Pandemic stories have been around for centuries. Humanity has long been fascinated by the presence of illness in society and how swiftly it can disrupt daily life. The arts have and will continue to communicate, alter, and create stories of people living through outbreaks of disease. Upon reflection, there are three rough categories of pandemic art that I have been able to identify:
The first is speculative. Typically, these stories describe horrifying, worst-case scenarios in which viruses spread uncontrollably, leading to the end of humanity. This category ranges from zombies such as those in The Walking Dead (2010 to 2022) to the sudden death of most of humanity, such as in Stephen King’s The Stand (1978).
The second is intimate. Stories such as Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1772) or Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man (1995) depict real (or close to real, in the case of the former) experiences of human life as we’ve adapted, struggled, and persevered through epidemics and pandemics that have actually occurred.
The third is a bit of a mixture. These art pieces take elements from real outbreaks and modify important parts of their histories for an artistic effect. One of the most famous examples is Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947), where the city of Oran undergoes a fictitious yet realistic epidemic based on previous outbreaks in the city.
As COVID-19 continues to rage on after almost two full years, artists will certainly take inspiration from their time spent in social isolation, and I suspect the pandemic will persist in art in a few different ways.
We will undoubtedly see memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies written by and about people who experienced the pandemic. Soon, any story about a person’s life will be incomplete without mentioning life during the pandemic, regardless of what shape it took for them.
Beyond the reflective, the pandemic will also—as with most major catastrophes in human memory—lead to a new era and style of art. Whether this takes the form of fictitious tales in which people live in a world where everyone wears face masks, or the next horror plague story, the COVID-19 pandemic presents a framework for storytellers and artists to work with from memory.
What is less certain is how day-to-day life will be depicted on-screen and in literature going forward. Most television shows, movies, and books coming out today still present the pre-COVID world, where viral transmission was not a common consideration. Will the next daytime sitcom be set in a world where everyone hangs out over Zoom or in six-foot distanced circles outdoors? Will characters forget to grab their mask the way they always forget their keys? Might routine vaccinations become a new part of storytelling?
We will likely begin to see stories told from a world where COVID persists, along with social isolation, distancing, and health measures—but will they become the norm? Furthermore, will we wish to consume such stories, if what they depict is our normal life for the foreseeable future?
