How a 2011 film found its stride-9 years later.
The Coronavirus has taken over the world. At the beginning of the year, lot’s of people jokingly wished for 2020 to be a movie, in the sense that all their New Year’s desires and dreams would develop. When the youth first heard of the Coronavirus back in February, we didn’t think much of it. Once classes began to get cancelled in March, we all thought that we were just getting an extra 2 weeks of spring break, and that was all that COVID-19 had to offer. After 7 months of pandemic life and the death of 200k people in the US alone, it’s safe to say that we have quite literally been part of a movie, but not one in the action or fantasy genre.
Dr. Ally Hextall: It’s figuring us out faster than we’re figuring it out.
The movie “Contagion”, directed by Steven Soderbergh, was released in 2011 as thriller-genre movie, concerning a deadly pandemic that takes over the world from China. Throughout the movie, the audience comes to the realization that Beth Emhoff, wife of the movie’s main character, Mitch Emhoff, was the first person to come in contact with the plague.
Thanks to the comparison that a year like 2020 offers, The film does an excellent job of portraying a pandemic-ran world, which an article like 'Contagion' vs. coronavirus: The film's connections to a real life pandemic goes over. Although some aspects of life were ridiculously exaggerated, such as the deadliness of the virus, or the chaos surrounding (specifically) the disease, the strict quarantine guidelines, face coverings, and involvement of the CDC and other major world health organizations were on point with our reality.
In this article, I will be going further in-depth on the phenomenon behind the history of pandemic films, and how they’ve become as relevant as ever in 2020.
“Our Fever for Plague Movies”, an article written by the New York times, covers the history of pandemic films in full-depth. and their historically massive success in the box-office. It’s ironic in the sense that COVID-19 has shut the world down in a movie-like fashion, and here we are as a society, sitting down and spending our time watching movies about disease and plagues. A parallel that can be made between the real world and Hollywood is disease itself: How can it be so pervasive around the planet to hold the influence it has amongst human interaction, or in this particular case, an entire industry?
As the coronavirus has evolved from infancy to its peripatetic prime, it has colonized the human conversation.
Human error is one thing these blockbuster-movies are excellent guides to. Films like “Contagion” often stray towards hope and self-delusion, with the sole purpose of entertaining the audience. The ultimate ambition of a filmmaker for this sort of movie is to capture the landscape and environment of an actual world where a pandemic is taking place, which is normally where the line between fiction and reality in Hollywood can be drawn, and for the filmmaking industry, reality is never entertaining enough.
“How ‘Contagion’ Suddenly Became the Most Urgent Movie of 2020”, an article by David Fear of the Rolling Stone, perfectly captivates the viewer’s experience for a film like Contagion. We, the audience, are forced to pay attention to the little interactions that take place throughout the entire film. A handshake between Gwyneth Paltrow’s character and the chef that comes in contact with the disease-carrying pig, a train pole being touched by multiple people, and serious cough from a random individual at the start of the film set the tone for the rest of the movie: In this world, you have to stay away from the sick, and fight for your right to survival.
The Contagion screenplay puts lots of those details that make the movie so much better into our eyes, as the reader is given the ability to capture the vision of the directors and writers of the film.
Dr. Ellis Cheever: So we have a virus with no treatment protocol, and no vaccine at this time.
While some viewers appreciated the film for its impressive depiction of a disease-ran world, other viewers felt that the movie was more of an interpretation of how bad things could get. Wesley Morris, writer for the New York times, wrote about his feelings towards the movie in his article “For Me, Rewatching ‘Contagion’ Was Fun, Until It Wasn’t”. He describes “Contagion” as an explanatory drama, written under a script about scientists and government officials that are racing to find a vaccine (for a much deadlier plague). He added that that while watching, the movie felt real to him, and the thought that the deaths and empty places legitimately exist during this time contributed to his viewing experience as a whole.
This ultimately ties in to the perspective of a man named Marshall McLuhan, who envisioned the power of the media nearly 60 years ago. One of his novels, entitled “The Medium is the Massage”, perfectly covers this feeling that Wesley Morris, David Fear, and every viewer of “Contagion” experienced: because it’s exactly how Hollywood wants you to feel. The sole purpose of the entertainment industry is to alter your perspective of reality, and make the masses see through their lens. The desensitization of serious issues, such as a global pandemic, or death, is a perfect way of shaping the mind of the audience. When a real pandemic takes place, lots of people aren’t concerned or stressed about it in the way that they would be if they never knew just how bad the situation could get. Since we all believe that the Coronavirus isn’t anywhere near as deadly or chaos-inducing as a virus that takes place in a Hollywood film, we get a false sense of security from movies, which is enrooted in our minds, regardless of genre.