I bring you this scene from last night's standard Tuesday hang-out, because I realized that it encapsulates a typical beer-o'clock conversation with my Oxford friends, and the folks back home are always asking me what the average Oxford experience is.
Scene: An average Tuesday, ~21:00. A chemist, a theoretical and an experimental physicist, a computational biologist, and a medievalist sit around the common room drinking. The chemist has just noticed that the experimental physicist's very hideous 'art' joke that has been gracing the common room for some days, a sort of robotic-looking monster figure constructed out of cardboard, Sellotape (Scotch tape), and a fair amount of consumed wine, has gone missing.[1]
Chemist: Oh, no, Chris, someone has thrown out your creation!
Theoretical Physicist: Or, receiving no love from its creator, it has taken off on its own and is wandering around college, terrorizing the finalists.[2]
Experimental Physicist [in a false, gravelly voice]: At once as far as angels ken he views / The dismal situation waste and wild, / A dungeon horrible, on all sides round / As one great furnace flamed. [Everyone laughs].[3]
Chemist, turning to Medievalist: Oh, speaking of which[4], season three of Penny Dreadful is now on Amazon.
Computational Biologist: I haven't seen that. Is it good?
Theoretical Physicist [in tone of patient correction]: No, it's dreadful.[5]
(Chemist rolls eyes, Computational Biologist makes small "cheers" motion with his beer.)
Chemist: I enjoy it. Dracula's finally appeared on scene. And it's nice that the bride of Frankenstein's monster finally has more of a role.[6]
[Medievalist nods in approval.]
[Medievalist nods in approval.]
End scene.
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Annotations:
[1] St John's College has an 'artist in residence'. We get a new sound artist every Hilary term and a new visual artist every Trinity term. It's a bit like those families living in 19th century mansions that would pay someone to live as a hermit on their grounds in the medieval folly they constructed, just to add to the Romantic æsthetic. These artists are almost always more of the experimental, post-modernist sort. As a parody of the artists-in-residence, the graduate students hold an unofficial, unsanctioned 'spoof art night', where we make terrible art (think finger painting, theses put into interpretive dance, toothpaste splatters on t-shirts, etc.) and attach little cards next to each piece with a short paragraph explaining the deeper meaning of our art. We then dress up in a creative interpretation of black tie and drink boxed wine while going around 'admiring' each others' artwork. That's the event at which this cardboard robot creation was made.
[2] First reference to Frankenstein. Also, after just one sentence, this is the first movement of the conversation into surrealism, which is where most of our conversations quickly end up.
[3] The person talking, instead of quoting Frankenstein, quotes Paradise Lost, which is a text heavily referenced by the monster in Frankenstein, and thus more suitable for impersonating the monster. And he chooses a quote that applies to the idea of his artwork wandering around college at night. Because of course everyone can quote (and recognize quotes from) Milton and Shelley.
[4] Notice that the words 'Frankenstein' and 'Mary Shelley' have never once been mentioned (or even 'Milton' or 'Paradise Lost'). It is assumed that everyone will know the references without having to explicitly say the names, even if none of you study anything remotely resembling 19th century literature (or whatever topic someone happens to skip to).
[5] Oxford is the Land of Puns and Dad Jokes. You can hardly open your mouth without someone making a pun off of what you say.
[6] It is also the Land of Pedantry. It is Frankenstein's monster, not Frankenstein.
