Louise Erdrich’s ‘The Sentence’ Is a Ghost Story and Epitaph for the Covid Shutdown
Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence becomes a way to acknowledge the surrealism that has always pulsated just beneath the surface of American life.
pandemic
Why Is There Still So Much Nostalgia for Nuclear Apocalypse?
The popularity of nuclear apocalypse is nostalgia for a time when our worries were wrapped in a single nuclear package, and all we needed was a bunker and a dream.
The Imagination of Disaster 2.0: Revisiting Susan Sontag in the Age of the Pandemic Horror Narrative
Considering Susan Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster” and modern apocalyptic narratives, are sci-fi and horror still “inadequate responses” to our world?
Did the Pandemic Shutdown Change Hollywood for Good?
The entertainment industry had to change when COVID-19 closed almost all its operations. Media scholar Kate Fortmueller considers the lasting effect.
How Could F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ NOT Mention the Flu Pandemic of 1918?
F. Scott Fitzgerald and his literary contemporaries ignored the 1918-1919 pandemic. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Photo Essay: Postcards from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Postcards from the milieu of the pandemic shutdown. A photo essay.
‘Chrono Trigger’ and Coping with Pandemic Trauma through Video Games
Coping with the COVID-19 shutdown via a video game, where I have control over the apocalyptic outcome, was what I needed. Chrono Trigger delivered.
Taylor Swift’s Pandemic Redemption
Taylor Swift responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with an album uniquely suited for it: contemplative, low-fi, acoustic songs perfect for isolation.
On Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch” in a Time of Forbidden Touch
Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch” perfectly captures the agonizing isolation that so many of us have been experiencing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Little Fish’ Director on Love and Loss During Pandemic
Little Fish director Chad Hartigan talks with PopMatters about his fascination with love, memory, and losing the ability to remember.
The Underestimated Resilience of Peace and Modern Society
While we feast on fictionalized (and real) tales of murder and awfulness, we really just want to live our lives in peace and are not interested in preying upon one another. Our essential goodness has become clear during our times of COVID-19.
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COVID-19 and Our Purgatory of Consumerism
Our pandemic quarantine has become the sublime enactment of Baudrillard's theory of consumption – that modern consumption, with its myth of individual liberty and choice, is in fact 'de-socialising'.