‘It’s like a movie’
Industry players say COVID-19 fears mirror apocalyptic thrillers
They feel like they have seen COVID-19 before – not in real life but on television screens in the form of pandemics that trigger mass paranoia. It’s no wonder players in the entertainment industry are likening the events surrounding the novel coronavirus outbreak to storylines from apocalyptic movies.
Contagion, starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow; I Am Legend, starring Will Smith; and even cartoon series The Simpsons have been trending on popular movie sites across the globe. They all seem to foreshadow what many are now grappling with as the COVID-19 virus continues to spread. “When you read all these books and watch all these movies and you see what’s happening now, of course, you can’t help but think, ‘Is this real?’” dancehall artiste QQ said. “You’re wondering if this was planned, because it all can’t just be playing out like this. I’m not taking these movies as fiction no more, and certain movies me nah watch again.”
The virus, which was first identified in Wuhan, China, last November, had, as of yesterday, infected more than 213,500 worldwide and is responsible for 8,790 deaths. In addition to health systems being under pressure, governments across the world have responded by closing borders, imposing travel bans, closing schools, and ordering people to remain indoors.
‘FEELS UNREAL’
“I’m not going to say that it feels like we’re in a movie, but on some level this all just feels unreal,” said artiste manager Janice Young.
“This generation has never seen anything like this and that’s what makes it so eerie. I don’t know if we had maybe lived through the cholera-era, we would feel differently, but all the other viruses we’ve seen – Ebola, SARS, etc – it never got to this level here in Jamaica, so the only experience we have with anything like this is what we see in the movies. Contagion and all these apocalyptic movies are really relatable now,” Young continued.
For artiste-turned-producer Esco, although the events from COVID19 seem like a movie, the sooner people realise it is real, the better it will be.
“We don’t know what the conspiracy is behind this, or if this is as a result of something we did to ourselves,” he said, adding that “whether there is conspiracy behind it or not, what we should focus on at this point is the preservation of life”.
Unlike in the movies when a superhero saves the day, the entertainment industry players said the key to surviving this frightening disease is for people to take personal responsibility to contain the spread of the virus.
“When you look at things, you can’t get too scared, because fear can feed this thing. We just have to do what we can to manage things,” Esco said.
Young agreed: “We have to now not allow fear to reign over us and, instead, think rationally. We have to realise this is real. It’s not a movie, and we can be in serious danger if we don’t think logically.”