The Myth of Victimhood

STAUCA and the power of the underdog

Whilst sipping one of Aikman’s most eccentric beers in the all too familiar cellar of the bar and bistro, bubbly conversation was forced to a close as all ears pricked towards one side of the room. A chorus of tories, rosy faces barely poking out from a mountain of tweed, took centre stage as what could only be described as a dirge fighting tooth and nail against the slow encroachment of progress began. Hearing William Blake’s ‘And did those feet in ancient time’ briefly took me back to school choir, until the whiplash of the situation snapped me back to the present (although the interior would suggest that I was in the ‘70s). The song I was listening to seemed to convey how the St Andrews Unionist and Conservative Association, or STAUCA, see themselves: scrappy underdogs who have carved out a bastion against an unstoppable tide of progress.

Blake’s hymn gives caution towards the devouring forces of change which were sweeping across Britain in his time. He pitches a fight between the satanic forces of industrialisation and England’s honest and vulnerable natural state. In heed of this warning, STAUCA have taken shelter against fast-paced change by locking themselves in their cellar. In their haste, they seem to have lost the key. For many, STAUCA seem unable to crawl out from their shell of irony, gripping onto needlessly edgy and attention-seeking jokes. Through this campus-wide unpopularity, STAUCA have done the impossible. They have forged a narrative of being plucky heroes standing defiantly against the faceless backdrop of student politics. The believability of this act is questionable, however. Should we accept the victimisation of STAUCA when the political theatre is actually shifting back towards conservatism?

Before the scales are tipped in this public debate, I would suggest a look back at the mythologies of other groups. For the Ancient Greeks, the primordial Titans were usurped by the more familiar cast of gods in an epic battle called the Titanomachy, a myth which expressed the violent blossoming of progress against the stagnant ancients. Although comparing the might of STAUCA to lumbering giants may be a bit far-fetched, their bellowing cries for days gone by in the depths of Aikman’s echo the cries of the banished Titans wailing from Tartarus’ dank caves. A myth more suited to the narrative they have authored could be found in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. 

Max Brückner, Final Scene of Götterdämmerung, 1894.

Channelling the romance of national myth, Wagner painted the tragic glows of the last sunset to shine on the old order in the Twilight of the Gods, the last section of The Ring Cycle. Heavily inspired by the myth of Ragnarok, Wagner shows the noble and tragic end to the gods, who meet their fiery deaths due to the faceless hordes of dwarfs, or Nibelungs, who seek control over the world through means of industrialisation. The gods are toppled, similarly to the Titans, by a force which represents the new. This theme is only a small leap away from the core message of the society’s anthem. 

STAUCA have adopted the attitude of the doomed gods, longingly gazing into the lapping flames of progress as they come to swallow them up, thanks to their unbending need to keep their controversial flair. That is not an attack on the group, but a self-admitted truth. A truth which STAUCA intensifies every time they host a “Thatcher Thursday,” every time they call something gay, and every time they sing ‘And did those feet in ancient time.’ It is their defiance to change that we either love or hate. STAUCA are not clueless — they have chosen to build the funeral pyre of self-loathing with the hate they get, and they’ve made their bed in it too, cosying up to their noble resignation like all old orders of myth. I don’t think that STAUCA want to rebuild Jerusalem. They’re too busy performing in its ruins.

Image from Wikimedia Commons