The World Health Organization in <i>Contagion</i> (2011) and <i>World War Z</i> (2013)

Abstract Understanding microorganisms and the havoc they cause requires exceptional creativity. Today, disease outbreaks and infections are largely understood through media narratives and their accompanying imagery. This article focuses on the World Health Organization (WHO) and its complex infrastructure via decentralization as depicted in two Hollywood films, Contagion (2011) and World War Z (2013). Reframing these contemporary blockbuster films as pandemic films, one can detect different representational propositions about the WHO and how it contrasts systems of global health vs. local health. The WHO’s cultural significance appears in one situation as defective and score-settling but in another as multilateral, there to serve humanity.