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Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rod Thornton, Senior Lecturer in International Studies, Defence and Security., King’s College London

There is a major sticking point often overlooked in the ceasefire negotiations between Ukraine and Russia currently being held in Abu Dhabi. This relates to the fact that, as part of any agreement, Kyiv is being asked to give up the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

If it does so, it will also be giving up the strategic positions that have prevented major advances by the Russian military for many months now. This is the significant line of defensive fortifications across the Donbas, known as the “Donbas line”. It’s Ukraine’s equivalent to the Maginot line of forts which were France’s main line of defence against Germany before the second world war.

The “Anchorage formula” agreed by the US president, Donald Trump, and Russia president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska late last year calls for Ukrainian forces to abandon the areas of western Donbas they currently hold. Washington is now talking up the idea of establishing a “free economic zone” or “de-militarised zone” which would cover the whole of the Donbas, including those portions currently occupied by Russian forces.

This would mean Ukraine abandoning the Donbas line. The system integrates at least seven distinct defensive layers that any attacking force must penetrate sequentially to achieve effect.

These include minefields, anti-tank ditches, anti-tank obstacles (“dragons’ teeth”), bunkers, trench lines and anti-drone defences. Such obstacles can either physically halt assaulting Russian forces or “canalise” them into swampy or otherwise impassible ground or into pre-arranged kill zones, wherein fires (mortar and artillery) can be used to destroy Russian formations.

One of the most critical lines runs through the embattled town of Pokrovsk, which has been under constant Russian assault since early 2025. Lose Pokrovsk and the Ukrainians will then more than likely also lose the important city of Donetsk. Thus Pokrovsk has been referred to as the “gateway to Donetsk”.

The Donbas line took years to build and to perfect. It is very sophisticated. It would be a massive strategic blow for the Ukrainians if they were forced to give it up and pull back.

In essence, the Russian demand that Ukrainian forces vacate the western Donbas can also be seen as a demand that they likewise give up, in the shape of this Donbas line, their one true means of protecting not only the western Donbas but also, arguably, the whole of the rest of Ukraine.

Who can be trusted?

If Kyiv were to accede to Russian demands and abandon the Donbas line, then this would only help bring about a lasting peace if, of course, trust could be placed in the Russians to keep their side of the bargain. They would need to cease all their assaults across Ukraine and themselves “de-militarise” the area of the eastern Donbas they currently control.

But Putin has a history of reneging on deals. Anything agreed now by Kyiv in Abu Dhabi is likely, as respected Washington-based thinktank the Institute for the Study of War points out, to suffer the same fate. This seems to certainly be the view of many on the Ukrainian side.

As Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself recently put it, “I don’t trust Putin”. He has good reason for doubting the Russian president’s bona fides. Russia was a signatory to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum alongside the US, UK and France by which those powers provided assurances for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv giving up its arsenal of nuclear weapons.

This didn’t stop Russia invading. Nor did the two Minsk accords in 2014 and 2015 which aimed to stop the fighting between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian military in the Donbas region.

In the event of any peace deal being struck between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine’s western allies have offered what they are calling “robust security guarantees”. These would be provided by a “coalition of the willing” made up of more than 30 countries, mainly from within Europe.

What’s on the table

In terms of what these promises might actually mean, there is a proposal for a three-tier mechanism. A Russian breach of the ceasefire would initially trigger a diplomatic warning, as well as allowing Ukraine to respond militarily.

The second tier would be provided by the coalition of the willing, primarily the UK and France, which plan to send troops to Ukraine as part of the deal, but also many EU members plus Norway, Iceland and Turkey.

The third tier would be a military response from the US. But it’s been reported that the US has made its participation in any security guarantees contingent on the agreement of a ceasefire deal which gives Russia control of the “entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine”.

A further issue here is that Moscow is unlikely to agree to the presence of any Nato troops as official security guarantors. Moscow has said as much, insisting that any foreign troops in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target”.

Would western governments forces really commit their troops into a situation where they might become targets – leading perhaps to a wider war?

The whole idea of Ukraine abandoning its Donbas line is fraught with difficulties. For this is not just a question of Ukraine trading land for peace. It is more fundamentally a question of trading land and significant defensive lines for the promise of peace.

The original version of the Maginot line did not save France in 1940. It was bypassed by German forces moving through Belgium to outflank the Maginot fortifications. The danger for Ukraine is that its own Maginot line could itself be bypassed if it accedes to Russian demands at the negotiating table in Abu Dhabi.

Can Zelensky really give up the Donbas line that is protecting his entire country and can he really rely on security guarantees from western states that may yet prove equivocal? As one Ukrainian official told Reuters recently, to give up remaining positions in the Donbas region would be “suicide”.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump wants Ukraine to give up the Donbas in return for security guarantees. It could be suicide for Kyiv – https://theconversation.com/trump-wants-ukraine-to-give-up-the-donbas-in-return-for-security-guarantees-it-could-be-suicide-for-kyiv-274779

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University

No accident waiting to happen can ever have delivered on its promise so spectacularly as Lord Mandelson, with the continuous revelations of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The decision by the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, to appoint Mandelson as ambassador in Washington DC always appeared a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But no reward could ever have repaid such risk.

There is a grim fascination in seeing a prominent public figure’s reputation incinerated in real time. Mandelson’s entreating emails to a convicted abuser and trafficker of minors were still quite recently sufficient of an embarrassment before he was then photographed urinating in public.

The new normal is to appear on front pages in his underpants. Next will come questions about the meaning of emails that appear to show him betraying the most cardinal principles of public office, for monetary gain, from a criminal.

Mandelson had clearly started 2026 with the intention of rehabilitating himself and re-entering public life: a Sunday morning BBC interview, columns in the Spectator, an interview in the Times. Journalists’ requests for comment were replied to. No longer.

What was striking across these appearances – given Mandelson’s talents – was his maladroitness. Not to have apologised to the victims of trafficking when pressed in that initial high-profile interview, only to realise his error and concede the following day did not bear the hallmark of a master of public relations.

The rehabilitation plan, moreover, evidently did not include a strategy for the documents that were to be released as part of another huge cache of material relating to Epstein.

There is now the suggestion that Mandelson may have forwarded government-sensitive information to a foreign banker while he was, effectively, the deputy prime minister and that he encouraged that banker to intimidate his colleague, the chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling. The banker allegedly did “mildly threaten” Darling. Darling knew someone was leaking, but, having died in 2023, never knew who. Now we have an idea.

To separate the procedural from the human, for now, the issue that leaves the current government most exposed is Starmer’s personal choice of Mandelson as US ambassador. One of two things must have happened: a catastrophic failure in vetting and in due diligence, or the government ignoring red lights from vetting and due diligence.

This is also an origin story scandal for the Labour party, in which Mandelson has deep roots. It has always lived in fear of its leaders succumbing to the charms of plutocrats. It happened in 1931, in the “great betrayal”, when Labour leader Ramsey McDonald formed a government with the Tories and Liberals to resolve a financial crisis – one reason the saintly Clement Attlee nationalised the Bank of England in 1946. Attlee’s deputy leader was Herbert Morrison, Mandelson’s grandfather.

This matters more now because Mandelson’s influence in the party meant that he has acted as a mentor to so many – not least the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, the man arguably more responsible for this government than Starmer himself, and the person said to have pushed for Mandelson to be given the ambassadorship. The fissures of the Blairites and the soft left are reopening.

Removing Mandelson

There will be those who take pleasure from so public a defenestration of so polarising a figure. Two such will be the Reform and Green party candidates in the Gorton and Denton byelection.

A room of scriptwriters could not have devised a situation calculated to land more effectively for a canvasser from an insurgent party to stand on a doorstep and asks a voter how satisfied they are with the way the country’s run, and in the qualities of their leaders.

Even before the revelations about his friendship with a billionaire paedophile, Mandelson was the personification of the increasingly maligned and resented globalist, lanyard-wearing, chauffeured classes. The online conspiracist hares that have already been sent running are unnecessary: this scandal is in no need of embellishment.

Some always knew. Mandelson masterminded Labour’s electoral approach for a decade, but when he succeeded Neil Kinnock as leader in 1992, John Smith would have nothing to do with him. Smith died suddenly, and Tony Blair’s sudden ascent was facilitated by Mandelson, to the undying enmity of Gordon Brown.

Brown appointed Mandelson his first secretary of state, but from a position of weakness. He is now making his fury known. The current prime minister appointed Mandelson his ambassador to the UK’s closest and most important ally, but from a position of weakness. Brown, at least, can vent his fury – he no longer has office to lose.

In the space of a few hours, Mandelson’s future shifted from the certainty of ignominy to the possibility of prison. We are already beyond historical parallel. For 60 years, John Profumo has been the yardstick for political scandal in the UK (and another where the exploitation of women was lost in a voyeuristic melee). We have a new one.

In other political cultures, Mandelson would by now have been airlifted to a safehouse outside Moscow or Riyadh, given sanctuary, never to be seen or heard of again. But the prime minister will be seeing and hearing of Mandelson for some time to come.

When it comes to making appointments – a prime minister’s elemental power – Starmer has frequently made the wrong choices, though innate caution and timidity, to the detriment of his government. It is the one exception to this cautious approach that may prove to be the most consequential of all.

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

– ref. The fall of Peter Mandelson and the many questions the UK government must now answer – https://theconversation.com/the-fall-of-peter-mandelson-and-the-many-questions-the-uk-government-must-now-answer-275011

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Subhajit Basu, Professor of Law and Technology, University of Leeds

Imagine a stranger starts chatting with you on a train platform or in a shop. The exchange feels ordinary. Later, it appears online, edited as “dating advice” and framed to invite sexualised commentary. Your face, and an interaction you didn’t know was being recorded, is pushed into feeds where strangers can identify, contact and harass you.

This is a reality for many people, though the most shocking examples are mainly affecting women. A BBC investigation recently found that men based outside of the UK have been profiting from covertly filming women on nights out in London and Manchester and posting the videos on social media.

In the UK, filming someone in public – even covertly – is not automatically unlawful. Sometimes, it is socially valuable (think of people recording violence or police misconduct).

But once a person is identifiable and the clip is uploaded for views or profit, it can become unlawful under data protection law and, in more intrusive cases, privacy or harassment law. The problem here is what the filming is for, how it is done and what the platforms do with it.

UK law is cautious about a general claim to “privacy in public”. There is a key distinction in case law between being seen in a public place and being recorded for redistribution.

Courts have accepted that privacy can apply even in public, depending on circumstances. In the case of Campbell v MGN (2004), the House of Lords ruled that the Daily Mirror had breached model Naomi Campbell’s privacy by publishing photos that, while taken in public, exposed her private medical information.

The rise of smartphones and now wearable cameras has made covert capture cheaper, more discreet and more accessible. With smart glasses, recording can look like eye contact.

Capture is frictionless: the file is ready to upload before the person filmed even knows it exists. And manufacturer safeguards such as recording lights are already reportedly being bypassed by users.

Once it’s been uploaded, modern social media platforms allow this content to become easily scalable, searchable and profitable.

Context is what shifts the stakes. Covert filming, an intrusive focus on the body and publication at scale can turn an everyday moment into exposure that invites harassment.

Privacy in public

Public life has always involved being seen. The harm is being made findable and targetable, at scale. This is why the most practical legal tool is data protection. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), when people are identifiable in a video, recording and uploading it is considered processing of personal data.

The uploader and platform must therefore comply with GDPR rules, which in this case would (usually) mean not posting identifiable footage of a stranger in the first place or, removing the details that identify them and taking the clip down quickly if the person objects.

UK GDPR does not apply to purely personal or household activity, with no professional or commercial connection. This is a narrow exemption – “pickup artist” channels and monetised social media posts are unlikely to fall within it.

Harassment law may apply where the filming and posting is followed by repeated contact, threats or encouraging others to target the person filmed, which causes them alarm or distress.

Lagging enforcement

Harm spreads faster than the law can respond. A clip can be uploaded, shared and monetised within seconds. Enforcement of privacy and data protection law is split between the Information Commissioner’s Office, Ofcom, police and courts.

Victims are left to rely on platform reporting tools, and duplicates often continue to spread even after posts are taken down. Arguably, prevention would be more effective than after-the-fact removal.

The temptation is to call for a new offence of “filming in public”. In my view, this risks being either too broad (chilling legitimate recording) or too narrow (missing the combination of factors – covert filming, identifiability, platform amplification and monetisation that make this a problem).

A better approach would be twofold. First, treating wearable recording devices as higher-risk consumer tech, and requiring safeguards that work in practice. For example: conspicuous, genuinely tamper-resistant recording indicators; privacy-by-default settings; and audit logs so misuse is traceable. The law could build in clear public-interest exemptions (journalism, documenting wrongdoing) so rules do not become a backdoor ban on recording.

There are precedents for regulating consumer tech in this way. For example, the UK has strict security requirements for connectable devices like smart TVs to prevent cyberattacks.

Second, platforms need a clear requirement to reduce the harm caused by covert filming. In practice, that means spotting and obscuring identifiers such as phone numbers and workplace details, warning users when a stranger is identifiable, fast-tracking complaints from the person filmed, blocking re-uploads, and removing monetisation from this content.

The Online Safety Act provides a framework for addressing this problem, but it is not a neat checklist for prevention. Where it clearly applies is when the content itself, or the response it triggers, amounts to illegal harassment or stalking. Those are priority offences in the act, so platforms are expected to assess and mitigate those risks.

The awkward truth is that some covert, degrading clips may be harmful without being obviously illegal at the point of upload, until threats, doxxing or stalking follow.

Privacy in public will not be protected by slogans or a tiny recording light. It will be protected when existing legal principles are applied robustly. And when enforcement is designed for the speed, incentives and business models that shape what people see and share online.

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

– ref. Is it illegal to make online videos of someone without their consent? The law on covert filming – https://theconversation.com/is-it-illegal-to-make-online-videos-of-someone-without-their-consent-the-law-on-covert-filming-274885

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David McMillan, Professor in Finance, University of Stirling

In late January, the gold price reached an all-time peak of around US$5,500 (£4,025). January 30 saw one of the largest one-day falls in prices, which sank by nearly 10% after hitting a record high only the day before.

This was a dramatic about-turn, from a bullish gold market that rose by more than 300% in the last decade, over 150% in the last five years and (perhaps more pertinently) by 75% since US president Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs announcement. To make sense of it, we need to understand some of the factors that led to the rise.

The reasons broadly break down into two categories. The first concerns market uncertainty and gold in its “safe haven” role. As a financial asset, gold offers no income, unlike shares (which might provide dividends) or bonds (which offer coupon payments). So during good times, gold is eschewed for the former and during periods of high interest rates for the latter.

However, during periods of heightened risk and uncertainty, the tangibility of gold gives it value. This was seen during the financial (and subsequent sovereign debt) crisis and at the beginning of the COVID period. Here both share prices and interest rates were low (interest rates historically so) and gold became the favoured asset because it offered the chance of greater returns relative to risk.

These crisis periods can often be geopolitical in nature, and that is the case now with the war in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, as well as ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

But at the moment, what is providing a further boost to the gold price is the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariffs. This is not only about international trade and growth but also its implications for the global financial system. The US dollar is used as a vehicle currency and means of payment for international trade and the currency in which commodities are priced.

The use of tariffs in this way undermines confidence in the dollar, especially where tariffs are threatened as a punishment – as Trump recently did against European countries for opposing his desire to annex Greenland.

And further buoyed by the weak US dollar, which has fallen by 10% in the last year, there has been significant gold-buying, including by central banks as part of their reserves.

As an important aside, while a lot has been said about central banks replacing the US dollar as a reserve currency, overseas holdings of treasuries (US government bonds) are at a record high, countering that view.

The level of debt that countries are building up shows no sign of abating. For example, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which outlines tax cuts and increases to border security and defence spending among many other budget measures, is expected to add several trillion dollars to US debt.

Read more:
The record gold price reflects a deeper problem than recent global instability

The second reason for the long-term increase in the gold price is its greater use in investor portfolios for speculative purposes. The “safe-haven” role of gold implies a negative correlation between stocks and gold. That is to say, when one rises the other falls – and vice versa.

However, with the S&P500 (the index tracking the top 500 companies listed in the US) also reaching record highs, stocks and gold have instead been moving in the same direction. This indicates that investors are buying both asset types.

A major component in the growth of gold as an investment asset (as opposed to only a safe haven) is the rise of gold ETFs (exchange-traded funds) that make it easier for non-professional investors to purchase gold.

So why the fall?

Rather than a single event, there has been an accumulation of small changes, combined with the usual sways in investor sentiment. Geopolitical risk remains high, both in Ukraine and the Middle East (while the situation in Israel and Gaza is calmer, that is not the case with Iran). But there are some positive signs.

Trump’s on-off use of tariffs as a means of political negotiation (this time regarding Greenland) also contributed to a rise and fall in the gold price. And the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the new governor of the US Federal Reserve is expected to lessen economic risk.

While Warsh generally supports Trump’s preference for lower interest rates now (although investors are expressing concerns that this could fuel inflation), Warsh also has an equal desire to reduce the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. So it would be unlikely to be an unreserved loosening of monetary policy.

But there is also the investor side. Profit is only realised when the asset is sold. Part of what we have seen is investors selling gold in a high (arguably over-priced) market to make a profit. The price fall associated with these trades then arguably led to further selling.

This included stop-loss trading (when assets are automatically sold when they dip below a certain price) and sales by the likes of hedge funds and other institutional traders. These investors need to unwind positions to prevent major losses.

After the huge fall on January 30, gold prices surged back a couple of days later in the biggest one-day rise since 2008.

There are always corrections, and in fact current movements are likely to be over-corrections. But it’s safe to assume that after this, the market will stabilise and most likely resume an upward trajectory albeit at a slower pace than immediately before the fall.

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

– ref. The rise and fall (and rise again) of gold prices – what’s going on? – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-again-of-gold-prices-whats-going-on-275017

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

A revival of a beloved and notorious Irish play from 1907, Catriona McLaughlin’s production of The Playboy of the Western World treats J.M Synge’s play as a work with urgent contemporary force, creating a story with resonance in 2026.

Reuniting Derry Girls Nicola Coughlan and Siobhan McSweeney at the National Theatre, the play is set in a shebeen (an illicit drinking den) in western Mayo. The plot centres on Pegeen (Coughlan), whose life is jolted by the arrival of Christy Mahon (Éanna Hardwicke).

On the run and boasting that he has murdered his father, Christy becomes an instant local hero. His violent, wild tale of defying his father’s supposed tyranny captivates a community in need of a hero. Christy’s notoriety is quickly complicated by the arrival of his very-much-alive father (Declan Conlon) in act two, collapsing the young man’s carefully constructed myth.

First staged in 1907 in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, The Playboy of The Western World famously enraged audiences who booed and rioted. At this time, Ireland was moving towards independence and national pride was growing. Irish audiences expected homegrown theatre to showcase a serious, disciplined national character.

Synge’s play, depicting a foolish man whose boasts of patricide are hailed as heroic by a drunken, sexually available community was deemed morally offensive, a direct affront to Ireland itself.

In the intervening century, the play has become recognised as a masterpiece of Irish literature. Synge’s biting dark humour and ear for richly authentic dialogue has endured, with the play now recognised as a classic of modernist drama.

Humour, cruelty and urgency

Told in Hiberno-English (the Irish version of English, influenced by Gaelic) dialogue, The Playboy of The Western World depicts rural life as complex and brutal. Almost 120 years later on a London stage, it rejects a nostalgic view of rural Ireland in a bygone era. These characters are human and imperfect, and just as susceptible to a tall tale as anyone in 2026.

Director Catriona McLaughlin has assembled a cast of familiar Irish names. Nicola Coughlan sparkles as Pegeen. Her sharp tongue and fortitude in a shebeen full of men is edged with frustration and a deep yearning for something exciting to happen.

Éanna Hardwicke’s Christy Mahon begins tightly wound, loosening as he basks in female adoration. His performance is infused with a coiled, elastic physicality giving Christy an electric intensity; Hardwicke dares the audience to fall in love with him, too.

Siobhan McSweeney, characteristically sharp and wickedly funny, is unmissable as the Widow Quin. Providing welcome comic relief are Marty Rea as a slyly humourous Shawn Keogh, and Lorcan Cranitch’s uproariously funny and drunken Michael James.

McLaughlin frames the Irish western coast as haunted and mysterious, reinforced by Katie Davenport’s straw mumming costumes (see image below) worn by musicians and extras, and the recurring use of the caoineadh or “keening” – mourning in song.

These design choices create an atmosphere which feels suspended rather than anchored to a particular period. The timelessness sharpens the impact of Christy’s unmasking: the community’s sudden turn against him when they witness a violent act mirrors a familiar real-world pattern. Violence absorbed as story, gossip or spectacle becomes intolerable once its physical reality intrudes.

The crowd’s horror is not prompted by the act itself, but by its visibility. In this way, the production speaks directly to contemporary audiences accustomed to consuming violence at a distance, yet quick to condemn when confronted with its immediate consequences.

Some critics have reported difficulty following Synge’s language, revealing how strongly expectations of “standard” English shape reception. Such dismissals reveal not a failure of intelligibility in the play, but a critical resistance to engaging with Hiberno-English on its own terms.

This requires attention to rhythm, tone and repetition, and dismissing it as unintelligible echoes the play’s broader concern with how stories are received and misread.

Dynamic and intellectually alert, McLaughlin’s production refuses to treat The Playboy of the Western World as a museum piece. It trusts both Synge’s language and its audience, allowing the play’s humour, cruelty and urgency to land without apology. So much more than a revival, this staging reasserts the work’s enduring relevance and makes a compelling case for why it remains essential viewing.

The Playboy of the Western World is at the National Theatre, London, till February 28

Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

Laura O’Flanagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Playboy of the Western World: National Theatre staging ensures Irish play remains essential viewing – https://theconversation.com/the-playboy-of-the-western-world-national-theatre-staging-ensures-irish-play-remains-essential-viewing-274762

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeff Scheible, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, King’s College London

Table tennis and film have a surprisingly entangled history. Both depended on the invention of celluloid – which not only became the substrate of film, but is also used to make ping pong balls.

Following a brief ping pong craze in 1902, the game largely disappeared and was widely assumed to have been a passing fad. More than 20 years later, however, the British socialite, communist spy and filmmaker Ivor Montagu went to great lengths to establish the game as a sport – a story I explore in my current book project on ping pong and the moving image.

He founded the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and codified the rules of the game in both a book and a corresponding short film, Table Tennis Today (1929).

Montagu presided over the ITTF for several decades. In 1925, the same year he founded the ITTF, Montagu also co-founded the London Film Society. The society helped introduce western audiences to experimental and art films that are now considered classics.

The game of table tennis has subsequently appeared at a number of moments when filmmakers and artists were experimenting with new technologies. An early example appears in one of the first works of “visual music”: Rhythm in Light (1934) by Mary Ellen Bute.

Meanwhile, an early work of expanded cinema, Ping Pong (1968) by the artist Valie Export, invited audiences to pick up a paddle and ball and attempt to strike a physical ball against the representation of one moving on the cinema screen. Atari’s adaptation of the game into the interactive Pong (1972) is often considered the first video game.

Perhaps the most familiar cinematic example of all, however, is the digital simulation of a photorealistic ping pong ball – made possible by a then-new regime of computer-generated imagery. It helped Tom Hanks appear to be a ping pong whiz in the Academy-Award-winning Forrest Gump (1994).

There are a number of other fascinating moments in which the game surfaces meaningfully: in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Jacques Tati’s M Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Michael Haneke’s 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), and Agnes Varda and JR’s Faces Places (2017).

And every day for more than two years, from 2020 to 2022, one of the world’s most beloved filmmakers, David Lynch, uploaded YouTube videos in which he pulled a numbered ping pong ball from a jar and declared it “today’s number”. It was a fittingly Dada-esque gesture that stands among the last mysterious works he shared with the world.

Enter Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. The title sequence alone discovers a new way of visualising the game’s iconography, as we see a sperm fertilise an egg, which then transforms into a ping pong ball (the digital effects first witnessed in Gump are now fully integrated into popular cinema).

Why Marty Supreme is different

Marty Supreme is very loosely based on the real-life player Marty Reisman (here Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet). What sets it apart from earlier cinematic appearances of table tennis is that it centres the game as a sport.

When table tennis has previously appeared in film, it is usually to help show off new special effects or as a brief plot device. Or it frequently appears in the background, helping to furnish the mise-en-scene of an office, basement, or bar. In these instances, we might not notice the game or its materials at all. When it does have a narrative function, it usually occupies a single scene, frequently serving to stage or resolve fraught interpersonal relations between the characters who are playing.

In Marty Supreme, however, table tennis seems neither tethered to special effects nor, certainly, to the game’s “background” status. Chalamet trained extensively over the seven years he spent preparing for the role, even taking his own table to the desert while filming Dune (2021). And despite the film’s sometimes compelling eccentricities, Marty Supreme in many senses follows the generic blueprint of a sports film.

Safdie has made a sports film, coincidentally or not, like his frequent collaborator and brother Benny Safdie, whose wrestling film The Smashing Machine was also released this past year. Marty Supreme, though, revolves around an athlete who plays a game that generally has been assumed to not have enough gravitas to command a place in the genre or to hold an audience’s interest.

The absence of sports films about ping pong certainly speaks to ways in which it is perceived as something not worth taking too seriously, for reasons that are surely at least partially linked to the same reasons for which the game is often celebrated. It is perceived to be what I refer to as an “equalising” sport, open to people and bodies of all backgrounds and types.

As actor Susan Sarandon, who founded her own chain of ping pong bars, puts it: “Ping pong cuts across all body types and gender – everything, really – because little girls can beat big muscley guys. You don’t get hurt; it is not expensive; it is really good for your mind. It is one of the few sports that you can play until you die.”

This perception of the game has perhaps also led it to appear in more comedic contexts, with athletes embodied by actors we might more readily laugh at, as source material for visual and sonic gags, from a slapstick scene in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939) to the widely panned Balls of Fury (2007).

The tension between the game’s perceived triviality and Mauser’s extreme dedication lends Marty Supreme a vast blank canvas – or ping pong table – onto which its oscillations can be painted, or played… and in turn felt by the audience, with its high highs and low lows.

While it’s great that a talented director has poured his heart into a cinematic treatment of Reisman for the screen, I’m holding out hope for an Ivor Montagu film, which could be even more beholden to its real-life character – and even more wild.

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

– ref. A brief history of table tennis in film – from Forrest Gump to Marty Supreme – https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-table-tennis-in-film-from-forrest-gump-to-marty-supreme-274445

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hadar Elraz, Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour, Swansea University

In the modern world of work, the “ideal worker” is a dominant yet dangerous concept that can dictate workplace norms and expectations. This archetype describes an employee who is boundlessly productive, constantly available and emotionally stable at all times.

What makes this trope so flawed is that it assumes workers have no caring responsibilities outside work, or have unrealistic physical and psychological capabilities. It’s intended to drive efficiency, but in fact it is a standard that very few people can reach. It marginalises people who deviate from these rigid standards, including workers managing mental health conditions.

We are researchers in management and health, and our recent paper found that this “ideal worker” is a means of creating stigma. This stigma is embedded in processes and policies, creating a yardstick against which all employees are measured.

The study is based on in-depth interviews with a diverse group of employees with mental health conditions (including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and OCD). They worked across the private, public and third sectors in various jobs, including accounting, engineering, teaching and senior management.

For workers with mental health conditions, the expectation of emotional steadiness creates a conflict with the often fluctuating nature of their conditions.

When organisations are seen to value the ideal worker archetype, they can end up creating barriers to meaningful inclusion. In our paper we understand these as both “barriers to doing” and “barriers to being”.

What this means is that workplaces end up with rigid workloads and inflexible expectations (“barriers to doing”). As such, they fail to accommodate people with invisible or fluctuating symptoms. They can also undermine a worker’s identity and self-worth (“barriers to being”), framing them as unreliable or incompetent simply because they do not meet the standards of the ideal worker.

Because employees with mental health conditions often fear being perceived as weak, a burden or fragile, they frequently work excessively hard to prove their value. This means that these employees might compromise their resting and unwinding time in order to live up to workplace expectations.

But of course, these efforts create strain at the personal level. These workers can end up putting themselves at greater risk of relapse or ill health. Our research found that overworking to mask mental health symptoms (working unpaid hours to make up for times when they are unwell, for example) can suggest an organisational culture that may not be inclusive enough.

What’s really happening

HR practices may assume that mental health conditions should be managed by employees alone, rather than with support from the organisation. At the same time, this constant pressure to over-perform can exacerbate mental health conditions, leading to a vicious cycle of stress, exhaustion and even more stigma.

The ideal worker norm forces many employees into keeping their mental health conditions to themselves. They may see hiding their struggles as a tactical way of protecting their professional identity.

In an environment that rewards constant productivity, disclosing a condition that might require reasonable adjustments could be seen as a professional risk. In other words, stigma may compromise career chances.

Participants in our research reported lying on health questionnaires or hiding symptoms because the climate in their workplace signalled that mental health conditions were poorly understood. But this secrecy creates a massive emotional burden, as workers felt pressure to constantly monitor their health, mask their condition and schedule medical appointments in secret.

Paradoxically, while this approach allows people to remain employed, it reinforces the structures that demand their silence. And it ensures that workplace support remains invisible or inaccessible.

Our analysis showed a stark contrast between perceptions of support for people with physical impairments and that for employees with mental health conditions. While physical aids like ramps are often visible and accepted, workers setting out their mental health needs frequently faced the risk of stigma, ignorance or disbelief.

By holding on to the ideal worker archetype, organisations are not only failing to fulfil their duty of care. They may also be undermining their own long-term sustainability if they lose skilled labour. Then there are the costs of constant recruitment and retraining.

Managing stigma is a workplace burden that can lead to burnout or divert energy away from a worker’s core tasks. We suggest a fundamental shift for employers: moving away from chasing the “ideal worker” towards creating “ideal workplaces” instead. This means challenging the assumption that productivity must be uninterrupted and that emotional stability is a prerequisite for professional value.

It also means focusing on the quality of an employee’s contribution rather than judging their constant availability or productivity. And it means designing work environments from the ground up to support diverse needs, so that mental health conditions are normalised. This would reduce the need for employees to keep conditions secret.

Ultimately, the problem with the ideal worker archetype is that it is a persistent myth that ignores the reality of human diversity. True equity requires organisations to stop trying to shape individuals to fit the mould and instead rethink work norms to support all employees so that everyone can play a part in enhancing the business.

Hadar Elraz disclosed this study was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. She disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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

– ref. Why the idea of an ‘ideal worker’ can be so harmful for people with mental health conditions – https://theconversation.com/why-the-idea-of-an-ideal-worker-can-be-so-harmful-for-people-with-mental-health-conditions-274350