When Cruelty Seems Like a Joke

 

 "The Trump administration and its Department of Homeland Security have made frame perversion a signature feature of their social media presence. On Valentine’s Day 2025, the White House posted images of Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, set against a pink backdrop and paired with a sing-song rhyme: “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Come here illegally / And we’ll deport you.” As Christmas approached later that year, the official ICEgov Instagram account shared an AI-generated image of an “ICE AIR” flight full of deportees pulled through the sky by Santa’s reindeer, captioned: “Avoid ICE AIR and go Ho Ho Home…” In each case, cheerful, familiar holiday imagery provides the setup; state violence supplies the punchline.

The frame perversion pattern reached its most chilling form in another White House post labeled “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” ASMR—short for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”—usually refers to videos designed to produce calm or pleasure through soft, repetitive sounds. Here, that “soothing” frame was supplied by the hum of jet engines, the metallic rattle of chains pulled from a crate, the click of handcuffs, the quiet clink of leg shackles with each step up the gangway. These sounds are meant to relax the viewer, even as they mark the forcible end of someone’s life as they know it. Frame perversion, in this case, does not merely normalize cruelty. It invites the audience to relax pleasurably within it."

read analysis by Janet McIntosh

 When Cruelty Seems Like a Joke - CounterPunch.org