When an event like the flooding in Louisiana takes place, destroying homes and disrupting and ending lives, media coverage shifts to a sober note. But the images of destruction and film reels of heroic rescuers suggest another, disconcerting dimension to catastrophe: disaster is a form of entertainment. It focuses attention, concentrates minds, and stimulates emotions. This is true in fiction, from The War of the Worlds to The Walking Dead. It’s also true in reality, where popular consciousness always seems fixed on one end-times scenario or the other, whether climate change catastrophe or Trumpocalypse or the rapture itself.
On the screen and in reality, the cocktail of horror, empathy, and heroism is magnetic.
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