Royal Breasts - Should We Courtesy?

Image c/o Take 40

BREASTS - you've got to love them. They give us milk, they keep Page 3 girls feed and, er, clothed, and, if you're a member of Cornershop, they provide a convenient pillow when tired. 

Perhaps more importantly than any of these, they sell newspapers and magazines. 

Unless your only contact with the world of publications is a subscription to Toothpick Bulletin, seeing two-dimensional breasts is a regular occurrence.  

Most of us are presented with an array of scantily clad women, and occasionally men, when perusing mainstream media. That doesn't make it right or wrong, merely commonplace. The fact that the public are so desensitised to nudity is a double-edge sword - and, let's face it, no one wants one of those around when naked. 

On a daily basis, you're quite likely to see some class of breast in whatever form of media you digest - pop star boob, actress boob, man boob. Recently, however, there a significant sighting to report - the rarest of all mammary gland creatures: royal boob. 

When topless photographs of England's future queen surfaced in French magazine Closer, not too many Irish eyelids batted. Their subsequent publication in the Irish Daily Star and ramifications of such were an entirely different story. 

The public reaction varied from apathy to anger. The fact that the images of a blissfully unaware Kate Middleton were taken in such a clandestine fashion led many to question the ethics of printing them. Yes, they were freely available online but was there sufficient public interest to publish the photographs in a national daily newspaper? 

It is noteworthy that the only other European publication to have printed the pictures - so far - is Italy's Chi. The magazine, which produced a special edition featuring a 26-page spread of a semi-nude Kate, is owned by Mondadori, the media conglomerate of one Silvio Berlusconi - bastion of all that is good and virtuous.

From an Irish perspective, Richard Desmond's announcement to seek a dissolution of the partnership of his company Northern & Shell and Independent News and Media (joint owners of the Irish Daily Star) was met with widespread shock and condemnation. The fact that the owner of illustrious titles such as The Very Best of Mega Boobs and Spunk Loving Sluts appeared so very horrified by the inclusion of the photos in a newspaper he was associated with would have been laughable were over one hundred Irish jobs not at stake. 

Desmond's reaction could be described as disproportionate. It could also be described as a convenient cover. The contract between Northern & Shell and INM is nearing its end and many commentators believe he has wanted to leave the Irish market for some time and is using this storm in a B cup as his way out. 

When questioned about ethics by the Leveson Inquiry in January of this year, Desmond responded: "Ethical – I don't know what the word means". Apparently, he's become acquainted with a dictionary since then.

In the immediate aftermath of the scandal, the British royal family took the unprecedented step of suing a media outlet over privacy issues, bringing Closer to court. The magazine has been banned from printing further topless photographs of Kate and has been ordered to hand over the original copies of the images and compensate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for their legal fees.

It remains to seen as to whether or not the royal couple will take legal action against the Irish Daily Star. For now, its editor Michael O'Kane has been suspended and the rest of the employees' livelihoods hang in the balance. What happens next is anyone's guess.

So, alas, it looks as though we're heading back into another royal nudity drought. Although, we'll always have Harry. God save the third in line.

Hat's Off: School Through A Lens

A look at portrayals of school life in cinema

SO WHAT is it then? A jungle? A meat factory? A playground? No, I'm not attempting to conduct an assessment of your current psychological state by holding up images of randomly arranged ink blots. Although, an ink stain is as good a place as any to start where the topic of education is concerned. With the exception of a few splotches from our parents, the vast majority of us begin our schooling as blank sheets of paper ready to be educated, influenced and drawn all over. That, and we've all had to deal with the dire ramifications of a burst pen in our school bag.  

Personal experiences of the education system vary greatly. Some individuals reach for the rose-tinted glasses while reminiscing of twelve times tables and requesting for permission to go to the toilet. The very phrase "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dtí an leithreas más é do thoil é" gets them all giddy with excitement. 

Alternatively, the concept of institutionalised learning can leave many others cold. The way we are treated and educated during our formative years has a colossal impact on the people we become later in life - long after 'big school' enters distant memory territory.

Either viewpoint can become more skewed or, indeed, gain clarity with the passing of time. For aeons, humans have made attempts at deconstructing the school environment - from academia to art. The latter has generally been more successful in this regard, particularly in the field of film. If a picture can paint a thousand words, surely a film is comparable to the back catalogue of an entire library.

In Pink Floyd's seminal 1982 film The Wall, the main protagonist's flashbacks to his childhood recall a conveyer belt view of the British education system. Here the children are homogeneous beings who are mocked and chastised should they dare display any artistic inclinations. They are simply "another brick in the wall". Their misery culminates in becoming overly familiar with an industrial-sized meat grinder. This damning indictment of schooling was largely influenced by Roger Waters' time in an English boarding school in the mid twentieth century. In the boy's fragile mind, it takes a frenzied riot to break down the wall of oppression created by a suffocating school system that forbids freedom of expression. The idea that curriculum and creativity are akin to oil and water has long been bandied about. This situation has certainly improved in schools in the last thirty years but 'art' in any form still stands on a much lower rung of the educational ladder than more traditional subjects such as maths and science.

Three years after the release of The Wall, John Hughes' The Breakfast Club redefined the genre of American high school based films. Five living, breathing stereotypes find themselves unexpectedly in each other's company in a Saturday session of detention. The group are labelled "a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse" and, for all intents and purposes, their personalities are presumed to delve no deeper. Each student possesses rather misplaced preconceptions regarding their companions. As their day together unfolds they begin to talk and, more importantly, listen to each other. Although coming from five radically diverse social groupings, the gang come to release they are much more alike that previously assumed and bond over shared interests and fears.

The issue of cliques is also examined in Tina Fey's insightful dissection of social schooling, 2004's Mean Girls. The film's central character finds it difficult to adjust to life in an American high school following her family's move from the African bush. The previously home-schooled Cady isn't emotionally or mentally prepared for the unwritten social rules that she must quickly learn to abide by in the complex world of twentieth first century teenage girls. She soon discovers that life in second level education is not entirely unlike life in the jungle - in fact, it's a lot less straightforward. A hierarchy exists in both settings but psychological warfare is evidently more prevalent in the former. Over time, Cady is forced to become au fait with concepts such as 'social suicide', miscommunication, back-stabbing and, ultimately, reconciliation. The film's exploration of the pressures placed on adolescents, particularly young women, as a result of skewed societal norms is really quite fascinating.

In school, as in life, we often pre-judge our contemporaries, superiors and, indeed, subordinates. The favour is, more often than not, returned. Perhaps there are more lessons to be learned from our celluloid syllabus, and each other, than first impressions would lead us to believe. 


This article was also published in Student Independent News, NUI Galway's student newspaper.