Epidemic Cinema - The Rise of a Genre

This book examines the recent trend in global cinema to feature infectious disease.
As the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic materialised the anxieties and discourses of world risk that had long been portrayed in popular media, the book provides a novel definition of the epidemic film genre and offers a systematic look into the narrative and stylistic conventions that characterise it. Epidemic Cinema traces the evolution of the genre from its early cinematic origins to establish the founding principles of a genre standing at the crossroads between science-fiction and horror. It draws on close textual analysis to show how the pandemic reified one of the central predicaments of epidemic narratives: the constant tension existing between free-floating phenomena and the impulse to control and resist such phenomena, ultimately epitomised by the trope of the border. Showing how infectious diseases offer a rich allegorical frame which cinema uses to articulate timely anxieties of growingly invisible and deterritorialised risks, the author presents the prevalence of contagion in popular culture as a symptom of this growingly viral and virus-ridden context, both in its most literal and metaphorical sense.
This insightful study will interest students and scholars of film studies, global cinema, science-fiction, horror, popular culture and genre theory.

List of contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. Plague-Metaphors in the Age of the Virus
Chapter 2. The Origins of the Genre
Chapter 3. Defining the Epidemic Genre
Chapter 4. Connectivity: Contagion and Viral (Dis)Information
Chapter 5. Territorial Conversion: Children of Men and Viral Fear
Chapter 6. Bodily Conversion: Warm Bodies and Viral Love
Chapter 7. Containment: Blindness and Viral Media
Conclusion

About the author

Julia Echeverría is a Doctor in Film Studies from the University of Zaragoza, Spain, where she works as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Humanities

Summary

This book examines the recent trend in global cinema to feature infectious disease.

Product details

• Authors: Julia Echeverria, Julia Echeverría
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 08.12.2023
• EAN: 9781032541358
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3254135-8
• No. of pages: 238
• Series: Routledge Advances in Film Studies; Print on demand
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre; Media Studies, Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disasters & Disaster Relief, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Science Fiction & Fantasy, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Horror, Film, TV & radio, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Social impact of disasters, Film Theory & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism, Social impact of disasters / accidents (natural or man-made)