Cinematic
Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion
in the Discourse of World Health
by Kirsten
Ostherr
Duke University Press, Durham and London,
2005
288 pp. illus. 98 b/w. Trade, $79.95;
paper, $22.95
ISBN: 0-8223-3635-9; ISBN: 0-822-33648-0.
Reviewed by Martha Patricia Niño
M.
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Facultad de Artes Visuales
Colombia
ninom@javeriana.edu.co
Ostherrs book deals with the multiple
relations among cinema, hygiene, disease,
moral infection, race, sexuality, globalization,
and national consciousness. It chronologically
analyses the discourse of world health
in numerous movies including early productions
such as The Science of life,
co-produced by the Public Health Service,
1940s public health and post war films,
1950s alien invasion movies, and finally
some blockbuster films of 1990s such as
Outbreak. It also analyses in detail
how ideas in the movies have a negative
effect on their American public or even
the whole American culture. In particular,
when they define "foreignness"
in which groups of different nationalities
become merged under the figure of the
alien that comes from exotic locations
in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the
far East. Interestingly, these particular
exotic locations have an ill-defined geography,
and this helps the commercialization of
the movie in contrast to the stereotyping
practice. The book also signals how the
discourse of US public health becomes
questionable when it is related with fears
of global contagion as with the movie
The Eternal Fight (1948) in which
the problem of racial difference and international
exchange is represented through medical
checks being held at airports, one of
the most vulnerable points of national
and border penetration surrounded by en
emphasis in information and communication
technologies. The book also suggests some
parallelisms not only between globalization
and contagion but also as the figure of
the immigrant and that of the malevolent
virus always trying to penetrate a frontier
at any cost.
Other anxieties regarding technophilia,
homophobia, globalization, and the universal
threat of infection are also discussed.
The book also points to terrorism, the
anthrax attacks and the search for Osama
Bin Laden and how the anxiety of an invisible
invader has been fostered half a century
earlier in movies with several works,
including The Day Earth Stood Still,
The War of the worlds, Invaders
from Mars, It came from Outer Space,
Them, Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
It Conquered the World, I Married
a Monster from Outer Space, and Invisible
Invaders, among others. Inside the
book you can also find interesting analysis
of the relation of computer viruses and
former American science fiction films
in the 50s. The chapter entitled Indexical
Digital: Representing Contagion in the
Post-Photographic Era also points
out to dystopic movies in which nuclear
war is the only solution to global contagion
such as the Andromeda Strain that
discuss bio-war "solutions".
The book highlights how both Cyberspace
and contagion are very difficult to represent
or track inside a body or a network not
only because their "invisibility"
but also because since they are objects
that dont exist anywhere but inside
their own mental image.
Contagion and globalization are huge topics,
so it is up to readers to make their own
connections with another the contagion
examples from outside the screen, such
as modern super bugs at hospitals, mad
cow diseases, and bio-war in Vietnam or
current bio-war experiments. It might
be interesting to compare the invisibility
of contagion with computer transparency.
Although the book is not highly political,
it criticizes, as in chapter four about
conspiracy and cartography, the moments
in which educational films mix ideology
and end up serving as propaganda. The
essays do not mention Poltergeist film
series and the representation of middle
class suburban deep fears in American
society an important topic for Douglas
Kellner analysis on American suburban
middle class society. It will be also
interesting to relate the ideas on this
book with alternative conceptual studies
on viruses and contagion, such as memetics
theory or other types of viral information
processes. It will be interesting to find
why the persons who enter illegally into
USA believe truly in the American dream
and few expect to be entering a modern
way of enslavement with lower wages, uncertainty
about medical condition, and fear of facing
deportation.
Most of the text is comprised by an extensive
and original research of the cinematic
representations of contagion in both educational
and commercial movies. This book is very
relevant for artists, academics, or readers
interested in cinema, contagion, history,
race, sexuality, and globalization. Ostherr
has been working with the topic for some
years and is assistant professor of English
at Rice University.