Weekly Insónia: Virus (Translation)
(This article is a translation of the original Insónia Semanal: Vírus published on March 20th, 2021)
BOOK
Decameron — Giovanni Boccaccio (1353)
Boccaccio was in quarantine in the town of Fiesole, near Florence, when the free time he had and the unusual situation he was living in inspired him to write Decameron. In the book, 10 people in confinement tell each other stories to pass the time.
It sounds (and is) current, but it’s a book that’s almost 700 years old.
There are 100 stories, which make up an enormous range of human attitudes, which Boccaccio masterfully describes at a late stage in his life.
MOVIE
Antiviral — Brandon Cronenberg (2012)
What if the cult of celebrities got to the point where people were willing to pay to be inoculated with the same virus contracted by their favourite celebrity? What if there was a black market for steaks made from the cells of famous people?
Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is a viral technician at Lucas Clinic, a company specialising in the disease market for people obsessed with celebrities. To try and make some money on the side, Syd starts smuggling pathologies out of the clinic by inoculating them into himself.
When he contracts the virus that affected the famous Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), he is forced into a race against time to try and find a cure. We accompany the protagonist on a journey of sadistic suffering.
In his directorial debut, David Cronenberg’s son takes up the style of body horror advocated by his father, and similarities can be found with ExistenZ or Rabid. However, the young Cronenberg’s scathing social commentary finds its greatest parallel in the senior Cronenberg’s Videodrome. Both place sadism and masochism hand in hand. The sexual sadomasochism of Videodrome is implicitly present in Antiviral.
The dystopian world it describes is full of characters who, when confronted with the suffering of others, oscillate between indifference and pleasure. A reflection on the moral space towards which we are heading in an age of reality shows and journalistic sensationalism. An exploration of sadism as a collective experience.
RECORD
Chilombo — Jhené Aiko (2020)
Immediacy is the main characteristic of the cultural industry in different areas, but in pop music, it is particularly noticeable how commercial logic has joined the age of attention deficit. In the midst of the voracity of concerts and streaming, albums have become absolutely ephemeral cultural objects in the last decade.
Jhené Aiko took advantage of the pandemic’s sudden doldrums to counter this logic, refining her album Chilombo in detail during this period. The Grammy-nominated work was released in March 2020, inspired by Hawaiian tranquillity. The singing bowls, incorporated into every track on the disc, are the hallmark of the American R&B singer’s third studio album.
ARTICLE
“The Companies Putting Profits Ahead of Public Health” — New York Times’ Editorial
Written at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, this text may not be the most up-to-date for understanding the current dynamics of the pandemic, but it is certainly one of the most interesting for reflecting on how COVID-19 suddenly called into question the entire economic and social structure in which we lived.
The article published by the editorial board of the leading American newspaper focuses on the relationship between the conflicts of interest between public health, employers, and workers.
Using a very comprehensive infographic, the article draws attention to the tragedy of how many workers have been left without a safety net.
Jaime Monteiro
