Abstract
Dahlia Schweitzer invites us to broaden our understanding of the war film to include films on pandemics as an allegory for our fears of global warfare and terrorism. While war has moved beyond clearly demarcated geographical and national battle lines with unclear enemies and heroes, warfare has been integrated into the “outbreak narrative” in films. Here, warfare itself can be conducted via a viral outbreak, with bioterrorism and engineered viruses infecting American film and television programs at an increasing rate. As Schweitzer explains, because pandemics are akin to terrorist attacks via the unpredictable and constant nature of the anxiety provoked by both, visual media productions on outbreaks and pandemics should be conceived of within an updated understanding of the war film genre.
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Film and Television
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Venomous. Directed by Fred Olen Ray. USA, 2001.
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Schweitzer, D. (2019). The New Face of Fear: How Pandemics and Terrorism Reinvent Terror (and Heroes) in the Twenty-First Century. In: Tholas, C., Goldie, J., Ritzenhoff, K. (eds) New Perspectives on the War Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23096-8_10
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