Avenue 5; or Something to Watch at the End of the World

I’ve been thinking a lot about panic lately.

I doubt this will surprise people and I know for sure I am far from the only one. With everything that is going on right now, it feels like almost everyone is operating at this baseline of a low-level buzz of panic. Not enough to cause riots in the street or anything, just enough so everyone’s on edge, just enough that panic-buying toilet paper and hoarding food has become common. It does say something to me that so many American consumer’s response to a health crisis is to shop harder, but I can’t blame anyone for that. I shopped harder myself. I’ve been ultra aware of my own body, trying to be alert for the tiniest sign that something might be wrong. Again, I am positive I am not the only one who has been constantly self-examining like this.

(Check out that link above, by the way. The Atlantic made all of their Coronavirus coverage free for everyone. Trustworthy information and very good writing about COVID-19, from a lot of different and interesting angles. Something to pass the time, keep yourself informed, and keep your head on straight. Which is kind of the goal of this post)

But I’m not going to talk about all the things we’re all feeling–the hum of panic in the air, the confusion, the fact that this all seems to move so fucking fast, the complete lack of central leadership from the places it is supposed to appear, how no one is sure how serious this is or how long it will last–I don’t think it will help and there are better, more psychologically astute writers out there already talking all about that. Instead, I’m going to do what I do best. I’m going to talk about movies, television, and books and act as if those are justifiable stand-ins for the real world. Which, considering how narrow our worlds will become in the next month or so, if not longer, might be pretty fucking reasonable. Maybe I’m just ahead of the curve.

I don’t believe that Armando Iannucci (Veep), the show-runner for HBO’s Avenue 5, or any of his writers on the show had even heard of COVID-19 when they wrote the first season of the show, which ended Sunday. (It has already been picked up for a second season) But the incredibly, pitch-black dark comedy–about a bunch of rich people trapped on a space-cruise-ship for what was originally just an eight-week excursion, that through many, many mishaps, transforms into a three-and-a-half year slog for survival–has felt almost eerie in its timeliness.

Because it’s about panic. It’s about people responding to extreme circumstances they never thought they would have to deal with in their lifetime. It’s about the utter failure of leadership at a time when good leadership is most needed. It’s about how fear can lead people to make horrifically stupid decisions. It’s also hilarious. I should stress that. It is dark as a moonless night and will not leave you with too much trust in humanity. But you will laugh your ass off. The acting (with Hugh Laurie leading as the ‘captain’ of the ship) is superb. The writing is sharp as a knife (my favorite line of the series: “He’s only there to keep his skeleton from falling over.”) It’s more than worth your time if you have access to an HBO subscription.

But as I was originally planning this post (it was originally going to be all Avenue 5) I realized that the darkest comedy I’ve ever enjoyed; a comedy about the uselessness of he rich and the failings of the average person under intense pressure; might not be what everyone needs right now. Because fiction (and by fiction I mean any piece of narrative storytelling through book, film, and television) can do many things. It can illuminate our failings but it can also show us the best of ourselves. Fiction can teach us to look at the world around us with new eyes. It can warn us. It can let us meet people we never would have met otherwise. And it can be an escape, among a million other things. This might be news to you, but I love stories. And I believe they can be especially helpful at a time like now, when the world is in flux and our lives seem uncertain. So the rest of this post will be me talking about stories to engage, inform, and provide you with escape as the Coronavirus continues its sweep across the globe and our subjective worlds shrink around us.

I genuinely hope this proves helpful to anyone reading and maybe provides you with a distraction if nothing else. All of these recommendations will be related in some way to panic or the virus.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by: Douglas Adams is a good place to start, right? DON’T PANIC is, after all, one of the most famous sayings among many from the book series (of which ‘Hitchhikers’ is only the first of five). I think that saying is something we may all need to keep in mind in the coming weeks and months. No one has ever made a good, well-thought-out decision while panicking and this is a lesson you might also learn from the book itself. The story of an ordinary, very unassuming Englishman whisked off the Earth just before it is destroyed by an ignorant and inefficient bureaucracy. It is honestly one of the funniest books you will ever read, and not nearly as dark a comedy as Avenue 5 (the destruction of Earth notwithstanding). This book can function as both an escape and a way to engage your mind in a very hippie/druggy strain of sci-fi philosophy. The movie is pretty good too.

Station Eleven by: Emily St. John Mandel is a much quieter kind of read. A book that takes place before, during, and after an apocalypse caused by a global pandemic named the “Georgia Flu”. Spooky, right? It is one of my favorite works of post-apocalyptic fiction and Mandel’s treatment of the disease and people’s reactions to it, while never heavy on the science, feels spot-on all the way through. The prose is some of the most gorgeous put to print in the last decade. But none of that is the reason I’m putting this book in this ad-hoc list I’m posting. Station Eleven is, more than anything, a novel of hope. The plot concerns a woman with a traveling symphony and acting troupe journeying through the world decades after the end. It’s a book that makes you believe in humanity’s ability to adapt. That people can find reasons for living, that they can find art, even after the apocalypse. That we may lose certain things in our present, even beautiful things (Mandel’s description of the beauties of the modern living world are heartrending), but there will always be something or someone worth fighting for. Read it for the quiet hopefulness it can inspire. Read it for the way it can make you see the gorgeousness of everything around you.

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and the movie of the same name directed by Alex Garland are for when you really want to dive deep into the ineffable horror and uncertainty of our world right now. A slim and creepy novel about a team of scientists on an expedition into Area X, a region of unknown and expanding size full of unexplainable biological and psychological phenomena. There are few things that explore the constant alarming confusion I and many of you have been feeling lately as well as this book. The main character (the whole book is told through her POV) is fascinating and potentially unreliable from the start. Everyone in the expedition is unsure of their ultimate goal and all of them were most likely infected by whatever created Area X from the moment they crossed the barrier. I think a lot of us can relate to that disorientation and the ongoing possibility of infection. The prose manages to make even the most ordinary sight into something otherworldly. It is a captivating and unfortunately all too relatable story for our current times. And if you enjoy it, there are two more books in the series, both just as creepy and ambiguous. The movie is also fantastic, although with a quite different plotline. Both book and movie cover similar themes, however, and are both relevant. Recommended if you want something a little creepy for your self-isolation.

Santa Clarita Diet is one I feel a little bad about recommending, only because the third season ends on a cliffhanger and then it got canceled. But the preceding thirty episodes are fucking gold. The Netflix show, concerning the actions of a normal upper-middle-class California family after the matriarch (played by Drew Barrymore) becomes a zombie, is one of the funniest things the streaming service has put out. This is a show about how family can both come together and pull apart when dealing with extreme circumstances. The husband (Timothy Olyphant, at his absolute best) is in a state of hilarious panic throughout the whole series. And yet I would never call this series anything close to a downer. It’s very strange to say this about a television show that focuses on flesh-eating zombies, murder, and if a human toe counts as a snack or a meal; but Santa Clarita Diet can be genuinely heartwarming. Proof that even in the midst of circumstances literally no one could have prepared for (which is so much worse than our situation), a family can still hold together. A family can still love one another. It is worth your quarantine time even if you’ll be annoyed by the cliffhanger thirty episodes on.

I hope this helps anyone who reads it. On the very off chance I actually get feedback from people wanting more, I would be happy to do another post like this. We are in an unprecedented period of history right now. For me, at least, there are few things that ground me or allow me to get my footing as well as the right story at the right time. Whether it’s relevant to our circumstances or not, sometimes you just discover a book or a movie or a TV show at exactly the point in your life when it is most needed. Escape is needed. Thought is needed. We need to find some way to process our panic and our confusion. I hope these stories can help you with that as they have helped me.

Stay safe out there, everyone. Stay healthy. Maybe read a book.