We watched "Safe" last night (the last chance to catch it on the Criterion channel) and this morning I'm reading articles that connect it to the Covid pandemic. To list a few:
"Watching Safe at the End of the World/In the second installment of his series about films that resonate in the age of COVID-19, our critic dives deep into an unsettling 1995 movie with Julianne Moore" (Variety): "[T]he trembling, terrified, inexplicable Carol White—who starts the movie at the peak of late-’80s prosperity and ends it battle-scarred, gaunt, and living in a literal igloo on a commune—has been on my mind. Yes, because of COVID-19: because a movie in which a woman starts to feel alienated from her own home, and from the people surrounding her, and from her own life writ large, has an eerie resonance."
"Todd Haynes’s Masterpiece 'Safe' Is Now a Tale of Two Plagues" (The New Yorker): "'Safe' is an unsettling film to watch while in quarantine from a disease that feels both everywhere and nowhere, and which is being willfully misunderstood by powerful people who can’t quite care enough to fight it. Whatever name the culture gives to the force that prises people apart at a given moment in time, it has always pushed in the same direction—back inside and further into solitude, back into blame and shame and doubt, back toward the mirror and a reflection we keep trying to trick."
"Why Julianne Moore in Safe Is Everyone’s Social Distancing Panic Mood Right Now/Todd Hayne's 'Safe' is all too prescient" (W): "Though fans of the film point out that it touches on numerous themes of modern life (there are correlations to AIDS, feminism, predatory self-help mumbo jumbo, and the loneliness of privileged suburban life, for sure), the film resonates especially right now because it asks 'What’s worse: a mysterious disease or the stress of trying to protect yourself?'"
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“What’s worse: a mysterious disease or the stress of trying to protect yourself?”
What’s worse: a common virus that government and media hype as “mysterious” or the stress of the hysterical voices pretending COVID is as deadly as the Plague?
Annual influenza kills more children than COVID historically yet no one refused to teach in person before. Teachers insisted on being first in line for COVID vaccines (which is an inappropriate word for the novel mRNA therapies that targeted the spike protein of C-19 instead of the parts of the virus that don’t mutate continuously like the spike protein does) and GIT THEM and still resist going back their perfectly safe classrooms.
'"'Safe' is an unsettling film to watch while in quarantine from a disease that feels both everywhere and nowhere, and which is being willfully misunderstood by powerful people who can’t quite care enough to fight it.'
Was he actually in quarantine?
He's an idiot...'powerful people' have done nothing but 'fight it.' Most of their efforts have been wrong-headed, but this has been the greatest opportunity in history for 'powerful people' to become even more powerful, and to exert that power to a greater extent than in any other time.
Of course, this is from the 'New Yorker,' so I'm sure it's a swipe at Trump. These lefties don't have an original thought in their PC heads...the hive mind rules even movie reviews.
I note in passing that Safe, like Blindness, like Outbreak, like Evolution, like Children of Men, like World War Z, is a work of fiction with only tenuous connections to reality. And Rene Russo stars in some of them, not Julianne Moore.
What's worse, deling with the reality of a pandemic that has already done its worst in this country, or embracing pandemic porn to oppress the citizenry?
People are constantly dying. They die of a lot of things.
Right now suicide, drug overdoses and domestic violence related deaths are spiking.
Fortunately not a single person has died of the Flu, Pneumonia, or lung cancer though for almost a year!
We need to thank the Chinese for finding a cure for these diseases.
"...and living in a literal igloo on a commune." I guess that's opposed to a figurative igloo on a commune. Has COVID made many of us retreat to our figurative igloos? And are we sure igloo isn't considered an offensive term yet?
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
Annual influenza kills more children than COVID historically yet no one refused to teach in person before.
Somehow in 2020 influenza only killed I believe 1 or 2 children per 100000.
They found a miracle cure.
It is mysterious.
Now put your mask on.
I can only laugh at the twisted mental processes of the typical city-dwelling eloi. There was a time when we actually believed that the urban class were "elite" in the sense of superior, more sophisticated, knowledgeable, worldly-wise. We now know that they are not "elite," but rather merely autistic. They seem like the strange creatures that live their entire lives in caves, without any light but what they might generate with their own peculiar brand of bio (or is it "psycho?) luminesence. I pity them. Or I would if I did not hold them in such contempt.
Vaccination
After the shots
Not a fever
No side effect
Except this pause
Or call it fear
Of going back
To the old life
The world of flesh
I am thinking
This is how ghosts
Floating edgewise
Near visible
And when given
Another chance
To be with us
Would turn it down
Would turn away
From stink and filth
And all the mess
Of being real
Would choose to stay
Thin and empty
Among the dreams
To which they're bound
I wrote that this past March. Seems somewhat relevant.
Sounds worth watching. Sorry I missed it on TCC. I'll have to see if I can get it on one of the streaming giants.
I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if this fits or not but it kind of sounds like the story of Howard Hughes who ended up isolated and alone because of various issues, which included a fear of germs.
I'm reading a book, which isn't about this but for other reasons includes some information about the Black Death, the great plague of the mid-1300s. I wonder if there was a way back machine that would allow time travel, if we could talk to the people who were around back then, I wonder what they would say about our pandemic. Because theirs seems to have been about as scary and as gruesome as it gets.
Some of us have never been in panic mode.
“What’s worse: a mysterious disease or the stress of trying to protect yourself?”
The mysterious aspect of the disease results from the stress of influential people attempting to capitalize on Covid. After 18 months, there is still no clear and consistent information to protect yourself, other than wear as many masks as you can tolerate and stay away from people who aren't important to the Democratic Party. Tests are still unreliable, and treatment is limited to quarantining until you call the E-squad because you can't breath.
Commenter MJB Wolf is correct, a subset of teachers act like going back to school is equivalent to trying to get out of Afghanistan. I hope it's a small subset, but significant enough that two teacher subreddits are currently shutdown to protest misinformation allowed on Reddit. What counts as misinformation keeps changing, but probably includes all the true statements of MJB Wolf.
>>'What’s worse: a mysterious disease or the stress of trying to protect yourself?'"<<
An interesting question since, in the case of "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome," (the subject of "Safe") the stress of trying to protect yourself *is* the disease. At least that is what medical science, having exhaustively studied it, has concluded. Or, as has been generally euphemistically stated by the investigators, MCS is a disease that has shown no "non-psychologic" cause (lack of a consistent dose response to proposed causative substances on controlled testing; high incidence of psychiatric disorder in MCS sufferers - and in their families; etc, to name a few of the factors in that conclusion).
The timing of the movie coincides with that period in which MCS was reaching the zenith of its vogue.
"Watching Safe at the End of the World"
At the End of the World? Seriously?
We are in the midst of a mass psychosis, and I don't know how we get out of it now. I keep reminding myself of Charles Mackay's old adage:
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
The problem is that this may take a long, long time for our society to regain its senses.
'I'm reading a book, which isn't about this but for other reasons includes some information about the Black Death...'
Now that was a plague!
Best said in a Paul Hogan voice...
So long as we’re going to try to enjoy this, The Rapture is the creepiest movie I remember from that era. I think it came out at about the same time as Safe, which was pretty disturbing but nothing compared with The Rapture. Then there’s the actual bird flu miniseries set in Britain, called Survivors. And the New Zealand movie Aftershock, in which you can contemplate spending your final days with the coworkers in the next cubicle.
"We are in the midst of a mass psychosis...."
Yes...the almost psychotic frenzy of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers who think it is a rape of their freedom to be required to take reasonable and prudent precautions to avoid being infected or infecting others with a virus that at the one year point had killed more Americans than had been killed in (all the years of) WWII. In short, being asked to be considerate of our fellow citizens is seen as the equivalent of(or a prelude to) storm troopers smashing down our doors. The idea of freedom has become nothing more than militant solipsism, with the idea now complete anathema that with our freedom comes obligations to those around us.
Robert- for a disease that has a 99.7% survival rate, and much higher survival rates for everyone under the age of 70. Nice try turning it around on me, but I ain't stupid. However, I will ask you to answer an honest question- when, exactly in your opinion can we stop masking everyone including children? Or is it now a permanent part of the wardrobe, and I am a psychotic for asking?
It sounds like a horrible movie to me but it's on Amazon as a $2.99 rental for anyone intrigued.
"Robert- for a disease that has a 99.7% survival rate, and much higher survival rates for everyone under the age of 70. Nice try turning it around on me, but I ain't stupid. However, I will ask you to answer an honest question- when, exactly in your opinion can we stop masking everyone including children? Or is it now a permanent part of the wardrobe, and I am a psychotic for asking?"
Sure...COVID has a high survival rate, but it if infects enough people, as it has, significant numbers of people will die who wouldn't have otherwise. Witness the greater-than-WWII US deaths from COVID in one year.
When do we stop masking? It seems we already are, officially in many places, and unofficially in many other areas. Fer crissakes, it's only been a year and a half since it began...it's hardly as if we have been under the hob-nailed boots of the COVID safety protocols for more than a fraction of time. Life is returning to normal in many places, and wearing masks--where it is still required--is no sacrifice at all and does not impede one's life or freedom in any way. It never did. (The real damage, aside from the deaths, was the loss of jobs and closing of businesses. The govt. has rightly taken some steps to alleviate the worst harm to those so affected, but, as usual, it's not enough, and businesses are getting more love than individual citizens.)
The whole fucking hissy fit about wearing masks comes primarily from the infantile segment of our population, most of whom are Trump supporters, and who think making asses of themselves in protest of COVID tyranny marks them out as brave freedom fighters. No, it marks them out as childish assholes with persecution complexes and delusions of grandeur. It's a make-believe and self-aggrandizing kindergarten fight they're fighting.
There was a time when all we heard was how many thousands were dying from the virus. Now that has changed to the increase in the number of cases. Could this be attributed to the Delta variant being less deadly? That doesn't stop the powers that be from pushing a mass vaccination campaign but that might be a very good idea. It seems that there is a new variant spreading that is vaccine resistant and it has been found in the U.S.
According to the article;
The World Health Organization says it is monitoring a new vaccine-resistant variant of COVID-19 called "mu" that appears to be rising in Colombia.
The mu strain, or as the scientific name goes B.1.621, was first detected in January in Colombia. So far, 2,000 cases of the variant have been detected in the United States.
According to Geert Vanden Bossche, who holds a Ph.D. in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany, conducting mass vaccination of Sars-CoV-2 is counterproductive and promotes the virus's evolution.
"Conducting mass vaccination campaigns on a background of high infection rates generates optimal conditions for breeding even more infectious Sars-CoV-2 variants," Bossche writes. "The combination of massive, spike-directed immune pressure combined with high infectious pressure rapidly allows these variants to reproduce more effectively such as to outcompete previously circulating variants/ strains. Mass vaccination, therefore, promotes viral evolution towards more infectious variants."
Vaccine Resistant COVID-Variant on the Rise in Colombia
"and wearing masks--where it is still required--is no sacrifice at all and does not impede one's life or freedom in any way. It never did."
It might be no sacrifice to you, Robert, but is to me and many others. Your subjective feelings don't matter here. If I thought wearing 3 masks and a face shield was no sacrifice at all, would you agree with that and happily do so if mandated- I suspect not? Basically, what I am taking away from your comment is that there is no endpoint to the mandates- there is no line the health mandarins could cross if it helped save one life. People with your attitude are actively dangerous to liberty- I truly don't understand people like you.
"It might be no sacrifice to you, Robert, but is to me and many others. Your subjective feelings don't matter here."
The subjective feelings on display is your assertion that wearing a mask is a "sacrifice" to you and "many others." My statement is objectively true. Wearing a mask does not impede one's ability to go where one wishes to go or to do anything one might want to do: to travel, to enjoy one's friends and family, to enjoy the activities one enjoys. I truly don't understand people like you who consider it an offense and a rape of one's freedom to be expected to practice safety protocols that do not restrict your movement and that will help reduce the spread of a virus that has killed (and harmed) many who share the community with you. Freedom does not come without obligations attached, obligations to those around us, (if that only means not punching your neighbor in the face, or not disturbing their sleep by playing loud music at 3:00 AM, or, yes, not infecting them with a virus that may have harmed you minimally or not at all, but that may kill others you encounter).
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