Pandemics in Film with Robert Alpert
Episode 16 - June 28, 2020
Robert Alpert (Fordham and Hunter College) discusses pandemics in film as a form of popular culture. After an introduction of how to analyze film and whose perspective it conveys, the conversation focuses on two films, Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011), and the shifting ways in which each represented its fictional pandemic. Alpert points out the differences and similarities between the movies and our contemporary experience of COVID-19, explains why zombie movies should be considered pandemic films, and explains why he believes movies should not be disregarded because they are “unrealistic”.
Further Reading
- Priscilla Wald, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
- Dahlia Schweitzer, Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2018.
- Robert Alpert, “George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Diary of the Dead: Recording History.” CineAction, no. 95 (December 22, 2015).
- Qijun Han and Daniel R Curtis. “Suspicious Minds: Cinematic Depiction of Distrust during Epidemic Disease Outbreaks.” Medical Humanities, May 28, 2020.
Our Guest
Robert Alpert,
Lecturer, Film Department, Fordham University
Lecturer, Film and Media Department, Hunter College
