The Illusion of Depth

You may or may not be aware of this (there are so many other news stories at the moment) but a Presidential election is currently underway in the US. The Batley Townswomen's Guild Reenactment of the 2024 Presidential Election (with apologies to Monty Python) This election has been replete with moments of drama (and will doubtless continue to be) but one stand-out incident has to be the interview a couple of months ago in which one of the candidates claimed that his opponent had "only recently turned black." "I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know - Is she Indian? Or is she black?" I'm not going to waste anyone's time by being shocked or appalled that a self-confessed rapist could possibly say such a thing. He's a shmuck. We already knew that; it hardly qualifies as news any more. But there is actually something interesting about this parti

A curious thing happened at the Olympic Games in Paris last month: the gold medal for Women's boxing was won by... a woman . And the whole internet went crazy. I'm not sure what it says about the current state of "gender identity" when a boxer who is biologically female is no longer considered female enough to satisfy the gender-critical voices in popular culture, but the entire incident has become something of a flashpoint in the ongoing debate about the definition of gender . When I introduced this new series of films last week, I talked about the A-Level essay I was asked to write (a long time ago) discussing whether or not the Eroica Symphony could be defined as "Romantic". Before one can answer such a question, one first needs to agree on a definition of "Romantic Music". Likewise, deciding whether or not the boxer Imane Khelif is female depends entirely on how one defines the term female . Khelif certainly appears to meet the medical definiti

When I was a humble A-Level music student (about 150 years ago) I was asked to write an essay on a topic that still haunts me. Can Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony be considered a work of "Romantic" music? Why or why not? In the (many, many) decades that followed, hardly a day has gone by when I haven't thought about that essay topic. Not because I think it's a difficult question, and not even because I care so very deeply about the 'Eroica' Symphony (Beethoven is great, but give me Mozart or Brahms any day) but because I see this question as a microcosm of the current state of modern cultural discourse. I'm serious. Think about the implications of this essay question for a moment. In order to answer it, one first needs to establish what is meant by "Romantic Music". Then one needs to consider whether this particular symphony meets those parameters. Since "Romantic Music" is a very fuzzy term, this is necessarily a very subject