A raw new C4 drama asks what it takes to turn five 'ordinary' lads into gang rapists The crisis in modern masculinity has been well documented in almost every medium over recent years, from the tongue-in-cheek New Lad backlash of Baddiel and Skinner or Loaded, via films such as Fight Club, to the sociological and psychological explorations of books such as Anthony Clare's On Men or Susan Faludi's Stiffed. The observation that the economic and social empowerment of women is contributing to the emasculation of modern man has turned into an easy truism, prompting the question of what happens as the natural progression of this trend? Read More...
Readers recommendMusicReaders recommend: songs about confusion and delusion – resultsBangles to banjos, witches to Yapoos, Partisans to Porcupine Tree, RR’s Abahachi ranges through a rich history of songs picked out from last week’s topic
Confusion is the defining sentiment of our age. In modernity, the past ceases to be any guide to the quicksand of the present, and the future can be imagined only as ceaseless instability and uncertainty, in which real change is deemed impossible. Read More...
The Patience StoneReviewA woman in a ruined warzone speaks her mind to her vegetative husband in this powerfully absorbing dramaThat remarkable 82-year-old veteran of the cinema Jean-Claude Carrière has written a trenchant and vivid screenplay for an absorbing drama set ambiguously in Afghanistan, or in some other country in the endgame of a grim and soul-destroying war. Carrière has collaborated with the director, Atiq Rahimi, who wrote the original novel; their movie is by turns mysterious, moving, shocking and explicit – and very different from the kind of opaque and quietist cinema we might expect. Read More...