Scenes from a Pandemic

TW: discussion of COVID 19 Pandemic, 9/11

A frazzled, anxious mother pushes a grocery cart. It is empty, save for the car seat holding her sleeping infant. Silently, she wills the child to remain asleep as she navigates the aisles of the store under flickering fluorescent lights. She is desperate to collect her things and retreat from the store swiftly. Things have been strange lately, out here in the world. Her eyes connect with the coveted item she’s been seeking. Baby formula. Funds have been meager recently and food has been harder to secure, but this will make all the difference. With this formula, she can quell her tiny child’s cries, filling their stomach. Stopping the cart, she crouches down to the bottom shelf. She reaches her hand out and stops in midair.

She breathes in quickly, sharply, lowering herself to her knees and extending her fingers to touch the formula.

On the shelf, in place of the canister, a piece of paper is taped. On the paper is the printed image of the formula.

All of the surrounding shelves are similarly covered in mere printed pages of the products they were meant to hold. There is nothing here.

The baby begins to murmur in her seat, a hungry cry barely below the surface.

Societal turmoil and tragedy have always been reflected in film. The woes of tumultuous times seep deeply into the stories we tell and into horror in particular. Analysts have remarked on echos of WW1 in films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. There exists a heavy focus on good versus evil and an examination of madness, often seen as a response to the ravages of the Great War. Subsequent wars, for instance, the Vietnam War, loom heavy over films of the 70s and early 80s. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one such film, touching on the political environment in America and often dissected as an allegory of the war itself. Films of the 2000s hold shadows of 9/11. Cloverfield (2008) is infused with the frenzy and panic of the attack on the Twin Towers. War of the Worlds (2005) features much of the same mass alarm, even including a chilling nod to 9/11 with a wall of missing posters. A film does not have to explicitly feature the source of the fear to tap into it’s roots.

Globally, the last two years of the COVID 19 pandemic have been incredibly difficult . Millions of lives were lost, families broken, health and home destroyed. There is horror in this time; prevalent, blatant horror. Contagion, infection, physical betrayal of the body, the death of a loved one. Less obvious, maybe, but still utterly chilling are the conspiracy theorists, the radicalization, the disloyalty, once stable relationships crumbling . These are heavy themes that are likely to appear in the film world more and more as creatives seek to process this bizarre tableau of life.

What I’m pondering though, just now, is what small nods to this nightmare will trigger a chill and a shudder in future horror. The little moments that instigate a recognition in us, a sense of…..oh, I was THERE. War of the Worlds (2005) is by no means high on my list of quality horror media, but, as someone who can recall the events of September 11, 2001, I can remember the way I felt in the theatre, seeing the wall of missing posters in WotW. My mind flashed back to news footage of desperate family members, clinging to hope that their loved ones may merely be displaced somewhere, under all the tragedy. The moment stuck with me, and pulled me back into the mindset of 2001.

There are tiny horror stories in the early days of the pandemic.

A frazzled couple carries on day to day as an apocalyptic event looms. They go to work, they buy groceries, they come home and tread these same paths over and over with no other choice. Each evening, when they return to the safe haven of home, their dinner is no longer cherished around a cozy kitchen table. No, not anymore. Now their trembling plates are perched upon jostling knees as they crowd around a laptop screen, watching the daily news pressers. Each day, a wealth of numbers evolves and grows, a running tally of anxiety that they stir into their sustenance like salt.

What moments peppered your days in the earliest unfolding of this pandemic? I recall driving the streets of my rural town, kids buckled in while all services were closed. Hearts were taped to windows, a meager recognition of fear and uncertainty that we could connect to.

Bare grocery shelves. Banana bread and idle time. Bigger fears, like streets lined with refrigeration trucks, ventilators, induced comas. Job loss. Life loss.

A dark night on a residential street. A teenage boy walks home, streetlights scarce. The windows of the rows and rows of identical houses are shuttered and curtained, as though the residents fear the outside getting in. He feels a chill along his back, pulling his sweater tighter. His footsteps echo on the pavement. No cars drive by. He is alone.

He doesn’t feel alone.

Picking up his pace, all he wants is to step inside his house where he knows what to expect; safety lies there. A home base, a shield against this empty unknown, somehow full of shadows and demons. He rounds the last corner and stops in his tracks. On the driveway of his home he sees a figure. NO, not just one, a group of figures. A circle of people stand on the pavement, a small fire burning directly in the middle of them. They are perfectly equally distant from one another, about 6 feet between each. Their heads are bowed towards one another. Why are they standing there like that, spread out in this strange loop? Is this… some kind of ritual? He cannot hear a word. He draws in a gasping breath. Every head lifts up, turning towards him. Gaunt and emotionless faces in the flickering of the firelight.

His mind offers only one response: Run.

I’m fascinated by the threads of this pandemic that connect us globally. There are small experiences that resonate worldwide: the sudden sense of collapse and fear, the unknown, the evolving definition and perception of the term “lockdown”.

Tiger King.

Sourdough starter.

Blue latex gloves.

Clanging of pots and pans, a chorus of support. But imagine it a warning, an omen at the changing of the guard.

Surgical masks tangled in trees, waving like spectres in a gusting wind.

Arrows on the floors of grocery stores. Be sure to follow the correct path. Do not dare to tread another. There be monsters.

The sensation of looming strangers, coming too close. Invading space. Stepping backward as they step forward, a silent standoff. The sound of rapid, panicked breathing inside a paper mask.

We’re deep in this societal trauma now. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking or even denial for me to project these ideas out into the world, into a world where we can look BACK on this time. Horror has always been there, to scoop out the meat of world events and cultural shifts. Horror has been a mirror and will be a mirror, even when this moment, this day, this month, this year are far behind us. Who knows what that world will look like, but, if history tells us anything about patterns in film, the horror genre will be waiting to reflect us right back to ourselves.

Tell me in the comments what fragments of the pandemic times will pull you back like a taut rope, into the past, into an abyss of simmering memory. The type of gentle, pandemic symbolism that, one day, in a far and distant and hopeful (and hopefully not fictional) future, will trigger the hairs on the back of your neck to stand. What will invoke a gentle ringing in your ear: I was THERE?

NOTE: I am a lucky soul to live here, in rural Canada, where I’ve been able to homeschool my children and work from home. I’ve lost no one dear to me and I do not, for a second, think that my anxieties about unmasked faces and people entering my six foot bubble could possibly compare to the devastating loss many have endured. Care for others, support the vulnerable and immune-compromised, press your lawmakers to support the houseless, the disabled, the racialized communities most at risk in this pandemic. Wear a mask and get vaccinated.