CONTAGION Means Something

Watch Between the Frames

Another rainy Seattle day. This climate practically imposes mandatory film viewership. Theaters provide safe havens from the wet and cold. And upon exiting, a long walk beneath the mist and gray encourages rumination on where producers and studios seek to ferry the human mind.

Today: CONTAGION.

I go in expecting a propaganda film and emerge duly obliged.

Contagion tells a story of benevolent public servants, motivated by nothing more than duty. They dash about across the world in pursuit of a virus and its vaccine.

The CDC and the WHO convey as spokes model agencies for the support of centralized government. Never the viewer mind the perhaps more easily questioned legitimacy of acronyms such as FDA, DOE, and EPA. When it comes to the protection of innocents from superbugs, best bow to the moral authority of a few.

We have self sacrificial characters who believe the best course of action is to keep information withheld. Transparency spells imminent danger to the public.

A sort of meta fear mongering goes on across the narrative arc as one by one and million by million citizens and politicians alike fall prey to the new and improved fast acting death touch of a phantom.

If the only thing to fear is fear itself, then perhaps we arrive back at square one, with fear still endowing control of mind and body as our greatest idol and puppeteer. Dread it seems shall always remain the conductor of mortals, regardless of its source, be it death or suffering or horror films.

Yet in Contagion the message practically back hands the audience with a 'trust your superiors' bitch slap. It concludes without metaphor that the greatest thing to fear is ourselves. Not the disease, not a government of ever increased power and scope. Fear the riots. The chaos. The thieves who will come to steal your food.

And above all, fear the internet and bloggers. The self fancied young journalists who wise old doctor men reduce to just 'graffiti artists who use punctuation'. In Contagion the televisions that recite the evening news in the background convey only honest truth, while critical paranoids toy with the minds of millions and foster ignorance and chaos on a scale Walter Cronkite never fathomed.

Contagion damns the populace and the accessible nature of the internet. I fear, yes it scares me, that perhaps a slow loss of individuation looms on our horizon. The FEMA camps, martial law, Homeland Security, these good men and women who care about us more than we do. We NEED them the message blares . More perhaps than we need ourselves.

It comes as no surprise to me that Steven Soderbergh would take on a project such as this. He supports the 'deputization of the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates'. To me that translates to 'don't let individuals pie slice monopolized profits.' Again, the internet be thine enemy. The masses too. Governing entities, not so much.

This film belies a specific agenda. Any ensemble picture necessitates a more meticulously planned process than your typical hero/protagonist story. Assisting Soderbergh in his quest rank a veritable gauntlet of famous names. I typed 'Contagion propaganda' into google and the results indicate I am no loner. This film gave pause to many skeptics.

The CDC was also consulted on the project as confirmed by NPR. Acronyms acronyms acronyms. In a time when authoritative legitimacy of big, centralized institutions continues to wane, the State will increase the utilization of large studios, cult of celebrity, and sensationalized media to maintain power. The studios will benefit too, for without intellectual property law, they face drastic disinflation of their generational bloat.

Reprinted with permission from Watch Between the Frames.

October 11, 2011

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