When reality overcomes fiction: Why do people enjoy watching virus movies in the middle of a pandemic?

«The medium is the message», said Canadian philosopher and theorist Marshall McLuhan, to summarize that «the way we acquire information affects us more than the information itself». This concept is 100% applicable to cinema and its enormous advertising and propaganda machinery, and it allows us to explain how, in the midst of a global pandemic, people enjoy and yearn to watch movies about viruses, epidemics and biological catastrophes.

In the midst of collective isolation, the American films «Contagio» (2011), «Outbreak» (1995) and the South Korean «Virus» (2013) have become three of the most watched films on the different audiovisual platforms that offer home cinema . What motivates this social reaction? Perhaps the fact that many filmmakers tend to view panic as an inevitable social response and take advantage of it. Alfred Hitchcock explained it best, at the time, in this interview:

At present, when COVID-19 stalks humanity, «Society’s psychological weakness is playing a fundamental role, and finding itself pressured by a situation that causes anxiety and stress, it tends to seek more information about the cause of its emotional instability», explained Galvarino Riveros, a sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela, in an exclusive interview.

“The scenarios that we live, always need a preparation of the collective imagination. Cinema and the media serve, and have served, so that when changes and transformations occur, society naturalizes the process. In other words, the cinema prepares our minds to accept what the governments, corporations and religious leaders that run the industry want to implement”, said Riveros.

To this, we can add the words of the neuroscientist Mariano Sigman, who in an interview with El País stressed that “cinema is like an emotional vaccine, you expose yourself to fear or other emotions in small attenuated doses to gain resilience. It is like a sentimental training in low doses (…) You expose yourself voluntarily and imagine the worst scenarios like nightmares, which are a simulation in which you prepare yourself cognitively for adversity”.

The pandemic cinema

The last major pandemic was the Hong Kong flu (1968-1970), with more than a million deaths. Considering that the continent with the highest average age is Europe, with 42 years (according to a study by Visual Capitalist), it is not daring to say that a large part of the world population does not know how to live in quarantine. So, they decide to go to the cinema, an art that incorporates realities, fantasies, dreams and ideas that circulate in society and transforms them into an audiovisual narrative.

This is how films about viruses, in the midst of conscious ignorance, serve as an «experience», a «life lesson» or a kind of «emotional catharsis» to laugh, cry, shout and even applaud fictional characters that the viewer feels close, although he «lived» with them or «knows» them for just an hour.

In an exclusive interview, William Castillo, journalist and expert in political communication, pointed out the following: “Why do people watch so many action and war movies? Because for decades we have lived in a society at war. Cinema reacts as a cultural industry to social phenomena and people react by consuming those products that end up being part of the imaginary and reality of the peoples”.

“It is logical that in the face of a situation of a sanitary and health tragedy and such an aggressive and surprising pandemic, which generates many collective fears, people look for cinematographic references, that either help them understand what is happening or that projects their own fears and uncertainties”, explained Castillo.

«I do not think it is people’s morbid interest to see themselves reflected in their tragedy, I believe rather that there is great uncertainty and misinformation, a great need to know», said Castillo.

Marycleen Stelling, a sociologist and university professor, agrees and affirms that in times of uncertainty, of fear for the present and the future, people seek information, even if it is cinematographic.

“The new normal recreated in the cinema becomes a kind of reference to the unknown. Others will say that it is out of morbid interest that people go to such movies. I do not think so. Rather, it is a way to, from an uncertain present, glimpse into a cinematographic future ”, she asserted in an exclusive interview.

Fiction or reality?

The detail, or perhaps the problem, is in how many fictional elements are involved in the plot of the film, how much of what we see and hear on screen is truly adaptable to reality. Do the reactions of the protagonists, of the governments and even of the viruses themselves adjust to the real world? And here the «politically correct» issue comes into play, so as to decide who acts well or badly in the face of the emergency.

In this regard, José Egido, doctor in sociology at the University of Marseille, in an exclusive interview, recalled that “by definition cinema is a recreation of reality that, depending on the objective of the film, can be brought closer to or away from that reality that it proposes”.

“We have a propaganda cinema that seeks to present, in the best way, a group of determined actors (or characters); an educational cinema that seeks to raise awareness of what is pedagogically legitimate and necessary; and an entertainment cinema whose business is to make money, and the latter is not interested in reality», he said.

So the entertainment industry takes advantage of these kinds of situations, and it has two strategies to do so. The first is by producing films about the event in question, as in 2011 when they filmed Contagio, just two years after the health crisis caused by the spread of the H1N1 flu.

“But they don’t only make fiction films, they also make documentaries. An example is the series ‘Pandemic’, which addresses the alleged search for a vaccine and is financed by Bill Gates. When one sees the series, apart from some scientific arguments, it seems like an advertising campaign by Bill Gates to make people believe that he will be the savior of humanity because he will find a vaccine», said William Castillo.

The second strategy is rescuing old productions, such as Contagio, Outbreak or Virus itself, and this is where digital platforms gain relevance, because they place these films among their main recommendations to take advantage of society’s avid search for information.

Galvarino Riveros described it like this: “Spaces like Netflix determine what to read, what information to look for and even what movie the world should see. This generates a social conditioning that limits people, because another person or ‘company’ builds a particular framework of reality for them, ‘forces’ them to see what is ‘in fashion’, and establishes an action that they must imitate or repeat ”in order not to be a victim of a certain type of supine ignorance».

Myths and facts about these films

An investigation published in December 2019 on the website of the United States Centers for Disease Control warned of the deceptive influence that these films can have on the response of society. «The cinema makes us believe that in these crises people have an immoral and selfish reaction, and that governments respond with brutal, unjust and violent measures», even if this is not the case.

In the movies, nations with communist or leftist governments are portrayed as the villains and even use arguments to turn their assertion into a scientific fact, while the great neoliberal systems are the only ones prepared to sacrifice themselves and save humanity.

From fiction to reality, William Castillo explained that with COVID-19 it has become clear that there is no response from the market or from private and neoliberal systems to eradicate the pandemic, a common approach in films such as ‘Contagio’.

“Today the whole world is clamoring for State intervention, for strengthening public health systems and for social quarantine measures. It has been proven that it is the appropriate response to stop the chain of contagion, because China, Vietnam, Southeast Asian countries and even Venezuela and Cuba have achieved this”, he stressed.

On the other hand, in the face of COVID-19, the accustomed cinematographic heroes have chosen to defend the economy and freedom of mobility over social welfare, to the point of turning a ‘deaf ear’ to the warnings of the World Health Organization. The United States, Brazil, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom are the best examples.

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, despite being of anti-communist origin, expressed in his most recent book entitled «Pandemic», that the current situation has become an opportunity to install a new social system to replace the «New World Order liberal- capitalist «, and that it is a kind of reformulation of «communism», in which confidence in the State itself prevails.

Quoted by El Diario, Žižek explained that «globalization, the capitalist market and the transience of the rich» would now be favorable concepts for the spread of the virus, which is why he proposes to take advantage of panic to improve world organization, and mentioned as an example : «Israel cooperates and helps Palestine in the crisis, not out of kindness, but because the pandemic does not distinguish Jews from Palestinians».

In this sense, William Castillo concluded with a reflection: “Žižek simply refers to the need to live in a more solidary society, which looks back at the public health and social control systems in the face of tragedies, returns to the collective and forget that private systems will answer for us. It is simply a new way of defending life«.

Along these lines, Marycleen Stelling argued that “the world, as we know it, has disappeared.It is time to find, after the times of anger, new ways of living and living together, of working, of leisure, of loving, of ways to do politics and to rethink the economy».

But, unfortunately, that ending that Slavoj Žižek proposes will never be shown in a movie, or at least in one that has a worldwide reach and that is distributed on the same platforms that today offer ‘Contagio’, ‘Outbreak’ and ‘Virus’.

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