From "Contagion" to Covid: How Hollywood Turns Viral Fear into Viral Profits

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Title	From "Contagion" to Covid
Subtitle	How Hollywood Turns Viral Fear into Viral Profits
Contributor	Dahlia Schweitzer(author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.53288/0448.1.04
Landing page	https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-pandemic-visual-regime-visuality-and-performativity-in-the-covid-19-crisis/
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Copyright	Dahlia Schweitzer
Publisher	punctum books
Published on	2023-11-09
Long abstract	Proliferating for the last twenty-five years, outbreak narratives have now reached epidemic proportions. From 28 Days Later to The Walking Dead, Outbreak to Contagion, films and television shows are filled with zombie viruses, bioengineered plagues, and disease-ravaged survivors. Not only have outbreak narratives infected public discourse and affected the way we view the world, but they have, especially right now, impacted global responses to COVID-19. The way infectious viruses are appropriated by Hollywood provides insight into the viruses themselves and the world we live in. After all, few things reflect social trends and anxieties like film and television. Alarmingly, outbreak narratives are even used as “how-to manuals” of sorts. For instance, as COVID-19 took hold, journalist Mike Stuchbery tweeted that crisis response teams were reading World War Z by Max Brooks (a fictional account of a zombie plague) as a study in the effects of epidemics. My chapter examines film and television outbreak narratives, studying how the repetition of characters, images, and story lines has produced a formulaic narrative that reflects and shapes new paradigms of disease and fear, connecting those to real-life events that have unfolded worldwide over the course of 2020.
Page range	pp. 63–89
Print length	27 pages
Language	English (Original)
Keywords	COVID-19 outbreak narrative zombies viruses film television

Contributors

Dahlia Schweitzer

(author)

associate professor and chair of the Film and Media Department at Fashion Institute of Technology

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3874-5898

Dahlia Schweitzer is an associate professor and chair of the Film and Media Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Her latest book, Haunted Homes (Rutgers up, 2021), explores the ways haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse. Her previous books include L.A. Private Eyes (Rutgers up, 2019), Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World (Rutgers up, 2018), and Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster (Intellect, 2014). Dahlia has published articles in various academic journals, including Cinema Journal, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Jump Cut, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and Journal of Popular Culture.