Pandemics and Popular Culture

The three books reviewed here deal with the interrelation between pandemics, society, and culture. The common subtext within them is that pandemics have always had a shattering effect on the social status quo. Published at the threshold of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they bear concrete implications for assessing how American popular culture is being impacted by the outbreak, and how it might evolve. The review is divided into five sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Plagues and Culture; 3. Covid-19 and Misinformation Culture; 4. Pandemics and Society; 5. Conclusion. In the span of two decades, the world has been subjected to several pandemics, including SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, and currently Covid-19 in 2020–21. Because of this, several cultural phenomena have crystallized that are the direct consequence of what can be called a pandemic era, ranging from a broad interest in the plague literature and cinema of the past to the burgeoning of books for the general public on pandemics and how their outcomes (medical and social) are shaped by the politics and discourses of misinformation. A recurring theme in the books under review is that coping with pandemics, and especially ‘pandemic fatigue’, involves an engagement with literature and the arts—both of which have themselves been shaped by pandemics of the past. The books are thus significant in shedding speculative light on how pandemics might alter (or not) our socio-cultural habitus.