Skip to main content

Professor's Picks: 5 Ways COVID-19 Will Change Film


In the wake of 9/11, America was left limping after a devastating blow to its sense of invincibility and power. Film custodians frequently attribute the modern superhero craze in which ultra-righteous individuals thwart the bad guy to this injured sense of pride from a country desperately trying to tell itself that it's still on top.

Because film is a product born from and made for the popular consciousnesses, films are natural reflections of the hopes and anxieties of their day. When traumatic events suddenly bend those hopes and anxieties in very large, very specific ways, film takes on recognizable traits in response. There are books full of examples of themes, genres, and styles of film surfacing or even disappearing in response to societal events. 

So what's film going to do with a worldwide pandemic?

When friends have brought up this question to me over the last year, they've been mostly wondering if we're going to get more films about disease and lockdowns a la Steven Soderberg's Contagion. That's a possibility, but I imagine we'll get bored of those rather quickly. The most significant changes will be a lot more subterranean and speak to insecurities that run much deeper than how long we're expected to wear a mask. 

And so here I am offering my own best guesses on what the pandemic is going to do to film. 

There's obviously a lot to unpack from a production and distribution perspective (how will studios approach theatrical distribution?) but in the interest of keeping this specific, I'm going to look mostly at the style and content within film itself.

Anyways, 5 ways film will respond to lockdown and the pandemic.

--

1. Quarantine Comedies

Whenever I have this conversation, people seem most interested in all the horror films we're going to get from this period. Again, a lot of people are ready for more Contagion-style thrillers. 

I do think horror will look different over these next few years, and I'll get into that in the next section, but where I think the COVID-19 pandemic is going to get the most screentime is actually in comedy. 

Humor is one means of asserting our authority over something, insisting that it's not scary and not powerful. Very early in the pandemic, we saw attempts to diffuse the terror of the situation with irony and humor, and this attitude never really went away. 

Once the pandemic is in the past we'll only see further effort to use humor to put even more distance between us. This will translate into a lot of films invoking the pandemic directly or subtly for comedic effect. "Ha, ha! Do you remember that one time when we couldn't leave the house for months? That was just the woooorst!" After all, many real-life situations familiar to the lockdown world lend themselves naturally to the world of comedy (families being saddled together for an interminable amount of time, people fighting over toilet paper, etc.) 

No doubt some movies will be seen as insensitive or #toosoon. A lot of this will come down to whether any given film can differentiate between what made the pandemic frustrating (endless zoom meetings) versus what made it tragic (the loss of nearly 3 million lives worldwide). But either way, expect comedy to lead the charge with representation of the pandemic.

--

2. So What About Horror, then?

I've mentioned in my essays for both The Wolf Man and A Quiet Place that the fears expressed in horror films are never as straightforward as the fear of being chased through the house with a knife. The thing that makes horror truly scary is the subtext and metaphor. The way a film gives shape to a fear we don't have words for. We'll no doubt see diseased-themed horror films over the next few years, but most if not all of them will feel empty because the sickness itself was only ever the surface of what disturbed us.

The sense of safety and security within America has been compromised ever since 9/11, but the virus is a whole new animal. It's not terrorists that we're scared of now. It's a microscopic organism, an organism made even more frightening because it isn't human. It has no agenda. It's not an attack on any particular ideology or nationality. It just saw global prosperity doing its thing and overnight brought the world to its knees.

Human action will no doubt eventually enter the conversation as we try attributing responsibility to certain behaviors or attitudes that perpetuated the pandemic and lockdown. Perhaps a surge in horror films probing the human pursuit of comfort at the expense of public safety? Our indifference to the loss of human life, as long as it's "only like one in a hundred?"

The most significant horror films born out of the COVID-19 pandemic won't be the ones centering on disease or lockdown; rather, they'll be the films that speak the language of horror to describe a world defeated by something it can't even see.

--

3. The Great Depression Makes a Comeback

    Film uses the past to make sense of the present. The relative stability of the late 1990s and early 2000s saw America displacing its own anxieties over plentitude by lampooning the similarly prosperous 1950s with films like Pleasantville, The Iron Giant, and Far From Heaven. 

    Regrettably for us, the world that we're returning to is less reminiscent of the balanced economy of the 1950s and more America's Great Depression in the 1930s, which is likely where film will be turning its attention for the next several years. 

    Naturally expect a surge in straight-up historical dramas in the vein of Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition competing for the Oscars, but don't be surprised to see film go further. I'm also imagining films like Peter Jackson's King Kong, which sets an epic fantasy-adventure against the backdrop of The Depression or even time-machine/love letters for the decade, like Stranger Things for the 30s. (And I know I'm always predicting the resurgence of movie musicals, but I can't help but bring up that it was during the 1930s that musicals first fox-trotted into popularity and wonder what if . . .)

    Psychologically, revisiting periods of social trauma gives the audience permission to view their own circumstances objectively. It's easier to talk about someone else fighting to keep their head above water in a broken economy than it is to talk about us doing the same. Besides, if we got through it then, we can get through it now, right?

--

4. Video Conference: The Movie



On a more stylistic note, let's talk about what a year of talking to faces on screens is going to do for the visual aspect of film. 

As the video-conference aesthetic has become more familiar, expect the medium of film to start trying to explore its application for storytelling.

Pre-pandemic, we've already seen some movies play with this format. Aneesh Chaganty's Searching depicts a man looking for his missing daughter, but our only window into the film is a computer screen. The story is told exclusively through video chats, handheld cameras, and desktop views in a 90-minute love-letter to the digital age. Searching tries this out within the thriller/mystery genre, and I'm predicting we'll see this proliferate into other styles and modes as well. 

I expect this to mostly show up within indie-film circles at first, but I can imagine this bleeding into the mainstream. Whether or not this style lasts will largely hinge on whether or not any of these films take on a life of their own.

--

5. The Connection Reckoning

Over the last several years, not just 2020, we've seen a lot of interest in understanding and combatting loneliness. Did you know, for example, that chronic loneliness impacts a person's well-being as much as obesity or substance abuse? Or that gens Y and Z are the loneliest generations yet? A year of social distancing has only turned up the volume on an aching that's been screaming for our attention for years. Film and its ability to both simulate and deconstruct connection will become an active channel in this conversation.

I'm reminded of Morten Tyldum's 2016 film, Passengers, a movie that presented this need in a "what-if" scenario. Here, a man aboard an interstellar transport is awakened from hibernation 90 years early, and when faced with a lifetime of solitude he chooses to awaken another person to share in his plight. Upon release, audiences were revolted at this decision, and the film became a critical chew-toy. 

From the other side of quarantine though, I've already seen at least one video essay reframing this movie in the context of national lockdown. Maybe after going a year without hugs, a lot more of us can sympathize with a man who would do anything to feel connected to another person. (Pre-pandemic I'd already given my own thoughts about the movie.) I mention this film because whether or not it gets the post-corona reevaluation it deserves, I'm certain many films will use it as a blueprint for how to explore the need for human connection that many of us only appreciated once it was out of reach, locked behind a sleeping pod for a lifetime.

---

I drew these observations from studying how film has historically reacted to world events and societal changes. Just so, I will be the first to acknowledge this is all speculative. Right when the pandemic first struck, I resisted the impulse to write something like this exactly because I wanted some distance and perspective. I imagine that further time and distance will only further clear the fog. Who knows what the future holds for any of us?

What I'm more certain of is that things are going to be challenging. Pulling through the wreckage is going to ask a lot of patience and cooperation from us. If we play this right, we'll see future films play this period as a time in which we were surprised to find just how good we could be to each other when shared humanity became more important than individual attitudes or political alignment. 

If we play it right. 

                --The Professor

Comments

  1. Out of the five, "Quarantine Comedies" make the most sense to me--and the most likely to make a buck, in my estimation. Not sure how much we want to see terror based on the pandemic, but a lot of funny and weird stuff has come about or happened because of all of this. So, my money is on comedies that poke fun at that side, and offer a sense of relief that we made it through this, even though we may have done some weird, gross, or whatever things during the last couple of years! Thanks for enlightening me, Professor. Love your posts!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: WICKED

       Historically, the process of musical-film adaptation has been scored on retention --how much of the story did the adaptation gods permit to be carried over into the new medium? Which singing lines had to be tethered to spoken dialogue? Which character got landed with stunt casting? Which scenes weren't actually as bad as you feared they'd be?      Well, Jon M. Chu's adaptation of the Broadway zeitgeist, Wicked , could possibly be the first to evaluated on what the story gained in transition.       The story imagines the history of Elphaba, a green-skinned girl living in Oz who will one day become the famous Wicked Witch of the West. Long before Dorothy dropped in, she was a student at Shiz University, where her story would cross with many who come to shape her life--most significantly, Galinda, the future Good Witch of the North. Before their infamous rivalry, they both wanted the same thing, to gain favor with the Wonderful...

My Best Friend's Wedding: Deconstructing the Deconstructive Rom-Com

  Well, Wicked is doing laps around the box office, so it looks as though the Hollywood musical is saved, at least for a season, so I guess we’ll turn our attention to another neglected genre.           As with something like the musical, the rom-com is one of those genres that the rising generation will always want to interrogate, to catch it on its lie. The whole thing seems to float on fabrication and promising that of which we can always be skeptical—the happy ending. This is also why they’re easy to make fun of and are made to feel second-tier after “realer” films which aren’t building a fantasy. You know? Movies like Die Hard …  We could choose any number of rom-coms, but the one that I feel like diving into today is 1997’s underrated My Best Friend’s Wedding . I’m selecting it for a number of reasons. Among these is my own personal fondness for the film, and also the fact that it boasts a paltry 6.3 on IMDb despite its ...

REVIEW: MOANA 2

   Way back in 2016 , Moana's quest to return The Heart of Te Fiti ran perfectly parallel to both Moana's own sense of unrest and her community's need to return to their voyaging roots, motivations that were all intrinsic--and also very well-established in that first act. The opposing forces were also clear--not just in the presence of lava monsters or killer coconuts, but in the attitudes she faced from her overprotective father and her swaggering demigod sidekick. Her ultimate discovery, that the island she was trying to restore and the monster she had to thwart were one and the same, was likewise an organic extension of her inherent compassion and discernment.       That first film understood the basic chemistry of the adventure narrative, and how it sang when thoughtfully applied to the Disney aesthetic, so they don't really have an excuse for bungling the mixture this time around.       For a film determined to fit in as many charac...

REVIEW: Belfast

     I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the world needs more black and white movies.      The latest to answer the call is Kenneth Branagh with his  semi-autobiographical film, Belfast . The film follows Buddy, the audience-insert character, as he grows up in the streets of Belfast, Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though Buddy and his family thrive on these familiar streets, communal turmoil leads to organized violence that throws Buddy's life into disarray. What's a family to do? On the one hand, the father recognizes that a warzone is no place for a family. But to the mother, even the turmoil of her community's civil war feels safer than the world out there. Memory feels safer than maturation.      As these films often go, the plot is drifting and episodic yet always manages to hold one's focus. Unbrushed authenticity is a hard thing to put to film, and a film aiming for just that always walks a fine line betwe...

REVIEW: The Super Mario Bros. Movie

     Some die-hard fans of the franchise may have to correct me, but I don't remember Mario having a solid backstory. Or any backstory. I'm pretty sure he just emerged fully grown from a sewer pipe one day and started chucking turtle shells at mushrooms for fun.       I remember, for example, that Mario and Luigi are canonically brothers, yet there's little opportunity in the video games to explore anything like a relationship between them. That's domain better trod by film.       And this weekend's feature film adaptation from Illumination does succeed in carving out character, personality, and history for all the players on the board. The fact that Mario and Luigi are brothers isn't just a way to excuse their nearly identical apparel. Their relationship is the foundation for Mario's quest. Even more impressive is that the film reaches its degree of texture with its characters without cramming in exposition overload. This is one ar...

REVIEW: Cyrano

    The modern push for the movie musical tends to favor a modern sound--songs with undertones of rap or rock. It must have taken director Joe Wright a special kind of tenacity, then, to throw his heart and soul into a musical project (itself a bold undertaking) that surrenders to pure classicalism with his new film Cyrano . Whatever his thought process, it's hard to argue with the results. With its heavenly design, vulnerable performances, and gorgeous musical numbers, the last musical offering of 2021 (or perhaps the first of 2022) is endlessly enchanting.     Cyrano de Bergerac's small stature makes him easy prey for the scorn and ridicule of the high-class Victorian society, but there has yet to be a foe that he could not disarm with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. The person who could ever truly reject him is Roxanne, his childhood friend for whom he harbors love of the most romantic variety. Too afraid to court Roxanne himself, he chooses to use the han...

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - Febuary

    Welcome back, one and all, to my latest attempt to justify being enslaved to a million different streaming services. My efforts to watch one new movie a day all year haven't worn me out yet, but we're not even past the first quarter yet.           My first film of the month brought me to Baz Lurhmann's Australia , and it reminded me what a beautifully mysterious animal the feature film is. My writer's brain identified a small handful of technical issues with the film's plotting, but the emotional current of the film took me to a place that was epic, even spiritual. I don't know. When a film cuts straight to the core of your psyche, do setup and payoff even matter anymore? I think this film is fated for repeated viewings over the years as I untangle my response to this film.     One of my favorite films of all time is Billy Wilder's The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.  You'd think, then, that learning that the t...

REVIEW: Samaritan

    It's only in a landscape like today's, one where the superhero myth is so deeply intwined in the pop culture fabric, that a deconstructionist superhero movie like Samaritan could feel warranted. There's no shortage of contemporary examples from which to learn. This makes the film's ultimate stumble all the more mysterious and all the more disappointing.      The film's premise gives it every chance to be a thoughtful piece within the superhero craze and independent of it. Here's a story about a boy lacking a strong male role model just hovering above poverty and wondering where the heroes have gone. All the while, his community teeters on disarray and anarchy as the powers that be neglect the larger population. It's the kind of world where no one's expecting a hero, but the hopeful among us sure are hoping for one.      Thirteen-year-old Sam thinks he's found the answer to his prayers in his aged neighbor, Joe. After witnessing a few displays ...

Hating Disney Princesses Has Never Been Feminist pt. 1

     Because the consumption of art, even in a capitalist society, is such a personal experience, it can be difficult to quantify exactly how an individual interprets and internalizes the films they are participating in.      We filter our artistic interpretations through our own personal biases and viewpoints, and this can sometimes lead to a person or groups assigning a reading to a work that the author did not design and may not even accurately reflect the nature of the work they are interacting with (e.g. the alt-right seeing Mel Brooks’ The Producers as somehow affirming their disregard for political correctness when the film is very much lampooning bigotry and Nazis specifically). We often learn as much or more about a culture by the way they react to a piece of media as we do from the media itself. Anyways, you know where this is going. Let’s talk about Disney Princesses. Pinning down exactly when Disney Princesses entered the picture is a hard thi...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 7 Best Songs Written for (Non-Musical) Film

    This being a blog about film, I generally keep my observations focused on movies, but today we're going to expand the menu just a little.      Most of the stuff I write here, I write with some film music playing in the background, usually a film score or a Broadway cast recording (right now I'm on a bit of a Raul Esparza kick, everyone deserves to hear his rendition of "Come to Your Senses" from this year's Miscast concert). I've been doing this for a while, yet I only recently had the idea to actually write about some of the songs that inform my writing process. The songs I can never get out of my head.     To keep things mostly on-brand, I'm going to be writing about music that features in films, preferably songs written for their respective movies.  Just to make things interesting (and to keep the door open for a future installment ... maybe ) I'm choosing to restrict the songs listed here to those written for non-musical films, and I'm cho...