Globalization in Contagion is seen in more than one way. The idea that because people are able to travel almost anywhere somewhat quickly on an airplane helped this illness to spread a lot more rapidly across the globe than would have been possible a hundred years ago. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character gets infected with the virus in China, and brings it back to the US, spreading it wherever she went. She was not the only person infected; had she been it probably would have spread a lot slower. She probably infected people at the airport and on her various flights, those people then went on to other cities and infected other people. Globalization made this virus travel faster than it would have on its own, however it probably still would have spread to a lot of people, just on a slower rate.
Globalization is also seen in this film by the number of different cities across the world that we see different characters in. The people from the CDC travel to many places to do research to stop the disease. Marion Cotillard’s character, Leonora, is sent to China to do research because that’s where they thought the infection started. Kate Winslet’s character is sent to Minnesota because that’s where Gwyneth Paltrow’s character lived and died. The CDC is able to send all of these doctors to all these different places around the globe to do research, and this helps discover a cure faster.
Globalization is also seen through Jude Law’s blog. He is able to reach millions of people through the internet and they read about his discoveries an opinions. He is arrested because he tells people something that will cure them that might not have been a real cure, and makes lots of money off of it. If he hadn’t been able to reach so many people through the internet, that never would have happened and possibly more people could have died.
In an article from Film Quarterly, Aaron Baker describes the director’s style, “[Soderbergh’s] movies diverge from the contemporary Hollywood mainstream through their focus on issues – including political repression, illegal drugs, violence, environmental degradation, the empowering and controlling potential of digital technology, economic injustice, and the challenge of global public health – using a combination of realism and expressive stylization of character subjectivity.” Even though this is a Hollywood film, the director wanted to focus on the issue of globalization, or at least the way globalization affects the spread of disease, or possibly the spread of anything.
The tagline of the movie is “Nothing spreads like fear” and I think this is very true. At one point in the movie at a press conference someone pointed out that this could just be an overreaction just like what happened with the swine flu. People got scared and started looting and breaking into pharmacies and stores in search of a cure of a means to survive. I think this is a very important topic and I am glad that it was covered by a Hollywood film that was widely viewed.
Baker, Aaron. “GLOBAL CINEMA AND CONTAGION.” Film Quarterly 66.3 (2014): 5–14.
Soderbergh and co. made an interesting decision in terms of the ending to Contagion. While the film depicts the virus as the villain—with perhaps desperate and scared humanity as a secondary villain—the decision to show the cause of the virus beginning with deforestation in China adds another wrench into the film's commentary. What begins as an exploration of how humans react to the absolute other—along with all the political actions that coincide with the segregation—the ending's quick depiction and undefined details ushers in a new debate concerning neo-imperialism.
Steven Pokornowski highlights this ending within a discussion of contemporary zombie films and their relation to the other. Indeed, one could easy imagine Contagion being the spread of an infectious zombie outbreak, and the film would most likely arrive at a similar ending in terms of death count and societal devastation. Pokornowski argues that these narratives “demonstrate not only who is included in a global community, but also who is served by it, who is excluded from it, and how it is policed” (217). In other words, they seem to push against the tendency of modern globalization and capitalism, which both strive to breakdown the boundaries that divide the global scene. This type of exclusion and policing can best be seen in Contagion within the storyline concerned with the Chinese village where Dr. Orantes is held hostage. Not only does the village feel forgotten by the global community when the outbreak begins, but they are given placebo vaccines in exchange for Dr. Orantes because of the amount of similar threats being made around the world.
Taking this notion further, I would agree with Pokornowski that the ending forces us to reexamine Contagion within a lens of modern American imperialism. In his words:
“the United States in the film is both the source of the problem and the country that stands the most to gain from its situation. The American transnational corporation's exploitation of Chinese resources, and the U.S.'s subsequent underserving of vaccine to China, appear in the film as complex moments of Western neo-imperialism as told through—and obscured by—global health” (228)
While his analysis then revolves around Glissant's notion of generalization, Pokornowski's suggestion seems to carry weight due to the profit that the pharmaceutical companies stand to make (a similar argument to the conspiracy theories that Jude Law's Krumwiede suggests). If we view Contagion in this light—where global divisions are strong due to foreign extraction of resources and become only stronger when a transnational threat is presented—I would suggest that it conflicts with the trend of globalization as we have been discussing it, and might also display the versatility of global capitalism. Before the breakout of the virus, because of its tendency to “flow,” global capitalism is fine with the break down of these divisions in order to freely move politically and economically from country to country. While neo-imperialism and global health threats necessitates these divides, capitalism still finds a way to continue flourishing.
Pokornowski, Steven. “Insecure Lives: Zombies, Global Health, and the Totalitarianism of Generalization.” Literature and Medicine, 31:2, Fall 2013. 216-234. Johns Hopkins U P http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lm/summary/v031/31.2.pokornowski.html
Contagion was an interesting film in terms of globalization. We have previously discussed the exchange of money, drugs and sex but never of a virus. It is certainly something that never crosses my mind. I agree with Elsa when she discusses how globalization helps the spreading of people through transportation and in the film, a lethal virus joins the ride. We saw the movement of people travelling to different parts of the world to use their ‘skills’ to find a solution to this epidemic. We also see how easily it is to interact with others that may or may not be of the same nationality. A social web is formed globally. It is then a chain of events that spread the lethal virus globally.
Another aspect of globalization is the spreading of ideas, in this case fear. Elsa also points this out with the film’s tagline. Fear of the virus rapidly spread via the internet, television and word of mouth. Over the course of the film, Jude Law’s character gloated that he had “12 million unique visitors” That is a substantial amount of people to reach in a short amount of time. The internet has a profound effect on how quickly ideas can be exchanged. There is also the fear of the CDC. Law’s character singled out the CDC that they were withholding the cure to the virus. The allegations caused a fear in people’s mind that the government was the bad guy or at least that the CDC can’t be trusted.
In the same article that Chandler visited, Literature and Medicine, Steven Pokornowski made an interesting claim about the final scene.
“In this way, the end of the film, which takes the form of a prologue-as-epilogue, reveals the events occurring just before the film’s beginning, necessitating a reevaluation of the film’s portrayal of global interconnectivity. This epilogue interrogates and imagines not just the global flow of bodies of illness and information, but the role of money and privilege in regulating those flows.” (228)
I agree that the role of money and privilege did regulate the illness. It was Law’s character, Alan that was making a profit on Forsythia, the drug that he claimed cured him from the virus. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that he might have bought some sort of stock in Forsythia and used his blog to raise his investments. Out of fear and the thought that Forsythia really does work, people began rioting to get the “cure” and the virus kept on spreading. Privilege was abused when the officials and their loved ones were the first to get their hands on the cure as seen with Dr. Ellis Cheever. I agree that the virus was not the only main focus in the film.
It was interesting to see a new vehicle of globalization through a deadly virus. This is very different to the other films that we have seen where some films focused on sex and human trafficking as consequences of globalization.
Pokornowski, Steven. “Insecure Lives: Zombies, Global Health, and the Totalitarianism of Generalization.” Literature and Medicine, 31:2, Fall 2013. 216-234. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lm/summary/v031/31.2.pokornowski.html
The Contagion offers a scary yet all too realistic example of what could happen to our world if a virus like this was to spread.
Unlike many of the other films we’ve watched the focus of globalization is not on the trading of goods, culture, values, or even one’s self. What we see being passed on from country to country is an illness, which is actually something I never even thought about.
Although this central idea of this ‘pandemic’ has been seen in many other films such as “I Am Legend,” “The Happening,” and even the TV series “The Walking Dead.” I found this film to be the most realistic because for one, we aren’t dealing with zombies here. This virus is actually plausible and the insight we get into various people’s lives that are affected by this makes it very relatable. We get a look into the lives of an average family, the people responsible for finding a cure, and the person who thinks it’s all a set up.
In “Nightmare of an Exploding Pandemic,” Kristen L. Mueller states, “Viewers witness both the impact a highly transmissible pandemic virus that kills many of its victims has on the day-to-day lives of those affected and the broader effects it has on society. The director's approach also works because it shows how a pandemic could play out in today's world, complete with the U.S. government taking into account the Thanksgiving Day shopping weekend when planning its response. What we see is not reassuring.”
There were numerous ‘dramatic’ scenes throughout the film I found to be actually very realistic if this was to occur. When the clinic announces they ran out of forsythia for the day and people start to riot – throwing chairs through the glass windows and trampling others, I couldn’t help but believe people would react this way in real life. When the government can’t keep up with the demand of the people, or protect them, “the people” will do whatever they have to do to survive. That type of fear will create pandemonium.
I was also very invested in the journalist, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law’s) theory on the whole situation so when we find out he faked having the virus in the first place, I felt slightly betrayed. Something he said about how Lysol and Vicks VapoRub were invented after the Spanish influenza, stuck with me however.
I looked both Lysol and Vicks VapoRub up and it turns out he wasn’t lying. Although both products had been around prior to the flu epidemic of 1918 it was this pandemic that made them household names. Krumwiede wasn’t far off for implying that pharmaceutical companies use these types of events to profit or that they at least “take advantage” of the opportunity.
Identifying the heroes in Contagion is rather easy--the scientists, of course. That is Western scientists (primarily American). It's never question, really, who we're counting on to defeat the enemy which is here embodied emphatically by the disease itself, and abstractly by the fear and hysteria that spreads.
It's interesting though that the economic affects of globalization are identified as the cause of the outbreak, while solution is depicted as global collaborative effort, the result of intensified connectivity wrought from globalization. In his Marx and Coca Cola column for Film Quarterly, Joshua Clover comments on the "...quiet persistence with which it solicits the audiences sympathies for the authorities. This is a politics, with or without allegory. In a world gone catastrophically wrong, the only folks to be trusted are government officials, mostly aligned with the Center for Disease Control...an affirmation of the order of things, without apology or agon."
Contagion is another movie to file under what Clover calls the "apocalyptic pictures", wherein our deep-seated anxiety over the ever impending end of days is excised and taking to some imaginable conclusion for our viewing pleasure. Naturally, human civilization avoids extinction, and the causalities seem to largely consist of people who "didn't have access to quality health care, clean drinking water, etc." read: the third world, read: mostly black and brown people. This is suggested subtly. We never see those bodies; we're limited to the devastated suburbs. We're meant to trust that the government will develop an fair and honest plan to decide who gets the vaccine first, and in the film, a lottery system is devised. But we also see that certain people (in this case the head of the CDC), are able to secure additional vaccinations for the people close to them. There's the gesture that's never quite brought home: if you are in a position of power during a global pandemic, you can likely secure a vaccine or bunk in the bunker.
The world in Contagion is honest about it's divisions, but not about what caused them; nor is it interested in engaging how, in the case of a real global pandemic, some thorny political decisions might be made, and the rationale for those decisions. Instead, it actively de-centers the focus--it goes out of its way to tell mention that "all" governments are dealing the brutal reality that they'll have to choose who gets the vaccine and who's left out.
One wonders what kind of film this would've been had we seen a diversity of perspectives during this pandemic. How would a average Chinese-Matt-Damon storyline played out. Would he have survived? (Probably not, the other enemy in this film is, as in so many we've watched, China. He would totally die, and Matt Damon would still live.)
Again, the film imagines that the system is both the problem and the solution; as such, the film cannot honestly critique the system it depicts. Ultimately, it appears to say "this is going to happen, probably. When it does, pray you are Matt Damon. If you're not, well, sorry."
Before I being my post, I figured it best to point out the quote that stood out to be the most within Aaron Baker’s article of the film Contagion in which I based a majority of this post. What he says is as follows: “Although Soderbergh’s films at times represent this economic globalization, they also embody the less deterministic assumption that, fostered by new communications technologies and the accessibility of jet travel, the world has gotten smaller, creating greater connection and interrelationship among cultures” (8). In summary, this small statement nearly covers the entire context of the film. Simply put, this film represents how small the world had gotten and how fast information (among other obvious things) travels.
I think we are all able to attest to how small the world has gotten over the past 100 years. Especially considering the advent of the internet and long distance travel, information, goods, money, and more importantly people are not almost instantly travel or connect with every single corner of the world within seconds or travel there in only a number of hours. And then in addition, the side effects of this information and travel can occur just shortly after if not instantly. This is what I believe Contagion did extremely well. While still perhaps considered a largely Hollywood type production, the ideas in this film are both on the surface as well as further beneath with its comment upon social media and its influence upon the populations. This is once again an idea that Aaron Baker brings up within his article.
Despite the rather frightening aspect of the film, I do believe this is also important on this idea of “exchange” which we have spoken about many times before. And working with the same idea as Elsa, the tagline of the film “Nothing spreads like fear” does point out another very interesting product that gets exchanged in this more interconnected world. Fear itself is a product, one that travels well. This got me thinking along a rather interesting line of thought in consideration with both the film as well as Baker’s idea of communication technology. As Jude Law’s character is most involved with social media in the film, it is perhaps right to comment on how it is through these social media which fear travels. Needless to say, as I’m sure we all know, fear through social media can travel almost instantly. One person tweets something, and then another second later another two people tweet it, and this continues on until nearly everyone on the site could be in the loop with a matter of hours, if not minutes. Then consider that how many people around the world are connected to these websites. The fact that fear could travel so fast, is frightening in itself. It spreads, quite literally as the film might state, like a disease.
But this is not to say that Contagion is simply about social media. As we know, it’s much more than that. Or, as Baker states in his article “Besides showing the networked world essential to the rapid spread of the deadly virus, Soderbergh also links the disease to the economic notion of globalization driven by transnational corporations. The aforementioned bulldozer shot at the end of the film, showing factory construction displacing the diseased bat that sets the virus in motion, is followed by the movie’s last shot: Beth shaking the casino chef’s hand, marking the initial point of transition, which is indicated by a title stating ‘‘Day One’ (11). Needless to say, Beth’s company sent the disease in motion, which in turn comes back toward her as she becomes patient zero.
Baker, Aaron. “Global Cinema and Contagion.” Film Quarterly 66.3 (2014): 5–14.
Right from the beginning Contagion kept my attention and I was able to follow the whole film quite easily. This aspect makes me believe that this film was made for the average Westerner who just wants to see a “what if” film. Meaning a film that would show us what would happen if a deadly virus were to take over the whole world.
Globalization is seen throughout this whole film in quite obvious ways. Most of you have pointed these ways out, from the different countries that the virus spreads through to the blog on the internet that persuades people to not take the vaccination. Globalization is seen more as affecting the whole world and more public in comparison to the previous films that we have watched. For example in Import/Export globalization is seen more at a personal level, by affecting Olga and Paul. A little broader view of globalization is seen in Workingman’s Death, however it is limited to the working class and poor people of these countries. In Contagion globalization is seen throughout the entire world. The virus strikes all sorts of people from all sorts of places.
Caetlin Benson-Allott declares in her article titled “Out of Sight” that is in the academic journal Film Quarterly that “Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion tries to contest this prevailing logic by insisting on the limits of visibility” (14). People are fascinated by seeing things that technology shows us that we cannot see ourselves. Technology makes things that can’t be seen by the naked eye visible. By seeing these things in movies and on our televisions we feel better informed and marveled at the “real” image of the virus. However, Benson-Allott argues that film can only go so far and this is proven in the conclusion of the film showing that the real cause of the virus is from the bananas in the tree. The human eye can only see so much, and this simple answer to the source of the virus reveals that modern technology cannot determine everything.
Contagion is a “what if” film and if a deadly virus were to take over the whole world it would result in a lot of loss and pain. They do find a vaccine in the end, but after all of the lives and days lost it shows that unknown viruses do have control and will devour all sorts of people.
Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Out of Sight.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Winter 2011), pg. 14-15.
This week in class we've spent time discussing the economics of getting films made and the different motivations of the parties involved (directors, producers, investors, actors). In an interview with journalist Gavin Smith to promote Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh acknowledges the allure creating films with commercial appeal as he notes that “working on something for short money and then having nobody go see it, and that's frustrating” and going down that road again “just didn't seem like a very smart idea” ( 2011, p. 62). And while Soderbergh’s resume does show a steady stream of widely appealing films (both pre- and post-Contagion) he contends that although big-budget, Contagion was intended as a “really simple” film as evidenced by the near absence of lighting setups, minimal camera movement and an emphasis on performance and scientific accuracy (Smith, 2011, pp. 62).
Many of the films we have watched previously related capitalism and globalization in certain terms, for example industry, manual labor etc. (save for Dirty Pretty Things). Contagious introduces a kind of bio-economic capitalism. In 2012 President Obama released the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, with the administration’s key science and technology advisor explaining that “life sciences have proven to be a remarkably vital source of economic growth” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bioeconomy_press_release_0.pdf). A plan that Jude Law’s character, Alan would no doubt cite as possessing questionable motives for all its seemingly good intentions. Specifically as it would related to Contagion, how to profit from the disruption of society and human well-being in part due to “the increase in international trade and travel,” and the “explosion of ‘microbial traffic’” as a result of our globalized world says Belinda Bennett (2006, p. 3).
Monica in her post also goes a step further and adds the additional variable of privilege, as seen through monetary means, birthright etc. The film explores then when we see the exchange of Marion Cotilliard’s character Dr. Leonora, a single person for literally an entire village of people in Hong Kong. This uneven exchange is not attributable to human worth (or rather perceived worth) but instead comes down to perceived privilege.
Bennett, B., & Tomossey, G. (2006).Globalization and Health: Challenges for health law and bioethics. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Smith, G. (2011, Sep. - Oct.). All Work and No Play...Makes Steven Soderbergh some kind of genious. Filmcomment, 47, 62-67.
"The lightning spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), unprecedented in its speed and scope, was a reminder of man's vulnerability in the face of constantly evolving infectious diseases." This quote from the article "Biodiversity and Emerging Diseases" reflects the fear that feeds the plot of Contagion. As has been previously stated, this film shows globalization in a light that we have not previously studied: infectious disease. Mankind is almost rendered powerless in the spread of a new virus, and the globalization of today's world makes the spread of such diseases all the more potent. This is illustrated in Contagion, with one woman who visited China being infected and spreading a disease that infects 1 in 12 people in the world's population (which was emphasized in the movie as not being the population of the US, but of the world, further showing the effects of globalization).
As evidenced in the fact that one can find many scholarly sources on the topic of infectious disease that begins in animals and is spread to humans, this is not a new phenomenon, although the film greatly exaggerates the results of such a virus. The quote above sites SARS. Other such diseases were mentioned in the film, like West Nile and Swine Flu. The fear surrounding these viruses when they broke out in the world was, I would argue, just as high as the fear in the film, even though the results were much less serious. The film took a very real fear and escalated the results. It played on the powerless feeling we would have in the face of such disaster.
I couldn't help but think of the Columbian Exchange while viewing this film. That was likely the first incident of infectious disease and globalization. This occurred when settlers in the New World brought with them the diseases of the Old World. The Native Americans, having not ever been exposed to such diseases, had zero immunity to these diseases and suffered and died in great numbers. This is certainly an early example of globalization. Now, with airplanes and fast travel, a new disease could spread at a much faster rate, as evidenced in the film.
I enjoyed the choice of starting the film on "Day 2" and not showing what happened on Day 1 until the end of the film. While the idea that one bat could infect one pig that suddenly becomes a worldwide epidemic may be in danger of being a slippery-slope fallacy, this idea of how quickly something could spread with globalization was still interesting. I believe the film was also about the exchange of fear, not just a virus. Fear spreads quickly like a virus, and the effects of this virus would have been different if so much care had not been taken in not upsetting everyone (at first).
The drab setting of the film could be compared to La Promesse and Import/Export. A grey setting for grim circumstances. This seems to be a theme in these films.
Blouin, Edmour F, and Jean-Charles Maillard. Impact of Emerging Zoonotic Diseases on Animal Health. Boston, Mass: Published by Blackwell-WileyInterScience on behalf of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006. Internet resource.
It seems like this week, even though most of the movies we have watched are "Hollywood" movies, many of them, such as Babel, Syriana, and Contagion are all also known as "hyper-link cinema." They are films in which the characters relationships with each other are indirect or simply just thematic. They are films in which the story progresses laterally as well as forwardly. So, instead of having a river of narrative, one gets a web of narrative, a network of story, in which the films cut to separate parts of the web, and it is up to the viewer to see the whole. Or, as Anil Narine says in her introduction to Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society, "In the cinematic network society, empowered agents fail to co-ordinate or even comprehend the networks that surround them. Borrowing from social problem films, economic guilt films, and city films of the past, these network narratives illustrate how networks can link us in unwanted ways.” Although Contagion is not one of the 11 films Narine discusses, it does fit into the hyperlink genre to which Narine is analyzing. And what she says about characters in other hyperlink films, also fits into characters in Contagion. In Contagion, no one person knows how the sequence of events is playing out on the global scale. Everyone knows only a part and the characters themselves never get together to put the jigsaw pieces together, that is left to the audience. But, everyone in Contagion is aware that they are connected to the rest of humanity simply by virtue of "having a nose and mouth." So, in Contagion, characters do not exactly fear the web the virus makes through the world, instead, it is the connection to the web they fear. The virus made them aware of the few degrees of separativity that existence between everyone on the planet and so a character like Matt Damon's seeks isolation. Hyperlink cinema is often brought into the conversation of film and globalization, and for good reason. Hyperlink cinema is a genre in which a very large cast of characters, in a large variety of locations, can be edited together in a way that makes the audience feel less like a voyeur and more like a god. In traditional cinema, the audience generally follows the struggles of a single protagonist. We see this character’s life and learn about his personal, political, economic, etc. problems from virtually his point-of-view. But in hyperlink cinema, one is able to see from a birds eye view instead of a peep hole. The globe becomes a very small place in the film, with edits from China, to France, to America, all in the same minute, without the audience knowing anything about the characters themselves. All we know is that they must be connected, because they are in the same film. So hyperlink cinema, or the process of making a hyperlink film, becomes a lens so as to look at globalization. The film Contagion is dense, filled with so many characters that I never caught the names of any, with all of the characters connected in various ways, with the entire globe as a stage, and the villain as something invisible and chameleon. When one compares the globalized world to this, one can see similarities between world and movie.
I thought Soderbergh made an interesting cinematic choice when he chose to show all of the things a sick person would touch and how many people touch them. As I sat there watching this film, I would find my self touching my face and I would quickly remove my hand. This small and otherwise unnoticeable choice added so much to realistic nature of this film.
Globalization is shown through the networking of sick people across the world but as Baker suggests it is also shown through "the growth of Asian economic power as a challenge to the hegemony of the West" (11). This film clearly shows that this disease started on a business trip in China suggesting that business with China is ultimately a dangerous endeavor for American businesses. We know that American society feels threatened by China's advancements in science and business. This film paints China as the antagonist through the epicenter of the disease and the kidnapping; and America as the protagonist through our ability to find the cure. Americans love to believe that we are the best country in the world and that we will be the ones to save the world in its time of need. This movie only perpetuates this dangerous ideal and creates an us vs. them mentality.
Baker, Aaron. "Global Cinema and Contagion." Film Quarterly (Spring 2013): 5-14.
I want to talk about what Chandler brought up in his post, the idea of neo-imperialism. Yes the movie is the tale of a new super virus and how this world would react, how would a post virus world and a during virus world look? The movie takes on a simulator aspect, doing its best to show us this situation. However like Chandler brought up, there were still an amazing amount of politics in the movie.
The such place is Jude Law's character. A fighter for the people and with twelve million followers has his own little imperial claim. Governments have always claimed the rights to their subject's minds and wills. The government has the right to say what will and what wont help people and Jude keeps saying they have the right to choose. This reminds me of what debate there is now with vaccines. Currently you can tell people to not to take them, but in the movie it got Jude into trouble. This could be seen as a element of neo-imperialism as governing through crisis.
Already the governments of the world do govern through crisis. Also in these movies we have been watching the two global powers who do this most often, America and China. These two countries as also always presented as enemies to some extent.
Contagion presents the initial outbreak as a result, however, of global reaction to our actions. The origin may have come from a foreign land, but the truth is it is all part of a global system. This is never covered or presented to the American public in the movie, just to us. In the movie the virus is just another foreign invader.
Globalization in Contagion is seen in more than one way. The idea that because people are able to travel almost anywhere somewhat quickly on an airplane helped this illness to spread a lot more rapidly across the globe than would have been possible a hundred years ago. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character gets infected with the virus in China, and brings it back to the US, spreading it wherever she went. She was not the only person infected; had she been it probably would have spread a lot slower. She probably infected people at the airport and on her various flights, those people then went on to other cities and infected other people. Globalization made this virus travel faster than it would have on its own, however it probably still would have spread to a lot of people, just on a slower rate.
ReplyDeleteGlobalization is also seen in this film by the number of different cities across the world that we see different characters in. The people from the CDC travel to many places to do research to stop the disease. Marion Cotillard’s character, Leonora, is sent to China to do research because that’s where they thought the infection started. Kate Winslet’s character is sent to Minnesota because that’s where Gwyneth Paltrow’s character lived and died. The CDC is able to send all of these doctors to all these different places around the globe to do research, and this helps discover a cure faster.
Globalization is also seen through Jude Law’s blog. He is able to reach millions of people through the internet and they read about his discoveries an opinions. He is arrested because he tells people something that will cure them that might not have been a real cure, and makes lots of money off of it. If he hadn’t been able to reach so many people through the internet, that never would have happened and possibly more people could have died.
In an article from Film Quarterly, Aaron Baker describes the director’s style, “[Soderbergh’s] movies diverge from the contemporary Hollywood mainstream through their focus on issues – including political repression, illegal drugs, violence, environmental degradation, the empowering and controlling potential of digital technology, economic injustice, and the challenge of global public health – using a combination of realism and expressive stylization of character subjectivity.” Even though this is a Hollywood film, the director wanted to focus on the issue of globalization, or at least the way globalization affects the spread of disease, or possibly the spread of anything.
The tagline of the movie is “Nothing spreads like fear” and I think this is very true. At one point in the movie at a press conference someone pointed out that this could just be an overreaction just like what happened with the swine flu. People got scared and started looting and breaking into pharmacies and stores in search of a cure of a means to survive. I think this is a very important topic and I am glad that it was covered by a Hollywood film that was widely viewed.
Baker, Aaron. “GLOBAL CINEMA AND CONTAGION.” Film Quarterly 66.3 (2014): 5–14.
Soderbergh and co. made an interesting decision in terms of the ending to Contagion. While the film depicts the virus as the villain—with perhaps desperate and scared humanity as a secondary villain—the decision to show the cause of the virus beginning with deforestation in China adds another wrench into the film's commentary. What begins as an exploration of how humans react to the absolute other—along with all the political actions that coincide with the segregation—the ending's quick depiction and undefined details ushers in a new debate concerning neo-imperialism.
ReplyDeleteSteven Pokornowski highlights this ending within a discussion of contemporary zombie films and their relation to the other. Indeed, one could easy imagine Contagion being the spread of an infectious zombie outbreak, and the film would most likely arrive at a similar ending in terms of death count and societal devastation. Pokornowski argues that these narratives “demonstrate not only who is included in a global community, but also who is served by it, who is excluded from it, and how it is policed” (217). In other words, they seem to push against the tendency of modern globalization and capitalism, which both strive to breakdown the boundaries that divide the global scene. This type of exclusion and policing can best be seen in Contagion within the storyline concerned with the Chinese village where Dr. Orantes is held hostage. Not only does the village feel forgotten by the global community when the outbreak begins, but they are given placebo vaccines in exchange for Dr. Orantes because of the amount of similar threats being made around the world.
Taking this notion further, I would agree with Pokornowski that the ending forces us to reexamine Contagion within a lens of modern American imperialism. In his words:
“the United States in the film is both the source of the problem and the country that stands the most to gain from its situation. The American transnational corporation's exploitation of Chinese resources, and the U.S.'s subsequent underserving of vaccine to China, appear in the film as complex moments of Western neo-imperialism as told through—and obscured by—global health” (228)
While his analysis then revolves around Glissant's notion of generalization, Pokornowski's suggestion seems to carry weight due to the profit that the pharmaceutical companies stand to make (a similar argument to the conspiracy theories that Jude Law's Krumwiede suggests). If we view Contagion in this light—where global divisions are strong due to foreign extraction of resources and become only stronger when a transnational threat is presented—I would suggest that it conflicts with the trend of globalization as we have been discussing it, and might also display the versatility of global capitalism. Before the breakout of the virus, because of its tendency to “flow,” global capitalism is fine with the break down of these divisions in order to freely move politically and economically from country to country. While neo-imperialism and global health threats necessitates these divides, capitalism still finds a way to continue flourishing.
Pokornowski, Steven. “Insecure Lives: Zombies, Global Health, and the Totalitarianism of Generalization.” Literature and Medicine, 31:2, Fall 2013. 216-234. Johns Hopkins U P
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lm/summary/v031/31.2.pokornowski.html
Contagion was an interesting film in terms of globalization. We have previously discussed the exchange of money, drugs and sex but never of a virus. It is certainly something that never crosses my mind. I agree with Elsa when she discusses how globalization helps the spreading of people through transportation and in the film, a lethal virus joins the ride. We saw the movement of people travelling to different parts of the world to use their ‘skills’ to find a solution to this epidemic. We also see how easily it is to interact with others that may or may not be of the same nationality. A social web is formed globally. It is then a chain of events that spread the lethal virus globally.
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect of globalization is the spreading of ideas, in this case fear. Elsa also points this out with the film’s tagline. Fear of the virus rapidly spread via the internet, television and word of mouth. Over the course of the film, Jude Law’s character gloated that he had “12 million unique visitors” That is a substantial amount of people to reach in a short amount of time. The internet has a profound effect on how quickly ideas can be exchanged. There is also the fear of the CDC. Law’s character singled out the CDC that they were withholding the cure to the virus. The allegations caused a fear in people’s mind that the government was the bad guy or at least that the CDC can’t be trusted.
In the same article that Chandler visited, Literature and Medicine, Steven Pokornowski made an interesting claim about the final scene.
“In this way, the end of the film, which takes the form of a prologue-as-epilogue, reveals the events occurring just before the film’s beginning, necessitating a reevaluation of the film’s portrayal of global interconnectivity. This epilogue interrogates and imagines not just the global flow of bodies of illness and information, but the role of money and privilege in regulating those flows.” (228)
I agree that the role of money and privilege did regulate the illness. It was Law’s character, Alan that was making a profit on Forsythia, the drug that he claimed cured him from the virus. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that he might have bought some sort of stock in Forsythia and used his blog to raise his investments. Out of fear and the thought that Forsythia really does work, people began rioting to get the “cure” and the virus kept on spreading. Privilege was abused when the officials and their loved ones were the first to get their hands on the cure as seen with Dr. Ellis Cheever. I agree that the virus was not the only main focus in the film.
It was interesting to see a new vehicle of globalization through a deadly virus. This is very different to the other films that we have seen where some films focused on sex and human trafficking as consequences of globalization.
Pokornowski, Steven. “Insecure Lives: Zombies, Global Health, and the Totalitarianism of Generalization.” Literature and Medicine, 31:2, Fall 2013. 216-234.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lm/summary/v031/31.2.pokornowski.html
The Contagion offers a scary yet all too realistic example of what could happen to our world if a virus like this was to spread.
ReplyDeleteUnlike many of the other films we’ve watched the focus of globalization is not on the trading of goods, culture, values, or even one’s self. What we see being passed on from country to country is an illness, which is actually something I never even thought about.
Although this central idea of this ‘pandemic’ has been seen in many other films such as “I Am Legend,” “The Happening,” and even the TV series “The Walking Dead.” I found this film to be the most realistic because for one, we aren’t dealing with zombies here. This virus is actually plausible and the insight we get into various people’s lives that are affected by this makes it very relatable. We get a look into the lives of an average family, the people responsible for finding a cure, and the person who thinks it’s all a set up.
In “Nightmare of an Exploding Pandemic,” Kristen L. Mueller states, “Viewers witness both the impact a highly transmissible pandemic virus that kills many of its victims has on the day-to-day lives of those affected and the broader effects it has on society. The director's approach also works because it shows how a pandemic could play out in today's world, complete with the U.S. government taking into account the Thanksgiving Day shopping weekend when planning its response. What we see is not reassuring.”
http://0-www.sciencemag.org.library.unl.edu/content/334/6059/1064.1.full
There were numerous ‘dramatic’ scenes throughout the film I found to be actually very realistic if this was to occur. When the clinic announces they ran out of forsythia for the day and people start to riot – throwing chairs through the glass windows and trampling others, I couldn’t help but believe people would react this way in real life. When the government can’t keep up with the demand of the people, or protect them, “the people” will do whatever they have to do to survive. That type of fear will create pandemonium.
I was also very invested in the journalist, Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law’s) theory on the whole situation so when we find out he faked having the virus in the first place, I felt slightly betrayed. Something he said about how Lysol and Vicks VapoRub were invented after the Spanish influenza, stuck with me however.
I looked both Lysol and Vicks VapoRub up and it turns out he wasn’t lying. Although both products had been around prior to the flu epidemic of 1918 it was this pandemic that made them household names. Krumwiede wasn’t far off for implying that pharmaceutical companies use these types of events to profit or that they at least “take advantage” of the opportunity.
Identifying the heroes in Contagion is rather easy--the scientists, of course. That is Western scientists (primarily American). It's never question, really, who we're counting on to defeat the enemy which is here embodied emphatically by the disease itself, and abstractly by the fear and hysteria that spreads.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting though that the economic affects of globalization are identified as the cause of the outbreak, while solution is depicted as global collaborative effort, the result of intensified connectivity wrought from globalization. In his Marx and Coca Cola column for Film Quarterly, Joshua Clover comments on the "...quiet persistence with which it solicits the audiences sympathies for the authorities. This is a politics, with or without allegory. In a world gone catastrophically wrong, the only folks to be trusted are government officials, mostly aligned with the Center for Disease Control...an affirmation of the order of things, without apology or agon."
Contagion is another movie to file under what Clover calls the "apocalyptic pictures", wherein our deep-seated anxiety over the ever impending end of days is excised and taking to some imaginable conclusion for our viewing pleasure. Naturally, human civilization avoids extinction, and the causalities seem to largely consist of people who "didn't have access to quality health care, clean drinking water, etc." read: the third world, read: mostly black and brown people. This is suggested subtly. We never see those bodies; we're limited to the devastated suburbs. We're meant to trust that the government will develop an fair and honest plan to decide who gets the vaccine first, and in the film, a lottery system is devised. But we also see that certain people (in this case the head of the CDC), are able to secure additional vaccinations for the people close to them. There's the gesture that's never quite brought home: if you are in a position of power during a global pandemic, you can likely secure a vaccine or bunk in the bunker.
The world in Contagion is honest about it's divisions, but not about what caused them; nor is it interested in engaging how, in the case of a real global pandemic, some thorny political decisions might be made, and the rationale for those decisions. Instead, it actively de-centers the focus--it goes out of its way to tell mention that "all" governments are dealing the brutal reality that they'll have to choose who gets the vaccine and who's left out.
One wonders what kind of film this would've been had we seen a diversity of perspectives during this pandemic. How would a average Chinese-Matt-Damon storyline played out. Would he have survived? (Probably not, the other enemy in this film is, as in so many we've watched, China. He would totally die, and Matt Damon would still live.)
Again, the film imagines that the system is both the problem and the solution; as such, the film cannot honestly critique the system it depicts. Ultimately, it appears to say "this is going to happen, probably. When it does, pray you are Matt Damon. If you're not, well, sorry."
http://www.filmquarterly.org/2012/01/fall-and-rise/
Before I being my post, I figured it best to point out the quote that stood out to be the most within Aaron Baker’s article of the film Contagion in which I based a majority of this post. What he says is as follows: “Although Soderbergh’s films at times represent this economic globalization, they also embody the less deterministic assumption that, fostered by new communications technologies and the accessibility of jet travel, the world has gotten smaller, creating greater connection and interrelationship among cultures” (8). In summary, this small statement nearly covers the entire context of the film. Simply put, this film represents how small the world had gotten and how fast information (among other obvious things) travels.
ReplyDeleteI think we are all able to attest to how small the world has gotten over the past 100 years. Especially considering the advent of the internet and long distance travel, information, goods, money, and more importantly people are not almost instantly travel or connect with every single corner of the world within seconds or travel there in only a number of hours. And then in addition, the side effects of this information and travel can occur just shortly after if not instantly. This is what I believe Contagion did extremely well. While still perhaps considered a largely Hollywood type production, the ideas in this film are both on the surface as well as further beneath with its comment upon social media and its influence upon the populations. This is once again an idea that Aaron Baker brings up within his article.
Despite the rather frightening aspect of the film, I do believe this is also important on this idea of “exchange” which we have spoken about many times before. And working with the same idea as Elsa, the tagline of the film “Nothing spreads like fear” does point out another very interesting product that gets exchanged in this more interconnected world. Fear itself is a product, one that travels well. This got me thinking along a rather interesting line of thought in consideration with both the film as well as Baker’s idea of communication technology. As Jude Law’s character is most involved with social media in the film, it is perhaps right to comment on how it is through these social media which fear travels. Needless to say, as I’m sure we all know, fear through social media can travel almost instantly. One person tweets something, and then another second later another two people tweet it, and this continues on until nearly everyone on the site could be in the loop with a matter of hours, if not minutes. Then consider that how many people around the world are connected to these websites. The fact that fear could travel so fast, is frightening in itself. It spreads, quite literally as the film might state, like a disease.
But this is not to say that Contagion is simply about social media. As we know, it’s much more than that. Or, as Baker states in his article “Besides showing the networked world essential to the rapid spread of the deadly virus, Soderbergh also links the disease to the economic notion of globalization driven by transnational corporations. The aforementioned bulldozer shot at the end of the film, showing factory construction displacing the diseased bat that sets the virus in motion, is followed by the movie’s last shot: Beth shaking the casino chef’s hand, marking the initial point of transition, which is indicated by a title stating ‘‘Day One’ (11). Needless to say, Beth’s company sent the disease in motion, which in turn comes back toward her as she becomes patient zero.
Baker, Aaron. “Global Cinema and Contagion.” Film Quarterly 66.3 (2014): 5–14.
Right from the beginning Contagion kept my attention and I was able to follow the whole film quite easily. This aspect makes me believe that this film was made for the average Westerner who just wants to see a “what if” film. Meaning a film that would show us what would happen if a deadly virus were to take over the whole world.
ReplyDeleteGlobalization is seen throughout this whole film in quite obvious ways. Most of you have pointed these ways out, from the different countries that the virus spreads through to the blog on the internet that persuades people to not take the vaccination. Globalization is seen more as affecting the whole world and more public in comparison to the previous films that we have watched. For example in Import/Export globalization is seen more at a personal level, by affecting Olga and Paul. A little broader view of globalization is seen in Workingman’s Death, however it is limited to the working class and poor people of these countries. In Contagion globalization is seen throughout the entire world. The virus strikes all sorts of people from all sorts of places.
Caetlin Benson-Allott declares in her article titled “Out of Sight” that is in the academic journal Film Quarterly that “Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion tries to contest this prevailing logic by insisting on the limits of visibility” (14). People are fascinated by seeing things that technology shows us that we cannot see ourselves. Technology makes things that can’t be seen by the naked eye visible. By seeing these things in movies and on our televisions we feel better informed and marveled at the “real” image of the virus. However, Benson-Allott argues that film can only go so far and this is proven in the conclusion of the film showing that the real cause of the virus is from the bananas in the tree. The human eye can only see so much, and this simple answer to the source of the virus reveals that modern technology cannot determine everything.
Contagion is a “what if” film and if a deadly virus were to take over the whole world it would result in a lot of loss and pain. They do find a vaccine in the end, but after all of the lives and days lost it shows that unknown viruses do have control and will devour all sorts of people.
Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Out of Sight.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 2
(Winter 2011), pg. 14-15.
This week in class we've spent time discussing the economics of getting films made and the different motivations of the parties involved (directors, producers, investors, actors). In an interview with journalist Gavin Smith to promote Contagion, director Steven Soderbergh acknowledges the allure creating films with commercial appeal as he notes that “working on something for short money and then having nobody go see it, and that's frustrating” and going down that road again “just didn't seem like a very smart idea” ( 2011, p. 62). And while Soderbergh’s resume does show a steady stream of widely appealing films (both pre- and post-Contagion) he contends that although big-budget, Contagion was intended as a “really simple” film as evidenced by the near absence of lighting setups, minimal camera movement and an emphasis on performance and scientific accuracy (Smith, 2011, pp. 62).
ReplyDeleteMany of the films we have watched previously related capitalism and globalization in certain terms, for example industry, manual labor etc. (save for Dirty Pretty Things). Contagious introduces a kind of bio-economic capitalism. In 2012 President Obama released the National Bioeconomy Blueprint, with the administration’s key science and technology advisor explaining that “life sciences have proven to be a remarkably vital source of economic growth” (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/bioeconomy_press_release_0.pdf). A plan that Jude Law’s character, Alan would no doubt cite as possessing questionable motives for all its seemingly good intentions. Specifically as it would related to Contagion, how to profit from the disruption of society and human well-being in part due to “the increase in international trade and travel,” and the “explosion of ‘microbial traffic’” as a result of our globalized world says Belinda Bennett (2006, p. 3).
Monica in her post also goes a step further and adds the additional variable of privilege, as seen through monetary means, birthright etc. The film explores then when we see the exchange of Marion Cotilliard’s character Dr. Leonora, a single person for literally an entire village of people in Hong Kong. This uneven exchange is not attributable to human worth (or rather perceived worth) but instead comes down to perceived privilege.
Bennett, B., & Tomossey, G. (2006).Globalization and Health: Challenges for health law and bioethics. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
Smith, G. (2011, Sep. - Oct.). All Work and No Play...Makes Steven Soderbergh some kind of genious. Filmcomment, 47, 62-67.
"The lightning spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), unprecedented in its speed and scope, was a reminder of man's vulnerability in the face of constantly evolving infectious diseases." This quote from the article "Biodiversity and Emerging Diseases" reflects the fear that feeds the plot of Contagion. As has been previously stated, this film shows globalization in a light that we have not previously studied: infectious disease. Mankind is almost rendered powerless in the spread of a new virus, and the globalization of today's world makes the spread of such diseases all the more potent. This is illustrated in Contagion, with one woman who visited China being infected and spreading a disease that infects 1 in 12 people in the world's population (which was emphasized in the movie as not being the population of the US, but of the world, further showing the effects of globalization).
ReplyDeleteAs evidenced in the fact that one can find many scholarly sources on the topic of infectious disease that begins in animals and is spread to humans, this is not a new phenomenon, although the film greatly exaggerates the results of such a virus. The quote above sites SARS. Other such diseases were mentioned in the film, like West Nile and Swine Flu. The fear surrounding these viruses when they broke out in the world was, I would argue, just as high as the fear in the film, even though the results were much less serious. The film took a very real fear and escalated the results. It played on the powerless feeling we would have in the face of such disaster.
I couldn't help but think of the Columbian Exchange while viewing this film. That was likely the first incident of infectious disease and globalization. This occurred when settlers in the New World brought with them the diseases of the Old World. The Native Americans, having not ever been exposed to such diseases, had zero immunity to these diseases and suffered and died in great numbers. This is certainly an early example of globalization. Now, with airplanes and fast travel, a new disease could spread at a much faster rate, as evidenced in the film.
I enjoyed the choice of starting the film on "Day 2" and not showing what happened on Day 1 until the end of the film. While the idea that one bat could infect one pig that suddenly becomes a worldwide epidemic may be in danger of being a slippery-slope fallacy, this idea of how quickly something could spread with globalization was still interesting. I believe the film was also about the exchange of fear, not just a virus. Fear spreads quickly like a virus, and the effects of this virus would have been different if so much care had not been taken in not upsetting everyone (at first).
The drab setting of the film could be compared to La Promesse and Import/Export. A grey setting for grim circumstances. This seems to be a theme in these films.
Blouin, Edmour F, and Jean-Charles Maillard. Impact of Emerging Zoonotic Diseases on Animal Health. Boston, Mass: Published by Blackwell-WileyInterScience on behalf of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006. Internet resource.
It seems like this week, even though most of the movies we have watched are "Hollywood" movies, many of them, such as Babel, Syriana, and Contagion are all also known as "hyper-link cinema." They are films in which the characters relationships with each other are indirect or simply just thematic. They are films in which the story progresses laterally as well as forwardly. So, instead of having a river of narrative, one gets a web of narrative, a network of story, in which the films cut to separate parts of the web, and it is up to the viewer to see the whole. Or, as Anil Narine says in her introduction to Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society, "In the cinematic network society, empowered agents fail to co-ordinate or even comprehend the networks that surround them. Borrowing from social problem films, economic guilt films, and city films of the past, these network narratives illustrate how networks can link us in unwanted ways.” Although Contagion is not one of the 11 films Narine discusses, it does fit into the hyperlink genre to which Narine is analyzing. And what she says about characters in other hyperlink films, also fits into characters in Contagion. In Contagion, no one person knows how the sequence of events is playing out on the global scale. Everyone knows only a part and the characters themselves never get together to put the jigsaw pieces together, that is left to the audience. But, everyone in Contagion is aware that they are connected to the rest of humanity simply by virtue of "having a nose and mouth." So, in Contagion, characters do not exactly fear the web the virus makes through the world, instead, it is the connection to the web they fear. The virus made them aware of the few degrees of separativity that existence between everyone on the planet and so a character like Matt Damon's seeks isolation.
ReplyDeleteHyperlink cinema is often brought into the conversation of film and globalization, and for good reason. Hyperlink cinema is a genre in which a very large cast of characters, in a large variety of locations, can be edited together in a way that makes the audience feel less like a voyeur and more like a god. In traditional cinema, the audience generally follows the struggles of a single protagonist. We see this character’s life and learn about his personal, political, economic, etc. problems from virtually his point-of-view. But in hyperlink cinema, one is able to see from a birds eye view instead of a peep hole. The globe becomes a very small place in the film, with edits from China, to France, to America, all in the same minute, without the audience knowing anything about the characters themselves. All we know is that they must be connected, because they are in the same film. So hyperlink cinema, or the process of making a hyperlink film, becomes a lens so as to look at globalization. The film Contagion is dense, filled with so many characters that I never caught the names of any, with all of the characters connected in various ways, with the entire globe as a stage, and the villain as something invisible and chameleon. When one compares the globalized world to this, one can see similarities between world and movie.
Narine, Anil 'Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society,' "Critical Studies in Media Communication," Volume 27, Issue 3, 2010
DeleteI thought Soderbergh made an interesting cinematic choice when he chose to show all of the things a sick person would touch and how many people touch them. As I sat there watching this film, I would find my self touching my face and I would quickly remove my hand. This small and otherwise unnoticeable choice added so much to realistic nature of this film.
ReplyDeleteGlobalization is shown through the networking of sick people across the world but as Baker suggests it is also shown through "the growth of Asian economic power as a challenge to the hegemony of the West" (11). This film clearly shows that this disease started on a business trip in China suggesting that business with China is ultimately a dangerous endeavor for American businesses. We know that American society feels threatened by China's advancements in science and business. This film paints China as the antagonist through the epicenter of the disease and the kidnapping; and America as the protagonist through our ability to find the cure. Americans love to believe that we are the best country in the world and that we will be the ones to save the world in its time of need. This movie only perpetuates this dangerous ideal and creates an us vs. them mentality.
Baker, Aaron. "Global Cinema and Contagion." Film Quarterly (Spring 2013): 5-14.
I want to talk about what Chandler brought up in his post, the idea of neo-imperialism. Yes the movie is the tale of a new super virus and how this world would react, how would a post virus world and a during virus world look? The movie takes on a simulator aspect, doing its best to show us this situation. However like Chandler brought up, there were still an amazing amount of politics in the movie.
ReplyDeleteThe such place is Jude Law's character. A fighter for the people and with twelve million followers has his own little imperial claim. Governments have always claimed the rights to their subject's minds and wills. The government has the right to say what will and what wont help people and Jude keeps saying they have the right to choose. This reminds me of what debate there is now with vaccines. Currently you can tell people to not to take them, but in the movie it got Jude into trouble. This could be seen as a element of neo-imperialism as governing through crisis.
Already the governments of the world do govern through crisis. Also in these movies we have been watching the two global powers who do this most often, America and China. These two countries as also always presented as enemies to some extent.
Contagion presents the initial outbreak as a result, however, of global reaction to our actions. The origin may have come from a foreign land, but the truth is it is all part of a global system. This is never covered or presented to the American public in the movie, just to us. In the movie the virus is just another foreign invader.