Contagion and Viral Propagation

What is Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) about if not fear?

The plot runs like any pandemic/virus/zombie movie: the first case, the spread, the quarantine, the panic, the destruction, the desperation of trying to survive. But somewhere in the middle of the film Soderbergh subjugates the suspense of trying to develop antibodies and vaccines underneath a more troubling examination of the contagion of fear in crises. Which is making me meditate on how contagion, as a figurative term, works with regards to information spread.

In comparison, Outbreak (1995) is emotionally arresting because it tells the story of a small core of characters who risk their lives against an airborne e-bola type virus. 28 Days Later (2002) investigates military corruption by making zombie-ism germ-like. I Am Legend (2007) takes the post-apocalyptic approach and features one man against the monsters. Blindness (2008) looks at human evil in the face of a pandemic of blindness. All of these films concentrate on coloring in the shades of good and evil when human infrastructure falls apart in the face of mass sickness and death. They all have a sense of inherent pathos to them in that they hint that the good of the few perhaps cannot outweigh the evil of the panicking masses.

Contagion does this too, and also goes further. After a while, the virus's deadliness doesn't even seem to be what's perpetuating the panic anymore - it's our mass communication outlets, individualism within globalization, and sense of entitlement towards resources and treatment. For example, Jude Law's Alan Krumwiede is an insurgent blogger hell-bent on exposing favoritism in the CDC, but his exclamations are more evidence of the questions of valid information distribution than any governmental or organizational conspiracy. Likewise, Laurence Fishburne's Dr. Ellis Cheever tells his fiancée to leave Chicago before the quarantine announcement goes public, which is evidence that in the end, we'll might choose our few individual loved ones over helping strangers.

Contagion makes me think about the spread of information. In the last short story in A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan, a music promoter in a future-set New York uses paid "parrots" to hype a live concert. The marketers behind these promotions used to have to study epidemiology in order to learn about things "going viral," but that information model has become outdated: "'No one says "viral" anymore,' Lulu said. 'I mean, maybe thoughtlessly, the way we still say "connect" or "transmit" - those old mechanical metaphors that have nothing to do with how information spreads. See, reach isn't describable in terms of cause and effect anymore; it's simultaneous.'"

If Egan's prediction comes true, and I am inclined to think that she's on track, we are headed for a system of spreading information that mirrors contagion, even going beyond viral spreading. Blogs link to blogs, Facebook and Twitter share everything, newspapers go under, social media values the instantaneous and the individual over the informative, and we end up spreading information in a frenzy that seems panicked. I think it's already happening now, and I worry that our individualism is egging it on. No, it's not about life and death here, but there's definitely a paradigm of survival going on--we all want relevance, significance, and influence.

I am a Media Voyeur

I spent this past weekend away from media, in a summer house in Birkerød, Denmark with some of my hallmates. Good food, beautiful views and more than enough cultural immersion (some of it exhausting, namely the 48-hour imperative to speak Danish) left me liberated from my media-saturated lifestyle in Copenhagen. But like any addiction, I found myself craving film as soon as I got back yesterday. So I watched Soderbergh's first feature sex, lies, and videotape (1989), which left me as conflicted about film as ever.

There's us, waiting for the bus. 

In the film, Ann is a prudish newlywed, John is her cheating husband, Cynthia is her sister who is sleeping with John, and Graham is John's friend from college who invades and disrupts their lives with his voyeuristic sexual fetish. He calls himself impotent ever since he admitted he is a pathological liar, and his only sexual activity is to record women talking about their sexual activity. When Ann finds out that her husband is cheating with her sister, she decides to make a tape for Graham, which is the fastest way to splitting up their marriage as she can think of. The film is eerie, introspective, and sensitive, and while it's a film whose style normally would affect me positively, I found it made me uncomfortable. 

Not because of the sexual content, but because it made me think seriously about how much media I consume. This is an undercurrent that has been bothering me for a while now, and it, strangely or not strangely enough, came to a head when the film exposed its characters for being voyeurs. Now, the concept of voyeurism in film is not new, nor is it new to me--Hitchcock and Mulvey come to mind--but what's new for me is the realization that perhaps all media is a type of voyeurism, albeit a non-sexual type. Well, maybe I'm not a voyeur but a gleaner of experiences through media that I ought to be having on my own. 

I've written about this vicarious adventuring and loneliness before here, but now I'm starting to worry that I rely on film and television to teach me lessons instead of living them. This comes particularly into my worldview with regards to interpersonal relationships; like the episodic structure of television, I expect resolution at the turn of every new emotion, experience, interaction. This impulse to rely on stories to give structure to my experiences is even more intense when it comes to romance (damn you, romantic comedies!). I remember seeing Garden State in high school and subsequently expecting my romantic connections to be as instantaneous and deep as they were in that film. My friend Kristian who limits his television consumption to "only things that are funny" tells me that I think in very "macro" terms about how men and women are instead of just learning about individuals, and I worry that media representations and generalizations of gender have a lot to do with this.  Media even helps me imagine a future I may or may not have decided for myself yet, but I can't see it any other way than what's portrayed in the stories I consume. 

I think observing Kenneth Burke's idea that "stories are equipment for living" is a totally useful and necessary practice, but the problem for me happens when I use stories as a crutch, or when my self-worth and identity are too formed by external stimuli. This became clear this weekend, when in the midst of a full-blown experience (read: party) I found myself lagging back and not fully engaging, because I felt uncomfortable not being able to be myself in a foreign language and place. So instead of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and trying to embrace the moment, I observed the behavior of others (which was of course amusing). I kept coming back to a certain question, though. When you don't feel like yourself, what's better: leaning into this discomfort to try to make the most of it and eliminate your 'voyeurism,' or listen to your feelings and come to terms with them? This is a question I usually don't have to ask, because media provides the escape. 

So, maybe in order investigate what I really enjoy doing apart from consuming media, I have to stop consuming media!