Robert Alpert is an adjunct instructor at Fordham University. He is the coauthor of Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics, and Zombies in American Movies.
It’s become a cliché to observe that news coverage of disasters like the LA wildfires resembles a Hollywood movie. Yet the movies themselves are now shying away from depicting our disastrous reality by peddling easy myths of technological quick fixes.
Movies depicting the spread of disease have become a well-established genre and helped frame our understanding of the real-life COVID-19 pandemic. The spirit of these films increasingly reflects the despair and atomization of neoliberal capitalism.