I am Legend - Richard Matheson | Science Fiction Book & Movie Review

I am Legend originally explored depression, alcoholism, and self-harm. Taking up a different theme, the 2007 movie starring Will Smith explores racism. 2007's I am Legend updated Matheson's classic novella, using the narrative to comment on white America's othering of people of color while at the same time lauding and often attempting to recreate white versions of the abilities of black athletes, actors, musicians, and writers. White society essentially parasitizes people of color. Similarly, in I am Legend, white vampires attempt to steal the life energy of a black Robert Neville.

Neville and Depression

Matheson's original Robert Neville in I am Legend was a depressive. Neville had relationship blues and drank too much. I used to get mad every time I encountered a story that relied on drinking as its central conflict. It seemed too easy. Writers like Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill did it over and over again. What I didn't know is that alcoholism was a social scourge for most of America's history. In the 21st century, the days when alcohol abuse was the great social ill seem quaint. Alcoholism is bad, yes, but consider what your hometown would be like if every meth freak and heroin junkie were simply struggling with alcoholism. Consider whether you'd rather live next to someone running a still out of a cave in their backyard or a meth lab in their kitchen.

But I don't mean to downplay the problem of alcoholism. Dealing with an alcoholic or alcoholism is tough, affecting families for generations. What's more, the discussion of alcoholism deals with the same foundational human issues conjured up by discussions of methamphetamine and opioid abuse. They all share narratives of addiction, depression, poverty, scorn, neglect, unchecked passion, and on and on.

Neville's drinking drinking problem is tied to his isolation. His relationship failure isolates him, and he worsens it by consistently drinking to excess. The devils outside Neville's door intensify his feelings of isolation. His inner conflict has now manifested itself in the real world. Now, rather than just not wanting to leave his home so he can stay drunk, leaving home is impossible! His enforced isolation has resulted in required isolation. This is how real life goes isn't it? One's inner life eventually influence the world around them. Personal decisions are never purely personal.

At one point in I am Legend, Neville injures himself with his own drinking glass. Don’t overlook this image. It’s powerful. Yes, the glass literally injures him when it breaks. He’s cut. He bleeds. But the cut from the glass represents the larger problems Neville suffers from as a result of his drinking. His conflict later with the vampires, beings seeking blood, calls back up Neville’s greatest problem: he is a danger to himself. Neville already sheds his own blood without anyone’s help.

Energy Vampires

But what of the vampires? For the depressive, self-isolating individual, the world is a vampire, thanks Smashing Pumpkins. Lacking vital energy, the depressed individual sees others as further siphons to their vitality, energy vampires. Have you ever been around an energy vampire, people that take up your time and resources and have nothing ever to give back in return? It’s no fun, just ask Robert Neville.

By the end of the I am Legend novella (Nevilla?) Neville has been captured and is forced to take pills that kill him. So, Neville dies by his own agency, swallowing pills, a fairly common way to go for depressives.

White and Black America

Francis Lawrence’s 2017 version of I am Legend shifted emphasis away from substance abuse with its causes and effects to race, using the vampire narrative to comment on white America's othering of people of color. In I am Legend, the white society of vampires are parasitic, attempting to steal the vital energy of Robert Neville. This is especially because Neville is a successful black man. He’s got a nice apartment. He’s cultured. He listens to reggae music that encapsulates what he stands for, empowering people of color to stand up to a system that keeps them down. In scenes that call up the lynch mobs of yesteryear, vampires surround Neville’s home in the night, banging on all sides of the house, all wanting Neville’s blood. This I am Legend speaks directly to a history of systematic racism in America.

Unlike the zombies, Neville can still walk about in the light of day, important symbolically because he sees things clearly. The vampires cast about in the dark, acting as a mob rather than applying individual reason.

The Fame of Will Smith

Ironically, the majority of the movie’s audience are white people that are much less successful than Will Smith. So, the audience, like the zombie population, is transfixed on the status of the legend at the center of the screen.

Smith’s first big break as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air put him in a somewhat similar spot to Neville. Smith’s Fresh Prince was a young black man from an inauspicious life in West Philadelphia suddenly thrust into a life of luxury and opportunity. The Fresh Prince made it, overcoming socio-cultural barriers locking most black people in cycles of poverty. Importantly, the audience for Fresh Prince wasn’t just people of color, white Americans were major fans of the show.

Smith’s fame is deserved. He is a talented entertainer, but the underbelly of all this attention is America’s history of othering talented people of color, finding their talents amazing as they would the oddities of those in circus sideshow exhibits, and white America’s history of parasitizing talented successful people of color. On the one hand, individuals are revered because they are different, on the other they are studied so that their success can be imitated by white Americans.

Contrasting the themes of the book and movie, we see that the ‘50s offered up internal obstacles as the greatest difficulties to overcome. The individual is faced with isolation as a result of the inability to overcome anxiety, depression, and alcohol abuse. Whereas in the 21^st century, almost all struggles are external. The hero is the one individual capable of overcoming groupthink, racism, and stereotyping. Consider that at the end of 2007’s movie, Neville discovers that his blood is the cure for the vampire plague, his black blood.

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