Steven Soderbergh’s pandemic thriller Contagion (2011) was trending strongly on streaming services in the US in the early days of COVID-19 restrictions, where the fiction took on an unforeseen afterlife amid a real pandemic. In this new context, many viewers and critics reported that the film seemed “uncanny,” if not prophetic. Frameworks such as Priscilla Wald’s notion of the “outbreak narrative,” as well Richard Grusin’s “premediation,” may help to theorize this affective experience on the part of viewers. Yet the film was also designed as a public health propaganda film to make people fear and better prepare for pandemics, and the present account works to recover this history. Although the film takes liberties with reality, in particular by proposing an unlikely vaccine-development narrative, Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns consulted prominent scientists and policymakers as they wrote the film, in particular Larry Brilliant and Ian Lipkin. These same scientists were consulted again in March 2020, when an effort spearheaded by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public health reunited the star-studded cast of Contagion, who created at home a series of public health announcement videos that might be thought of as a kind of re-adaptation of the film for the COVID-19 era. These public service announcements touch on key aspects of pandemic experience premediated by the original film, such as social distancing and vaccine development. Yet their very production as “work-from-home” illustrates how the film neglected to address the status of work during a pandemic. Recovering this history via Contagion allows us to rethink the film as a cultural placeholder marking a shift from post-9/11 security politics to the pandemic moment. It also becomes possible to map the cultural meaning of the technologies and practices that have facilitated the pandemic, which shape a new social order dictated by the fears and desires of an emerging work-from-home class.

中文翻译：

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重新适应大流行的预防和宣传：COVID-19中的Soderbergh传染病

史蒂芬索德伯格的流行惊悚片蔓延（2011）在COVID-19限制的初期，美国的流媒体服务发展趋势非常强劲，在这种情况下，小说在真正的大流行中遭受了无法预料的来世。在这种新情况下，许多观众和评论家称这部电影似乎“不可思议”，即使不是预言的。普里西拉·沃尔德（Priscilla Wald）的“爆发叙事”概念以及理查德·格鲁辛（Richard Grusin）的“预防”等框架可能有助于使观众的这种情感体验得到理论化。然而，这部电影还被设计为公共卫生宣传影片，以使人们更加恐惧并为流行病做好更好的准备，目前的记录致力于恢复这一历史。尽管这部电影带有现实的自由，特别是通过提出一种不太可能的疫苗开发叙事，索德伯格和编剧斯科特·Z。伯恩斯（Burns）在撰写影片时咨询了著名的科学家和决策者，特别是拉里·布里里安特（Larry Brilliant）和伊恩·利普金（Ian Lipkin）。2020年3月，当哥伦比亚大学梅尔曼公共卫生学院带头开展的一项工作使星光熠熠，Contagion，他在家中制作了一系列公共卫生宣传视频，这些视频可能被认为是对COVID-19时代电影的一种重新适应。这些公共服务公告涉及原始电影所传播的大流行经验的关键方面，例如社会距离和疫苗开发。然而，他们作为“在家工作”的作品却说明了影片在大流行期间如何被忽略以解决工作状况。通过传染病恢复历史让我们重新思考这部电影是一种文化占位符，标志着从9/11之后的安全政治向大流行时刻的转变。也有可能绘制出促成大流行的技术和实践的文化含义，从而形成一种新的社会秩序，这种社会秩序是由新兴的在家工作的人们的恐惧和渴望所决定的。