Shohini Banerjee

Everyone is (hopefully) practising social distancing. With time on our hands and nowhere to go, people are turning to online platforms for entertainment like Netflix, Amazon Prime and just about anywhere that you can stream a movie or TV show from. This is a movie-fan introvert’s dream scenario (minus, of course, the reason for why this is happening).

So here’s what I have learned NOT to watch or listen to during a global pandemic.

(Warning: SPOILERS ahead)

Contagion: It’s about a global pandemic that starts in China, spreads across the world and is passed through coughing, sneezing and touching surfaces. People are asked to stay at home.

People are finding parallels between the movie and COVID-19. There are articles that fact-check it, showing the difference and basically downplaying it; yes, while the death rate in the movie was 25-35%, COVID-19 is obviously much lower. However, why, oh why would you still want to watch a movie that IS WORSE than real life? I obviously watched it right after people suggested not to, only to agree with them; don’t do it. The mind is a funny place. While knowing that Contagion is a movie, I still found myself worried about things that happened in the movie like riots because it is so close to real-life; except you’re thinking about a WORSE scenario.

Leftovers: The synopsis of this TV-show is that 2% of the world (140 million people) die after an “Endgame”-type situation happens. How does the rest of the world react to it?

I will put a caveat that I only saw one episode and that was enough for me to decide not to continue at this period of my life. It seemed like an extremely interesting show but people dealing with the death of 2% of the world population in a short amount of time hits too close to home. In the show, people are dealing with this world-altering historical event through cults of chain-smoking people who don’t speak, shooting feral former-pets and spiritual gurus who can cure the feeling of existential crisis. Works of art that ask the audience to examine humanity are great when you aren’t already doing it in real life. When political parties are holding rallies drinking cow urine as a way to combat COVID-19, people are being beaten while going home and migrant workers having no choice but to not practice social distancing, there is plenty of material to work with in real life to do a philosophical exercise of the current state of humanity without watching a TV show that also makes you do that.

The Circle: Speaking of thinking about humanity, want to lose faith in it? No? Then don’t watch this. The movie beautifully sets up your faith in humanity only to brutally annihilate it with an epic twist that you do not see coming. Fifty people wake up in a dark room, standing around a black dome and one by one, someone dies. Eventually, they realise that they can vote for who dies next. What follows is an insight into what people consider important when everything is stripped away, other than life and death. Beautifully dark movie. Watch it when there isn’t a global pandemic with sufficient real life dark parts of humanity (read above paragraph)

If the World was Ending: Lastly, is listening to the lyrics “if the world was ending you’d come over right?” going to uplift your spirits and make you believe that there will be a post-COVID-19 positive world? It didn’t do that for me. World-ending type songs are also something I would suggest to steer clear of.

So what are some uplifting things to watch? Well here’s a few things from my list to lift your spirits. Happy watching and see you (physically) on the other side:

• Movies 

  • Wonder Woman: A powerful female superhero kicking ass – what’s not to love about it?!

  • Thor Ragnarok: Funny, quirky, feels like an acid trip with superheroes.

  • The Truman Show: You’ll fall in love with Jim Carey.

  • Gifted: Want to happy cry? Watch this beautiful relationship between a little girl and her uncle.

  • Good Will Hunting: Robin Williams IS the superhero we need in times like this.

  • Begin Again: If music AND movies is your thing, you will LOVE this.

  • Up: Animation. Happy. Old man, little boy and dog – what a combo!

• TV-Shows 

  • Stranger Things: Gifted child actors in a sci-fi world also kicking ass.

  • The Good Place: Philosophical but good dose of comedy and good-feels.

  • The Boys: Action. Superhero. Dark comedy.

  • Locke and Key: Fantasy world.

  • Modern Love: Love stories – do I need to say more?

• Others

  • ‘The Try Guys’ youtube playlist: they are a bunch of dorky, hilarious guys just trying the most random things. Give them a “try“.

  • ‘Myths and Legends’ podcast: This is a pretty self-explanatory title. What’s great is that there are some known, some unknown stories and they are from across the world. Here’s one that I just listened to.