Audience Shot #2.
Morbidly curious or blissfully ignorant: COVID-19 reveals new divisions.
Great Britain has long been a divided nation. Well before Brexit, we’ve had Cavaliers vs Roundheads, Protestants vs Catholics, Tories vs Labour, North vs South, daddy or chips, Corrie or EastEnders, cat or dog, and now in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the division between the blissfully ignorant (see the dozens of day-trippers travelling hundreds of miles for a nice seaside walk at the weekend in the middle of lockdown) and the morbidly curious.
According to a study released by the University of Chicago last week, just three months into the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak, the 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie ‘Contagion’ rose from the 270th most-watched Warner Bros movie to the second most-watched Warner Bros film (behind the Harry Potter franchise) and the 1995 viral pandemic movie Outbreak experienced a similar trend, according to Google Trends.
Even if you haven’t yourself, you’ll know someone who has watched ‘Contagion’ since the coronavirus outbreak started and someone who couldn’t imagine anything worse than seeing a film that accurately reflects the disaster unfolding around us in reality (not counting Jude Law’s dodgy accent).
As a nation — in fact, as a species — it seems we’re divided between between those of us who would rather not be confronted with the truth of what’s happening and those of us who want to know as much as possible — the morbidly curious who religiously study the latest graphs on death rates, watch every daily government coronavirus update and read first person stories of what it’s like to have the disease. We just can’t get enough.
But why would we search for entertainment about a topic that’s causing mass disruption in our lives? Well, it’s pretty much for the same reason so many of us like horror movies, documentaries about serial killers or rubberneck at motorway accidents.
Scientists have long studied the topic and decided that it was down to evolutionary psychology — that it is in human beings’ interest to investigate potential dangers that could threaten our survival.
But according to Eric Wilson, who wrote a 2012 book on the topic called ‘Everyone Loves A Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away’ and interviewed dozens of experts about morbid curiosity in the process, there’s a more uplifting element to add to that.
His conclusion about morbid curiosity is that: “We yearn to empathise — a yearning that is, incidentally, perfectly compatible with the evolutionary argument, since empathy helps us forge close bonds, which are essential for survival. Striving to feel what it might be like to be caught in the tsunami, or the pile-up, may be fundamentally healthy….(it’s) normal [and] noble.”
So when we find ourselves in a situation like the coronavirus outbreak that’s so far out of our control, it’s no surprise that so many of us find some kind of twisted reassurance in morbid curiosity.
In fact, it’s neatly summed up by ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ director Edgar Wright, who revealed on Twitter that he’d watched ‘Contagion’ last month, adding: “I’d say that it’s a good film to watch right now as, though it’s bleak and sobering, it offers a glimmer of hope at the end.”
Now, where’s my ’28 Days Later’ DVD?
