Abstract
Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend is a complex intertext of Matheson’s novel of the same name and its two previous film adaptations. While the film attempts to depict racism as monstrous, the frequent invocation of 9/11 imagery and Christian symbolism throughout the film recodes the vampiric dark-seekers as radical Islamic terrorists. This serves to further enshrine an us/Christians vs. them/Muslim dichotomy present in post-9/11 America, a dichotomy that the film presents as “curable” through the spread of Christianity and the fall of Islam.
Recommended Citation
Heyes, Michael E.
(2017)
"Fixing Ground Zero: Race and Religion in Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend,"
Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 21:
Iss.
2, Article 13.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32873/uno.dc.jrf.21.02.13
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol21/iss2/13
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
VolNum
21
Included in
American Film Studies Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, History of Christianity Commons, Modern Literature Commons
