A Eulogy to Sincerity 

Millie Cain on 14 November 2024

“You are better than a brainrot affinity.” – Millie Cain raises a thoughtful conversation on how we interact with music and whether social media has led us to devalue art and its content.

Whether sincerity is owed to music is not a debate I will be settling today – nor a question I believe I can answer. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t rotate based on reciprocity, meaning that what might be owed has not been given. How worthy is your work if it is not taken seriously? If it is taken with a laugh and a poke and thrown back in your face? 

The death of earnestness is one I mourn. A severe lack of counterculture to fuel an approach synonymous with post-postmodernism – we are breaking away from irony and cynicism and into a world of overflowing optimism & radical acceptance. 

While we can take into account those who do make art for fun, entertainment and amusement, this is especially popular in short form media content & has began to create an overwhelming build up of an audience expecting such. This is not a genre though, and for this audience they are beginning to expect that all they consume can be taken and viewed with a lens of ridicule that is undeserved. 

Streaming platforms also steal some integrity in this argument. Many artists discuss the importance of their audiences listening to their albums in order, in the arrangement they have painstakingly poured over for hours. To then be taken, spliced into separation and viewed as singular pieces. This brings forth the ‘clickbait’ or eye-catching content pulse that has begun to drive marketing pursuits generally. 

Finding and clinging to fixed ideas such as cannibalism as a metaphor for love was one such popular idea; must we be lured in by the grotesque and hideous to somehow understand? Buying into horror stories of wars being fought far away from our homes for content must be disciplined and those who pursue it, educated. 

Brain rot culture on tiktok is suffocating newsfeeds and art releases. We are currently in an ‘irony epidemic’, a term coined by Ethel Cain in a recent rant about such matters. A potentially post-post-ironic tone is being set and completely overshadowing critical thinking. Since when was taking genuine care and appreciation for art or music or film ‘cringe’? 

To explicitly state: having fun and making jokes in funny scenarios is always lighthearted and welcomed. With personal trauma, humour is a hugely successful tool for coping and comfort. Wrap yourself in that & in the warmth of your privacy. However, truly serious matters are being tainted by brainrot culture. Repeated comments / phrases that may have singularly been hilarious in one context, but are now being wielded as a crutch by people to avoid actually meaningful engagement with the media that is thrust before them. 

Our society on the whole have typically consumed media for escapism and we are so fortunate to have so many spaces to do so. To sit and listen to an album in its entirety with no distractions can be a fun, evocative, and lighthearted experience but it can also be reflective and appreciated as a dark piece of media. 

Fans are finding a severe lack of pensive discussion about art they appreciate. Yes, we understand your favourite artist ‘ate’ – we’ve seen it written a thousand times somehow. How did it make you feel? How did this carefully curated and meticulously crafted experience genuinely affect you? 

By having no sense of nuance and just taking sensitive and delicate topics at face value, we are losing personal opinions, swayed by senseless online reviewers who project their own media tractive dreams onto albums.

We can wade through desolate wasteland of content to try and find debates and discussions and shared ideas. Appreciation and awe feel rare and special in the waves of mindless, addled typing.

As previously mentioned, Ethel Cain is an artist of harrowing music; her album’s ‘Ptolemaea’ & ‘Hard Times’ are difficult to listen to, to feel and they push real introspection forwards. But after all, art and music can and should make you feel uncomfortable, and that is okay. To have such a diverse range of music available to us at all times is a gift, not something to avoid. Are we so detached from humanity that we cannot see and feel what is being placed in front of us? As adults, and in the older half of Gen Z, we do not need to censor ourselves from sensitivity. You are better than a brainrot affinity. 

Humanising artists is a change that must come soon. God forbid you actually might be annoying when you scream over people and shout them down. When you dissect their work into whatever is the most eye catching event. Instead of delving into their process and psyche, we delve into silly edits and stolen ideas. Artists do not owe you content. 

We will never be sated – despite the abundance before us. Listen deeply and truly, even to share that experience with those you love and sit and well in things that make you feel. And please, I beg you, create an opinion, hold it, mould it to your desire, but hold what is yours and don’t let it be tainted by consumerism. 

Words by Millie Cain

Send Nudes by Saba Sams review – “10 short stories that are brilliantly crafted and subtle in their delivery.”

Krishna Srinivasan on 28 March 2022

‘So she left, walked home through the park, with an image in her head that wouldn’t shift: her body as a nut cracked open.’ This is one of a hundred stunning lines from 25-year-old author Saba Sams’ debut novel, Send Nudes, a collection of 10 short stories that are hard to put down, brilliantly crafted and subtle in their delivery.

Send Nudes chronicles the lives of several Generation Z women who have just come of age and explores their reactions to the absurd situations they find themselves in. These situations come about within the patriarchal society they live in, such as in Here Alone where Emily finds herself being used to make her date’s ex-girlfriend jealous. She is ignored and left discarded like a plastic wrapper, finally finding comfort through food, a pleasure she indulges in with hesitation. 

It is not only patriarchy that Sams pays attention to, but also the ills of capitalism and its resulting inequality. In Today’s Square a working-class girl is promised a holiday by her mother, but the onslaught of COVID and financial difficulties render this impossible. These characters go from point A to B rather easily and their actions show a resigned acceptance, but a whole load of internal monologue complicates things.

Sams is interested in how modern technology – smartphones, social media, selfies – distorts women’s perception of themselves. See the title story, Send Nudes, where the protagonist struggles with her appearance, or Tinderloin, in which a Tinder match has disastrous consequences. Her characters don’t fit into the standards expected of young women and they suffer as a result. They are rebellious without meaning to be, and different without wanting to be. An important message from the collection is that only very few women fit into these standards of beauty and behaviour, and the toxicity and self-hate from this is inherently damaging. 

The best story in the collection, by a mile, is Overnight, a truly harrowing depiction of sexual assault, told through flashbacks at a rave. The relatability of the settings – a rave, a party, and school uniform shopping – make it all the more horrifying. The fine-drawn nuances of this type of scarring situation are so confidently rendered and stay with you for days.

Altogether, these socially relevant themes, combined with deadpan dialogue and a fluid prose style give the collection a visceral energy. It is the kind of book that people will fangirl over, and rightly so.

In Britain, Sams is part of a generation in which the female artist has taken on a renewed importance. Last year we saw the release of critically acclaimed albums from female musicians: Arlo Parks, Joy Crookes and PinkPantheress to name a few. In literature also, we are seeing a similar situation, where the poster girl is Sally Rooney.

Sams’ style of writing is almost identical to Rooney’s. In this area, Saba Sams has brought nothing new to the table. But innovation in prose style is not what she is after; it is content in which she has made remarkable strides. She has significantly widened the picture from Rooney’s obsession with bourgeois romance troubles and middle-class professionals moaning of how awful life is whilst professing themselves to be avid Marxists…

Stories should reveal something to the reader by taking them into the depths of a character’s inner life, a place which said reader cannot access otherwise. Sams does this down to a T. Her stories are rich in narrative and reach peaks that warrant further exploration. Her short stories leave the reader pondering over their conclusions. 

But the peaks also show something else: that many of the stories have the potential to grow into novels. Sally Rooney’s Normal People began life as a short story. Saba Sams should realise this and soon release a novel – a form in which I expect she will fare greatly.

Dev Halls’ High School Musical is an earnest love letter to the franchise

Isobel Moore on 11 March 2022

On Friday 25th February Devonshire Hall and the LUU Backstage Society concluded their three day run of ‘High School Musical on Stage!’, directed by Jess Simmons and based on the original High School Musical film. The adaptation follows the same course as the film, focusing on American high schoolers torn between the expectations placed on them by their cliques and their creative desires hidden within.

Immediately noticeable is the love that both audience and production have for the High School Musical property. The mania surrounding the 2006 made-for-TV film had to be experienced to be understood, which this production benefits from due to the cast and crew being made up entirely of first year students. The audience was immersed from the get-go, with the customary phones-off announcement concluded with “What team?”, and the audience’s emphatic roar of “Wildcats!”, highlighting just how embedded the film is in early Gen Z culture; I was sat alone and the Wildcat reflex took over me nonetheless. Although the American accents of almost every character left something to be desired, they weren’t especially distracting and almost complimented the endearingly cheesy nature of the franchise. The transitions were seamless, the sets charming and the lighting appropriately utilised throughout.

Credit: Jackie Slipper

The musical is instantly set apart from the film, with Sean Lomas as Troy singing the songs himself, which is more than can be said for Zac Efron in the first film. Lomas especially impressed when allowed to sing in a higher vocal range than songs like ‘Get’cha Head in the Game’ allow, and shone in ‘What I’ve Been Looking For’. The highlight of Elise McCracken’s consistent performance was in her solo, ‘When There Was Me and You’, with her vocal flourishes impressing throughout.

Any High School Musical fan will understand that the true star is Sharpay. She was played adeptly by Caitlin Lister who completely understood the assignment with all the sass and drama expected from the character matched with her own powerful, belting voice that outshone Ashley Tisdale’s by a mile. Josh King provides a refreshingly tortured aspect to Ryan, an oft overlooked character who finds solace only in his (perfectly executed) jazz squares. Maisy Dodd beautifully dominated the stage with her rendition of Ms Darbus, bringing all of the overacting and theatrics expected of her character and delighting the audience with nods to the romantic chemistry between herself and Coach Bolton (Uma Dell).

Credit: Jackie Slipper

The musical standout of the production was certainly ‘Stick to the Status Quo’, with the stage being fully utilised and eliciting a wonderful audience response. Especially notable was the surprisingly powerful verse by Sam Bolles as Zeke and the relentless ‘popping and locking’ of Charlotte Haren as Martha. The live band performed stunningly all night, with the inclusion of a full brass section serving to highlight the dedication of those behind the production.

High School Musical on Stage! proved to be an earnest love letter to the franchise, the inclusion of brick phones and chunky laptops showing an eye for detail and a level of care and passion that felt completely natural for a production led by those who grew up on High School Musical. Knowing that there is also a production of High School Musical 2: On Stage! in existence, one can only hope that the talented Backstage Society will cast their eyes towards a sequel.

No thanks Estrid, we’ll reclaim our own body hair

Fern McErlane on 9 July 2021

‘Hey friend,’ the email read. ‘I’ve got a super-smooth surprise for you.’

It was from Estrid, one of the many ‘revolutionary’ feminine hair removal companies springing up recently. You may yourself have spotted their pastel-pink razors plastered across Instagram or creeping into your DMs.

The offending email was infantilising, playing on Gen-Z terminology to hook in a customer – “we’re like you!” the email screamed. Between liberal rainbow and heart emojis, they denoted themselves as a ‘female-first razor brand that celebrates inclusivity, body positivity, and equality’. They even offered a free razor, all for the low price of an #ad on your personal Instagram account. Now that all sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But how exactly do they fit into a new era in which empowered personal choice shapes consumerism?

Image credit: Harper’s Bazaar 1922

Though body hair removal has been practiced by women for centuries, only more recently has it become a ‘necessity’ through social stigmatisation. The first female-specific razor was introduced to the market in 1915 by Gillette – the Milady Décolleté. Beneath this flowery name lay the new implication that body hair was unsanitary and unsightly, with shame functioning as a vehicle to further this new industry. Thus, the war against female body hair was born.

Feminine razor and hair removal companies have built their empire by creating a problem and inspiring insecurity. Women shouldn’t be hairy, they told us. Women should be smooth, sleek, sexual. This message stuck, for the most part, until very recently when self-empowerment and body positivity movements changed the game. Body hair removal brands now occupy an uncomfortable space, and have quickly changed tack, with new businesses bubbling up to fill the emergent market gap.

Image credit: Fern McErlane

Gillette now gleefully crows ‘Say pubic!’ on their social media, openly celebrating hair-down-there, and shares ‘feminist icon’ Ruth Bader-Ginsburg quotes. It’s a far cry from the ‘embarrassment’ of female body hair that they previously shilled. Estrid’s Instragram account is flush with carefully curated, aesthetically pleasing images, and memes likely created by an underpaid intern. They do raise valid points surrounding the necessity of vegan, cruelty-free, and sustainable products (something that in my opinion they should focus more upon). Yet, there is no admission from Gillette, or any other brand in the industry, of their part in creating the body hair stigma that they now “fight” against. In the era of real body positivity movements, it cloys of corporate desperation. More importantly, there is an unspoken unwillingness to take the blame. Should we let the same businesses that shamed and politicised our bodies now encourage us to choose for ourselves? It’s important to remember that as appealing these new brands may be, they’re not your friends. They’re selling you something, be it a product, or an idealised lifestyle (attainable only by using said product).

So, to these companies, my takeaway message is: back off. If we want to seek you out, we will. You don’t get to offer us a choice that was our own to make in the first place.

(But thanks for the free razor.)