The Epidemiologist as Culture Hero: Visualizing Humanity in the Age of “the Next Pandemic”

Abstract

As a projected human extinction event, the 'next pandemic', generated according to prevalent scenarios by a newly emerged zoonotic virus (Quammen 2012; 2013), has in the last two decades assumed the role of the ultimate, world-ending catastrophe. The return of such end-of-the-world scenarios after a long lull, which followed the dissolution of the US-Soviet nuclear standoff, is a topic that has been extensively discussed in studies of Western popular culture (Keane 2006; Perkowitz 2010; Cantor 2012). What has, however, remained outside the scope of these analyses is that, represented as the ultimate catastrophe, the 'coming plague' (Garrett 1996) necessitates its very own culture hero. This twenty-first-century Gilgamesh is no other than the

Geographic charisma and the potential energy of Ebola

“…Prior to 2013, Ebola outbreaks were small in scale, mostly rural and relatively quickly contained, yet narratives of the disease tended to incite the levels of fear and anxiety in the global north that far exceeded any likely risk horizons (Broom and Broom , Washer ). From the 1990s then, there was an ‘othering’ of Ebola to Africa which may have contained fear in the global north (Leach and Hewlett ), but also reinforced the virus's mystique by squarely associating it with far‐flung places out of the geographic purview of all but the most adventurous virus‐hunters (Lynteris ). While Ebola is not endemic to any particular place as outbreaks tend to happen sporadically in a variety of locations, the idea of Ebola somehow ‘belonging’ to an undifferentiated African continent gives the impression of endemism.…”

“…The cultural iconography of Ebola unleashed by The Hot Zoneof apocalyptic scenes of unimaginably horrific symptoms, contagion, biocontainment suits, Level Four biosecurity laboratories, of places and people being 'hot' (danger from contamination or contagion) or 'cold' (safe and decontaminated)came at a time of a growing frequency and geographic spread of outbreaks (King 2015b, Ungar 1998. Outbreaks in Kikwit and Mayibout (Gabon) led to rapid mobilisations of international teams of disease experts and were greedily followed by the international press (Garrett 1996, Lynteris 2016. The exotic story line was further heightened by Ebola's suspected zoonotic transmission from primates to local hunters and the enduring mystery of its exact reservoir host.…”

Zoonosis

“…Finally, besides scientific narratives, the mythic dimension of animal sources of disease today is also evident in popular representations of zoonosis. Either in the form of epidemic photography, focusing as it does on wet markets and bush meat consumption (Lynteris 2016c), or in blockbuster epidemic apocalypse films like 28 Days Later (Boyle 2002) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Wyatt 2011), where the killer virus jumps species so as to eradicate humanity, the mythic 'animal zero', wherein the pandemic-to-be is lurking, has achieved a global spectatorship (Lynteris 2016a). For all its discourse of entanglement and interspecies enmeshment then, portraying animals as incubators, carriers, reservoirs, or spreaders of human infection, and ultimately a human extinction event, grounds the scientific study of zoonosis on a hard anthropocentric ground.…”

From fantasy to reality: managing biomedical risk emotions in and through fictional media

“…They have, for example, examined the ways in which fictional media provide inaccurate representations of science and medicine ( Collee, 1999 ; Kirby, 2003 ; Manfredini, 1999 ) and also shape the public’s understanding of and engagement with science ( Bourdaa et al, 2013 ; Dudo et al, 2010 ; Stilgoe, Lock, & Wilsdon, 2014 ; Van Den Bulck, 2002 ; Van Riper, 2003 ). Alongside such concerns with ‘factual accuracy’, researchers have also examined the ways in which fictional media produce narratives about science and medicine through, inter alia , the collective framings of bioethics ( Chambers, 2001 ; Montello, 2005 ); broader social concerns about humanity in a changing scientific landscape ( Lynteris, 2016 ; Nerlich, Clarke, & Dingwall, 2001 ; Pethes, 2005 ; Wald, 2008 ); and the portrayal and communication of risk ( Mairal, 2011 ; Nerlich, Clarke, & Dingwall, 2000 ). As Foucault (2002) has argued, texts play an active role in shaping and constructing reality, so fictional media provide more than mere representation or expression of collective concerns.…”