Pandemic Culture: Escapism and Isolation

Over the Christmas and New Year period for 2021, I have been in isolation with my partner as we recover from COVID-19. Our isolation period coincides with the temporary holiday closure of my office, and every family gathering and afternoons in the beer garden with friends. We are left with little to do, and absolutely no room to move in our one-bedroom apartment (sans balcony) which traps in the summer heat we had hope to escape with jaunts to the beach.

Thankfully, we are both vaccinated and our symptoms were mild, leaving us with enough energy to partake in some self-pity whilst scrolling past pictures of friends and family grouped by Christmas trees and clinking glasses, between diving deep into literature and every streaming service we now subscribe to (and revisiting the home workouts we had neglected since coming out of lockdown).

The surrealness of living through a global pandemic has suffocated us like the thick, humid air pushed back and forth by a surviving table fan from seventies, totally inescapable. I am not alone in saying that the pandemic has changed my consumption of culture. When we have been locked down, quarantining or isolating, the fatigue of existence in this realm of living draws me to want to jump into the life of another person, another place, another time. The stories I consume are like sugar and wine — a necessary sweetness in the moment, leaving a sour aftertaste. The overindulgence in escapism during these periods leaves me emerging into the world seeking reality, a connection to life and all of its pleasures, or else I fall into the existential trap when I can’t place a meaning to the swing between connection and disconnection that is the truest sign of the times.

Since the life as we knew it turned on its axis in March 2020, a small volume of literature and research has emerged documenting how the pandemic has shaped culture and our relationships with cultural mediums such as books, film, television and the overwhelming endless scroll of content on the internet. Indeed, the first iteration of the pandemic was a time of collective consumption globally. We were united in our viewing of Tiger King and The Last Dance on Netflix, re-reading Normal People after binging the series, baking sourdough, creating TikTok accounts and learning dances, and playing animal crossing — all of which feel a sickly treat when we revisit them in the days leading into 2022 when the dream of returning to normal life is fading like a mirage as we come out of Christmas stupor.

Escapism

The desire to escape our present reality was recorded in a study by Hyerim Cho et al. (2021) as a dominant concept in what motivated readers during the pandemic. Within that desire, readers endeavour to regulate their mood and transport themselves, metaphysically, to a new setting. It was noted that readers chose books which were set in other realities to be “subsumed into the action of the text itself [as] a type of escapism”. Perhaps less surprising is the choice of readers to re-read books and series, where the plot and characters are predictable — a lacking feature in these unprecedented times.

The escapism effect was most evident in our devouring of television series in 2020 and 2021. However, as Doreen St. Félix writes in The New Yorker:

Escape, as it turned out, was impossible. Watching television this year was often a fraught activity, the passiveness of the auto-play highlighting the collapse of time outside the frame. I found myself watching all species of television this year, including what I typically neglect (Taiwanese baseball, for instance), because what else was there to do? I loved and resented it; I relied on it and was exhausted by it. It made me feel alive and sometimes a little bit dead.

Our constant consumption doesn’t necessarily involve attentiveness, rather the unending stream of material is just a cultural ambience to the reality we are living through, since it feels better to say ‘I watched the whole season during lockdown!’ instead of admitting ‘I increased my screentime by 800% this week’. Essentially, as we feel alone and most disconnected, we can continue to participate in culture with others without much effort.

My guilty pleasure for isolation was watching season two of Darren Star’s Emily in Paris (after watching season one during a previous period of isolation). As Kyle Chayka notes, Emily in Paris provides a “sympathetic background for staring at your phone, refreshing your own feeds—on which you’ll find “Emily in Paris” memes, including a whole genre of TikTok remakes.” What the show brings is a dreamy escape, with panoramic views of Paris and the characters experiencing too simple a trouble to distract from an espresso and cigarette outside a cafe. Like its millennial companion Friends, it has apartments one can only dream of, and fashion that remains forever and always out of the viewers’ budget. The lack of realism is hardly a fault, because in 2021 do we really want a show that doubles our dose of reality?

Parasocial relationships

The monotony of digital discussions while isolating doesn’t greatly inspire desire to pick up the phone. After testing positive, my partner and I received such an influx of messages of support from friends and family that we were almost too overwhelmed to respond to everyone with appreciation and rather thought to turn our phones off. Of course, we are grateful for such support, and for all those who left supplies and gifts at our door. But limiting social engagement to the singular digital dimension is exhausting, and it is unsuprising that so many of us have actively followed the lives of influencers during this time, for the lack of reciprocity meant that the parasocial relationship was low stakes. Amidst our cultural intoxication, I’m sure these relationships included fictional characters from books or television — I certainly laughed and cried for characters through my viewing of Ted Lasso.

The appeal of parasocial relationships in these times are an escapism in itself. Watching vlogs took me apartment hunting in New York, or out dining in Tokyo; reading and watching television allowed me to worry about someone else‘s life (one where COVID-19 doesn’t exist). More importantly, especially for those living on isolation time (as time ceases functionally existing after the first few days), they enable doses of social contact, mediated wholly by yourself. It is less unpredictable, less engaged, but is a relatively satisfying supplement while our IRL relations are offline.

Reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanahigara early in 2020 engaged the concept of parasocial relationships for me. Perhaps due to its length and detail, I could not help but begin to know and care for Jude, Willem, JB and Malcolm. The book even leaked escapism, framed as “’Sex and the City’-style lifestyle porn” but reflecting notions of a less glossy reality. The connectedness I sought thereafter was quelled by Emma Chamberlain’s content (which I saw described as akin to watching the last person on Earth and agree), catching up on Deux Moi, and reading Rachel Cusk.

Magical thinking

Isolation also coincided with the sad news of Joan Didion’s passing, which triggered my revisiting of her 2005 book, The Year of Magical Thinking. I first read it after the passing of my childhood dog and found that Didion’s words reverberated for that loss, and still do for other losses. In many ways, losing two years to the pandemic feels worthy of mourning. In these two years, where I might have revelled in the lightness of being in my early 20s, I have increased my dosage of my anti-depressants, reduced my alcohol intake, and have bypassed the easygoing years. Then there is the more pressing truth of the sheer loss of life, and a reminder that to lose a slice of my 20s is just my own delusion (for time is construct and 30 is the new 20).

The Year of Magical Thinking, like existing in isolation, challenges our interaction with time. Didion notices the oppressive presence of time, in reminding her how many days have passed since her husband and daughter had themselves passed, whilst simultaneously disengaging from the practical effect of time, untying her relationship with time and the doing and being. I feel at home in the passivity of the book, letting time brush over me like a stone in a river.

My choices in this piece are emblematic of the mood of all material you come across in isolation — “[e]verything feels either depressingly dark or depressingly light”. Arguably, they are choices which exist beyond time and its constraints, embodying the liminality of two years of a life transitioning/on hold/observed.