Speaker 1: 00:00:00 No, it can't be. Can't be. It's impossible. What's impossible, doctor, it's viral. That much is clear, but a lot of the blood, the blood of all or even in our bodies is here.
Speaker 2: 00:00:28 [inaudible]
Speaker 1: 00:00:29 it does. It works.
Speaker 3: 00:00:30 Okay. I've been exploring escapist films to distract you from our current Corona virus pandemic, but as parts of the country in some businesses start to reopen, I decided it was time to explore some unconventional pandemic films that raise issues beyond just the virus itself.
Speaker 4: 00:00:59 [inaudible]
Speaker 3: 00:00:59 I'm Beth Armando and welcome to another edition of listener supported KPBS Sinema junkie podcast. Today I'll be speaking with neuroscientist and emotion researcher Eric Lee Artis. He's been spending his hours quarantined at home watching pandemic films, but he has an interesting take on these movies because he wants to see how emotions like panic and fear can spread as readily as a virus and how words can be as dangerous as germs. Let's get our first break out of the way so we can explore a diverse collection of films from the silence to the present day from Cambodia to the U S to see what pop culture can teach us about past and imagined pandemics and how that might help us cope with the current one. So sit back, wash your hands, put on a mask and I'll be right back with Eric lean artists to infect you, some pandemic movies to ponder. Eric, I've had a chance to talk to you about movies before and you've been working on a list of kind of pandemic films to watch while we're sheltering at home. And I want to talk to you about a few of these films and before we get to some of the films that are on your list, give us a little background on what your particular field is.
Speaker 5: 00:02:19 Sure. Um, so once again, I'm Eric Lee and artists'. I'm an instructor of cognitive science at UCLA and in particular, uh, I'm an emotion researcher. I study how humans and animals understand each other's emotional state by using multisensory cues from our social counterparts. My research is broadly concerned with how the brain gives rise to emotion and social interactions and how emotions like panic and fear can spread through a population of humans and animals. What I've been doing is, because I didn't have much else to do also because of the quarantine, but also I wanted to see if I could find whether there were social aspects of the quarantine and the lockdown and the COBIT crisis in general that we might be able to see in pandemic films from recent times and from the past and try to get a sense of what we can learn from these films about how these things might lead to mass panic, mass hysteria, misinformation and wide variety of issues related to government control that I think we should all probably be focusing on and paying attention to right now.
Speaker 6: 00:03:25 So you have looked at quite a wide breadth of films and let's start with the oldest one on your list cause this is actually a silent film and as we know, pandemics are nothing new to this century or anything. We always have the great plague to go back to. And this one is a silent film. Tell me about this. I, I'm not sure how I can pronounce the name in it's German.
Speaker 5: 00:03:49 Did pest in Florence or the plague of Florence is the English translation from 1919. It was directed by auto ripper and written by Fritz Lang who happens to be one of my like very favorite directors and writers from the silent end of eventually the talkie era. So the reason I wanted to include German expression is it was, as you were just saying, right plagues are nothing new. There are plenty of old stories and depictions of the plague that we might be able to gain some insight about. So the reason I chose a German expressionist film is for one, it's my favorite John Ray film. Um, it was directly after the first world war. I think it's characterized by intense makeup, exaggerated gestures, elaborate set design. There was a lot of effort and just basically like drawing landscapes in the background. So the artistry I think is exceptional. So I actually don't think that it, not having a words or many sounds is actually it takes too much away from it. So this is a Fritz Lang's adaptation of a mask of the red death by Edgar Allen Poe, which was written in the 1840s. Um, this story kind of highlights a lot of the concerns that let's say the church or religion would traditionally have about sexuality and the dangers of sin, the dangers of pleasure of going out and having parties and engaging in a wide variety of activities that God might see as unsightly.
Speaker 6: 00:05:17 Now this came out in 1919 which is a significant year. If we're talking about pandemics cause this would have been right after the Spanish flu. So how do you think that plays into this particular film?
Speaker 5: 00:05:31 Yeah, I think it absolutely does play into this particular film. I think that that pandemic was at a much, much larger scale than the current pandemic that we're looking at. It is very likely that most lives were touched by that, but they lost a lot of people and but it's very likely that you would have lost a family member in that. So this depiction of the black death in Europe many, many hundreds of years before was pulling at the heartstrings of those viewers who were definitely being affected by this. Uh, the massive, uh, Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 which was only a year before. And you mentioned that this is based on Edgar Allen Poe's the mask of the red death, which also had a memorable but very different adaptation featuring Vincent Price. Yes, absolutely. And that, that is also a really interesting take on it. It's a much more Shakespearian version where they really dig into PO's representation of these sort of royalty and really kind of digging further back into Poe's original story to give a sort of very interesting depiction of Florence at that time.
Speaker 7: 00:06:45 Soon you will be costuming yourselves for the mask is celebration my friends celebration of victory over death. We will have a good Senor Scarlatti and his wife will not be joining as he failed to obey my orders. But because of me through my mediation with my master, the Lord of flies, you all of you on where they though you may be will be safe from the red dead.
Speaker 5: 00:07:20 So Vincent Price is, yeah, I mean his part was just fantastic. And, uh, I think just his presence in the film just makes it really energetic and interesting. Also, the depictions of the Renaissance parties and the costume design in the mask of the red death was also just fantastic. But I think that also has this depiction of these bacchanalian parties of this fear of degeneracy and sin that these people are in some kind of state of Sodom and Gomorrah and they will be punished for their socializing. So one thing that both of these stories kind of picked up, uh, for me was that, um, so I'm from New York originally and, um, New York city recently came out with a pandemic sexual warning. It's like a, um, NYC health came out with this, um, basically like a white paper, which was sex in the Corona virus disease and it kind of lists a whole bunch of things that you should or should not do at this time.
Speaker 5: 00:08:17 It emphasizes that you should really only have sex with them partners or people that live with you. Try not to engage in sexual activity with those outside of your household. And I guess in a sense, although these are very, this is very useful information that people should follow. It did give this sort of like classic paying of anti vice campaigns and stuff like that. So I think that there's something really interesting there about the kind of tying up of disease and sexuality and how, of course it can spread through that, but it kind of can allow sort of more repressed style, embracing of conservative values
Speaker 8: 00:08:55 in bringing that up though in particular with the black plague, there was this sense of kind of recklessness because people felt there was no way to protect themselves like they were going to die no matter what. So they might as well have these, you know, ridiculous parties and throw caution to the wind and that seems to play a little differently like in the black plague than in some other pandemics that happened. Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5: 00:09:21 Um, and I think um, cause it was so mysterious and there was such a lack of medical knowledge, you could see people very easily falling into the, well, it's going to happen anyway. So I might as well enjoy myself. I think actually interestingly enough, that also relates to some of these more party and beach related areas in the United States. I heard that Miami recently had an outbreak of COBIT 19 because people had just kept going to the beach and kept going to these massive parties even though they knew that the diseases had already touched the United States. That impetus still certainly exists today and I'm sure that there are plenty of people that are still engaging in gatherings that are larger than 10 people. But you know, that has risks and consequences and this film really wants to emphasize that.
Speaker 8: 00:10:06 Now one film that you dug up, you had a very hard time finding a copy that actually was subtitled. This is a film called the fall of Maine. But what interested you about finding a film that was kind of obscure like that?
Speaker 9: 00:10:22 Well, what's interesting is that with the fall of meeting in China, this is like a very respected and interesting historical depiction of the end of the Ming era. So the reason I chose it is because in some solidarity with our Chinese brother and across the sea, I mean I think that there's a lot of anti-Chinese rhetoric that's going on in this country that I want to resist and I want to just kind of look at some Chinese film that speaks to that. So that's why I wanted to choose this. But finding subtitles was difficult, so I had to watch it in the original Mandarin.
Speaker 10: 00:10:58 Good job put off,
Speaker 9: 00:11:02 do speak some Mandarin. So I could understand some of the main plot points that I wanted to share with you guys. But basically in this story, there is a doctor who has some interesting theories about how plague is spreading through this army that is currently at war. So at first the government doesn't believe the doctor and actually they sort of cast him away because they believe that his ideas are actually very harmful. And the idea that he has is he puts forth this theory of the cheat and lead sheet is basically this form of pathogen type thing. It's some kind of pathogen type energy, like key flow that can be spread through the air.
Speaker 10: 00:11:48 Yeah.
Speaker 9: 00:11:52 Okay. So the idea that he starts wearing
Speaker 4: 00:11:54 masks. Okay. And he, he keeps trying to convince everyone that this disease can actually be airborne and that is how it is spread. So eventually in the end of the film, after a great physician fails to take care of the soldiers there and he actually dies of the plate himself, only then can this doctor bring his new theory of this airborne pathogen to the front lines to treat these soldiers. So I just thought it was really interesting that it talks about this sort of government doubt of these medical professionals even in the 16th century. So these are very, very familiar stories, but they're sort of happening over and over again. [inaudible]
Speaker 8: 00:12:51 the clip from the Chinese historical drama, the fall of Ming from 2013. I need to take one more quick and final break and then I'll be back again with Eric Lee and Artis to talk about South Korean and Cambodian pandemic movies as well as some familiar American ones like the thing, world war II and contagion now to stay in Asia. There is a Korean film that also comes from the same year 2013 and again, the years that these films are made reflect sometimes things that are going on in that contemporary world because, uh, we've had SARS and mirrors going on that probably spurred some of these, you know, uh, films, but the Korean one, the South Korean one is called flu. And I have to say watching that, there are some scenes where they show the droplets coming out of people's mouth as they cough and how it spreads. And it felt very of the moment right now and did not make me want to go out and do
Speaker 9: 00:13:52 public space. Definitely. Um, I would say, you know, this film was probably one of the more horrific, uh, and sort of horrifying films and depictions of how bad a pandemic could possibly get. I guess one of the things that I thought
Speaker 5: 00:14:15 it was really interesting at first with the film is that it kind of starts like a cage drama. It kind of seems like a romantic comedy set up or something like that, which actually made the critics really, really dislike this. It actually got very bad ratings because it still has this sort of playful romantic comedy thing where there's the doctor, Dr. Kim, who gets saved by a rescue worker who she doesn't like very much and he keeps making these advances towards her. He would like to date her, but she really has no interest whatsoever.
Speaker 9: 00:14:42 And then all of a sudden this outbreak happens. There's all sorts of mass panic, all sorts of supermarket raids and riots. And as the disease is spreading, interestingly enough, Dr. Kim leaves her daughter alone at home to just sort of do whatever. Um,
Speaker 5: 00:15:00 and it is then that her child meets patient zero. Um, what I find interesting about this story also is that the disease was brought to Korea in this story by illegal immigrants in a shipping crate who were being shipped, I think from Hong Kong, from other parts of the world through, huh.
Speaker 10: 00:15:21 Hello?
Speaker 5: 00:15:39 It does give you an idea of Korean politics relative to outsiders probably to some degree. It certainly reminds me of the current situation where we have this stigmatization, this anti immigrant xenophobic sentiment. But also I think that this film really emphasizes episodes of childhood trauma. Dr Kim's child is mostly alone, scared, separated from her mother and screaming into mass panicky areas of
Speaker 10: 00:16:08 people.
Speaker 9: 00:16:13 Does this evoke in me the current potential for trauma at in the U S for quarantining. But instead it also brings forth this current U S immigration policy, the child separation policy in my mind in 2020. Um, so seeing this child constantly separated from her mother screaming, um, and being put in these horribly dangerous situations does evoke a lot more than just, um, what was happening in Korea in 2013.
Speaker 8: 00:16:46 Well, I was going to say one of the other things about the film that, uh, kind of resonated for today was depicting the politicians.
Speaker 10: 00:16:55 Every one has gone down.
Speaker 11: 00:16:56 The moment is considered a potentially infectious person and will be segregated at the cap. We'll initially track down the erythematous infectious persons by visual examination. Their status of contamination will be determined through PCR tests. Asymptomatic persons within the first 48 hours with a negative test result may leave the camp normal view on bouncy NIDA
Speaker 8: 00:17:27 and how they decide to handle it. And you have kind of different levels of response. You know, the politician who's only interested in their own career and how what they do will reflect on them. And other politicians who are more concerned with the actual, uh, wellbeing of, uh, his constituents. So, uh, that element of it and who, who gets to call the shots. And you know what happens if they bring in outside cause there's some people who are speaking with American accents, but uh, I'm not exactly sure of all the political ramifications that are in some of those.
Speaker 5: 00:18:05 Oh, absolutely. I think the, the turn that the film takes is that it basically becomes something like a government genocide and atrocity film where these government officials in Korea are working with these U S officials and they're deciding that capitalism above safety,
Speaker 1: 00:18:23 but these are protocols that we discussed this morning. We've got no option. We have to launch operation now
Speaker 5: 00:18:31 they lock down then tell them what's going on. Kill all of the people that are infected, dump them in mass graves and the U S is influence is even further to shoot at their own people if there are people do not do as they say, which eventually they push up against. Um, yeah, this is a very sort of pessimistic tale. Um, which I think is actually really interesting because the way that South Korea actually dealt with the virus was very different than this depiction of what let's say the director expected might happen. It turns out that actually their response was very Swift. It was not violent. They set up these testing stations that you could drive in through in South Korea. They were one of the first people to have these drive through testing stations and they managed to flatten their curves significantly without resorting to horrible mass graves. And also another thing is that, um, the government decided to turn off all social media at some point or try to at least cut cell communication from all the towers so that everyone couldn't communicate to each other during the pandemic. So that is also a very, very different approach than they actually took it real life.
Speaker 8: 00:19:43 And you did mention the tone of the film and on a certain level it feels very Korean in the way that tone can sometimes fluctuate wildly within a film. And it does start with this kind of meat cute and then goes incredibly dark and grim and then kind of swings back to comedy. And you have a couple of characters who are always there for like comic relief. So on a certain level it makes it kind of easier to watch cause you get a little break every now and then from the stress of the pandemic. But um, I do feel that's kind of a, a Korean trait in a lot of their films where they do mesh a lot of genres into one.
Speaker 5: 00:20:22 Oh, absolutely. And it, yeah, it does. It does get confusing at times. I wasn't put off by it too much, but for those who wanted it to be an extremely serious film, that doesn't change tone. This is not the one for them. But I would also say that, yeah, it definitely, it just seems like a very, a film of its time of the K drama time of like the entire like film apparatus that they have going in Korea these days to start. I mean to basically put those elements in, although I'm not sure that they all work. I think that it's definitely an interesting smattering of all sorts of different emotions at once.
Speaker 8: 00:20:58 And I do have to say that the doctor is probably one of the worst doctors I have seen. She does almost everything wrong. You sort of feel like she smuggles her sick daughter in with the healthy patients and uh, you know, breaks the rules constantly. And there's these moments where you just feel like,
Speaker 5: 00:21:18 wait, wait, wait. This is not what we should be saying. No, absolutely not. I mean, well that was another thing. I think usually these films kind of depict the medical profession in a much more respectful way. Like I think in the last film that we were talking about, you know, these doctors are dying on the front lines, risking their lives, doing everything they can in this story. That is not the case. Dr. Kim is actually very much very corrupt figure. So she engages in sort of nepotism that is that she takes care of her child above her own patients. She knows that her own patients are being put into mass graves and does nothing about that. But when it is about her daughter, she will willingly infect all of the people that are safe in the actual safe quarantine, the noninfected quarantine just because she knows that the fate of her child is at risk. I'm so not a very good doctor. And the other character, the rescue worker, he eventually calls her out on it and it was just like, you're a hypocrite. This is like, this is unacceptable behavior. And eventually she recognizes it, but after way too late.
Speaker 8: 00:22:22 Well, and he's the exact opposite because he constantly is risking his life going like, you go ahead, you get to safety, I'm going to help these other people who were here and trapped. Totally.
Speaker 5: 00:22:32 Uh, so it's very, very different approach. And also in some sense it does seem like he, he has this calling, he really does feel this necessity to, to rescue as many people as he can. While she does not, she seems like she's much more interested in protecting herself and her child.
Speaker 8: 00:22:49 One film that you have on here that's also from Asia, but not from a country. We generally get a lot of films from his run and this was very low budget, but dealing with the issue of a pandemic that breaks out, I felt that
Speaker 5: 00:23:03 going to Cambodia would be a sort of interesting shift. Right. Most of the films that we see are from Hong Kong or they could be from Japan, Korea, even mainland China, but Cambodia is a place that you don't often see these types of pandemic films coming from. It turns out that Cambodia does have a tradition of horror films. Usually they're kind of spiritualist type of horror films where there are spirits that turned people into ghosts or zombie-like creatures. This film I thought was interesting because, um, what the director says is he wanted to take a more sort of grounded scientific approach to these types of outbreaks. So it's not like a spiritual ailment that is haunting these people
Speaker 12: 00:23:48 bull, but instead is a virus that's actually infecting them
Speaker 4: 00:24:02 [inaudible]
Speaker 12: 00:24:02 but they trend what's really interesting, it's very low budget. It's $10,000 that they use. Most of the actors you can tell actually don't have experience acting in some sense. I think that can be charming. It can also be very frustrating depending on what you're looking for in the film. But I thought that it's depictions of chaos in the, in the capital city of Phnom Penh was super interesting. Also some of the music they played. I will say I really enjoyed the soundtrack, whatever, like 1960s or seventies Cambodian tracks they were playing, uh, during that I found very interesting. So I'll have to look those up. But there are some depictions in there that I thought were interesting. They actually show people using Facebook sort of like very clearly. So they, they, they mentioned Facebook
Speaker 5: 00:24:45 book multiple times. They kind of all seem to rely on Facebook as a means of communication. So I thought that that would give me a little bit of an opportunity to talk about how much of a role social media is playing in our lives, not only in places like the United States, but also all around Southeast Asia, all around the world. Um, is that this is one of the main modes of communications that we're using, especially in a crisis. And one of the things that we were talking about in the last podcast is this potential for emotional contagion, for misinformation spreading through these means. Um, and I think that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that these types of communications systems can really control the narrative and influence the way we think about things. Um, so in that sense I thought that it gave me an opportunity to take a step back and say that there are these global communication devices that we're using that we know have biases and that we know can actually change our behavior.
Speaker 5: 00:25:38 There have been some studies done where for instance, if you are only shown very sad and hopeless posts, then they've found, cause they did this on purpose, Facebook actually purposely manipulated their stream to only show some users negative posts and see if they would also post about negative things. And it turns out they did. So I just think that in terms of online communication, it shows up in run. It also shows up in flu in a much more drastic case where the government actually tries to shut it all down. Another thing with run that's interesting is it doesn't really critique the government response very much. And I think that that has something to do with the authoritarian regime. That's currently there. So in the end of the film, it's very hopeful. Like the government finally responds and everyone starts cheering. Right. Which we will see in one of our other films.
Speaker 5: 00:26:30 The government response is actually usually much more horrific then something which should be cheered. But it turns out that there've been a lot of reports recently also in foreign policy journal that the Cambodian government has taken the Corona virus as an opportunity to sort of strengthened its political agenda in the region. Um, so, uh, there are some reports that basically they're taking it as an opportunity to continue to repress whatever voices it was that they weren't politically working well with. So it was interesting that in the film there's no sorts of things like that happening, but in real life, it turns out that there is kind of an interesting situation going on in terms of the political response to Cobra 19 in Cambodia.
Speaker 8: 00:27:16 Well, and another interesting thing is there are a couple of characters who appear to be American or English speaking, but they come across as complete idiots.
Speaker 13: 00:27:26 I see. Okay. Well, it's kind of antiquated technology, but I actually used to work with one of these med schools, so I'm pretty familiar with it. I just need to press more of these buttons with some more of these knobs, precedence, bread thing, and then we should be getting some vital signs. Yes.
Speaker 8: 00:27:39 So it doesn't seem to place a whole lot of faith, trust or anything in those kinds of foreign people. Yeah.
Speaker 5: 00:27:47 Which I think also, I mean if we look at the history of, you know, the U S meddling and Cambodian affairs that, you know, I think that unlike the case of flu where we have, you know, the U S you know, controlling the government, essentially in this story we see a very different take, which I think it was the point of adding a story like this, which is not going to be really wow in terms of its budget or even its, uh, acting. But instead just kind of giving a different feel, a different view of a pandemic from a country that we, you don't usually hear from in terms of cinema.
Speaker 8: 00:28:22 And again, the Asian films we've talked about, uh, the fall of Maine flu and run all came out in 2013 which would have been right after the mirrors, which would have been, uh, like a decade or so after the SARS outbreak. So what is it about film that you think might help people process some of that or be able to reflect back on that using film or art or something to kind of help them
Speaker 5: 00:28:52 work their way through those fears? Yeah, and I think that, I mean that was probably another motivator for not creating a traditional Cambodian horror film where there would be like these ghosts or spirits, but instead would be this actual virus that was infecting people cause it wouldn't be a response to, yes, not only stars, but also mirrors and all of these other viruses. There's also a few other Southeast Asian viruses that didn't reach these other countries that are also bad, like a NIPA virus. I believe that was in Malaysia, which was more like the disease that contagion, um, was based on. So, yeah, I think one thing also is that there's a lot of online posts from people from Cambodia that were actually expressed. They were, they were really proud of this film. They were so happy that Cambodia had their own zombie film. Now, even though the director admits it's not actually a zombie, they're infected and they become uncontrollable, but they're really not like the Ramiro styles on these that you'll usually see.
Speaker 5: 00:29:51 And an American film that you have on your list is George Romero's, the crazies, which was also remade more recently. What is it about the crazies that particularly struck your interest? Well, I think when I first made the list, I just put Dawn of the dead on there because I love that movie and it is extremely apocalyptic and it has a great critique of capitalism and commodification and all these things. So my first instinct was to go with the Dawn of the dead, which is the sort of classic, quintessential George, a Romero's zombie film. But the reason that I decided to go with the crazies instead was because it's an earlier film that's a little bit less known and it really is much more like a biological story about a bio weapon that is let loose in our own
Speaker 10: 00:30:42 backyard. We never thought it would happen. Nobody gets in or out of that town. That is that clear. The girl just died. How do you intend to let the people know about all this? We were asleep. They dragged us right out of the house. Are we under martial law? Don't talk to me or anybody else unless you've got a voiceprint tick. Oh no. It was broke loose in town. Nobody knows what's going on. You just can't push us around this way. We've got to get a nuclear weapon in the air above that town. Alright, checking me. No push. They started something. They can't stop raising. A small town becomes a giant stockade as an city must be contained or level. We're all concerned with Evans city and mr Hawks. If we have to push the button, we just say the weapon went off. Got me the president.
Speaker 5: 00:31:40 One thing that's interesting about Ramiro's film is that they usually take places in very familiar places like Donna, the dead play takes place in a mall and this takes place in a small town in Pennsylvania where this bioweapon Trixie was accidentally released. Um, and as a result, these people fall into these, they get infected with the virus and they fall into these violent bouts of insanity and extreme violence. So I think what Romero is really taking here is that there are atrocities that are being committed in our very own backyards and they could happen to just about anyone and everyone in some sense is capable of extreme evil. And this film is very nihilistic in that regard. So this one was kind of more interesting just in terms of the response to what's going on as opposed to, uh, some of the other aspects of the pandemic.
Speaker 5: 00:32:30 Yes. This was an extremely militaristic response. Also, I think this film shows that, I mean, it was a Swift response. The military very quickly given it was their own bio weapons. They wanted to cover it up. So, but the other thing is that the government and the military in this film are depicted as not only in competent but also just capable of horrible things just by the nature of being in this hierarchical structure. If anyone denies or if anyone moves too quickly, they will be shot onsite. That is shown in multiple scenes in the film. Um, and it kinda, it does seem very pessimistic about what the government and military are capable of. And I think that that also speaks to the fact that this film was made in 1973 this is sort of Vietnam, you're a Watergate era, all of the things, all of the doubts that you would have about your government, its politics and its military interests elsewhere. But instead of taking place in Vietnam or Cambodia, this is taking place in Pennsylvania. So it's really trying to sort of bring home the sort of a malicious nature of government and military in the late sixties and early 1970s
Speaker 8: 00:33:43 anything else about the crazies that you found interesting?
Speaker 5: 00:33:46 So two things. One of them is that there are two performances in the crazies that I think are quite exceptional and interesting. One of them is from Richard Liberty and he has a character that usually comes to mind in my like horrified consciousness from day of the dead, which was the SQL, the Dawn of the dead where he is this very sort of jolly and excited doctor who eventually is caught feeding human remains to the zombies that he keeps his pets essentially. Um, but in this film he's actually, um, a father who is trying to protect his daughter. Um, and his, I just really liked his performance. I thought that it was very much foreshadowed his later performances and Romero films. So it's definitely worth checking out and he also becomes, uh, infected and does some really horrific stuff that's actually quite terrible. Um, but it, it definitely has some foreshadowing for his later characters of your Romero fan as well. Richard France, uh, plays a very dramatic doctor in this film who has a very, very robust and interesting performance in this film. But also he shows up in Dawn of the dead as this doctor on television who is warning people about um, making sure to kill all of zombies. So those are two notes that I thought for the real nerdy people. Uh, the crazies was super interesting.
Speaker 8: 00:35:05 Now I was able to talk to one of your UCFD colleagues, Joel Wertheim about contagion, but we spoke about it mostly as how he was using it as a tool to teach a class on epidemiology. One thing I want to ask you about that film is in contrast to some of the like chaos and panic that are in some of the films we've mentioned so far. Contagion from a filmmaking point of view had this kind of very low key kind of not sensational perspective where it of played
Speaker 6: 00:35:38 everything out in this very sort of matter of fact way. And I was wondering what you thought of that and, and if there were any aspects of that film that you were intrigued by.
Speaker 12: 00:35:47 Absolutely. So the thing I, one of my friends recently posted online that he wishes Laurence Fishburne was actually the head of the CDC because it would be going much better. We're working very hard to find out where this virus came from to treat it and to vaccinate against it if we can. We don't know all of that yet. We just don't know. What we do know is that in order to become sick, you have to first come in contact with a sick person or something that they touched. In order to get scared, all you have to do is come in contact with a rumor or the television or the internet. I think what mr Chrome Woody is, uh, is spreading is far more dangerous than the disease. Basically
Speaker 5: 00:36:24 [inaudible] contagion. The government response is Swift. The government responds within five to 15 days of this outbreak and it is of course catastrophic, really worse than we're seeing in terms of numbers right now. And the mortality rate in contagion was 30% instead of three. Um, but what you see is a bunch of competent government officials coming together to try to solve this problem as quickly as possible with as many resources as possible. Um, there's also a scene where, uh, Laurence Fishburne, his character says, um, I'd rather it be seen as an exaggeration or something like this. You know, I'd rather it be like we overreacted than, you know, everyone dies. Well, it turns out the actual situation that unfolded in the United States w couldn't have been any more different than that. Instead, it was a bunch of sort of lumbering oafs doubting that there was even an outbreak in the first place that it could even get people sick.
Speaker 5: 00:37:22 And now the numbers that we're looking at in the United States are higher than any numbers in any other country. And it's because in real life, unfortunately, the government was much less competent and much less able to respond to the horrors of the COBIT 19 epidemic. So I think that contagion gives this very false narrative about the United States being a leader in these types of responses because it seemed like they were, when that film was made, up until this particular crisis, it seemed like the U S was particularly well suited for this. But instead, I think what it has shown is that it couldn't be any further from the truth.
Speaker 6: 00:38:01 And another aspect of that too was you have the Jude law character who is this online blogger and he pretends that he has the disease and he takes a drug and he gets cured and he puts out there that, you know, here's the thing you need that the government's hiding from you. And that goes towards, right now instead of a blogger like him, you have social media working to spread misinformation. Some of it deliberately and maliciously spreading it. Some of it just, you know, people to find
Speaker 8: 00:38:36 something to latch onto, to give them hope and spreading it in the hopes that, you know, it'll help people. But how does that aspect kind of play into the way people deal with pandemics and are kind of like looking for that thing to believe in and not being, not thinking critically about some of the information they may get.
Speaker 5: 00:38:58 I think that in a period where there's such extreme uncertainty, when you hear a voice that speaks with certainty, it is very comforting and whatever it is that they say, whether it's true or not, uh, some people might run with, uh, it turns out that the conspiracy mindset, I mean it's just getting more and more popular in the United States these days, whether it's just really fringe theories related to politics or just, you know, homeopathic theories, anti-vaccination theories and Jude law's characters are sort of embodiment of this sort of classic conspiracy theorist who believes that the government is behind this disease in some extent and also offers these quack cures.
Speaker 10: 00:39:42 My temperature is 101 higher than it was earlier. My head hurts. My throat feels like it's closing. This is for Cynthia. I've been taking it since the onset of the symptoms. If I'm here tomorrow, you'll not bugs.
Speaker 5: 00:40:13 I mean the quack doctor is also not necessarily a new trope, but the fact that the quack doctor operates on the internet in these communication systems that we were talking about, they can actually have much more influence than they might have had previously. So Jude law's characters are fascinating character and he really is just this slimy and just very unlikable character. But I think usually in real life conspiracy theories are much more likable and believable and people really do trust them and that's why they become so insidious as well. I think someone who comes to mind is actually an Alex Jones. He's a conspiracy theorist. It's very popular online. Um, and he's also just peddling all sorts of interesting vitamins for, you know, curing Corona virus, et cetera. I think he's recently been some action taken against him, but he's only one of potentially thousands or maybe millions of conspiracy theorists out there. So I would highly recommend trying to innocuous knock, relate yourself through these types of things by taking a step back, reflecting and looking at whatever scientific evidence is available. But it's hard to do. I think being scientifically literate is not an easy thing and you don't always know. Even scientists don't even know when they're being sold a line or they're not being told the full story. But it's definitely a huge concern.
Speaker 6: 00:41:33 And there are a couple of other films that don't deal directly with kind of the pandemic we're dealing with now, but films like panic in the streets and Cassandra crossing and what, what is it about these films that were made before pandemics, like SARS and what do they say that might be different from some of the more recent films?
Speaker 5: 00:41:52 Yeah, so panic in the streets. Being a movie from the fifties had a bunch of interesting depictions that I thought kind of spoke to the Euro for one. Also, just a quick note, Jack Palance his performance and zero Mostel. His performance and panic in the streets are just wonderful. It's just like really great cinema. I loved that movie, but it does have some problems. Mainly that the disease also comes from some kind of immigrant that is from Armenia in this case, interestingly enough,
Speaker 11: 00:42:23 other they just did it. You're claiming sick no matter what do you, can't quit now. Got it quick, cool, cool. I'm sick. Wasn't too sick to walk off the boat when the 190 bucks the first night you were in the country. Why is he black? He broke a fully better tell Adam with you shouldn't have sent me a hundred there'll be triple check. Got a headache, bang.
Speaker 5: 00:42:52 And I think that there is a kind of, there is a xenophobic tone to the film, for instance, like they're trying to track down this immigrant that was on the ship. So they talk to these Asian cooks on the ship and they're sort of very, they're represented in a highly orientalist fashion. It definitely has this idea that this disease is associated with people that are from elsewhere, from far away. They're different from us. They have different traditions and that's something to be afraid of. So I think that that, that is a theme that comes up in that film that definitely speaks to this sort of 1950s paranoia about purity, especially since immigration restriction by the 1950s had been restricted so significantly since the twenties that it was, they were really making an effort to make a homogenous population that is not very diverse. So I think that some of those things come up in that film, which eventually, like we said before, like before in the flu, also an immigrant brought the disease. So that is a very common theme or trope that we might see in a pandemic film. And I think panic in the streets is one of them that kind of started that.
Speaker 6: 00:43:59 And then Cassandra crossing
Speaker 10: 00:44:01 a thousand passengers sealed on a train. Why armed guards in space suits why it is forbidden to leave the drain alive. Why a thousand human beings on a journey to nowhere with one way tickets to hell
Speaker 5: 00:44:27 Cassandra crossing for one. If you'd like to see the juice OJ Simpson as a submachine gun wielding priest, then you should watch this movie. Also if you'd like to see a great performance by Martin sheen and Sophia Loren, I would also suggest seeing this movie that the cast is stacked, but it basically takes place on a train where this plague breaks out on a train and eventually, I mean just a bunch of horrible things and catastrophic things take place. But the reason I wanted to bring this one up is because recently on the topic of conspiracies, a train engineer in LA actually derailed a train in efforts to drive it into a us Naval hospital ship that was docked like one of the docs, uh, it came about 200 feet away from a train colliding with this Naval ship where they were trying to treat people because the engineer himself had a conspiracy theory that it was some kind of like ship where they were killing people, where they were actually storing all the bodies for the people that the government killed. So it turns out that in Cassandra crossing there is also a train wreck that takes place, the end of the film. Not to ruin the film, but I thought that there was an interesting relationship there, although maybe that joke is in bad taste.
Speaker 6: 00:45:40 And one film that I just want to throw out there that I thought of when all this started to, uh, when the pandemic hit is a Andromeda strain, which was a film that really scared me as a kid because it was like some, my new little organism that came on a, I think a satellite that fell to earth that ended up creating all these problems. And I just remember as a child being just terrified by that whole idea
Speaker 11: 00:46:09 with the suddenness of a snapping finger, a whole town dies almost without a trace theory. I suppose a single organism could do it, but in fact there wasn't an organism on it. You mean it didn't used to be almost without a clue, except except for a six month old baby and a 60 year old derelict. They have faced the Andromeda strain and survived. But will anybody else. The Robert Wise production of the most incredible best seller of the decade, the Andromeda strain, 130 minutes of intense excitement to 96 of the most critical hours in world history. So spends to last a lifetime, maybe too intense for younger children. But Robert Wise production of the Andromeda strain rated gene.
Speaker 6: 00:46:59 I had a chance to talk to another UC San Diego professor and we kind of covered some of the biological information when we talked about the film contagion. Uh, and one of the things was that when he described what a virus was, that it's this parasite that's looking for a host. You know, immediately one of the films that came to mind is the thing because it is this being possibly not really a living organism exactly. But it's driven to find a host to live in to just keep
Speaker 12: 00:47:30 going. So the thing is a really interesting film. This is John carpenter's the thing, the one that came out in 1982 and so what kind of issues and ideas does this film bring up that intrigued you at this particular time? The thing really brings up a series of issues that I think we are dealing right now with the coven 19 pandemic, which is specifically detecting whether or not someone is infected with a virus. And what clues can we actually use to figure that out? Mainly like how do you know it's really me that's interacting with you and not something else. And what kind of cues can we use and other species use to figure this out. So social recognition of other members of one species is a key part of survival and reproductive success in the animal kingdom. In the mammalian brain, there are specific circuits in the brain that are dedicated to identifying the same species, pheromones, different species, pheromones, facial expressions, and identifying the actions performed by others of the same species or predators. And these tend to be used for designating ingroup and outgroup distinctions. And usually when we're in a crisis, this is usually going to determine who you help and who you blame for the crisis. So these systems usually in other mammals are primarily olfactory. So the scene that comes up for me from the film when it comes to mammalian detection of a social other is the scene with the dog.
Speaker 10: 00:48:55 Go ahead. Go ahead. What are you waiting for?
Speaker 9: 00:48:59 Where the dog that was infected with this virus enters this cage with all of these other dogs present. And at first the dogs just kind of look at this dog that's entering and they don't seem to notice much of a difference. And then it sort of sits down in an awkward way and then suddenly the dogs realized something is wrong. There's some kind of error there. The dog is not behaving the way other dogs behave or it's not smelling the way that other dogs smell
Speaker 10: 00:49:30 about
Speaker 12: 00:49:30 like the sense of smell and how it can actually cue us into whether someone is part of our species or not. It's also related to illness, which I found particularly interesting. So not only do we recognize pheromones of species or other species, but we might be able to also sense when they're ill by their smell. For instance, like when somebody has diabetes, um, their urine smells like rotten apples. Or when someone has typhoid, their body odor turns to the smell of baked bread and cholera and makes sweet smelling feces, these types of things. Recently a Scottish woman became famous for being able to tell if someone has Parkinson's disease by smelling their t-shirts and which is really strange. But keep in mind that this is something that happens both consciously and unconsciously. So there's something really interesting about this dog I figuring out that there is something very wrong with this creature that has just entered.
Speaker 12: 00:50:22 So that is one particular scene that comes to mind. But what that then reminds me of is in the case of humans, there's a very particular experimental phenomena that we observe in robotics that comes to mind in regards to the thing which is called the uncanny Valley. So the uncanny Valley is a concept in robotics introduced in the 1970s by roboticist, uh, Masahiro Mori. Uh, and it refers to when robots look more and more humanlike people report them as being more and more creepy or eerie. The same phenomenon happens for like dolls, clowns, zombies. There's just something not quite right about them. Um, so there's a general theory about this phenomenon that suggests that this type of uncanny Valley reaction is related to evolutionary mechanisms for avoiding disease, choosing a suitable mate and that sort of thing. There's another more psychoanalytic theory called terror management theory, which I think is great, which suggests that these type of stimuli remind us of our own susceptibility to illness or death.
Speaker 12: 00:51:25 So when you see a rotting corpse, it reminds you that you're going to die and this is what might generate this type of emotional response. But at UCS D I used to Sagan and Ord, you, Oregon, and the team from university college London, uh, looked at the uncanny Valley experimentally using brain measures. And it's a really interesting experiment because what they find is that your brain is constantly trying to figure out the relationship between what something looks like and how it's moving or how it's behaving. And you have disassociated pathways in the brain for what something is and how it moves. So when they did is they looked at three cases, they looked at a robot but it looks like a robot and moves like a robot sort of machine like okay. Then they have a human doing the same thing that the robots doing.
Speaker 12: 00:52:11 They're like waving and performing a series of actions, but then they have an Android which kind of violates the two cases. Mainly the Android looks like a human but moves like a machine. Okay, so there's something fundamentally strange about the way that it interacts and what we find is in the brain measures that there is a cascade of error signals in the case of the Android that is not present in the case of the robot and the human. So basically there's this area of the brain that's integrating this information and saying that thing is not human. Right. It is basically signaling to the rest of the brain that something has gone wrong, that there is something very atypical about the way this thing is behaving and thus it might not be the thing you think it is. What's interesting about this mechanism as well as the olfactory mechanisms we discussed before is this can be unconscious as well. So mainly in the thing when they're trying to figure out who is actually infected with the virus, their brain might actually have these cues figured out to some extent, but they would not be conscious of it. So there are parts of our brains that are constantly monitoring whether that thing is a member of our species and whether that thing is behaving according to our past. And when this is violated, you might not even know it, which is even more creepy.
Speaker 6: 00:53:31 Well, in John carpenter's the thing, the inability to know for sure if what you're dealing with is a person or the thing, it leads to the sense of paranoia,
Speaker 12: 00:53:45 frustrating. And it's basically what we think also leads to that uncanny Valley type of emotional experience. This inability to be able to tell what it is, this uncertainty or this ambiguity gives rise to these negative emotions that these people are experiencing. Um, so this paranoia is very palpable in these cases. And what they do is instead of relying on their sensory capacities, they actually turn to a sort of biometric approach. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 10: 00:54:12 we're going to draw a little bit everybody's blood. We're going to find out who's the thing,
Speaker 12: 00:54:21 which is where they take the blood from each of the members and then test it using some kind of like electrical wire. I'm still not sure how that part works, but it was a sort of very interesting way of kind of putting everyone's money where their mouth is and testing it empirically
Speaker 10: 00:54:35 as it's pure nonsense. It doesn't prove a thing. I thought you'd feel that way. Gary, you were the only one that could have got to that blood. We'll do you last.
Speaker 6: 00:54:49 And so taking the thing, how are you seeing some of that playing out in this current pandemic in terms of people can walk around infected and not know it and infect other people? And how, how is that adding to kind of, the way we're experiencing this pandemic,
Speaker 12: 00:55:11 the invisibility and the undetectable entity of the Corona virus is what makes it sort of, in some ways kind of banal because like everyone looks fine, right? And yet it's what also makes it more insidious because then it spreads more and then it's going to affect those vulnerable populations. So it's this sort of precise question of the detectability or undetectable entity of illness through, um, all sorts of symptomatic means, meaning like the way someone is moving around, whether someone is coughing, of course. Um, but even these other, uh, w less detectable things like how they're smelling and all of these other things. So I think that, um, this film really brings to light a lot of the issues of what happens if someone has this virus and they're walking among us and you can't even tell the difference.
Speaker 6: 00:56:01 Now another, uh, film, I prefer the book, but, um, max Brooks is world war Z, which, uh, was also made into a film. Now in this case, the pandemic is something that you can very easily assess in terms of when it's coming at you because it's these zombies and they're infected and you can obviously it. So how
Speaker 12: 00:56:23 does that dynamic change kind of the way people experience a pandemic? Well, in one sense I think that it much more easily leads to the spread of panic, right? I think that like when you actually see a large group of zombies climbing over each other to try to eat you, you're probably much more likely to run than if there's some kind of, let's say, invisible disease, but you can't necessarily tell. But I think there's, there's a few things that world war Z brought up for me, which is related to this sort of fear and panic spreading. Right? Um, and I think that having a disease that is much more visible, um, would definitely, um, compel people to panic a bit more. But we still see a lots of panic going on in the current situation. So interestingly enough, I think they probably have more in common than differences.
Speaker 12: 00:57:19 So the thing that, uh, the books kind of starts out with this, um, Chinese doctor, Guam DJing shoe from Tom chain where he seems to discover this virus and then the government actually suppresses his calls for alarm. I think the main reason why the government is trying to suppress this information is because it seems like it's an exaggeration. It's harmful to spread such rumors that could potentially not be true and cause this type of panic. So inevitably, the reason why the coverup took place in the book [inaudible] consequently real life was because the government did not want this panic to spread the way that it inevitably would. Um, so I would say that a lot of the government suppression of these type of information, especially early on, um, is due to the fear that the emotional contagion, uh, we'll break out, uh, and people will panic without even having been infected with the disease.
Speaker 12: 00:58:20 And what other things in the book and the film struck your interest? Well, keeping on the sort of emotional contagion angle, there are definitely some scenes that really come to mind, uh, that I thought were really interesting. So there's this one part where they're in Odessa, Ukraine, um, and there's this character Bodan terrace contract tweak. And he basically describes the situation where there are a bunch of people on a bridge. Okay. And they were in the middle of an evacuation and then the government at some point, uh, seems to turn on the crowd and give up on the evacuation and try to kill everyone. Um, so he exclaims off the bridge. Everyone get off panic shot through the crowd. You could see it like a wave, like a current of electricity. People started screaming, trying to push, push forward back into one another. Dozens were jumping into the water with heavy clothes and that present prevented them from swimming. I thought that that visualization, this panic spreading through the crowd, like a current of electricity. It's interesting because usually when we model panic as it spreads through, your crowd is actually using the same models that were used for viruses and diseases and not the way that electricity spreads. But I thought that that was a really, really powerful image for how this type of panic can sort of cascade through a group of people.
Speaker 6: 00:59:47 And one of the films that you've chosen is a personal favorite of mine, which is Pontypool, which has been described as a zombie film without zombies because of the way the disease kind of spreads and it's through language. So it's something where like a word can infect your brain and kind of unhinged it. So this is a really interesting film and an interesting way to look at the idea of disease or pandemic.
Speaker 12: 01:00:19 This was a really interesting example because it still plays on this idea that viruses need not be these necessarily biological entities, that there are other types of entities that can spread in the same types of ways, whether it be emotion in the last case, but it could also be words and their meanings. Consequently. So there a a few quotes that I thought that were really interesting, which was Dr. Mendez, this character, as he starts to slowly figure out what's going on in the radio station with grant Massey and the producer.
Speaker 1: 01:00:52 No, it can't be, can't be. It's impossible. What's impossible doctor, it's viral. That much is clear but a lot of the blood, the blood, not at the air but all or even in our bodies
Speaker 2: 01:01:20 [inaudible]
Speaker 14: 01:01:20 it is in words [inaudible] but all words, not all speaking but in some some words are infected and it spreads out. When the contaminated word is spoken, Oh we are witnessing the emergence of a new arrangement for life and our language is it's host. It could have sprung spontaneously out of a perception. If it found its way into language, it could leap into reality itself changing everything.
Speaker 12: 01:01:56 It's basically a disease of some or a virus that infects this part of the brain that that allows us to understand language, which actually I have a theory about. I guess before I get to the theory, I'll go to the way that they wind up treating it in the film, which is mainly they realize that because it's related to understanding and the of a word. If they keep repeating a word and other variations that are related to it, then it kind of loses its meaning. Um, which actually in the linguistics literature is called semantic satiation, which is the subjective loss of meaning. When you hear a word over and over and over again. I don't know if you've ever done that, like you say the same word over and over again and it sounds like just mush. It doesn't even sound like the thing that you originally started with.
Speaker 15: 01:02:45 I think a simple kind of sample. I can't stop sample what I'm trying to say. Just try to stay calm. Yeah. What I'm trying to say, Ken, can you think? I can't. I can't. Yeah, that's like the simple question center and that's it. It's gone. This is what he is now is just a crude radio signal is seeking [inaudible].
Speaker 12: 01:03:33 This type of phenomenon is actually studied in psycho linguistics. And in the brain, the area of the brain that is responsible for understanding, written and spoken language is known as Vernadsky's area. And when this area of the temporal lobe is damaged, people actually are not able to understand the meaning of written or spoken words. So I would say that this virus very likely takes place in a, for Nikki's area to some extent. However, um, there's also another part of the brain that's very close to Vernie keys area that is responsible for it, what is called phonological processing, which is the sound of words. So for instance, if a word sounded like or rhymed, like another one, like in the movie they say they start with symbol and then they say simple and then they say sample. Those aren't related in meaning they're related in the way that they sound.
Speaker 12: 01:04:23 So what I would say is the reason why this treatment seems to work is some kind of relationship between those two parts of the brain. I mean, the thing that's so kind of chilling in the film too is the way you can almost see a brain kind of come apart just as a person kind of here's a word and starts to say something. It was a really well done. Um, film in that respect. There is something quite disturbing about that. And it mainly, I think one thing that kind of got me was the idea that it's not the same word for everyone. In fact, uh, everyone has a different word that their brain, yeah. Uh, sort of stuck on. And this idea, I think the fact that every brain is unique is a really important thing to me. And the fact that there are words that you can say to certain people that can elicit widely different responses than, so I guess the thing that really comes to mind with, with this point is that it kind of opens up to something like etiology.
Speaker 12: 01:05:25 It's like if sometimes if you hear the right sentence, it could radicalize you, it could make you join a crowd that's going to be like in a mass panic and hysteria. I guess. So for this, the way that I want to sort of analyze this part of the film and relate it to the current situation is that words actually have a huge impact on the way that people respond and the language that public officials use to describe what's going on can spread. And in this case I think what we see is a lot of American leadership using a lot of racist and xenophobic rhetoric using words like Chinese virus or woo Han virus. And I think that that could lead to something like mass scale scapegoating of these others that have invaded our population. This is very classic 20th century genocide speak. And I would say that racial discourse and language like this can spread just like a virus and it can be just as if not more deadly.
Speaker 6: 01:06:23 And the interesting thing too about this particular film is it's Canadian and the, it's based on a book where the author is from a country where there are two languages spoken French and English. And so the idea of two languages and also the difference between written language and spoken language also come up as part of the elements that the film is looking to.
Speaker 12: 01:06:50 And I think it's interesting that they chose, uh, the English language as the one that is infected, um, that might speak to some kind of Quebecois type of separatism. But I don't know. Um, and I think that one of the things that also attracted me to the movies is the fact that it took place in this sort of rural Canadian type of setting. Um, so it wasn't this, uh, sort of typical American film. It kind of gave a different perspective, uh, of what an outbreak might be like in not a major city, but a type of area that's isolated where it's not very clear what's going on in the surroundings. So with this list of films, do you think that watching some of these movies at this time is going to make people feel better or worse about what they're going through? I personally am not in the business of making people feel better.
Speaker 12: 01:07:41 Um, I would like for people to be more aware, more attentive, more in tune, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to feel better after watching these films. After, after I watched about 10 pandemic films, um, I was a little bit on edge. I was a little bit more concerned that I might have been because it kind of shocked me into reality. Um, but sometimes that's what it takes. Um, so if you're looking for, you know, feeling comfortable, maybe this is not the place for you to be experimenting, but if you're looking to perhaps become more aware of the possibilities of maybe what's going
Speaker 5: 01:08:16 on right under your nose, you might want to pay attention.
Speaker 3: 01:08:19 All right Eric. Well, it's always a lot of fun talking to you, uh, especially about film even though you're a neuroscientist. But, um, thanks so much for sharing this list with us and thank you for having me. This is so much fun and I'm glad that I had a chance to
Speaker 4: 01:08:39 [inaudible]
Speaker 3: 01:08:39 that was UC San Diego, cognitive scientist, Eric Lee and artist. Thanks for listening to our pandemic podcast today. Hope you found some films you want to check out while sheltering at home and considering when to venture out into the world. Coming up, I'll be speaking with the doctor of the dead about what's worse, coven 19 or the zombie apocalypse till our next film fixed on Beth, Erica, Mondo, your residence cinema junkie.
Speaker 4: 01:09:57 [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible].
