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BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AND LAW
IN FILM AND TV:
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE LINKS BETWEEN REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE
by Christine A. Corcos
The recent outbreaks of anthrax
infection and exposure, and the current lively discussion over
wholesale smallpox vaccination, whether or not they are linked
to the events of September 11, 2001 are both horrific and strangely
reminiscent of some of the kinds of biological screen destruction
that Hollywood has imagined for us over the past fifty years.
Television brought us scenes of New York City and the Pentagon,
and the crash in Pennsylvania that seemed both unbelievable and
eerily familiar, life imitating art, partly because we are used
to seeing (imaginary) scenes of destruction on the screen. The
continuing media coverage of the hour by hour investigation of
attempts to terrorize us recreate for us the real-time anguish
of watching friends or loved ones undergo injury or illness.
It also recalls for us the frightening stories we are familiar
with from many movies. It follows a familiar pattern: the revelation
or speculation that weapons of mass destruction exist, that a
national enemy is deliberately manufacturing and stockpiling
them, and that it plans to use them against us. We see public
health officials and law enforcement (including the military)
go into action, often fighting over turf and the proper procedures.
We see the press (usually personified by an aggressive reporter)
announcing information dramatically, bit by bit, seeming to want
to inflame the public. The films familiarize us with certain
health protocols, to the extent that we are now hearing real-life
victims of the attacks criticize the CDC and others in authority
for failing to act quickly enough, that is, with the kind of
organized, mass approach that we see in films such as The
Andromeda Strain. Indeed, we recognize the fellows in the
HazMat suits from television; in their elaborate white costumes
they seem quite unreal and quite inhuman.
The enemy may be from outer space, as in films such as War
of the Worlds (1953 and remakes) or Independence Day
(1996). It may be the result of human-made experimentation that
results in accidental escape into the environment or intentional
destruction, as in Night of the Lepus (1972), creating
not viral plagues but plagues of mutated animals or insects.
It may result from outer space contamination of the atmosphere,
as in The Andromeda Strain (1971). Or it may, as in some
of the scenarios created for us by media commentators and government
officials, be the result of malicious tampering, either by a
foreign power or by disaffected individuals among us. In every
case, however, Hollywood presents us both with an imminent biological
or chemical threat and speculates about the ability of the government
to deal with the public health and law enforcement crises that
result.
 Coordination between public health
officials and various police forces is the aim, but Hollywood
often portrays it as an uneasy alliance. The scientists and
physician heroes are presumably interested in the preservation
of life and prevention of harm. Law enforcement and security
forces aim to contain the harm and bring the perpetrators to
justice. As far back as 1950 the classic Panic in the Streets,
set in New Orleans, features an Army physician (Richard Widmark)
as the hero; in tandem with a local police officer he tracks
down a killer suffering from bubonic plague. His first mission
is to locate the sick man; unlike the police he is not necessarily
interested in bringing him to justice. He and the police officer
work well together, however, sending the message that all government
workers have the welfare of the public at heart. Although the
title of the film implies that the city's residents are suffering
from mass hysteria, the movie actually demonstrates how public
health officials endeavor to promote calm and explain the procedures
necessary to protect the citizenry's health. The movie was remade
in 1973 as Killer By Night (also called The City By
Night). The physician hero has become a civilian, the plague
is diphtheria, the sick man is a cop killer, and the doctor has
a more difficult time convincing the police officer that public
health is the first priority. Much of the film, as the title
suggests, takes place at night, unlike Panic in the Streets,
which is characterized by daylight scenes. The changes in attitude
and ambience track the anti-government, anti-police notions of
the period.
Preventing the plague, accidental or intentional, that biological
weapons could cause is the theme of many films and television
episodes. That prevention almost always takes the form of covert
action on the part of U. S. national security organizations,
as in Avalanche Express (1979). American operatives try
to facilitate the escape of a Soviet general with information
about the USSR's biological weapons program. The possibility
that a foreign government is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction
and may plan to use them against the U.S. is often dramatized.
Indeed, the short lived television series The Burning Zone
(UPN 1996-1997) postulated a top secret group of biologists whose
sole mission is to track down and prevent the human race's destruction
by a group known as "The Dawn." Obviously, regular
law enforcement is powerless to save us from this threat. The
unintended consequences theme is obvious in films such as Deep
Space (1987) in which an American satellite armed with a
biological weapon crashes to earth, accidentally letting the
weapon loose among the unsuspecting populace. Again, the local
police must deal with the problem.
This kind of official failure is the theme of George Romero's
The Crazies (1973) in which a Pennsylvania town suffers
the fallout from biological weapons. The Army is unable to contain
the threat. Interestingly, the "biological/chemical weapons
accident" is sometimes used to prevent the public from discovering
threats of a different kind, as in the X-Files episode
Fallen Angel. We are so well conditioned to understand
that such weapons might accidentally be let loose and that the
military might have to prohibit our access to the affected area
that, the show suggests, we willingly accept such stories as
an explanation (or cover story) for events that are far more
sinister. Biological/chemical accidents are no longer something
unusual and frightening; they are almost expected. The problem
with the military's final report on Roswell ("really, this
is the last time we will come up with an explanation for this,
this really is what happened, unlike the last four times we gave
you an explanation") is not that it didn't make sense, but
that television and the movies have already convinced us that
biological and chemical accidents (or military experiments gone
horribly wrong) are regularly the cover-up for truths that our
government doesn't want us to know. Interestingly, physicians
and other health care workers are not automatically swallowing
the government's demand that they provide smallpox and other
inoculations for the general population. They have legitimate
health care concerns about the dangers of smallpox vaccines.
Will the rest of us begin, perhaps at the urging of the creative
media, to consider other, more sinister reasons for such opposition?
Biological weapons in the hands of a foreign government, albeit
an unfriendly one, is one thing. Foreign governments can and
do react to political and military pressure. But biological weapons
in the hands of terrorists is quite another, and it is the theme
of films like The Berlin Conspiracy (1992), in which
such weapons fall into the hands of terrorists. The threat to
all governments forces the Western allies and the former Eastern
Bloc to cooperate to prevent the sale of these weapons on the
black market. This kind of fictional cooperation expresses the
humanitarian hope that humans, whatever their political differences,
will work together if the threat is great enough, and is to the
human race as a whole. But it is usually portrayed at the individual
level, demonstrating how human beings can learn to get along
if they get to know each other. It rarely shows governments
working together and overcoming turf wars and national security
fears.
 In the science fiction
series Crusade (TNT/Warner Brothers, 1999), a followup
series to Babylon 5, the military and the scientific establishment
are engaged in trying to find a cure for a plague that aliens
have loosed on the universe, after the military has failed to
forestall the activities of followers of its alien enemies. Other
post-apocalyptic films, in which biological weapons rather than
nuclear ones have destroyed society and law include The Terror
Within (1988). In movies such as War of the Worlds
or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the alien beings themselves
stand in for the biological infestation that will kill all human
life. In War of the Worlds, the military is powerless
to protect us against the threat. Only the happenstance of Terran
biology destroys the invaders. In the original Invasion of
the Body Snatchers (1956), the physician (psychiatrist) who
should protect his patients from the threat actually becomes
one of the invaders. Those few humans who know the truth convince
the authorities of the danger too late to save their friends.
Even in such films as The Thing (1951) the original film
with James Arness (who also starred in Them! a 1954 film
about mutant ants) the danger from the alien being becomes a
danger from within as the being takes over the bodies of various
individuals in the story. The biological 5th Column theme appears
not only in the remakes of The Thing but also in television
episodes inspired by the story such as the X_Files ("Ice").
This lag between the identification of a potential threat and
comprehension of its magnitude gives rise to a great deal of
the terror that such attacks cause. If the police or military
fail to protect us from physical invaders we can still buy weapons
and mount a defense If a public entity, such as the CDC, fails
to react appropriately or quickly enough, we are powerless. Even
without conspiracy theories as an explanation, we are so conditioned
to believe in the incompetence of government officials and the
insensitivity and ignorance of bureaucrats that we question whether
we need to start manufacturing Cipro in our basements. Further,
our lack of medical knowledge leaves us at the mercy of health
workers at the very time that the government and the media ask
us to wonder about their motives and their commitments to us.
In some cases, of course, the scientist is the evil doer, and
because of our national committment to individual freedoms, the
police can step in only after a crime has been committed and
death or injury occurs. The ebola virus, first described to us
in books such as Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, becomes
the plague of choice in Airboss II: Preemptive Strike
(1998) and Virus (1995); in both films the protagonist
discovers a plot on the part of the government and other officials
either to spread the virus or to prevent treatment. Conspiracy
runs rampant in these films, so that while we have not yet heard
suggestions that the anthrax outbreak is the work of some government
agency, we are hearing criticisms from certain sectors that some
affected segments of the population, most notably Congress, are
getting better medical care than others. The suggestion that
those in charge care more about their own class than about the
general population strikes at the very heart of the notion of
American democracy. It is exactly the kind of class warfare that
feeds on panic caused by national disaster. And, given the common
film images of corruption among government bureaucrats, we should
expect to hear more of it.
Television and movies have set the standard very high for officials
attempting to deal with the current biological threat. We are
so familiar with the legal and medical procedures that we believe
are routine that we watch with a critical eye to see if they
are followed. The cautious statements of real life officials
seem to hide sinister truths; we sense they must know more than
they are divulging, because we've seen in the movies that the
government always covers up the truth in an attempt to control
the public. Our familiarity with a real biological attack comes
from the many fictional ones we have seen on the screen. We know
how things should be; the government should have contained the
problem by now, or some heroic journalist should have given us
the truth so that we can defend ourselves. That they have not
demonstrates the extent to which life does not imitate art and
adds to the uncertainty and terror of our times.
Posted January 30, 2003
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