Rolling Covid in Pop Culture Thread

i watched some low budget indie drama about a couple going through 2020 covid & lockdown and it was terrible on its own merits

drop the name, yo, bad low budget indie dramas are my thing

i believe it was called Together? James McEvoy and his wife screaming at each other for 90 minutes, if thats your thing

"Save Yourselves!" was one of those accidentally apt covid films. A total coincidence - it premiered at Sundance in January 2020 - but basically a covid quarantine satire in all but name.

Apparently the new Sally Rooney novel features some covid stuff. Gary Shteyngart's most recent novel Our Country Friends is I think a satire about a group of bourgeois bohemian Manhattanites heading to the Hudson Valley to quarantine together and wait out the pandemic. I doubt that's the last of where we'll see covid pop up in fiction.

Superstore’s whole last season is about covid. The whole show is great and seemed to perfect to turn on a dime and find so many jokes around it.

The Akwafina TV show had a kinda sweet, kinda dumb episode about it.

Mostly though I just don’t wanna see the most boring and depressing part of my life all over again.

The new Lena Dunham movie (Sharp Stick) takes place in L.A. during Covid, so basically the characters wear masks when outside their homes. It may be the first “2020-21 Covid” nostalgia movie, since everyone’s wearing cloth masks.

Ooh, that reminds me, speaking of "Sunny," "Mythic Quest" made a really touching (iirc) episode that addressed the pandemic and quarantine and isolation.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, January 21, 2022 2:52 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was interesting, because that episode came out in spring 2020 as a stand-alone episode between S1 and S2. Then, when S2 started, the show vaguely alluded to the pandemic as the reason C.W. was still working remotely. (Rob McElhenney explained that he didn't want to endanger octogenarian F. Murray Abraham.) But then it wasn't mentioned again, the rest of the characters interacted with each other in an office like nothing had happened, and Abraham eventually reintegrated with the rest of the cast.

So, in the world of the show, COVID was something that only existed in 2020 and had already ceased to be a major concern by early 2021. In a way, this was weirder than if the show had simply never bothered to mention it at all.

That was Curb’s stated reasoning, too - David and Shaffer simply assumed the pandemic would be completely over by the time the season aired.

The second series of Morning Show, though it takes quite a while to get around to it.

Marvel actress Evangeline Lilly attended the D.C. anti-vax protest last weekend where RFK Jr. compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, saying she's for "bodily sovereignty": https://t.co/2GdYSjwNog

— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) January 27, 2022

what's the german word for "disappointed but not surprised"

The new 30-minute Aziz Ansari special is mostly about Covid and vaccines. Haven't seen many new comedy specials, but this is the fullest set of material I've seen around it all.

I'm actually quite onboard with seeing covid depicted in media; one thing about it is it's one of the very few (only??) events I've witnessed that was truly GLOBAL so there's something touching in seeing media from different countries tackle it. Leading me to:

Ooh, that reminds me, speaking of "Sunny," "Mythic Quest" made a really touching (iirc) episode that addressed the pandemic and quarantine and isolation.

Yes that was really lovely and makes for a nice companion piece to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QGi6Y6NZLI

Also on the same wavelenght, the David Tennant/Michael Sheen show Staged.

Random comment on a different board:

one thing i’ve noticed about stuff that was filmed over covid is that i’m very consciously aware of it and everyone just seems a little ‘off’. people stand just a little too far away from each other when they’re talking, just a few too many scenes taking place outside and i have no other way to describe it other than i kind of ‘feel’ it in the performances.

i’ve felt it in everything from this to spider-man no way home to don’t look up. it’s not in everything that’s been made, but i definitely notice it when i notice it. am i alone in this?

It's kind of a Schrodinger's Covid situation, imo. If I'm looking for it I definitely notice it, unless the only reason I'm noticing it is because I'm looking for it and finding it, even if it's not the case. I recall Mare of Easttown filmed mostly before Covid but did some pickups and reshoots during Covid, so as we watched that I kept trying to figure out which scenes were filmed when, based partly on the aforementioned (where actors were standing, how scenes were blocked, etc.). But of course there is no way to know if any of that was due to Covid or just how they decided to shoot it. Certainly in that particular show I don't recall anything glaring, which could mean the makers made an effort to disguise the impositions of Covid, or could mean there was simply nothing Covid-y to see!

one thing i’ve noticed about stuff that was filmed over covid is that i’m very consciously aware of it and everyone just seems a little ‘off’. people stand just a little too far away from each other when they’re talking, just a few too many scenes taking place outside and i have no other way to describe it other than i kind of ‘feel’ it in the performances.

reads like creepypasta

http://www.ericwalters.net/novels/dont-stand-so-close-to-me/

Spotted in the library while browsing with my kid

i believe it was called Together? James McEvoy and his wife screaming at each other for 90 minutes, if thats your thing

I watched this and I thought it was excellent.

the second series of This Way Up (Aisling Bea thing) ends just as the first lockdown is approaching. seems slightly sinister almost.

and Help was specifically about covid in care homes

Latest "Righteous Gemstone" might be the first time I've heard a character actually say the word "covid." Though I also suddenly remembered that "Borat" might have been the first thing this pandemic to show the pandemic, so maybe it mentioned "covid," too. Though maybe not.

Iirc, they ended the American version of Shameless with the William H. Macy character dying of Covid.

Drive My Car and Worst Person In The World both end with scenes set in the mask-wearing present without the scripts needing to comment on it

I honestly find it kind of weird sometimes how scarce it is in TV/movies. It was one thing to avoid depicting it when it seemed like the pandemic would be over in a couple of months and everyone would go back to normal, but even if the virus vanished off the face of the earth tomorrow, we would still be living in a world that was ravaged by a pandemic for the past two years. How do the shows that have ignored it eventually adapt to that?

I guess the fact that the experience of living through it has changed so much over time makes people reluctant to depict anything will potentially seem dated a few months later. See, for instance, this interview about the movie Kimi (which does depict COVID) with director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp:

What were your thoughts about having the pandemic hover over Kimi?
Soderbergh: The film we felt needed to be made soon because of its topicality, and if we wanted to set it in a real universe, so that meant we were forced to deal with COVID. Obviously, the movie would work without it. It just added a layer of complication physically and psychologically that absolutely played to the premise of the film. So, we kind of inherited it without asking, but it wasn't a bad thing. The questions were a year ago last March and April when we were shooting, How prevalent do we make COVID in something that's going to come out 10 months from now?

Koepp: I'll be a little less modest. You got it exactly right. It was really prescient. If you see the movie, some people wear masks, some don't. It was hard to speculate, though, at the time because I think we started talking about it when there was a script in August, September of 2020. And I'm delighted with the way you did it because it reflects life right now. And when I watch movies now, if they're new movies, if everybody's in a mask, I want to turn it off because I feel like, "No, that's a lockdown movie. I was in lockdown. I don't need to see that." And if nobody's in a mask, I say, "What world are these lunatics living in?"

I assume, at least for now, that any time we see people wearing masks it's because the film was shot during covid. Assuming that eventually (hopefully) more or less no one will absolutely need to wear a mask, I wonder how long until someone makes a movie or TV show that puts everyone in masks on purpose. Or hell, how long until some inevitable perverse covid nostalgia kicks in? Or a some movie or show comes out set in an anti-lockdown community?

How long until someone makes a record and describes it as "covidcore"?

Oh fuck me

https://bandcamp.com/tag/covidcore?artist=2968869255

https://bis.se/shop/thumbnails/shop/17115/art15/h6810/5066810-origpic-159f31.jpg_0_0_100_100_250_250_0.jpg

Songs of Solitude was conceived by the violist Hiyoli Togawa at a time when a virus was forcing people across the world into isolation and she herself needed to find a new rhythm of life as concert after concert was being cancelled. As she relates in the booklet to the disc, playing Bach – music that combines powerful emotions with a crystal-clear structure – became part of her daily routine, along with walks along the empty streets of Berlin. During these, the importance of remaining creative became even clearer to her, along with the idea to offer people the opportunity through music to reflect upon the difficulties of living through a pandemic. Having recently collaborated with the composer Kalevi Aho, she came upon the idea of asking him and a number of other composers to write for her – pieces that would ‘reflect life and work in the time of the coronavirus and that distil isolation in music’.

The result is Songs of Solitude – works for solo viola commissioned from 11 different composers and interwoven with sarabandes from Bach’s cello suites. The individual pieces range from the meditative (Toshio Hosokawa reminiscing in his version of the traditional Sakura) to the defiant (Johanna Doderer’s Shadows). Some of them even provided Hiyoli with musical company – Aho’s Am Horizont requires her to play two parts on the viola while singing a third, and the piece by John Powell is written for nine voices, recorded in multitrack. The album was recorded in Berlin during three periods, June to October 2020, as the various pieces arrived and the restrictions in place at the time permitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f1/Elton_John_-_The_Lockdown_Sessions.png

Elton John - The Lockdown Sessions

Um

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBD8X5zLG4U

This movie will be four hours long, whereas the trailer only feels like it.

It has to be four hours long to allow for all the improv.

(I didn't make it to the end of the trailer, tbh.)

Is... R Crumb antivax?

lmao I hadn't read the Crumb anti-vax comic, what a mess https://t.co/x28dRg1IgN

— K. Thor Jensen (@kthorjensen) March 28, 2022

now that's a comic that's got a little bit of everything

I don't think a true anti-vaxxer would make the punchline of the comic be "I am having a mental breakdown while my vaccinated wife is living a good life".

Calling "He's A Rebel" a 50's song is pretty dangerous misinformation tho.

Indeed. I'd like to see what Vikki Carr says about that.

L&O: SVU S22E12 does the whole furlough / old people dying / schools closing / businesses going under thing as a cold open, leading to a hostage situation in a restaurant.

L&O: Organized Crime has a villian transporting black-market covid 19 vaccines in ice cream trucks.

Heard a song about wanting to get back to normal after Covid by UK folk singer Beans On Toast, it was called "Human Contact" and was not good.

the Organised Crime episode, they are now having a vaccination party for the rich with the stolen vaccines

Today I learned that Robert Crumb is still alive. For some reason I had it in my head that he committed suicide after appearing in Crumb, but that was his brother.

Of all the people I turn to for life advice, Robert Crumb isn't on that list because until just now I thought he was dead. But if he had been on that list, he wouldn't have.

An episode of "The Bear" makes a reference in passing to how the restaurant survived covid.

in the final season of Superstore they had a covid episode featuring panic-shopping

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/08/the-unabashed-spectacle-of-p-valley

After a two-year hiatus, “P-Valley” ’s second season premièred this June. We had to wait one episode to return to the Pynk. The coronavirus, or “the rona,” has invaded Chucalissa. Uncle Clifford and Autumn Night, the Pynk’s new co-owner—at the end of Season 1, she miraculously saved the club in an auction—have set up a mobile operation. A client, bored with his family in quarantine, may steer his vehicle through a car wash, where masked women will give him a neon-lit show. The covid story lines this season far exceed much of what I’ve seen since television writers began broaching our pandemic reality. “P-Valley” meditates on the culture of pandemic life—the paranoia, the illness, and the economic precarity it wrought and continues to wreak—by incorporating it into the preëxisting action.

A lot of the rona riffing is darkly funny. One dancer sneezes on a client, who turns out to be a health inspector. Uncle Clifford dashes around the town, struggling to secure P.P.E. before the inspector returns. But other facets are spectral; we get the sense that the writers want to endow our national illness with a lore. Loretta Devine plays Granmuva Ernestine, Uncle Clifford’s maternal figure, a blind woman who owned the Pynk decades ago, when it was a juke joint. Ernestine gets covid. In her delirium, she journeys to a river, where she begs to be cleansed. She calls out to her daughter, Clifford’s dead mother, and soon Clifford is seeing visions in her Cadillac’s rearview mirror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbBUGPAvCE

What's a Freevee?

L&O SVU had everyone masked up and awkwardly taking masks off to talk for about 3 episodes then just gave up.

there were screens in the courtroom, but yes, quickly dropped.

whereas Superstore stayed with it until the end of the show (albeit only a dozen or so episodes later)

i never know the kind of lag there is between recording and airing but i think we'll be seeing presenters standing strangely far away from each other for a while yet. Forged In Fire, i notice, has extra-long judge's tables at the moment.

What's a Freevee?

it’s IMDB TV’s new name

you know, like the CPE

wait, CPA

Jeff’s branding is impeccable

"The Rehearsal" was largely mask-free, but masks did pop up now and then among the crew (when revealed) and sometimes background actors or brief appearances from other characters. I don't know what union rules/filming regulations are right now, but I still see lots of behind the scenes promo shots of films/shows where the cast/crew is masked. Like these:

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_1315/e7d6c45634d22d8a8fda550b37f7f6a4.jpg

Our shoot on Instagram/Our shoot on twitter pic.twitter.com/mjaArmR5Vw

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) August 22, 2022

I don't know what union rules/filming regulations are right now, but I still see lots of behind the scenes promo shots of films/shows where the cast/crew is masked.

I'm adjacent to a lot of this and it's a miracle itself that AMPTP, DGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, Teamsters, and Basic Crafts unions could agree on any kind of basic covid protocols w.r.t. vaccination and masks. The current agreements expire on October 31 and I doubt they'll be renewed again. For the most part it's working but constantly under the threat of hair-trigger clusterfucks. Movie stars who refuse to be vaccinated but have pull to keep from being re-cast. Various "normalization of deviance" behaviors to cut costs.

My favorite story was a production/super-spreader event that infected several dozen people with omicron just before everyone went home to their families for Thanksgiving (and in turn infecting dozens more). The person who infected everyone on set? The covid safety officer.

Must be close to two years since I've posted in a Covid-related thread...The third season of The Morning Show is the most pointed attempt I've seen to document the first few months of the pandemic. It's a flashback episode meant to fill in the gap between the end of S2--where Jennifer Aniston's character comes down with the virus and does her show remotely--and S3, which takes place present day.

It's not great, but it did more or less capture the strangeness of that time.

I'm trying to think if I've seen any other recreation of those early days in pop culture.

I see a lot of books--non-fiction, not popular culture--but it'll be a while before I'm ready to read a book on that year, if ever.

From upthread:

Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn is set in the present day, and it’s a MASSIVE RELIEF to finally see a film or TV thing in which mask-wearing is completely normal, right down to a non-masker losing their rag at a supermarket checkout person, and people at a parent-teacher conference fiddling with their masks while speaking, or getting tsked for dicknosing.

― dark end of the st. maud (sic), Friday, January 21, 2022 4:07 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Really catches the awkwardness of social distancing too.

^^"Present Day": Spring/Summer 2020

Drive My Car and Worst Person In The World both end with scenes set in the mask-wearing present without the scripts needing to comment on it.
― symsymsym, Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Saw both of those, and the not-commenting was interesting; COVID was just a part of life. in The Morning Show, it's an unfolding story (interrupted by other stories: Jan. 6, Roe, etc.).

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/stress-positions-no-movie-has-better-understood-how-mean-we-were-during-covid

Ooh, I'm interested. I do wish there were more pop culture depictions of how the pandemic fucked everyone up for a while, especially since its effects are still reverberating.

Just finished All The Beauty and The Bloodshed. Noting that most of the chronicled protests were pre-Covid, in 2018-9, the pandemic quietly announces itself beginning in the fifth section when the Purdue/Sackler court dates are conducted as Zooms and a PAIN org meeting is seen being conducted outdoors with masking and social distancing. The final scenes at the Met also involve masking.

All the Spanish Flu stuff in Pearl.

in Mike Leigh's Hard Truths, the main character wears a mask to a doctor appointment. another character discusses not feeling well "a couple of weeks before lockdown," and it's suggested that it might've been COVID because there was probably a lot of it going around before people even knew what it was.

tbc, the movie is set in the present day (it was filmed in 2023)