Source: (Mortillaro)
During the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, the media disseminated satellite images of disappearing clouds of pollution over countries like China and Italy. The accompanying copy drew on words like “surreal,” “striking” (Mortillaro), as well as “unprecedented” (Hickey). The headlines sensationalized the images. Online media posts implied a connection between the lack of human activity and the reduction of pollution. The imagery, exemplified by NASA’s Image of the Day for March 2, 2020, showcased a stark contrast in nitrogen dioxide levels over China in early January and mid-February 2020, illustrating the dramatic effects of reduced traffic during the February lockdown (Hickey). Separate news articles showed similar juxtapositions between human activity and pollution levels in Italy. The Chinese image features an orange section with red highlights against a white backdrop, denoting the pollution that disappeared in the adjacent image. The Italian image marks pollution in yellow against the blue and purple map. The pollution-free counterpart is conspicuously absent (Mortillaro). While these images aim to convey a message of hope–that pollution is a reversible phenomenon–they also subtly tell a story about the virus and people confined to their homes. “Lockdown,” a term synonymous with the pandemic, signifies the act of confinement mandated by the government, not as a consequence of a crime, but as a preventive measure.
The two-dimensional depictions of people and places in the images simplify what is otherwise a complex relationship between human activity and its impact on the climate. The implication that pollution disappears when lockdown happens is problematic because it implies that the human body is the source of pollution. The promise of a pollution-free image is conditional on confining bodies or ensuring their immobility. The unfamiliar virus added to the anxiety of polluting respiratory function—particularly the lungs. The human body then is both a victim and a perpetrator.
The representation of individuals within each space is obscured by a colorful miasma, suggesting a potential solution within the blank spaces where the orange hue dissipates. The deliberate reduction in visual elements conveys a sense of claustrophobia, evoking the challenges of breathing in air tainted by pollution and viral infections. Paradoxically, the absence of human bodies becomes a remedy to both pollution and the virus, as it alleviates the struggle for breath. This visual strategy serves as a stop-gap solution, complicating the seemingly simple acts of seeing and breathing in a two-dimensional space.
Hence, a pivotal question emerges: Whose breathing space should be facilitated to give precedence to the white space on the map? Equally noteworthy is the deliberate use of words like “quantifiable consequences,” “significant decrease,” and “economic slowdown,” aligned to the image, signaling an interconnectedness between seeing and reading. What we see in the image is a promising future at the cost of reduction in mobility in the present (Mortillaro). The coupling of the words speaks to relationships between what can be sensed and felt. Each pair describes what is possible by signaling the positives contingent on the negatives. A “consequence” that is “quantifiable” is possible because pollution has been reduced. A “decrease” in pollution is “significant” because the orange atmosphere signaling a catalytic phenomenon disappears in the adjacent image. A “slowdown” in the “economy” is another kind of consequence because human bodies are in lockdown. The contrast of the images framed by these paired words translates to different planes of senses particularly in terms of seeing and silence.
The framing of the images with these descriptive words calls on the reader to not only engage in seeing through the words but also feeling through the image. In his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram engages in a phenomenological examination of the interconnectedness of visualization and text. Abram draws from Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “chiasm” to introduce the notion of “optic chiasm,” a term from neurobiology that describes the crossing of optic fibers from the left and right eyes to create perspective and materialize a unified vision (127). Merleau-Ponty originally defined perception as the intermingling of human senses through chiasmic interactions with the earth via sensory receptacles. Abram expands this definition to encompass not only the sensory experience but also the act of reading words or symbols (128). When applied to the present context, chiasm is also at play here where the “unified vision” created through the pair of words and the image generates a sense of how one breathes vs how the planet breathes. The news articles rely on this unified sense of the readers experiencing a space that is difficult to comprehend from a distance.
How does one see the human bodies in lockdown when their attention is directed to the two-dimensional space of cartography? How does one make sense of a virus when their understanding of it relies on words chosen to specifically draw a pre-determined conclusion?
The way Abram defines “[p]honetic reading” as a comingling of seeing and hearing sheds light on how the media’s chiasmic interpretation of the virus and pollution reduces the human body and interprets it as a problem. According to Abram, “[i]n contrast to touch and proprioception (inner-body sensations), and unlike the chemical senses of taste and smell, seeing and hearing regularly place us in contact with things and events unfolding at a substantial distance from our own visible, audible body” (128). This unique characteristic of visual and auditory senses, as defined by Abram, showcases the individual’s ability to connect with events and phenomena taking place at a considerable distance from their immediate surroundings. One therefore must also consider how this distance is replicated in the images taken by the satellites and speaking for people and places that are invisible and absent within the two-dimensional plane. If Abram’s idea posits that reading transcends visual perception, enabling an entry into a space beyond comprehension, the spatial representation of smog’s absence and presence on a two-dimensional plane builds on a crucial temporal aspect. The image and the text speak to a clean space or a desirable outcome contingent on forcing people to stay at home. The temporal jump necessary to connect to the surreal reveals an oversight that government-issued rules enforced the sudden environmental change.
As exemplified by the CBC article, the decrease in particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), a key contributor to health crises with direct links to respiratory illnesses and reduced visibility, is a noteworthy success story emerging from the pandemic (Mortillaro). The article optimistically notes, “[t]his is particularly good news for those living in China.” However, in celebrating this environmental success, there seems to be a disregard for the disappearing body, confined within spaces restricted by government-issued rules. This forceful conflation of the human body and regulated space transforms people into a white, clear space on the map, seemingly overlooking the nuances of the “visible, audible body.”
The invisible bodies then become synonymous with a lung that cannot breathe due to pollution or the virus. The pollution is depicted as an orange smog in the image comparable to the “quantifiable consequence” as described by Mortillo but the virus can only be recognized through the word lockdown. Abram expands on the concept of reading as an act of “participation, or chiasm,” emphasizing how our sensory apparatus, such as eyes and ears, must disconnect from the immediate surroundings to engage with the flat surface of the page (131). This disconnect, inherent in the act of reading, plays a crucial role in shaping our visualization of the virus that otherwise cannot be mapped. While the satellite image provides a succinct representation, the absence of any visual representation of the virus, either as a scalable image comparable to the map or an impression depicted through the color rendering, lacks the same clarity. The image, projected from hundreds of miles in space with a bird’s-eye view of the atmosphere, is easily translatable while the virus at a magnified scale is impossible to trace. Each lung that breathes the polluted air also exhales a virus-filled air at the same moment, signaling the impossibility of separating the human body from either of these foreign bodies.
Hence, the chiasm expanded through the interplay of image and words suddenly shifts the responsibility for pollution and the virus onto the invisible bodies of the people, metaphorically connecting their lungs to the planet. The argument suggests a condition wherein a catastrophic alteration in the human condition is imperative for the planet to breathe. A 2020 CNN headline encapsulates this idea: “There’s an Unlikely Beneficiary of Coronavirus: The Planet” (Wright). The headline refers to the chiasm between the coronavirus and pollution-free spaces as a success story by arguing that the confinement of the human body allows the planet to flourish. The narrative is packaged as a message of hope and subtly hints at the idea that the pandemic is a means of saving a planet in crisis. This leaves one to wonder who truly serves as the crisis mitigator in this claim.
Works Cited
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Pantheon books, 1996.
Hickey, Hannah. “February Lockdown in China Caused a Drop in Some Types of Air Pollution, but Not Others.” University of Washington, 20 Aug. 2020, https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/08/20/february-lockdown-in-china-caused-a-drop-in-some-types-of-air-pollution-but-not-others/.
Mortillaro, Nicole. “Air Pollution Drops as Countries Shut down amid Spread of COVID-19.” CBC News, 20 Mar. 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/covid-19-air-pollution-1.5501810.
Wright, Rebecca. “There’s an Unlikely Beneficiary of Coronavirus: The Planet.” CNN, 17 Mar. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/asia/china-pollution-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html.
