The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore

by Andrea Kitta

Disease is a social issue, not just a medical issue. Using examples of specific legends and rumors, The Kiss of Death explores the beliefs and practices that permeate notions of contagion and contamination. Author Andrea Kitta offers new insight into the nature of vernacular conceptions of health and sickness and how medical and scientific institutions can use cultural literacy to better meet their communities’ needs.
 
Using ethnographic, media, and narrative analysis, this book explores the vernacular explanatory models used in decisions concerning contagion to better understand the real fears, risks, concerns, and doubts of the public. Kitta explores immigration and patient zero, zombies and vampires, Slender Man, HPV, and the kiss of death legend, as well as systematic racism, homophobia, and misogyny in North American culture, to examine the nature of contagion and contamination.
 
Conversations about health and risk cannot take place without considering positionality and intersectionality. In The Kiss of Death , Kitta isolates areas that require better communication and greater cultural sensitivity in the handling of infectious disease, public health, and other health-related disciplines and industries.

Genres: Nonfiction, Folklore, Science

202 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2019

About the author

Andrea Kitta is a folklorist with a specialty in medicine, belief, and the supernatural. She is also interested in Internet folklore, narrative, and contemporary (urban) legend. Her current research includes: vaccines, pandemic illness, contagion and contamination, stigmatized diseases, disability, health information on the Internet and Slender Man. She is co-editor for the journal Contemporary Legend, a scholarly journal published annually by the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research.

Reviews

[Ciarra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found some chapters in this book to be really interesting, such as the introduction, Chapter 2, Chapter 4 (to some extent), and Chapter 5. It wasn’t that the other chapters were bad, but I just found that they discussed topics that were irrelevant to my personal interests.
For example, the chapter on Slender Man might have been more interesting to someone who has an interest in creepy pastas, but I personally could not care less.
Also, some of these chapters were more exploratory than argumentative, which again isn’t a bad thing (in some ways I think the expectation for essays to be argumentative is overly aggressive), but I tend to be more engaged by academic texts that try to make a cohesive point. For instance, I found Chapter 5 to be the most engaging of Kitta’s essays, due to its concise call to action to pivot away from binary and overly confrontational discussions of vaccines. This essay, as well as the essay in Chapter 2, was especially relevant to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the intersections between storytelling and public health.

[Lucia Graziano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I capitoli centrali, legati alle dinamiche immaginarie che regolano le epidemie di zombie, di vampiri e di "slender sickness" (la malattia causata dal mostruoso Slender Man dell'immaginario statunitense) sono sicuramente interessanti, per il modo in cui sottolineano i vari possibili perché dietro al nostro immaginario legato ai mostri.

Ma i capitoli dedicati al folklore e alle leggende urbane legate alle epidemie reali degli ultimi decenni (Ebola, AIDS, H1N1 e morbillo - quest'ultima, in riferimento al contagio scoppiato negli USA nel 2015, avente Disneyland come focolaio) sono qualcosa che davvero aprono gli occhi e fanno riflettere.

Con un tempismo che ha del profetico, il libro è stato pubblicato negli ultimi mesi del 2019; non vedo l'ora che ne venga fatta una seconda edizione che tenga conto del folklore urbano sorto in questi ultimi tre anni.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't quite what I was looking for when I began my research, but it was a lovely survey of different avenues for looking at how the concept of monstrosity manages to intersect with both the mundane and the fantastical aspects of a sociological ecosystem.

[Sara G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, kinda underwhelming and not really covering anything in enough depth to be a discussion.