re: #84 Yeah Sure WhatEVs

I think I’d feel vastly different if we had handled the pandemic better from the start. That it was virtually ignored, downplayed, and outright lied about makes pop culture more than simple escapism, because for a large number of Americans, pop culture is their news, it is their reality.

Chiming in late to say this is an excellent point. As an amateur would-like-to-be-published-someday writer myself, my mercenary/practical side says, write happy-talk escapism because that’s what people want in a crisis…while another part of me is pulled in the exact opposite direction: Salman Rushdie’s line about how, in an age full of lies, it becomes the fiction writer’s job to tell the truth.

Then there’s also this long but must-read piece from the BBC: How to heal the ‘mass trauma’ of Covid-19

Covid-19 is a mass trauma the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Our most complex social extensions, and the building-blocks of our personal realities, have been coloured indelibly.
…
All pandemics end, however. And this one will. But to forget the trauma, move on, and pay it no mind, won’t help. It’d be a disservice to history and our own minds. Maybe to the future, too.

So I’d say there ought to be space for both: feel-good escapist material plus that which tackles the pandemic head-on. It might not be appreciated now, but it will serve as a crucial record and lesson for the future.