Pandemic, coronavirus and Dogville
Jamile Borges da Silva[1]
USA, March 2020. The world assists Dr. Anthony Fauci, health consultant to US President Donald Trump, renders and covers his face in response to Trump's observations in a press conference on the COVID-19 pandemic. The failure of the American president is a mix of disinformation, bravado and preconception that constrains the doctor responsible for articulating strategies, measures and orientations for the formulation of public policies for the country.
Philippines, April 2020. President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, known worldwide for his controversial statements and radical-conservative positions, says in a public statement that he commanded to shoot to kill in order to break isolation rules. The declaration occurred after confrontations and imprisonment of residents of poor areas of Manila, who asked the government to help feed them.
Brazil, May 2020. The Brazilian president, JM Bolsonaro, contrary to the guidelines of the WHO, resigns the Minister of Health during the period of confrontation of the pandemic, atiça o odio e a opinião publica contra las isolation measures (lockdown) while promoting street outings without protection, without masks, inciting crowds and announcing festivities and walks in the capital of the country that is gradually becoming the epicenter of the global epidemic. (see data updated daily on different monitoring platforms and also on the WHO portal).
Since the formal announcement of two first cases of COVID-19 in the world, we have been assaulted by images and news that range from sensationalism to real concern to the dissemination of fake news, turning the fight against viruses into a herculean exercise for all the people involved in the multiple dimensions of the pandemic.
A scenario that involves complex and multifaceted quests. The pandemic is the result of an intersection, a crossover between biology, technology, culture, economy, globalization and society. Meanwhile, at the first moment the bio/epidemiological dimension articulated with cultural constructs is higher. Because? The fact that coronavirus has had its first cases in the city of Wuhan, in China, has led to some new knowledge: racism, xenophobia and discourses of a fascist anti-immigration order, promoting the date of borders and terrorism against Asian populations, in the wake of the discourse that all 'them' are equal. Once again, a new dichotomy between 'Nós' and 'Outros', paraphrasing Stuart Hall or 'West' and 'Rest', this is, the West and the rest of the world.
Kingsley (2020) in a recent article for the Internet warns us about the parallels between the origin of the AIDS virus and COVID-19. We have two highly infectious viruses with a long and asymptomatic incubation period that quickly spread among traditionally vulnerable populations, that is, with less capacity to react appropriately and based on safe investigations. Furthermore, at the origin of the epidemic, both in the case of coronavirus (at the point of being called Chinese virus by some world leaders) when AIDS, reinforces conservative and discriminatory attitudes in relation to affected people, resulting in torrents of hate and dissemination of lies – fake news – reinforcing stigmas, stereotypes and preconceptions.
Crises of this type – epidemiological and viral – as in the case of the outbreak of Ebola on the African continent at the beginning of 2013 tended to explain mechanisms of segregation and inequalities by appealing to the recreation of mythical figures of evil incarnated now in immigrants, now in LGBTQI+ populations, now in African people.
The pandemic is an unequal process and its own “geometry of power” despite the common understanding that the epidemiological scenario works for everyone in the same way. This is where the metaphor from Lars Von Trier's first work of cinema is quite useful to us.
Em Dogville[2] The scene, practically non-existent in the plot unfolding, is summarized in non-chõe markings, like a theater box, emulating the limits of streets and houses, and it is possible to see only elements for the construction of the plot: beds, sofas, etc. A good analogy for our cities basically converted to three essential structures: hospitals and campanha beds, contagion proliferation alert systems and cemitérios. Engaging the city requires the viewer to exercise imagination in order to avoid the two cliffs, since we are beginning to get used to each day seeing the place of two different social strata in the new architecture of cities, but the marks drawn are not intended to serve to trace the limits of contact and guarantee a safe distance. social isolation.
Sim, perhaps it is necessary to note that O FIM IS NEAR! But this is not an alert as we make the neo-Pentecostals in the middle of the years sounds, screams and cars in the cities. We transform ourselves into the worst verses of ourselves, like Fritz Lang's films, capable of destabilizing the environmental conditions that have enabled the emergence of life on the planet thousands of years ago.
Scientists in different parts of the world warn that we have exceeded the limits of good sense and everything or that there is chaos, buzz films and promises of dermocosmetics to confront the twilight of the planet in conditions of quase immortality and very little botulinum toxin.
The more evident the “inconvenient truths” become, paraphrasing the alarmist Al Gore about the future of the planet and the global crisis, verses about the end of the world and the techno-pessimists become increasingly popular. This is a vertiginous world. A world invaded by technological media, which interweaves our daily lives in an abstract, virtual and complex way. I understand that the construction of a new civilizing framework necessarily involves the creation of another bio-techno-political-economic model and the reconheciment of the direction of life with dignity for all people indistinctly.
Now, we run the risk of dating the curtains of life like in Dogville: the result that precedes the death of everyone in the destruction of the town, leaving only the one survivor in the memory of the hell that one day we call home.
[1] Jamile Borges da Silva. Prof. Adjunct of UFBA/ Coordinator of the Post-Graduation Program in Ethnic and African Studies of UFBA. 06/11/2020, Salvador-Ba/Brazil
[2] DOGVILLE. Production Denmark/ Sweden/ Finland/ Germany, 2003 Director: Lars von Trier (Film)
Reference
KINGSLEY, Liam James. Paying the ultimate price: COVID-19 is teaching us lessons we should have learned from the HIV epidemic. https://africasacountry.com/2020/05/paying-the-ultimate-price
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