INTRODUCING “THE HOLLYWOOD FILES”

Projecting Pandemicism in Popular Culture

(Please note: a separate Substack has been created for these same posts—see The Hollywood Files. It may be that is where these reviews will be completed, so please subscribe there.)

The Hollywood Files began in 2022 as a modest attempt in Telegram to serialize movie analyses in order to answer some very basic questions that have persisted for me since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic:

1. From where did ordinary people get the idea that the most appropriate response to a virus was to have harsh “emergency measures” and that we should comply with them?

2. Who taught average citizens to think in terms of “public health emergencies” and how did they teach them?

3. How is it that so many, both among the authorities and their experts and members of the wider society, have come to expect a certain menu of responses when it comes to “public health emergencies” even if it means disregarding established pandemic preparedness plans? In other words, what are the “unwritten” yet internalized “pandemic preparedness plans” that exist in people’s minds, worldwide?

Revisiting Pandemicism: On the Concept of “Measures”

We already know that 9/11, and the anthrax attacks, did a great deal to impel the securitization of popular culture—but this goes even further. The founding hypothesis of this study is that when people faced Covid-19, they dragged in assumptions derived from popular culture, which is itself shaped by the social system within which it is cultivated. But the story does not stop there: the creations of the industries of popular culture do not remain inert, they are not simple receptive vessels—once launched, they helped to slowly reshape popular culture in turn.

Contra Mattias Desmet, The Hollywood Files are therefore not about some “mass formation psychosis” and even less are they about mass “hypnosis” that emerged only in a very specific situation, as if out of the blue, using cultural materials conjured up on the spot. If people, everywhere, seemed to be “uncritical” and “irrational,” then what made that behaviour normal? Indeed, was it “irrational” behaviour, yet “reasonable”?

Nor, contra Peter and Ginger Breggin, is this a case of a cabal of “global predators” pre-planning “emergency measures” to discipline populations by engaging in a global “PsyOp” invented by the cabal. It is arguably much worse than that, and runs much deeper: the responses were primarily cultural, meaning deeply embedded, taken for granted, held subconsciously and thus remaining unexamined. As we proceed, we will see some of the ancient heritage of this cultural bedrock, which Hollywood brought to life/light on its screens and then re-shaped.

Imaging/Imagining Pandemics

The project is focused only on commercially made movies for entertainment (it thus excludes cartoons, magazines, newspapers, music videos, documentaries, etc.). Had we added other forms of popular entertainment and information, the case probably would not have changed but would have been amplified. We can assume that it is not likely that either cartoons, documentaries, and other media are as much sources of pandemic emergency images as are Hollywood movies.

We can begin by previewing some of the main themes and elements we will see in our reviews of Hollywood movies:

(1) A highly militarized response to a spreading illness is projected as the normal response in many Hollywood movies. This includes: using soldiers to quarantine entire towns, counties, and cities, and even imposing no-fly zones; setting up detention camps (quarantining both the sick and healthy, together); locking people in their homes; and, when things get out really of control (they always do), firing on and even bombing those suspected of infection. In these movies institutions that stand out, aside from the Department of Defense, are the CDC, Fort Detrick, and the White House.

(2) Epidemics and pandemics are always cast as massively deadly. We are thus shown: rows of corpses in body bags, lined up on the ground; stacks of coffins; infected bodies being burned; and, mass graves. Entire cities and whole states may be absolutely depopulated due to a mortality rate that frequently appears to be 100% or something close to it.

(3) Fear of everyday life and normal human behaviour: shaking hands, sharing food, talking to each other face to face, laughing, going to restaurants and cafes, even going to a movie (ironically), are all seen as dangerous threats. We are taught to fear everything, everyone, always. Disinfectants are prominent, as are the ubiquitous masks. Hollywood was convinced that masks worked, many years before the CDC itself pushed masking in real life.

(4) Audiences were introduced to the terminology of the “new normal”: it was in Hollywood movies—years before Covid-19—that audiences would have first heard of “social distancing” (including greeting by touching elbows) and “lockdowns”. Understanding that these terms would be novel or unusual for audiences, the scripts of the movies themselves take the time to explain their origins and what they mean. Add this to masking against a respiratory virus, and it was Hollywood that provided key elements of the pandemic response.

But we also learn of a strange paradox:

(5) While audiences seemed to have grasped messages of fear and total control by the authorities, they have apparently forgotten or overlooked those films with contrary messages, that contain clues and insights into telling patterns of the abuse of power. There have been commercial mass productions that show how a virus can be deliberately unleashed by a government on its own population; how an epidemic can be exploited politically and financially; how the military is guilty of acts of cruelty and mass murder; and, how the unchecked power of massive pharmaceutical corporations can become dangerous to humanity’s very existence.

The paradox then is that audiences apparently retain some messages, and implicitly reject others. The result is that fear wins—it triumphs over logic and critique. And this may be one lesson: that the fear that is nurtured in these movies is so overwhelming and memorable, that audiences remember that more than the skepticism that is voiced in many of those same films.

Those movies that are dominated by fear-based messages appear to have had the effect of serving as training manuals. Movies have softened audiences in preparation for totalitarian “measures” (to use authoritarians’ favourite euphemistic terminology). Audiences have thus been conditioned and prepared, and their knee-jerk responses thus become understandable, and predictable. Thus it would be a mistake to watch these movies (and the derived clips) as mere “entertainment”—they can act as teaching materials. What is interesting is the degree to which Hollywood movies draw on “conspiracy theories,” re-script them, and then in turn influence viewers who repeat much the same.

I am not, however, suggesting, endorsement of the theory of “predictive programming”. That theory was first put together by Alan Watt, whose work on his website, Cutting Through the Matrix, appears to be the forerunner to Alex Jones’ more widely heard assertions. The theory assumes too much central coordination and pre-planning to be credible, except perhaps as a Hollywood movie script in its own right.

(6) The feedback loop continues, from Covid-19 back into Hollywood movies: a number of apocalyptic, outbreak movies since 2020 are now being re-imprinted with what took place in the real world. Hollywood movies now bear the imprints of the same pandemic responses that they helped to inculcate. It will be interesting to see, right in front of our eyes, how Hollywood goes about reshaping the pandemic narrative as a result.

One last thing to look out for: if Hollywood script writers and directors had been in charge of organizing responses to Covid-19, one dreads to think of the possible outcomes. These likely would have included: mass arrests of the “unvaccinated”; detention camps for the “unvaccinated”; and, ultimately, the mass execution of the “unvaccinated”.

Hollywood, Audiences, Influences

As we proceed with reviews, readers might discover small or even large revisions to some of the arguments above, as the central hypothesis comes under greater test.

It should be noted that my use of the word “Hollywood” is often as an abbreviation of the entire commercial film industry, everywhere in the world. The only point validating this is that many other nations’ film industries were themselves inspired, influenced, and even formally trained by Hollywood.

When it comes to audiences, I can only make assumptions. Audiences are notoriously difficult to even define, let alone track. Over twenty years ago, anthropologist S. Elizabeth Bird pointed out these challenges in her seminal book, The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World. For example, how do you define the “audience” for a given movie? Is it people who saw the movie, and forgot about it? What about people who did not really pay attention during the movie, or saw only part of it? Do we include people who never saw the movie, yet learned of it from others, or from the media, and learned so much about it that it’s almost as if they had seen it? I have never seen the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and yet even I know of its classic scene when E.T. says “home phone” while pointing at a newspaper comic and then into space. Am I am a member of the E.T. audience? We also know from numerous anthropological studies that audiences in different parts of the world interpret movies in sometimes strikingly different ways, when they in effect become co-creators as they retell the stories of movies (see for example: Don Kulick & Margaret Wilson, “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day: Subjugating the Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a Papua New Guinean Swamp” in Visual Anthropology Review, 2008, 10[2], pp. 1-13, DOI: 10.1525/var.1994.10.2.1).

We also do not know how deeply imprinted by movies the viewers may be. As mentioned before, some may even forget they ever saw a given movie. However, as this has also happened to me, I surprise myself on occasions when I mouth a key line from a movie that I forgot having seen. I make the assumption that filmgoers are indeed imprinted to a meaningful degree, given the extent to which Hollywood movies (and associated video games) have become the novels of our time, the sources of our myths and legends, and the key referents to the great stories of our contemporary society. Some go even further, calling cinema the repository of our collective memory, and the vessel and vehicle of our collective subconscious.

Another anthropological text, older than Bird’s above, is the classic by Hortense Powdermaker: Hollywood: The Dream Factory, published in 1950 by Little, Brown & Co. in Boston. Powdermaker conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Hollywood producers, writers, and other staff, while in Los Angeles during 1946 and 1947. I have taken two key points from this wonderful book: (1) the social system in which films are made significantly influences their content and meaning; and, (2) Hollywood does not respond to “demand” from audiences—Hollywood gives to audiences what Hollywood wants to make. The first point, however, is just one half of my argument, with the second half being that Hollywood films in turn influence and shape the cultural content of the social system.

Just as probing the perceptions and reactions of actual “audience” members is beyond this study (beyond it in conceptual and practical terms), I also do not do any interviews with Hollywood producers, directors, actors, or script writers. For me, this is a shortcoming, and I will try—with time—to find ways to fill this gap. However, let it be noted that intentionality is not always conscious and available to be spoken, such that interviews and conversations might not turn up what one might hope.

My study is thus primarily historical content analysis—like reading an archive, as an ethnographer, something with which I have considerable experience. While not conducting ethnography in Hollywood itself, like Powdermaker did, my own ethnographic practice involved, along with billions of others, (involuntary) immersion in the everyday practices and communications of a pandemic, but while developing a critical perspective on the politics of pandemicism. It was during the pandemic itself that I began my reviews of pandemic films, creating an inescapable feedback loop between a portrayal of an invented reality on the screen, and participating in actual, everyday reality. My method involves triangulation: content analysis in one domain, ethnographic experience in another domain, and readings on pandemics and preparedness plans by medical specialists and policy planners.

Anthropologists will also be able to tell how, at several key points, I draw upon lessons from Pierre Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice (Stanford University Press, 1990), and his writings on cultural imperialism. In particular I agree with his approach to culture as a product of socialization, reproduced through language and social relationships, that results in durable dispositions that come without saying because they go without saying. Needless to say, Michel Foucault’s writings related to biopolitics inevitably inform some of the analysis. Last but certainly not least, I kept abreast of the work published by Giorgio Agamben on the politics of Covid-19 (see his book), which I found to be deeply incisive, eye-opening, and quite courageous.

What Remains to be Done

Thus far, in Telegram, I am barely half-way through the database of movies that I am reviewing. I thus begin this new Substack publication by revising and transferring what has already been reviewed. I am not even sure that I will complete the review process in Telegram, as I may opt to solely focus my efforts on Substack.

One caution, however: I commit the cardinal historiographic sin of not reviewing the movies in a consistent chronological order. Once the reviews are complete, I will need to:

• list the movies in chronological order;

• establish the “genealogies” of distinct “lineages” of epidemic/pandemic movies (because some clearly build on recognizable antecedents);

• outline all of the different “emergency measures” that are depicted, with an analysis of the frequency of appearance of certain “measures”.

In terms of theory, I still have to do much more work on cinema, popular culture, and spectacles. I have a strong background in visual and media anthropology, that I need to revisit. Some of the essays that will eventually appear here, will be primarily theoretical ones that help to analyze results in light of my main hypothesis.

If the reader can think of other questions that I should ask, or other angles to pursue in this study, I very much welcome early feedback.

Now, onto the movies!

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