ABSTRACT
In Chapter 5, the authors analyze how films have depicted the role and experience of women during epidemics across cinematic history. It is shown that women have often been portrayed as symbolic “carriers” or “spreaders” of disease—sometimes as a punishment—often connected to female characters deviating from their expected gender roles prescribed to them during epidemics. Frequently, this is tied to a moralizing view on female sexuality—where we reflect on epidemic disease outbreaks‘ capacity to provide authorities with unparalleled access to bodies, and a series of codes for inscribing them with a justifying discourse. One prescribed role is for women to take on heavy burdens during epidemic outbreaks—often by selflessly caring for others. In extreme cases, this leads to women sacrificing themselves for the “greater good” of the wider community or to protect a male protagonist. Both images are mutually reinforcing. Not all female images fit into these two models, however: some instead are used to highlight more morally ambiguous outcomes, or to sometimes emphasize what men and women can share as poor and marginalized in a vision of “sameness and collectivity”.
