The Pandemic Novelist Has Regrets
Still from La Jetée (1962) Last month, I rewatched Outbreak and Contagion. I was searching for the same scab-picking pleasure as everyone else who vaulted them to the Netflix Top 10. Instead, I caught exasperated despair. When Google only brought up articles on how “strikingly realistic” they are, and I discovered even Barry Jenkins likes Contagion, I added to my bad mood that specific irritation of learning no one on the Internet agrees with you.
All these films offer is solace for a bygone era. Even cineplex blockbusters—that most global and sturdy of comforts— offer no balm for life under COVID-19.
The pandemic blockbuster lives by a code. First, it must open with montages of delighted gore, the bodies of mostly black and East Asian actors riddled with sores, spectacular pustules, cascading mouth foam, rubbed-raw skin. In , there are two white women who get this treatment, but they at least have the decency to die in private homes, unlike a Chinese and a Japanese man who expire inconsiderately (also inexplicably?) in the streets. In , people go
