A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic

<p><em>I have had a headache all day. I am afraid of what will happen next.</em></p><p></p><p><em>A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>Outbreak</em> (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.</p>