ABSTRACT
One key factor crucial in the rejection of quarantines, isolation, and social controls during epidemic outbreaks is trust—or rather distrust. Much like news reporting and social media, popular culture such as novels, television, and films can influence people’s trust, especially given that the information provided about a disease is sometimes seen as grounded in “scientific fact” by societies. This chapter zooms in on three illuminating films from our database centering around epidemics’Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011), Blindness (Fernando Meirelles, 2008), and The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006)—to highlight three categories of distrust conceptualized in broader discussions regarding trust and health: institutional, social, and interpersonal. These films raise two key issues about trust and social responses during epidemics. First, while aspects of trust are badly diminished during these outbreaks, epidemics can also interact with pre-existing structural inequalities within society—based on race, gender, or wealth—to create mixed outcomes of fear, prejudice, and discord coexisting with new forms of solidarity or cohesion. Second, the breakdown in trust seen at certain levels during epidemics, such as at the institutional level between communities and authorities, might be negotiated by heightened solidity of trust at the social level, within or between communities.
