Mimesis of the Zoom World: How TV Series Mirrored the 2020 Pandemic and Its Languages

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has made apparent the importance of stories in consoling, healing, and being effective vehicles of useful information. The two case studies taken into consideration in this work are TV series special episodes created and aired during the first phase of the pandemic, and particularly during the first lockdown. Parks and Recreation’s and Mythic Quest’s pandemic episodes portray their characters’ interactions on line, mirroring the real world and the necessary but painful social distancing. These episodes were moving and have a great value as testaments of the lockdown, other than having proved helpful in raising charitable donations. Due to logistic restrictions and to the intention of portraying reality as it was, the two special episodes were realized through video calls and portray characters video calling each other.

Keywords

• audio-visual languages
• comedy series
• coronavirus
• covid-19
• healing narrative
• mimesis
• mythic quest
• pandemic narratives
• parks and recreation
• tv series