Burn your Boxers…Manchester’s ‘Menimism’ makes Headlines.
In these uncertain times, it is so easy for undergraduates to feel lost in the vast crowd of their fellow dressed-down and soon to be unemployed peers.
However, Ben Wild is an inspiration to opinionated but unheard students everywhere. He proved that if you are truly passionate about a good cause and bang on about it for long and loud enough, people will listen (even if you are a member of that forgotten class of society, known as the student population).
TheModernCaveman talks to Ben Wild, founder and champion of the University of Manchester’s MENS society. A society that tactfully and politely (but unapologetically) addresses the role of men and male issues in our society. Such a society has not been without its controversies and opponents, but it is partly thanks to such controversy that the MENS society became a national talking point. Ben Wild began appearing on the BBC World service, on Women’s Hour and his face even graced the dizzying heights of Grazia magazine. TheModernCaveman interviewed Ben to see what all the fuss was about….
MC: What’s your name and where d’you come from?
BW: I’m Ben Wild. I was born in Lyon, France, but I’ve lived in Leeds since I was 8.
MC: What’s the difference between a Men’s society and Manchester’s MENS society?
BW: A Men’s society is one that is run and attended solely by men. MENS is a society that addresses male-specific health and welfare issues and is open to anyone who is interested. MENS stands for the Masculinity Exploring Networking and Support group.
MC: Why is there a need for a MENS society?
BW: Because issues such as prostate and testicular cancer, male on male violence and rape, domestic abuse against men, stigma against men in ‘unmasculine’ jobs, custody and parental leave inequalities, and general stereotyping of what it is to ‘be a man’ are not being addressed.
MC: Ever since the Society began you’ve come under a barrage of criticism, opposition and controversy. What do you think is the single most controversial thing about MENS?
BW: I think the most controversial thing is the fact that it exists. Nothing we have actually done has gathered much criticism. The trouble is that people are instantly suspicious of anything that seems to go against the tide of received wisdom when it comes to tough issues. Considering the troubled history of gender relations and patriarchal domination, this reaction is understandable, though not excusable in its prejudice. The best way to counter this suspicion is by proving ourselves through our actions and this is what we are doing. There is only so much theorising and philosophising we can do, and when it comes to fundraising and campaigning on male-specific health issues, actions really do speak louder than words.
MC: You’ve done many a media interview since the MENS society was established. Have you found any of them tough?
BW: None of the interviews have been too difficult because they simply involve telling the truth, which comes naturally. It’s worth bearing in mind that those groups who really don’t like us won’t try and talk to us to get our side of the story!
MC: Where do you see the new wave of Menimism taking the MENS society?
BW: I would like every university to have a MENS society or some equivalent of it. . Ultimately, as with any humanitarian group, our goal is to work ourselves into redundancy by addressing all of the issues we set out to address.
The Caveman is listening to…
United States of Pop 2009 (Blame it on the pop) By DJ Earworm; When your iPod Shuffle just can’t seem to pin down the song you wanna hear, why not listen to tiny incoherent snippets of every song you’ve ever enjoyed blended into one generic remix? An excellent idea Mr. Earworm.
Warning: This track annoys easily! United states of Pop is novel the first time, fun the second time, then after that it will grind on you so badly, you’ll never be able to listen to any of the included songs ever again (and that’s pretty much every R&B record released in 2009).
The Caveman is Reading…
Mary Schmich’s lyrical essay ‘Advice, like youth, is wasted on the young’. The words of her speech were immortalised in the Remix ‘Everybody’s free (To wear Sunscreen)’, which featured in the Soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s 1998 Romeo and Juliet. Maybe it’s just because my future currently seems as empty as an a4 page, but these lyrics seem to stike a chord everytime.
The long term benefits of Sunscreen have been proven by Scientists. The rest of my advice has no basis but my own meandering experience and I shall dispense it now:
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Never mind, you won’t enjoy the power and beauty of your youth until it’s gone.
Don’t worry about the future. Well, Worry but know that worrying is as effective as solving an algebra equation with bubblegum. The real troubles in life will have never crossed your worried mind when they hit you at 4pm on an idle Tuesday.
Don’t be reckless with people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Don’t waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead. Sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do in life. The most interesting people I know didnt know what they wanted to do at 22. The most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t know what they want to do.
Maybe you’ll marry. Maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll divorce. Maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th Wedding Anniversary.
Whatever happens don’t congratulate yourself too much or comiserate yourself too much. Your path is half-chance and so is everyone else’s.
Live in New York City once but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Califonria once but leave before it makes you soft.
And most importantly. Always wear sunscreen.
Rioting never looked so good.
Our Grandparents lined the streets to support this nation’s brave troops as they marched off to fight facism.
Our Parents took the streets, somewhat less patriotically, with placards and baseball bats to protest against Vietnam, the closure of British Industry and Nuclear Weapons. (My mum tells me she even had a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament pencil case).
But what has got the kids of the Credit Crunch generation excited enough to look up from facebook and take to the streets with anger and frustration??…….A failed sale at American Apparel.
In all fairness, it was a bloody good sale. Yesterday, American Apparel hired a warehouse in the centre of London’s Brick Lane; filled it with over 150,000 sale items at up to 85% off. The sale began at 9am. By 10 am the shabby-chic streets of the East End were jam-packed with a mob of over 2000 disgruntled bargain hunters.
A grand total of thirty smug customers were served at the temporary tills before the Police were forced to shut the operation down as a result of raucous rioting. Our forefathers may have rioted passionately to fight the evils of capitalism and greed; but this youtube clip proves our generation is not as apathetic as was once thought. When discounted cardigans are at stake, us members of the happy-slap generation can be as ferocious as any that have gone before us.
If it is any consolation, TheModernCaveman‘s roaming reporter on the scene said it was the best dressed angry mob he had ever seen.
‘Fashion fades, only Style remains the same’ – Chanel
Just behind the neon billboards of the Curry Mile, South Manchester’s answer to the Las Vegas Strip, lies a reinvigorated national treasure. Hidden behind a bus stop and opposite a car wash, The Manchester Gallery of Costume is a bizarrely located cultural gem. The Museum lives in a beautifully restored 18th Century Manor House, which once majestically stood over rolling rural fields, and is now overlooked by a tower of council flats.
The gallery prides itself on owning the nation’s second largest collection of fashion and costume, second only to London’s V&A Museum. The long awaited first exhibition since reopening is entitiled ‘Suffragettes to Supermodels’ and boasts a carefully selected collection; including Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Dior, Balenciaga and Mary Quant. The exhibition chronologically charts the role of Women through fashion, from the ‘Votes for Women’ sashes of the 1910s to the Power-Dressing business suits of the 1980s. The exhibition is exciting and beautiful, but is also spectaculalry anti-climactic. The Gallery’s prized possession, a Givenchy evening gowned owned by Audrey Hepburn, is pushed oddly into the corner next to the Staff Room door and an unneccessarily large amount of space is taken up by one of the nation’s largest collections of buttons. For a gallery with extraordinary and unusual assets and a very limited amount of space, one uninteresting cabinet containing a purse from Accessorize and a Kimono from Topshop, seemed a particulalry wasteful use of space.
The gallery’s most exciting exhibits were the unexpected cultural rarities. In the restored 1765 Dining Room, installation artist Susie MacMurray has created an awe-inspiring sculpture of 100,000 adamantine dress pins. The adjacent room is filled with the perfectly preserved 18th Century clothes worn by Sir Thomas Worsley in the very rooms that now house the exhibits. Most impressively, the exhibition remains distinctly Mancunion; one room charts the change in fashion of 18th Century silk to 19th Century cotton, which fuelled and funded Manchester’s industrial growth. Local artist, Annie Harrison, has created an installation piece comprised of folded bed linen wrapping beautifully around the Grand Staircase of Platt Hall, designed to reflect the hunderds of workers who gave their lives to Manchester’s textile industry.
My advice; don’t neglect this Gallery because of its bizarre location! This is one of our city’s greatest cultural assets. The gallery’s archives are also open to view on prior request; an amazing resource for students and members of the public alike.
The Good Soul: ‘Are there any good people left?’
Director, Chris Honer, and Leading Lady, Poppy Miller, talk to TheModernCaveman about their recent production of The Good Soul of Szechuan, which took Manchester’s iconic Library Theatre by storm last November:
The Good Soul of Szechuan is possibly Brecht’s most famous masterpiece; but do you think you could summarise the play’s message in a soundbite?
Chris: The Good Soul is a parable about how hard it is to be a good person in a bad world.
Poppy: Well, there are certainly loads of questions but no clear message! The characters live in a dog eat dog world with no care from the state. Then these three Gods arrive and are desperate to ask “Are there any good people left in the world?” Of course, if there are, the Gods are doing their jobs properly and can happily go back to heaven. But the lives of the human characters raise questions like, “How can we be good when the world makes it difficult?” and “If being bad means getting your own way, why shouldn’t we be bad?”
This was the first time The Library has produced Brecht in four years. Why revive this tradition now?
C: The Good Soul of Szechuan is a play all about materialism, poverty and greed; it seemed like a very apposite play to produce in this economic climate. Also, Brecht is a brilliant story teller.
Poppy, your character adopts the guise of a male alter-ego for half of the production. Did you enjoy your time as a man or was it a challenge?
P: It was brilliant fun! Of course, it was challenging. But it was made easier by the fact that I was playing a woman pretending to be a man, rather than a male. I’ve had to do a lot of movement work on male archetypes. I’ve been watching men walk around Manchester! There was this one great guy really giving it the whole shoulder swagger, I think he might have been off his head.
You had quite a large cast of 15 actors. What was it like working with such a sizeable number of people?
P: Everyone was so interesting; everyone had their own story to tell. When we came together it was a ready-made world, which was great because that’s exactly what the play’s about.
What were the challenges of visually recreating the bustle of Szechuan Province on stage in the basement of a library in Central Manchester?
C: More than anything the complexity of Brecht’s story-telling made this very difficult. The Good Soul is set in a large number of locations; the city streets, a tobacco shop, an opium den, a court room. We had to develop a really unique set made out of movable screens that could be reassembled smoothly so that scene changes didn’t stop the action of the play. The screens were plain so the set looked like it could be any industrial city outside of the West. Brecht made it expressly clear that he didn’t think the set should be covered in Chinoiserie.
Finally, could you describe The Good Soul of Szechuan in three words?
P: Feisty, Quirky and Impressive.
Further Information about The Library Theatre’s November 2009 Production of The Good Soul of Szechuan is available at: http://www.librarytheatre.com/whatson/whatson_details.php/7/2009/1211/the-good-soul-of-szechuan/
