Epidemics
Do epidemic films teach us about distrust?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Against a top-down Foucault-style story that elites always use epidemics as tools of control, the paper reads cinema as evidence that afflicted communities often distrust official action — and that films themselves shape trust.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Epidemic cinema is read against a top-down Foucault-style story that elites always use epidemics as tools of control: afflicted communities often distrust official action.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
Epidemic cinema is read against a top-down Foucault-style story that elites always use epidemics as tools of control: afflicted communities often distrust official action.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Film survey plus historical epidemic literature on community distrust of official control
- N
- Cinema/cultural analysis across epidemic films; not a sample N
- Population
- Cinematic depictions of epidemic distrust from contagion to asylum-oppression films
- Outcome
- Afflicted communities’ distrust of official action and films’ role in shaping trust
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Do epidemic films teach us about distrust?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Elites?
elites or authorities—have throughout history used epidemic disease outbreaks as a ‘tool’ for implementing oppressive social regulations and restrictions.
Tool for what?
oppressive social regulations and restrictions. In 19th-century India, for example, the classic work of David Arnold once suggested that major epidemic dis
Key findings
Communities in outbreaks are not always convinced of prescribed action. Authorities have used outbreaks as tools for oppressive regulations. Films also influence people’s trust.
Methodology
It cites 19th-century India (Arnold) on epidemic regulations, then surveys films from contagion to bioterrorism and even Cuckoo’s Nest as asylum-oppression cinema, arguing films influence trust because they supply information about disease.
Limitations
This is film-and-epidemic cultural history, not epidemiology. Cuckoo’s Nest is analogical (asylum), not a plague movie.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.