Cinema’s First Epidemic: From Contagious Twitching to Convulsive Laughter
There was no funnier sight gag in early cinema than the catastrophe of epidemic contagion. Habitual tics such as yawning, laughing, sneezing, hiccupping, itching, coughing, barking, sobbing, and blinking spread like wildfire when too many nervous bodies found themselves together in close quarters. Associate professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature discusses this phenomena in an article featured in Los Angeles Review of Books.
