This
usually isn't asked out of any genuine concern, but out of
bemusement. After all, it's understandable why there's a certain
schadenfreude in seeing the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the
world suddenly brought to its knees. But as someone who is at the end
of the day an American, what it means is greater immiseration for
those with whom I share a passport and a flat accent, and after the
bodies are swept away, as a man more perceptive than I once said,
“everything stays the same, but worse.”
I try
to stay off social media, but I couldn't help but notice the ongoing
arguments over masks that are apparently the topic du jour back home.
Given the social stratum of which I am a part, the opinions I see are
naturally far more pro-mask. I will say up front, that this is a
complex issue, and I don't see one side or the other as explicitly,
100 percent right – rather, it's dependent on a lot of
material-world questions, all revolving around what mask you use, how
you use it, and what other measures you're taking – but that kind
of nuance doesn't translate online. What seems worth interrogating as
a layman, rather, is the social climate surrounding the issue, which
can be as interesting as the scientific and epidemiological reality.
When
I see pro-mask Facebook posts and memes, the touchstones are the
standards of liberal discourse – the importance of looking out for
one's neighbor, “believing science,” a nod towards success
stories in other countries, and a palpable disgust at those for whom
convenience = freedom. Now, those are basically good sentiments. I,
too, like being kind and educated and cosmopolitan, and I, too,
dislike puerile American conservatism.
The
reason shit like this drives me absolutely nuts is that it is – yet
again – the American reduction of what should be a cold-blooded and
scientific issue to yet another goddamn, motherfucking culture war.
Like
all culture wars, it is predicated upon individual and ultimately
consumer
action (paired, of course, with plenty of online scolding) rather
than any kind of collective effort. As far as I'm concerned, if you
think that consumption choices can function as a form of activism,
you're as big a fucking rube as the upper middle class cunt who goes
to a protest so he can take his wife to The Cheesecake Factory again
– the difference being is that the plastic straw-eschewer and the
mask-reminder don't do active harm.
I
can empathize. You're probably stuck at home, either laid off or
working from the living room, stuck with your family members who
grate on you, or stuck alone, trying desperately to stay positive,
trying to not feel helpless, trying not to feel like you're on a
rocket to the sun, and no one is offering any valid solutions.
Whether you're aware of it or not, the complete neoliberal
evisceration of public services has probably fucked you, and the
political and executive classes as a whole don't give a shit about
you. So you click a button in the vague hope that something, anything
will happen, and it feels like a measure of taking control.
The
desire to act, even if your actions are purely performative, is of
course not limited to American soil. At my neighborhood market in
Bangkok, staff were diligently requiring masks and temperature
checks. Never mind that people were rubbing their mitts all over
their faces, that the cheap thermometers were likely unreliable (and
irrelevant for incubating cases), that there wasn't even a semblance
of social distance, and that people were, y'know, eating. The
performance was to be followed.
For
what it's worth, given that it's a social norm in this part of the
world, I've been wearing a mask in enclosed spaces, even though I
know that given the way that the humidity accumulates and the fact
that it's an ordinary cloth mask, it's probably more of a risk than
wearing nothing, and even though I'll probably have to remove it to
communicate with a cashier (you try speaking your third language
through a thick cloth mask, my dudes). I follow the performative
role, simply to reduce friction. Which is why we do a lot of things,
really.
The
sudden spike in popularity of Contagion
points to the fact that in trying times, people need metaphor systems
and structures in order to not feel like their clawing at the padded
walls. I haven't watched it, and I don't particularly care to.
However,
I did watch Roger Corman's 1964 masterpiece, The
Masque of the Red Death,
with gorgeous cinematography by Nicholas Roeg (who would later go on
to direct, fucking my mind with the one-two punch of The
Man Who Fell to Earth
and Don't Look
Now),
and starring Vincent Price as the leader of a coterie of wealthy
perverts who try to lock themselves behind palace walls doing
shits-and-giggles Satanism and having weirdly joyless orgies, trying
to hide from the plague ravaging the countryside. Villagers seeking
refuge are shot, plots are made, survivors are few, and the Red Death
comes for everyone.
This
is the metaphor I prefer. Death stalks us all – you are
fundamentally powerless as an individual in an impassive universe,
and to deny the existence of death is to make yourself a grotesque.
The illusion of control is a great lie, and the courtiers, merrily
letting the people die, concerned with saving their own skin, suffer
the same fate. Salvation is a fool's errand, whether from God or
Satan, and heavens and hells are human creations.
Granted,
this is pretty much textbook existentialism – something
conspicuously absent from contemporary film, when you come to think
of it – but it was somehow comforting to feel a bit less insane.
Which, in turn, means that this was my own balm, my own narrative
comfort. As was writing this.
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