One of the first films or genres that enjoyed a revival following the spread of COVID-19 was Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and for good reason too. The bizarre similarities between present-day events and the plot of the 2011 thriller where a virus leads to chaos in the world including social order disarray and the fight to find a vaccine that can stop the spread of the virus expectedly renewed interest in the nine-year-old film.
In times such as these, it is also understandable for some to indulge in end-of-the-world, zombie, and such genre films in the name of escapist entertainment. Psychologists believe that the reason for a surge in the viewing of pandemic films could have to do with the individuals trying to process complex information that isn’t covered by news media and also feeling in control.
Among other things, the coronavirus pandemic has also slowed down life enough for many of us to realise and rediscover certain things. While it has given a few of us an opportunity to partake on ‘binge-watching’, probably the first such experience for some, it has also introduced the present generation to shows that were the norm much before the kind of material they would readily associate with the frenetic act of watching months worth of television series in a matter of few hours came about.
It’s interesting that while audiences were divided between comfort-watching or finding similarities between the reel and real pandemic, Doordarshan’s decision to telecast some of its most popular shows from the 1980s and 1990s made some people see red. The argument that binge-watching Ramayan, Mahabharat, Circus and Byomkesh Bakshi would not slow down the spread of COVID-19 is one of the most unintelligent ones that you’d ever come across. If a considerable chunk of any online streaming platform’s revenue model depends on reruns of older television series such as Friends and all-time classic Seinfeld, it’s only standard practice for a television channel to cash in on its catalogue.
The record viewership that Ramayan enjoyed in its rerun—an average episode received 42.6 million tune-ins, which when compared to the 2019 IPL final, 55.6 million—could give Netflix and Amazon Prime a run for their money.
In 2003, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said, “Disaster movies might be the only optimistic social genre that remains today.” They imagine a utopia of social cooperation by conjuring a situation of absolute catastrophe. The impact of Covid-19 on cinema and television is still unknown but if fiction is to be believed, what comes after is simplistic and devoid of anything fancy. On some level, the likes of Circus and Ramayan and Seinfeld convey just that, and they would do fine.
gautam@chintamani.org, Film historian and bestselling author