South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why, and what can be done

 

South Africa is ranked one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Conversation Africa spoke to Imraan Valodia, the Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, about inequality in South Africa.

Has income inequality got worse in the last 20 years?

According to the most recent data, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of around 0.67. The Gini coefficient is a widely used statistical measure of how income is distributed in the population of a country. It takes a value between 0 and 1. A coefficient of 1 indicates perfect inequality – where one individual in a country would earn all the income in that country. Conversely, a coefficient of 0 is an indicator of perfect equality, where the income of the country is distributed perfectly equally among all its citizens.

South Africa’s Gini is exceptionally high. A number of other African countries have high Ginis too. For example, Namibia’s is 0.59, Zambia’s 0.57 and Mozambique’s 0.54.

Countries in Europe, especially Scandinavian countries, have much lower Ginis. They range between 0.24 and 0.27. Among the developed countries, the US has a high level of inequality with a Gini of 0.41.

China’s is 0.38 and India’s is 0.35. Russia’s is similarly relatively low at 0.37. Brazil, like South Africa, has a much higher level of inequality at 0.53.

In South Africa, the evidence suggests that income inequality has risen in the post-apartheid period, though it has fluctuated.

What is clear is that levels of inequality are not decreasing.

What’s driving the trend?

There are a number of drivers.

First, the fact that large numbers of South Africans are unemployed and report no or very low incomes. According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the rate of unemployment in South Africa, in June 2023, was estimated to be 32.6%. But this doesn’t include people who have given up trying to find work. (The internationally accepted definition of unemployment requires people who are classified as unemployed to be searching for work.) If we include these discouraged workers, the unemployment rate increases to 44.1%.

There are about 40.7 million people in South Africa between the ages of 15 and 64 – this is the group that could potentially work. Those who are not able to work, because they’re at school, or ill, or for some other reason, are estimated to number 13.2 million. That leaves 27.5 million people. Of these, only 16.4 million are working.

Of the 16.4 million, only 11.3 million are employed in the formal sector, where income tends to be higher.

These figures make it clear that the economy is just not able to generate sufficient numbers of employment opportunities.

The second driver is that, among those who are employed, many earn very low wages. Of those who do have work, about 3 million people subsist in the informal economy, where incomes are very low. Another 900,000 people work in agriculture and about 1 million as domestic workers, where incomes are very low.

Even in the formal sector, wages, especially for non-unionised workers, tend to be extremely low.

And third, the incomes at the top end of the income distribution are very high. It’s more difficult to provide reliable statistics on this, because incomes for rich households tend to come from a variety of sources. One way to get a sense of this is to look at household expenditure – a good proxy for incomes. Unfortunately, South Africa’s income and expenditure survey is now quite dated. But what’s available shows that the richest 10% of South African households are responsible for some 52% of all expenditure. The poorest 10% of households contribute only 0.8% of all expenditure.

Is South Africa an outlier?

Yes. However, there are probably many countries that have higher levels of inequality – we just don’t have the data for them. So, while people often say South Africa has the highest Gini in the world, it would be more accurate to say that South Africa has the highest Gini among countries that have data on income inequality.

South Africa’s data is generally very good, reliable and independent.

What steps have been taken? Why didn’t they work?

The major intervention in post-apartheid South Africa was to address inequality in terms of race. This is, of course, extremely important. Among other steps, government introduced the Employment Equity Act to address race-based discrimination in employment, and various measures to address ownership by race. There is controversy about some of the measures. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that they have been very successful in changing the patterns of inequality in South Africa.

However, not enough has been done – race-based inequality is still a real problem. In general, high income South African households, irrespective of race, have done well over the last three decades, which is why inequality has remained stubbornly high.

What steps should be taken now?

I don’t think there is any one policy that would address the issue. Some focus on the labour market and argue that employment is not growing because of labour protections. But I think this is incorrect and does not deal with the nuance of the country’s political and economic situation.

I think we should rather be thinking about how to direct the benefits of economic growth and redistribution policies to benefit those at the bottom end. This could involve, for example, raising incomes at the bottom, creating new opportunities and employment for those who don’t have them, and ensuring that the benefits of growth do not disproportionately benefit those at the top end of the income distribution.

What is the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality?

Income inequality measures only a portion of the real inequality in South Africa. Measuring inequality in wealth gives a more complete picture of how unequal a society is. Income is only one factor that determines wealth. Wealth also includes inheritance, earnings from assets and so on.

The broad picture is that in South Africa wealth inequality is much worse than income inequality. Some striking statistics are that the top 0.01% of people – just 3,500 individuals – own about 15% of all of the wealth in South Africa. The top 0.1% own 25% of the wealth. The net wealth of the top 1% is R17.8 million (about US$944,000). In contrast, the bottom 50% have a negative wealth position (they have more liabilities than they do assets) of R16,000 (around US$850).

This article is part of a media partnership between Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and The Conversation Africa for the Annual Inequality Lecture which will be given by Professor Branko Milanovic, titled “Recent changes in the global income distribution and their political implications”. You can register for the event here.

Imraan Valodia, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director Southern Centre for Inequality Studies., University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Depression isn’t just sadness – it’s often a loss of pleasure

 

No longer enjoying the things you used to can also be a symptom of other mental health conditions. fizkes/ Shutterstock

It’s often thought that if someone is depressed, they will feel sad or low most of the time. But what many don’t realise is that these aren’t the only symptoms of depression. Another common symptom of depression that is sometimes overlooked is the feeling that you no longer find the things you used to enjoy to be interesting or pleasurable.

Known as anhedonia, this symptom is present in up to 75% of adults and young people with depression. But despite how common this symptom is, it remains one of the most difficult symptoms to treat and manage.

Loss of pleasure

Anhedonia is defined as the reduced interest or pleasure in all – or almost all – activities a person previously enjoyed. If a person has anhedonia for an extended period of time (at least two weeks consistently), they can be diagnosed with depression – even if they may not feel sad or low.

Although mainly associated with depression, anhedonia can also be a symptom of other disorders – such as schizophrenia, anxiety and Parkinson’s disease.

In in-depth interviews my colleagues and I conducted with young people about depression, anhedonia was described by many as not just a loss of joy, but also less motivation to do things. For some, this lack of drive was only related to specific things – such as going to school or seeing friends. But for others, it was more severe, and they felt they didn’t want to do anything at all – not even live.

But despite how troubling anhedonia can be, it’s often not the main target of depression treatment.

It’s recommended that cases of mild depression are treated with talking therapy. People with more moderate or severe cases of depression may be prescribed antidepressants. While all these treatments aim to help patients cope with and overcome symptoms, over half of people with depression don’t respond to their first recommended treatment. Even after changing treatments, approximately 30% of patients still experience symptoms.

It’s been argued that one reason for these low response rates may be because current treatment techniques don’t adequately target anhedonia. Research also shows that having anhedonia predicts chronic relapsing of depression. It’s even possible that some antidepressant treatments might make anhedonia worse.

Why might this be? One possibility is that current standard treatments focus mainly on treating the depressed mood and brain processes that underpin low mood – but not anhedonia. For example the main aim of talking therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, is to reduce negative thinking in patients. The most common antidepressant medications also mainly target serotonin, which is thought to underpin in part, how the brain processes negative information.

Experiencing anhedonia for at least two weeks consistently is a sign of a depression. Ponomarenko Anastasia/ Shutterstock

But as anhedonia is reduced joy in life, treatments such as behavioural activation (a form of talking therapy) could be better for anhedonia. This is because behavioural activation aims to help people with depression take simple, practical steps towards enjoying life again. Yet some studies find behavioural activation is no better than standard treatments in managing anhedonia. This might be because the very nature of anhedonia includes a lack of motivation – making it difficult for patients to engage in any therapy, even forms which may most benefit them.

Anhedonia has also been linked to dysfunctional reward mechanisms in the brain. As such, treatments which focus more on improving the way the brain processes reward could help alleviate anhedonia more effectively than current treatments.

But the brain’s reward system isn’t straightforward, and actually involves various subprocesses – including anticipation, motivation, pleasure and learning about reward. Problems with any one of these subprocesses could be contributing to anhedonia. As such, it will be important for research to uncover how these subprocesses operate in people with anhedonia to develop better targets for treatment.

Treatment options

While anhedonia may be complex, that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for those who are affected by it.

For instance, research shows that talking therapies which focus on reward processing could help reduce anhedonia. A recent pilot study also found that a new type of talk therapy called augmented depression therapy may work better than cognitive behavioural therapy in treating depression. This is because augmented depression therapy specifically targets anhedonia by having patients focus on both their negative and positive experiences.

Further, antidepressants that target neurotransmitters involved in the reward system (such as dopamine) might be better suited for patients with anhedonia. Early work examining drugs such as ketamine, which can affect dopamine activity, suggest it may have promise for treating anhedonia.

And while it can be hard to find motivation if you’re experiencing anhedonia, trying to find time for fun, enjoyable activities or experiences like a hobby you used to love – or even a new hobby – could help alleviate anhedonia.

If you think you have anhedonia – or other symptoms of depression – it’s important not to ignore your feelings so you can get the help and treatment you deserve. If you aren’t sure where to begin, you could try sharing how you feel with a loved one or with your GP.

You could also contact Samaritans – call 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org if you need to talk to someone soon. It’s free and anonymous.

Ciara McCabe, Professor of Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology and Mental Health, University of Reading

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

South Africans are fed up with their prospects, and their democracy, according to latest social attitudes survey

 

29 years of democracy has left its mark. Rather battered and frayed South African flag billowing in the wind against a cloud-strewn sky.

The mood among South Africans has soured. The latest findings from the representative survey that’s done every year by the country’s Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) shows some disturbing new trends.

The most marked are:

• a decline in levels of life satisfaction as a whole

• a downturn in people’s views about what lies ahead in their lives

• a growing sense of despondency, and

• a declining satisfaction with democracy.

The sense of hopelessness and despondency with democracy that emerges from the survey does not bode well for the future of the country’s democracy. As the survey shows, as despondency increases, so too does a sense of hopelessness.

The 2021 survey – with the most recent available results – consisted of 2,996 South Africans aged 16 years and older living in private residences. The data were benchmarked and weighted to be representative of the adult population.

The survey echoes key points in our forthcoming work on life satisfaction and democracy in the Human Science Research Council’s flagship publication, State of the Nation. This details increasing life dissatisfaction amid growing unhappiness with democracy and despondency.

Based on our two decade involvement in social attitudes research in South Africa, we argued that while South Africans were increasingly unhappy with democracy, their levels of life satisfaction remained stable. But we are now noting a significant decline in life satisfaction in the context of increased democratic despondency, weak political efficacy and mediocre service delivery.

It is this sense of hopelessness that could potentially signal political instability in the future.

What are people are saying

The Social Attitudes Survey is a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey. Conducted annually since 2003, it measures underlying public perceptions, values and social fabric in South African society.

The survey represents a notable tool for monitoring evolving social, economic and political values among South Africans. We also believe it shows promising use as a predictive mechanism that could inform decision makers and policy-making processes.

The most recent survey results show a marked downturn in the mood in the country since 2021, most notably around life satisfaction and future life improvement or optimism.

A downturn in life satisfaction: South Africans show a recent downturn in their general life satisfaction, a measure that has remained relatively stable over the last 18 or so years (Figure 1). When asked to reflect on their current personal life circumstances, only 41% were satisfied with their lives in late 2021 compared to 52% in 2014. This is a significant decline for a measure that is usually quite stable.

This points to appreciable strain on life satisfaction, something that is likely to be more acutely felt among poor and vulnerable citizens.

Outlook on future life: Trends in the outlook South Africans have for their future in the medium term also highlight despondency and hopelessness (Figure 2). In 2014, 44% felt their lives would improve over the next five years. In late 2021 this had fallen to 29%. The number who felt that life would worsen rose from 25% in 2014 to 39% in 2021. Those who believed that their situation would remain unchanged fluctuated between 22% and 30% over this period.

The 2021 results suggest that a threshold has been crossed, with a pessimistic outlook becoming more dominant than an optimistic one.

A sense of despondency: This was observed across all race and gender groups. But from a age profile perspective, older people held more negative views on future life optimism (Figure 3).

The drivers

Our analysis shows that personal future outlook of South Africans is strongly shaped by factors relating to the government performance evaluations, trust in institutions and general democratic evaluations.

Those with a more positive outlook were also more satisfied with government efforts at delivering a range of serives. These included the provision of water, sanitation and electricity, tackling crime and corruption, as well as job creation and social grants.

Those who thought these services were sliding had a more negative outlook.

Similarly, those expressing trust in national and local government, parliament, the Independent Electoral Commission, political parties and politicians all reported a sunnier outlook than those who were more sceptical.

As an example of the scale of these effects, in Figure 4 below, we present the scale of difference in the share offering positive future expectations based on those that are satisfied and dissatisfied with democracy. On average over the 2014-2021 period, the difference between these two groups is 28 percentage points, rising to a high of 33 percentage points in 2021.

Democracy outlook

Up until 2020 there was evidence that South Africans, in common with other citizens across the subcontinent and Latin America, conventionally took a more optimistic view of the future through expressing that life would get better in the next five years.

However, as democratic despondency increases, so too does a sense of hopelessness in South Africans.

This begs the question of whether the Freedom Day 2023 mood should be a celebratory one, or one of sober reflection, and re-commitment to the social compact and spirit of accountability and government responsiveness that characterised the dream of 1994.

Joleen Steyn Kotze, Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State and Benjamin Roberts, Research Director: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division, and Coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Human Sciences Research Council

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

A year on, we know why the Tongan eruption was so violent. It’s a wake-up call to watch other submarine volcanoes

 

Sung-Hyun Park/Korea Polar Research Institute

The Kingdom of Tonga exploded into global news on January 15 last year with one of the most spectacular and violent volcanic eruptions ever seen.

Remarkably, it was caused by a volcano that lies under hundreds of metres of seawater. The event shocked the public and volcano scientists alike.

Was this a new type of eruption we’ve never seen before? Was it a wake-up call to pay more attention to threats from submarine volcanoes around the world?

The answer is yes to both questions.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano was a little-known seamount along a chain of 20 similar volcanoes that make up the Tongan part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

We know a lot about surface volcanoes along this ring, including Mount St Helens in the US, Mount Fuji in Japan and Gunung Merapi of Indonesia. But we know very little about the hundreds of submarine volcanoes around it.

Scientists have good understanding of land-based volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but far less so about seamounts. Getty Images

It is difficult, expensive and time-consuming to study submarine volcanoes, but out of sight is no longer out of mind.

Tongan eruption breaks records

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption has firmly established itself in the record books with the highest ash plume ever measured and a 58km aerosol cloud “overshoot” that touched space beyond the mesosphere. It also triggered the largest number of lightning bolts recorded for any type of natural event.

The injection of large amounts of water vapour into the outer atmosphere, along with “sonic booms” (atmospheric pressure waves) and tsunami that travelled the entire world, set new benchmarks for volcanic phenomena.

COVID hampered access to Tonga during the eruption and its aftermath, but local scientists and an international scientific collaborative effort helped us discover what drove its extreme violence.

Eruption creates a giant hole

A team from the Tongan Geological Services and the University of Auckland used a multi-beam sonar mapping system to precisely measure the shape of the volcano, just three months after the January blast.

We were astonished to find the rim of the vast submarine volcano was intact, but the formerly 6km diameter flat top of the submarine cone was rent by a hole 4km wide and almost 1km deep.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai crater and caldera before and after the eruption. Sung-Hyun Park/Korea Polar Research Institute, CC BY-SA

This is known as a “caldera” and happens when the central part of the volcano collapses in on itself after magma is rapidly “pumped out”. We calculate over 7.1 cubic kilometres of magma was ejected. It is almost impossible to envisage, but if we wanted to refill the caldera, it would take one billion truck loads.

It is hard to explain the physics of the Hunga eruption, even with the large magma volume and its interaction with seawater. We need other driving forces to explain especially the climactic first hour of the eruption.

Mixed magmas lead to chain reaction

Only when we examined the texture and chemistry of the erupted particles (volcanic ash) did we see clues about the event’s violence. Different magmas were intimately mixed and mingled before the eruption, with contrasts visible at a micron to centimetre scale.

Isotopic “fingerprinting” using lead, neodymium, uranium and strontium shows at least three different magma sources were involved. Radium isotope analysis shows two magma bodies were older and resident in the middle of the Earth’s crust, before being joined by a new, younger one shortly before the eruption.

The mingling of magmas caused a strong reaction, driving water and other so-called “volatile elements” out of solution and into gas. This creates bubbles and an expanding magma foam, pushing the magma out vigorously at the onset of eruption.

This intermediate or “andesite” composition has low viscosity. It means magma can be rapidly forced out through narrow cracks in the rock. Hence, there was an extremely rapid tapping of magma from 5-10km below the volcano, leading to sudden step-wise collapses of the caldera.

The caldera collapse led to a chain reaction because seawater suddenly drained through cracks and faults and encountered magma rising from depth in the volcano. The resulting high-pressure direct contact of water with magma at more than 1150℃ caused two high-intensity explosions around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Each explosion further decompressed the magma below, continuing the chain reaction by amplifying bubble growth and magma rise.

After about an hour, the central eruption plume lost energy and the eruption moved to a lower-elevation ejection of particles in a concentric curtain-like pattern around the volcano.

This less focused phase of eruption led to widespread pyroclastic flows – hot and fast-flowing clouds of gas, ash and fragments of rock – that collapsed into the ocean and caused submarine density currents. These damaged vast lengths of the international and domestic data cables, cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world.

This map shows the sites of ongoing venting after the eruption. Marta Ribo/AUT, CC BY-ND

Unanswered questions and challenges

Even after long analysis of a growing body of eyewitness accounts, there are still major unanswered questions about this eruption.

The most important is what led to the largest local tsunami – an 18-20m-high wave that struck most of the central Tongan islands around an hour into the eruption. Earlier tsunami are well linked to the two large explosions at around 30 and 45 minutes into the eruption. Currently, the best candidate for the largest tsunami is the collapse of the caldera itself, which caused seawater to rush back into the new cavity.

This event has parallels only to the great 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia and has changed our perspective of the potential hazards from shallow submarine volcanoes. Work has begun on improving volcanic monitoring in Tonga using onshore and offshore seismic sensors along with infrasound sensors and a range of satellite observation tools.

All of these monitoring methods are expensive and difficult compared to land-based volcanoes. Despite the enormous expense of submarine research vessels, intensive efforts are underway to identify other volcanoes around the world that pose Hunga-like threats.

Shane Cronin, Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Auckland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

How Edgar Allan Poe became the darling of the maligned and misunderstood

 

Could the pugnacious writer ever have imagined that he would one day become a cult hero? Nick Lehr/The Conversation via DALL-E 2, CC BY-SA

Edgar Allan Poe, who would have turned 214 years old on Jan. 19, 2023, remains one of the world’s most recognizable and popular literary figures.

His face – with its sunken eyes, enormous forehead and disheveled black hair – adorns tote bags, coffee mugs, T-shirts and lunch boxes. He appears as a meme, either sporting a popped collar and aviator shades as Edgar Allan Bro, or riffing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” by muttering, “I’m just Poe boy, nobody loves me” as a raven on his shoulder adds, “He’s just a Poe boy from a Poe family.”

Netflix has sought to capitalize on the writer’s popularity, recently releasing the mystery-thriller “The Pale Blue Eye,” which features Poe as a West Point cadet, where he spent less than a year before being court-martialed. Netflix also has a Poe-inspired miniseries, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” set to be released sometime in 2023.

But as a Poe scholar, I sometimes wonder whether Poe’s appeal is less about the power and complexity of his prose and more about an attraction to the idea of Poe.

After all, Poe’s most famous literary creations tend to be unsympathetic villains. There are psychopaths who perpetuate seemingly motiveless murders in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”; protagonists who abuse women in “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”; and characters who exact cruel, fatal revenge on unwitting victims in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hop-Frog.”

The degenerate characters whose perspectives Poe invites readers to inhabit don’t exactly align with a cultural moment characterized by the #MeToo movement, safe spaces and trigger warnings.

At the same time, the conception of Poe the writer seems to tap into a cultural affection for outsiders, nonconformists and underdogs who ultimately prove their worth.

A character assassination that misfires

The idea of Poe the underdog began with his death in 1849, which was greeted by a cruel notice in the New York Tribune: “This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”

The obituary writer, who turned out to be Poe’s sometime friend and constant rival Rufus W. Griswold, claimed that the deceased had “few or no friends” and proceeded with a general character assassination built on exaggerations and half-truths.

Strange as it seems, Griswold was also Poe’s literary executor, and he expanded the obituary into a biographical essay that accompanied Poe’s collected works. If this was a marketing ploy, it worked. The friends that Griswold claimed Poe lacked rose to his defense, and journalists spent decades debating who the man really was.

Rufus W. Griswold penned the first draft of Poe’s life and legacy. raveler1116/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

During Poe’s lifetime, most readers encountered his work through magazines, and he was rarely well paid. But Griswold’s edition went through 19 printings in the 15 years after Poe’s death, and his stories and poems have been endlessly reprinted and translated ever since.

Griswold’s defamatory portrait, along with the grim subject matter of Poe’s stories and poems, still influences the way readers perceive him. But it has also produced a sustained reaction or counterimage of Poe as a tragic hero, a tortured, misunderstood artist who was too good – or, at any rate, too cool – for his world.

While translating Poe’s works into French in the 1850s and 1860s, the French poet Charles Baudelaire promoted his hero as a kind of countercultural visionary, out of step with a moralistic, materialistic America. Baudelaire’s Poe valued beauty over truth in his poetry and, in his fiction, saw through the self-improvement pieties that were popular at the time to reveal “the natural wickedness of man.” Poe struck a chord with European writers, and as his international stature rose in the late 19th century, literary critics in the U.S. wrung their hands over his lack of appreciation “at home.”

Poe’s underdog story takes off

By the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for Poe to be embraced as the perennial underdog. And Poe often did appear on stage around this time, as the subject of several biographical melodramas that depicted him as a tragic figure whose lack of success had more to do with a hostile cultural and publishing environment than his own failings.

That image appeared on the silver screen as early as 1909 in D.W. Griffith’s short film “Edgar Allen Poe.” With Poe’s wife, Virginia, languishing on a sick bed, the poet ventures out to sell “The Raven.” After meeting rejection and scorn, he manages to sell his manuscript and returns home with provisions for his ailing wife, only to find that she has died.

Later films also depict Poe as being misunderstood or underappreciated in his lifetime. A wildly inaccurate biopic, “The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe,” released in 1942, ends with a voice-over commenting, “…little did [the public] know that the manuscript of ‘The Raven,’ which he tried in vain to sell for $25, would years later bring the price of $17,000 from a collector.”

In ‘The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe,’ Poe’s talents are overlooked, as ‘men scoffed at his greatness.’ LMPC/Getty Images

In real life, while an early draft of “The Raven” was declined by one editor, Poe had no trouble selling the poem, and it was an immediate sensation.

But here “The Raven” becomes a stand-in for Poe himself, something dark and mysterious that, according to legend, people in Poe’s time failed to appreciate.

Poe is an obscure writer and amateur detective in the 1951 film “The Man with a Cloak,” which ends with a saloonkeeper allowing the rain to wash away the ink on an IOU that Poe gave him. On the reverse side of the note is a manuscript of the poem “Annabel Lee,” as its bearer declares, “That name’ll never be worth anything. Not in a hundred years.”

Of course, the audience watching this film almost exactly 100 years after Poe’s death knew better.

The most interesting plants grow in the shade

Which brings us to “The Pale Blue Eye,” in which Henry Melling portrays Cadet Poe, an outcast with a keen crime solver’s intellect. In a refreshing change, this younger Poe is not a tortured artist or a haunted, brooding figure. He is, however, picked on by his peers and underestimated by his superiors – yet again, an underdog viewers want to root for.

In that sense, the Poe in “The Pale Blue Eye” fits well with his contemporary image, which also permeates the early episodes of “Wednesday,” Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff set at Nevermore Academy that’s chock full of Poe references.

The headmistress of Nevermore Academy – a Hogwarts-like school for outcasts – refers to Poe as “our most famous alumni,” which explains why the school’s annual boat race is the Poe Cup and why there’s a statue of Poe guarding a secret passage.

The delightfully antisocial protagonist, Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega, is an outcast among outcasts – the Poe figure at a school whose name evokes Poe. In one scene, a sympathetic teacher urges her not to lose “the ability to not let others define you. It’s a gift.” She adds, “The most interesting plants grow in the shade.”

When John Lennon sang “Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe” in “I Am the Walrus,” he didn’t have to say who was kicking him or why. The point was, Poe deserved better; the most interesting plants do grow in the shade, unlovely and unloved.

And that’s exactly why so many people – aspiring writers and artists, but also everyone when they’re lonely and misunderstood – see a little bit of themselves in the weary-but-wise image of Poe.

Scott Peeples, Professor of English, College of Charleston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.