We can all agree that we have probably heard enough about COVID-19 and the daily updates about the prognosis of the world can feel exhausting. Yet we are endlessly fascinated with pop culture representations of disasters and diseases. As the seriousness of the pandemic has increased, so has the prevalence of people searching for pandemic movies on Google. Perhaps there is an odd comfort to catastrophizing our own experience through movies, as if to contextualize an invisible threat into the very visible world Matt Damon and Goop herself. As mental health professionals, we typically tell our clients to practice their safe coping skills whenever they begin to catastrophize to reduce their anxiety. In this situation, however, throwing ourselves head long into the panic of another world might be the best we can do to cope. At least in the movies, we have a reassurance that the story will be wrapped up and answers will be had.
A quick review of top disaster movie lists revealed that many of our favorite panic movies are male-centered. Maybe it’s too difficult to pass the Bechdel Test when a tsunami is hurtling toward the shore or a pandemic threatens the globe. Or maybe these films reflect a harsh reality in our lives: disaster impacts are highly gendered. The last few times a virus or illness has swept through the globe, women’s earning ability took longer to recover than their male counterparts. As many people are forced to shelter at home and schools close down, women are more likely to be called on to provide care for the whole family, sick or not. In situations like this pandemic, the second shift never ends; boundaries between work life and home life are so continuously blurred that women may find it difficult to delineate between all the responsibilities they hold. We still have a long way to go before we reach the end of the particular crisis, but I urge you dear readers, enjoy your pandemic movies while dividing up labor in an egalitarian way. Just because society has ground to a halt does not mean that feminism must.
- Grace Fowler
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