UnSafe at Any Distance: Todd Haynes' Visual Culture of Health and Risk - "Safe"
The Criterion Collection has announced the re-publication by the leading journal Film Quarterly of an article on Todd Haynes’s film “Safe” that dramatizes the fate of Carol White (played by Julianna Moore) who struggles with the effects of environmental illness (multiple chemical sensitivity) that cause her sense of selfhood and space to collapse. Now made available for free by Film Quarterly as relevant to our experience of CVID-19 pandemic.
“In the world SAFE claims for Carol, itself, and viewers, there are no safe social spaces, no safe healthcare practices, no safe critical perspectives, and, lest we forget, no safe cinema.”
“Editor’s Note: In his chillingly relevant article, Roddey Reid reads Safe as an allegory about public health discourses, in which “common-sense and (scientific or nonscientific) expertise …remain in strained and even antagonistic relationship. ” “UnSafe at Any Distance” describes an anxious spectatorial experience that mirrors that of the confused and distressed public today, with our knowledge of COVID-19 taking leaps forward and steps back with every passing week. — Marc Francis”