Viruses, rage, zombies — those wildly popular films and shows about the apocalypse don't give a road map for this real-life crisis.
To be sure, there have been plenty of scenes chilling enough for any pandemic film. Cruise ships filled with sick and well passengers seeking port like the Flying Dutchman; families saying farewell to the dying through hospital windows; governors begging for more ventilators and getting broken ones or none at all; medical staff intubating patient after patient before going home to strip and sleep in basements and garages to avoid infecting their families.
But most Americans are not members of the medical profession or of emergency response teams. Mercifully, and may this remain true forever and ever amen, most of us have not experienced a COVID-19 infection firsthand. At least not yet. The numbers are boggling, the maps on which the infection blooms globally are horrifying, the firsthand accounts being shared on all media platforms are terrifying but the streets, though silent and eerie, are not filled with zombies or people felled on the spot.
All those fast-moving, survival-skill-celebrating “what if” world-ending films and series we loved to deconstruct as metaphorically insightful or even prescient now seem, at best, superfluous. Which may explain why, despite all those “best films about pandemic” lists that were blithely posted in early days,Real horror, as any horror fan knows, is uncertainty.
Turns out the most relevant metaphor for apocalypse isn’t a zombie staggering around, or a rage monster rising from the dark or an identifiable cloud of death creeping across the planet. It’s the quiet vacuum filled by Zoom meetings and far too much time on social media as we wait to see how bad things are going to get — watching through sleepless hours as the degrees of separation between our families and COVID-19 count down.
As our days of confinement pass, the dramatic choices of near-instantaneous epidemic, or undead monsters, and certainly the narrative use of comas, begin to make perfect sense. Pandemic movies are, at heart, action flicks — things need to move fast. But for those of us fortunate enough to remain, thus far, at least several degrees removed from infection, life has instead slowed down to an increasingly interior balancing act of worry, vigilance, uncertainty and yes, boredom.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Column: The DOJ just made it too easy to link coronavirus to terrorismWe should confine terrorism crimes to offenses involving violence and intimidation against a large body of civilians in pursuit of political aims.
Read more »
Column: You can thank the coronavirus for a plunge in robocallsThe number of robocalls plummeted last month as call centers closed for coronavirus lockdowns and social distancing. 'With everything else going on, a few hundred million fewer robocalls helps a little,' writes columnist DavidLaz.
Read more »
Column: Amid an epidemic, Trump is still making decisions that could kill peoplePresident Trump's decisions not to reopen Obamacare plans and to roll back auto emissions rules are deadly.
Read more »
8 Of The Hottest Celebs Without Their FleshEven Hollywood’s most fit and fabulous stars opt to go without skin every once in a while! Case in point: Beyoncé and Jay Z, fresh-faced and fleshless in Brooklyn.
Read more »
Pete Buttigieg Says Governors Showing More Leadership Than TrumpPete Buttigieg says governors and mayors are showing leadership in pandemic, unlike Donald Trump.
Read more »
Fed's dilemma: Picking winners for $4 trillion in creditFed's dilemma: Prioritizing which market, set of companies or group of institutions to help next as it plans how to leverage more than $450 billion of seed money from the Treasury into perhaps $4.5 trillion in credit programs by hpschneider
Read more »