Vampires were once cinema’s primary figure to explore contagion anxieties,often in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic,but they tend to be selective about whom they infect. Since 9/11,they have largely been supplanted by indiscriminately biting zombies,described by one critic as ‘‘vampires with lobotomies’’.
US sociologists Robert Wonser and David Boyns see the zombie phenomenon as an expression of cultural anxieties about loss of autonomy and threats to individualism. Princeton University’s Merle Eisenberg recently noted that both plague studies and zombie films have grown exponentially since the anthrax envelope attacks of 2001,the completion of the Human Genome Project (2003) and the continuing evidence of catastrophic climate change.
Tufts University international politics professor Daniel Drezner wrote in the journalSocial Research (2014) that a mob of ‘‘reanimated,ravenous corpses’’ is as inexorable a force as climate change. ‘‘Zombies are the perfect avatar for the 21st century threat environment.’’
Drezner argues that in America,cinema’s zombies have been co-opted by the CDC,FEMA,gun lobbyists and survivalists to bolster perceptions of impending societal breakdown. Yet he remains upbeat about the zombie narrative as a force for positive change.
‘‘Narratives about flesh-eating ghouls will always be scary,but they can also remind audiences that humans have an enormous capacity to adapt to new threats and overcome them,’’ he writes.
Certainly there have been some unexpected takes on zombie contagion inThe Dead Don’t Die (2019),Cargo (2017),The Cured (2017) andRavenous (2017),but the zombie trope isn’t the only type of pandemic allegory. There have been some extraordinarily creative explorations of contagion themes,including the strange mutations of an unknown organism infecting the minds and bodies of an exploration team inAnnihilation (2018);language as a virus in the weirdPontypool (2008);a time travel pandemic twist in12 Monkeys (1995);alien infection (The Thing,1982,Invasion of the Body Snatchers,1978/1956);technological infection (Tetsuo,1989),and the effects of inexplicable viruses affecting fertility (Children of Men) and vision (Blindness,2008).
Even Quentin Tarantino owes a debt to this genre,citing John Carpenter’sThe Thing (1982) as an influence onThe Hateful Eight (2015). Both films (The Thing was made at the height of Cold War tensions) feature people ruinously infected by suspicion while claustrophobically trapped in a snowbound setting.
‘‘The paranoia amongst the characters[in The Thing] was so strong,trapped in that enclosure for so long,that it just bounced off all the walls until it had nowhere to go but out into the audience,” Tarantino said whenThe Hateful Eight was released. And out into the audience it still goes,like a replicating virus:the contagion of fear,with undercurrents about the spread of dangerous ideas,and how to deal with an invisible threat from within.
Angela Ndalianis,research professor in media and entertainment at Swinburne University of Technology,has long followed the pandemic genre and sees it as one of contemporary culture’s primary allegorical tools for exploring human nature. It offers a reference point in the current COVID-19 crisis.
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‘‘What fascinates me the most in this genre is how the infection becomes a way of trying to examine what would humans do in this scenario,’’ she says. ‘‘What is human nature about? A lot of these films examine both the best of humans and the worst-case scenarios ... The genre is there to teach us lessons about ourselves.’’
Cinema allows audiences to play through a scenario such as contagion in a way that is both familiar and realistic,but also distant enough to not send them into panic.
One of Ndalianis’ favourite scenes comes fromWorld War Z:infection is shown spreading through crowds in a matter of seconds,visualising what is invisible to us (a virus passed via breath,touch or bodily fluids).
Coincidentally,Ndalianis arrived in Italy for a research trip just before COVID-19 took hold. By the time she left,the day before the borders closed,many thousands were infected. Back home with a cold (not COVID-19,it turned out),she had to go to a hospital to be tested.
‘‘I swear it was like one of these films,’’ she says. ‘‘I was walking down this dark empty corridor and these double doors opened and everyone was wearing the protective gear. It was like Rick Grimes in the hospital scene at the start ofThe Walking Dead.’’
It may have felt like the end of the world,yet it’s comforting to acknowledge that apocalypse doesn’t strictly mean the end of everything:the word borrows from the Greek apokalypsis,which is more about revelation and discovery than outright cataclysm. Through our apocalypse narratives in film and TV,whether by virus or zombie,revelation is the point – about human nature,at any rate.