Richard Scheib: A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic, Kartoniert / Broschiert
A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic
- Publisher:
- Headpress, 06/2025
- Binding:
- Kartoniert / Broschiert
- Language:
- Englisch
- ISBN-13:
- 9781915316394
- Item number:
- 12040336
- Volume:
- 220 Pages
- Weight:
- 567 g
- Format:
- 248 x 171 mm
- Thickness:
- 19 mm
- Release date:
- 19.6.2025
- Note
-
Caution: Product is not in German language
Blurb
"I have had a headache all day. I am afraid of what will happen next."
A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. Already committed to writing a book about plagues and pandemics in popular culture, Covid-19 felt like a perverse twist of fate for Richard Scheib. Media depictions of deadly contagions had, to this point, been speculative and often off the mark; his book takes an in-depth look at what filmmakers imagined would happen and contrasts it with the reality.
International in scope, the book examines films in a wide variety of genres, from the silent era to the present day. Black Death, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu - it explores fictionalized accounts of plague and pestilence such as box-office hit Outbreak (1995), as well as 'mockumentary' treatments. Whether the threats depicted have a basis in reality - the biowarfare of the Cold War era, for instance - or are more fantastical, Scheib demonstrates how the fear of contagion has provided a wealth of inspiration for the big and small screen.