4/9

In my last blog post I talked about engaging with movies in certain genres that interest me. I have specific genres in mind: dramas, psychological thrillers, and the like. I’m drawn to psychological thrillers, and the topic of psychology, because I’m very interested in how people process events – generally, human behavior and the influences on it. Understandably, the biggest thing in my mind right now is the coronavirus pandemic. This is one of the things I want to examine in my work, but I don’t want to write a movie about the pandemic. Throughout it I’ve watched – and experienced – what I would call a “fraying” in people, individually and as groups. The coronavirus has upended our ways of life like nothing has in a long time. Even in previous global diseases we couldn’t watch our fellows suffer in real time. Understandable, then, that what we consider normal would bend and give way for the sake of coping. So we fray; some people are testier now, some greedier. Some sink it to us-vs-them mentalities, withholding goods from those who need it because they themselves later might. People do – and justify –  things they wouldn’t have considered before, whether that’s scolding parents from bringing children to the store or wearing pajamas till 3pm. That is what I want to explore in the coronavirus: extenuating circumstances. Fraying.