Reframing the Virus Icon

When going for a walk around my neighborhood, I noticed a sign leaned up against the playground gate. The imagery printed on the sign struck me as both familiar and out of place. A glaring, overblown image of the virus occupied the majority of available space on the sign, and seemed to be its intended focus. The information printed below this blown-up virus image read: “Public Facility Closed”. The odd choice of layout of the sign, paired with its playground context was jarring. It felt like I had walked up to a mugshot posted up for neighborhood watch, not a public health notice cautioning safety.

My instinct in identify the sign as having a mugshot-like quality brings up an interesting point. The abnormality of this global crisis is that the coronavirus pandemic does not and cannot wear a human face. It is faceless by nature. Nonetheless, in encountering imagery of the virus, I was tempted to ascribe to it a human quality. It is this specific image, the same one replicated on the sign, that has become iconicized by the media, specifically because it lends itself so easily to this subconscious act of humanization. After all, successful icons "...recreate recognizable moments of social performance" (Hariman and Lucaites 32). 

The iconic image is made up of one singular viral shape, which acts almost as a headshot, that is then juxtaposed with a dark background, which draws attention to the formal qualities of the viral body itself, such as its red spikes and circular form. It is important to remember that these formal qualities are simply computer-renedered interpretations of the real virus, and its true form is unrecognizable to the human eye. The computer-rendered nature of the virus icon, as well as our inability to see it in its natural form, reflects the importance of science and technology during this pandemic and their influence in constructing the pandemic narrative. The simplistic and accessible nature of this virus image has allowed it to become humanized by the public, and its multiplicity and reproduction in the media have contributed to it iconicization. This anthropomorphized image of the virus has become an icon of the pandemic.

It can be argued that by giving the pandemic this face, we have chosen to iconicize imagery that is unfamiliar and in every way removed from humanness, valuing it over images of humanity and hope. "The image activates available structures of feeling within the audience" (Hariman and Lucaites 35), and this specific choice of icon reflects public feeling of the pandemic as an isolating and dehumanizing event.

Although some aspects of this argument are true, I believe that our collective choice of non-human icon for this moment does not reflect a removal of humanity, but rather exposes a shortcoming in our ability to interpret the actors in the mis-en-scene of this crisis. We have never before been faced with a non-human actor in a tragic play of this magnitude. The choice of iconicizing the viral image over a human one does not represent a defeat of humanity but rather an adaptation. In taking action to create an iconic "face" for the virus, we are able to ground it as an actor in the pandemic, making it accountable and creating a sense of certainty in a time that severely lacks it. By framing the icon of the virus on our own terms, we are able to reconcile its presence in our lives and, hopefully, recognize our ability to overcome it.