The New Cringeworthy

When Darnell Mitchell recently watched Die Hard, the classic 1988 action film starring Bruce Willis, he couldn’t stop grimacing at his television screen, but not at the violent scenes you might expect. Mitchell had seen the movie before, several years ago, but this time felt different. The characters’ actions seemed, somehow, cringier.

“I was like, Why am I reacting this way? What’s happening?” Mitchell recounted to me recently. “And then I realized: Oh, I’m actually reacting to each time they touch their face.”

Mitchell, a stylist, lives in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Like many Americans sequestered. “I was like, ” Mitchell said. “Now almost every single TV show or movie makes me slightly uncomfortable when I watch it, because the entire time, I’m thinking about it.”