Infecting a Body or Infecting on Screen: (Pre)mediating the Trauma of Pandemic Contagion in Filmic Narratives

Based on a media historically informed interpretation of how disaster films (Yacowar) represent pandemic contagion and ensuing collective traumatization, this essay demonstrates a shift in the representation of infections on screens from the analogue media paradigm prevalent in the 1970s, through the post-analogue and early digital paradigm of the 1990s and, finally, up to the post-digital 2000s era. It argues that in this progression touching and infecting bodies are increasingly replaced by electronic screens showing contagion as technologically mediated in The Andromeda Strain, The Cassandra Crossing, Alien, Twelve Monkeys, Contagion and Arrival. This shift has consequences affecting the cultural processing of traumas in various media(l) environments, and its identification possibly refines our understanding of categories advanced in the twenty-first century such as premediation (Grusin) or compressed trauma (Demertzis, Eyerman). (AV)