As Some of the Legacy Media have Dumbed Down, The New Yorker has Dumbed Up

Newspaper headlines when Trump wins the Presidency, as read on the subway, created by Barry Blitt and published in the New Yorker, November 14, 2016.

By Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University

Like many, I entered The New Yorker through the cartoon door. The first cartoon I loved, and remember to this day, featured a New Yorker staple – two guys sitting in a bar – with one saying to the other: “I wish just once someone would say to me, ‘I read your latest ad, and I loved it’.”

For someone whose first job after university was an unhappy stint in an advertising agency, the cartoon was a tonic. They are still the first thing I look at when the magazine arrives by mail or the daily newsletter by email, and the first thing shared with my family. There have been around 80,000 published since the magazine’s first issue on February 25 1925.

I had discovered The New Yorker while studying literature at Monash University and writing an honours thesis on the playwright Tom Stoppard. The English drama critic Kenneth Tynan had written a long profile of Stoppard for the magazine in 1977, combining sharp insights into the plays, behind-the-curtains material from Tynan’s time as literary manager at the National Theatre (he bought the rights to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1966) and slices of Stoppard’s life.

The most enticing of these was Tynan’s account of a Saturday afternoon cricket match between a team from The Guardian, comprising several no-nonsense typesetters and the paper’s industrial correspondent, and Harold Pinter’s XI, which was actually a IX owing to two late withdrawals, including the captain himself.

Stoppard arrived in dazzlingly white whites but didn’t seem to take the game seriously, inadvertently dropping a smouldering cigarette butt between kneepad and trousers as he took the field. “Playwright Bursts into Flames at Wicket,” he called back to Tynan standing on the boundary.

A younger Tom Stoppard. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Once the game began, though, Stoppard was a revelation, first as wicket-keeper where his “elastic leaps and hair-trigger reflexes” saw him dismiss four players, and then as a batsman, when he smoothly drove and cut his way to the winning score.

I had never read anything like this. It wasn’t academic literary criticism, which tended to assault the English language on a polysyllabic basis. It wasn’t the daily newspaper, which as Stoppard himself mocked, was terse, formal and leaned to the formulaic. It wasn’t a biography of someone long dead, but a “profile”, whatever that was, of a living, breathing person.

I wanted more and so began looking out for the magazine but read it only intermittently. Released from advertising, I began working in journalism in 1981. The 1980s coincided with the final years of William Shawn’s 35-year editorship when The New Yorker almost collapsed under the weight of very long articles about very slight subjects and Shawn’s legendary prudishness. (Tynan once referred to a “pissoir”, which Shawn changed to “circular curbside construction”.)

Shawn began working at The New Yorker as a fact-checker eight years after its founding in 1925 by Harold Ross, a former newspaperman, and his wife, reporter Jane Grant. Shawn took over as editor after Ross’s death in 1951, and was brilliant, encouraging writers such as Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Hannah Arendt and Truman Capote to do work better than even they expected.

Truman Capote in 1959. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

More than 60 writers have dedicated books to Shawn that grew out of New Yorker articles, according to Ben Yagoda’s excellent 2000 history of the magazine.

In Shawn’s later years, though, the weaknesses of his approach became dominant, and he could not bear to let go of the editorship. As John Bennet, a staff member trying to decipher Shawn’s gnomic utterances, said:

Shawn ran the magazine the way Algerian terrorist cells were organised in the battle of Algiers – no one knew who anybody else was or what anybody else was doing.

Yagoda writes the cornerstones of the magazine were:

A belief in civility, a respect for privacy, a striving for clear and accurate prose, a determination to publish what one believes in, irrespective of public opinion and commercial concerns, and a sense that The New Yorker was something special, something other and somehow more important than just another magazine. These admirable values all had their origin in the Ross years. But under Shawn, such emotional energy was invested in each of them that they became obsessive and sometimes distorted and perverted, in the sense of being turned completely inward.

The 1980s may have been a difficult period for the magazine, but it still produced some outstanding journalism, and it was the journalism I increasingly turned to, particularly that of Janet Malcolm. Today, readers know of her work through books such as In the Freud Archives, The Journalist and the Murderer and The Silent Woman, but all three, like most of her writing, originally appeared as long articles in the magazine.

I can still recall the jolt I felt reading the famous opening paragraph of The Journalist and the Murderer (published in the magazine in 1989):

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

Malcolm’s dissection of the relationship between Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, and Joe McGinniss, a journalist convicted by her ice-cold, surgically precise prose, is by turns brilliant, thought-provoking, infuriating and incomplete. Well over three decades later, Malcolm’s book is one all journalists should read.

To Malcolm, the relationship between journalists and their subjects was the “canker that lies at the heart of the rose of journalism”, which could not be rooted out. Hers was a long overdue wake-up call for an industry allergic to reflection and self-criticism. But in the end, for all the brilliance with which she opened up a difficult topic, Malcolm packed the journalist–subject relationship in too small a box.

Among her colleagues at the magazine were many who carefully and ethically navigated the challenges of gaining a subject’s trust, then writing about them honestly, as I learnt when researching a PhD which became a book, Telling True Stories.

One example is Lawrence Wright’s work for the magazine on the rise of Al-Qaeda, and the subsequent book The Loooming Tower. In a note on sources, Wright reflects on the questions of trust and friendship that haunt the journalist–subject relationship.

Knowledge is seductive; the reporter wants to know, and the more he knows, the more interesting he becomes to the source. There are few forces in human nature more powerful than the desire to be understood; journalism couldn’t exist without it.

By conspicuously placing a tape recorder between him and his interviewee, Wright tries to remind both parties “that there is a third party in the room, the eventual reader”.

Outstanding journalists

When I began teaching journalism, especially feature writing, at RMIT in the 1990s, I found myself drawn more and more to The New Yorker and to its history. The “comic paper” Ross originally envisaged had travelled a long way since 1925. The second world war impelled Ross and Shawn, then his deputy, to broaden and deepen the scope of their reporting.

Most famously, after the dropping of two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese to surrender in 1945, they commissioned John Hersey to return to Japan, interview survivors and, as Hersey later put it, write about “what happened not to buildings but to human beings”. Ross set aside the cartoons and devoted the entire issue of August 31 1946 to Hersey’s 31,000-word article simply headlined “Hiroshima”.

I still remember being deeply moved by “Hiroshima”, which I first read half a century after publication and half a world away while on a summer holiday in the bush. The backstory behind the article (ranked number one on the Best American Journalism of the 20th Century list), and its impact on journalism and the world, is well told in Lesley Blume’s 2020 book, Fallout.

By the 1990s, when Tina Brown became the first woman to edit The New Yorker, it definitely needed a makeover. It still did not have a table of contents, nor run photographs. And, beyond a headline, it gave readers little idea what a story was about! She eased up on the copy editors’ notorious fussiness. As E.B. White, a longtime contributor, once said: “Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.”

Brown lasted only marginally longer than her predecessor, Robert Gottlieb. Her editorship has been given a bad rap by New Yorker traditionalists, but she gave the magazine a much-needed electric shock, injecting fresh blood.

A list of outstanding journalists she hired who remain at the magazine three decades later is illuminating: David Remnick (who followed her as editor, in 1998), Malcolm Gladwell, Jane Mayer, Lawrence Wright, Anthony Lane and John Lahr, among others.

There’s going to be a lot of celebrating of the magazine’s 100th anniversary, including a Netflix documentary scheduled for release later in the year.

Not many magazines reach such a milestone. One of The New Yorker’s early competitors, Time, which began two years before, was for many years one of the most widely read and respected magazines in the world. It continues today but has a thinner print product and a barely noticed online presence. (I say that as someone who once worked for three years in Time’s Australian office.)

Time is far from alone in this. Magazines, like newspapers, have struggled to adapt to the digital world as the advertising revenue that once afforded them plump profits was funnelled into the big online technology companies, Google and Facebook.

Yet The New Yorker has not only adapted to the digital age but thrived in it. It is one of few legacy media outlets whose prestige and influence have actually grown in the past two decades.

As the internet arrived, the New Yorker’s paid circulation was 900,000. It exceeded a million, for the first time in the magazine’s history, in 2004. As of October last year it was 1,161,064 (for both the print and electronic edition). Subscribers to the magazine’s electronic edition have increased five-fold since it began in 2016 and now stand at 534,287. Yes, advertising revenue remains challenged, recently forcing some redundancies at the magazine, but nothing compared to other parts of the media industry.

Apart from the weekly edition, a daily newsletter was introduced around 2015. The magazine has also expanded into audio, podcasting and documentary film, runs a well-attended annual festival, invites readers to try their hand at devising captions for cartoons and does a line of merchandising. All the astute branding on the part of the magazine and its owners, Condé Nast, would have Shawn rolling in his grave, but the core of the magazine’s editorial mission remains true.

Why it succeeds

The key reasons behind The New Yorker’s current success, in my view, are twofold. First, as the internet made a cornucopia of information available instantly anywhere, the magazine continued to produce material, especially journalism, that was distinctive and different.

Journalist Jane Mayer. goodreads

Think, for example, of the extraordinary disclosures made by Seymour Hersh and Jane Mayer during George W. Bush’s administration (2001–2009) about the torture by American soldiers of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and how rules about what constituted torture were changed to make almost anything short of death permissible.

Both journalists later published their work in books: Hersh’s Chain of Command: the road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (2004) and Mayer’s The Dark Side: the inside story on how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals (2008).

Alongside the investigative journalism have been many examples of deep, productive dives into seemingly unpromising topics such as the packaged ice cube business (Peter Boyer, The Emperor of Ice, February 12 2001) and a movie dog (Susan Orlean, The Dog Star: the life and times of Rin Tin Tin, August 29 2011).

In a world of information abundance, what remained scarce was the ability to make sense of chaotic events, knotty issues and complicated people, in prose that is almost always clear, alive to irony, elegant and sometimes profound. In other words, while most of the legacy media was dumbing down, The New Yorker was dumbing up.

The second reason for the magazine’s continued success is that even as the internet’s information abundance has curdled into the chaos and cruelty of social media’s algorithm-driven world, The New Yorker has not wavered in its editorial mission.

Just as Donald Trump doubled down on the Big Lie surrounding the 2020 election result and the January 6 2021 riots at the Capitol, so the magazine doubled down on reporting his actions since then and into his second presidency.

Other media outlets, even The Washington Post, which did so much excellent reporting during the first Trump presidency, have kowtowed to Trump, or at least its proprietor appears to have. Jeff Bezos decided the newspaper should not run a pre-election endorsement editorial last year. The Amazon owner was placed front and centre with other heads of the big tech companies at Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

By contrast, The New Yorker has published a steady stream of reporting and commentary about the outrageous and shocking actions of the Trump administration in its first month.

The new administration has moved so quickly and on so many fronts that the import of its actions have overwhelmed the media, making it hard to keep up with reporting every development in the detail it might deserve.

To take one example, The Washington Post reported that candidates for senior posts in intelligence and law enforcement were being asked so-called loyalty questions about whether the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and the January 6 Capitol riots an “inside job”.

Two individuals being considered for positions in intelligence “who did not give the desired straight "yes” answers, were not selected. It is not clear whether other factors contributed to the decision".

The report prompted media commentary, but not enough of it recognised the gravity of an attempt to rewrite history every bit as egregious as Stalinist Russia.

The New Yorker has made its own statement, in response, by reprinting Luke Mogelson’s remarkable reporting from January 6 2021, with photography by Balasz Gardi and alarming footage from inside the capitol with the rioters.

David Remnick, now in his 27th year as editor, was among ten media figures asked recently by The Washington Post how the second Trump administration should be reported. He said:

To some degree, we should be self-critical, but we should stop apologizing for everything we do. I think that journalism during the first Trump administration achieved an enormous amount in terms of its investigative reporting. And if we’re going to go into a mode where we’re doing nothing but apologizing and falling into a faint and accepting a false picture of reality because we think that’s what fairness demands, then I think we’re making an enormous mistake. I just don’t think we should throw up our hands and accede to reality as it is seen through the lens of Donald Trump.

Remnick’s argument is clear-eyed and courageous. You would hope it is heard by other parts of the news media that have long ceded editorial leadership to what was for many years categorised simply as a “general interest magazine”.

Failing that, they could look at the cartoons. On February 14, the magazine published one by Brendan Loper featuring a drawing of Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster standing outside the Cookie Company factory where a spokesman said,

Let me assure you that as an unpaid “special factory employee” Mr. Monster stands to personally gain nothing from this work.

Here’s looking at you, Elon.

Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Life-size Sculptures Uncovered in Pompeii Show that Ancient Women Didn’t Just Have to be Wives to Make a Difference

Lifesize sculptures of a woman and man have been discovered in a monumental tomb uncovered outside the gates on the east side of Pompeii. 

By Emily Hauser, University of Exeter

Visitors to the site of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried (and so preserved for thousands of years) by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, don’t often think to look beyond the city walls. And it’s easy to understand why: there’s plenty on offer within this monumentally well-preserved town, from jewel-like wall paintings of myths and legends like Helen of Troy, to the majestic amphitheatre and sumptuously stuccoed baths.

But step outside the gates for a moment, and you’re in a very different – yet no less important – world.

For the ancient Romans, the roads and paths leading into and out of cities were crucial: not just for getting places, but as a very real kind of “memory lane”. Tombs lined these ancient byways – some simply bearing inscriptions to the memories of loved ones lost, others, more grand, accommodating space for friends and family to feast in remembrance of the dead.

Some of the tombs even address the passerby directly, as if its occupant could speak again, and pass on what they’ve learned. Take one Pompeiian example, set up by the freedman Publius Vesonius Phileros, which opens with ineffable politeness: “Stranger, wait a while if it’s no trouble, and learn what not to do.”

Going into Pompeii, and leaving it, was about being reminded of ways of living and ways of dying – as well as an invitation to tip your hat to those who trod the path before you, and to learn from their example.

Which is why the recent discovery of a monumental tomb crowned by life-size sculptures of a woman and man, just outside the gates on the east side of the town, isn’t just a fascinating find in and of itself. It’s also a reminder to stop, and to remember the people who once lived and died in this bustling Italian town.

The tomb’s main feature is a large wall, peppered with niches where cremated remains would have been placed, and surmounted by the astonishing relief sculpture of the woman and man. They’re standing side by side but not touching.

The woman is taller than the man 

and is draped in a tunic and veil. 

I rather like that she’s slightly taller than him, standing at 1.77m, while he’s 1.75m. She’s draped in a modest tunic, cloak and veil (symbols of Roman womanhood), and boasts a pronounced crescent-moon-shaped pendant at her neck called a lunula, that (through the age-old link with lunar cycles) tells a story about female fertility and birth. He, meanwhile, is dressed in the quintessentially Roman toga that instantly identifies him as a proud male citizen of Rome.

Who do the statues depict?

The status quo in archaeology, when a woman and a man are presented next to each other in tombs and burials like this, has always been to assume that she’s his wife. Yet here, there’s an unmissable clue that there’s more going on. That’s because, in her right hand, she’s holding a laurel branch – which was used by priestesses to waft the smoke of incense and herbs in religious rituals.

Priestesses, in the Roman world, held unusual levels of power for women – and it’s been suggested that this woman might have been a priestess of the goddess Ceres (Roman equivalent of Demeter).

So this high-status priestess is shown alongside a man. The inclusion of the symbols of her status (as priestess) alongside his (as a togatus, or “toga-wearing man”), shows that she’s there in her own right, as a contributing member of Pompeiian society. She might be his mother; she might even have been more important than him (which would explain why she’s taller). Without an inscription, we don’t know for sure. The point is: a woman doesn’t have to be a wife to be standing next to a man.

What’s fascinating is this isn’t unique to Pompeii. In my new book, Mythica, which looks at the women not of Rome but of Bronze age Greece, I’ve found that new discoveries in archaeology are overturning the assumptions that used to be made about a woman’s place in society, and the value of their roles, all the time.

One fascinating example is a royal burial in Late Bronze Age Mycenae: a woman and a man who’d been buried together in the royal necropolis, around 1700 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius decimated Pompeii. As is typical, this woman was immediately labelled, by the archaeologists who uncovered her, as the man’s wife. But then DNA analysis came into the picture.

As recently as 2008, both skeletons were sampled for DNA – and came up with the game-changing result that they were, in fact, brother and sister. She’d been buried here as a member of a royal family by birth, not by marriage, in other words. She was there on her own terms.

From golden Mycenae to the ash-blasted ruins of Pompeii: the remains from the ancient world are telling us a different story from the one we always thought. A woman didn’t have to be a wife to make a difference.

So I think it’s worth listening to the advice of our friend Publius. Let’s look at the burials of the past, and learn.

Emily Hauser, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter

Tove Jansson’s Moomin Books Explore the Power of Adventure and Transformation

Moominmama, Moominpapa and Little My

By Sue Walsh, University of Reading

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first Moomin tale, The Moomins and the Great Flood. In the book, Moomintroll and his friends embark on a journey to find their home after a great flood devastates Moominvalley, meeting odd creatures and new friends along their journey.

The book was first published in creator Tove Jansson’s native Swedish in 1945. However, the first Moomin book to have an English edition was in fact the third of the Moomin books, Trollkarlens Hatt (The Hobgoblin’s Hat). It was translated by Jansson’s friend Elizabeth Portch and reached its widest English-speaking audience when it was published by Puffin Books in 1961 as Finn Family Moomintroll.

At the beginning of the story Moomintroll finds a magical top hat. It can transform anything that is placed inside of it into something else entirely – and so the adventures begin.

Unlike the Swedish-language edition, Portch’s translation of Finn Family Moomintroll begins with a letter from Moominmamma. It’s written in a curly cursive and dotted with love-hearts and an image of an apparently “hand-drawn” troll. The letter is addressed to a “dear child” who is “overseas”.

In it, Moominmamma expresses disbelief at the idea that there may not be any Moomins “there over” and that the child she is addressing may “not even know what a troll is” (hence the illustration).

Moominmamma’s wonder at the differences in custom between her own land and “your country” is based on an assumption that the two must be somewhat alike. Similarly, her explanation of what Moomintrolls are depends on their difference from the “usual common trolls”, which means there must be familial similarity between them.

The Moomins and the Great Flood was Jansson’s first Moomins book.

Both Moominmamma’s wonder at and explanation of difference assume an underlying essential similarity or sameness between Moominvalley, where she lives, and the reader’s home. This is significant in a story that explores ideas of foreignness and translation, change and transformation.

Though the adventures in Finn Family Moomintroll might be said to only truly begin on the spring morning when Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin find “a tall black hat”, the book opens with the Moomins settling down for their winter hibernation and closes with the valley in autumn.

Creator of The Moomins, Tove Jansson in 1970. Per Olov Jansson/Wiki Commons, CC BY-SA

The changes wrought by the Hobgoblin’s hat are “quite different” because “you never know beforehand” what they will be. However, their extreme nature is framed and contained by a world in which there are known and predictable changes in the seasons, as well as routine – though sometimes dramatic – changes in the weather.

The Hemulen is unperturbed by the hat’s transformation of eggshells into fluffy little clouds that Moomintroll and his friends are able to ride. That’s because he is “so used to [them] doing extraordinary things”. But when Moomintroll is transformed by the hat into “a very strange animal indeed”, so much so that his friends do not recognise him, it’s a very different matter.

A moment of real jeopardy occurs when Moomintroll’s own mother does not seem to recognise him either. But this is soon dispelled when Moominmamma looks “into his frightened eyes for a very long time” and quietly declares: “Yes, you are my Moomintroll.”

This moment of recognition breaks the spell and Moomintroll changes back into “his old self again”. One of the crucial features of the hat is the changes it makes are only temporary and this, together with Moominmamma’s reassurance that she will “always know [Moomintroll], whatever happens”, suggests an ultimately unchanging essence to things that cannot be denied.

Changelessness as deadening

On the other hand, the book suggests that some change is to be embraced.

Sniff’s desire for things to stay the same “for ever and ever” is portrayed as immature and wrong-headed. As is the Muskrat’s obsessive quest for peace and stillness which ends up with his apparent, though temporary, transformation into a monster.

Snufkin’s point that “life is not peaceful” offers a gentle rebuke to the Hemulen, who also wishes to “live his life in peace and quiet”. But perhaps the clearest indication of the book’s attitude to changelessness is the monstrous Groke. She is motivated by an unwavering drive to recover the “King’s Ruby”, not because this thing which “changes colour all the time” is “the most beautiful thing in the world”, but because it is “the most expensive”.

The Groke’s inability to appreciate the ruby aesthetically is presented as being rooted in her own immutability. That the Groke’s hostility to change is itself deadening, becomes evident when she sits “motionless” before the Moomins and their friends, staring at them in a way that makes them feel “she would wait for ever” and eventually departs leaving the ground behind her frozen in the wrong season.

This, then, is key. Adventure, transformation and change in Finn Family Moomintroll are both necessary and desirable, but they are also contained within a reassuring frame of reliable predictability. The final lines of the English translation are: “It is autumn in Moomin Valley, for how else can spring come back again?”

Sue Walsh, Lecturer, Department of English Literature, University of Reading

Conclave: The Tight Thriller about Vatican Power Politics which Evokes the Selection of a New Pope

Brian F. O'Byrne (left) as Cardinal O'Malley and Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence. Courtesy of Focus Features

By Jon Hackett, Brunel University of London

A largely faithful adaptation of Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, Edward Berger’s Conclave narrates the election of a new pope after the sudden death of the pontiff.

The film draws on Harris’s research into the obscurities of the papal poll, which was also present in Fernando Meirelles’s quirky 2019 film about Popes Benedict and Francis, The Two Popes. Conclave’s cardinals are entirely fictitious, but the ritual of selecting the new pope aims for authenticity.

The lighting lends a film noir atmosphere by keeping faces half in shadow, apt for the skullduggery in which many of the main contenders are involved. The strong cast includes Ralph Fiennes (the British Cardinal Lawrence in the film, renamed from Italian Lomelli in the novel), Stanley Tucci (as Cardinal Bellini) and John Lithgow (as Cardinal Tremblay). Isabella Rossellini plays Sister Agnes, an assertive nun in patriarchal lockdown; an arch curtsy from her had the audience in stitches during the screening.

Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography strikes a dreamlike note in certain scenes. Before the elections commence, Cardinal Lawrence must address a homily to the assembled cardinals, which causes controversy among traditionalists by stressing the value of doubt over dogma. His subsequent walk through the courtyard in slow motion, with cardinals in the background out of focus, perfectly signals Lawrence’s anxiety and sense of exposure.

A darkened breakout room with turquoise seats in which the liberal faction strategises – and in which a pivotal crisis meeting occurs later on – resembles nothing so much as a cinema auditorium. Towards the end, a high-angle wide shot looking down on the umbrella-wielding cardinals in white and pink crossing a rainy courtyard, somehow recalled for me the dancing mushrooms in Disney’s Fantasia.

A divided church

Commercial cinema needs to attract a wide audience, so Conclave, like The Two Popes, has to depict the church in ways that make sense to audiences of different faiths or none (me included). It works here as a sort of political thriller, avoiding the mystifications of the likes of The Da Vinci Code and lurid conspiracy theories available on the internet and social media.

It does so while offering a spectacle of ritual, costume and setting (such as a recreated Sistine Chapel) that taps into the visual pleasures of period drama. In The Two Popes, cutaway shots of the chapel ceiling were used for comic effect – memorably, a painted figure doing a facepalm. In Conclave, following the novel, Michelangelo’s frescoes signal the presence of the holy spirit.

Between their lodgings and the chapel, the cardinals are in enforced isolation, cut off from rumours from Rome, not to mention the media. Unlike politicians, they are not undermined by insiders Whatsapping sympathetic journalists. Instead we have a state ruled by a caste of religious bureaucrats sealed off from the everyday world and the immediate concerns of the public, at least temporarily.

As in political biography, the character and follies of flawed individuals drive the narratives, rather than channelling wider social currents or political problems. Conclave offers what to elites must be a consoling vision of politics isolated from an irreverent voter base.

The opposition of reformists and traditionalists might initially be read as an allegory of the world’s decades-long shift to the right. We might see reformists standing for neoliberal managerialists – the outgoing pope describes Cardinal Lawrence as a manager – and the traditionalists as “populist” nationalists, with complicity between factions where needed.

Conclave finds its audience in Trump’s second term, Keir Starmer’s first, and Macron’s left-excluding “unity government”, not to mention the continuing right-wing leadership of Georgia Meloni in the country that surrounds the Vatican City – and whose migration policies have won Starmer’s admiration.

However, Conclave’s cardinals display genuine socially liberal or arch-conservative convictions that are not entirely down to cynical strategising and vote calculations. Defeating the racist contender Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is the main focus of the liberals such as Cardinal Bellini.

Some of the characterisations of Harris’s novel reached for stereotypes, such as the African churchman who is homophobic, even if striving for a “liberal” message in the ending. Pope Francis in Meirelles’s The Two Popes could stand in for the global south and perhaps a watered-down version of liberation theology. One of the contenders in Conclave is also from Latin America – and has a secret of his own.

If the message is that the church can modernise through egalitarian recruitment, surely this overlooks the fact that the church is a deeply entrenched hierarchical, patriarchal institution.

Changing the faces at the top in order to demonstrate a commitment to diversity without changing the structure and politics of institutions has been dubbed “elite capture” by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. But this kind of identity politics which leaves structures alone is more likely in secular liberal institutions than in a 2,000-year-old religious establishment known to move at a glacial pace, for which even such superficial nods to modernisation are unlikely.

Ending aside, the rest of the film seems more interested in offering us a soapy, ceremonial intrigue with plenty of opportunity for its cast to bring the scheming alive. In this respect, Fiennes’s mastery of registering revelations and quick turns of events through minute changes of expression and posture are one of the film’s greatest pleasures.

Jon Hackett, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television, Brunel University of London

Could Trump be Leading the World into Recession?

Could the turmoil in the financial markets caused by the vicissitudes of US president Donald Trump's economic policy send the world into a recession? 

By Steve Schifferes, City St George's, University of London

Growth forecasts for the US and other advanced economies have been sharply downgraded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the wake of dramatic swings in US president Donald Trump’s economic policy. But could the uncertainty and the turmoil in financial markets eventually be enough to push the world into a recession?

The IMF says that global growth has already been hit by the decline in business and consumer confidence as “major policy shifts” by the US unfold. These are leading to less spending and less investment.

It also predicts further damage from the disruption in global supply chains and inflation caused by tariff increases.

But while the IMF forecasts a sharp reduction in world economic growth in 2025 and 2026, it is not projecting a recession – for now. However, it says the chances of a global recession have risen sharply from 17% to 30%. And there is now a 40% chance of a recession in the US.

The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, has blamed the slowdown on the ongoing “reboot of the global trading system” by the US. She said this is leading to downgrades in growth estimates, while volatility in financial markets is “up” and trade policy uncertainty is “literally off the charts”.

As part of the IMF forecasts, growth projections for the world’s richest countries in 2025 have been sharply reduced. In the US it is down 0.5% to just 1.8%, while growth in the euro area is projected to be just 0.8%. Japan will be growing by even less at 0.6%. Germany – the EU’s largest economy – is projected to have no growth at all.

And for the UK, growth has been cut by 0.5%, to a very weak 1.1%, which is in line with forecasts from March. This is well below the 2% projected at the time of the last budget in the autumn. And despite the adjustments made in the UK’s spring statement, the downgrade is likely to mean more tax increases, spending cuts, or both.

Some developing countries are doing much better, with India projected to have one of the highest annual GDP growth rates at 6.2% in 2025. Meanwhile, China’s growth forecast has been cut sharply due to the effect of US tariffs. It is now projected by the IMF to be down by 1.3% to just 4%.

Other poorer developing countries will also be negatively affected, but most will continue to grow at a faster pace than major industrial nations.

What the forecast underscores is that the era of rapid globalisation, spurred by trade and integration of financial markets, seems to be coming to an end.

Its rapid spread since the 1950s, which accelerated in the 1980s, led to a huge expansion of the world economy. But it created winners and losers, both between nations and within them.

The Trump administration’s answer to this is massive tariff increases hitting countries that stand accused of “ripping off America”. The tariffs have several contradictory objectives, including raising money pay for tax cuts; acting as a bargaining chip to open foreign markets to American goods; and encouraging manufacturers to relocate to the US.

Trump has swung between these objectives, and backed down when market reaction became too fierce. These swings have destabilised trade and investment, as well as business and consumer confidence.

Tariffs do not change the fact that many countries can produce the goods Americans want, more cheaply and often more efficiently. And the looming trade war could mean US exporters are hit with retaliatory tariffs, making it even harder to sell American goods abroad.

The inflationary effect of tariffs – raising the price of imported goods – could reverse the recent successes of central banks in taming inflation. It could even force them to raise interest rates – something Trump is fiercely against.

A more immediate effect of Trump’s erratic policy-making has been turmoil in financial markets. The US stock market has fallen sharply since Trump announced his tariff plan, currently down by nearly 15% (a loss of more than US$4 trillion (£2.99 trillion) for shareholders).

This matters for the US economy, as most Americans depend on their stock market holdings to pay for their defined-contribution pensions. But even more worrying is the effect on the US Treasury bond market, which has been a safe haven in times of trouble. Foreign investors are now shunning US bonds, driving up interest rates for US government debt and unsettling financial institutions.

Added to the problem is the sharp drop in the value of the US dollar. Trump says he wants a weaker dollar, presumably to make US exports cheaper. But it also raises the price of imported goods and could fuel inflation. Ultimately, it could threaten the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Potentially, big swings in normally steady financial markets can presage some of the same wobbles that led to the global financial crisis of 2008. That crisis threatened the solvency of the global financial system – although we have not reached that point yet.

Winners and losers

So what is the most likely outcome of the trade war, and the loss of a single hegemonic economic power? One example is what happened when Britain lost its dominant role in manufacturing and finance after the first world war.

Attempts at rebuilding a global economic order failed, and other major countries (led by Germany and the US) reverted to autarky, stepping back from the international trading system and worsening the Depression of the 1930s.

Just as Trump is trying to do, countries reverted to competitive devaluations. Each tried to make its exports cheaper than those of its rivals, ultimately to no avail. The world was divided into rival trading blocs, and it is conceivable that the US, the EU and China could form three such blocs in future.

The last financial crisis, in 2008, was mitigated by prompt and cooperative action by central banks and governments. They injected trillions to stabilise the financial sector, but even now the damaging effects of this crisis on national growth rates is plain to see.

The IMF has made it clear that it is not just the detail of the tariffs, but erratic US economic policy, that is the main culprit for the potential recession. The rising cost of servicing US debt as investors lose confidence is also raising the cost of the large public debts of other advanced economies, including the UK. This puts more pressure on public spending.

Let’s hope that whatever the turmoil, we will not be repeating the mistakes of the past.

Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George's, University of London

How Will a New Pope be Chosen in Rome? An Expert Explains the Conclave

Pope Francis leaves the Sistine Chapel after being elected pope and shortly before appearing for the first time on the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican in March 2013. CNS/L'Osservatore Romano

By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski

Following the death of Pope Francis, we’ll soon be seeing a new leader in the Vatican. The conclave – a strictly confidential gathering of Roman Catholic cardinals – is due to meet in a matter of weeks to elect a new earthly head.

The word conclave is derived from the Latin con (together) and clāvis (key). It means “a locked room” or “chamber”, reflecting its historical use to describe the locked gathering of cardinals to elect a pope.

Held in the Sistine Chapel, the meeting follows a centuries-old process designed to ensure secrecy and prayerful deliberation. A two-thirds majority vote will be needed to successfully elect the 267th pope.

History of the conclave

The formalised papal conclave dates back centuries. And various popes have shaped the process in response to the church’s needs.

In the 13th century, for example, Pope Gregory X introduced strict regulations to prevent unduly long elections.

Pope Gregory X brought in the rules to prevent a repeat of his own experience. The conclave that elected him in September 1271 (following the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268) lasted almost three years.

Further adjustments were made to streamline the process and emphasise secrecy, culminating in Pope John Paul II’s 1996 constitution, Universi Dominici gregis (The Lord’s whole flock). This document set the modern framework for the conclave.

In 2007 and 2013, Benedict XVI reiterated that a two-thirds majority of written votes would be required to elect a new pope. He also reaffirmed penalties for breaches of secrecy.

The secrecy surrounding the conclave ensures the casting of ballots remains confidential, and without any external interference.

The last known attempt at external interference in a papal conclave occurred in 1903 when Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria sought to prevent the election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla. However, the assembled cardinals rejected this intervention, asserting the independence of the electoral process.

How does voting work?

The conclave formally begins between 15 and 20 days after the papal vacancy, but can start earlier if all cardinals eligible to vote have arrived. Logistical details, such as the funeral rites for the deceased pope, can also influence the overall timeline.

Historically, the exact number of votes required to elect a new pope has fluctuated. Under current rules, a minimum two-thirds majority is needed. If multiple rounds of balloting fail to yield a result, the process can continue for days, or even weeks.

After every few inconclusive rounds, cardinals pause for prayer and reflection. This process continues until one candidate receives the two-thirds majority required to win. The final candidates do not vote for themselves in the decisive round.

The ballot paper formerly used in the conclave, with ‘I elect as Supreme Pontiff’ written in Latin. Wikimedia Commons

How is voting kept secret?

The papal conclave is entirely closed to the public. Voting is conducted by secret ballot within the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the pope’s official residence.

During the conclave, the Sistine Chapel is sealed off from outside communication. No cameras are allowed, and there is no live broadcast.

The cardinals involved swear an oath of absolute secrecy, and face the threat of excommunication if it is violated. This ensures all discussions and voting remain strictly confidential.

The iconic white smoke, produced by burning ballots once a pope has been chosen, is the only public signal that the election has concluded.

Who can be elected?

Only cardinals who are under 80 years of age at the time of conclave’s commencement can vote. Older cardinals are free to attend preparatory meetings, but can not cast ballots.

While the total number of electors is intended to not exceed 120, the fluctuating nature of cardinal appointments, as well as age restrictions, make it difficult to predict the exact number of eligible voters at any given conclave.

Technically, any baptised Catholic man can be elected pope. In practice, however, the College of Cardinals traditionally chooses one of its own members. Electing an “outsider” is extremely rare, and has not occurred in modern times.

What makes a good candidate?

When faced with criticism from a member of the public about his weight, John XXIII (who was pope from 1958-1963) retorted the papal conclave was “not a exactly beauty contest”.

Merit, theological understanding, administrative skill and global perspective matter greatly. But there is also a collegial element – something of a “popularity” factor. It is an election, after all.

Cardinals discuss the church’s current priorities – be they evangelisation strategies, administrative reforms or pastoral concerns – before settling on the individual they believe is best suited to lead.

The cardinal electors seek someone who can unify the faithful, navigate modern challenges and maintain doctrinal continuity.

Controversies and criticisms

The conclave process has faced criticism for its strict secrecy, which can foster speculation about potential “politicking”.

Critics argue a tightly controlled environment might not reflect the broader concerns of the global church.

Some have also questioned whether age limits on voting cardinals limit the wisdom and experience found among older members.

Nonetheless, defenders maintain that secrecy encourages free and sincere deliberation, minimising external pressure and allowing cardinals to choose the best leader without fear of reprisal, or of public opinion swaying the vote.

Challenges facing the new pope

The next pope will inherit a mixed situation: a church that has grown stronger in certain areas under Francis, yet which grapples with internal divisions and external challenges.

Like other religions, the church faces secularisation, issues with financial transparency and a waning following in some parts of the globe.

One of the earliest trials faced by the new pope will be unifying the global Catholic community around a shared vision – an obstacle almost every pope has faced. Striking the right balance between doctrine and pastoral sensitivity remains crucial.

Addressing sexual abuse scandals and their aftermath will require decisive action, transparency and continued pastoral care for survivors.

Practical concerns also loom large. The new pope will have to manage the Vatican bureaucracy and interfaith relations, while maintaining the church’s stance on global crises such as migration and poverty – two issues on which Francis insisted mercy could not be optional.

The cardinal electors have a tough decision ahead of them. The Catholic community can only pray that, through their deliberations, they identify a shepherd who can guide the church through the complexities of the modern world.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic Universit

Pagan Loaves, Christian Bread, a Secular Treat: a Brief History of Hot Cross Buns

Ancient Greeks baked small round loaves marked with crosses to honour their gods. Early Christians made a cross to show their devotion on bread. Pagan Saxons worshipped a spring goddess called Eostre, which gave us the English word for Easter. 

By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski

Hot cross buns aren’t just a sweet snack that appear at Easter. They carry centuries of storytelling in their dough. From ancient gods to modern supermarkets, these sticky spiced buns have crossed many borders and beliefs.

Today, you can buy them in all kinds of flavours. But their story is far richer than chocolate chips and salted caramel.

Ancient beginnings

In some ancient cultures, bread was more than just food. It was a symbol of faith. Ancient Greeks baked small round loaves marked with crosses to honour their gods. According to some historians, these marks could represent the four seasons or four phases of the moon.

Jewish people have also shared special bread during holy times like Passover, and scholars have debated whether these customs influenced early Christian bread traditions.

Pagan Saxons worshipped a spring goddess named Eostre. They baked bread during springtime festivals to celebrate new life and longer days. The name “Eostre” is where we get the English word “Easter”. Over time, some of these springtime bread traditions blended with Christian customs.

From Pagan loaves to Christian buns

Early Christians started marking bread with a cross to show their devotion and ate it throughout the year.

They believed the cross kept away evil spirits and helped the dough rise. Over time, the Christian view of the bread marked with the cross shifted to focus on Jesus’ crucifixion and became associated with Easter.

Baking bread as illustrated in the 16th century Book of Hours. Getty

By the Middle Ages, many bakers only kept the cross on Good Friday bread.

According to popular tales, one 12th-century English monk made spiced buns marked with a cross on Good Friday, because that day is the “Day of the Cross”.

Monks often used spices to show the day was special. These spiced buns helped people remember the crucifixion of Christ and the spices used in his burial.

In 1592, Queen Elizabeth I restricted the sale of spiced bread and buns, perhaps because of religious tensions. England had broken away from the Catholic Church, and new Church of England officials worried that “holy” buns looked too much like Catholic superstition. Others say it was an issue of bread prices and profits. Then again maybe they were just too special for just everyday.

Under these laws, commercial bakers could only make spiced bread on Christmas, Easter and for funerals.

Good Friday and magic buns

By the 18th century, English street vendors sold “hot cross buns” on Good Friday. We even see an old rhyme about them in Poor Robin’s Almanac in 1733, which says:

Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs,
With one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns.

Soon, people believed these Good Friday buns had magical powers. Some hung them from kitchen rafters, believing they would never go mouldy. They kept them for protection against evil or illness. If someone felt sick, they crumbled part of an old hot cross bun into water, hoping it would cure them. Others placed buns in their grain stores to keep pests away.

These beliefs might sound odd today, but they were part of daily life for many.

This hand-coloured etching from 1799 shows a woman selling hot cross buns in London. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Victorian England, people exchanged hot cross buns with friends on Good Friday and said, “Half for you and half for me, between us two good luck shall be”.

Whatever ancient superstition the cross once warded off, today it’s the flavour roulette that keeps us coming back. Proof that tradition now serves taste, not fear.

An enduring symbol

Traditional buns contain dried fruit and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, but many modern versions swap sultanas for chocolate chips or add flavours like salted caramel, orange – or even Vegemite and cheese. They have become a secular treat. Yet the crisscross pattern remains on top, hinting at the Christian origins.

When you smell a fresh batch of these buns, you’re sharing an experience people enjoyed centuries ago. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Poles, Romans, Saxons, medieval monks and 18th-century street sellers all had their versions of spiced, crossed bread. Each group gave the buns its own meaning, from honouring gods to celebrating Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

A woman giving hot cross buns to two children, in an illustration from 1899. British Library

Eating hot cross buns at Easter also shows how traditions change with each generation. At first, they were hard to find outside Good Friday. Now, you might see them in shops just after New Year’s. They once symbolised pagan festivals, then moved into Christian rites, survived royal bans, and sailed through waves of superstition. Yet they remain a symbol of Easter in Australia and around the world.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University