January 21, 2025 • 46 mins
Everyone’s got a favorite disease movie. What’s yours? Does it feature zombies like 28 Days Later (2002), or is it more grounded in reality, like Contagion (2011)? Does it end with a glimmer of hope or with a dose of despair? Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? From the early days of disease movies like Panic in the Streets (1950) to more recent films like Little Joe (2019), these movies have provided endless entertainment, excitement, and opportunities to examine society itself. In this TPWKY book club episode, Robert Alpert, Dr. Merle Eisenberg, and Dr. Lee Mordechai join us to discuss their book Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics, and Zombies in American Movies. Diseased Cinema approaches the genre of disease-themed movies with the goal of understanding what these movies say about our hopes, our fears, our anxieties, and how these perspectives have shifted over the decades. When did faith in our government’s problem solving give way to rugged self-reliance? Why did people start to view science as the bad guy rather than the source of salvation? Tune in for a fascinating discussion that will stay on your mind long after your next movie night. And also check out Merle and Lee’s excellent podcast Infectious Historians!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this podcast will
Kill You. If it's your first time tuning into one
of these t p w k Y book Club episodes, welcome,
happy to have you here, and if it's not, welcome back,
thanks for being a listener. We've been on on quite
a journey this season with this book club, and sadly
that journey is almost over, with just one more book
(01:07):
Club episode planned for this season. But before we get
into the topic of the day, I've got to go
through the usual business of telling you where you can
find the list of all of the books featured in
this and last season's book club, which is on our
website this Podcast will Kill You dot com. Under the
extras tab, you'll find a link to our bookshop dot
org affiliate page, which has a link to all of
(01:28):
the TPWKY book Club books, as well as lists four
other books featured on the podcast. So many books about
disease and medicine and history to fill your shelves, But
maybe reading really isn't your thing, or maybe it is,
but you just want to break from the page and
you find yourself drawn to the world of disease movies,
(01:49):
where instead of reading about epidemics or outbreaks. You can
watch them play out on the big screen. A confused
Killian Murphy waking up in an empty London hospital in
twenty eight days later, a horrified Kate Winslet realizing she's
infected with the deadly virus in Contagion, a desperate Donald
Sutherland fleeing the Pod People, and invasion of the body Snatchers.
(02:12):
These scenes and the feelings they evoke, terror, despair, unease, sprinkled,
perhaps with a tiny bit of hope, they stay with
us long after the credits roll. Movies featuring disease, whether
supernatural like zombie movies or more realistic like Contagion, have
long been a part of cinema, but over the decades,
(02:32):
trends in the plot trajectories, the tropes, the portrayal of
heroes and villains, and the final resolution in these movies
have evolved to reflect changing societal preoccupations. How can we
use disease movies as a lens through which to view
American society? Who do we value as heroes and who
(02:52):
do we perceive as a villain? Does science solve the
problem or does it stand in the way of progress?
And what is does that mean in light of the
COVID pandemic. Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai, authors
of Diseased cinema, plagues, pandemics and zombies, and American Movies,
join me in today's book Club episode to discuss the
(03:14):
answers to these questions and many more. Robert Alpert is
an intellectual property lawyer turned film professor. He has taught
at the City University of New York and Fordham University,
also in New York City, and his courses and writings
center on cultural myths, AI and digital media. Doctor Lee
Mordecai is an environmental historian and a Byzantine historian, and
(03:36):
his work centers on historical environmental disasters as well as diseases.
Lee teaches history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and
is currently on a fellowship at Princeton University. Doctor Merle
Eisenberg is a late Ancient and early medieval historian and
also works on historical diseases and pandemics. Merle is an
assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and just completed a
(03:59):
fellowship in Oslo, Norway, conducting research at a pandemic center
to better understand the history of pandemics in diseased cinema.
Robert Lee and Merle survey how the narrative landscape of
disease movies has changed over the course of the twentieth
century and into the twenty first, exploring how a rise
in individualism and a drop in trust of science and
(04:20):
governmental institutions has shifted the focus of these movies. I'm
guessing that most, if not all TPWKY listeners have a
favorite disease themed movie. What makes it your favorite? Who
saves the day? Or is there even a day to
be saved? Personally and probably predictably, I like the movies
(04:40):
with kind of a happy ending, especially when science saves
the day. But what seems to dominate these days is
an apocalyptic or post apocalyptic storyline where humanity is too
far gone to be saved and the only course forward
is to start fresh. What does that say about our
modern society and whether it use the glass as half
(05:01):
full or half empty? This book was such a fun
and eye opening read, and I guarantee that this episode
will be on your mind when you pick out your
next disease themed movie to watch or rewatch. We've got
a lot of cinematic ground to cover in this interview,
So let's go ahead and get started. Lee, Merle, Robert,
(05:45):
thank you all so much for joining me today. I
am a thrilled to chat disease movies with you.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Thanks so much for having us here.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, thanks so much for having us on.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Diseased Cinema was such a fascinating and eye open read,
and I was blown away by how much the prevailing themes, character, stereotypes,
and even plot lines follow these larger trends reflective of
societal concerns over the past few decades. To start us off,
can you give me the big picture view of how
films about disease have changed over the period that your
(06:18):
book covers.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Our were argument, which is not I think a unique
argument or novel in any way, is that these movies
reflect the current culture of the time, Right, so the
politics and other aspects of the time in which they
were made, and within this context, the same films also
can also help change existing culture, so you can't really
(06:43):
separate both of these. This becomes clearest if you try
to watch one of these movies that was made in
a different context. Right, So if we would go and
watch a movie from the fifties, for example, it would
seem very foreign, right, because part of the things and
the discourse or the tropes that we would see in
(07:04):
those films are speaking really to audiences in the fifties,
and if we try to watch that seventy five years later,
it would seem a bit discordant. Let's say, what we
found in our research for the book is that films
really change over time. So early on films, let's say,
from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen eighties, it tend
(07:24):
to focus on some heroic government affiliated doctor who tends
to sacrifice his personal often financial well being, essentially to
protect the state, his community, and otherwise anonymous people. Modern
audiences and students really would probably find that these films
(07:46):
again are a bit strange. Right, These are not the
kind of stories that we tell these days about pandemics, right,
We're used to other stories. If we move forward to
the nineteen nineties, so we see transitional period in which
we still have doctors, but at this point in time,
these eroic doctors tend to look out for their immediate
(08:06):
family or perhaps are rewarded for their work.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And if we move to.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
The time that most of us probably know best, right,
twenty first century movies. Essentially, there are many other changes, right,
So this move from people in the film containing a
disease to films depicting a deadly global pandemic either happening
or has happened when the film takes place in more
(08:33):
recent films pre COVID, and we can maybe talk a
little bit more about that, we see this uncontrollable apocalyptic pandemic.
So that's like the main argument I think of the book.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
The early films as you watch them are the characters
are as long as you're American, and they that is
defined in a very narrow kind of way. As long
as you're American, everything seems like really very satisfactory and peaceful,
and knife you have, as Li said, doctors who are
solving problems. The movies are about curing. The idea of
(09:08):
uncontained disease is just completely alien. But again it's subject
to your being part of what's defined as American. If
you're foreign, and that's a whole other subject. If you're foreign,
of course, well then you are the cause of the disease, obviously,
And the transition is slowly over decades and as again
(09:29):
they point out, in the nineties especially, it begins to change.
While there is not that kind of sense of public
good which has it was in the earlier films, there
is a sense, even if it's nostalgic, that people can
actually still contain disease, and then it eventually goes to
the point where there is no public good and everybody
(09:50):
is sort of the same. Everyone's like, everybody has an
equal seems to have an equal stake, and it's treated
the same. But the consequence seems to be in the
opposite direction in terms of ability to solve problems. This
complete chaos because everybody is ultimately is really ultimately on
their own. So it's a slow deterioration process of the
(10:14):
American culture.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I want to kind of touch on some of those
aspects in a bit, But first, what counts as diseased
cinema and what doesn't?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
How did you go about choosing which movies to include
in this book?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, this is merl That's a great question and one
we spent a long time discussing, debating, dithering about. And
there's lots of movies that I think could fit. But
one thing we were particularly keen on was to treat
film as we all think, as a form of literature
and as a form of art, and so that was
one keen aspect. We wanted movies that expressed a viewpoint.
(10:53):
We decided that we had to kind of make two decisions.
One was we focused on American movies, not because their
movies aren't super important. They absolutely are, and we have
some in the movie, but just we had to focus on,
you know, some subset in American culture, certainly in the nineties.
Onward drives a lot of other international themes, and so
we came up with a list of about one hundred
(11:13):
major disease movies, and we watched many of them, many
of them I wish I could have my time back,
but so be it. And we selected films we thought
were historically important, those we found cohesive right that we
can actually write about, and those that best represent their
time period as well. That Lee and Robert laid out.
(11:35):
The other thing I should say as well, we also
did choose some movies that we personally did not like
or we found incoherent. And this was probably the hardest
chapters to write, or the hardest sections, because writing about
a movie that most or all of you really don't
like is just really hard to do.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Well, what movies are you referring to?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Those would mainly be, and I'm sure they'll come up
in a little bit, the the.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Famous Resident Evil movies. How can you forget that? I mean,
after long hours of arguments about this, movies.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
So terrible that you just want to erase your memory
of them?
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Right, I think Merle has repressed it, as have I
the worst chapter to write.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Okay, well that makes my next question at least a
little bit easier. So I have some like rapid Fire questions,
because the whole time I was reading, I was thinking, Okay,
what is everyone's favorite movie? What is everyone's least favorite?
Sounds like Resident Evil? But if we could, just, like
Rapid Fire, a few of these. So first, what was
each of your favorite movies featured in this book? And
(12:40):
what do you love about it?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Let me put it this way. It's a little hard.
I can't just give you a bullet point because it depends. Sorry,
it depends on how you mean.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Favorite.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Like, my favorite in terms was just to the pleasure
of just watching as an action movie was World War Z.
It has so much action, it's wonderful. My favorite in
terms of like intellectually in a way, was Little Joe
the Last of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because
I think it's the most in your face movie in
terms of really saying where we are as an American
(13:13):
or global culture. But the best movie in terms of
what I think was the most interesting and not so
down frankly was A Night of Living Dead, simply because
of its style and its ability to document what was
going on in America at the time.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So Lee here, I would probably go with Children of Men.
It seems to me to be the most present film
that stays relevant some twenty years after it was made.
Is so very well done. That's my favorite, and.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Probably for me it is actually thought long and hard
about this As the other two people were going, it's
probably Shivers, which is a very campy horror movie by
David Cronenberg, who I think just came out with a
new movie that just showed it con recently, mostly because
it's just a funny movie in the guise of a
horror movie, and I hadn't seen it before, and so
(14:07):
it was something different and versus some of these other
ones I had actually watched before.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Answers all across the board. I love it all right,
So I feel like the least favorite was probably universally
the Resident Evil series.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Without question, although Lee may be a discenter on this.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I mean, yeah, I'll dissent here. I mean, for me,
I would give probably two. I mean Resident Evil. We
can talk about this and kind of revisit some of
our heated debates, let's say a few years ago. But
the least favorite movies that I had so were The Invasion,
which is like a two thousand and seven another remake
(14:44):
of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
It was just like a.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Bad movie and also Roberts's favorite movie, so one of
his favorite movies, right, so Little Joe. I mean, I
had major issues with it, especially because it was very
slow and I never actually connected to that.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I'll just add in that The Invasion is probably on
my list aside from the Resident Evil movies, because it's
a very Hollywood movie that's very in your face but
also extremely I would say regressive in its themes, and
it also has some deeply troubling scenes actually which I'm
surprised no one picked up visa VI COVID where the
CDC or the Bad Guys and they're the ones actually
(15:23):
spreading the disease in the movie. And I didn't actually
see an illusions during COVID to this, but maybe it
was just such a bad movie that no one wanted
to rewatch it.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've
(15:53):
been chatting with Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai
about their book Diseased Cinema, Pandemics and Zombies and American Movies.
Let's get back into things. What do you think makes
people want to watch diseased themed movies? I mean, and
maybe this question could be answered separately before and after
(16:13):
COVID or before and during COVID, But in general, is
it an escape from reality? Is it a search for optimism?
Is it validating fears, providing a survival handbook?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
What are some of the reasons that people are drawn
to these movies?
Speaker 5 (16:30):
My have a theory, which is that it's sort of
the flip side of why I think audiences are also
drawn to sci fi movies. I think we're going through
a very troublesome time for a variety of reasons that
we touch on in our book. I mean, yes, it's escapism,
and people like the blood and the zombies and all
(16:51):
the rest, but I think it's it's a kind of
way for them in the audience to address their unease
with their physical being and the physical world that they're
in that sort of makes each of us feel like
we have no value in the world anymore. And I
also think it's part of sort of a compliment to
(17:12):
all the the AI movies that are very popular as well,
which are all about the mind. And this is these
are movies about the body, and there's a there's a
kind of struggle I think we're going through about our
minds and our bodies, and these movies are really about,
you know, a feeling of not belonging, not having a presence,
and literally a physical rat So it's an escapism, but
(17:36):
I think it appeals to almost a dark, despairing sense
of what's going on in the.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Global climate that we have today.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
The very question of why are these movies so popular?
I mean that was essentially topic for discussion at the
beginning of COVID, right so early on during COVID, we're
talking like January to let's say April, maybe May twenty twenty.
Many of these movies exploded in popularity, right, So movies
such as Contagent for example, ended up in like I
(18:04):
think second place on iTunes. Outbreak got to maybe like
third place. And these are like old movies at the time, right,
So Outbreak is like twenty five years old, and people
are going back to these movies and watching them. And
there were quite a few commentators who are trying to
make sense of and asking exactly this question, right, So
why are we going back to these movies, especially when
(18:25):
we're we're kind of like seeing something similar outside. And
then our research on this really revealed that there was
no one answer, right, and people just like made up
their own answers or hypotheses. Really do you get answers
such as I wanted to see how COVID is going
to develop, right, so I watched Contagion or in the
(18:46):
UK for example, where twenty eight Days Later was made
again like two decades before COVID, but this was still
it still became a talking point, right, so people would say, oh,
I feel like Jim in twenty eight days Later, Right,
I woke up and I the world seems to have changed, right.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So this was in a.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Sense, a way in which people could communicate around the
disease with other people become optimistic. I mean, some of
them were clearly more optimistic because these movies, some of
them movies, right, they show some kind of happy ending,
where we can debate about whether that is or is
not happy ending, But some people decided to accept it
(19:25):
as such, and others just wanted to see how bad
it could get, right, So, I mean, it's it's kind
of like one of these answers that every person would
kind of like provide their own answer.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
You mentioned that the idea to write this book came
about in twenty nineteen, So how did this book take shape?
And then how did that shape sort of change as
the COVID pandemic evolved.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Lee and I are early medieval storians, and we actually
specialize in a sixth century pandemic called the Justinianic plague,
which is the first plague pandemic, and we'd written a
lot of various historical work on this, but we kept
arriving back at the same question, really, which is why
no matter what we say, because we provided evidence that
(20:10):
we don't have much evidence of this actually being a
huge pandemic, but no matter what we said, everyone would say,
but it's still a big pandemic. And so we asked,
you know, why do these people keep saying this despite
us showing them all the evidence, and you know, there's
not much empirical evidence that's conclusive. So why do we
have this idea that this pandemic or all pandemics. You know,
(20:31):
some have mass death tolls, some don't. And what we
realized was this was much more of a twentieth and
twenty first century question than a sixth century question, and
it was much more about the cultural views of disease
that people when they were writing about the sixth century had. Right, So,
if you were writing and say the nineteen fifties, you
basically thought like a nineteen fifties movie, versus if you
(20:53):
were writing in the nineteen nineties, you were thinking like
a nineteen nineties movie. Naturally, Lee and I were trying
to figure out, well, what changed our culture? And this
is the book that we think answers that question. To
explore it through film, you could ask why did we
do film? Well, we decided that would be the way
in through culture, and we reached out to Robert who
obviously writes and teaches about film, and I should say,
(21:16):
as the reveal in the podcast, although it's not explicitly
in the book, is that Robert's also my father, and
so he was obviously someone with whom I had gone
to movies with at a young age. So that's obviously
why I decided to do movies. And then I brought
Lee on board and we had a lot to say.
It was a lengthy process, and then during COVID we
(21:37):
had most of the book matag From actually done before COVID,
but we used COVID to go through it to rewrite it.
I'm sure we'll talk about the influence of COVID on
the book shortly. But one thing Lee was really great
on early on was tracking, as he just talked about
people watching disease movies, and so that became an obvious
chapter to add to the book.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Do you think that previous disease, ease or pandemic movies
in general set expectations for the COVID pandemic. You mentioned
how people would watch Contagion as like a guidebook to
see what would play out, which would have been horrifying
and in some ways like there were very many similarities too.
But yeah, I want to hear a little bit more
(22:18):
about what that process was like, what it was like
to see this pandemic unfolding and then see the parallels
within the movies that you had just written about.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I think movies did a lot to set our expectations
during COVID, and you know, if you want data, leads
given it to you. In terms of people watching these movies. Personally,
I watched none of these movies, and I was horrified
that anyone want to watch any of these movies. But
that's you know, again, as Least said, everyone has their
own take on these things. But I also think you
saw this during you know, early New York Times op
(22:48):
eds or you know, kind of opinion pieces. People would
go back through and watch these things. There was a
great article about I guess Jared Leto was doing a
silent retreat somewhere in the West during the beginning of COVID,
and he didn't know about lockdown for a week and
then he emerged, and all the articles were like Jared
Leto emerges like the you know, like Jim from twenty
(23:09):
eight days later and he doesn't even know what's happening.
So clearly there's expectations. What's a little. You know, perhaps
not surprising if you watch a movie, is movies have
to play out with the beginning, middle, and end, and
they have to be kind of rational. They have to
have a point that people can follow, and you know,
they might be a little crazy, they might go off
(23:30):
the deep end, but people kind of assumed visa vis
some of these movies. I think that people would follow instructions. Right.
If you think about the end of a movie like Contagion,
everyone happily takes the vaccine as they wait in line
for it, right, And obviously that's not how the vaccines
went in terms of rollout in many countries around the world.
And the other thing I think I would say is
that they really failed to show kind of how boring
(23:54):
pandemics are for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
This isn't to mitigate the horror and the deaths and
the awfulness and the sickness, but by boring here, I mean,
you know, movies show the collapse of the world. Right.
Matt Damon in Contagion, you know, finds a gun and
like protects his daughter in his house, and you don't
get probably the many many scenes of him board sitting
on the couch, you know, trying to read a book
(24:16):
because there's nothing else to do. And so I think
for many people that was their reality, right, that real
life wasn't this good guy's and bad guys kind of thing,
but that most people in the end really just followed
their own values as they already existed, and they look
for outcomes that they wanted. And so I think probably
the best comparison example that I always think about is
(24:37):
there's this scene in Contagion where a congressman like steals
a plane and it leads to one of the characters dying,
and the congressman steals a plane to save his own
life very clearly and you know, looks out for himself.
The only example you get during COVID of that is
a bunch of Republican senators selling stock when they went
into this secret meeting back in February because they heard
things the American public didn't and they sold all their
(24:58):
you know, very stock to make a ton of money.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
So that's the difference, one group just making a ton
of money in the other group at least looking out
for themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
In the movie, let's take another break here, We'll be
back before you know it. Welcome back, everyone, I'm here
(25:25):
chatting with Robert Alpert, Merl Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai about
their book Diseased Cinema. Let's get into some more questions.
You mentioned how good guys and bad guys and how
in the movies there are these clear labels that can
be applied to the heroes and the villains in these movies,
and it was interesting as you discussed how those changed
(25:48):
over time and who became the trusted individuals, you know,
starting out with these doctors affiliated with the government or
with these institutions, to then those being the the bad
guys essentially? Do you feel like that also played any
sort of role in expectations during the COVID pandemic and
setting these guidelines for who to trust and who not
(26:10):
to trust for sure?
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I think that the movie that maybe does the
most of that for me is Contagion, right. So in Contagion,
I think it's like Jude Law, I think is his character, right,
the blogger who has been compared to anyone from Alex
Jones to US President Donald Trump with regards to the
(26:33):
misinformation and essentially the self interest through which he is
portrayed there. But there are maybe more interesting answers to
that question as well, which is to try to reflect
on how if we stay with contagion, how exactly the sea,
how exactly is the CDC portrade?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Right?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
And then you have like different levels within the CDC,
and some are portrayed more positively, others are portrayed more questionably.
Let's say Merle I think mentioned earlier the invasion in
which the CDCRE is actually portrayed as the bad guys.
And we could go further back, right, So an Outbreak,
for example, the military is portrayed as the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So that as well, I.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Think really ties into how we started this discussion, right,
which is the moment in time when Outbreak was made
in the mid nineties, kind of critiquing the military was
seen as something fashionable to do or something positive to do,
which post nine to eleven, I think is much more difficult,
if at all possible, right. And I think one of
(27:40):
the questions is, how does COVID change all this?
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Right?
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I mean, how does COVID, How does the CDC's performance
during COVID, the government's performance during COVID, How are these
going to change in subsequent movies about disease?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Absolutely? I mean what is the future of disease these movies,
What are the sort of trends that you expect to
see given the COVID pandemic, How the government responded, how
the CDC responded, and how people's faith or trust in
these institutions and in science in general has kind of
been shaken even more than it was previously.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I always thought there's a key line, and I actually
wanted it to be kind of the subtitle of our book,
And there's a lie in the movie that I think
really stands for what's going on. And frankly, it's going
to inform I think all the future movies, which is
and I'm just quoting from it, says like you said, baby,
just taking care of everybody that's in my life boat.
(28:39):
And I think that really, to me at least, has
summarized where these movies have gone. And yeah, they'll have
different plots in different narratives, but what they're going to
have in common is, to the extent there's distrust and
so forth, it's because I'm taking care of people in
(29:00):
my life vote and that I don't care about anybody else,
and these movies now reflect that, and they'll take different forms.
I think and the distrust will be about someone else.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
But I think underlying.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
It is a change, and that's the change. I think
our book has reflected from the idea of a common
public good, assuming you're the right kind of American, of course,
to everybody supposedly is equal, and I emphasize supposedly even
though that's clearly not the case, and where everybody is
(29:34):
out to get their own people in their life vote,
and that's probably in real life. Also, what I think
is really the movies reflect and in real life, how
we treat disease and how we view the CDC and
how we work together as a country is informed by that. Unfortunately,
it's funny we haven't used the word capitalism at all
(29:56):
in this whole podcast, yet you can't kind of talk
about these movies without actually using that word, because that
is what you know. These movies are a reflection of
as we talk about. It's from manage capitalism to a
neoliberal form and the effects that that has, And disease
is one aspect. Obviously, that's what we focus on, because
(30:17):
you know, disease is impacting us globally.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I do think interestingly enough, if you recall I think
they faded pretty quickly. There was actually a wave of
disease movies that came out kind of in twenty twenty
twenty twenty one, bleeding into twenty twenty two, and they
all seem to completely flop. What I think is what
is happening overall is to an extent, the same thing
that's happening with academic scholarship as well, which is a
(30:42):
sharp increase that happened initially, and now there's actually a
massive drop off in people doing infectious disease research. Interesting enough,
and grant funding and all the like. So I think
that that there's kind of a moment for infectious disease
research that happened, and I think we shouldn't necessarily expect
maybe disease movies to be as forefront, at least in
(31:04):
the short term. But I do think that movies could
play a role in shaping change narrative. So, if you
want to be more positive than Robert's take on it,
you could say, because movies shape culture, right, if you
give new desires, new ideas to people, that that might
actually help shape change moving forward in terms of people
not just looking after people in their lifeboat.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Today, some of the movies that I think about disease.
Movies that I have enjoyed in the past tend to
have happy endings where there's optimism at the end. But
I do think it's really interesting, like what these different
endings give us in terms of optimism pessimism, What are
the ones that people enjoy or just because I personally
(31:48):
I don't like just feeling pure despair. There's enough of
that like the news. So I have movies for me
are an escape. But I was wondering if you had
any thoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
It's a great question, and I think that maybe I
would say a few things here. One is that several
of these movies try to keep the ending ambiguous by
on purpose, right, So don of the dead, right, So
some some people survive escape rawl like right on that boat,
and then you have the post credit or like during credit,
(32:20):
like brief like footage I think from like a camera
that they found there is something, but you actually do
not see them all die, right, So the camera falls
and then they kind of like run back to the
boat and they may have survived and they may have
not survived, and you don't really know, right, So in
one way, this leaves up the opening for a sequel,
But then you have other kind of ambiguous let's say endings, right,
(32:43):
and I can return to Contagion. On one hand, you
have an appy ending, right, I.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Mean they beat the disease.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
The last scene is essentially them taking the virus and
kind of like putting it in the freezer near sars
and I think it was like a swine flu if
I remember.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Correctly, right, And then what does that actually mean? Right?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
So is that like a happy ending or not really
happy or a bad ending? And you could probably understand
it in both ways, right, So, yes, they defeated the
virus and it kind of like went there, But that,
together with the constant references, especially to swine flu and
to stars throughout the film, kind of implies that this
(33:22):
is not something that's going to go away, right, So, yes,
we defeated this virus, but another virus is going to
come in some number of years, right, So is its
positive or is this negative? And it's it's I would
argue purposely ambiguous just for that reason, for every person
to be able to come up with their own solution,
and people could discuss this film like we're doing right now.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I'll just briefly add in this is where you see
the big contrast with older movies. Right, So something like
Doctor Erlyx's Magic Bullet, which is from nineteen forty. It's
a Jewish scientist find secure for syphilis, tested on people
in problematic ways. But that obviously is not the end
of the world or bad, even though it's deeply problematic medically.
(34:07):
But he dies right as a saint, you know, and
there's this great scene where he has light around him
literally like a halo, right. Or you think of Panic
in the Streets from nineteen fifty, in which you know,
the doctor has a relatively speaking, we would say today,
pretty crappy life. He has no money, you know, his
family life's not the best, but you know he saves
the city and you know everyone kind of praises him
(34:29):
for it. And so you see that direct contrast from
movies from you know, fifty, sixty, seventy or more years ago,
where you have that much more positive message. So I
would say to you, Aaron, if you want to watch
positive movies, you have to watch the older movies rather
than watching you know, the more recent things where even
now sometimes right, you know, I'm thinking of the Planet
of the Apes movies where everyone dies in the Apocalypse
(34:51):
of the Pandemic, and it's just in the end credits
and it's not even shown. It's just like kind of
airplanes moving on a map showing the spreadtive disease. So
we're all going to die, and we're all so worthless
that we can't even show how we die.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
Yeah, let me also suggest you watched the nineteen seventy
eight or Georgia or Mayo don to the Dead, because
at least that's a little more positive. I mean, they
fly off, the two main characters fly off in a
helicopter and the woman's pregnant. Yeah, they're low on fuel,
but you know what, they may not make it to Canada,
but there's a possibility, as opposed to the remake where
they're gone. Okay, I'm sorry, and in contagion, the probabilities
(35:27):
are because you see, as Lee pointed out, you know
this is going to happen again in some other place.
So yeah, I agree with morel watch an old movie
or old movies are much more comforting. Again, as long
as you're the right kind of American. I got to
emphasize that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Right, So I want to Yeah, I want to get
into that if we can sort of this narrow definition
of what an American is in some of these movies.
How do disease seemed movies tend to represent marginalized groups
or what do they tend to leave out in terms
of the impacts of the dems, pandemics, disease on marginalized groups.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
In the early movies, we don't basically see marginalized groups
at all. Right, So to give you the example I
was just talking about Panic in the Streets. Panic in
the Streets is filmed on location in New Orleans, and
there's not a single black person in the movie, right,
So that's effectively impossible in the city of New Orleans,
and it's obviously done on a purpose for various racist reasons.
(36:24):
And also non Western Europeans because are also shown as
the problem in the movie and they're quarantined. So that's
kind of how those early movies effectively are just openly
racist in many ways. And there's other examples we could
talk about. By the time you get to the more
recent movies, it's not as if they discuss race where
they're somehow better on it. They just take characters who
(36:45):
are black or who are from various different backgrounds. For example,
and they kind of turn them into everyone else in
most cases, not in all cases, but so you know,
in something like Dawn of the Dead, it's actually quite
a diverse cast, but none of the people in the
cast do anything with race or talk about racism, or
(37:05):
it's not really prevalent at all, it doesn't have a
role in the film. They're just kind of built in
as other individuals. And in fact, I think if you
look at old scripts of that, they just changed the
race of some of the characters and it didn't seem
to make a difference to the lines they gave or anything.
So that's, you know, kind of tells you what they
were thinking in that movie overall. And what I think
movies failed that perhaps the most in many of these
(37:27):
examples is when it came to COVID. Right, we know
COVID had a higher case fatality rate for anyone who
is basically not a wealthy white person for all intents
and purposes, and you would never know that in any
of the movies.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So in Contagion, you know, the thing the disease does
MeV one is it kills everyone equally without regard to
any socio economic demographic profile. Whatsoever. Right, And I don't
think you would be the expert more than us that
any disease in the history of humankind actually works like.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
That, and everybody gets to shot at getting the vaccine equally,
it's just a lottery, I mean, like really oof.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, just a few minor details left out by these movies.
All right, I've got one last question for you all.
If you were to write a disease movie, what would
it be like? What would the title be? Would it
have a happy ending, would it have a sad ending?
Would it be more on the zombie side of things
or on the more contagion realism side of things. What's
(38:30):
the message that you'd want to get across?
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Right, So, I think my film would probably emphasize the
I mean to continue this discussion, right, would emphasize the
aspect of social justice, to use disease just to show
iniquities in society and try to present an optimistic way
of working together. Right, So, drawing from earlier movies that optimism,
(38:57):
but kind of refracting that through the issues we have
in current day society. So to try to speak to
the present, speak to you again, the inequalities that we've
seen inequalities with regards to who gets sick and who
doesn't get sick, who can just run away and who
cannot run away? Right, so have maybe I mean in
(39:19):
that sense it might look like a contagent type story
with lots of different characters from lots of different backgrounds.
I would definitely make other choices than the ones made
in Contagion. I would show more working class people, for example,
I would show definitely less elites. Broadly speaking, that would
(39:40):
be the kind of story I would try to tell
about how our society interacts with I mean not really
unprecedented but supposedly unprecedented situation, how different institutions struggle, and
how individuals within those institutions struggle. I think that both
of those things I think Contagion did well, and I
(40:01):
would move away from the zombie apocalypse survivor like family
group type walking dead like genre of gratuitous violence, which
I think is less interest I mean, I guess, more popular, right,
but less interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
I have lots of hopes and dreams of what you
could make a movie like that, in the sense of
showing lots of people, like Lee said, But I also
know the struggle of a movie. You have to have
characters and there's only so many people, so showing you know,
structures that have to be an interaction with those human beings.
I mean, I would suggest a movie that focuses more
(40:42):
on to an extent, more mythologizing figures in which we
can have positive things from, you know, so returning to
the more fifties mold of which are somewhat mythical, right
of someone like Jonas Salk obviously of you know, not
patenting the polio vaccine, which is not really true, but
the message it implies and that it shows, and how
(41:04):
that can help change society and how people think about
society very differently. So someone like that focusing on a couple,
again returning to the heroic people figures, but obviously bringing
in some of the things I think Lee pointed out
when it comes to aspects of race and class and
all those types of issues that certainly need to be shown,
but not you know, making it so everyone dies or
(41:25):
were inevitably going to die, or all the government officials
are incompetent, right, because all of that just continues to
degrade the overarching situation and the problems that we face
in America today. And probably Robert will say something about
how it's critiquing capitalism that maybe he has a different
take on us.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
So when I decided if I were to make a
movie about disease, i'd actually what I would want to
do is try to have a drama where people represent
different perspectives on our lives today and what the problems
of our lives are and how we deal with each other.
(42:05):
Because I think ultimately, if we're going to change things,
we have to change it on a very personal and
level at the same time that it will affect a
larger change. So if I were to do a movie,
it would be a you know, a handful maybe a
dozen people, you know, put them in you know, a
house or room. They're affected by a disease. No, they're
(42:27):
not going to be any zombies, I'm sorry. And and
they they have to decide, well, what do they do
about practical things like do they you know, what do
they do about? How do they get food? How do
they how often do they wash? What happens if somebody
hasn't washed, what happens if they disagree amongst themselves about
what the precautions are that they have to take. How
do you how do you reach decisions, and because at
(42:50):
the end of the day, the personal is political. And
so if you want to develop an idea of what
disease is about and what the problems of disease are
that these big movies are are attempting to address, I
think you have to do it at that level. Many people,
I will acknowledge, are going to be bored out of
their minds. I can't help it, I you know. But
(43:13):
for me, a disease movie I want, I would want
to express what I think the problems are and what
diseases represent. And now I'm thinking, is this going to
be a happy or sad end? Maybe it's just enough
if you just in some way can betray it and
(43:33):
you leave open whether it's happy or sad, because in
a way, that's not the point of movies. Movies should
enlighten us. They should move us and help us understand
things in ways that as we go about our daily
lives we don't quite come to grasp. So that's the
kind of movie I would like, you know, a low
(43:54):
budget independent movie that I could actually talk about some
of these issues that all these movies raise.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Robert murl and Lee thank you all so much for
joining me. To chat about your fascinating book. I'll never
watch a disease movie again without thinking of what is
trying to tell me about society. If you also enjoyed
this episode and want to read more, check out our
website this podcast will kill You dot com. Or I'll
post a link to where you can find Disease Cinema
(44:41):
and send us your disease movie recommendations or your favorite
disease movies. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are.
I'll also include a link to Merle and Lee's excellent podcast,
Infectious Historians. Aaron and I were on an episode just
a few months ago, and we had an absolute blast.
Don't forget. You can also check out our website for
all sorts of other cool things, including but not limited to, transcripts,
(45:04):
Quarantini and Placiberrita, recipes, show notes and references for all
of our episodes, links to merch our bookshop dot org,
affiliate account, our Goodreads list, a first hand account form,
and music by Bloodmobile. Speaking of which, thank you to
Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all
of our episodes. Thank you to Leana Scuilacci and Tom
(45:25):
Bryfogel for our audio mixing, and thanks to you listeners
for listening. I hope that you liked this bonus episode
and our loving being part of the TPWKY book Club.
A special thank you, as always to our fantastic patrons.
We truly appreciate your support. Well until next time, Keep
washing those hands, U,
Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh and this is this podcast will
Kill You. If it's your first time tuning into one
of these t p w k Y book Club episodes, welcome,
happy to have you here, and if it's not, welcome back,
thanks for being a listener. We've been on on quite
a journey this season with this book club, and sadly
that journey is almost over, with just one more book
(01:07):
Club episode planned for this season. But before we get
into the topic of the day, I've got to go
through the usual business of telling you where you can
find the list of all of the books featured in
this and last season's book club, which is on our
website this Podcast will Kill You dot com. Under the
extras tab, you'll find a link to our bookshop dot
org affiliate page, which has a link to all of
(01:28):
the TPWKY book Club books, as well as lists four
other books featured on the podcast. So many books about
disease and medicine and history to fill your shelves, But
maybe reading really isn't your thing, or maybe it is,
but you just want to break from the page and
you find yourself drawn to the world of disease movies,
(01:49):
where instead of reading about epidemics or outbreaks. You can
watch them play out on the big screen. A confused
Killian Murphy waking up in an empty London hospital in
twenty eight days later, a horrified Kate Winslet realizing she's
infected with the deadly virus in Contagion, a desperate Donald
Sutherland fleeing the Pod People, and invasion of the body Snatchers.
(02:12):
These scenes and the feelings they evoke, terror, despair, unease, sprinkled,
perhaps with a tiny bit of hope, they stay with
us long after the credits roll. Movies featuring disease, whether
supernatural like zombie movies or more realistic like Contagion, have
long been a part of cinema, but over the decades,
(02:32):
trends in the plot trajectories, the tropes, the portrayal of
heroes and villains, and the final resolution in these movies
have evolved to reflect changing societal preoccupations. How can we
use disease movies as a lens through which to view
American society? Who do we value as heroes and who
(02:52):
do we perceive as a villain? Does science solve the
problem or does it stand in the way of progress?
And what is does that mean in light of the
COVID pandemic. Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai, authors
of Diseased cinema, plagues, pandemics and zombies, and American Movies,
join me in today's book Club episode to discuss the
(03:14):
answers to these questions and many more. Robert Alpert is
an intellectual property lawyer turned film professor. He has taught
at the City University of New York and Fordham University,
also in New York City, and his courses and writings
center on cultural myths, AI and digital media. Doctor Lee
Mordecai is an environmental historian and a Byzantine historian, and
(03:36):
his work centers on historical environmental disasters as well as diseases.
Lee teaches history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and
is currently on a fellowship at Princeton University. Doctor Merle
Eisenberg is a late Ancient and early medieval historian and
also works on historical diseases and pandemics. Merle is an
assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and just completed a
(03:59):
fellowship in Oslo, Norway, conducting research at a pandemic center
to better understand the history of pandemics in diseased cinema.
Robert Lee and Merle survey how the narrative landscape of
disease movies has changed over the course of the twentieth
century and into the twenty first, exploring how a rise
in individualism and a drop in trust of science and
(04:20):
governmental institutions has shifted the focus of these movies. I'm
guessing that most, if not all TPWKY listeners have a
favorite disease themed movie. What makes it your favorite? Who
saves the day? Or is there even a day to
be saved? Personally and probably predictably, I like the movies
(04:40):
with kind of a happy ending, especially when science saves
the day. But what seems to dominate these days is
an apocalyptic or post apocalyptic storyline where humanity is too
far gone to be saved and the only course forward
is to start fresh. What does that say about our
modern society and whether it use the glass as half
(05:01):
full or half empty? This book was such a fun
and eye opening read, and I guarantee that this episode
will be on your mind when you pick out your
next disease themed movie to watch or rewatch. We've got
a lot of cinematic ground to cover in this interview,
So let's go ahead and get started. Lee, Merle, Robert,
(05:45):
thank you all so much for joining me today. I
am a thrilled to chat disease movies with you.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Thanks so much for having us here.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, thanks so much for having us on.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
We very much appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Diseased Cinema was such a fascinating and eye open read,
and I was blown away by how much the prevailing themes, character, stereotypes,
and even plot lines follow these larger trends reflective of
societal concerns over the past few decades. To start us off,
can you give me the big picture view of how
films about disease have changed over the period that your
(06:18):
book covers.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Our were argument, which is not I think a unique
argument or novel in any way, is that these movies
reflect the current culture of the time, Right, so the
politics and other aspects of the time in which they
were made, and within this context, the same films also
can also help change existing culture, so you can't really
(06:43):
separate both of these. This becomes clearest if you try
to watch one of these movies that was made in
a different context. Right, So if we would go and
watch a movie from the fifties, for example, it would
seem very foreign, right, because part of the things and
the discourse or the tropes that we would see in
(07:04):
those films are speaking really to audiences in the fifties,
and if we try to watch that seventy five years later,
it would seem a bit discordant. Let's say, what we
found in our research for the book is that films
really change over time. So early on films, let's say,
from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen eighties, it tend
(07:24):
to focus on some heroic government affiliated doctor who tends
to sacrifice his personal often financial well being, essentially to
protect the state, his community, and otherwise anonymous people. Modern
audiences and students really would probably find that these films
(07:46):
again are a bit strange. Right, These are not the
kind of stories that we tell these days about pandemics, right,
We're used to other stories. If we move forward to
the nineteen nineties, so we see transitional period in which
we still have doctors, but at this point in time,
these eroic doctors tend to look out for their immediate
(08:06):
family or perhaps are rewarded for their work.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And if we move to.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
The time that most of us probably know best, right,
twenty first century movies. Essentially, there are many other changes, right,
So this move from people in the film containing a
disease to films depicting a deadly global pandemic either happening
or has happened when the film takes place in more
(08:33):
recent films pre COVID, and we can maybe talk a
little bit more about that, we see this uncontrollable apocalyptic pandemic.
So that's like the main argument I think of the book.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
The early films as you watch them are the characters
are as long as you're American, and they that is
defined in a very narrow kind of way. As long
as you're American, everything seems like really very satisfactory and peaceful,
and knife you have, as Li said, doctors who are
solving problems. The movies are about curing. The idea of
(09:08):
uncontained disease is just completely alien. But again it's subject
to your being part of what's defined as American. If
you're foreign, and that's a whole other subject. If you're foreign,
of course, well then you are the cause of the disease, obviously,
And the transition is slowly over decades and as again
(09:29):
they point out, in the nineties especially, it begins to change.
While there is not that kind of sense of public
good which has it was in the earlier films, there
is a sense, even if it's nostalgic, that people can
actually still contain disease, and then it eventually goes to
the point where there is no public good and everybody
(09:50):
is sort of the same. Everyone's like, everybody has an
equal seems to have an equal stake, and it's treated
the same. But the consequence seems to be in the
opposite direction in terms of ability to solve problems. This
complete chaos because everybody is ultimately is really ultimately on
their own. So it's a slow deterioration process of the
(10:14):
American culture.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I want to kind of touch on some of those
aspects in a bit, But first, what counts as diseased
cinema and what doesn't?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
How did you go about choosing which movies to include
in this book?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yeah, this is merl That's a great question and one
we spent a long time discussing, debating, dithering about. And
there's lots of movies that I think could fit. But
one thing we were particularly keen on was to treat
film as we all think, as a form of literature
and as a form of art, and so that was
one keen aspect. We wanted movies that expressed a viewpoint.
(10:53):
We decided that we had to kind of make two decisions.
One was we focused on American movies, not because their
movies aren't super important. They absolutely are, and we have
some in the movie, but just we had to focus on,
you know, some subset in American culture, certainly in the nineties.
Onward drives a lot of other international themes, and so
we came up with a list of about one hundred
(11:13):
major disease movies, and we watched many of them, many
of them I wish I could have my time back,
but so be it. And we selected films we thought
were historically important, those we found cohesive right that we
can actually write about, and those that best represent their
time period as well. That Lee and Robert laid out.
(11:35):
The other thing I should say as well, we also
did choose some movies that we personally did not like
or we found incoherent. And this was probably the hardest
chapters to write, or the hardest sections, because writing about
a movie that most or all of you really don't
like is just really hard to do.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Well, what movies are you referring to?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Those would mainly be, and I'm sure they'll come up
in a little bit, the the.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Famous Resident Evil movies. How can you forget that? I mean,
after long hours of arguments about this, movies.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
So terrible that you just want to erase your memory
of them?
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Right, I think Merle has repressed it, as have I
the worst chapter to write.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Okay, well that makes my next question at least a
little bit easier. So I have some like rapid Fire questions,
because the whole time I was reading, I was thinking, Okay,
what is everyone's favorite movie? What is everyone's least favorite?
Sounds like Resident Evil? But if we could, just, like
Rapid Fire, a few of these. So first, what was
each of your favorite movies featured in this book? And
(12:40):
what do you love about it?
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Let me put it this way. It's a little hard.
I can't just give you a bullet point because it depends. Sorry,
it depends on how you mean.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Favorite.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Like, my favorite in terms was just to the pleasure
of just watching as an action movie was World War Z.
It has so much action, it's wonderful. My favorite in
terms of like intellectually in a way, was Little Joe
the Last of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because
I think it's the most in your face movie in
terms of really saying where we are as an American
(13:13):
or global culture. But the best movie in terms of
what I think was the most interesting and not so
down frankly was A Night of Living Dead, simply because
of its style and its ability to document what was
going on in America at the time.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
So Lee here, I would probably go with Children of Men.
It seems to me to be the most present film
that stays relevant some twenty years after it was made.
Is so very well done. That's my favorite, and.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Probably for me it is actually thought long and hard
about this As the other two people were going, it's
probably Shivers, which is a very campy horror movie by
David Cronenberg, who I think just came out with a
new movie that just showed it con recently, mostly because
it's just a funny movie in the guise of a
horror movie, and I hadn't seen it before, and so
(14:07):
it was something different and versus some of these other
ones I had actually watched before.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Answers all across the board. I love it all right,
So I feel like the least favorite was probably universally
the Resident Evil series.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Without question, although Lee may be a discenter on this.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
I mean, yeah, I'll dissent here. I mean, for me,
I would give probably two. I mean Resident Evil. We
can talk about this and kind of revisit some of
our heated debates, let's say a few years ago. But
the least favorite movies that I had so were The Invasion,
which is like a two thousand and seven another remake
(14:44):
of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
It was just like a.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Bad movie and also Roberts's favorite movie, so one of
his favorite movies, right, so Little Joe. I mean, I
had major issues with it, especially because it was very
slow and I never actually connected to that.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
I'll just add in that The Invasion is probably on
my list aside from the Resident Evil movies, because it's
a very Hollywood movie that's very in your face but
also extremely I would say regressive in its themes, and
it also has some deeply troubling scenes actually which I'm
surprised no one picked up visa VI COVID where the
CDC or the Bad Guys and they're the ones actually
(15:23):
spreading the disease in the movie. And I didn't actually
see an illusions during COVID to this, but maybe it
was just such a bad movie that no one wanted
to rewatch it.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Let's take a quick break, and when we get back,
there's still so much to discuss. Welcome back everyone. I've
(15:53):
been chatting with Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai
about their book Diseased Cinema, Pandemics and Zombies and American Movies.
Let's get back into things. What do you think makes
people want to watch diseased themed movies? I mean, and
maybe this question could be answered separately before and after
(16:13):
COVID or before and during COVID, But in general, is
it an escape from reality? Is it a search for optimism?
Is it validating fears, providing a survival handbook?
Speaker 4 (16:25):
Like?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
What are some of the reasons that people are drawn
to these movies?
Speaker 5 (16:30):
My have a theory, which is that it's sort of
the flip side of why I think audiences are also
drawn to sci fi movies. I think we're going through
a very troublesome time for a variety of reasons that
we touch on in our book. I mean, yes, it's escapism,
and people like the blood and the zombies and all
(16:51):
the rest, but I think it's it's a kind of
way for them in the audience to address their unease
with their physical being and the physical world that they're
in that sort of makes each of us feel like
we have no value in the world anymore. And I
also think it's part of sort of a compliment to
(17:12):
all the the AI movies that are very popular as well,
which are all about the mind. And this is these
are movies about the body, and there's a there's a
kind of struggle I think we're going through about our
minds and our bodies, and these movies are really about,
you know, a feeling of not belonging, not having a presence,
and literally a physical rat So it's an escapism, but
(17:36):
I think it appeals to almost a dark, despairing sense
of what's going on in the.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Global climate that we have today.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
The very question of why are these movies so popular?
I mean that was essentially topic for discussion at the
beginning of COVID, right so early on during COVID, we're
talking like January to let's say April, maybe May twenty twenty.
Many of these movies exploded in popularity, right, So movies
such as Contagent for example, ended up in like I
(18:04):
think second place on iTunes. Outbreak got to maybe like
third place. And these are like old movies at the time, right,
So Outbreak is like twenty five years old, and people
are going back to these movies and watching them. And
there were quite a few commentators who are trying to
make sense of and asking exactly this question, right, So
why are we going back to these movies, especially when
(18:25):
we're we're kind of like seeing something similar outside. And
then our research on this really revealed that there was
no one answer, right, and people just like made up
their own answers or hypotheses. Really do you get answers
such as I wanted to see how COVID is going
to develop, right, so I watched Contagion or in the
(18:46):
UK for example, where twenty eight Days Later was made
again like two decades before COVID, but this was still
it still became a talking point, right, so people would say, oh,
I feel like Jim in twenty eight days Later, Right,
I woke up and I the world seems to have changed, right.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So this was in a.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Sense, a way in which people could communicate around the
disease with other people become optimistic. I mean, some of
them were clearly more optimistic because these movies, some of
them movies, right, they show some kind of happy ending,
where we can debate about whether that is or is
not happy ending, But some people decided to accept it
(19:25):
as such, and others just wanted to see how bad
it could get, right, So, I mean, it's it's kind
of like one of these answers that every person would
kind of like provide their own answer.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
You mentioned that the idea to write this book came
about in twenty nineteen, So how did this book take shape?
And then how did that shape sort of change as
the COVID pandemic evolved.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Lee and I are early medieval storians, and we actually
specialize in a sixth century pandemic called the Justinianic plague,
which is the first plague pandemic, and we'd written a
lot of various historical work on this, but we kept
arriving back at the same question, really, which is why
no matter what we say, because we provided evidence that
(20:10):
we don't have much evidence of this actually being a
huge pandemic, but no matter what we said, everyone would say,
but it's still a big pandemic. And so we asked,
you know, why do these people keep saying this despite
us showing them all the evidence, and you know, there's
not much empirical evidence that's conclusive. So why do we
have this idea that this pandemic or all pandemics. You know,
(20:31):
some have mass death tolls, some don't. And what we
realized was this was much more of a twentieth and
twenty first century question than a sixth century question, and
it was much more about the cultural views of disease
that people when they were writing about the sixth century had. Right, So,
if you were writing and say the nineteen fifties, you
basically thought like a nineteen fifties movie, versus if you
(20:53):
were writing in the nineteen nineties, you were thinking like
a nineteen nineties movie. Naturally, Lee and I were trying
to figure out, well, what changed our culture? And this
is the book that we think answers that question. To
explore it through film, you could ask why did we
do film? Well, we decided that would be the way
in through culture, and we reached out to Robert who
obviously writes and teaches about film, and I should say,
(21:16):
as the reveal in the podcast, although it's not explicitly
in the book, is that Robert's also my father, and
so he was obviously someone with whom I had gone
to movies with at a young age. So that's obviously
why I decided to do movies. And then I brought
Lee on board and we had a lot to say.
It was a lengthy process, and then during COVID we
(21:37):
had most of the book matag From actually done before COVID,
but we used COVID to go through it to rewrite it.
I'm sure we'll talk about the influence of COVID on
the book shortly. But one thing Lee was really great
on early on was tracking, as he just talked about
people watching disease movies, and so that became an obvious
chapter to add to the book.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Do you think that previous disease, ease or pandemic movies
in general set expectations for the COVID pandemic. You mentioned
how people would watch Contagion as like a guidebook to
see what would play out, which would have been horrifying
and in some ways like there were very many similarities too.
But yeah, I want to hear a little bit more
(22:18):
about what that process was like, what it was like
to see this pandemic unfolding and then see the parallels
within the movies that you had just written about.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I think movies did a lot to set our expectations
during COVID, and you know, if you want data, leads
given it to you. In terms of people watching these movies. Personally,
I watched none of these movies, and I was horrified
that anyone want to watch any of these movies. But
that's you know, again, as Least said, everyone has their
own take on these things. But I also think you
saw this during you know, early New York Times op
(22:48):
eds or you know, kind of opinion pieces. People would
go back through and watch these things. There was a
great article about I guess Jared Leto was doing a
silent retreat somewhere in the West during the beginning of COVID,
and he didn't know about lockdown for a week and
then he emerged, and all the articles were like Jared
Leto emerges like the you know, like Jim from twenty
(23:09):
eight days later and he doesn't even know what's happening.
So clearly there's expectations. What's a little. You know, perhaps
not surprising if you watch a movie, is movies have
to play out with the beginning, middle, and end, and
they have to be kind of rational. They have to
have a point that people can follow, and you know,
they might be a little crazy, they might go off
(23:30):
the deep end, but people kind of assumed visa vis
some of these movies. I think that people would follow instructions. Right.
If you think about the end of a movie like Contagion,
everyone happily takes the vaccine as they wait in line
for it, right, And obviously that's not how the vaccines
went in terms of rollout in many countries around the world.
And the other thing I think I would say is
that they really failed to show kind of how boring
(23:54):
pandemics are for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
This isn't to mitigate the horror and the deaths and
the awfulness and the sickness, but by boring here, I mean,
you know, movies show the collapse of the world. Right.
Matt Damon in Contagion, you know, finds a gun and
like protects his daughter in his house, and you don't
get probably the many many scenes of him board sitting
on the couch, you know, trying to read a book
(24:16):
because there's nothing else to do. And so I think
for many people that was their reality, right, that real
life wasn't this good guy's and bad guys kind of thing,
but that most people in the end really just followed
their own values as they already existed, and they look
for outcomes that they wanted. And so I think probably
the best comparison example that I always think about is
(24:37):
there's this scene in Contagion where a congressman like steals
a plane and it leads to one of the characters dying,
and the congressman steals a plane to save his own
life very clearly and you know, looks out for himself.
The only example you get during COVID of that is
a bunch of Republican senators selling stock when they went
into this secret meeting back in February because they heard
things the American public didn't and they sold all their
(24:58):
you know, very stock to make a ton of money.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
So that's the difference, one group just making a ton
of money in the other group at least looking out
for themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
In the movie, let's take another break here, We'll be
back before you know it. Welcome back, everyone, I'm here
(25:25):
chatting with Robert Alpert, Merl Eisenberg, and Lee Mordecai about
their book Diseased Cinema. Let's get into some more questions.
You mentioned how good guys and bad guys and how
in the movies there are these clear labels that can
be applied to the heroes and the villains in these movies,
and it was interesting as you discussed how those changed
(25:48):
over time and who became the trusted individuals, you know,
starting out with these doctors affiliated with the government or
with these institutions, to then those being the the bad
guys essentially? Do you feel like that also played any
sort of role in expectations during the COVID pandemic and
setting these guidelines for who to trust and who not
(26:10):
to trust for sure?
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I think that the movie that maybe does the
most of that for me is Contagion, right. So in Contagion,
I think it's like Jude Law, I think is his character, right,
the blogger who has been compared to anyone from Alex
Jones to US President Donald Trump with regards to the
(26:33):
misinformation and essentially the self interest through which he is
portrayed there. But there are maybe more interesting answers to
that question as well, which is to try to reflect
on how if we stay with contagion, how exactly the sea,
how exactly is the CDC portrade?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
Right?
Speaker 4 (26:54):
And then you have like different levels within the CDC,
and some are portrayed more positively, others are portrayed more questionably.
Let's say Merle I think mentioned earlier the invasion in
which the CDCRE is actually portrayed as the bad guys.
And we could go further back, right, So an Outbreak,
for example, the military is portrayed as the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So that as well, I.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Think really ties into how we started this discussion, right,
which is the moment in time when Outbreak was made
in the mid nineties, kind of critiquing the military was
seen as something fashionable to do or something positive to do,
which post nine to eleven, I think is much more difficult,
if at all possible, right. And I think one of
(27:40):
the questions is, how does COVID change all this?
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Right?
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I mean, how does COVID, How does the CDC's performance
during COVID, the government's performance during COVID, How are these
going to change in subsequent movies about disease?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Absolutely? I mean what is the future of disease these movies,
What are the sort of trends that you expect to
see given the COVID pandemic, How the government responded, how
the CDC responded, and how people's faith or trust in
these institutions and in science in general has kind of
been shaken even more than it was previously.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
I always thought there's a key line, and I actually
wanted it to be kind of the subtitle of our book,
And there's a lie in the movie that I think
really stands for what's going on. And frankly, it's going
to inform I think all the future movies, which is
and I'm just quoting from it, says like you said, baby,
just taking care of everybody that's in my life boat.
(28:39):
And I think that really, to me at least, has
summarized where these movies have gone. And yeah, they'll have
different plots in different narratives, but what they're going to
have in common is, to the extent there's distrust and
so forth, it's because I'm taking care of people in
(29:00):
my life vote and that I don't care about anybody else,
and these movies now reflect that, and they'll take different forms.
I think and the distrust will be about someone else.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
But I think underlying.
Speaker 5 (29:13):
It is a change, and that's the change. I think
our book has reflected from the idea of a common
public good, assuming you're the right kind of American, of course,
to everybody supposedly is equal, and I emphasize supposedly even
though that's clearly not the case, and where everybody is
(29:34):
out to get their own people in their life vote,
and that's probably in real life. Also, what I think
is really the movies reflect and in real life, how
we treat disease and how we view the CDC and
how we work together as a country is informed by that. Unfortunately,
it's funny we haven't used the word capitalism at all
(29:56):
in this whole podcast, yet you can't kind of talk
about these movies without actually using that word, because that
is what you know. These movies are a reflection of
as we talk about. It's from manage capitalism to a
neoliberal form and the effects that that has, And disease
is one aspect. Obviously, that's what we focus on, because
(30:17):
you know, disease is impacting us globally.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I do think interestingly enough, if you recall I think
they faded pretty quickly. There was actually a wave of
disease movies that came out kind of in twenty twenty
twenty twenty one, bleeding into twenty twenty two, and they
all seem to completely flop. What I think is what
is happening overall is to an extent, the same thing
that's happening with academic scholarship as well, which is a
(30:42):
sharp increase that happened initially, and now there's actually a
massive drop off in people doing infectious disease research. Interesting enough,
and grant funding and all the like. So I think
that that there's kind of a moment for infectious disease
research that happened, and I think we shouldn't necessarily expect
maybe disease movies to be as forefront, at least in
(31:04):
the short term. But I do think that movies could
play a role in shaping change narrative. So, if you
want to be more positive than Robert's take on it,
you could say, because movies shape culture, right, if you
give new desires, new ideas to people, that that might
actually help shape change moving forward in terms of people
not just looking after people in their lifeboat.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Today, some of the movies that I think about disease.
Movies that I have enjoyed in the past tend to
have happy endings where there's optimism at the end. But
I do think it's really interesting, like what these different
endings give us in terms of optimism pessimism, What are
the ones that people enjoy or just because I personally
(31:48):
I don't like just feeling pure despair. There's enough of
that like the news. So I have movies for me
are an escape. But I was wondering if you had
any thoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
It's a great question, and I think that maybe I
would say a few things here. One is that several
of these movies try to keep the ending ambiguous by
on purpose, right, So don of the dead, right, So
some some people survive escape rawl like right on that boat,
and then you have the post credit or like during credit,
(32:20):
like brief like footage I think from like a camera
that they found there is something, but you actually do
not see them all die, right, So the camera falls
and then they kind of like run back to the
boat and they may have survived and they may have
not survived, and you don't really know, right, So in
one way, this leaves up the opening for a sequel,
But then you have other kind of ambiguous let's say endings, right,
(32:43):
and I can return to Contagion. On one hand, you
have an appy ending, right, I.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Mean they beat the disease.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
The last scene is essentially them taking the virus and
kind of like putting it in the freezer near sars
and I think it was like a swine flu if
I remember.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Correctly, right, And then what does that actually mean? Right?
Speaker 4 (33:01):
So is that like a happy ending or not really
happy or a bad ending? And you could probably understand
it in both ways, right, So, yes, they defeated the
virus and it kind of like went there, But that,
together with the constant references, especially to swine flu and
to stars throughout the film, kind of implies that this
(33:22):
is not something that's going to go away, right, So, yes,
we defeated this virus, but another virus is going to
come in some number of years, right, So is its
positive or is this negative? And it's it's I would
argue purposely ambiguous just for that reason, for every person
to be able to come up with their own solution,
and people could discuss this film like we're doing right now.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I'll just briefly add in this is where you see
the big contrast with older movies. Right, So something like
Doctor Erlyx's Magic Bullet, which is from nineteen forty. It's
a Jewish scientist find secure for syphilis, tested on people
in problematic ways. But that obviously is not the end
of the world or bad, even though it's deeply problematic medically.
(34:07):
But he dies right as a saint, you know, and
there's this great scene where he has light around him
literally like a halo, right. Or you think of Panic
in the Streets from nineteen fifty, in which you know,
the doctor has a relatively speaking, we would say today,
pretty crappy life. He has no money, you know, his
family life's not the best, but you know he saves
the city and you know everyone kind of praises him
(34:29):
for it. And so you see that direct contrast from
movies from you know, fifty, sixty, seventy or more years ago,
where you have that much more positive message. So I
would say to you, Aaron, if you want to watch
positive movies, you have to watch the older movies rather
than watching you know, the more recent things where even
now sometimes right, you know, I'm thinking of the Planet
of the Apes movies where everyone dies in the Apocalypse
(34:51):
of the Pandemic, and it's just in the end credits
and it's not even shown. It's just like kind of
airplanes moving on a map showing the spreadtive disease. So
we're all going to die, and we're all so worthless
that we can't even show how we die.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
Yeah, let me also suggest you watched the nineteen seventy
eight or Georgia or Mayo don to the Dead, because
at least that's a little more positive. I mean, they
fly off, the two main characters fly off in a
helicopter and the woman's pregnant. Yeah, they're low on fuel,
but you know what, they may not make it to Canada,
but there's a possibility, as opposed to the remake where
they're gone. Okay, I'm sorry, and in contagion, the probabilities
(35:27):
are because you see, as Lee pointed out, you know
this is going to happen again in some other place.
So yeah, I agree with morel watch an old movie
or old movies are much more comforting. Again, as long
as you're the right kind of American. I got to
emphasize that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Right, So I want to Yeah, I want to get
into that if we can sort of this narrow definition
of what an American is in some of these movies.
How do disease seemed movies tend to represent marginalized groups
or what do they tend to leave out in terms
of the impacts of the dems, pandemics, disease on marginalized groups.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
In the early movies, we don't basically see marginalized groups
at all. Right, So to give you the example I
was just talking about Panic in the Streets. Panic in
the Streets is filmed on location in New Orleans, and
there's not a single black person in the movie, right,
So that's effectively impossible in the city of New Orleans,
and it's obviously done on a purpose for various racist reasons.
(36:24):
And also non Western Europeans because are also shown as
the problem in the movie and they're quarantined. So that's
kind of how those early movies effectively are just openly
racist in many ways. And there's other examples we could
talk about. By the time you get to the more
recent movies, it's not as if they discuss race where
they're somehow better on it. They just take characters who
(36:45):
are black or who are from various different backgrounds. For example,
and they kind of turn them into everyone else in
most cases, not in all cases, but so you know,
in something like Dawn of the Dead, it's actually quite
a diverse cast, but none of the people in the
cast do anything with race or talk about racism, or
(37:05):
it's not really prevalent at all, it doesn't have a
role in the film. They're just kind of built in
as other individuals. And in fact, I think if you
look at old scripts of that, they just changed the
race of some of the characters and it didn't seem
to make a difference to the lines they gave or anything.
So that's, you know, kind of tells you what they
were thinking in that movie overall. And what I think
movies failed that perhaps the most in many of these
(37:27):
examples is when it came to COVID. Right, we know
COVID had a higher case fatality rate for anyone who
is basically not a wealthy white person for all intents
and purposes, and you would never know that in any
of the movies.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So in Contagion, you know, the thing the disease does
MeV one is it kills everyone equally without regard to
any socio economic demographic profile. Whatsoever. Right, And I don't
think you would be the expert more than us that
any disease in the history of humankind actually works like.
Speaker 5 (37:59):
That, and everybody gets to shot at getting the vaccine equally,
it's just a lottery, I mean, like really oof.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, just a few minor details left out by these movies.
All right, I've got one last question for you all.
If you were to write a disease movie, what would
it be like? What would the title be? Would it
have a happy ending, would it have a sad ending?
Would it be more on the zombie side of things
or on the more contagion realism side of things. What's
(38:30):
the message that you'd want to get across?
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Right, So, I think my film would probably emphasize the
I mean to continue this discussion, right, would emphasize the
aspect of social justice, to use disease just to show
iniquities in society and try to present an optimistic way
of working together. Right, So, drawing from earlier movies that optimism,
(38:57):
but kind of refracting that through the issues we have
in current day society. So to try to speak to
the present, speak to you again, the inequalities that we've
seen inequalities with regards to who gets sick and who
doesn't get sick, who can just run away and who
cannot run away? Right, so have maybe I mean in
(39:19):
that sense it might look like a contagent type story
with lots of different characters from lots of different backgrounds.
I would definitely make other choices than the ones made
in Contagion. I would show more working class people, for example,
I would show definitely less elites. Broadly speaking, that would
(39:40):
be the kind of story I would try to tell
about how our society interacts with I mean not really
unprecedented but supposedly unprecedented situation, how different institutions struggle, and
how individuals within those institutions struggle. I think that both
of those things I think Contagion did well, and I
(40:01):
would move away from the zombie apocalypse survivor like family
group type walking dead like genre of gratuitous violence, which
I think is less interest I mean, I guess, more popular, right,
but less interesting.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
I have lots of hopes and dreams of what you
could make a movie like that, in the sense of
showing lots of people, like Lee said, But I also
know the struggle of a movie. You have to have
characters and there's only so many people, so showing you know,
structures that have to be an interaction with those human beings.
I mean, I would suggest a movie that focuses more
(40:42):
on to an extent, more mythologizing figures in which we
can have positive things from, you know, so returning to
the more fifties mold of which are somewhat mythical, right
of someone like Jonas Salk obviously of you know, not
patenting the polio vaccine, which is not really true, but
the message it implies and that it shows, and how
(41:04):
that can help change society and how people think about
society very differently. So someone like that focusing on a couple,
again returning to the heroic people figures, but obviously bringing
in some of the things I think Lee pointed out
when it comes to aspects of race and class and
all those types of issues that certainly need to be shown,
but not you know, making it so everyone dies or
(41:25):
were inevitably going to die, or all the government officials
are incompetent, right, because all of that just continues to
degrade the overarching situation and the problems that we face
in America today. And probably Robert will say something about
how it's critiquing capitalism that maybe he has a different
take on us.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
So when I decided if I were to make a
movie about disease, i'd actually what I would want to
do is try to have a drama where people represent
different perspectives on our lives today and what the problems
of our lives are and how we deal with each other.
(42:05):
Because I think ultimately, if we're going to change things,
we have to change it on a very personal and
level at the same time that it will affect a
larger change. So if I were to do a movie,
it would be a you know, a handful maybe a
dozen people, you know, put them in you know, a
house or room. They're affected by a disease. No, they're
(42:27):
not going to be any zombies, I'm sorry. And and
they they have to decide, well, what do they do
about practical things like do they you know, what do
they do about? How do they get food? How do
they how often do they wash? What happens if somebody
hasn't washed, what happens if they disagree amongst themselves about
what the precautions are that they have to take. How
do you how do you reach decisions, and because at
(42:50):
the end of the day, the personal is political. And
so if you want to develop an idea of what
disease is about and what the problems of disease are
that these big movies are are attempting to address, I
think you have to do it at that level. Many people,
I will acknowledge, are going to be bored out of
their minds. I can't help it, I you know. But
(43:13):
for me, a disease movie I want, I would want
to express what I think the problems are and what
diseases represent. And now I'm thinking, is this going to
be a happy or sad end? Maybe it's just enough
if you just in some way can betray it and
(43:33):
you leave open whether it's happy or sad, because in
a way, that's not the point of movies. Movies should
enlighten us. They should move us and help us understand
things in ways that as we go about our daily
lives we don't quite come to grasp. So that's the
kind of movie I would like, you know, a low
(43:54):
budget independent movie that I could actually talk about some
of these issues that all these movies raise.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Robert murl and Lee thank you all so much for
joining me. To chat about your fascinating book. I'll never
watch a disease movie again without thinking of what is
trying to tell me about society. If you also enjoyed
this episode and want to read more, check out our
website this podcast will kill You dot com. Or I'll
post a link to where you can find Disease Cinema
(44:41):
and send us your disease movie recommendations or your favorite
disease movies. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are.
I'll also include a link to Merle and Lee's excellent podcast,
Infectious Historians. Aaron and I were on an episode just
a few months ago, and we had an absolute blast.
Don't forget. You can also check out our website for
all sorts of other cool things, including but not limited to, transcripts,
(45:04):
Quarantini and Placiberrita, recipes, show notes and references for all
of our episodes, links to merch our bookshop dot org,
affiliate account, our Goodreads list, a first hand account form,
and music by Bloodmobile. Speaking of which, thank you to
Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all
of our episodes. Thank you to Leana Scuilacci and Tom
(45:25):
Bryfogel for our audio mixing, and thanks to you listeners
for listening. I hope that you liked this bonus episode
and our loving being part of the TPWKY book Club.
A special thank you, as always to our fantastic patrons.
We truly appreciate your support. Well until next time, Keep
washing those hands, U,
Hosts And Creators
Erin Welsh
Erin Allmann Updyke
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