What Will Pop Culture Do About the Pandemic?
On whether we write this past year-plus into art, or begin the process of forgetting.
A few weeks ago, I watched the premiere of Mr. Mayor, a new Tina Fey/Robert Cook sitcom on NBC that stars Ted Danson as the unprepared mayor of Los Angeles. I was not particularly impressed with the show, though I’ll reserve my judgment for if and when I continue the season. But I was struck by one thing: it exists explicitly in a world in which the pandemic happened, but is now over.
Masks, testing, virtual learning and other clearly Covid-related things are mentioned multiple times, and in the pilot, Danson’s mayor thanks his predecessor for getting us through an “unprecedented time” (in addition to the pandemic, this version of Los Angeles suffered lightning strikes, earthquakes, malware, and murder hornets that were really tiny North Korean fighter jets). But the masks are gone, distancing doesn’t appear to be happening, and the immediate threat of the virus, it seems, is behind them.
It’s jarring to see the pandemic exist in a TV universe. Many of the new shows and films that have debuted since last March were filmed just ahead of Covid. Some, like How To With John Wilson, unexpectedly snuck it in at the end, in deeply affecting ways. Some, like The Flight Attendant, just went on to depict an alternate universe in which there were crowded New York bars in Spring 2020. Pop culture has not quite figured out what to do with the pandemic, though pieces of it exist in new music (Megan Thee Stallion takes it head on in “Body”) and documentaries like Framing Britney include modern images of masked protestors. In Mr. Mayor’s case, it felt extra odd to see the pandemic beaten, as a way of skirting depicting the day-to-day nightmare but still including it in the world. The fact that we are still IN it, so much so that production on Mr. Mayor had to shut down in December because of a Covid cluster, makes it all the more uncomfortable.
I have been wondering what culture will do once the pandemic does end, or at least once the immediate threat has left us. This has been a universal experience. It seems unimaginable that TV shows, books, and films will simply omit what will likely be nearly two year’s worth of recent global history from their fictional universes. On the other hand, I don’t think we’re going to want to relive it in art. I’m not interested in watching a film or television series about quarantine and mass death, now or in the near future, and I expect I’m not the only one. Even seeing the pandemic touched on in the Mr. Mayor universe seemed just a tad too much.
After the Spanish Flu died down in 1919, it became what historians call “America’s Forgotten Pandemic.” Over the course of nearly two years, the Spanish Flu killed about 50 million people, proving particularly deadly for young people between the ages of 20 and 40. It was, to put it mildly, a horrible time to be in America. With both the pandemic and World War I over in the 1920s, the decade was an incredibly vibrant one culturally — art, music, fashion, food, a vast expansion of Hollywood film, etc. But in all that art, the recent crisis that had embroiled the globe was rarely, if ever, addressed. People wanted to forget.
It will be interesting (“interesting”) to see if history repeats itself again.
Catching up on the news
We are now amid former reality TV star Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, which thus far seems to be serving as a bolster to his famous comment that he could “shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it” (or something along those lines, I refuse to look it up). So far, I’ve heard one defense that seemed to be, “Acquit because I personally love the Senate and the DOJ should indict him anyway,” and one that was something along the lines of, “The Constitution explictly says the words, ‘Donald Trump personally should not be convicted,’ so don’t do it.” Still, it seems likely nothing will come of this. Good times.
More news:
I don’t know whether to be impressed or mad that Taylor Swift has been so productive in the pandemic.
LOL BYE GINA CARANO, I WILL NOT MISS YOU.
Fauci says we’ll all be vaccinated by the end of summer, though I am not optimistic that he means summer 2021.
Here are some good blogs & features I am reading
“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is Culturally Sensitive Trash” — The New Yorker
“The Limits of the Lunchbox Moment” — Eater
And, though it’s not a blog or feature, I highly recommend checking out Reply All’s in-depth podcast series on the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen.
And now for some good tweets (rare!!!!)
All your (and my) tweets sucked this week. Maybe next week will be better.
BYE!