AustLit

'We’ve seen this scenario before, but only in the cinema: a mysterious plague, for which there is no cure, suddenly appears out of nowhere and ravages the globe. In everything from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), dealing with the Black Plague in the 1300s, to Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (2011), in which a mysterious virus causes agonizing death in a matter of days, society is unprepared for what befalls it, scampering uselessly in circles to contain the spread of the disease. This time, however, there is no barrier between the spectacle we witness unfolding on the screen and the audience. This time, the threat is real. And as in the cinematic iterations of a viral pandemic, we are unprepared in real life.' (Introduction)