Predictably, sooner than one could imagine, the pandemic show, in the hands of dominant ideology, is about to appear on the big screen in movie theaters (or more likely on living room televisions and in low-demand exhibition halls). It is not difficult to foresee corporate producers’ upcoming projects.
With box office favorites as leading men and some of the most objectified female actresses on the market, in this order, we will see a gripping drama about a “love story” full of the latest fashionable scientific notions and the fatality of an inter-imperialist war between China, Russia, and the United States for control of a miraculous vaccine and the planet, in which good and evil face off in the transnational pharmaceutical arena. The film will feature strong “horror movie” elements.
There will be nude scenes and copulation, to the limit, dramatic tension, violence with blood and insults, perverse dialogues, candid looks, luxurious wardrobes and class contrasts. There will be impossible car chases on busy avenues in the world’s most populated capital cities. Tons of special effects, the latest sound technology, music to manipulate emotions and the wasting of vast resources of unknown origin: limousines, airplanes, yachts, motorcycles and mansions decorated with crass bourgeois excess.
It was to be expected that the pandemic would be used, like everything else capitalism is capable of manipulating to serve its shameless desires.
It was to be expected that COVID-19 would be inoculated ideologically, to explain and justify aberrations of all kinds, appearing on the screen as a new evil threatening the “good life” of the bourgeoisie, already evident in some “new normal” projects.
And, of course, movie industry merchants must already be cooking up proposals to sell with any number of infections, death, and devastation to be suffered as a result of the virus and the economic system that has made it so lethal. Some may be thinking of full-length action films, with others designing series of five or more seasons, even reality shows, plays, soap operas, and stand-up comedy acts. No one will want to be left out of the business of presenting tired clichés in an attempt to sublimate the real drama of a rotten economic system that has shown its true, inhuman colors.
They have had no qualms about using the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Nazi extermination camps, coups and assassinations of leaders and attacks on social movements… There is no limit to the greed of the spectacle makers and their sponsors. And no possible sanction for the open abuse of human misfortune by more than a few celebrity magnates.
The obscenity lies not only in the opportunism, which is predictable, not only in the profits made from human tragedy, or the gall to accuse others of your own defects, compulsively seeking someone else to blame for your crimes. The barbarity is expressed, in its full dimensions, in the frantic effort to fill the heads of peoples with junk ideology, to anesthetize consciences with an overdose of bourgeois “entertainment.” And make a good business out of it.
What is obscene is wasting money to fabricate commercially glamorous stories with the goal of destroying critical thinking and replace it with class collaboration. Empathizing with the enemy to improve his profits is a very bad idea. But despite all the obscenity, it is not only a moral problem. This is a symbolic war, theft and plunder of symbols orchestrated by the corporate mass media to be stolen from a population overwhelmed by their own fears and the fragility revealed by the unexpected, unannounced pandemic.
All this media paraphernalia, amassed by communications monopolies, and pharmaceutical, military and banking mafias, will sooner or later be featured
In one or several films and mini-series replete with nauseating formulas to sell bourgeois success. Clichés will be repeated, along with cynical expressions of pain, joy and ecstasy, plus psychotic and supremacist phrases, that could become slogans. They will do everything possible to reduce the magnitude of the pandemic to fit in an ideological “pay per view” capsule.
We know this all too well, it is foreseeable, predictable. Perhaps a new technological development or 3D special effect will surprise us. The rest will be more of the same. We know the story before the first scene is filmed. The challenge is to be ready to fight this symbolic war. To be alert, on guard intellectually and creatively, with our critical thinking sharp, taking all necessary precautions to avoid being contaminated by this toxic, demobilizing ideology - ruling class ideology. Another virus for which we have yet to develop vaccines, in sufficient quantity and within the reach of social movements. Let’s get ready.
