Eat the Rich: Pandemic Horror Cinema
摘要
This essay posits that pandemic horror cinema speeds up the slow violence of the pandemic so that political stakes become apparent. Thus, pandemic horror cinema enables an eloquent conversation on the relation between the imagined diseases of the Other and modernity as an engine of middle-class preservation. The essay traces the tradition of the gothic and horror pandemic narrative from its nineteenth-century origins to the present moment in time when it has proliferated into a number of different nations, languages and ideological positions. The article then explores these positions through a discussion of the films Dawn of the Dead (2004), I am Legend (2007), World War Z (2013), and Train to Busan (2016). Focussing on religion, race, ethnicity, and class, the essay describes how the pandemic horror cinema helps project different understandings of self and Other through the image of violent pandemic disease.