Yes, of course there’ll be a Covid-19 movie, as soon as they can find a film crew not in self-isolation, but meantime, how are you enjoying the crisis?
Is it permitted to even ask the question? Our whole world has been turned upside down, you or someone you love may die prematurely, when it’s over we’re all going to be a lot poorer. So how is it you feel more intensely alive than you have done in years?
Because suddenly we’re living in a drama. By which I mean one of those stories we watch on Netflix, or in the cinema. Our life now comes with what we in the screenwriting business call inciting incidents, character arcs, plot beats and climaxes. We track the unfolding story agog, not knowing what tomorrow will bring, and that alone delivers a buzz of excitement to life. Add to that a very real dread as we contemplate the collapse of our safe world, and the stakes get high indeed. We all know how different it is when you’re ‘inside the story’, when you watch a drama about something you’ve personally experienced, divorce, say, or cancer. It connects, and hurts, and if it’s good it’s cathartic. Now we’re all inside the story, and – such a great and terrifying plot device – we don’t know how it’s going to end.
Now we’re all inside the story, and – such a great and terrifying plot device – we don’t know how it’s going to end.
This is a car crash. We’re on the motorway and the crash is on the other side and we’re slowing down to look. Why? Because we think we might see a mangled body, some blood on the tarmac, at the very least a covered stretcher by an ambulance. Our better selves disapprove of this, it smacks of schadenfreude. Rubber-necking isn’t cool, and it slows down the traffic. But the truth is, it’s a necessary impulse. We want to touch these rare moments of injury, pain, death, because we need to know what it’s like, we need to imagine in safety the terrors we fear and avoid. There’s superstition here as well, the secret belief that we deserve to suffer, and that this other suffering, beyond the central reservation, is our own punishment transferred to someone else. You can build religions on this story-line. God sends his son to die in agony for our sins. I’ve never quite seen the sense of that plan from God’s point of view, but from our point of view, yes, please let someone else do the suffering while I watch.
Issue 87, 26th March 2020
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