The Screening Spires
I do not talk like this and neither do you. Why, then, is it that practically every film in which our dear old Oxford stars seems to have been made in some bizarre parallel universe where the last calendar anyone has seen was 1896? Or have the real students of Oxford been hiding from me? Watching the 1984 classic Oxford Blue recently, I began to experience an overpowering sense of guilt and shame.
Taking as I do everything I see in movies as gospel, I surmised that I quite simply couldn’t be a real Oxford student. I observed with a sudden shock of agony in my guts the discrepancy between the betweeded, cravat-loving students of the film and my own shambolic self. Some serious self-interrogation was necessary.
“Why,” I asked myself, “am I not a sexually ambiguous public school boy with enormous, rodent-style teeth? Why am I not a Nietzschean uberrower with one of those psycho stares SS guys have in old war movies? Why is my tutor not an alcoholic with a narrative function identical to the trainer in a boxing film?” Fortunately, my freak-out was not so severe as to lead to me asking myself why I was not Rob Lowe in a baseball jacket. After a Valium and a snooze, I decided action was necessary.
Too many film-makers have snoringly perpetuated the stereotype of Oxford as being like Raj India but with fewer funny brown people: it’s time we reclaimed our own screen image. So, coming soon to a cinema near you, keep a keen eye open for Academy Award winner Andrew Q. Lowry’s Oxfordalypse Now. You heard me. To reflect the diverse lifestyles of our fellow students we’ve gone for a multi-character, Altmanesque approach.
There’ll be Hugo, the gap year veteran assiduously contriving to cover up his stockbroker belt origins with a great many beads, a gormless grin and a propensity to use the words “awesome” over and over again. He will lust after Keiralia, who is by far the most important woman in London and who swears into her pashmina when she is told nobody gives the slightest toss about indolent rich people’s social lives.
Neither of them will have even met Rod, who as a rower is far too busy punishing himself for his sinful existence to leave the river, living as he does on a houseboat forty foot long and twelve inches wide. They will solve the mystery of Old Man Patten’s gold, while simultaneously winning a dance competition, learning life lessons, hating each other for a while before a climactic tearful reunion, and becoming disillusioned with western foreign policy in a Zimbabwe subplot.
Wouldn’t you rather see that than watch some American teach posh types how to rock and roll? What do you mean “No”?.
12th Jan 2005