The history of humanity has been affected by many fatal diseases. When looking at the history of the world, outbreaks of disease that occurred in each period of great civilizations or empires have left humanity helpless. Outbreaks not only took away people's lives but also completely destroyed the habits of societies. For some people, this situation has been a gain, while for others it has been a destruction for the relatives of the people who lost their lives. The coronavirus outbreak that emerged in Wuhan, China on November 17, 2019 deeply affected the whole world and many people have made speculations about how the virus emerged. The fact that similar-themed movies were made before the outbreak shows that cinema has made some predictions about the future to people. The re-examination of these predictions through the re-watching of the recent outbreak-themed movies has made people aware of the high possibility of these predictions coming true in cinema. In this study, we focused on the representation of outbreak diseases in cinema and how these representations manipulate the perception of people in their minds. The "The Flu" movie, which is the subject of our research, was analyzed and interpreted based on Roland Barthes's method of interpretation and Ferdinand de Saussure's sign theory by selecting specific segments from the film.
Keywords: Cinema, The Flu Movie, Perception in Cinema, Epidemics, Perception Management