Final Project

For my final, I chose the story making project. The premise of my story is that the pandemic has already essentially set in to society. I remained vague about the specifics of the disease as I thought it would be more important to deeply explore a single idea rather than spread myself across too many details. This also helped me reveal the idea of the disease slowly and deliberately, rather than cramming in a news segment for exposition. In its most basic form the disease takes away your ability to perceive depth, which we can assume to be a spinning sensation or panoramic vision. The one clearly defined rule about the disease is that you can see regularly through a mirror, since it is a flat reflection. There was a lot I wanted to communicate through visuals and through characters so I chose to write a screenplay. It is a short screenplay, so, in an attempt to be metaphorical and subtle there may be some ideas that are underdeveloped, at least in how they are conveyed to the audience. I hope you can still enjoy the story behind it, and visualize what I was trying to communicate. 

Click here to view the main story artifact before reading on.


I tried to address any of the important concepts indirectly. For technology, I think the story is significantly less about the "cure" and more about how the society developed around mirrors, and only being able to see through mirrors. There are a few examples that made it into the last script. I thought it would be interesting to also work in painted mirrors that are used as advertisements and are incredibly invasive to somebody who is affected and trying to just see through the mirror, but it did not fit into the narrative. I selected mirrors specifically because they are widely symbolic in film. This was how I tried to communicate the idea of the individual and the collective, particularly the last shot between the goggles and the mirror. In terms of diversity, I did not want to fall to the broader salient social identities that already exist, I wanted to craft and then explore my own, that being affected and unaffected.

Ultimately, since mirrors and vision were so weaved into the narrative, I thought that the main ideas would be about visions as in goals, vision in terms of seeing other people, in terms of understanding other people and in terms of connecting to other people, and of course, reflections, self-reflections, and self-identity. I also thought it was important to note the vague but deliberate titling of affected versus unaffected, which implies a distinct wall between two peoples.

Works Cited:

Benia, Cooper Owens Deirdre. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. The University of Georgia Press, 2018.

Medical bondage talks about experimental medicine and how physicians reinforced baseless divides between races, sexes, and classes. The book uses the phrase “medical superbodies” to describe how these people were dehumanized. While these doctors made valuable advancements they did so at the expense of others’ rights. I did not think the climate of a pandemic was the proper stage to examine such a stark moral story, so I tried to recreate these mistakes within a moral gray, where characters are clearly well meaning, though possibly misguided. The parallel for “medical superbodies” in my work could be the idea of a medical destiny, the way that affected and unaffected people are sorted and treated, particularly Isko’s characterization as somebody who was born with the disease and did not catch it. The characters of Posey and Cameron point out engineers trying to fix a problem they do not understand or sympathize with. There is also evident bias in the way the unaffected characters live in an affected society. This is demonstrated by most characters that are clearly sorted into the unaffected group, and the way they react to mirrors and affected people. 

Park, Alice. “AIDS Drug AZT: How It Got Approved 30 Years Ago.” Time, Time, 19 Mar. 2017, time.com/4705809/first-aids-drug-azt/.

The first search I made when beginning research for this project was into the AIDS crisis. It was a subject that was taught to me back in high school and again in another STS course, so I knew it would serve well as a rough framework for how I wanted my story’s “cure” process to play out. From this Time article, I researched the process that got AZT approved. The AIDS crisis was tragic and rapidly caused a lot of deaths and therefore the solution against it was rushed. A brief test was held that had results suggesting AZT helped patients with AIDS, but while most medications take years to be approved, AZT was approved in only 20 months on the grounds that it was thought immoral to withhold a medication that could potentially save lives. AZT was not the perfect solution, nor was it a catch all be all solution. It was imperfect. It had a difficult dosing regimen and incredibly and immorally high cost that made it difficult to get and to consistently take. This was where I got the idea to make the ultimate cure in my story imperfect and rushed and not accessible or even effective to some people. 

Pantalone, David W. “AZT Treats People with AIDS.” Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2020. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=96775788&site=eds-live.

After my preliminary search about the AIDS crisis and AZT, I searched the NYU database for a scholarly article on the topic. I found more information on how AZT was originally used to prevent cancer, but was ineffective and therefore disregarded for years. I wanted to use this idea of repurposing by making an everyday object embody what was essentially the cure for my pandemic. Ultimately, however, AZT did not slow or prevent the progression of AIDS, so it did not work in the way that was desired. Again, these parallels can be seen with the goggles, being questionable in how effective they are. The goggles, just like AZT, are not a direct cure.

Floyd, Kory. “Affection Deprivation Is Associated With Physical Pain and Poor Sleep Quality.” Communication Studies, no. 4, 2016, p. 379. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsbl&AN=vdc.100034764555.0x000001&site=eds-live.

This periodical addresses affection as a need for humans and affection deprivation’s ties to physical pain and poor sleep habits. Floyd notes social bonds are a necessity not a luxury for us, and that affection is hugely important in communicating between humans. Floyd compares the need for socialization to needs such as hunger, thirst, and sleep. Like hunger and thirst and sleep, there is a direct bodily consequence of affection deprivation. He cites brain scans which confirm that physical pain is processed very similarly to social pain, and good socialization is important for, “physical health, mental well-being, academic performance and mitigates loneliness and depression.” In my story, the character Isko notes how he knows only himself. His lack of socialization due to the nature of his disease prevents him from properly understanding how the goggles are supposed to work. He continues looking at the ceiling, and has no evident reaction when he finally looks Posey in the eye. This is a result of deep affection deprivation that has lasted his entire life. Additionally, the song that plays at the top of the introductory scene hold significance to this idea and related ideas.  The tone of the song is in contrast to the mood of the pandemic, and the fact it is in a different language and uses one meaningless word for the chorus paints how Isko is disconnected when it comes even to the idea of language.