Former ESHCC history student Phạm Thùy Dung has reworked her BA thesis into an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Media History. The article explores continuities and changes in how disease has been instrumentalized in cinema as a way of conceptualising race. Did the depiction change in line with other cinematic trends? And how did the historical context of globalisation and uncertainty play a role?
Together with co-authors and ESHCC History Department’s Dr. Daniel R. Curtis and Dr. Qijun Han, Pham analyses how disease was used in conceptualising race in five movies in the 1930s and in five movies from 1950 until 1962. As previously the Second World War was found to have a significant effect War on the depiction of non-white populations in cinema, the authors explain that this was an important distinction to make.
From their research, the authors found that before the Second World War, more films focused on the Othered environment as the centre of disease, referring to this as the "incubation." When comparing this to movies produced after the war, the movies often depicted a larger focus on the transmission of the disease. Creating the image of the disease spreading towards, frequently, white communities or the “destination”.
The “Outbreak Narrative”
The article historicizes important frameworks used for interpreting epidemic representation, such as the "Outbreak Narrative". The framework argues that through this narrative, epidemics are often conveyed as coming from economically ‘underdeveloped’ environments or from ‘non-mainstream' sub-cultures. The epidemics are then perceived as moving towards what is considered so-called healthy society. Considering this framework, the authors explain that these findings are not constant when placing it in the historical context of their own research.
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Read the full article here: From Disease Incubation to Disease Receipt: Representing Epidemics and Race in Pre- and Post-Second World War American Cinema (1931–1939 and 1950–1962) - TMG Journal for Media History (tmgonline.nl)