Good Essay On History In Art

I Am Legend is a movie directed by Francis Lawrence in 2007. The producers of the movie include Moritz, Goldsman, Lassiter, and Heyman. The movie bases on the horror fiction novel by Richard Matheson in 1954. The novel illustrates the development of the zombie genre to popularize a worldwide plague. The novel adapts the film The Omega Man in 1971, Last Man on Earth in 1964, and I Am Legend production in 2007. Some of the casts in the movie include Will Smith, who represents Dr. Robert Neville, Alice Braga who plays the role of Anna, and Willow who represent Marley Neville, Sallie and Charlie. Francis Lawrence, the movie director turns to a post-apocalyptic wilderness in an upstaged island in Manhattan.
Three years on the plague causes evacuation and quarantine to the people living in New York. Neville exists as the sole human remnant that spends time roaming in the streets while in a lonely and carefree attitude. The streets undergo obsolescence and decay due to abandonment for a long period. Neville is a civil servant with emoluments such as house allowance to allow him an elegant house in Washington Square suburb. His profession is a doctor, and he works as a scientist and a soldier. In the onset, he engages in the search for a suitable cure to address the plague the society. He has to come with a cure that wipe out an entire generation and has to arrive home before sunset. The entire city has the encroachment of the virus that has transformed the humans living there into light-allergic cannibals. The vampires can only appear at night while they scamper for safety during the day. Social de-evolution is complete in the presence of zombies that Neville has to maintain a safe distance between him and them. Zombies resemble rabid dogs since they set traps and make plans.
Dr. Robert Neville is the single survivor due to the plague that resembles vampires. The pandemic causes war that spreads through dust storms to disrupt human survival in the cities. The movie illustrates Neville normal routine in Los Angeles as he attempts to find a solution for the plague where he is the only immune person. Neville can recall that the same plague claimed the life of his family, and he had to confront his wife who reappeared in a vampire form so as to attack him. Neville uses barricades such as mirrors, garlic, crucifixes and avoiding going at night so as to prevent attacks from vampires. Ben Cortman is Neville’s neighbor turned to a vampire and navigates the surrounding of the house looking for a way to get inside.
Neville is very busy during the day since at that time most of the vampires are inactive. He looks for supplies during that time while killing a few vampires on sight. Neville encounters a stray dog that him company for a few days. The dog gets infected after one week and eventually dies. Neville suffers depression and alcoholism before deciding to venture in the scientific cause of the plague. Neville obtains books and research materials in the library in the bid to discover the cause of the disease. The discovery leads him to understand that the infection is a bacterium that can infect the dead and living organisms.
In addition to that garlic, crosses, and mirrors can affect vampires since they are prone to hysterical blindness due to psychological conditioning of infected people. The cross affects vampires that scribe to Christian religion while they were in the sane state. Neville discovers ways to confront and kill vampires other than driving a stake in the heart. Other methods of killing the vampires include exposing vampires to direct sunlight that make them change from being anaerobic to aerobic parasites to consume their hosts once exposed to the air.
Neville captures Ruth in broad daylight after she convinces him of how she survives the infection together with her husband. Neville does not understand why Ruth objects the idea of killing vampires while she tells the story of surviving the escapade.
Neville decides to expose Ruth to garlic this makes her recoil with force. Ruth stands in front of the door at night, and this leads Neville to become suspicious of her. Neville later takes the blood sample that verify that she has an infection. In the morning, Neville finds a note from Ruth where she confesses that she has an infection, and she is a spy sent to investigate on him. The infected people have decided to establish a new society as they are slowly adapting to sunlight. The new society have developed medication to assist the victims withstand the severe symptoms of the plague. A group of people is working to capture Neville, and he should run to Vermont for safety.
After the epidemic for three years due to a deadly virus only one person is a survivor. The street is in a state of collapse since people abandon the property as weeds grow everywhere. Neville survives with the company of his dog. He lives in a barricaded house in Greenwich Village with the doors and windows sealed every night using heavy steel shutters. During the night zombies terrorize the streets. The predators appeared as hairy creatures and were once human’s beings before encountering the plague. The humans have changed to savage killers with huge fang of teeth. Neville has a laboratory in the basement of the house in search of identifying a vaccine to cure the mutant cancer. The influence of cultivated garlic, crosses, sharpened stakes, and used mirrors work against the band of predators.
Matheson succeeds in the development of traditional vampires unlike the use of strong zombies in the low realism that is effective. In I Am, Legend Neville firmly believes that he is the only human alive, and this leads him to remain earnest in the quest of identifying a vaccine for the entire population in the city.
In the retrospect, Neville faces a bleak future as human beings mutate to infinite bodies called zombies with infinite speed and physical strength. The set up involves Neville’s campaign to survive. The event of mowing down zombies with his car breaks his spirit as they try to kill him. Neville attempts to treat a victim infected with the plague using own blood, he captures an infected woman and takes her to her fortified place in Washington suburb. Neville treats the woman and is not successful. In the next instance, he finds himself in a similar type of entrapment that he uses to capture the woman. He escapes when it is already dark, and infected dogs pursue him through contact stain of the virus. One of the dogs bites Sam, and he injects him with the serum, she attempts to attack him, and Neville kills her by strangling her. The following day, Neville goes out and attacks a group of infected people. A young woman, Anna (Alice Braga) and Ethan (Charlie Tahan) come to his rescue. The trio head home together and Anna explains the idea of getting a colony of survivors in Vermont. It is difficult to travel from Manhattan to Vermont now the bridge is in collapse and the presence of zombies everywhere. All routes leading to Manhattan are in collapse in an attempt to quarantine the island from contaminating the rest of the populace in the nation. It is not clear how Anna and Ethan manage to enter the city and why they attempt to test their fate in the face of imminent danger. Neville tries again to administer the cure to the infected woman while a group of infected people breach the security of the house while the trio scuttles to the basement laboratory.
Neville makes another attempt to cure the infected woman in the laboratory and this time round he is successful. Neville draws blood from the cured woman and hands it to Anna and later on she shuts Anna and Ethan in a coal chute on the back of the laboratory. As the infected group attempt to break in to the laboratory, Neville detonates a grenade that kills the mutants and him. In the next morning, Anna and Ethan travel to survivor colony where they give the persona in charge the blood sample containing the core. Lawrence uses Anna and Ethan to demonstrate suspense in addition to the idea of monsters leaping in the dark as they gnash their fangs to hammer items.
Neville avoids the encounter of the unspeakable precarious desire that represent the level of Lacanian Real. Neville has to confront the obsessive behavior of Cortman to codify the monstrous view of a mutant empire. Neville has to reconfigure the ethical relationship between human and mutant-human vampires.
Matheson’s (1954) environment centers on speculation in the apocalyptic last man on earth. The protagonist in the movie emerges as the only survivor in the plague attributed by the vampire pandemic that leave a whole population infected by the virus as humans turn into undead vampires. The protagonist lost a daughter and wife due to contamination of the vampire virus. Neville faces the struggle for survival amidst harsh environment brought by the predatory vampires, sexual frustration, and solitude.
Some of the authors claim that sexual frustration and desire for sociality is in the context of cold war politics and racial segregation in the 1950s. Other authors claim that the narrative is a horrific parody of a middle-class life experience with self restricted barricade in a fortified neighborhood. Neville spends an entire day in a desperate situation due to lack of female company in the late of sharpening stakes. Neville exists in a crisis of postwar masculinity versus a dominant heterosexual gender ideology. Neville attempts to gain the trust of a stray dog in his reflection for burning desire for company. The protagonist has the hope that one day he will come across a person of his stature; immune to the virus. Neville realizes that his psychotic impulses are the source of anxiety in the environment of mutant human-vampires. Neville is a new subject in the dominant mutant human-vampires since he views the society as his threat.
Neville is immune to the virus, and this leads him to barricade himself in the house in the Los Angeles home as he spends days killing some of the sleeping vampires and comatose infected humans as he struggles with dejection and solitude. He is systematic, yet frustrated, and the investigation of the vampire virus gives him a new lease of life. After living for three years in solitude, Neville encounters Ruth. Ruth as it later appears is one infected by a virus and is a spy sent to investigate the conduct of Neville. Ruth is part of a large group infected with the virus and has the intention of keeping the virus at bay with the pills. Ruth and her society establishes a brutal society and have the intention of capturing Neville, the last member of the old race since he has killed most of the victims of a vampire plague and should be captured for public execution.
Matheson succeeds in the transition of the horror genre from Gothic exoticism and illusion to urban horror. Fear is one of effective features in the horror fiction. The things that humans fear are not distributed in a random fashion. Humans can acquire fear in the presence of dangerous evolutionary past. The fear system in humans depends on the interaction with the environment for the development of optimal functioning. The threat from animals derives phobias that constitute selective pressure while large mammals preyed on human beings during the prehistoric time. Fierce predators with sharp teeth and claws play an instrumental role in the modern horror fiction since they are in a civilized generation, relegated to cages, and televised for programming.
The abstract of fear of death is a context-dependant aspect. In one context, people fear large carnivores as they attack at night while in another setting people fear bombings. Predators work as a central theme in the horror film I Am Legend. The threat of powerful forces, ghosts, chainsaw maniacs, and vampires is a powerful motif in human existence. I Am Legend is a horror story illustrated by monsters and vampires to the periphery. The vampires continue with their prowl as they crave for Neville blood. Vampires are cold and have white fangs as they play an integral role in the narrative to host other abstract monsters.
I Am Legend illustrate the motif of sexual frustration and isolation due to the predators. As vampires attack Neville at night, the female vampires lead him to have anxiety. Women vampires pose as lewd puppets at night since they hope if he has seen them and decide to come out. To escape the nightmarish experiences at night, Neville consumes himself with literature and music while the knowledge of the books does not put out the desire of the flesh. Neville sexual frustration is powerful that almost get him killed as he decides to venture outside in the blind fury at night. The issue of solitude continues to disturb Neville when he makes a visit to the grave to reminiscence his wife and daughter that he lost to the plague, dejection overcomes him. The idea that he is still alive, normal with all the parts functioning gives him hope that one day he will meet somebody that resembles him since his life has turned to a bare cheerless trial. Lack of love and companionship disturbs
Neville prowls to the library while librarians clean the place. The tragedy that he oversees is that of dying in the absence of a loving embrace since he is likely to suffer the fate of the vampire that will infect him with the plague. The death without the knowledge of love is a greater tragedy than that of becoming a vampire. Vampires have an anti-social behavior since they do not have a deep need for sociality. A human being thirsts for companionship with others in the environment since it serves as a strong need for sustenance. The horror for isolation is real and rational. Solitary isolation is a severe form of punishment in the criminal justice system. Any human infant living alone in the world will have a slim chance of surviving on their own since one can grow as psychologically impaired.
In conclusion, Neville succeeds in his struggle to make sense of the world around him. He discerns the patterns as he collects all the relevant information in the fitness. The quest for information and the frenzy of discovery set off the plot I Am Legend coupled with the hope of finding a companion to sustain Neville in the narrative. The mystery behind vampirism is suspense throughout the narrative as one questions the cause of vampire pandemic.