Are Movies and TV Avoiding the Pandemic?

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ASPartOfMe
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14 Mar 2022, 8:24 am

Variety

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In the early days of what we used to call “coronavirus” in March 2020, before we all became budding epidemiologists, people flocked to Steven Soderbergh’s eerily prophetic 2011 drama “Contagion” on streaming services. Within a month or so, the movie was propelled from the 270th slot to the second most watched film in the Warner Bros. library, according to numbers from iTunes.

Two years down the line, COVID-19, which shut down the world and altered our way of life, hasn’t yet made its way into many series and movies, apart from a handful of fleeting acknowledgements. (Berlin competition contender “Both Sides of the Blade” from Claire Denis and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-nominated “Drive My Car” are examples.) For comparison, the Spanish Flu, which killed more than 50 million people worldwide over roughly two years following World War I, is still nearly invisible in popular culture to this day.

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“There have been movies about all the Balkans wars, about the world wars and hardly anything on pandemics, and even if you look at photography, what has been shown from this Spanish Flu era? Almost nothing. No one can really say much,” says Fredric Boyer, the artistic director of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Boyer points out that the most compelling films about imaginary pandemics have been written before or after these dark historical chapters by visionary filmmakers, for instance, Leos Carax’s “Mauvais Sang” (1986). “This cult film with Juliette Binoche was not only about a deadly virus but also also about the Earth heating up, way before we started talking about global warming,” says Boyer.

“There’s an emotional exhaustion about the subject because we’re still in it. We don’t have perspective and storytelling usually happens in context. That’s why there’s still so many World War II movies,” says Bobette Buster, a Tufts University professor who made the feature documentary “Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound” and is currently writing her third book.

Arianna Bocco at IFC Films says pandemic movies can also be tough to market depending on when they’re released. “It’s difficult to sell audiences films that are about what they’re currently going through if it’s not a documentary. They don’t want to see it; they want to escape it.”

Stewart said audiences are increasingly drawn by escapist films and superhero movies because of the world we’re living in. “If you look at what kind of movies were successful in the 1920s or after the Great Depression, you’ll see that there were also a lot of escapist films.

“I’ve received a lot of scripts about pandemics with doctors, etc., lately and have stored them away; cinema is still about escapism, and there’s no need to see what we’re going through on a big screen,” Stewart added.

Similarly, producer Eric Altmayer said he’s starting to receive more and more scripts where masks are present — and is staying far away from them.

He’s currently developing a project with Yann Gozlan (director of Cesar-nominated “Boite Noire”), which is an adaptation of the book “Les fleurs de l’ombre,” a dystopian tale set in a post-pandemic world where sanitary checks are omnipresent.

That project is something of an exception, he explained, as it’s “driven by the vision of a director who brings some perspective.”

Meanwhile, COVID has been integrated into the plots of several U.S. shows because TV development works much faster than films.

“The real issue, as Steven Soderbergh said, is that going forward, storytellers are really going to decide whether they’ll simply refer to the pandemic or have people walking around with masks because that’s our new normal. How much do you want to make it part of the new normal?” said Buster.


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01 Apr 2022, 6:38 pm

Grey's Anatomy did a whole season of acknowledging the pandemic and pretending that the same thing that happened in the real world happened in the world of Grey's Anatomy, but then they moved on and said that in the Grey's Anatomy universe it got solved and isn't a problem anymore, which makes sense because it would be boring if that's what the whole show was reduced to. Now after every episode they specify that the show is set in a post pandemic world and that you should still follow pandemic rules in the real world.


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09 Apr 2022, 9:19 am

Maybe it's harder to tell a story when you don't know the ending.

Or, if the story you want to tell isn't about the Pandemic you are concerned including masks and other Pandemic artifacts would quickly make your story look outdated.


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10 May 2022, 8:52 pm

Isn't the reason most people watch movies and TV is escapism? How can you escape from the world if the one you're watching is about a terrible infectious disease?

But then again, disaster movies are popular for some strange reason. Perhaps because most humans think, if at all, they they'll somehow survive a disaster even if it ends up killing about 99% of the human race.



ASPartOfMe
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11 May 2022, 11:56 am

The “it’s too soon” idea is relatively recent. The 1940s through 1960s saw a plethora of WWII films watched by people who fought in it. At home they could watch TV series “Combat” and “Rat Patrol”. These were heavily sanitized versions in which the Americans always won about a victorious war. It is the Vietnam War where the too soon effect began to be felt. The pro Vietnam policy film “The Green Berets” starring John Wayne was only film of note about Vietnam to come out during Vietnam. By the end of the 70’s a few years post defeat “Coming Home” and “Apocalypse Now” had come out. Since then a handful of Vietnam War films have come out. That is true of war films in general. It seems 47 years after the fact it is still sort of too soon.

When 9/11 happened films, TV shows, and songs (with the exception of inspirational patriotic ones) that referenced terrorism and Muslims/Arabs were pulled. Within short period of time it was not too soon. “The Sum of All Fears” was out the following year. By 2006 “Fahrenheit 9/11”, “Flight 93” and “World Trade Center” had done well. The 2005 Steven Spielberg film ‘War of the Worlds” had a scene where dust reigned down from a blown up building.
Terrorism remains a staple of TV procedurals and movies.

The pandemic does not fit into the rally around the flag or we lost themes. Not that nothing has been made “Songbird” and “Locked Down” have come out and was mostly ignored. Scripted TV shows had to explain the long time between episodes. For the most part they dedicated their first episode or two to the pandemic and went back to normal. With the exception of the previously mentioned ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ medical shows did that also but with an occasional COVID case thrown in.

Right now as I started a thread about America for the most part has moved mentally beyond COVID. I have no idea when it will not be too soon. The current and predicted for the foreseeable future confusing hybrid of pandemic and endemic does not make for any sort of dramatic plot. Going back to 2020 when it is still kind of going on? Maybe in 20 years Ken Burns will make a mini series “The Pandemic”. Maybe somebody will make a movie about a heroic Long Covid patient takes on heartless doctors.


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