Has COVID-19 killed our appetite for apocalypse films and other watershed moments of 2020
Will we ever watch apocalypse movies the same way again, or has the COVID-19 pandemic killed our appetite for armageddon?
Looking back on the spate of apocalypse and disaster films that dotted the film screens in the past 20 years, it seems twisted that we were ever so fascinated by stories that depicted our own extinction. But scholars say that turning to disaster films is not only helpful in building a sense of resilience and preparedness during a pandemic, but they’re also purposeful.
In her book Apocalyptic Transformation, Elizabeth K. Rosen writes that apocalyptic narratives are a means to unearth a sense of order in a chaotic world. They teach us how to process the grievances of our own world as we watch it burn — at least in theory, and that’s the point. In doing so, we reckon with the failures of our modern systems, vicariously live through the character’s struggles for survival, and achieve a sense of renewal at the end.
With death and unimaginable loss depicted on the big screens, the most important thing apocalypse films demonstrate is how to recover hope in times of adversity.
Drawing comparisons between the fiction of apocalypse films and the reality of a COVID-19 world may seem dramatic. After all, even as we approach the one million mark in the number of deaths, COVID-19’s devastation isn’t all-encompassing. It seems tame compared to how sweeping apocalypses are imagined in fiction (in John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s 2012, 6.6 billion people died — 99% of the global population in 2012). And yet the COVID-19 pandemic has offered what cinematic apocalypses often set out to achieve — a reckoning with the life we’ve led and a chance to change it.
In April, SimilarWeb and Apptopia released data documenting the subtle yet dramatic shifts in the Internet habits of Americans.
With many under lockdown across the country, people are finding themselves with a lot of extra time on their hands, and they’re choosing to spend it in surprising ways. Predictably, entertainment platforms like Netflix and Youtube are gaining a lot of traffic. But people are watching shows a lot less on their phones, shifting instead to their laptops and desktop computers.
There’s no surprise that usage for video-calling applications like Google Duo, Google Meet and Zoom is skyrocketing, what with school and work moving en masse online. But the spike is also coming from people seeking to video-call and see their loved ones’ faces, rather than settle for texting or chatting.
There’s a lot of reason to believe that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t just shuttered the economy and forced us all indoors. It is also displacing old habits, giving many people a chance in the chaos to rebuild their relationships — and not just with one another, but also with everything else in their lives.
Take, for example, how the lockdown is dramatically changing our relationship with food.
Pre-COVID-19, our relationship with our phones pretty much transformed restaurant dining and the food business in general. Restaurants were shaped not by the choices of diners per se, but by the algorithms and the demands of the attention economy. Meals were made to impress people who weren’t even at the table. Restaurants adapted just as well by shifting their presentation, their marketing, and even their services online.
But under the current circumstances, these old norms are beginning to fade, too. Given no choice but to shift work, study and the conduct of the majority of our businesses into the confines of our home, Americans are relearning the taste of home cooked meals. We’re becoming less and less reliant on restaurant take outs, choosing instead to grow our own food or bake our own breads. And with that, we’re gaining a renewed appreciation for meaningful craft: not of the food that we appreciate through the lens of an Instagram filter, but of the ones we make with our own hands.
Where does this leave restaurants and food businesses?
Brookings researchers estimated that the trend of working from home is probably going to continue way past the decline of COVID-19. Businesses, like people, are going to have to adjust to and strike at the opportunities emerging out of the changing landscape.
Based on the dramatic changes sweeping across every aspect of our lives, there are three important things restaurants and food business owners should focus on:
Rapport. Restaurants have long been working to make their online presence competitive by encouraging their patrons to post reviews or hashtags, by incorporating online delivery services into their system, and bypromoting new dishes through bloggers and video recipes. But as people desire to eat in a lot more and to order out only on occasions, the window for reaching potential customers is shrinking amidst ever-growing competition. Add to that the current trend of Americans seeking more meaningful use of their time online and of their lives, restaurants have to step it up to nurture genuine relationships with their patrons.
It’s not going to be enough just to have 5 stars on Yelp — restaurants and food businesses need to build on those impressions, and nurture relationships that their loyal patrons are going to want to go back to — not just as consumers, but something more akin to old friends.
Local Support. With restrictions to movement, people are naturally turning to locally sourced products, including food. There’s reason to believe that people are doing so not just out of convenience, but out of a need to reconnect and explore what’s there to see in the vicinity of their own neighborhoods.
While this might spell good news for established businesses with already functioning online profiles, it’s a daunting task for small and local businesses that have, until now, relied on faithful foot traffic to bring in the customers. Nevertheless, it’s an opportunity they would be remiss to lose out on.
There are plenty of time-tested online platforms such as UberEats, Foodpanda, and Facebook where small restaurants can easily set up pages for themselves. For more tailored management, companies like Staff Street offer specialized backend support for every segment of the food business supply chain.
Visibility. Needless to say, the success of shifting operations online during a pandemic hinges on how well any business can make itself relevant to its captive audience. An increased reliance on digital engagement must be met with increased visibility — restaurants want people to talk about you and share stuff about you.
As long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage and people refrain from seeking dine-in experiences, restaurants have little opportunity to control the environment of engagement. People can’t very well appreciate glossy menu ads and AI-controlled ordering systems and dine-in privileges from the confines of their own homes. Therefore, the onus is on restaurants to innovate their business models, or to tap specialized services, capable of finding new and creative ways to build a visible and memorable online presence.
It’s clear that this pandemic is turning a lot of things on their heads — routines, habits and assumptions about the permanence of our way of life. And as the lack of certainty compels most people to reconsider what’s important in their lives, businesses and institutions must reckon with their pre-COVID0–19 business plans, and reassess how they can pursue and maintain meaningful relationships with their clients.
What about you? What habits have you broken during the pandemic? What things are you choosing to do better?
