Around the world, the coronavirus epidemic has aroused fears but also a real appetite for films, video games and anxiety-provoking series on the theme of the disease. In recent weeks, the thriller Contagion has been at the top of downloads on iTunes. It must be said, who has not thought of this Steven Soderbergh film released in 2011?
Unparalleled figures for coronavirus
In Contagion , a businesswoman, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, unintentionally reports to the United States a virus contracted via a chef from Macau. The scenario has many similarities to the Covid-19 epidemic that appeared in December in the city of Wuhan in central China. As in the film, the virus was transmitted to humans by animals before spreading.
In the film, the virus exponentially kills some 26 million people worldwide in the first month alone. Figures without common measure with the current coronavirus. This nightmarish story, however, attracted a large number of spectators. The last week of January, Contagion was thus in the top 10 of the British iTunes ranking. This week, it fell back to 55th position in Great Britain but remained in good place in many countries: number 7 in Singapore, 20 in the United States and 24 in Australia.
Relieve stress
In Hong Kong, where a Contagion scene takes place, he is in eighth position. The population of the megalopolis remains traumatized by the epidemic of Sras, which had killed 299 in 2002-2003, and from which the director was inspired. If Hong Kongers are worried, the rest of the world is curious to see, through Hollywood cinema, what a global pandemic could look like. "This sudden interest in everything related to epidemics and viruses is a way for people to better manage what is happening," said Robert Bartholomew, a medical sociologist who studies the phenomenon of collective hysteria, to AFP. Talking about traumatic events can help people "break free" and relieve stress. "
But this film is not the only one to be successful. Since its release eight years ago, the game Plague Inc., in which a virus is spreading across the planet, has been very popular. And, each time epidemics like Covid-19 or Ebola appear, the number of downloads increases, according to Ndemic Creations, the game's creative company: "We are seeing an increase in the number of players, because people are trying to find out how whose diseases spread and understand the complex aspects of epidemics. But Plague Inc. is a game, not a scientific model. ”
The # Pandemie documentary series has just been released on @NetflixFR
Perfect timing at a time when psychosis and the media revolve around #coronavirus in #China pic.twitter.com/ocpXP1not8
Perfectly timed Netflix documentary series
Last year, Extra Credits, an educational channel on YouTube, produced a series of animated films for the 100th anniversary of the so-called "Spanish" flu which, in 1918, had caused millions of deaths. The number of views has soared, especially in Southeast Asia, since the appearance of the new coronavirus, said Robert Rath, the author of the script for this series who lives in Hong Kong. For its part, Netflix could not dream of a better calendar for the release in January of its documentary series Pandemic which points to the lack of preparation, on the international level, faced with a new virus.
Worldwide searches for this series, the game Plague Inc. and the movie Contagion have exploded in the past month around the world. For Robert Bartholomew, continuous information pushes people to go on the Internet in order to make sense of their anxieties: “In the past, people went to church and prayed, whereas today, at a time more secular, they go online and discuss their fears it's a way to get out together ”.
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