Dafydd MacLennan week 3: Spanish kids react to ‘The Riot Club’

“Isn’t Oxford full of posh twats?” This is something I am sure we all get asked by people when they find out we go to Oxford.

Safe to say I’m pretty sick of having to defend myself against such unfortunate stereotypes by saying that, whilst the gowns may make us look like posh twats from the outside, most of us are normal and friendly people from a variety of backgrounds.

I’m pretty sure the trailer of The Riot Club, which came out this week, has not exactly helped our cause. Especially with the line “I am sick to death of poor people!” well and truly shitting all over Oxford’s attempt to improve its public image and, of course, access.

So I thought it would be interesting to get a completely unbiased perspective on this trailer and how it portrays our beloved University…

I decided to show it to a class of Spanish teenagers, passing it off as an English lesson.

Had there been feedback forms, I’m sure everyone would have commented on how well the lesson was structured.

When I asked them where Oxford was was the only responses I was able to drag out of them were: “¿Is a country in the America, no?” and “¿Is in London, no?”.

So I was pretty confident that they knew fuck all about the place. I played them the Riot Club trailer and asked them how they would now describe Oxford, based on what they saw.

Well first of all they thought that Oxford was full of gang violence where the gang members dress up like waiters… Once I nipped that idea in the bud it was frightening how quickly they developed the exact same opinions of Oxford that we try so hard to dispel:

¡They are all rich!

¡You have to have mucho dinero to go to Oxford!

¡They are bad persons!

¡They are arrogants persons!

¡They are not tolerants persons!

The whole class unanimously agreed that Oxford looks like a place which was full of weirdly dressed dick-heads and is a University that exclusively admits rich people. If this is the opinion formed by Spanish kids who know nothing about Oxford based on a three minute trailer then we can only brace ourselves for the avalanche of unpleasant stereotypes that people are going to vomit all over us when we tell them what Uni we go to. ¡Muchas gracias por eso The Riot Club!

“You’ve got quite a posh name. Myles, are you… (pause for unnecessarily long…) posh?” said the affluent looking white girl in an equally ‘posh’ accent. Can we all agree that this is the lamest opening line ever?  – ¡Que te jodan tía!

I’m sure we can all expect an accurate and totally unbiased portrait of our lives. At least it will make much better Cinema than a film of students watching cat videos in the Rad Cam and furiously slut-dropping in Park End.