Good morning, Mick:When COVID-19 is enough under control that filming can begin again and we’ll have a steady release of movies, do you think there will be a spate ofpandemic movies, or will audiences prefer escapism, movies with little or no mention of the pandemic?

Paul Sheinfeld, Novato

Good morning, Paul:That will depend on a few things, including how long this goes on for and how bad it gets. If it’s a full year or more of this, I lean more toward the escapism side of the ledger. No one is going to want to relive this, not for a while.

Still, there will be a few uplifting movies. I’ve said thatTom Hankswill probably end up playing thatNavycaptain, Brett Crozier, who tried to protect his men. I also imagine that, sooner or later, every Italian American actor of a certain age (plus New York-born Jewish actors, because of a certain Harvey Keitel-like cultural overlap) will have to begin practicing Andrew Cuomo impressions. And, of course, this could be whereAlec Baldwinfinally gets a supporting actor Oscar.

But generally speaking, I expect there will be two or three virus movies, which will do so-so at the box office, and then these stories will vanish for about 10 years. Then, if there’s no pandemic in the intervening period, you’ll start getting the definitive pandemic movies, circa 2030.

At least that’s how it worked with the two world wars andVietnam.

Hi Mick:你正确地指出,希特勒和奥萨马bin Laden were so disgusting that they couldn’t turn out anything “humane or beautiful.” However, you added Charles Manson to that list. I wish he had been executed in the early 1970s. Still he sang and composed a beautiful song that is all over YouTube. It’s called“Look at Your Game, Girl.”Please listen and give your readers an honest assessment of that song.

Kurt Gillespie, Fairfield

Hi Kurt:Just listened to it. It’s OK — I’ve heard worse on the radio — and he was a good singer. But when I said that some minds are so diseased and evil that they couldn’t possibly produce great work, I wasn’t talking about songs.

If we’re talking about good songs by evil people, you could also make the case that “The Horst Wessel Song” has a good beat and you could dance to it, especially if you don’t know what it refers to. Two things put songs (and poems, too, but especially songs) in a special category. The first is that they’re short bursts, and anyone can suppress the crazy for three verses and a chorus. The second is that they speak from a subjective world in which the singer is the only person whose emotions matter. Their form, as such, gives cover to the homicidal megalomaniac’s mentality, because, in a song, the singer is always the source of all wisdom and the boss of the universe.

Take “Look at Your Game, Girl”: On the surface, it’s a song in which a guy tells a woman that she needs to be happy and stop playing the victim. He tells her, “Stop tryin’/ Or you’re gonna play cryin’.” Of course,weknow that that’s a threat, but in the mini-planet of the song, he’s just trying to be helpful. Meanwhile, half the songs written by George Harrison, who was practically the moral opposite of Manson, have the same point of entry. Harrison is always telling people what’s wrong with them — “Think for Yourself,” “Taxman,” “Within You Without You,” “Piggies,” “Beware of Darkness” and on and on.

In 2002, writer-director Finn Taylor released a great movie that touched on this phenomenon.It’s called “Cherish.”它弥漫着流行歌曲,因为它的交易,among other things, with a woman being followed by a violent stalker. The context allows you to realize how selfish, merciless, self-pitying and crazily subjective most pop songs are, including the title song (by the Association). Being on the receiving end ofthatsick song would be seriously creepy.

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