Polar contagion. Ecogothic anxiety across media in the twenty-first century

Concerns about climate change have seen increased attention across virtually all media after 2000. In addition to raising ecological awareness, these concerns have inspired numerous gothic fictions, in which the polar thaw consequent on global warming becomes a source of paranoia, fear and horror. This article explores a specific group of twenty-first-century cultural products that associate polar melting with epidemics triggered by pathogens or infectious insects released after lying dormant in the ice. Often called “zombie” viruses or bacteria, these pathogens appear in a wide range of fictions as well as in sensational articles that use gothic paraphernalia to describe the spread of terrible diseases. Like spectres, these agents of contagion return from the past to haunt the present; they also cast a dark shadow upon the future, as they become the invisible protagonists of “dystopian ecological visions” in which humankind and other species are at risk of annihilation. Four types of products are analysed to demonstrate that they convey similar anxieties by combining images of environmental disaster with pandemics. Different though they are in genre and medium, novels like Thaw’s Hammer (2010), films like The Thaw (2009) and TV series like Fortitude (2015-18) not only interrogate the epistemological limits of science; they also shed light onto dangerous socioeconomic dynamics while posing ethical dilemmas about the human meddling with nature. Mostly produced before the spread of coronavirus, these fictions are made more appealing by the current pandemic, which has encouraged speculation over new potential sources of contagion. Their appeal is confirmed by the 2020 proliferation of newspaper/magazine articles focusing on “zombie” pathogens. By merging objectivity with sensationalism, these articles turn pathogens into spectral agents that seek revenge for human crimes against nature.