Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Emilia Mickevicius, Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, University of Arizona

Deadpan is not so much a type of joke as a mode of delivery, a manner of address to an audience that often provokes nervous laughter.

Comedian Nathan Fielder’s persona is marked by deadpan. In his hit HBO comedy series “The Rehearsal,” he maintains a blank facial expression as he listens to contestants fumble their auditions for “Wings of Voice,” his fake reality singing competition. He takes the task of donning the guise of an adult-size infant very seriously, in order to relive the childhood of heroic pilot Sully Sullenberger. His voice is steady and monotone as he converses with a male pilot who cluelessly describes the egregious behavior he’s displayed toward women colleagues.

What makes deadpan feel so off, so destabilizing, so dryly funny?

One reason is that performers – particularly comedians – are expected to be expressive and over the top, or even hint to the audience that they’re supposed to chuckle, similar to a sitcom laugh track.

As I recently organized an exhibition on photography’s relationship to humor, I found myself thinking about how deadpan works in photography. A still, deadpan image might seem like a paradox: Don’t you need a real, live performance? But exploring how photographers have deployed deadpan sheds light on just how powerful and incisive this form of humor can be.

Are you not entertained?

“Pan” was slang for “face” in the 19th century. The genre of deadpan humor was popularized in movies by actor Buster Keaton, whose expressionless, blunt and stilted presence before the camera inspired his nickname, “the Great Stone Face.”

Sprung upon an audience, deadpan can yield a reaction that reveals what philosopher Ted Cohen has described as the “conditional” nature of humor – that it plays into assumptions, expectations and prior knowledge precisely to disrupt them.

Puzzled by the unmet promise of a clear emotion or narrative, the audience laughs uncomfortably at their own bewilderment. The performer’s restraint registers as absurd.

The opposite of postcard perfect

As a medium, photography has historically been burdened by debates over its ability to convey ideas or expression. To early critics, a photograph seemed “mechanical” because it appeared only to reproduce the world, rather than express something new. Compared to drawing or painting, they reasoned, the camera could merely copy.

But I would argue that for these very reasons, photography is a rich lens to explore how deadpan works visually. In photography, deadpan doesn’t even need to involve people.

Take the work of Californian photographer Henry Wessel Jr. Known for his decades-long documentation of everyday life in California, Wessel was one of 10 photographers featured in the watershed 1975 exhibition “New Topographics” at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, which trained a lens on landscapes altered by humans rather than nature alone – think gas stations, parking lots and tract homes instead of national parks.

Yet the shift Wessel and the other photographers initiated did not simply concern subject matter, but the manner in which they presented it: coolly, at least by the standards of iconic landscape. Previously, photographers such as Ansel Adams had infused their pictures with drama and contrast to provoke the same reverence that they felt toward nature’s beauty. Museumgoers were accustomed to seeing these kinds of landscapes: picturesque and sublime, featuring sprawling mountain ranges and billowing clouds rendered in dramatic tonal ranges.

By contrast, Wessel photographed suburbia in the American West – and with irreverent affection. He composed his images with mock casualness and printed in a narrow tonal range, as if yielding to the leveling quality of the bright sunlight on the stucco and concrete.

This was puzzling; Wessel’s pictures seemed worlds away from fine art landscape photography. They resisted awe and transcendence in favor of dry bemusement. By 1970s standards, his subject matter and aesthetic were equivalents of deadpan’s monotone. Who in their right mind would make the effort to take such a plain picture of a humdrum house?

Yet by adopting this style, Wessel encouraged audiences to pay greater attention to their immediate surroundings: to read front porches, carports and landscaping as evidence of people’s lifestyles and values. His photographs demonstrate the wealth of information that lurks in the mundane.

Why so serious?

Other photographers have marshaled deadpan to explore themes of identity and belonging.

Tseng Kwong Chi was a prominent personality in the East Village art scene in the 1980s and a friend of pop artist Keith Haring. In his landmark series of proto-selfies, “East Meets West,” the Hong Kong-born artist used a funny personal experience as the point of departure.

Dining at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center, Tseng decided to wear a Zhongshan suit, or “Mao suit,” as it was known in the West, due to its association with the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

The restaurant’s staff treated him as a dignitary, inspiring Tseng to embark upon what ultimately became over 100 self-portraits in which he appeared in this guise of an “ambiguous ambassador.” In the series, Tseng appears in front of popular tourist destinations – Disneyland, Mount Rushmore, Cape Canaveral, Paramount Studios – but never cracks a smile. Goofy hams it up for the camera as Tseng’s suit and serious expression subvert the conventions of tourist snapshots.

In doing so, “East Meets West” deploys deadpan to tell a broader story about the search for belonging as an immigrant and a queer person of color.

Similarly, in his series “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation,” Zig Jackson adopts a caricature-like persona to both mock and resist Native American stereotypes.

Jackson was the first member of his family to leave their reservation in North Dakota. He spent time in various western states before enrolling as a photography student at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1990s.

Early in his time there, as he went for a jog in the city’s sprawling Golden Gate Park, he heard grunting bison from the nearby paddock, a beloved San Francisco landmark since 1892. Jackson felt simultaneously at home and homesick, like he was “among relatives.”

Wearing a war bonnet, or feathered headdress – an item of regalia that is often appropriated by white people “playing Indian” – he returned to the site to “claim the buffalo as my own,” as he explained to me in an email.

In the image, Jackson meets the camera with an expressionless gaze, sitting next to a sign he made to mark his fictive reservation. This and other works from this series are deadpan: Jackson’s headdress registers as jarring with his street clothes, and the rules spelled out on the sign – including “NO PICTURE TAKING” and “NEW AGERS PROHIBITED” – read as tongue in cheek. But the photographs are also melancholy visualizations of feeling out of place.

The matter with fact

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether photography itself is inherently deadpan. It possesses a built-in bluntness that registers as absurd or confusing in certain contexts.

For her series “Skirts,” British conceptual artist Clare Strand rented banquet tables from a commercial catering company, covered them with linens and photographed them one by one. She then presented the images as a grid, as if they were specimens.

The viewer might initially assume that there is some sort of overarching narrative: Are they for a party? An award ceremony?

But Strand provides no answers. All dressed up with nowhere to go, the tables show that to photograph something is to transform it: In anointing an object, person or scene as worthy of being singled out, the photographer confers importance on it. From there, the viewer is left to fill in the blanks.

Scholar Heather Diack has argued that conceptual artists have subverted photography’s purported straightforwardness by making photographs that don’t simply copy or “capture” reality. Their work shows how photographs are anything but natural, literal or transparent.

Yet because people tend to associate photography with objectivity, it renders the medium ripe for deadpan humor – for crafting the appearance of a “straight face,” but with a wink.

Emilia Mickevicius does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A straight face, with a wink – the subtle humor of deadpan photography – https://theconversation.com/a-straight-face-with-a-wink-the-subtle-humor-of-deadpan-photography-258454

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Roy Scranton, Associate Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

No one uses “Malthusian” as a compliment. Since 1798, when the economist and cleric Thomas Malthus first published “An Essay on the Principles of Population,” the “Malthusian” position – the idea that humans are subject to natural limits – has been vilified and scorned. Today, the term is lobbed at anyone who dares question the optimism of infinite progress.

Unfortunately, almost everything most people think they know about Malthus is wrong.

The story goes like this: Once upon a time, an English country parson came up with the idea that population increases at a “geometrical” rate, while food production increases at an “arithmetical” rate. That is, population doubles every 25 years, while crop yields increase much more slowly. Over time, such divergence must lead to catastrophe.

But Malthus identified two factors that reduced reproduction and held off disaster: moral codes, or what he called “preventative checks,” and “positive checks,” such as extreme poverty, pollution, war, disease and misogyny. In the all-too-common caricature, Malthus was a narrow-minded clergyman who was bad at math and thought the only solution to hunger was to keep poor people poor so they had fewer babies.

Understanding Malthus in a broader context reveals a very different character. As I discuss in my 2025 book “Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress,” Malthus was an innovative and insightful thinker. Not only was he one of the founding figures of environmental economics, but he also turned out to be a prophetic critic of the belief that history tends toward human improvement, which we call progress.

God and science

On the topic of progress, Malthus knew what he was talking about.

He was raised and educated by dissenters: progressivist English Protestants who advocated the separation of church and state. He was taught by the radical abolitionist Gilbert Wakefield, and his father was a friend and admirer of the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas helped inspire the French Revolution.

Despite struggling with a cleft palate, Malthus distinguished himself at Cambridge, where he studied applied math, history and geography. Going into the clergy was a common choice for educated young men of middling means, and Malthus was able to secure a parsonage in Wotton, Surrey. But that didn’t mean giving up his interest in social science.

“An Essay on the Principle of Population” was shaped by Malthus’ theological views, but it is also a deeply empirical work and became more so as he revised it in later editions. His argument about geometrical and arithmetical growth rates, for instance, was based on the rapid population growth witnessed in the American Colonies.

It was also based on what he saw happening around him in Britain. Over the final decades of the 18th century, Britain was wracked by repeated food shortages and riots. The population rose from 5.9 million to 8.7 million, an increase of almost 50%, while agricultural production lagged. In 1795, hungry Londoners mobbed King George III’s coach demanding bread.

Boundless optimism

But why was Malthus talking about population in the first place? As Malthus himself explains, his essay was inspired by an argument with a friend about the journalist and novelist William Godwin – best known today as the father of Mary Shelley, author of “Frankenstein.”

Malthus and Godwin had similar backgrounds. Both came from dissenting middle-class families, were educated in progressive schools and began their careers as ministers. But Godwin’s extreme radicalism put him at odds even with his fellow dissenters, and he soon left the pulpit to take up the pen.

The book that made Godwin’s name and provoked Malthus was “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,” published in 1793. Today, it is considered a founding text of philosophical anarchism. Originally, however, Godwin’s “Enquiry” was seen as a thunderous articulation of Enlightenment progressivism.

Godwin argued that all social problems could be eliminated by reason’s proper application. He advocated abolishing marriage, redistributing property and eliminating government. What’s more, he asserted that progress led inevitably to a utopian world, where humans will no longer have to reproduce because we’ll be immortal:

“There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice as it is called, and no government. … But beside this, there will be no disease, no anguish, no melancholy and no resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardour the good of all.”

Such things would come about in due time, Godwin assured his readers, solely through the spread of rational discussion.

From his poverty-stricken parsonage in Wotton, Malthus saw things differently. Historian Robert Mayhew describes Wotton at the time as an industrial wasteland afflicted by “agrarian poverty … high birth rates and short life spans.” Studying history led Malthus to conclude that societies moved not in an ever-ascending line of progress but in cycles of expansion and decline. Godwin’s utopian story didn’t seem to match the evidence.

Reform – within reason

Malthus aimed to puncture Godwin’s grandiloquent progressivism. But he wasn’t saying positive change was impossible, only that it was limited by the laws of nature.

“An Essay on the Principles of Population” was his attempt to ascertain where some of those limits might lie, so that policy could respond to social problems effectively, rather than exacerbating them by trying to achieve the impossible. As a writer and active member of the Whig Party, Malthus was a reformer who advocated free national education, the extension of suffrage, the abolition of slavery and free medical care for the poor, among other programs.

Since then, science and industry have made incredible advances, leading to changes Malthus would have scarcely found credible. When his essay was published, the global human population was around 800 million. Today it is over 8 billion, a tenfold increase in little more than two centuries.

Over that time, proponents of progress have scorned the idea that humans are subject to natural limits and denigrated anyone who questioned the fantasy of infinite growth
as “Malthusian.” Yet Malthus remains important because his pessimistic account of society so clearly articulates an insight that refuses to be repressed: The laws of nature apply to human society.

Indeed, “the Great Acceleration” in human development and impact over the past 80 years may have pushed society to the breaking point. Scientists warn that we’ve exceeded six of the nine boundary conditions for sustainable human life on Earth and are close to exceeding a seventh.

One of those conditions is a stable climate. Global warming threatens to not only raise sea levels, increase wildfires and supercharge storms, but also amplify drought and disrupt global agriculture.

Malthus may not have foreseen the developments that fueled human growth over the past two centuries. But his fundamental insight into the limits of growth has only become more relevant. As we face accelerating global ecological crisis, it may be time to revisit the pessimistic idea that we live in a world with limits. Reconsidering what we mean by “Malthusian” might be a good place to start.

Roy Scranton received funding from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

– ref. Misunderstood Malthus: The English thinker whose name is synonymous with doom and gloom has lessons for today – https://theconversation.com/misunderstood-malthus-the-english-thinker-whose-name-is-synonymous-with-doom-and-gloom-has-lessons-for-today-263101

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Tatishe Nteta, Provost Professor of Political Science and Director of the UMass Amherst Poll, UMass Amherst

Has President Donald Trump survived the latest and most serious firestorm of controversy over the Epstein scandal? Or has the Trump administration’s handling of the release of information concerning the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child sex trafficker and Trump’s former friend, hurt the president?

A number of journalists, pointing to recent public opinion polls, have claimed that the scandal has hurt Trump. Others have argued that the public has largely moved on and the Epstein controversy no longer presents a political liability for Trump.

But both of these conclusions are based on limited polling about the Epstein controversy and thus may be premature.

Our recent University of Massachusetts Amherst national poll includes particularly detailed questions about the Epstein controversy and attitudes toward Trump, and thus provides fresh insights on how the controversy has affected public support for Trump.

We find that Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy has done significant damage to his standing, particularly among his core supporters.

Trump ‘fumbling the matter’

Americans are paying close attention to the prolonged Epstein controversy. Our polling finds that 3 in 4 respondents have heard, read or seen “a lot” or “some” about Epstein.

Moreover, most believe that Trump is fumbling the matter.

Seven in 10 Americans believe that Trump is handling the matter “not well.” This includes pluralities of Trump’s most loyal supporters, 43% of Republicans, 43% of conservatives, and 47% of those who voted for him in 2024.

When we drill down on the 47% of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein controversy, we find significant cracks in the MAGA facade. Among members of this group, 28% now disapprove of Trump as president.

When we take demographics, ideology, partisanship and assessments of the economy into account, disapproval of Trump’s handling of the release of the Epstein files is still associated with an increase in disapproval of Trump.

Voter regret

Even more significantly, we find that among 2024 Trump voters, negative views of Trump’s handling of the Epstein files are associated with an increased desire to make a different choice if the 2024 election could be rerun.

More specifically, among Trump voters who believe that the president has mishandled the release of the Epstein files, more than one quarter – 26% – indicate that they would not vote for Trump if they had the opportunity to vote again in the 2024 election.

While there are no election do-overs, it is clear that the Epstein scandal has hurt Trump among his base of voters.

Much can happen between now and the midterm elections in November 2026, of course.

But if Trump fails to satisfy his political base, perceptions among Trump voters that he has mishandled the controversy could reduce enthusiasm and participation in the elections. Even if the share of Republicans alienated by the Epstein controversy is relatively small, this could hurt Republicans in close contests.

With over a year to go, the facts on the ground will likely change. But as of today, the controversy over the release of the Epstein files remains relevant. Whether the president responds in a manner that satisfies his voters is a question that could have important political consequences.

Jesse Rhodes receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and Demos. He is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Adam Eichen, Alexander Theodoridis, Raymond La Raja, and Tatishe Nteta do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump’s Epstein problem is real: New poll shows many in his base disapprove of his handling of the files, and some supporters are having second thoughts about electing him – https://theconversation.com/trumps-epstein-problem-is-real-new-poll-shows-many-in-his-base-disapprove-of-his-handling-of-the-files-and-some-supporters-are-having-second-thoughts-about-electing-him-263662

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jennifer Ho, Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

The legacy of Vincent Chin has recently been commemorated in a street sign bearing his name on the corner of Cass Avenue and Peterboro Street in Detroit’s historic Chinatown.

I was glad to see it. Watching the 1987 documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and learning about his life and Asian American activism changed my life.

I was 18 and taking my first Asian American studies class at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The film made me realize two things: Asian Americans are targets of racial violence, and Asian Americans across the ethnic spectrum could join together to fight for civil rights. This led to my passion for social justice.

I’m proud to now be a professor of Asian American studies and critical race theory who teaches my students about Vincent Chin.

So who was Chin, and why did his death catalyze an Asian American civil rights movement?

A fatal brawl

Chin, an Oak Park resident, was 27 years old on the night of his bachelor party, June 19, 1982. He got into a fight with two white men – Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler car plant supervisor, and Michael Nitz, an unemployed autoworker and Ebens’ stepson.

According to Racine Colwell, a dancer at the Fancy Pants Club in the Detroit area, Ebens shouted, “It’s because of you little motherf–kers that we’re out of work.” Detroit in the early 1980s was in an automotive slump. People blamed Japanese auto imports and the Japanese people, in general, for the economic downturn. The assailants didn’t seem to understand or care that Chin was actually Chinese.

After the fight between Chin and Nitz and Ebens, Chin and his friends ran out of the club. Ebens and Nitz ran after them, with Nitz grabbing a baseball bat from his car. When they found Chin outside a McDonald’s on Woodward Avenue, Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat his body and head with the bat. They were stopped by two off-duty police officers who had been inside the fast-food restaurant.

After the attack, Jimmy Choi, a member of the bachelor party, cradled Chin in his arms. He said that Chin’s last words were “It’s not fair.” Chin died four days later.

Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder, but their lawyers pleaded the charge down to manslaughter. At the end of the trial, Judge Charles Kaufman fined them US$3,000 each and sentenced each to three years’ probation, explaining: “These weren’t the kind of people you send to prison. … You don’t make the punishment fit the crime. You make the punishment fit the criminal.”

Asian Americans organize for legal justice

The sentencing enraged Chin’s friends, family and the greater Chinese and Asian American community of Detroit.

Activists of various Asian ethnicities and their non-Asian allies created American Citizens for Justice, an organization that pressured the Justice Department to investigate the violation of Chin’s civil rights and to see Ebens and Nitz imprisoned for Chin’s murder. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, was a key advocate in the pursuit of justice for her son, showing up to rallies and interviews to remind people of Vincent’s death for nearly a decade.

While there were other moments, such as the anti-eviction fight for the I-Hotel in San Francisco, that brought Asian Americans of all ethnicities together to fight for civil rights, Chin’s murder sparked a broad awareness. Asian Americans realized that what happened to Chin could happen to them.

American Citizens for Justice held press conferences and gained support from local African American activists in Michigan and national Black leaders like Jesse Jackson, whose presence helped bring more attention to the Chin tragedy.

Activists were successful in forcing the FBI to open an investigation. The resulting 1984 federal trial was the first time the Justice Department had argued that the civil rights of an Asian American person had been violated. Nitz was found not guilty on two counts. Ebens was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, a 1986 federal appeals court ruling overturned the conviction, freeing Ebens.

A civil suit filed against Ebens and Nitz on behalf of Lily Chin was settled out of court in 1987. Nitz agreed to pay $50,000 and Ebens $1.5 million – the projected income that Chin would have made had he lived.

Nitz fulfilled his debt, but Ebens made only a few payments. By 1987, Ebens had been unemployed for five years. He stopped making payments after he moved to Nevada. Estimates in 2016 place Ebens’ debt to the Chin estate at over $8 million, including accumulated interest.

Chin’s death had a profound impact on the criminal justice system in Michigan and nationally. Michigan made it harder to plead down murder charges to manslaughter and required prosecutors to be present at sentencings to face victims. Nationally, victim impact statements are now commonplace. Victims and their families now have more of a voice in the justice system.

Chin’s death spurred Pan-Asian American activism across the U.S., leading to the eventual founding of organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice in 1991 and Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stop AAPI Hate recorded violence against Asians happening in the U.S. and educated people about anti-Asian racism.

Today, Asian Americans fight for social justice through organizations like these and 18 Million Rising, a group that advocates for racial justice for Asian Americans and all marginalized people.

This is the lasting legacy of Vincent Chin.

Jennifer Ho does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A Detroit street is named in honor of Vincent Chin – his death mobilized Asian American activists nationwide – https://theconversation.com/a-detroit-street-is-named-in-honor-of-vincent-chin-his-death-mobilized-asian-american-activists-nationwide-262033