breakup and was super broke at the time (big
old overdraft) so I finally decided to just go
for it in May of this year.
[ButterFlower]: I started it over lockdown. I
wanted to see what the hype was all about!
What sort of things do you post?
[Piri]: I post nude photos and videos as well
as lingerie shots, mostly just me posing and
looking cute. I did do some pay-per-view
masturbation videos but that’s just whenever
I feel like it!
[ButterFlower]: I post lingerie photos and
lewds, anything fun and flirty. (A lewd is a
tease photograph; not quite a nude photo but
teasing the viewer.)
Are you ever worried about what
this could mean for your professional
career if these photos were
found by someone who recognised
you?
[Piri]: There was always some fear about that
but, rationally, employers shouldn’t and can’t
discriminate against people for doing sex
work. I feel pretty confident that it won’t impact
my future other than starting off my adult
life with a huge cash injection! I do worry that
I’m desensitised to it all and underestimating
the impact this could have but, to me, it’s not
a big deal.
[ButterFlower]: Yes and no. I don’t post anything
that could be majorly controversial but
I keep my name out of it. Most people know
I have it; it’s not a huge deal. That said, I do
avoid posting explicit photos just in case. I
believe that it shouldn’t matter at all but sadly
we still live in a conservative society.
Have you had any negative experiences
doing what you do?
[Piri]: I’ve had some weird messages and a lot
of dick pics but I’m used to that now and you
can laugh it off. Something that gets to me
though is the odd time when somebody steals
your content. Someone made a fake account
on Twitter with my content and got about 500
followers. It was quickly reported and they
deactivated and apologised. It’s a really unfortunate
side to doing what I do but it taught
me to watermark my stuff.
“I got so much more comfortable
with my p*ssy!”
[ButterFlower]: A lot of people have said
weird things or got rude about it but honestly
I’m used to it now. Unsolicited pictures and
slut-shaming are (sadly) almost part of the job
description.
Is there a support network in place
for people who have those negative
experiences?
[Piri]: Well, I guess you’d want to talk to your
friends for their support in general but honestly
the community of other OnlyFans girls on
Twitter is insanely supportive. They will help
get stolen content taken down super fast; so
many girls helped me out I can’t thank them
enough.
[ButterFlower]: I know a fair few people who
do it and we talk to each other and my boyfriend
is super supportive but we just have to
look after each other.
How has running an OnlyFans
account affected your self-confidence
and self-image?
[Piri]: My self-confidence and self- image
have gone through the roof! I was always
pretty confident before but I just appreciate
my body so much more and believe people
more when they say I’m good-looking. I’ve
noticed that I’ve stopped worrying about eating
too much and stopped checking out my
size in the mirror (more just checking myself
out!) I also got so much more comfortable
with my p*ssy! I used to be self-conscious
and worry about how she looked but now I’m
really not arsed and I appreciate and see the
beauty in her so much more.
[ButterFlower]: I felt like a bad b*tch before
and now I feel like a bad b*tch with extra
cash.
How do you think the image of
what someone on OnlyFans is and
compares to what is shown in media?
[Piri]: The thing about the image that annoys
me the most is calling people “lazy” or saying
they’re “taking the easy way” for starting OnlyFans.
Yes, you can get successful but you
do have to work at it pretty hard and it’s not
like I’ve given up the rest of my life for it:
I still work another job and I’m going to do
a masters next year. Doing OnlyFans doesn’t
mean we don’t have other jobs.
[ButterFlower]: People think it’s full of girls
trying to scam – especially after the Bella
Thorne situation. But I just think if someone
is willing to pay, why not?
Now, there are a lot of rumours
about people making thousands
each week from OnlyFans – how
true is that?
[Piri]: I was hoping you’d ask this! As of just
now, I have made $11,700 from OnlyFans
alone and probably another grand or so on top
of that from Cashapp and Paypal. I’ve been
doing it for 14 weeks so, as you can imagine,
I’m gassed by how much I’ve made! These
days, I’m making about $3k a month (which
is about £2.3k). It does work, ladies.
[ButterFlower]: It can be true. I know a few
friends of mine who have made loads but
it depends on what you’re willing to post. I
make a lot of money but the pressure to post
more and more explicit or dirty material is always
there.
Do you have any parting advice to
give students considering starting
an OnlyFans?
[Piri]: My main advice would be: Reddit is by
far the best website for promoting your content.
Don’t get disheartened when you start,
either, because it does take a whole month to
get started. Finally, only post content that you
want to post. Lots of people will ask for more
and it can be easy to just go with it but there
is absolutely no pressure to cater to anyone.
Just post photos of looking cute if that’s all
you want to do.
[ButterFlower]: Do it but be careful. Don’t
use your real name, post only what you are
comfortable with and don’t let anyone pressure
you. (And make sure you pay your taxes!)
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 9
C BLACK O M M HISTORY E N T MONTH
Understanding Microaggressions
Tobias Max Kafula
GUEST BHM EDITOR
In this article, I want to explain what microaggressions
are. As we move to the stage as
a community to reaffirm our commitment
to being anti-racist within the Student Union
but also within the University itself and
the local community. Therefore, this article
would be an educational piece on the definition,
history, misconception, and the future
of microaggressions.
Racial Microaggressions can be defined as,
“the brief and everyday slights, insults, indignities
and denigrating messages sent to
racially minorities during individuals by
well-intentioned white people who are unaware
of the hidden messages being communicated”.
The definition illustrates that white
people who are genuinely well-intentioned
can fall I to
the trap of showing biases or state comments
that are considered to be offensive
in a wider context than they might realise.
How did this subject come about? Back in
1970, Dr. Chester Pierce was the first to coin
the term “microaggression”-- as common as
denim, now -- to describe the subtle racial
putdowns that degrade physical health over
a lifetime. But the concept is also rooted in
the work of Jack Dovidio, Ph.D., and Samuel
Gaertner, Ph.D. in their formulation of aversive
racism. While many well-intentioned
white people consciously believe in and profess
equality, they often act in a racist manner
unconsciously.
One of the misconceptions is that microaggressions
the same as racism. The answer is
yes and no. They are based on some of the
same core ideas about people who are minorities
or are marginalized in parts of the
world ( for example, that they’re not smart,
that they don’t belong, or that they make
good punchlines), but microaggressions are
a little different from
overtly racist, sexist, or homophobic acts or
comments because they typically don’t have
any negative intent or hostility behind them.
People who engage in microaggressions are
ordinary folks who experience themselves as
good, moral, decent individuals.
Microaggressions occur because they are
outside the level of conscious awareness.
Within Microaggressions there are three sections:
- Micro – assaults
- Microinsults
- Microinvalidations
Firstly, we look at Micro assaults. Micro- assaults
are Explicit and conscious derogatory
racist epithets that are purposefully meant
to hurt people of colour. Examples may include
but are not limited too:
- Name-calling
- Promoting discriminatory signs and flags
- Avoidant behaviour, purposeful discriminatory
actions.
In addition to this, we then begin to look at
microinsults which out of the 3 terms, tend
to be the one most recognised act of microaggression
as well as micro-invalidations. It
can be defined as unconscious and unintentional
demeaning slights made toward people
of colour. Examples are but not limited
to:
- Implying that one got a job because of quotas
- You don’t look Black/ white enough
- You are a credit to your race
Lastly, we look at the final term. Microinvalidations.
These, like microinsults, are the biggest
acts of microaggression acts in practice
throughout society. Microinvalidations can
be defined as being, communications that
exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological
thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a
person belonging to a particular group. Examples
are but not limited to:
- Commenting on how well someone speaks
English, when from an English-speaking
country in the Global South
- Statements such as “`When I look at you, I
don’t see colour”
- Comments such as “There is only one race,
the human race “
- Comments such as” I’m not a racist. I have
several Black friends”
In order to grasp the effects of microaggression
as it can hold on minorities, I need to
share with you my personal experience of it.
Throughout my 19 years of existence, I have
experienced various forms of microinsults
and microinvalidations. These included:
- “You’re black on the outside but white on
the inside”
- “You’re English is very good”
- “Where are you really from?”
- “Does your family live in huts?”
- “I never touched a black person’s hair before,
can I touch yours?”
- “You’re playing the Race card”
How did this affect me mentally you might
ask? Firstly, I felt that I couldn’t be myself,
and had to be the person that people wanted
me to be. As growing up, there was this atmosphere
of “leave your culture at the door”.
This consequently progressed into the feeling
that I never felt good enough or truly accepted
within society.
While I explained how microaggressions affected
me, we haven’t talked about how it
could affect BAME students with their Mental
Health. A report was done by the Why is
Curriculum White Campaign, tilted “, Builtin
Barriers: The Role of Race in Shaping BME
Student.
Experiences at Lancaster University. Their
findings were as follows,
• BAME Students experienced more depression,
self-doubt, frustration, and isolation
that impacted their education as a result.
• 19% of students surveyed feel their race had
a negative impact on their safety.
• For those who had experienced racism and
microaggressions, less than 5%
claimed they had reported it to either the
Union or the University.
47% of the participants feel they have to
modify their ethnic and cultural identity to
‘fit in’ with western norms in academic settings.
It shows that within Higher Education and
here at Lancaster University, BAME Students’
experiences will often be worse compared to
white students due to the racial institutional
barriers that are still present. In addition to
this, the worsening of their mental health
will see. BAME Students lose trust within the
university and are more likely to be less engaged
within the university community.
In order to combat this, we all need to make
an effort. I am asking readers to:
- Be constantly vigilant of your own biases
and fears.
- Don’t be defensive. Listen
- Be open to discussing your attitudes and
biases and how they might have hurt others
or in some sense revealed bias on your part
- Be an ally, by standing personally against all
forms of bias and discrimination.
By doing so, only then can we remain committed
and reaffirmed to the process of
decolonizing our institutions and be more
progressive in our to be more inclusive, not
only within the university but as well within
society.
Image courtesy of King’s College London
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 10
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Life and Legacy of Audre Lorde
Louisa Hinks
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a self-described
‘black, mother, warrior, poet’.
Her work aimed to ‘demystify the assumption
that these terms cannot inhabit the
same space: Black and lesbian, lesbian and
mother, mother and warrior, warrior and
poet.’
Lorde was widely known by others as a Black
feminist, poet, and lesbian
activist. She was the daughter of immigrants
and lived in New York City. She
spoke, through her activism and her published
works, on the importance of the struggle
for liberation among oppressed peoples
and of organising
intersectional activism across differences of
race, class, gender, sexuality, age and ability.
She received many honours and awards, including
the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit.
Lorde served on the board of the Feminist
Press in New York City and often gave readings
of her works at Judith’s Room, a
feminist bookstore in Greenwich Village.
Lorde published her first volume of poetry,
First Cities, in 1968 after leaving her job as
a librarian. She began to reach a larger audience
after the publication of Coal, by a major
company in 1976. Soon after in 1978, followed
what is often thought of as one of her
greatest works, The Black Unicorn, in which
she explored her African heritage.
One of the most defining moments of Audre
Lorde’s career was her 1981 presentation at
the National Women’s Studies Association
Conference. The part of the speech that most
stood out to me was: ‘After fifteen years of a
women’s movement which professes to address
the life concerns and possible futures
of all women, I still hear, on campus after
campus, “How can we address the issues of
racism? No Women of Colour attended.”
Here she addresses the problem of intersectionality
within the women’s
movements, a problem that also existed
within black rights movements.
These problems are still very prevalent in today’s
activism and representation of social
issues. Black women being doubly discriminated
against was something too often overlooked
and continues to be overlooked. And
as a lesbian woman, Audre Lorde had insights
into the intersections of racial, gender,
and sexuality-based discrimination, which is
part of why she is such an important figure in
the history of social change.
Audre Lorde died of breast cancer at age 58
in 1992. She had cancer for 14
years and wrote The Cancer Journals in 1980,
following her first stages of the disease. In
this book, which is now a Penguin Classic,
Lorde blends journal entry, memoir, and essay.
She judges questions
of survival, sexuality,
prosthesis, and
self-care.
In The Cancer Journals,
Lorde wrote: ‘I have
come to believe over
and over
again that what is most
important to me must
be spoken, made verbal
and
shared, even at the risk
of having it bruised or
misunderstood.’
This statement embodies
the way that Audre
Lorde lived her life. She
confronted injustices of racism, homophobia,
and sexism. Despite these being challenging
and emotionally draining topics to
broach on a regular basis, this was her life’s
mission. The messages conveyed through
her activism and poetry are still relevant lessons
in today’s society, giving power and a
voice to people facing injustice.
Image courtesy of Thomas Hawk via Flickr
---------------------------------------------------------------------
What is White Privilege?
Tobias Max Kafula
GUEST BHM EDITOR
White Privilege has been defined by Kehinde
Andrews, a Professor of Black Studies at
Birmingham City University, as “the benefits
that you get from being white. If you are an
ethnic minority there are certain disadvantages
you have.
The term was first introduced by former Civil
Rights Activist, William Du Bois, in 1935. He
first coined the term when discussing the differences
of a poor white man and poor black
man and how white people received more
assistance. However, the term came into
full effect after the groundbreaking essay by
Peggy McIntosh, an American Activist. Her
Essay, titled” White Privilege: Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack Peggy McIntosh” detailed
daily forms of White Privilege.
Examples of White Privilege in the UK
1) Black people were more than nine times
as likely to be stopped and searched by
police as white people. (2018 -2019)
2) Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons
are more than twice as likely to be
unemployed than white people. (2017)
3) White people are more likely to own their
own home, compared with BME
people. Just 21 percent of black African and
24 percent of Arab Britons are homeowners,
compared with 68 percent of white
Britons. (2017)
4) Pupils of Roma background are more than
three times as likely to be excluded
from school, compared with white British
children. Black Caribbean pupils are almost
twice as likely to be excluded. (2017)
5) Fewer than 60 percent of black students
achieve A* to C grades in English and
Maths by the time they finish their GCSEs
aged 16. White Gypsy and Roma students
have the lowest level of attainment in this
category, with just 10 percent attaining
A* to C grades. (2017)
( Link to the source: https://www.aljazeera.
com/news/2017/10/ways-white-peopleprivileged-uk-171011124754885.html)
This highlights that White people do not face
discrimination in terms of Education as a
direct result of the colour of their skin. The
same is true for Housing, Healthcare, and
Employment, in the UK. Meanwhile, other
ethnicities are more likely to be the victims
of a racist institutional system that will be
entrenched for generations – unless we take
action! In
order for us to this, we need to understand
the misconceptions surrounding white Privilege.
1) Using the term ‘white privilege’ is not racist.
2) Having white privilege does not mean that
you need to feel guilty about anything
3) Having white privilege does not mean that
you’ve never struggled – or that you
haven’t worked/studied hard
4) Having white privilege does not mean
you’re a bad person, it’s just about
understanding that people of certain races
are more likely to be discriminated
against.
Acknowledging White Privilege means that
we can work towards a solution: have these
discussions about how an unjust society
built by systemic racism still affects ethnic
minorities today. Furthermore, It helps us
understand that no-one truly benefits from
an unequal society, where race is a determining
factor. Finally it is the key to be building
relationships across races.
To conclude, educate yourself and others on
the barriers facing ethnic minorities. In addition
to this, you need to promise to Listen
and amplify the voices of all ethnic minorities
and understand it is not enough to be
“not racist” but rather proactively anti-racist.
Lastly, confront Racial Injustices even when
it is uncomfortable.
Image courtesy of Joseline Jagararo via Flickr
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 11
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bee on the BAME Attainment Gap
Tom Burgess
NEWS EDITOR
Bee the VP for Education, recently spoke
out about the poster that has gone up in
the Students’ Union offices. It attracted attention
due to the fact that it publicises the
12% attainment gap at Lancaster University.
Bee said that this issue ‘goes unnoticed’
and questioned ‘why are those students not
achieving the same as their white peers’? Bee
challenged the university on recruitment
grounds, describing how ‘in the south they
have really really diverse student bodies’-
Bee was frank about the fact that ‘we really
don’t here at Lancaster’. Bee recommended
looking at the ‘widening access participation
plan’ to see Lancaster’s specific goals
and aims in the coming years.
Bee warned that the statistics show that ‘in
over a decade we barely made progress’ towards
our goals. On a more positive note,
she does feel that ‘the attitude around this
has changed’. The one issue that Bee hopes
will decrease the attainment gap is having
‘anonymous marking’. Anonymous marking
has the advantage that unconscious bias is
completely eliminated which is one of the
many ways in which BAME students can be
disadvantaged. Bee’s predecessor Ian Meeks
was the person who first started calls for
anonymous marking to be used and Bee is
hoping to continue his work and get it over
the line. Bee hoped that by publicising the attainment
gap it will give the issue ‘that push
that we need to get anonymous marking’.
Bee is hoping to bring back the ‘Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion’ reps- ‘I’m hoping we
can relaunch it this year’. She thinks that
‘the more diverse voices we have the better
for change’. Putting the poster up in the
SU offices means that ‘all of the university
staff have to walk past’ those statistics, it’s a
challenge to ‘do something about it’. When
the attainment gap has been decreased the
poster can be taken down or amended to a
lower percentage. Bee has been getting increasingly
frustrated in meetings that she
has been having as she can’t understand why
they have ‘put on hold diversifying the curriculum’.
She is tired of all the promises and
statements that the university puts out and
wants to see ‘actual change’.
At Lancaster the target is to reduce the attainment
gap ‘to 6% by 2024/25’ but Bee
thinks that even if the university does get it
down to 6%, which is an ambitious target,
it will be far harder to eliminate the unconscious
bias that remains. Bee recognises that
it is frustrating ‘students starting the conversation
now will have left’ before the changes
will be in place- but ‘it is the right thing to
do’.
Bee rounded off the interview by telling us
that ‘it will be a long time before we see the
change that is needed’ but that the correct
first step is to embrace ‘anonymous marking’.
Another big step will be to diversify the recruitment
of the university-
‘if we have a more
diverse staff and more
diverse students we’ll be
better as a university’. To
help make these changes
happen consider becoming
an academic rep or
when the renewed EDI
roles become available,
sign up! Reducing the attainment
gap is the right
thing to do and as a student
body we can create
the pressure for it to happen.
Image courtesy of Lancaster University Student’s
Union website
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Being Black in Higher Education
Tobias Max Kafula
GUEST BHM EDITOR
Before we begin, this piece is a combination
of my own and other’s personal experiences
as a minority living in Britain and an
analysis of some of the national issues facing
minorities in higher education. It needs
to be stressed that this should not be used
to tell all the stories of what black people go
through in this nation. That being said, being
a black person in this country is exceptionally
difficult when we have institutional
barriers in education. This in addition to
dealing with the constant microaggressions
and negative stereotypes can make life even
harder. People often claim that compared to
other nations, Britain is the least racist. This
country is seen as more welcoming, progressive,
and committed to tackling the institutional
barriers that have hindered so many
black people. This article is here to inform
the reader from the perspective of a black
man and a student that we are far from it.
Furthermore, I would like to illustrate how
much progress we still need to make to be
much more inclusive.
My experience with the education system
can be best summarised as daunting. When
I first came to Lancaster, I was mentally prepared
to be a minority in a white institution,
based on the fact that I spent 17 years in a
white upper-middle-class town - in some
cases, I was the only black person in my class.
It was not a secret that Lancaster had issues
with racism. The first Google search results
brought up the Snow Sports Scandal. Then
former BAME Students Officer, Chole Long,
resigned following the leaking of photos of
the accused wearing a white T-shirt covered
in discriminatory messages. This did not
make me feel at ease coming to Lancaster.
As the year progressed and when I stood as
the candidate for the BAME Students Officer,
the extent of the racial problems at both the
Student’s Union and the university was appalling.
For instance, when students were asked
about their experiences of racism, 22% of
students said they have experienced racism
at Lancaster University. These experiences
can manifest in a variety of ways, including
racial slurs and sexual fetishisation, many
of them taking place within student accommodation.
30% of black and minority ethnic
students surveyed felt there were not enough
safe spaces to speak about race within Lancaster
University and 33% believe the Student’s
Union does not take issues of racism
seriously. When asked about their opinion
on whether the Student’s Union prioritises
race equality, over 38% of participants said
it fails to prioritise issues of race. Additionally,
over 25% of BME students believe that
the Union’s full-time officers (FTOs) fail to
support matters of race in the same way they
do other causes. These are just highlights of
the issues reported by the ‘Why is My Curriculum
Campaign White?’ report “BUILT-IN
BARRIERS: THE ROLE OF RACE IN SHAP-
ING BME STUDENT EXPERIENCES AT
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY REPORT 2020”.
Hearing about black student’s experiences at
Lancaster made me angry. Not only because
of what the report revealed, but also because
the Student’s Union took no action at the
time. The Student’s Union has a responsibility
to ensure that all students are safe from
horrible incidents like those reported. I truly
hope as the BAME Student’s Officer that
myself and the other FTOs can make a difference,
which is why we have created a strategic
plan to combat these issues. No student
should have to feel that their voice does not
matter. No student should have to think that
their Student’s Union doesn’t prioritise them.
In light of my experience, I argue that we are
not as progressive as we often like to claim.
We are still dealing with a brutal and aggressive
system that disproportionately affects
minorities in higher education. We need better
training for staff within education, our
curriculum decolonised, and a better, more
stringent policy on hate crimes. If we want
to have a progressive future in which we can
defeat racism, these are the solutions.
Image courtesy of Noun Project
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster @carolynneonline | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 12
S
C
R E E N
A R T S
& CULTURE
5 Best Horror Games to Celebrate the Spooky Season
A ROLYNNE
MUSIC
An Interview with Bastille’s guitarist, Will
FASHION
& B E A U T Y
The Waste Problem in the Beauty Industry
LIFESTYLE
Essay Writing: My Tips and Tricks
SCREEN
A Short Introduction to Scandinavian TV
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 13
A R T S & C U L T U R E
The 5 Best Horror Games to Celebrate the
Now that the nights are getting longer and
the weather is getting colder, there is no
greater Autumnal sensation than staying
in, snuggling under a blanket and playing
a calming video game. However, for those
who exist solely for Halloween antics, Animal
Crossing: New Horizons probably isn’t
going to provide you with much fulfilment!
If you are more inclined towards a gaming
experience that simulates a heart attack,
this list may provide you with gaming ideas
perfect for a Covid-19 Halloween.
1) Alien: Isolation
Holy hell … this game knows how to create
an atmosphere! In taking creative inspiration
from the film Alien, the game developers
have implemented iconic aspects from
the film, such as the constant tech beeping
and claustrophobic design of the spaceship,
into a strangely beautiful yet nightmarish
interactive experience. Although the game
is rife with jump-scares, it is the moments
of silence that are the most unnerving. The
very setting of an alien-infested ship leaves
you peeking around every corner and hiding
in every locker out of sheer paranoia.
Spooky Season
Maddy Jeffrey
This title is
ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR
likely to be remembered
as
a defining horror
game of the
outgoing console
tion.
genera-
2) Outlast
The first Outlast
game is a
masterpiece of
the jump-scare
horror genre!
As you play as
an investigative
journalist
in a decaying
asylum, you often ask ‘why?’ when your
character insists on persevering with his
venture despite the presence of the unique
patients. With narrow hallway chases, hiding
in lockers and oppressive lighting, this
game ticks all the boxes of a good horror
game. Although the gameplay can become
repetitive towards the half-way point, it is
still well worth a play with your flatmates!
3) Resident
Evil 7: Biohazard
Would a horror
game list be
complete without
at least
one Resident
Evil title? Tonally,
Biohazard
is a departure
for the series;
comparatively
with classic
Resident
Evil titles, the
visuals are a
step-up and
the overall atmosphere
is far more immersive, so much
so that this game may be too much even
for a committed horror fan! The events in
Biohazard are truly horrifying and the gore
is sometimes excessive but if you are of a
strong mental and physical disposition, this
game is not to be missed!
4) Until Dawn
This cinematic, choice-driven game is easily
one of the most immersive video games ever
Image courtesy of @hjl via Flickr
to have existed! In adopting all the quirks
of 80s and 90s slasher movies, Until Dawn
is unapologetically an homage to that era.
With a diverse cast of comically stereotypical
characters, the tone feels familiar, yet
the depth of the storyline surpasses that of
a love-to-hate slasher film. Academy-award
winner, Rami Malek, is just one in an incredible
cast that brings the game to life. Until
Dawn is only about eight hours long but its
replay-ability will leave you frequently returning
to collect every bit of lore!
5) Dead by Daylight
For those missing out on human contact
and want a gaming experience you and your
friends can enjoy together, Dead by Daylight
will help you finally find out who would die
first in a horror movie! With iconic characters
from the horror canon being the playable
killer, hunting out the other players
can be exhilarating and will give everyone
something to laugh about. The player rotation
between the killer and the survivors
keeps gameplay fresh, meaning it will be
3am before you know it! Luckily for gamers,
social isolation is nothing new but for those
missing their friends, this game will be sure
to lift your spirits in a maniacal sort of way!
Review: Hamnet
Beth McMillan
Whether we like it or not, at school we
are all introduced to (or forced to suffer
through, whichever way you look at it!) William
Shakespeare’s writing. I confess, I love
a good Shakespeare play but, until recently,
I had never really stopped to think about the
man behind the works. Too often, long-dead
authors can become dehumanised mysterious
figures of the past, remembered only
through the legacy they left behind. Reading
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet for the SCAN
book club made me fall in love with the
famous Bard in a new way. Writing from a
range of perspectives within Shakespeare’s
extended family, O’Farrell paints an extraordinary
picture of Elizabethan England and
the life and times of England’s favourite
playwright.
The novel is centred around the untimely
demise of Shakespeare’s beloved son, Hamnet,
from the plague. Through her intimate
depiction of the events leading up to the
tragedy (including the plague’s sinister
journey to England), the family’s final moments
with their son and their grief in the
aftermath, O’Farrell brings a humanity to
the Shakespeare family that transgresses
the boundaries of time. Their struggles do
not seem so far away from our own in the
modern-day and these ‘historical figures’
are effortlessly brought to life in new and
imaginative ways.
Woven throughout the text alongside the
main narrative through a series of flashbacks
is a quiet and understated yet beautiful
love story between William and his
future wife Anne. I was in hysterics at Will
being quite the ‘lad’ and his frankly pathetic
attempts at flirting! I found myself thinking
“Seriously Will? You’re meant to be the
wordsmith – you can do better than that!”.
Through this interweaving of the past and
present of Shakespeare’s life, we get to know
the man behind the mask; he is a young
man desperate to escape his abusive father’s
shadow and forge his own path, fed
up with his small-town life and yearning
to explore the world. We see Shakespeare
through many complex guises: the scholar,
the teacher, the writer, the son, the father,
and the husband.
Who else but Shakespeare would be rebellious
enough to marry Stratford’s resident
witch? Based on the true fact that Anne was
suspected of practising witchcraft (probably
due to all single women with green fingers
in Shakespeare’s time being regarded
with suspicion),
O’Farrell
also explores
the hostility
created
by the match
and the vicious
rumours
surrounding
Anne. By portraying
Anne
as genuinely a
‘witch’ – if you
count making
herbal remedies
and being
slightly psychic
as ‘witchcraft’
– we get
an interesting
insight into the way rumours are blown out
of proportion in small rural communities.
We are also able to glimpse where Shakespeare
may have got some of his inspiration
for his more fantastical ideas and brilliant
feminist commentary.
O’Farrell creates a beautiful landscape in
which characters thrive and the late 1500s
are brought to life in vivid and vibrant
technicolour. The book is an extraordinary
Image courtesy of Megan Jones
retelling of Shakespeare’s life in all its beautiful,
simple humanity and promise of his
future legacy. However, we learn that, in
the end, it is not his legacy that matters but
what he did with it, as we see the wonderful
words that pay tribute to and immortalise
his son in Hamlet. Witty, well-researched
and expertly told, Hamnet was exactly the
kind of book I needed in my life and I would
definitely recommend it.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 14
A R T S & C U L T U R E
Interview with the Author, Andrew
Miller
Alistair Williams
Andrew Miller is a British author, originally
from Bristol. He is the author of eight
novels, and his most recent, Now We Shall
Be Entirely Free, came out in 2018. Andrew
studied English and creative writing at
university, culminating in a PhD in Critical
and Creative Writing at Lancaster University,
from 1995 to 1997. Miller’s novels fall
into the genre of historical fiction, and he
has been compared to Hilary Mantel by the
Guardian. SCAN managed to speak with
Miller (over the internet) on Friday 16th
October.
1) What drew you to writing historical
fiction?
I didn’t set out wanting to write ‘historical’
fiction. Before I was published, I wrote all
sorts of stuff, probably not much of it ‘historical’.
But the first two novels I published
had 18th-century settings and so I found
myself being described as a historical novelist
and with, perhaps, some expectation I
would continue in that way. For that reason
- or that in part - I made sure the third book
was contemporary (Oxygen), and since then
I’ve tended to alternate between fiction set
in the more or less now and fiction that
might fall under the ‘historical’ heading. My
publishers - wonderful publishers - have always
been happy for me to write whatever I
wanted, and that’s what I’ve done.
It’s true, however, that I’ve always loved reading
‘historical’ fiction. My first really powerful
experiences of reading were probably
Rosemary Sutcliffe’s novels for young readers,
particularly Eagle of the Ninth, which
I guess I read at about eight or nine years
old. It’s hard to say exactly what the draw of
historical fiction is above and beyond what
makes any fiction worthwhile. For me - for
many readers - history is exciting. The past,
as they say, is another country and good fiction
is one of the ways we can travel there. I
feel very at ease writing about the world of
two hundred years ago. It doesn’t feel freakish.
Nor does it feel somehow less relevant
than fiction set in the present, though I accept
that one view of ‘the role of the novel’
is that it should be some sort of state of the
nation report. That’s fine, it can be very effective,
but it’s clearly not the limit of what
fiction can do. (What is the limit?)
The truth, I think, is that what we want from
fiction is complex - an expanded sense of
things (life), a view into what’s normally
hidden from us (the minds of strangers), a
reality more coherent than the one that surrounds
us (this can be a relief, it can be healing).
Also, beautiful language (language that
works) and perhaps just the company of another
voice, another sensibility that we can,
at our leisure, take inside of us. And these
wants are just as likely to be supplied by a
book following the lives of people in a world
lit only by fire as it is by one lit by the light
of electronic screens. Good writing is good
writing. ‘Setting’ is not that important.
2) Why do you have a focus
towards the early
romantic period?
The late 18th century and
early 19th appeal, I think,
because they are both distinct
and yet at the same
time, recognizable and
‘modern’. In this country,
the 18th century sees an
acceleration in the decline
of religious faith and
a rise in scepticism and
the secular. That’s what I
mean by modern. If you go
back much earlier you need
to factor in the role of faith in
people’s lives, public and private.
That’s very interesting but
it’s tricky to try to convey just how
central that faith was, how much part
of the shape of life. We are so far away
from that now.
3) Who is your favourite author
and why?
Well, I don’t have a favourite author, so I’ll
give a couple of names. D.H Lawrence got
me started (also Hardy). The Rainbow and
Women in Love are among the best things
written in English in the 20th century. And
Penelope Fitzgerald was a kind of genius. I
love her work, I love her wisdom. The Blue
Flower should be in anyone’s top ten list of
great historical fiction.
4) Has lockdown inspired you
or hindered you?
Lockdown’s been pretty good. I was able to
work every day and that’s not normally possible.
The world was quieter and calmer; I
felt the same way. That said, I’m a little over
it now. Can we move on, please?
5) What do you have planned
next?
I’m in the last stages of finishing a little
novel called ‘The Slowworm’s Song’. It’s my
first time writing in the first person and I’ve
found that hard. No real idea if I’ve managed
it or not. I don’t show my work to anybody
until I’ve taken it as far as I can, then it goes
to my editor and agent and I wait, very nervously,
for the responses.
6) Did your PhD from Lancaster
University help you become a
writer?
I used the universities as my patrons. I had
no real interest in having a PhD. The best
thing about being at Lancaster was having
David Craig as my supervisor. A calm and
serious man, quietly helpful but never intrusive.
7) What is the best piece of advice
you have for young writers?
Best advice? Camus used to say to young
writers ‘Be ambitious’. That’s not bad. I’d
add, be patient. Good writing, Art, takes
time.
8) What was your first writing
success?
The first work I ever published was a poem
in the Rialto magazine. I was sent a nice letter
with a five-pound note enclosed.
9) When did you
first realize that
you wanted
to become
a writer?
I was eighteen
and
taking my
A levels. I
thought
t h e r e
couldn’t
possibly
be a better
way
to use my
life.
10) Do
you have
any writing
quirks
that you would
say are specific to
you?
Probably lots but I might not recognise
them as such. Ask my daughter or my
friends.
11) Would you say you have a
writing routine?
Routine is good if you can manage it but life
often gets in the way so it’s important to be
adaptable. Write when you can and be ready
to write anywhere.
Image courtesy of Abbie Trayler-Smith
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 15
A R T S & C U L T U R E
Covid-19 Cannot Stop Student Creativity
– An Interview with Lancaster University
Art Society
Maddy Jeffrey
ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR
interactions and any content for the members
via our social media.
Image courtesy of Lancaster University
Art Society
We spoke to Amie, Roseanna, Annie, and
James from Lancaster University Art Society
to discuss how they are coping with this
Michaelmas term.
1) These past few weeks have been
stressful for students across all UK
universities. There is constant uncertainty
regarding new restrictions;
subsequently, have you been finding
it difficult to run your society?
Amie (President) - I think it has been a definite
challenge! As we can’t have meetings in
person and there were issues with the handover,
we don’t have the facilities to have all
the sessions we wanted to run in person.
Also, with the evolving rule restrictions, we
are constantly changing and tweaking our
plans to be able to give our members the
best experience we can. However, because
of Zoom and Teams and social media, we
can have our exec meetings and do our activities
online with the members which is
positive. This isn’t the way we wanted this
year to go but we are using the resources we
have!
2) Have restrictions limited what
you can provide to your members?
Roseanna (Social Media) - Yes. The Art
Society used to hold weekly art events on
Tuesday to provide hands-on activities for
our members. It is indeed difficult as members
now may not have access to art supplies
such as acrylic paints, brushes, pencils, etc.
3) Freshers Fair is a major part of Welcome
Week at Lancaster and with the
move online, all societies had to think
on their feet! How has your engagement
fared, as a result?
Annie (Secretary) - We definitely had to
think on our feet about the move to online;
the art society is a very interactive one so
we’ve faced a lot of challenges when trying to
think about how to make our society accessible
and enjoyable to any members. I don’t
believe our engagement in terms of expressions
of interest or people asking questions
has suffered too much. We have had quite a
few people showing their interest and wanting
to know how we’ll be operating. We did
have to make the decision to postpone any
art sessions for this first term (we just faced
too many complications in trying to make
the sessions a viable option). However, this
was not due to a lack of engagement at all.
We will definitely be trying to keep up the
4) Many artists are seizing the opportunities
provided by lockdown
to experiment! Have you collectively
been able to derive any inspiration
from your experiences of
Covid-19?
Amie (President) - I think the lockdown
has definitely given artists more time for
self-reflection and the time to practice new
techniques and investigate different ways of
creating art. However, we feel like Covid-19
and the stress of the current world has had
such a negative impact on mental and physical
health. Through the art society and the
themes we will use each week, we want to
try to use it as a medium of escapism and,
despite everything, focus on the good things
in life.
5) For people considering joining
your society, are you currently
working on any new projects together,
or do you work on a more
individualised basis?
Amie (President) - On a weekly basis, we
usually have a theme that we encourage
members to create their art around. This
gives a community feel despite the distance
between us and the different styles each person
creates. We have some possible group
collages/activities planned for later on in
the year which will create a bigger collective
piece, but at the minute this is still depending
on the current restrictions.
6) With returning to degrees and
student life, many (myself included)
will be struggling to make time
and energy to creatively utilise
their emotions. What would your
message be to new and returning
students who are finding creativity
to be a struggle?
Amie (President) - I think my message to
those students is that it is ok to feel that way.
Due to the current climate, there is a lot of
uncertainty and panic that is hard to ignore.
My suggestion would be to find a routine
that works for you; routines are known to
alleviate stress and anxiety and allow you
to designate time for what matters to you
as an individual. Especially with the online
self-lead learning during term 1, the importance
of having a routine to regain some
semblance of normality has never been as
important. This is why, as a society, we have
our meetings at a designated time every
week to provide a platform of relaxation and
escapism for members to self-reflect and
use their creativity to express themselves.
7) Artistic expression is more than
painting on a canvas; it is a process
that involves collaboration, space,
and resources. Do you fear the longterm
impact Covid-19 will have on
people’s engagement with the creative
world? As the access to art supplies
is costly and difficult, do you feel
it is important to continue to push the
importance of art in discussions surrounding
how university life should
be structured?
Roseanna (Social Media) - I do believe
that artistic expression, or the sense of art,
is and can only be developed on a long-term
basis. Covid-19 has brought restrictions limiting
the activities we can host, which actually
created a barrier for us to get involved
with a lot of works involving collaboration,
or works that have to be conducted in specific
locations that could have been shutdown
due to the virus. It is very important
for us to get engaged online and have regular
events related to our art interests.
8) Obviously, the lockdown rules
are changing daily. Do you have
any major events planned for this
academic year or are you just seeing
how things go on a weekly basis?
James (Events Coordinator) - We have taken
the decision to host online-only events
for now. We are going to keep an eye on how
restrictions change, and as soon as it proves
possible to host in-person sessions again
we hope to be able to do so, but for now,
the most important thing has to be putting
the safety of our members first whilst still
encouraging as much member engagement
in the society as possible, and online seems
like the best way to do this. Because of this,
we haven’t planned any major events for
this term, but we still hope to be able to host
more events in terms two and three!
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 16
M U S I C
The Joy of Making Playlists
Max Grainger
Quite often when it comes to music, I can
find myself being a bit of a purist; or, in probably
more accurate terms, a snob. I like to sit
down and listen to an album because that’s
how the artist intended for their music to
be listened to, right? Maybe it’s because of
how I tend to listen to music, which is typically
through physical media such as CDs
and vinyl, which really doesn’t help with the
whole ‘snob’ thing, does it? When listening
to music I tend to avoid playlists that others
have made, or those Spotify playlists made
to fit any ‘vibe’ or ‘feel’. Albums are how music
should be listened to, each track is put in
context, flowing into the next as intended.
Listening to a playlist means you lose some
of that, and in a way lose a part of a song. Or
at least, that’s the case for a pre-generated
playlist, made by some algorithm to fit your
mood and taste.
But personal playlists are something different.
You can have a huge range of playlists,
be them for pre-drinks, an artist you love,
made to fit a certain mood or time of year,
or just songs that you like. In some ways, a
playlist can make your connection to a specific
song even stronger. Because you can
just stick them on whenever without the
feeling that you have to complete them like
you do albums, playlists can be soundtracks
to moments of your life that would otherwise
be silent. Songs you hear at certain
times will always be associated with those
moments that stick out to you, and the
emotions you have tied to those songs will
be stronger. Picture this: you’re on a train on
the way back from a quite important family
event. You’re not feeling the best and to
pass the time on a long journey you stick on
your playlist of favourite songs. Staring out
of the window at the rolling countryside as
rain trickles down the window, that song
comes on, and it just fits. From now on, for
better or worse, that song will always be associated
with that moment. Thanks to your
playlist, it means something more to you
than before.
A favourite of mine is making playlists for
specific times of the year. Earlier this year,
on maybe one of the sunniest days of the
year so far in late February, the uncharacteristically
bright weather put me in one
of those summery moods. The storms we’d
been having all month had relented, just for
a day, so I started making a summer playlist.
Handpicking favourite songs that you know
will fit a certain time of year, especially when
it’s nowhere near that time, can help you
get through those rough times. Tired of the
wet and grey days of the late winter slump?
Make a summer playlist for the (hopefully)
bright and warm days ahead. Got a long car
journey ahead? No road trip is complete
without an accompanying soundtrack. Just
can’t wait for Christmas? Well, it’s never
too early to start preparing your Christmas
playlist.
In other ways, playlists can act as a form of
catharsis. Who hasn’t made themselves a
playlist of sad songs for those times when
you’re just feeling a bit rubbish? Sure, there
are countless ‘sad’ playlists out there that
are just a search away, but having your own
songs that make you, and maybe just you,
sad makes it hit just that little bit more. These
are your songs for you and your time alone,
not something for consumption by everyone.
A step above the sad playlists are the even
more melancholic break-up playlists. Probably
the most personal of all, these playlists
can be filled with your ex’s favourite songs,
the songs you showed them, and the songs
you associate with the times you spent.
Sometimes you’ve just got to let it all out,
and there’s no better way than making a
playlist of tracks that you know will just do
it for you. But after the inevitable sadness,
there’s the acceptance and the time to move
on. And the time for the strong, independent,
I-can-do-it-myself playlist. You’re over them
and you’re over that crappy breakup playlist,
and it’s time for you to get your head back in
the game. Fill it with the tracks that get you
motivated, the ones that you wake up in the
morning for. Fill it with those energetic, angry
songs that all your friends hate. So what
if your housemates can’t stand you blasting
Death Grips? You’re stronger now, and this
playlist is getting you through those tough
times where you could be lying in bed wallowing
in your own sadness. Goodbye The
Smiths, hello happier times.
And that is why making playlists is such a
joy. They’re the soundtrack to the movie of
your life, however mundane that movie may
be. It doesn’t matter if they’re the soundtrack
to a once in a lifetime holiday or just songs
that you can stare out of windows to. Playlists
are your hand-picked selection of songs
that mean something to you. They can be an
album-length compilation of exactly your
choosing, each song fitting the same mood,
or they can be vast, sprawling collections of
every song you’ve ever loved, a never-ending
mix of everything you love listening to.
They’re yours and yours alone. So embrace
that. Go ahead and make that playlist, then sit
back, relax, and enjoy the tunes.
Image courtesy of Olivia Middleton
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 17
M U S I C
Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension: A
Break-up with the Past
Jonathan Robb
CAROLYNNE ONLINE EDITOR
Sufjan Stevens’ music has always been inspired
by America, be it American folklore,
history, or geography, particularly on his
two albums inspired by states Michigan
(2003) and Illinois (2005). This is probably
what makes The Ascension such a stylistic
difference, as Stevens makes a deliberate
rupture with the Americana of his previous
albums for something darker and more introspective.
Perhaps the most notable change is the
sound of the music itself which rejects the
folk instrumentation of Stevens’ previous
album Carrie and Lowell (2015) for an electropop
soundscape. The tone is set straight
away on intro track ‘Make Me an Offer I
Cannot Refuse’, which starts off with choral
singing suddenly interrupted by synths,
and ends with an extended one-minute
instrumental outro with electronic percussions
and singing synths. From there the
album encompasses a wide soundscape
from glitchy production (‘Ativan’ and ‘Death
Star’) to dream pop (‘Sugar’) to even traces
of new age and ambience (‘Die Happy’). Often
the songs will feature extended instrumental
outros allowing the various synths
and electronic sounds to express the tone
themselves. While these songs have a very
different flavour to them as opposed to his
folk music, electronic is a genre that Stevens
has previously explored, and his songwriting
skills have lost none of their talent in
switching between genres, crafting songs
which match the tone of the album and lead
to some occasional really impressive sonical
highlights.
The subject matter of the album feels undeniably
heavy and is perhaps best expressed
in the album’s 12-minute long closing opus
‘America’, which centres around the repeated
haunting refrain of ‘don’t do to me what
you did to America’, a plea of hopeless protest
against a culture he once admired but
now finds to contain a spreading rot. The
song uses multiple relations to religious imagery
and expression, which has a certain
emotional resonance from an artist who has
referred to himself as a Christian throughout
his career and made frequent reference
to it in his music, now finding himself in a
country where the Church is being distorted
into more of a political than spiritual identity.
Stevens also turns an introspective gaze
onto himself, pondering about the purpose
of his life as he nears middle-age on track
‘Goodbye To All That’, and worries about
the impact that his life will have had on
those around him on the standout title track
(which might just be one of the best songs
of the year).
That said, this might also be his most overtly
romantic album yet, with many songs featuring
lyrics addressing a lover directly in a
way often unseen in Stevens’ music. Not all
of the relationships described are necessarily
happy: see the protest against a difficult
and manipulative lover in ‘Video Game’ or
his attempts to reconcile a hurting relationship
in ‘Sugar’, however it is ultimately the
album’s romantic elements which give it
it’s hope. Perhaps this is most clearly displayed
on the track ‘Tell Me You Love Me’,
in which Stevens spends the first 3 minutes
of the track voicing his insecurities and
worldly doubts while pleading for his lover
to confirm their love for him, before in the
last minute of the song the instrumental
suddenly blossoms and swells as Stevens
decides to choose to cling onto the love he
has for them in spite of everything, placing
his certainty in it.
The Ascension is not necessarily the Sufjan
Stevens album that people expected, and
certainly, for some, it may prove to be too
much of a rupture in style. Yet musically it
certainly reinforces the themes of the album
as he rids himself of the style attached
to Americana in exchange for ethereal electronics
far removed from any set geography.
Ultimately, it is the strength of Steven’s
songwriting and some of the record’s emotional
moments which make this another
strong entry into Steven’s discography.
Ninja Sex Party – The Prophecy Album Review
Image courtesy of ninjasexparty via instagram
Image courtesy of asthamtickittyrecords via
instagram.
Lauren Banks
CAROLYNNE EDITOR
Comedy albums are hit and miss. But
Ninja Sex Party’s 5th original album, The
Prophecy, is one of the best that they have
released.
After 12 years and 8 albums together, duo
Danny Avidan and Brian Wecht work together
seamlessly. Avidan plays the sexedup,
spandex-clad Jewish superhero-withno-powers
Danny Sexbang, while Wecht
is the silent mass-murderer Ninja Brian. A
strange combination, but one that will never
fail to make you laugh.
The album opens with an introduction, before
segueing into the 11-minute epic ‘The
Mystic Crystal’, which tells the tale of Danny
and Ninja Brain going on an epic quest to
free a princess kidnapped by a necromancer.
This was the first single from the album,
and an extremely fitting one. It doesn’t feel
like just one song – the style changes several
times, and the story is genuinely funny.
In one memorable section, Danny tries to
defeat the evil necromancer with love, only
to get his legs broken and for Ninja Brian
to kill the necromancer by using Danny as
a club. In the same vein as their other long
song, the 9-minute 6969, it spins together a
bizarre, fun story that grips you throughout.
My favourite song on the album has to be
the ballad ‘Wondering Tonight’. While at
first it seems like a mournful rumination on
lost love, it turns out Danny Sexbang is just
wondering who his ex is banging now. However,
while the lyrics are raunchy and ridiculous,
Avidan’s voice is just beautiful.
Without a doubt, the funniest song on the
album – and in my opinion, one of the funniest
songs NSP has penned – is ‘Welcome to
My Parents’ House’. About bringing home a
girl while your parents are home and being
told to keep it down by your mum, it really
hit home with me, and made me think about
all the times as a 16-year old I’d come home
with a boy or a girl and try to spirit them
away to my bedroom without my parents
trapping me with embarrassing questions.
Interspersed between songs are little skits
that add to the comedic value of the album.
My personal favourite is about the wishing
bear, but all of them are fun little interludes
to break up the album.
You can’t discuss a Ninja Sex Party album
without looking at the music videos. Always
high concept, most are either fully or partially
animated, beautifully shot, and telling
a story throughout. ‘Wondering Tonight’,
while the lyrics are infinitely sad, there is
something incredibly funny about seeing
all the romantic moments between Danny
Sexbang’s lost love and her new man with
Ninja Brian in the background of every shot.
While we don’t yet have a music video for
‘The Mystic Crystal’, the preview shots and
animation look incredible and will be well
worth the wait.
In an interview with Vanyaland, Avidan and
Wecht opened up about what their favourite
part of recording the album was. Wecht
replied that it was working in the legendary
LA studio Sunset Sound, where artists such
as The Doors and Elton John have recorded,
saying that ‘all of these incredible artists
have worked there, and being in that space
and doing our songs about wizards and
dicks and stuff felt like we were really a part
of history’.
The Prophecy is now available to stream on
Spotify and Apple Music!
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 18
M U S I C
Bastille back with ‘survivin’’: An Interview
with band guitarist, Will
Beth Train-Brown
COMMENT EDITOR
“We’re coming back with a new kind of sound;
we’re coming back with a higgledy-piggledy
mess – but cool.”
Weirdly enough, your new single
‘survivin’’, which was released just
last month, is quite relevant for
that lockdown feeling.
It was written before all of this kicked off but
we were speaking about this the other day.
It’s almost not important what the intentions
were when we wrote it because people
listen to it and it speaks to them. When you
write something and release it, it becomes
public property in a way.
A lot of our songs, Dan will write with something
specific in mind but then you’ll meet
fans who say, this means this to me. And you
can’t say no because, to them, that is what
it means.
Dan, Bastille’s frontman, has spoken
about writing this from a place
before lockdown, using it to explore
anxiety, self-doubt and the
overwhelmingness of modern life.
What does it mean for you?
I suppose the theme of self-doubt is quite
universal, especially since COVID happened
and anxiety is through the roof.
It’s interesting because I know Dan very well
so when I listen to lyrics he’s written, it’s not
necessarily personal to my life because it’s
him who I hear saying these things. It’s different
when the lyrics are written by someone
you know personally. For me, a lot of
the songs, lyrically, don’t have a personal
connection because they’re written by my
friend and I know what inspired them.
It’s interesting you talk about that
distinction between listening as a
friend or a fan because the chorus
has been described as a “warm
enveloping hug from a gang of
friends” – which might be the
sweetest lyric analysis I’ve ever
heard. Can we see some of your
relationship with the others come
through in this new track?
Yes, I think. I think it must come through
all our songs. One of the fascinating things
about being in the band but not being a
songwriter is that there’s a different dynamic.
There’s something very deep and personal
about writing lyrics – language itself is
exposing – whereas when I write the guitar
parts it isn’t quite the same thing.
Language is an innate window to the soul
and I’m always lost to explain my relationship
to our lyrics because it’s that complex
thing where I know Dan very well but I have
no idea what his process is. Often my interpretation
of what he’s written is based on
what I know of him but you can only know
someone so well – I could be completely
wrong.
Dan’s said previously about
‘WHAT YOU GONNA DO???’ that
you were “completely tearing up
your process, being spontaneous
and starting again” and that track
had a very strong punk vibe. What
does that mean for your upcoming
album?
I think that was a bit of an outlier. We’ve
done a couple of punky songs – especially
the second album. It’s always fun to do that
and I want to do more.
We all grew up listening to Blur so it was
amazing that we actually got Graham Coxon
on that track. It was a really cool one to
come back with.
I absolutely love the music video
to ‘WHAT YOU GONNA DO???’ –
it’s so trippy, it’s cracker.
I love it – but they did make me look about
87 years old! Dan looks like Dan and Kyle
looks like a smoking hot Kyle then I’m the
granddad-looking one in the background.
Maybe that’s my vibe?
At the time, we couldn’t really get together
so that’s when we came up with the idea for
an animated video. They had a whole team
in America and they’re absolutely amazing.
It’s great to see these young creative people
come into the industry.
I was watching that music video
when I noticed that the final scene
plays a snippet of ‘survivin’’.
Does it? I genuinely hadn’t noticed that. I’m
sure it does and that’s very deliberate and
very clever. Subliminal. I like that.
I’ll be honest, sometimes I’ll be listening to
the old albums and I’ll hear a song I just forgot
existed. They’ll play one live and I’ll be
hearing it for the first time in years. I don’t
listen to Bastille while we’re not on tour.
Is it a bit like how people don’t like
listening to the sound of their own
voice on recordings?
I do hate when I have to
record backing vocals
– I can’t listen to
that. Usually,
I’m fine with
my guitar
but
there is
a bit in
‘ T w o
Evils’
where
s h e ’ s
j u s t
broken
the guitar
and there’s
a fluffed note
that I played and,
at the time, I was like
that’s kind of weird. Now,
I’m like, oh God, don’t ever let that
be played again.
So far, you’ve had Bad Blood,
Wild World and Doom Days.
(Although, I feel like Doom Days
would be better timed for right
now.)
[Laughs.] Good point. We were prophetic –
by mistake.
Those are some poignant album
titles. Do you have the next title in
mind yet?
Well, we’ve got a single-syllable alliterated
theme going on so we’re kind of limited. We
haven’t even started thinking about it yet
while we’re still writing. I think the theme
comes after the fact.
The last album, Doom Days, we started out
with a narrative arc but, even so, it’s only
once you finish the writing process that
you can take a step back and see all of the
individual pieces come together for a title.
It’s hard mid-process to have that clear-cut
idea.
‘survivin’’ was released along with
the announcement that “this showcases
a new, groove-led sound
for Bastille typical of the band’s
new expect-the-unexpected sonic
God knows. [Laughs.]
identity.” That is quite a bold
message. What
does the
move towards
“grooveled”
sound
actually mean?
Every time we release anything, we always
try to be different, so that’s always the “new
sound”.
To be honest, it is quite groovy, the new
stuff. We’ve never adhered strictly to the
idea of genre so we have songs that are kind
of rock and songs that are ballad; you just
try and make each song cool and something
to be proud of.
Dan’s got that unique voice that ties it all together
in the end.
So, I guess our new sound is a higgledy-piggledy
mess of all sorts of things.
‘Higgledy-piggledy mess’ – I love
that.
Not my most articulate. [Laughs.] But yes.
Look forward to higgledy-piggledy messes
in our next album.
Check out the full interview on our website
and watch Bastille’s new animated music video
for single, ‘survivin’’, on their Vevo, which
premiered on October 6th.
Image courtesy of Bastille’s VEVO
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 19
S C R E E N
Horror: The Genre with the Best and Worst
Remakes
Joe Hopewell
By the time you read this Halloween season
has passed us by and now we’re facing the
agonising few weeks before Christmas décor
is acceptable. I feel pretty confident that
over the last few weeks as the All Hallows’
Hype kicked in, we’ve all indulged in sitting
down with family or friends and watching a
good old-fashioned scare-fest.
There really is nothing like it. I for one,
alongside my scare-proof flatmates, had a
good go at watching the classics over the
previous weeks. Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986),
Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1978), John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), I
could list the classics forever but these, in
particular, are my go-to choices. They are
also all remakes.
The purpose of this editorial is, therefore,
to look at the horror genre’s successful remakes,
gleam what works from them, and
also shame Psycho (1998) and the work of
Platinum Dunes in general really.
With the examples I gave earlier, it is easy
for the average film viewer to be unaware of
their status as remakes in and of themselves.
David Cronenberg’s grotesque body horror
classic Jeff Goldblum flick has supplanted
the original 1958 take on The Fly, similarly,
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
has done the same respectively. However,
I’d implore any fan of these films to try a
double feature with their progenitors. Both
films resemble each other but the remakes
take startling alterations based on the thencurrent
mindset of their times. In short, all
of these films are time capsules and complement
each other well.
Cronenberg took an endearing ‘science can
never take the place of God’ 1950s B-movie
feature about Vincent Price swapping heads
with a fly, and by retooling the scientist as a
lovable outsider and the insectoid elements
into a degenerative condition he makes each
form startlingly different. In the mid-80s the
spread of AIDS was an uncomfortable cultural
touchpoint, so one can imagine an
audience member seeing the parallels of a
mutating Seth Brundle to the news reports
of the time. The Fly had turned from a cautionary
fable into a harrowing sci-fi story of
caring for a loved one who was literally decomposing.
The same reasoning can be seen in Philip
Kaufman’s take on the eternally resonant
Body Snatchers. The original was set in a
small town where everybody knew each
other- the horror derived from seeing the
familiar be stripped of its distinctiveness.
The 1978 take is scary because in the big city
everything is unfamiliar and indistinct- the
invasion may already have happened; you
just haven’t noticed yet. The fear of losing
humanity is supplanted twenty years later
with the fear that we, as a society, have already
lost it long ago.
But what of the bad remakes I alluded to
earlier? I think 1998’s Psycho is noteworthy.
Taking a film that terrified baby boomers
in the 1960s and redoing it shot for shot is
pointless and
regurgitates
more than it
reinterprets.
There should
always be a
director and
production
team seeking
to stand
beside the
greats, not in
their shadows.
Michael Bay’s
Platinum
Dunes tried
their hands
at horror remakes in the late 2000s with
their takes on A Nightmare on Elm Street and
Friday the 13th, managing only to succeed in
annoying the ten people that still care about
those franchises. Which demonstrates the
other important (and blindingly obvious)
factor in worthwhile remakes: the filmmakers
need to care.
Until the next time cinephiles, Joe Hopewell.
Image courtesy of Sammy-Williams via Pixabay
Did James Bond kill the cinema?
Rhys Wright
SCREEN EDITOR
The news that the latest instalment in
the 007 franchise, No Time to Die, has had
its release date yet again pushed back,
this time to April 2021, a full year after its
original planned release date, has come
as a blow to an entertainment industry
already handicapped by COVID-19. Following
this announcement, Cineworld, the
world’s second-largest cinema chain, broke
the news that it would be closing all of its
venues indefinitely.
Of course, the Cineworld closures are the
result of far more than just No Time to Die
being postponed, it was merely the last
remaining studio tentpole between now
and the Christmas season after the likes of
Dune and West Side Story formed another
domino fall of postponement. With many
places in the midst of second waves of
COVID-19, many audiences understandably
do not feel safe attending cinemas,
even with the current safety precautions in
place, and not only that
but there is very little
available to see.
Another key factor in
major studio releases
being pushed further into
next year is the lacklustre
box office returns over the
summer season. The only
major release between
cinemas partially re-opening
in July and the present
was Christopher Nolan’s
highly anticipated Tenet,
which had the burden
of restarting an industry
almost singlehandedly
alongside several smaller independent
films, and predictably the box office returns
were less than what the industry was hoping
for, although by no means paltry. Again,
a combination of reduced capacity due to
social distancing measures, some markets
being closed entirely, and audiences staying
away out of fear of infection, resulted in studios
determining that continuing to release
blockbusters in the current climate is too
much of a fiscal risk
While most responses to this were to push
release dates back into next year, some low
risk-high reward model films like Bill &
Ted Face the Music were given a premium
video-on-demand release. Premium videoon-demand
is proving to be a particularly
popular form of release in the current
climate, to mixed results; lower budget
films have fared more successfully, whereas
studio tentpoles like Mulan are believed to
have underperformed.
Meanwhile internationally, the Chinese
market has continued its re-opening to
much success following its recovery from
COVID-19, with the Chinese historical war
drama The Eight Hundred so far becoming
the highest-grossing film of 2020.
In the UK, the recent announcement of
a second national lockdown means the
remaining Odeon, Vue, and independent
theatres still open will have to close once
again as leisure industries fall under the
government’s definition of non-essential.
The already considerable financial strain
on the exhibition industry will obviously
be exacerbated, and the obvious question
is will the government provide substantial
aid to an arts sector in peril? Who knows?
Maybe there’ll just be another push to retrain
in cyber.
So, what upcoming releases do we have to
look forward to…and when? After failing to
save the world in March with her infamous
all-star rendition of ‘Imagine’, Gal Gadot is
returning to save the box office this Christmas
with Death on the Nile and Wonder
Woman 1984. Will she succeed? Only time
will tell, but if COVID-19 cases continue to
rise then it’s possible that the Hollywood
studios may pull yet another Charlie Brown
football-swipe with the release dates, which
means the UK won’t really be missing
out on all that much should the current
national lockdown be extended over the
Christmas period.
Image courtesy of ClaraDon via Flickr
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 20
S C R E E N
A short introduction to Scandinavian
TV
Image courtesy of m_
chaggar via Instagram
Maria Svartvadet Jakobsen
Running out of things to watch during lockdown?
In desperate need of something to
binge? Why not escape the cold Lancaster
weather by diving into the even colder
weather of Scandinavia through some excellent
TV shows? Scandinavian TV, just like
British, American and other foreign TV, has
a wide range of genres and types of shows.
However, Scandinavia puts its own spin on
familiar genres like crime with its own subgenre
Scandinavian noir and plays a central
role in the production of certain genres,
such as contemporary teen dramas.
Skam – The series that took the
world by storm
Like many foreign TV shows, Scandinavian
TV shows have a tendency of staying
within Scandinavia, its main audience being
people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark
or the other Nordic countries. However, the
2015 teen drama series Skam is an extreme
exception to this. The series took the overdone
high-school drama and wrapped it in a
new, innovative media format. Throughout
the week, clips, text-messages, or Instagram
posts were posted in real-time on the Skam
website, before the content was unified into
a full episode on the website on Fridays.
Each season features a different main character,
and each deals with an important issue,
such as sexual abuse, sexuality, and religion,
in a truly honest way. The show uses
its interactive medium to create characters
that feel more real to the audience than ever
before, with each character having their
own social media accounts and a presence
outside of the episodes alone. With Skam,
Norwegian TV channel NRK has managed
to create a show which portrays a realistic
picture of not only Norwegian but many
high-school students’ experiences.
After the national and international success
of Skam, NRK continued to produce TV series
in the same type of multi-media format.
From 2018 to 2019 they produced the series
Lovleg, which, like Skam, deals with sexuality,
but in the form of a lesbian relationship.
The concept was also used for the series
Blank, which also featured the real-time releases
of clips, social media posts and text
messages, but dealt with another age group,
those just finished in high-school and entering
adult life. The series deals with issues
of relationships to friends and family, romance,
race and class differences.
The international success of Skam also led
to different adaptions by different countries,
such as Skam Austin, Skam España, and
Skam France.
The Bridge (Broen) – The epitome
of Scandinavian noir
Probably the genre Scandinavia is most famous
for is Scandinavian noir, also known
as Nordic noir. While both the UK and
Scandinavia produce crime drama series,
both countries put their own spin on the
genre, setting Scandinavian noir apart
from British crime dramas. The Bridge is a
Swedish and Danish collaboration, consisting
of 4 seasons, the first season starting
with a dead body being discovered on the
Øresund Bridge, exactly on the border between
Malmö and Copenhagen, leading to
a joint investigation. As is common for the
Scandinavian noir genre, the series follows
two detectives, Swedish Saga Norén and
Danish Martin Rohde (1st and 2nd season)
and Henrik Sabroe (3rd and 4th season).
The main character, Saga Norén, is a complex
character with poor social skills and,
without mentioning any spoilers, fits with
the Scandinavian noir trope of the far from
simply heroic protagonist. Scandinavian
noir, and The Bridge, is multi-layered, and
takes the viewer on a thrilling murder investigation,
darker and more twisted than
those of British crime dramas and typical
whodunnit style murder investigations. The
series is full of well-timed twists and turns
that keeps you captivated by the mystery
and the characters, and keeps you clicking
“Next episode.”
Like Skam, The Bridge has proved popular
internationally, having been shown in more
than 100 countries, and prompting several
remakes, including the UK and France’s The
Tunnel. However, none of these can compete
with the entrancing darkness of Scandinavian
noir in its purest and most elegant form.
Other great Nordic noir TV series to check
out: The Killing (Danish: Forbrydelsen) and
Bordertown (Finnish: Sorjonen).
The Rain – A post-apocalyptic
Scandinavia
Over recent years, several Scandinavian series
have premiered on Netflix. Series such
as the Swedish Quicksand, Danish The Rain,
and Norwegian Ragnarok have all proved
popular, not only in Scandinavia but internationally.
The Rain is a Danish post-apocalyptic
series, in which a deadly virus-bearing
rainfall kills almost all humans in Scandinavia.
The audience follows Danish siblings
Simone and Rasmus who are left to take
shelter in a bunker by their father. After six
years, they emerge to search for their father,
who never returned to the bunker. Already
from the beginning, it’s a thrilling show, that
keeps the viewers on their toes. With high
production value and a character-driven
plot that keeps you emotionally invested,
The Rain is an exceptional show to emerge
from Scandinavia. If you’re a fan of shows
like The 100 or Under the Dome, or just generally
sci-fi and post-apocalyptic TV and
film, then you might want to check out The
Rain.
Although available on Netflix with English
dubbing, you don’t quite get the same experience
as when watching it in its original
language, Danish. With the voices you hear
matching the actors’ lips, it conveys the
emotion of the scenes better. The show is
available with English subtitles.
Occupied (Okkupert) – A political
dystopia
In another series about the future, we find
ourselves in a very different Norway to the
politically stable, rich, and democratic
country we see today. The series depicts a
Norway in which all oil and gas production,
Norway’s biggest export, has been stopped
due to catastrophic events. This creates a
massive energy crisis in Europe, causing
Russia, with the support of the EU, to invade
Norway to restore its oil and gas industry.
The series is centred around politics and
war, and the layers of secrecy, action and
tension build-up to a captivating story that
you can’t help but get invested in. The series
is placed in the political thriller genre,
and for good reason, featuring agents, assassinations,
rebel groups and more. It is a
stark contrast to the peaceful Norway and
Scandinavia we see today. The series had a
budget of £7.5 million and is Norway’s most
expensive production to date, and this can
be seen in the series high production value.
Occupied delivers everything you want from
a political thriller. Highly recommended for
fans of The Man in the High Castle or Designated
Survivor.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 21
S C R E E N
David Attenborough’s A Life on Our
Planet Reviewed
Alistair Williams
Sir David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet
was released on Netflix on Sunday 4th October,
being moved from a cinematic release
in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The
cinematic release of the film was something
that had to come to my particular attention,
due to its relevance to a module I was studying
last academic year. In this module’s essay,
I compared the yet-unreleased film to
Al Gore’s two documentary films, An Inconvenient
Truth, and An Inconvenient Sequel,
and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood.
Unlike its initial cinema release, the release
of the film on Netflix crept up on me very
unexpectedly. While initially presented as a
reflection on the developments in environmentalism
during Sir David’s lifetime, the
film soon develops to become a platform for
the broadcaster to discuss the issue of climate
change.
When discussing this huge issue, Attenborough
pulls no punches, describing the
current state of the environment, and the
potential future for the planet. My dad, who
chose to watch the film with me, stated:
“this almost brings me to tears, Alistair”.
The message Attenborough conveys is both
heartfelt, and shocking. In my opinion, there
is no better person than Attenborough to
spread this message, after several generations
have tuned in to hit series’ such as Frozen
Planet and Life, as well as The Blue Planet
and Planet Earth, both of which have had a
sequel series within the last five years. Attenborough
has come to represent the subject
of natural history within British culture,
having worked within documentary making
at some level since 1954.
The audience is taken on an interesting
journey within the first half of the documentary
of Attenborough’s career, which
uses old clips from the time, with narration
from the 2020 Attenborough played over
the top. I found this use of older clips very
effective in showing the change that Attenborough
must have experienced, not just in
the natural world, but in the format of his
career as a presenter and naturalist. Alongside
the clips, the documentary is occasionally
intersected by a countdown screen,
which updates alongside the time period
Attenborough is discussing. On this screen,
there is select information, which includes
the world human population, carbon in the
atmosphere, and remaining wilderness. Between
the longer sections of narrative description
by Attenborough, these intersecting
screens show the development across
his career. Unfortunately, as you might expect,
the amount of carbon and population
dramatically increase, as the remaining wilderness
decreases.
Outside of the emotional impact of this film,
there is also a lot to learn from the documentary
in terms of factual information. A
lot of information is presented within A Life
on Our Planet. Some of these facts will make
any audience member feel uncomfortable
- Attenborough states that wildlife populations
across the globe have more than
halved since the beginning of his career. Attenborough
looks at various adverse effects
of climate change on the natural world; animals
such as coral reefs dying as the ocean
acidifies, a global average temperature rise
of 4oc, release of methane through the thawing
of frozen soil, mass animal extinction,
and millions of humans rendered homeless.
Attenborough concludes this by saying “this
is a series of one-way doors, bringing irreversible
change”. Attenborough works hard
in his description to tell the audience that
this disaster has already started, is happening
right now, and will only get worse.
Attenborough says in the conclusion of the
documentary, “It’s now apparent it’s not all
doom and gloom. There’s a chance to manage
our impact. Manage our impact, and
once again become a species in balance
with nature. All we need is the will to do so”.
As the documentary finishes, Attenborough
at least partly lifts the audience out of
the depressive tone of the middle of the
documentary, by stating that with the
will to act there is still time to make a
difference. I felt that the final message
of this documentary was perhaps understated
compared to the description
of the doom and gloom aspects of the issue,
but understandably, Attenborough
has the intelligence not to end the film
on an entirely sour note.
I knew that Attenborough’s breakdown
of climate change, where he would make
a heartfelt speech directly to the audience
was coming, but it still affected me.
It certainly wasn’t the first time Attenborough
has spoken openly about man-made
effects on the environment, or about climate
change as a topic, but it might be the first
time that they had been done together so effectively
by Attenborough. One of Attenborough’s
strengths in creating this message is
his overwhelming popularity, reaching audiences
that some activists might not. Unfortunately,
while Attenborough can reach a
wide audience, he cannot create change on
his own, that would require governmental
action. It will be interesting to see, however,
once this documentary has been viewed
and digested by mass audiences, whether it
will have a big effect on the climate change
discussion (akin to An Inconvenient Truth).
Only time can tell.
Image courtesy of International Monetary
Fund via Flickr
A24’s Saint Maud Reviewed
Ellie Ball
★★★★★
Morfydd Clark transcends all previous notions
of performance in writer-director
Rose Glass’s debut film. The psychological
thriller/horror marks Glass as one to watch
so to speak, sparking much excitement
amongst the film community. The narrative
centres around a recently converted medical
care-giver, Maud, upon her arrival at
a new nursing post. Here we meet her terminally
ill patient and former professional
dancer, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a person
who embodies all sin in Maud’s eyes.
Maud endeavours on a metaphorical pilgrimage
in order to save her patient from
more than terminal cancer – she is on a
mission to “save [her] soul”. Jennifer Ehle
and Morfydd Clark offer sublime, titillating
performances throughout, utilizing their
bodies and facial expressions to create a
sensual, climatic, and thoroughly chilling
work of art.
Rumoured to be in contention of Oscar
nominations, the film has achieved considerable
critical acclaim, often a challenging
feat for directors of the horror genre. The
genre classification of the feature has been
the subject of controversy;
it is not a film
that bombards the
spectator with meaningless
jump scares
and predictable genre
tropes. It is a remarkably
unsettling film but
not in the traditional
sense.
There is something
strikingly human
about this film, despite its thematic and
visual engagement with the supernatural.
Saint Maud delves into the most fundamental
concerns and dichotomies of humankind:
Life vs. Death, Virtue vs. Vice, Soul
vs. Soulless, Sanity vs. Insanity, and most
importantly God vs. The Devil. As the film
progresses, it becomes increasingly unclear
whom or what Maud believes she is communicating
with, the skilful use of inverted
camerawork, the symbolism of anti-clockwise
drains and the increasingly disturbing
content of the film implies that perhaps
God is not listening, but
something else is.
Ultimately, the true horror
of the film lies within
the social exclusion, marginalisation,
and mistreatment
of our sympathetic
protagonist. For
me, Maud goes down in
history as one of cinemas
loneliest characters. This
is foregrounded by the
film’s use of eerie silence, making for a very
tense and isolating viewing indeed.
Glass’s symbolic nod to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis
does not go unnoticed, the everpresent
cockroach which lingers inside
Maud’s claustrophobic apartment consolidates
the sheer isolation of our central character.
Glass’s references to Franz Kafka and
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of
Experience suggest that Maud is someone
on the brink of transformation – but a transformation
into what exactly? The theme of
transformation is core to the viewer’s interpretation
of the film, is Maud doomed to be
condemned or sent to be saved? Amanda’s
character is also dealing with a transformation,
life’s most fundamental transformation
– death. Amanda is in many ways
as lonely as Maud, after all, what could be
lonelier than the struggle with one’s inevitable
death? Saint Maud stands as a disturbing
social commentary on the modern-day
UK which is all too relevant amidst the outbreak
of Covid-19. The film engages excellently
with complex characters and the exploration
of universal anxieties surrounding
mortality, religion, and the search for a higher
sense of purpose in a seemingly meaningless
diegetic world. Saint Maud has firmly
secured a place on my Halloween watchlist.
Image courtesy of saintmaudmovie via Instagram
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 23
F A S H I O N & B E A U T Y
There is only so much cosmetics
can conceal: highlighting the waste
problem in the beauty industry.
Rhian Daniel
FASHION & BEAUTY EDITOR
We trust our brands blindly and often unconditionally:
we may shun a few companies
after a scandal breaks out, vow never to
buy from there again and within a month or
two, after a shiny new collab, we are back.
Most companies are aware of our fickleness,
our superficial morality, and most of all our
narcissism, and therefore scandals are sat
out, waiting for it to blow over before it can
be re-packaged and re-imagined by the marketing
team. Sadly, this is the reality of the
fashion world today but while fast fashion
companies have a least been attempting to
fight the small, unimpactful protests another
world has slid quietly through the net: the
beauty industry.
The beauty industry has a whole host of their
own issues: for example, pseudo-political
terms such as empowerment and self-love
are stamped onto the packaging to ensure
that the true, self-deprecating nature of the
product remains hidden under the perfunctory
marketing that draws us all in. These
problems, for the moment, will escape the
wrath of the discontented student writer.
Instead, I turn to another little issue: climate
destabilisation.
Elephants wander new realms in Tilaxan
Tharmapalan’s haunting image. They traverse
not the harshest conditions that nature
can throw at them but instead face new
struggles through the bleakest outreaches
of human interference, a rubbish dump. The
image shows a herd of elephants rummaging
through the waste on a landfill site near
a wildlife sanctuary in Sri Lanka and presented
the photographer the Royal Society
of Biology’s photography competition’s first
prize and to humanity the harsh and sobering
reality that we rarely are forced to face.
Among the rubbish that they sort through,
I’m sure they are faced with the by-products
of our beauty routines from slowly decomposing
tubes to the micro-beads polluting
their water.
The National Geographic highlighted this
problem in 2019, in an article ‘The beauty industry
generates a lot of plastic waste. Can it
change?’. They wrote, ‘the amount of plastic
packaging on U.S. products (not just on personal
care items) has increased by over 120
times since 1960—with almost 70 percent of
that waste piling up in landfills. Globally, the
packaging industry for beauty and personal
care products, which primarily reflects plastic
packaging, makes up nearly $25 billion in
sales.’ As mentioned, this was written over
a year ago, and with the advent of Coronavirus,
who knows what these figures could
look like now. Only time will tell what impact
medical necessities will have upon our
ocean or what consequences lockdown has
had, moving consumers even further away
from the less convenient and more expensive
eco-friendly alternatives, which are
so often produced by smaller and start-up
companies.
So, where does this failure lie? Well, in truth,
everyone, but that isn’t a very helpful statement.
Much of the blame is laid at the consumer’s
door and our poor choices and priorities,
however, this isn’t the full story. Yes,
we need to get better and yes, those who can
afford it should be prepared to spend a few
extra pounds on a product that is recyclable
and on a company that is committed to sustainability.
Yet, we are equally entitled to exclaim
that the issue is so confusing and the
jargon so convoluted that it sometimes feels
like you need an engineering degree in order
to understand the recycling system; and further
to this, to what extent are companies
genuinely committed to ensuring that their
products are sustainable and are not cutting
corners so that they can feign concern in
order to not lose their customers? In short,
how many beauty companies are interested
in more than their fiscal goals?
The first step is understanding what is actually
on our bottles. The signs on the side of
our jars, pots and bottles tell us more than
we appreciate. The first one is of an open
pot with a number followed by ‘M’: this is
the period after opening with ‘M’ standing
for months, 6M therefore mean you have
6 months to use it after opening. A similar
symbol is an hourglass, however, it states
that the product will last for 30 months
whether it has been opened or not. The leaping
bunny, perhaps the easiest to decipher,
means that no animal testing was used. The
Mobius symbol means that the packaging is
recyclable and if there is a number inside,
that is the percentage of packaging that was
made from recycled material. The green dot
is the symbol with the two arrows inside
which means it is part of the European recycling
scheme and has abided by waste laws.
Lastly, the red Ecocert symbol means that
Image courtesy of @oceanwasteplastic via Instagram
95 percent of the product contains natural
ingredients: for further information their
website highlights all the requirements that
are needed to have this certification.
The reality is though that these symbols
don’t tell the whole story if they are present
at all, and with beauty products being
some of the most complex products, what
are we to do? Unboxing rituals have helped
promote the false image of equating pretty
packaging with luxury and so unnecessary
plastic wrapping is therefore used for companies
to market their product. Therefore,
a small pot with a neat Mobius symbol is
rarely the reality for most of us.
‘Beauty product packaging is often composed
of a variety of types of material,’ explains
Stephen Clarke, Head of Communications
at TerraCycle Europe. ‘[…] 120
billion units of packaging are produced
every year by the global cosmetics industry,’
Clarke continues. ‘Of these, very few plastic
waste items generated in the bathroom are
accepted by most public kerbside recycling
programmes.’
Much journalism has placed the solution in
the hands of the consumer, calling for longer-term
changes in our shopping behaviour
and a need for us to demonstrate that we demand
better; but why is this the end of the
story? We certainly need to change our habits
but that can be difficult for a whole host
of reasons: maybe we don’t know what our
products are made out of ? Maybe we don’t
live near a place that does refills? Maybe we
cannot afford the premium prices that ecofriendly
companies charge.
We cannot afford to let companies slowly
bend to our will, it is time to call for companies
to be proactive and transparent: it is
time for them, as well as us, to do better.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 24
F A S H I O N & B E A U T Y
Our Favourite Outfits from Emily in Paris
Beth Train-Brown
COMMENT EDITOR
So, if you haven’t heard already, there is a
new show on Netflix called Emily in Paris.
I went in having heard the social media cries
of “cliché” and “abhorrent” and even “borderline
hellish” – and, I’m not going to lie,
the first episode in, I was kind of agreeing
with the Twitter storm.
But then, I got a bit deeper into a bottle of
wine (and a cheeky bit of romantic loneliness)
and, as the night wore on, suddenly
I’m living vicariously through Emily’s tragically
American character and hanging out
with all the lovely eligible men de Paris.
I don’t know how this show does it (I do
and I think it’s the French accents plus the
fact that everyone is Hollywood Hot) but I
just got so pulled into Emily in Paris that,
when the last episode finally rolled credits,
I checked the time and it was 2AM.
1. Emily’s yellow cami and maxi
skirt
This is undoubtedly my favourite outfit in
the show. It’s elegant in a way that is still Parisian
city casual. The thick black belt pulls
the ensemble together like a maxi dress,
adding that bit of bold edge to better fit
the Parisian fashion, which is honestly the
best stylistic decision of the wardrobe department
because now I can’t imagine that
printed silk camisole with anything else.
And yellow is a bold enough colour to show
off some of Emily’s sparky personality!
2. Emily’s structured white dress
(and its disaster)
This mini dress was designed by the fictional
Pierre Cadeau (and the very real Stephane
Rollande), featuring one shoulder and huge
rumples that add to that gorgeous lily effect.
True French haute couture.
Image courtesy of @emilyinparis via Instagram
3. Camille’s sheer polka dots and
Burberry
Camille’s character is the American envy
of French fashion. The wardrobe took inspiration
from model Caroline de Maigret
who often pairs a blocky square-shouldered
jacket with something lighter and
feminine underneath.
In this scene though, we see Camille in
a stunning contrast of sheer polka dots
under a beige plaid dress that brings out
her blonde hair to make the perfect beginnings-of-Autumn
aesthetic.
4. Emily and Gabriel at the launch
party
Brooklyn, the American movie star guesting
a Parisian launch party, says it best
when she stage-whispers, “the hottest guy
at the party is walking over here.”
Gabriel’s casual shirt and blazer ensemble
is effortlessly dapper and, in a quirk of
I could write a very long article about the In the show, two Avant-Garde stylists stage
loveliness of each character or the weird a publicity stunt and fire paint at the dress cinematography, matches the same tone
gently racist vibes the show has or the fact – and somehow I still love it, if not more. Emily wears with her casual red meshtop
skater dress. Both are flawless and
that Gabriel, our dreamy leading man, has It’s brass and ridiculous (and makes the fictional
Cadeau cry) but I adore the urban/ her handbag even matches the colour of
the sexiest voice I think I have ever heard –
but on the topic of fashion weeks, I thought couture clash.
his jacket! (Sex and the City stylist, Patricia
I’d live vicariously through the show’s bizarrely
riveting outfit choices instead.
nods to plot.)
Fields, is back at it with subtle wardrobe
Why You Should Wear Sunscreen Every
Day – Yes, Even in Winter
Lauren Banks
to re-apply it at least once every 2 hours, or
CAROLYNNE EDITOR
after exercising outside. UV rays can also
penetrate through glass, so it’s important to
apply it even when not leaving the house.
If you think sunscreen is just something you
put on when you’re on holiday or sitting out
in the sun, I need to stop you right there.
Sunscreen is one of the most important
things you can put on your face, as it has
many benefits aside from protecting you
from sunburn.
The SPF (sun protection factor) in sunscreen
protects your skin from ultraviolet (UV) rays
from the sun, which can be incredibly harmful
to your skin. There are two types of UV
rays: UVA rays are the ones that cause you
to tan, but can also cause premature skin
ageing and wrinkles, and UVB rays, which
cause sunburn and can lead people to develop
skin cancer. SPF tells you how long it
will take for the sun to affect your skin when
wearing it – so wearing SPF 30 will take you
30 times longer to burn than if you weren’t
wearing sunscreen.
UV rays can penetrate through clouds, and
still affect your skin when it’s winter. In an
article from the World Health Organisation,
they recommend an SPF of at least 15, and
This might sound like a lot, but there are numerous
benefits to wearing sunscreen every
day, especially on your face. It decreases the
risk of skin cancer and contributes to antiageing,
as prolonged exposure to UVA rays
without protection can cause premature
wrinkles.
Working SPF into your daily skincare routine
is easy. You can either replace your
moisturiser with one that contains SPF, or
find a facial spray that you can wear alone or
over makeup! And if you have oily skin, don’t
worry about it clogging up your pores – you
can either use a lightweight spray or a nonoily
formula – Eucerin has an oil-control
formula that’s factor 50+.
Sunscreen doesn’t have to be expensive,
either. Always a classic, Garnier’s Ambre
Solaire range has an array of both spray and
fluid sunscreens especially for sensitive skin,
with nothing dipping below factor 30. Other
great sunscreen brands include Hawaiian
Tropic (my personal favourite for their Airsoft
Face cream) and good old Nivea.
Try not to forget about your lips, either – try
and find lip balms that have SPF built into
them! Otherwise, a hit with an SPF-filled facial
spray will do the trick.
However, there are some pitfalls to sunscreen.
The Environmental Working Group’s
annual sunscreen guide discusses some
of the issues of chemical sunscreen over
natural sunscreen, highlighting common
ingredients in chemical sunscreen, such as
oxybenzone, which raises concerns about
allergies and skin absorption. They also
raise the point that consumers tend to misuse
products with a higher SPF, such as staying
in the sun for longer than they would
if using a lower SPF product. Higher SPF
products also have higher concentrations of
sun-filtering chemicals in them, which may
trigger allergic reactions. They recommend
staying within the SPF30-50 range.
If you want a more eco-friendly option for
sunscreen, there are some great options.
While more expensive, they’re made from
all-natural, vegan ingredients, making them
more suitable for people with extra sensitive
Image courtesy of @sokoglam via
skin. Amazinc has a range of sunscreens,
from sticks to butters, from SPF 10-50.
Shade is a UK-based brand made of only 4
ingredients, using zinc oxide to protect the
skin from the sun’s harmful rays. While not
vegan (it contains beeswax), it’s free from all
perfumes, alcohol, and is never tested on
animals. Their products are SPF 25, as they
do not use chemical active ingredients in
their products.
Wherever you get your sunscreen from, the
most important thing is that you consistently
wear it every day.
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 25
F A S H I O N & B E A U T Y
Kenzo Takada: A Tribute
Image courtesy of @tmagazine via Instagram
Isobel Dignum
The Tiger. That’s what you are all thinking
when someone states the brand ‘Kenzo’
to you right? Those vibrant tiger emblem
sweatshirts or ‘the eye’ t-shirt print are
iconic. You cannot go on a typical night out
in Manchester city centre, or anywhere for
that matter, without seeing someone wearing
it, thinking because its a well-known, designer
brand that they can get into any club
or fancy bar.
My first designer purchase was a Kenzo
sweater. I was around 15 years old and I
thought I was very cool and trendy with my
‘Kenzo Paris’ logo jumper that I bought from
the children’s section of farfetch.com.
Sadly though, for those of you who are unaware,
on the 4th of October 2020 Kenzo
Takada, aged 81, passed away after contracting
Covid-19. This is a devastating loss
in the fashion world, particularly for the
Paris fashion scene. Anne Hidalgo, Mayor
of Paris, actually took to Twitter to write,
‘he had given colour and light their place in
fashion.’ Takada ultimately changed the direction
of fashion in the 1970s, with his East
meets West inspired designs. Not only was
he one of the first Japanese designers to succeed
in Paris and also internationally, but he
is also deemed one of the original designers
to work on the vision of genderless fashion.
It began in Paris in 1970, the age of iconic
retro but classy style: flares, bell-bottoms
and Diane von Fürstenberg. Takada gambled
on buying a one-way ticket to Paris to
re-start his life and in turn his career. Kenzo
Takada’s inspiration is said to originate from
the famous artist, Henri Rousseau. In the beginning,
Takada could not afford to pay for
prints and textiles to work with, so he painted
on the walls of his first little boutique
on Galerie Vivienne naming it, ‘Jungle Jap’.
However, problems with the name caused
it to be rebranded, and ‘Kenzo’ was born in
1971. It was revolutionary, completely different
from the usual Parisienne style and
sophistication with its urban themes and
pops of electric colour. The brand was such
a huge success that ‘Kenzo’ was sold in 1993
to become part of the luxury good conglomerate,
LVMH. Now, it is run by US cult
designers Humbert Leon and Carol Lim of
Opening Ceremony who create the unique
designs we see in Selfridges and Harvey
Nichols today. I am interested to see how
the Kenzo label will change and develop in
the future.
Vogue Runway quoted Kenzo Takada who
stated, ‘I’d like to be remembered as a designer
who crossed boundaries.’ This quote
is so powerful, as I believe that in today’s
society it is important that we are able to do
this; to cross boundaries and explore different
avenues not only within fashion. Takada’s
story about starting from nothing and
taking a risk to create a spiritus, now wellknown
brand, are my favourite ones to read
about. I find this particular story bewitching,
the gamble that was taken just because
of the love and passion he had for art and
textiles is truly inspirational. I will continue
to love Kenzo Takada’s brand and purchase
his collection, as his legacy lives on.
Francesca’s Beauty Files
Francesca Adams
1. What is your go-to look and what
products do you use to achieve it?
I always try and minimise the amount of
make up I have on day to day, especially
when wearing a mask most of the time. Eye
make-up is therefore extremely important
when you’re trying to make an impression.
Clean lines and widening illusions are important
in my routines – I’m currently using
No. 7 Gel eyeliner and an inexpensive
eyeliner brush to achieve a half cat-eye flick
to elongate my eyes and Pixie Beauty’s Endless
Silky Eye Pen in White to widen them.
I’m also making sure to keep my skin exfoliated
and hydrated after being stuck under a
mask all day.
2. You’re stranded on a desert island
with only your five favourite
cosmetics, what are they?
I would just say a good moisturiser and call
it a day but with the luxury of choice I would
have to go for a few more staples:
(i) A well- balanced toner cross cleanser,
I’m loving AlphaH Balancing Cleanser with
Damask Rose, but it’s a limited edition so I
need to stock up!
(ii) My perfect day cream currently from
PURE, it’s vegan, sulphate and cruelty-free!]
(iii) No. 7 Lovely Lips Lip Balm in Poppy Petal,
it is the perfect tinted lip balm that gives
the vibrancy of a lipstick without the consequential
chapped lips.
(iv) Percy & Reed Smoothing No-Oil Hair
Oil; it’s the perfect non-sticky solution to dry
hair ends.
(v) The biggest bottle of Chanel No. 5 you
can find.
3. What is your skincare routine?
Not overcomplicating what I put on my
face; it changes daily depending on what
my skin needs. I always use a day and night
cream with SPF and always cleanse my face
in the evening with a silicone exfoliating
brush. Sticking to such a ‘routine’ I find can
be damaging to your skin if you continually
stick to certain products that your skin
doesn’t really want. Imagine it like having
soup every day of your life, the same one,
even if you’re dying for another flavour: listen
to your skin, it will need different things
on different days.
4. What is the best beauty advice
anyone has given you?
Make sure you choose a signature scent,
wear it everywhere, make people remember
you. And if your hair looks great, it doesn’t
matter about anything else. You can never
feel truly confident on a ‘bad hair day’.
5. What was your biggest makeup
faux pas?
I used to wear so much foundation because
I used to think that more make up would
make me look grown-up – thankfully there
isn’t much photo-evidence of this phase, but
all those faux pas and embarrassing moments
have helped me find my unique style
and way of doing my make-up that I love
today.
6. What is a product that you have
your eye on and why?
I have had my eye on LUSH’s ‘Catastrophe
Cosmetic’ facemask. I find that because
I have quite well-behaved skin, I struggle
to find something that isn’t too hydrating
or too mattifying, I’ve heard great things
about this mask; that its perfect for combination
skin. Maybe it will fall into my basket
next time I wander into the aromas of
LUSH in Lancaster city centre.
Image courtesy of Francesca Adams
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 27
L I F E S T Y L E
Essay Writing: My Tips and Tricks
Image courtesy of Kelly Teague
via flickr
Jennifer Kehlenbeck
LIFESTYLE EDITOR
Throughout your time at university you will
be asked to write an essay, probably a lot
of essays – even if you are doing a science
degree! Therefore, it is important to try and
master them early.
When it comes to writing essays at university
it will take you some time to work out
your own perfect way of going about it. I
am not the objective source of information
on essay writing, my advice is what I have
found useful throughout my time at university.
Feel free to disagree with me, it’s not my
way or the high way. At the very least, I hope
this guide will give you something to think
about.
This article is structured based on what I
think are the four main elements in writing
an essay: preparation, planning, writing and
editing. There is more to an essay than just
forcing the words out, and yet these other
stages are often overlooked or rushed.
Preparation
Read a lot
I never understand why people don’t read a
lot before they write. It is literally the easiest
part of writing an essay. Reading as much
as you can, or have time to (an important
distinction), means that you have more to
reference in your essay. You’ll have a word
document (or more) full of people you agree
or disagree with ready for when you write.
If you don’t end up referencing something in
your essay then it was not a waste of time, it
probably helped you think about your topic
– at the very least it will give you a bibliography
long enough to impress any professor.
Read smartly
However, simply reading a lot isn’t going
to help you if you are not reading smartly.
If you don’t look for the author’s argument
(or key facts depending on what you’re reading)
then you could be reading better. Make
lots of notes when reading! Write down the
writer’s main argument, any secondary arguments
you find interesting, how you react
to the writer’s arguments and how you
would use them in your essay (it is useful to
do these last two steps in a different colour).
Detailed notes will almost write your essay
plan itself.
Write your references as you go
This is such a time saver. It will save you the
faff of trying to get them all together at the
end – you won’t have to basically stalk the
author to try and find out what journal they
wrote in. In a similar vein always make note
of page references when you read! No one
wants to have to read an article twice – the
first time was more than enough.
Planning
Write all your points on paper first
Once you have finished doing all your reading,
write down all the points you want to
discuss on a piece of paper. Seeing them on
a page allows you to focus on your argument
and structure. You can experiment
with what structure works for you without
commitment. I always find seeing it on paper
illustrates to me what points flow into
the next one.
Go over your initial plan more than
once
A simple tip, but make sure you like your
plan and feel comfortable writing it before
you start writing, or even properly planning.
No one wants to be halfway through and realise
they hate their argument.
Make a full plan
Once you have a baseline of all the points
you want to write paragraphs on, fill in the
plan. Put in all the information and arguments
you want to use to serve that point
– and be sure to include references! If you
do this, you won’t have to search through
multiple word documents to find what you
want.
Writing
Push yourself to write a draft
To be honest, I don’t have loads of tips for
actually writing an essay. So much depends
on the specific essay and the way you personally
write. However, I will say the most
important thing is to actually write it. So
much of writing an essay feels like staring at
the computer praying for words to come to
you, hence, I find it helpful to mildly force
myself to get a draft done even if it is not
perfect. I always find once I have the first
draft, even if it is really rough, crafting the
essay into what I want it to become is much
easier.
Editing
Actually edit it
I’m under the impression that some people
don’t edit their essays. While some might
edit as they go and find that works for them,
I would advise you to make time to edit afterwards
as well. Not only does it help you
get rid of pesky spelling or grammar mistakes,
but it also helps you see your essay
as a whole and get a good sense of the logic
and flow of your argumentation.
Write the edits down on paper
I find that going paragraph by paragraph
and writing down the edits I want to make
(ie sentences I want to make clearer) without
editing the document itself gives me
clearer focus. It means I am focused on the
essay as a whole rather than a single sentence
or word. This takes slightly longer
than a simple read through, but is so much
more useful.
Have your computer read it aloud
Chances are at some point you will have
been told to read your essay aloud. This is
probably good advice; however, it doesn’t
sound fun. An alternative is to make Microsoft
Word read your essay aloud to you.
I found that when writing an essay, I get
used to what I meant to write rather than
what it actually says. Having Word read it
aloud means that you are forced to notice
overlooked issues such as spelling mistakes,
double words and poor sentence structure.
Have a friend read it
This is great… but can be awkward. A year
ago, I would not have suggested this as a
tip, however, last year a lecturer forced us
to swap essays before handing them in and
it was very useful. Someone else can pick
up on things you can’t. For example, when
reading my essay my friend noticed that I
overused a word.
The act of reading someone else’s essay
is just as useful as them reading yours. It
shows you what other people do well and
makes you focus on the act of editing. It also
gives you a much-needed break from the
monotony of your own writing!
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 28
L I F E S T Y L E
How We’re Making the Most Out of this
Year
Jennifer Kehlenbeck
LIFESTYLE EDITOR
We could spend ages talking about the
negatives of this year (trust me, I have), but
that’s not the most productive thing to do.
Perhaps instead we should reframe how we
think about this weird time. We might have
to work a bit differently (not harder, just
differently), but this year can still be memorable
(and not just in a bad way). Sure,
things will be a bit odd this year, but with
a little bit of creative thinking we can still
get a lot out of all aspects of our lives from
studying at university to thinking about our
future careers to participating in societies
to enjoying our nights in. Luckily for you, all
the creative thinking has been done for you
by some of our writers. This is how we are
making the most out of this year!
productivity this year. One of the most
important ways I have tried to overcome
this has been through timetabling my
days. When I know I have the “luxury” of
doing lectures as and when I please, I figured
it would be far too easy to wind up
cramming in all of them at the end of the
week. And, so, by writing up my own version
of our usual academic timetables, I
have been treating my asynchronous lectures
as if they were actually timetabled
for me. By doing this, I’ve also found I’ve
left ample time to get through my weekly
readings and have managed to (so far)
feel prepared for my seminars.
Lily McGahern
Saying goodbye to Nights out...
Neha Gupta
So, this year has been difficult, to say the
least. Less than a month into this new academic
year, it would be very easy to feel
unsettled given the huge adaptation we
have had to undertake. It took me a while
to come to terms with this new standard of
living; but when I eventually accepted this
new university style, life back in Lancaster
became considerably easier.
Potentially the biggest way in which I have
adapted to moving back to Lancaster has
been by forcing myself to see the positives
of online and at-home learning. As someone
who has always found it considerably
easier to work anywhere but in my living
area, I immediately had doubts about my
The new normal has definitely taken
time (and is still taking time) to adjust to,
in particular, the lack of Sugar and now
socialising during a lockdown. To make
the most of my last year at university, we
have had to be creative in how we spend
our Wednesday and Friday nights. Luckily,
I am in a bubble of seven, therefore, the
living room has turned into our own personal
club, flashing disco light included. The
main priority of these nights being making
up new ‘pres’ games, with ‘pres’ now lasting
all night. From drunk Jenga, to the old and
trusty ring of fire, along with the occasional
game of piccolo and photo roulette, we have
managed to have some of the funniest and
even eventful nights just sitting in the living
room. Although it is not the third year
I thought I would be getting, there is definitely
something to be said for making your
own fun, with it bringing me and my housemates
even closer once again. I have loved
being back at uni and I am excited to adapt
to these new ways with my best friends, even
if it is just for one more year!
Jennifer Kehlenbeck
At the moment, I am taking every chance
and opportunity I have. The chances we
have feel very limited currently, so we’ve got
to venture out of our comfort zones and grab
the ones available to us.
For example, the university and careers
service are both offering loads of optional
talks. And now because they are online,
they are so much easier to attend. A 5-6pm
talk now seems doable – I literally went to
one on Wednesday. Signing on something
at this time in person seemed unthinkable,
but online is another story. With it online I
could watch it in the kitchen with my tea in
the oven – the 5-6 time didn’t interrupt my
teatime.
Also, the online format means we have the
chance to nip in and see if they work for us.
We no longer have to sit there with an awkward
silence waiting for them to end, if it’s
not useful, you can leave at the click of a button.
But out of all the things I have signed
on for, I haven’t left any of them. Turns out,
these are useful. Who knew!
before. I think that when it comes to university
this year everyone’s attitude should be
to dive in headfirst without shame.
Lauren Banks:
While this year isn’t going as many of us had
hoped, I’m lucky to have found a few ways
to make the most out of it!
My course means I have 2 hours of contact
every week, sometimes 4 if I have my
biweekly module. This might seem very
empty, but actually it’s given me a chance
to get a head start on my essays (early, I
know!). Plus, now that the library is socially
distanced and very quiet, it’s my ideal space
and every time I come to campus I make
sure to book in a couple of hours so I can
bask in the silence and get some reading
done.
Having spare time is really doing wonders
for my mental health as well. I taught myself
how to cross-stitch over lockdown as a
way to relax and focus on something other
than my phone, so I’ve recently started to
sew Christmas presents for my family and
friends! It also gives me plenty of time to
cook in the evenings for me and my flatmate.
This year I am attending all additional seminars
offered, bombarding my lecturers with
emails, going to so many careers talks, attending
many office hours and posing questions
to academics I have never spoken to
Images to the right courtesy of Jennifer Kehlenbeck,
image above courtesy of Debby
Hudson via Unsplash
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 29
L I F E S T Y L E
Interview with a student addict
Beth Train-Brown
COMMENT EDITOR
Maddy is a second-year Lancaster University
student. She is also a self-described drug addict
and alcoholic..
So, Maddy, describe a typical day
in your life.
Well, if I drank the night before then I wake
up early, around 10AM. But if I got stoned
then I don’t wake up until much later (3PM
maybe?) and I usually miss my seminars.
The new blended learning approach is actually
pretty handy because it means that I
don’t have to get to campus super early (or
at all) because I can just catch up on the
seminar recordings whenever I want.
I do work during the day. I do work for my
course, do the readings, watch the lectures,
sometimes call my mum.
Then, around tea-time, I feel exhausted.
When I start feeling drained, I know that I
need a drink or a smoke to perk me back up.
If I go to bed without getting drunk or having
a smoke then I don’t feel like the day’s
finished.
And is that a normal cigarette or
weed?
Oh, weed. I don’t smoke tobacco. I used to
smoke joints (which is tobacco and weed)
but then I started smoking blunts (which is
just weed) and it goes down so much easier,
you know? I smoke them a bit like cigarettes
– definitely as often as other people smoke
cigarettes.
smoke is all I can think about.
I love the smell of weed and rolling the blunt
and lighting it and smoking it. It’s like how
some people enjoy knitting, I suppose. It
keeps your hands busy.
Smoking weed is a bit like knitting?
Interesting.
[Laughs.] Well, you know what I mean. It’s
downtime. It’s a hobby that’s completely
your own. I don’t have to worry about anyone
else, about grades or test results, any of
that. I get to see myself progress and know
that it’s just for me.
You’ve told me a little about
smoking weed
daily. Do you take
any other illegal
drugs?
I remember it started
a few weeks into first
term. I came to uni and
I’d already taken stuff
before (I literally took
a pill in Ibiza, like the
song) but it was always
as a group and I’d make
sure I only took a little
because everyone’s
heard horror stories
about kids who die the
first time they take ecstasy,
you know?
Well, I used to do a lot
more last term. Every
time we went out clubbing,
I would take something.
But then, I was in a Lancaster nightclub
(which I won’t name because you’re giving
me a look like I shouldn’t) and someone offered
me a sniff in the toilets. And, I’m not
going to lie, when she said “sniff ” my brain
short-circuited and I thought she meant
blow my nose.
Anyway, she holds up what looks like a little
bullet or something and taps some white
powder behind the nail on my pinky finger.
I sniff it without thinking (because it feels
a bit rude to say no when it’s free) and that
was it. I walked back into the club feeling
like I was ten feet tall. I was invincible. Everything
was so much more fun.
There are only two decent clubs in Lancaster,
so nightlife was getting boring but suddenly
everything was interesting again.
That night was the start of it. Since then, I
would take anything that was offered until I
got bored with having to rely on other people
and started contacting dealers myself.
It’s surprising how quick it is to learn to understand
a dealer’s menu on Snapchat. It
made me feel so cool and mature to be ordering
my own gear. I went through MDMA,
ecstasy, coke, ketamine, Xanax, poppers,
a bunch of other stuff that I had to google
first. I keep a list somewhere that I’m sort of
using to check off (but that makes me sound
a little obsessed and I promise I’m not!)
How much does all of this cost
you?
Before lockdown, when all the clubs were
open, it could be upwards of £100-150. Now,
I mostly just smoke weed (I get through
about 4-5g a week because my tolerance has
gone up massively) which makes life a lot
cheaper – maybe £40 a week. I don’t do as
much as I did before; it’s not the same when
you don’t have the club scene there.
I used to blow through my maintenance
loan so fast, it was unreal. But my flatmates
did too – they spent theirs on clothes and
overpriced alcohol at clubs; I spent mine on
other things.
Do you think this has affected
your health?
I mean, probably. I did get really ill in second
term last year because I took a mix of a few
things that basically ruined my appetite so I
forgot to eat for a good few days. Then I once
took ecstasy and drank so much water I was
nearly sent to the hospital.
It probably will affect me long term but I
just keep thinking – you know, we’ve only
got one life and I want to live it. I want to do
everything I want to do and see what happens.
SCAN does not endorse any illegal drug use.
Substance abuse is a serious mental illness.
If you have been affected by anything in this
article or think you might suffer from drug addiction,
please contact your college wellbeing
officer.
You can’t really get addicted to weed but I do
feel a difference if I don’t smoke one night
– I don’t sleep as well, I get nauseous in the
morning and I feel a bit down, emotionally.
When it gets to that time of day, having a
Do you know what it was that
you took that night?
Yeah. I mean, maybe. I think it was coke. As
in, cocaine. I never asked.
Images courtesy of Beth Train-Brown and
Snapchat
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 31
P H O T O G R A P H Y
Sophie Tomlinson
ONLINE EDITOR
We are surrounded by everyday visual culture,
from paintings to images and cinema
to something as ordinary as the traffic
light system and the highway code signs
on our roads. We see these ordinary objects
and generally just accept their meaning
and place within society. But how are
their meanings created? How do they become
an integral part of our culture? How
do we, even if it is just subconsciously, decode
the messages that the visual presents
to us, how does the visual culture control
our minds and the way we see the world?
As a Media and Cultural Studies student,
these questions are considered as it exposes
how much visual culture controls
how we see things in our everyday lives.
I am going to briefly demonstrate these
ideas by analysing a few images in order
to explore this concept.
This idea is reinforced through the introduction
of the digital camera in the 20th
century; paintings and images could now
be reproduced in different, transmittable
formats, and photos, are interpretable
messages, rather than literal meanings.
For example:
According to Barthes and his theory of semiology,
there are two, key main areas we
have to consider when interpreting a coded
image: denotation and connotation.
We can put these ideas briefly into practice
by analysing the image above.
Denotation- (what we see)
So, in the image, we see the trees, a lake,
the sky and the colours, blue and green.
How Truthful Are The Things We See?
Here we can take a whole different perspective
on the image. I have changed the colour
of the image, which therefore changes the
meaning. If we repeat the same process,
we can say that the signifiers are the same,
whilst the connotations are significantly different.
The connotations of black and white, make
a place of suggested peace and tranquillity
turn into eeriness. This indicates the importance
of how an edited replicated image, can
instantly change its meaning when placed in
the hands of the editor.
This idea is reinforced, when we use a caption:
So how much does visual culture control
our everyday lives? How much of it is true?
The clever use of editing can manipulate an
image and its set ideology so much that it
destroys any uniqueness that the original
image has had. By the time it reaches us as
the audience, it may have been processed
that much that we see a completely different
meaning to the one intended- memes
and GIFs are good examples of this, where
images may have had multiple producers
with an intended different reading each
time.
So next time you see a form of visual culture,
just stop and take time to think about
how genuine its content may be.
You may realise, that the world is never
truly as it appears to be.
Connotation- (the things we associate
with the image when we see it)
We instantly decode (the idea of converting
a coded message into one which
someone will understand) based on the
knowledge that we have. So, we look at
this image of a traffic light system above,
and instantly associate the colour red to
‘stop’, amber to ‘get ready’, and green to
‘go’. But how do we already know this?
The traffic light system is based on the
idea that when a code is introduced, we
need to learn it so we can understand
the code and fully comprehend the culture.
This idea is also reinforced through a
shared code, as we read signs and symbols
through a set of cultural forms.
However, whilst it is important to respond
to the idea that we can understand images
through a shared code, images can
also be polysemic (have multiple meanings)
due to images being used in different
contexts and different forms- for example,
the same image used in a different context
will result in a different meaning, or, people
from a diverse culture may also interpret
the same image in multiple ways.
For example, here, we could say that the
trees and the lake indicate nature, which
is linked closely to the powerful feeling of
spirituality. You could also say that when
looking at the image, you are drawn to
the use of blue. The symbolism of water
is drawn to the feeling of cleanliness and
healing, where it could be seen that the
trees have been purposely presented as a
frame (masking) to interrupt this flow of
purity.
This is the key message that I can take
from this image. Looking at it from an unbiased
perspective, I don’t know the editor’s
intended preferred reading (the messages
and meanings the editor intended
to be taken from the image).
This introduces the concept of power- the
idea that the author takes all control and
can manipulate an image using camera
angles, captions, formats and colours to
try and make us think a certain way. This
idea is shown in the replicate of the image
above, below:
YOUNG BOY IS FOUND DEAD IN POPU-
LAR DISTRICT
Here, if you consider the initial denotations
and connotations with the image the
caption portrays, it impacts the thoughts
and feelings we have about the image.
Going back to the earlier idea that images
are polysemic, it is shown that anchoring
pieces of visual media with captions limits
this potential polysemic meaning.
Captions bluntly put images into context
and stir us towards the preferred meaning-
within a matter of seconds this image
which symbolised purity and healing,
paradoxically, now indicates heartache and
suffering. This idea is fixed as the image is
placed alongside the text to create a narrative
and a fixed reading.
Image of traffic lights courtesy of Didgeman
via Pixabay
Image of lake courtesy of Lindsay Tomlinson
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 32
PHOTOGRAPHY
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Lancaster’s Autumnal Beauty Spots
Lily McGahern
Williamson Park
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Autumn accentuates this historic city’s
enchanting spots. With the rust coloured
leaves strewn all over the city and everyone
heading back to university, Lancaster
has the feeling of new beginnings. The
earthy tones highlight the area’s natural
beauty, with many picturesque places to
walk, study and enjoy over Michaelmas
term.
Lancaster Castle
Steeped in history, the preserved grounds
of the castle are crisp and bright, with all
the autumn foliage surrounding it. Sitting
on top of a hilltop, you can get some of the
best views of Lancaster here.
Not only do the grounds give all the autumnal
feels but the castle’s coffee shop
is also the perfect place to study. It is spacious
and bright, with the sweet smell of
coffee and cakes making it one of the best
places in Lancaster to sit and work.
Lancaster Canal
Whether you are after a stroll or fancy a
run, the canal’s towpath, which stretches
over 27 miles, provides a peaceful escape
from university life. With a crisp crunch
underfoot, the path is strewn with fallen
leaves, making the walk feel like fall is everywhere.
Although, running past the back
of the Sugarhouse, there is the miserable
reminder of pre-COVID nights.
The park at night fits the season, with
Ashton Memorial being lit up making
the whole park bewitching. Spooky and
ghoulish, a walk in the moonlight brings
all the Halloween vibes. Come in the daytime
to experience the spectacular views
of Lancaster and the Lake District, as well
as the park being vibrant with autumnal
colours.
Woodland Walk
With the speckles of golden yellow and
burnt orange littering the trail, the woodland
walk is beautiful at this time of year.
You don’t have to venture off-campus for
some fall scenery, with it being right on
your doorstep. Use it as a relaxing walk
to forget about your studies, or as it gets
colder something to pick you up on those
hungover mornings.
Graduate College
Look no further than on the edge of campus,
for the vivid scarlet trees of Graduate
college. The falling leaves provide a perfect
photo opportunity, as well as make
your walk onto campus, if you’re in Cartmel,
Lonsdale or Grad, that little bit more
enjoyable.
Images courtesy of Lily McGahern
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 33
S P O R T
The Return of Female Football’s Golden Era – A Likely Prospect or Hopeful Optimism?
Chloe Henderson
1921 was a horrible year for the development
of the women’s game. Women’s
football was in full swing; it was providing
liberation from the monotonous
style of Victorian life and was becoming
hugely popular – and not just among
women. But, despite this, 1921 saw the
prohibition of women’s football across
the UK.
What women’s football (and football
in general) would be like now if this
had not happened is something for
mere speculation and hypotheses. Who
knows? Maybe it would be female footballers
that are the idols of young children;
maybe it would be the names of
Alex Morgan and Marta that would be
yelled when smashing a ball into the top
corner of the goal – as opposed to the
chants of Messi or imitations of Ronaldo’s
celebration.
Yes, 1921 was a grave year for the game,
but it should never be forgotten - it
should be used to propel the desire of
women to participate in and excel in
sport. This is one of the fundamental
beliefs of Lancaster University Women’s
Football Club (LUWFC); which provides
a welcoming atmosphere for people
of all abilities – regardless of whether
you have already played at an impressive
level, or whether you’ve never even
kicked a ball.
LUWFC consists of three teams: there
are first and second team who both
compete in the BUCS league (against
other universities); and there’s the development
team, which provides the
perfect atmosphere for people wanting
to develop their skills and to meet a variety
of new people, without any pressure
or need for prior experience.
As a member of the first team, one of
the standout moments of last season
was when we were 3-0 down at home to
Newcastle at half-time (who, by the way,
we thrashed earlier on in the season)
and, after an emotional half time team
talk, we managed to claw back the score
to 3-3 with an immense set of goals - and
we continued to knock on the door for
more goals to snatch the win. The desire
and heart to work our way back, from
which would’ve otherwise been a horrifically
disappointing defeat, is something
I have only experienced a handful
of times in all my years being a member
of num
e r o u s
s p o r t s
teams.
L U W F C
has had
a trem
e n -
d o u s
i m p a c t
on my
university
experience
- especially
through Wednesday night socials
(which have unfortunately been temporarily
suspended due to the Covid-19
situation). Walking through the typically
chilly winter streets of Lancaster on
socials, dressed as a golfer or a giraffe
(or whatever ridiculous outfit was on
theme that week) have been some of my
favourite memories - and it’s something
you wouldn’t experience anywhere else
but at university. In addition, the long
coach journeys for the away days really
help to make you feel more professional
Image courtesy of LUWFC
and they add a massive feeling of being
a member of a team.
Hopefully, more and more girls can be
encouraged to try football out and have
the same positive experience that I, and
so many others, have had. This generation
of women could become the next
generation of England’s (or the world’s)
sporting hero’s - and maybe, just maybe,
the return of the ‘Golden Era’ may only
be a fingertip away.
Goals, Glorious Goals – has the Premier League
season started as good as they say it has?
Sam Stewart
SPORT EDITOR
Image courtesy of Justin Tallis/PA Images at Brila.net
Saturday 12th September 2020 – the first
game of the new Premier League season.
Fan-less, but fabulous. Sky’s first game of
the season saw newly-promoted Leeds
United take on runaway champions Liverpool
and slog out a seven-goal thriller – with
Liverpool edging it 4-3. ‘The best opening
day game ever’, many exclaimed. Regardless
of whether or not you agree, one thing’s for
sure; it was a sign of what was to come.
Perhaps it’s the lack of accountability and
pressure for defenders, but the fan-free atmosphere
has led to calamitous defending
and goals galore
since the
return of the
world’s greatest
football
league. You
expect clangers
from the
likes of Harry
Maguire and
Kepa Arrizabalaga,
but
you know it’s
bad when the
likes of Virgil
Van Dijk
and Alisson
are making
mistakes. But
although the
defending has
been enough to make any football fan cringe,
the season has well and truly started with a
bang.
There have been 13 games with six goals or
more in them, that have tantalised our footballing
taste buds so far. That’s over 19% of
the games so far. Not only this, but it took
until the 47th game to have our first 0-0 of
the season; and it’ll come as no surprise to
anyone that it was between West Brom and
Burnley – that’s exactly the fixture and result
that has been commonplace over the
years. We’ve been spoiled in the opening
few game-weeks, so it was comforting that
this game reminded us of where we’ve come
from.
Although the goals have dealt us some delicious
entertainment, it’s not all been smiles,
rainbows, and high-fives. VAR has managed
to sober up our enjoyment and ruffle more
feathers than an overly handsy farmer.
We saw it on the opening day with new signing
Robin Koch for Leeds against Liverpool;
the new interpretation of the handball
rules is an abomination to football. We saw
it again against Eric Dier for Spurs against
Newcastle; which even saw Steve Bruce (the
beneficiary of the diabolical decision) call
it a ‘nonsense’. Joel Ward, Victor Lindelof,
Matt Doherty, and Neal Maupay were all penalised
for handball penalties in a similarly
shocking and shambolic manner.
Crystal Palace manager, Roy Hodgson, said
it best for me:
“I think the rule is a nonsense…For me the
handball rule should be a simple rule. When
you deliberately handle the ball to prevent
a goal or to get an advantage, it’s handball.
And when the ball hits you and you can do
nothing about it, it’s not handball.”
Well said Roy.
The Premier League has long been the home
of the greatest footballing entertainment, but
nothing could have prepared us for how this
season has started. Don’t get me wrong, VAR
and the ever-changing laws have to and will
improve – they have already asked for more
leniency on the handball rule – but let’s not
let this inhibit our enjoyment. There’s bound
to be more goals, more thrillers, more clangers,
and more controversies. But let’s be
honest, we wouldn’t want it any other way,
would we?
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 34
S P O R T
Football Fan Culture in Lockdown
Beth Train-Brown
COMMENT EDITOR
Lockdown has been difficult for the arts
industry and has seen thousands of businesses
close. But, while football is back on
the telly, little thought is going towards the
small, untelevised teams and how lockdown
has changed fan culture.
I’m originally from Lincoln (up the Lincoln
Imps!) and whenever they play, me and my
Dad sit in the garage with the radio on listening
to the commentary, or we go to a pub
that stinks of damp wood and beer to listen
with everyone else. When Lincoln got promoted,
we went onto the South Common,
stood elbow to elbow in the crowd, and sang
‘Sweet Caroline’ as the team bus drove past.
Now I’m at Lancaster, I’m too far away to
reach the right radio frequency. Not only
that, but even if I could, the pubs are all
closed. Even when pubs reopen, it won’t be
the same – a goal scored in a pub hits different
when there are thirty blokes yelling at
the glitchy TV in the corner.
I spoke to a second-year Lancaster student
about their experience supporting teams in
lockdown.
“I’ve always supported Liverpool but big
teams like Liverpool are so crowd-based;
it’s all about community, especially where
I come from. Watching a match in a pub
is insane because everyone’s cheering together
and it’s like a family.
“In the living room watching it on telly,
there’s not even a crowd at the stadium,
right now. It’s not the same without the
fans. It’s a fan’s game.
“Ever since meeting everyone in my flat
last year, I’ve loved the energy around
small teams. There’s always been a different
kind of excitement when a small
team wins but it’s more obvious than ever
now that we’re in lockdown.
“I’d love to support an underdog team because
it’s more exciting – the highs and
lows are better, more emotional. You’re
on the edge of your seat more and I suppose
you invest more in a smaller team.
“If it wasn’t for lockdown, I don’t think
I’d feel this way. At the pub, every match
is exciting but in my front room, with two
people who don’t care about Liverpool because
the score is fairly predictable, it’s not
the same.
“My flatmate supports a smaller team in
League One. He has a season ticket and used
to go see them live all the time. Now that
Getting the ‘Nick’ of Squash
spectators aren’t allowed and smaller teams
aren’t televised, it must be kind of terrible.
The sense of community for both is so much
more important now.
“I’m glad they’ve brought football back (and,
don’t get me wrong, I’ve missed watching
sport) but it’s just not the same. It’s lonely.
It’s lost the excitement.”
Image courtesy of Flickr - Trevor
Wallis - trevorwallis778
As of right now, the Premier League is back,
as is the EFL, and the Europa and Champions
League. It is not clear what will happen
to football – especially with a looming prospect
of a second total lockdown, but fans
are remaining hopeful – that’s all we can do.
Rhian Daniel
FASHION & BEAUTY EDITOR
The university squash club at Lancaster has
been a vital part of my university life over
the past few years. So, it was a great relief
that, despite the challenges, we have been
able to continue to play - albeit with strange
restrictions. Squash has always been an underrated
game, in my opinion; it’s the forgotten
racquet sport which rarely makes it to
the Olympics or other large sporting events,
but this is no reflection on the demanding,
entertaining and rewarding game that it is.
Playing a so-called ‘minor’ sport at a university
will always come with difficulties
(namely funding and support). However, I
am pleased to say that this year the club has
reached its highest number of participants
across all three standard levels - beginner,
development, and first team. I consider it a
great privilege to be able to play for an exceptionally
inclusive and motivated team,
who has done so much to get more people
involved in this fantastic game.
The game itself, for those who don’t know, is
played in a court with four walls. The rules
of the game are not especially complicated
and certainly not worth going into now, but
the main necessary abilities that the game
demands are speed, strength, and coordination.
However, the most important part of the
game is how enjoyable it is. In a time where
we are all feeling under a lot of pressure, and
when this abnormal situation is distressing
and disorientating, the squash court is a
place to relax; it’s is a place to relieve some
stress, and it’s is a place to improve your
overall improve your mental, and physical,
wellbeing.
The only downside to this upsurge of interest
is being able to find the resources to adequately
coach this number of people. Speaking
to the club’s president, Jennifer Wat,
she said, “the last thing we want to do right
now is turn people away.” Yet, among the repeated
back and forth conversations with
the university and the student’s union about
the creation of bubbles and other rules, the
major disappointment was that funding
seems to be currently out of the question
for the first time. Luckily, however, the club
has luckily managed to secure funding, once
again, from Sultans as well as forming partnerships
with Live Suite Media, Karakal and
TCL Cumbria.
In recent months, court time has been somewhat
hard to come by. In line with the government’s
Covid-19 rules, we aren’t allowed
to play with people outside our household
- except for when we are in bubbles at training.
Jen said, “It means that team bubbles
who play with each other once (in the case
of development squads) or twice (BUCs
squads) a week, cannot do so again during
the week in their own time. Given that locals
are no longer allowed into the Sports Centre
now, we’re hoping that we can find a way to
secure more
court time
to accommodate
all
the interest
we’ve received.”
I, however,
am very
thankful
that I have
been able to
play at all
and frankly
am surprised
that
even within
Tier 3 rules
we are able to play twice a week. After the
long break that lockdown brought, it is a
great relief to be playing again and as the
club continues to be innovative (ensuring
that everyone is able to be involved), I hope
to see that squash continues to gather the
interest that it clearly deserves.
Image courtesy of Rhian Daniel
scan.lancastersu.co.uk | Twitter @SCANLU | Instagram @scanlancaster | facebook.com/SCANonline Week 6 - Week 9 | 35
S P O R T
The 12th Man: The Influence of No
Fans in Football
Image courtesy of pxfuel.com
Tom Jeffreys
‘The home advantage’, one of the biggest clichés
in sport - and football is no exception.
When asked the question, ‘What gives the
home advantage?’, there will always be an
array of answers as to why a team does better
at their home ground. Some are outright
laughable, such as Graeme Souness’ rather
sour suggestion that Aston Villa had left,
‘the grass longer than normal’ in order to
gain an advantage in their 7-2 humiliation of
Liverpool; some are the stuff of legend, such
as the suggestion that Stoke became undefeatable
on a cold and rainy Tuesday night.
However, the most consistent answer is ‘the
12th man’ - the home fans.
Previous in SCAN, Joanna Donnelly wrote
an excellent article discussing ‘the influence
of the fans in football’. This was just before
we were put into lockdown and live sport
was abandoned in Britain until June. Now,
as live sport has returned – this time without
fans - it is a good time to look back at
a crazy summer of sports and evaluate the
influence that having no fans has had on
sports – and football in particular.
Joanna studied the home and away win percentage
of the following five teams: Manchester
City, Sheffield United, Burnley FC,
Crystal Palace, and Norwich City. Now, after
each team has played over 10 games of postlockdown-football
behind closed doors, we
can compare results (*Stats are correct as of
October 8th, 2020*). Manchester City have
an impressive home win rate of 86%, but
their away form withers at 50%, compared
to their respective 82%- and 69%-win rates
pre-lockdown. From here on in, there is a serious
drop in quality results. Sheffield United
haven’t won on the road since lockdown,
and their home win rate is just 50%; their
win rates were 57% and 60% respectively
before lockdown. Burnley have won 20% of
their home games, and 43% of their away
games compared to their 58%- and 36%-win
rates without fans. Crystal Palace have won
a measly 17% of their home games, with an
equally poor 29% away win rate, which is
a big drop off from their respective figures
pre-lockdown – 50% and 38%. Finally, Norwich
(who were relegated in last place last
season) still haven’t won at home since lockdown
began but have won a game on the
road in the championship, meaning their
away win rate is 17%. Norwich have just
continued their downward spiral over lockdown,
as their pre-lockdown win rate was
also poor – 30% at home and 9% away. The
immediate conclusion is that the removal of
crowds has had an extremely negative influence.
Aside from last season’s runners up, all the
teams have had woeful restarts. In keeping
with Joanna’s conclusion that fans truly are
the source of home advantage, all the examples
given, aside from Manchester City,
seem to rely on their fans for an extra boost
and have suffered without them. It must be
said that Man City are a much more successful
side, so their results are inevitably better,
but regardless of the quality of the team,
each of the other five teams saw their home
results drop. Perhaps, as Manchester United
fans would love to say, City are unaffected
by the empty stadiums because they rarely
fill their stadium anyway – their average alltime
attendance is just 37,097 out of a possible
55,097 – but the logic that they have no
home atmosphere would suggest that their
away form during lockdown would improve
(which it hasn’t) as they’re more accustomed
to playing with less pressure.
Perhaps Souness’ outrageous suggestion
had some truth to it; there are small, niche,
and familiar advantages for each team at
their home ground, with the fans being one
of them.
Whilst every fan outside of the blue half of
Manchester would love to support this theory,
it certainly isn’t true, with Manchester
City’s 2019/20 attendance figures at 54,219
and their pre-lockdown win rate was also
very impressive. However, it is worth making
the point that, whilst Souness’ long
grass claim was nonsense, there are perhaps
small advantages that teams exploit at their
home grounds. Fans or no fans, there is an
added pressure to do well at home because
otherwise, the difference between a home
and away game wouldn’t even be a discussion
now that football is without fans.
Despite Manchester City’s improvement
at home suggesting otherwise, I am in total
agreement with Joanna; fans make the
difference in football. Her (self-admitted)
biased example of Liverpool is unarguable,
their atmosphere, especially for the big
games, must be awe-inspiring for the players.
Anyone who plays any level of sport
knows the feeling of when a family member
or friend comes to watch you play, there’s always
an added pressure, but also motivation
to do well, so I can only imagine what it feels
like to have tens of thousands of devoted
fans who work all week to see you play and
urge you on. Home stadiums, with passionate
home fans, are fortresses.
Sport is a much more underwhelming entity
without fans, and this can be seen outside
of football as well. The gulf in quality and
blockbuster excitement between English
Premiership Rugby and New Zealand’s Super
Rugby Aotearoa (with fully packed stadiums)
is evident, and that’s coming from
a man who’s seen his team jump from 5th
to 2nd over lockdown. Elsewhere, we can
look at sports such as snooker, which in
terms of atmosphere is perhaps famous for
the wrong reasons. Nonetheless, Ronnie
O’Sullivan, who transcends the sport for his
infamous lack of motivation seemed to have
an extra spark for the Snooker World Championship
Final when only a third of the Crucible’s
capacity was filled.
Regardless of what sport you follow, we can
unanimously agree that sport needs its fans.
Whether you’re a Norwich fan (if they exist)
wanting to do your part to stop their downward
spiral; a rugby fan who wants to see an
Autumn with rugby as exciting as the Bledisloe
Cup with brimmed stadiums; or a fan
of anything who wants to get rid of the awful
artificial crowd noises on the TV, at least we
can all agree on one thing: fans are the biggest
influence in sport.
![[F.R.E.E D.O.W.N.L.O.A.D R.E.A.D] No Bull Review - For Use with the AP US History Exam and SAT Subject Test (E.B.O.O.K. DOWNLOAD^](https://documents.yumpu.com/000/064/004/568/a59ff8d867b5294317b5847404f33670209a2dbf/734b7775654a5173646f684e464d3047676c627469773d3d/396f6d754d302b3972446d79376947542f2b535149773d3d.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAICNEWSPSEKTJ5M3Q&Expires=1610985600&Signature=mTkHWOrHGW31fEBA9fsvTnaHTVM%3D)
Change language