In April 2016, I started to write “Why is Hollywood Obsessed with Viral Armageddon?” In June 2017, I shot a photo to illustrate the post, which wasn’t finally finished until March 2021—nearly a year after the World Health Organization declared SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 to be a pandemic.
San Diego’s Museum of Us exhibit “Cannibals: Myth & Reality” must be ongoing because I came upon the same sign still in place six years later—as you can see from the Featured Image, captured using Leica Q2 Monochrom, on April 20, 2023. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/160 sec, 28mm; 3:23 p.m. PDT.
The zombie apocalypse has come but not in the fashion of Hollywood’s storytelling ambitions. The infected didn’t transform into the walking dead eating the living. Rather, we all became the living dead, aimlessly bumping about pandemic protocols like obedient lab rats in a maze.
Meanwhile, social and psychological cannibalism is everywhere—as people consume one another in battles over Bud Light, climate change, dead names, economics (socialism vs capitalism), gender identity, politics (conservative vs liberal), pronouns, reparations, Title 42, etc., etc., etc. Pick a position and someone opposing it will eat you (figuratively, of course—or so we can hope).
Bon appétit!