Alienating identification: Black identity in The Brother from Another

Planet and I Am Legend

Janani Subramanian

Science Fiction Film and Television, Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2010,

pp. 37-55 (Article)

Published by Liverpool University Press

DOI: 10.1353/sff.0.0088

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sff/summary/v003/3.1.subramanian.html

Access provided by University of Hyderabad (3 May 2014 17:25 GMT)

Alienating identification
Black identity in The Brother from Another Planet
and I Am Legend

Janani Subramanian

This article examines The Brother from Another Planet (Sayles US 1984), in which the protagonists
status as both extraterrestrial and black man lends insight into the black citizens relationship
to an alienating urban environment in the context of a Reagan-era retreat from federal
government support for inner cities. I compare and contrast Sayles film with the more recent
Will Smith vehicle, I Am Legend (Lawrence US 2007), focusing on the racial implications of a lone
black protagonist in a post-9/11 apocalyptic landscape and analysing Will Smiths star persona
and representation of blackness in a neoliberal context. Ultimately I argue that sf films act as a
valuable testing ground for theories of identity as the creation of alienating worlds reveals the
play of alienation and identification at work in the recent history of race and representation.

In both 1984 and 2007, a lone black protagonist faced an unfamiliar New York.
One saw Harlem through alien eyes, the other encountered alien landscapes.
Both of them complicate representations of black identity in their specific
relationships to social and historical contexts. In Reagan-era The Brother from
Another Planet (Sayles US 1984), sf icons and conventions function to destabil-
ise codes of black representation and lend insight into the fantastic aspects of
racial identity. In contrast, while I Am Legend (Lawrence US 2007) does raise
questions about the politics of black identity, it ultimately reinforces the domin-
ant narratives about black identity unsettled by other black speculative fictions.
Its casting of Will Smith as the last man on Earth resonates in a political climate
where blackness has paradoxically become a contested site of both belonging
and exclusion, with political figures such as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and
Barack Obama required to manage black identity in the interests of American
nationalism. Such contemporary African American icons represent a patriotic-
ally multicultural future in which blackness can be divorced from its historical
associations with violent injustice. I Am Legend exemplifies and complicates
this colourless American nationalism.
The term alienation has a specific relationship to sf and fantasy, genres which
set out to alienate viewers and readers from their own worlds and thus provide
critical perspectives on familiar yet exotic environments, dimensions or futures.
In psychoanalytic theory, the term also describes a subjects relationship to his
or her psyche and the outside world, and film theorists, from Christian Metz
ScienceFictionFilmandTelevision 3.1(2010),3756 ISSN1754-3770(print) 1754-3789(online)
Liverpool University Press doi:10.3828/sfftv.2010.3
38 Janani Subramanian

onwards, have used the oscillation between identification and alienation to the-
orise the subjects response to projected images. In Marxist theory, alienation
describes the separation of the worker under capital from the products of his
or her labour, and from other humans, the natural world and the self. The most
extreme example of this kind of alienation is racialised slavery, whose legacy
Thomas Holt describes in terms of multiple alienations:
Blacks are the builders of the economic infrastructure, yet dispossessed of its fruits; creators
of one of its truly original native cultures, in story and song, yet culturally demeaned and
maligned; faithful adherents to the nations basic ideals and values, yet shunned, abused
and stigmatized as if an alien people. (303; my emphasis)
Reading narratives of race and identity through these theories of alienation can
disrupt dominant ideologies of race and ethnicity and encourage reconsidera-
tion of race as an alienated/alienating object.

The Brother from Another Planet: two kinds of alienation

The Brother from Another Planet traverses the Harlem landscape from the per-
spective of Brother (Joe Morton), a crash-landed, mute alien who looks just
like an African American, has a talent for fixing electronics and is pursued
by two extraterrestrial Men in Black (John Sayles and David Strathairn). The
figure of the alien, a powerful metaphor for different kinds of disenfranchise-
ment, makes sf a testing ground for issues of identity. In most sf films, the alien
represents a threat to and/or the displacement of racial difference onto species
difference (see Bernardi; Greene; Sobchack). Brother reverses the direction of
this displacement: its alien is a black man, whose alienation is compounded by
Harlems unfamiliar landscape (Bould 87).
Mark Bould argues that Brother foregrounds commodity culture and the
commodification of desire as the foundation of African American oppression,
articulating the films postmodern landscape of curious and beautiful trash
(Sobchack 263) as a pointed critique of the capitalist condition. Made during
the ReaganBush administration, its activation of urban space and of science-
fictional and Marxist versions of alienation speaks to the actual alienation and
disenfranchisement of black Americans, the poor and inner-city communities.
Conservative political and social shifts in post-industrial New York City ren-
dered the poorest residents more susceptible to slumlords, redevelopers, toxic
waste dumps, drug rehabilitation centers, violent criminals, red lining, and
inadequate city services and transportation (Rose 30). The 1980s urban renew-
al programmes destroyed apartment buildings and relocated large groups of
 Alienating identification 39

tenants around the city, alienating the poorer and immigrant populations from
their own homes and neighbourhoods (Rose 303; Beveridge). The gentrifica-
tion of poor and working-class neighbourhoods also priced out their former,
lower-income residents. Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan describe the
process in the Lower East Side in the 1980s:
The immediate aim is to dislodge a largely redundant working-class community by wresting
control of neighborhood property and housing and turning it over to real-estate develop-
ers. The second step is to encourage the full-scale development of appropriate conditions to
house and maintain late capitalisms labor force, a professional white middle class groomed
to serve the center of Americas postindustrial society. (93)
Similar projects occurred throughout the city, turning the poor and disenfran-
chised into exiles on their home turfs: By creating neighborhoods and housing
that only the white-collar labor force can afford, the cities are systematically
destroying the material conditions for the survival of millions of people (96).
Organisations that opposed city housing and zoning policies claimed that
Mayor Kochs Cross-Subsidy program, which turned over city housing to pri-
vate developers who were merely encouraged to create low-income housing,
ignored the needs of lower-income New Yorkers (96, n.22) and, according to a
1984 statement by the Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference on the Cross-
Subsidy Plan, low and moderate income people with few options ... become
the powerless victims of dynamic economic forces that are beyond their control
(96). In the film, Brothers confusion as an exile propelled by barely understood
city and state institutions resonates with the experience of New Yorks poor and
disenfranchised populations.
Sayles documentary-style portrayal of urban space highlights the oscillating
accessibility of the metropolis to the disenfranchised. Brother experiences Har-
lem through a series of alternately inviting and hostile encounters. Everything
he attempts buying fruit, finding a job, meeting a woman, looking for shelter
is marked by the inaccessibility that stems from his muteness and alien-ness,
offering a poignant representation of the actual conditions of New Yorks poor

The Brother from Another Planet. MGM (Video and DVD).

40 Janani Subramanian

and disenfranchised neighbourhoods in the 1980s. Using tropes of postfuturist

sf which attempt to collapse the distance between alien and human (see Sob-
chack), Brother ultimately draws attention to the harsh boundaries that define
the post-liberal, Reagan-era inner city. Brothers isolation and fear effectively
convey the very real experience of being alienated not only by a citys other
occupants, but also by space itself pseudo-public buildings, parks and neigh-
bourhoods. Equally important, though, are the bonds he forms with various
Harlem residents, which recall the alternate communication and support net-
works that Tricia Rose argues were the foundation of New York City hip-hop
culture.
Rose describes how hip-hop responded to the cuts in social-service spending,
housing crises and shifts to a service economy by incorporating the city into
lyrics and beats: The new ethnic groups who made the South Bronx their home
in the 1970s, while facing social isolation, economic fragility, truncated com-
munication media, and shrinking social service organizations, began building
their own cultural networks, which would prove to be resilient and responsive
in the age of high technology (34). In the context of a disenfranchised black
New York, Brothers muteness is particularly evocative since communication
within the inner city changed as Reagan deregulated communications indus-
tries and instigated the shift towards media monopolies (30). Rose points to
hip-hop as a voice that could overcome the new and alienating modes of com-
munication that accompanied deregulation and conglomeration by reclaim-
ing the post-industrial urban landscape as both its source material and testing
ground. Similarly, Sayles uses his Harlem mise-en-scne to illuminate connec-
tions between black identity and the transforming city, with Brothers mute sf
journey through Harlem suggesting that alienation often involves literal and
metaphorical silencing of raced subjects.
Despite being renowned for his realist aesthetics, it is Sayles use of an sf trope
that allows him to access the experiences of the films Harlemites. Although
his three previous movies Return of the Secaucus Seven (US 1980), Lianna
(US 1983), Baby Its You (US 1983) were melodramatic tales of the nuances
of friendship, romance and family, he had written three low-budget sf mov-
ies, Piranha (Dante US 1978), Alligator (Teague US 1980) and Battle beyond the
Stars (Murakami US 1980), as well as an unproduced sf screenplay for Steven
Spielberg. Brother successfully combines the melodramatic and the fantastical,
focusing on the alien Brother as a character and on his relationships with other
people1 so as better to depict both isolation and community among Harlem
1. As Sayles mentions in a 1981 interview, his main interest is character, with action taking a back
seat: Im much more interested in character than action so its been nice sometimes for me to do
 Alienating identification 41

residents and thus capture the destructive material conditions of Reagan-era

inner cities.
This more complex representation of black subjectivity and community is
in part related to the films independent status, as comparison with one of the
most popular Hollywood films of the same year makes clear. Beverly Hills Cop
(Brest US 1984) also features a black protagonist who must navigate unfamiliar
streets. While it is set in another city which suffered from the policies of the
Reagan administration, Axel Foleys (Eddie Murphy) journey is unmarred by
any messy brushes with Los Angeles black inner city. According to Philippa
Gates, the fact that Axel is himself from a working-class Detroit neighbourhood
allows the film to contrast his lifestyle and detective work with his more proper
Beverly Hills counterparts on the basis of class alone, ignoring the complex
interactions of class and race in the 1980s. Divorcing the black protagonist from
his community and placing him in white, middle-class, mainstream contexts
ultimately neutralises the threat of blackness, simplifying black subjectivity on
screen to appeal to broader (i.e., white) audiences (Gates 28). This is another
instance of the much studied containment of black characters in Hollywood
film.2 As seen in the 1980s biracial buddy movie, Hollywood has put what is
left of the Black presence on screen in the protective custody, so to speak, of a
White lead or co-star, and therefore in conformity with dominant, White sensi-
bilities and expectations of what Blacks should be like (Guerrero 239).
These black protagonists, both of whom enter an alien landscape and obtain
some measure of control over it through alternative means, reveal the eras
spectrum of racial representations. Eddie Murphys position in 1980s Holly-
wood was paradoxical, in that although he gained considerable creative control
in a predominantly white industry, his roles often capitulated to white audi-
ences: while Foley manages to infiltrate white Beverly Hills society to solve his
crime, his character arc ends with integration and acceptance on white terms
(Guerrero 244), largely because he lacks any connection to a black commu-
nity within the film. He travels to Beverly Hills to investigate the murder of a
friend, but ends up foiling a criminal plot involving an upmarket art gallery.
Thus, his seeming disruption of white norms ultimately serves and protects a
largely white centre of wealth and privilege. In contrast, Brother is accepted
within the black milieu of Harlem, highlighting the networks which sustain
black inner-city residents and solving a crime that directly connects powerful

these hired-gun jobs where they give me a plot or at least a situation because I dont have to think it
up (Schlesinger 5).
2. On the mainstream Hollywood representation of black characters as stereotypical, one-dimension
al or simplified so as to support dominant white cultural norms, see Bogle, Diawara and Guerrero.
42 Janani Subramanian

white men to the disenfranchisement of young black Harlemites. Both films

represent whiteness as somewhat odd, dangerous and alien, but where Beverly
Hills Cop deploys blackness in the service of whiteness, Brother calls dominant
constructions of both into question.
Brothers representation of race oscillates between the various meanings of
blackness and alienation, suggesting that blackness is metaphorically alien in
the sf sense of the word and literally alien in terms of socioeconomic and cul-
tural marginalisation. Brother hints at the material basis for the black com-
munitys isolation, implying not just that black Americans are alienated by the
capitalist mode of production but also that commodity fetishism divorces black
Americans from society. In its Marxist sense, alienation is the separation of the
forces of labour from products which then circulate throughout society with
a life of their own, divorced from the hands, time, sweat and blood that went
into their production. The objects surrounding Brothers Harlemites confront
[them] as an autonomous power (Marx 324). Without the ability to shape the
world around them, the Harlemites are subject to forces beyond their control
and therefore also subject to an alienating and hostile world.3 Thus, Brother
whose likeness to a black man suggests that the black man is like an alien
becomes alienated. A hesitation therefore infuses the films representation of
race (see Gunning) as the metaphor of the alien inscribes itself into Broth-
ers experience of Harlem and his interaction with its residents. Although his
appearance enables him to blend into the community in which he finds himself,
he also manifests physical characteristics and abilities that distinguish him as
alien he has three-toed, claw-like feet; he can re-grow a severed leg with an
orange light that glows from his hand4 and pop out his eye to use as a record-
ing device and endow his body with the possibility of being beyond human.
Frequent close-ups of his wide-eyed stare emphasise his perspective as one that
is both familiar and unique.
The moment when Brother removes his eye confirms the unsettling nature
of his physicality, expanding his vision and his consciousness. The association
of his perspective with one that sees more makes his gaze at the end of the
film even harder to read. Is he staring at the camera as a black man, trapped by
the forces of capitalism, or as an alien, newly liberated by his human environs?
Or is it the combination of the two, the realisation that 1980s Harlem, while
oppressed by the weight of Reaganomics and commodity culture, still dem-

3. Echoing Greg Tate, Kodwo Eshun argues that the original alienation of slavery has led to con-
temporary conditions where Afrodiasporic subjects live the estrangement that science-fiction writers
envision. Black existence and science fiction are one and the same (298).
4. Bould (82) links this loss of a limb to the slave narrative alluded to later in the film.
 Alienating identification 43

The Brother from Another Planet. MGM (Video and DVD).

onstrates the strength and resilience of its black community? Brothers use of
his detached eye to watch the black community and to gain insight into the
material forces at work within and upon it suggests a modification of W. E. B.
Du Boiss conceptualisation of African American double consciousness (Du
Bois 2). Being both an alien and a black man gives Brother the perspective
necessary to help the black community, an sf convention affording him what
Du Bois calls second sight into, rather than alienation from, the formation of
black identities.
Furthermore, the flattening and fragmentation of the mise-en-scne works
with the transformation of Brothers body in a manner that tests black iden-
tity against this sf landscape to suggest new definitions of blackness. The film
bombards the viewer with images digital scenes from arcade games, shots
of Harlem, advertisements to which Brother responds with confusion, but
also with a sense of control. When he wants to monitor the drug trafficking
in a neighbourhood, he removes his eye, uses it as a camera, and later presses
it into the hand of a wealthy businessman involved in the drug trade to show
him its devastating effects on the inner city. While the film manifests the con-
nection between alienating commodification drugs as an extreme case and
black identity, it also suggests a solution, albeit a fantastic one, to the social
and institutional forces that are destroying the black community. Vigilance and
an expanded perspective, symbolised by Brothers eye, are offered as measures
to protect the community, even as his eye connects the theme of vision to the
concepts of difference and alienation. If Brother (and the viewer) encounters a
44 Janani Subramanian

fractured and fragmented view of the city, then the film claims that there are
ways to overcome this state of alienation and to wrest back control of an urban
landscape being made unfamiliar. That the solution involves the alien abilities
of a black-like protagonist suggests that social change must come from both
inside and outside the community and that a new cityscape requires a new kind
of sight, one that can see the external forces affecting the structure and func-
tioning of a minority community.
Brothers ability to commune with and repair electronics, as well as his
expanded vision, suggest alternative forms of communication in the black
urban milieu. Sayles use of the city, a black, technologically savvy alien prot-
agonist, and his alien eyes, allude to hip-hops marginal yet deeply influential
reclamation and reconstruction of city space through its rhythms and use of
technology. Hip-hop also involved a complex interaction with commodity cul-
ture, and while Bould argues that Brother is trapped by commodities, perhaps
one can also argue that he learns how to use a commodified landscape benefi-
cially. His adeptness with electronics and his ability to experience a range of
black experiences through his second sight can be read as successful manipu-
lations of a technological commodity culture to improve the black community.
Commodities can both alienate black subjects and act as sites of black resistance
and empowerment it is, after all, only by traversing Harlems alien(ating) and
commodified landscape through his otherworldly understanding of technology
that he is ultimately liberated from his intergalactic slave owners.

Will Smith as sf star: re-stabilising blackness

In the wake of 9/11, I Am Legends representation of New York City and its
black star speak to a different kind of desolation than Brothers Harlem. While
sf is always preoccupied with questions of difference, and blackness and race
are often present in SF films as narrative subtext or implicit allegorical subject
(Nama 2), black characters and, especially, black protagonists are rare in
mainstream sf. Consequently, Will Smiths appearance in eight sf blockbusters
in the past fourteen years5 is a phenomenon which deserves closer inspection.
Smith regularly appears at or near the top of Forbes Hollywoods Top-earning

5. These are Independence Day (Emmerich US 1996), Men in Black (Sonnenfeld US 1997), Enemy
of the State (Scott US 1998), Wild Wild West (Sonnenfeld US 1999), Men in Black II (Sonnenfeld
US 2002), I, Robot (Proyas US/Germany 2004), I Am Legend and Hancock (Berg US 2008). Among
Smiths projects in development are sequels to I, Robot and Hancock, a prequel to I Am Legend and an
adaptation of Daniel Keyes Flowers for Algernon (1966).
 Alienating identification 45

Actors list, where he was recently described as the one person who can open
any movie in the U. S. and abroad (Pomerantz). He and his wife, Jada Pinkett
Smith, maintain a high degree of creative control within the film industry, each
overseeing a production company, and they remain two of the few powerful
African Americans in contemporary Hollywood. His popularity, leading-man
status and industry influence form a strange relationship with his racial iden-
tity. His star image combines contrary qualities that simultaneously mark his
blackness while foreclosing its narrative significance and, more precisely, the
potential political significance of blackness after 9/11. In most of his sf films, he
plays an African American representative of US state power working to save the
world (or at least the US). His blackness is alluded to, but it does not challenge
(white) nationalist norms. On the contrary, in I Am Legend, a post-9/11 film set
in New York, his star image affirms the multicultural values of the US in impli-
cit contrast with the supposedly fanatical and intolerant Arab terrorist. This is
consistent with the analysis of Smiths star persona as a figure of neoliberalism
and, in particular, of a US-led, nationalist brand of neoliberalism. My analy-
sis of I Am Legend will address the negotiation of Smiths blackness and star
status within worlds where race is not explicitly addressed, and explore how
this brothers blackness is produced and managed by the cultural politics of a
big-budget Hollywood remake and a changed New York City landscape.
In I Am Legend, Smith stars as military scientist Robert Neville and, as with
most of his sf and action films, plays a representative of state authority marked
by rebelliousness, a hero who must break the rules in order to save the day. In
half of his sf films, he is paired with a white male co-star who takes over part of
the role of hero; in the others, he stands alone, more or less, against threatening
forces. Typically, his sf characters battle technological threats whether man-
made or extraterrestrial to humanity or the state, while negotiating between
dislike and grudging acceptance of technologys role in the worlds they occupy.
They generally strive for some notion of realness against backdrops of advanc-
ing technology, and a large part of their authenticity stems from Smiths
rarely mentioned, yet often highlighted, black masculinity. In contrast, Neville
engages with the aftermath of humanitys almost complete eradication, and
whereas Brother offered blackness itself up for inspection, I Am Legend places
the black protagonist in tension with the non-human world without explicitly
acknowledging the issue of race. Yet Smiths flickering blackness, supposedly
incidental, is central to the films apocalyptic narrative and annihilated New
York City mise-en-scne, and since the film is part of the mainstream machin-
ery of Hollywood, its black hero is unable to resolve the contradictions to which
he gives rise.
46 Janani Subramanian

The Omega Man. Warner Bros. I Am Legend. Warner Home Video.

The racial connotations of I Am Legend are highlighted by its use of zom-

bie film conventions (see Fay). Just as such connotations in Night of the Living
Dead (Romero US 1968), are made meaningful by its 1968 context,6 so con-
temporary zombie films post-apocalyptic settings are particularly significant
in relation to contemporary disasters and to millennial anxieties about disease,
chemical warfare, contamination and other forms of technology and science
gone awry (see Bishop 23). As the unfortunate by-product of a virus designed
to cure cancer, I Am Legend s zombies darkseekers ghoulishly embody
twenty-first-century fears of modern medicine and genetic engineering, while
its deserted New York setting recalls the scenes of destruction following both
9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The lone protagonists survivalist instincts are con-
tained by generic expectation and Will Smiths heroic onscreen persona, but his
blackness generates connotations that the film ultimately cannot manage.
Richard Mathesons 1954 novel upon which the film is based involves the
battle between a scientist, supposedly the last real human on Earth after a bio-
logical pandemic, and the left-over zombie-vampire mutants who demand his
destruction. In both of the previous adaptations, the last man Robert Mor-
gan (Vincent Price) in The Last Man on Earth (Ragona and Salkow US/Italy
1964), Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) in The Omega Man (Sagal US 1971)
is white. A comparison of the latter with I Am Legend produces considerable
insight into the different ways that masculinity, race and celebrity intersect in
specific cultural moments.
The Omega Mans zombies are represented as a radical counterculture group,
a fitting contrast to the conservatism of Hestons star image and iconic white
masculinity. Rather than mindless and animalistic, the zombies form a kind
of religious cult called The Family who band together to destroy books, art

6. Adam Lowenstein, for example, notes that Nights final moments, which depict Bens body being
dragged outside and hoisted onto a bonfire of zombie corpses, are presented as a series of grainy,
newspaper-quality photographs that produce inescapable connotations of lynchings and contempor-
ary civil rights-related violence (160).
 Alienating identification 47

The Omega Man. Warner Bros.

and technology so as to produce a return to a state of innocence. The films

racial dynamics are as muddled as its politics. The zombies are extremely white,
with chalky faces and white irises. The leader of The Family, Matthias (Anthony
Zerbe), is always flanked by African American Zachary (Lincoln Kilpatrick),
whose blackness is emphasised by the chalky residue on his skin and the white
Afro that peeks out from under his hood. Matthias rebukes Zachary for calling
Nevilles apartment a honky paradise, telling him to forget the old ways and
old hatreds. The other notable black character is Lisa (Rosalind Cash), a mili-
tant black woman and Nevilles love interest. Stereotypically sexy and sassy, her
inclusion in the film, seemingly intended to draw in the emerging blaxploita-
tion audience, only highlights its confused depictions of race. Near the end, she
becomes a zombie, removing her scarf to reveal a chalky complexion and white
eyes. As with Zachary, her lightened skin looks even more unnatural than that
of the other zombies, emphasising her difference from, rather than similarity to,
them.
The Omega Man mobilises two discourses of whiteness, the diseased and the
heroic. Discussing the association of whiteness with illness and death, Richard
Dyer argues that Night of the Living Dead shows that living whites are like, or
can be mistaken for, the dead and that the reckless, chaotic behaviour of the
white vigilantes resembles that of the zombies (59).7 While The Omega Man
does not make this connection its zombies are whiter than white there is still
an association of pale skin with danger, evil and a deadening of both soul and
body. Its emphasis on the zombies white skin and eyes, rather than any other
determining feature, explicitly associates whiteness with disease (and loss of
individuality). At the same time, Heston brings an almost otherworldly white-
ness to the film, derived in part from Planet of the Apes (Schaffner US 1968), as
well as his earlier historical and religious film roles. Depicted as a Christ-like
7. The Last Man on Earth is rumoured to have been an inspiration for Romero, but the scenes of zom-
bies gathering outside Morgans house are indifferently handled (Biodrowski) compared to Romeros
massed undead.
48 Janani Subramanian

The Omega Man. Warner Bros. I Am Legend. Warner Home Video.

saviour whose blood is found to cure the zombies disease, in the final shot
of the film he lies, as if crucified, at the foot of a fountain, having passed on
life (his blood) to the surviving children. Earlier, Lisa and Neville had joked
about birth control when there were so few humans left to repopulate Earth a
process that would begin, from necessity, with an interracial couple. However,
while miscegenation does not manifest itself explicitly, the fact that Nevilles
blood will be administered to Lisa to cure her suggests that whiteness will be
safely spread without the danger of interracial sex.
Night of the Living Dead associates blackness, Dyer argues, with life in terms
of practical skills and survival instincts, both of which the black protagonist,
Ben (Duane Jones), possesses to a greater degree than any of the white char-
acters. Similarly, The Omega Man contrasts Lisas tough individuality with the
lifelessness of the whitened Zachary, and she lends Hestons American machis-
mo an aura of cool. While Nevilles romance with Lisa suggests a flirtation with
contemporary racial politics, Hestons performance articulates his star persona
as the quintessential white American hero. Rather than eliciting sympathy, he
plays the lonely scientist with bravado and a kind of crusty good humour, par-
ticularly in the scenes with his chess partner a bust of Caesar and his other
inanimate, mannequin companions, but his macho, gun-slinging athleticism
remains intact.
In contrast, I Am Legend is marked by a tone of despair, its protagonist sub-
jected to a more intense and personal loneliness, and Will Smiths scenes with
the mannequins reveal a very different star persona. The Omega Man associates
blackness with radical politics and cool, whereas Smiths black Neville, while
still successfully holding off the zombie hordes, is marked by vulnerability from
the first scenes of the film, particularly when he cowers with his dog, Sam, in
a bathtub. I Am Legend shares I, Robots one-man battle against an invading,
inhuman population and its associations between life, blackness and a mascu-
linity that combines charm, sex appeal and sensitivity. However, its post-apoc-
alyptic and last man tropes reformulate Smiths affable capability. Flashbacks
 Alienating identification 49

reveal that Neville failed to save either humanity or his family from annihila-
tion, making his scientific endeavours a form of atonement. Smiths action-hero
qualities, his attitude and athleticism, are cast in a softer, post-apocalyptic light,
with the lack of a supporting cast emphasising his acting versatility.8 His por-
trayal of a vulnerable yet cool Neville tends to diffuse the racial implications of
white hordes (and white zombie-dogs) chasing a lone black man.
Smiths blackness is further disavowed in relation to Legend s CGI-enhanced,
seemingly mindless darkseekers. Like Romeros zombies, they lack a language
and appear to be motivated by hunger alone. They are animalistic, wearing
shreds of dirty clothing around their severely muscled bodies and punctuating
their movements with toneless, shrill screams. Their speed and agility make
Neville as much prey as predator,9 and in some ways they are just another
aspect of a monstrous environment that tests the limits of Nevilles masculin-
ity (which, as in The Omega Man, is shored up by fast cars, guns, elaborate
survival techniques and shirtlessness). While Night of the Living Dead s Ben
has intellectual and practical skills, and Brothers skills are associated with an
otherworldly understanding of technology, Nevilles bodily strength associates
blackness with physical prowess, a connection relentlessly reinforced by the
films concentrated focus on Smiths body. In Mathesons novel, Neville is, for
the zombie population, a legendary monster, but Smiths Neville like Hestons
owes his legendary status not to any shift in the definition of monstrosity but
to his role as a typical, self-sacrificial and physically battered Hollywood prot-
agonist.
Written after the breakthrough civil-rights case, Brown vs The Board of Edu-
cation, the novels racial overtones speak to the growing anxiety of white citi-
zens towards integration. As Kathy David Patterson notes,
Nevilles race is established very early and very directly as Caucasian. Matheson describes
him as a tall man, thirty-six, born of English-German stock [Matheson 14], complete with
bright blue eyes. By contrast, the vampires have no obvious racial attributes per se. However,
in Nevilles mind, they are consistently referred to in connection with blackness.
While Patterson draws parallels between Nevilles plight and that of the
anxiety-ridden, racially plagued white citizen, she overlooks the novels setting
in Compton, an area of Los Angeles that was beginning to diversify racially in
the 1950s (see Camarillo). According to one of I Am Legends screenwriters,

8. This is part of an increasing drive to establish his seriousness as an actor , as in The Legend of Bag-
ger Vance (Redford US 2000), Ali (Mann US 2001), The Pursuit of Happyness (Muccino US 2006) and
Seven Pounds (Muccino US 2008).
9. The film hints that they possess some kind of alternative humanity, but Neville stubbornly refuses
to see it.
50 Janani Subramanian

relocating the story to New York City was logistical Its hard to make Los
Angeles feel empty (Beale) but it must also be noted that if the film had been
set in Compton, associations between the social and political history of the area,
civil unrest and Smiths blackness might well have overwhelmed its attempts to
elide racial issues. Instead, Nevilles Washington Park townhouse and his for-
mer prestigious position as a government scientist associate him with an upper-
middle-class urbanity that, along with his comic asides and intelligent, rugged
survival instincts, set him even further apart from both the white zombie mobs
and any kind of historical connection to the black community.
Just as the representation of Harlem is essential to Brothers dissection of
Reagans devastating economic policies, so I Am Legend s deserted New York
City is no mere backdrop. The landscape was carefully evacuated by a team of
digital artists, with desolate and beautiful results. The scenes of Times Square,
overgrown with weeds and wild plants, suggest a conscious annihilation of this
Disneyfied temple of consumerism and spectacle. David Harveys comments
on mid-nineteenth-century Paris Private activity was forced to support the
political goal, which was to shape a certain kind of public space reflective of
imperial splendor, military security and bourgeois affluence (Political Econ-
omy) could apply equally to Mayor Giulianis efforts to reduce crime (the
Broken Windows approach) in New York City in the 1990s. While I Am Leg-
end s decaying New York is superficially the opposite of the citys embour
geoisment, begun by urban planner Robert Moses, who took a meat axe to the
Bronx (Harvey, Right 34), it nonetheless supports Hollywoods construction
of a kind-of raced, sensitive, masculine protagonist. While the image of Will
Smith/Robert Neville reclaiming and owning the city streets might seem rad-
ical in terms of the history of African American representation, in reality his
one-man stance merely reflects the films neoliberal context. As Harvey argues,
international capitalism has affected the processes of urbanisation and turned
major cities around the globe into debt-financed, corporate-owned bastions of
consumerism:

I Am Legend. Warner Home Video.

 Alienating identification 51

Increasingly, we see the right to the city falling into the hands of private or quasi-private
interests. In New York City, for example, the billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is re-
shaping the city after his hearts desire along lines favourable to the developers, Wall Street
and transnational capitalist-class elements, and promoting the city as an optimal location
for high-value businesses and a fantastic destination for tourists. He is, in effect, turning
Manhattan into one vast gated community for the rich. (Right 38)

Nevilles heavily fortified townhouse seems to echo Harveys words, suggest-

ing that to be black and successful in the city, private property and material
possessions are paramount. Smiths Hollywood career has a similar neoliberal
emphasis on individual effort and monetary gain.
The devastated city is also a poignant reminder of 9/11, but the World Trade
Center and its destruction should not be divorced from their ideological and
global significance. The Twin Towers themselves represented the very worst
of global capitalism, including the support of western financial interests at the
expense of the poverty-stricken third world. Global media often linked the
Towers to such connotations, but US media instead emphasised American
values, local heroes and an understanding of the victims as innocent (Harvey,
Cracks). While I Am Legend hints at the feelings of fear, pain and sadness that
abounded in New York after 9/11, it replaces any potential for reflection on the
causes of 9/11 with the satisfaction of seeing an action-hero defeat zombies and
sacrifice himself for world order. Any understanding of New Yorks ideologic-
al significance is subsumed by Hollywoods profit motive, just as the desire to
memorialise Ground Zero has been overwhelmed by demands that the space
remain capital-friendly. Rather than developing urban space for collective and
democratic uses, or recognising the relationship of the US to the global order,
the planned reconstruction of Ground Zero today around a Freedom Tower is
a sleek and uncritical celebration of American financial dominance (see www.
renewnyc.org).
I Am Legend s last man narrative necessitates that its lone protagonist strug-
gle for survival, but also highlights Hollywoods complicity in the neoliberal
project, placing an incredibly successful black man in the middle of devastation
and having him succeed entirely on his own. The films representation of black-
ness must also be understood in the context of post-9/11 racial politics, particu-
larly in relation to the succession of black government officials who have been
upheld as proof of Americas racial progress. As Clarence Lusane argues, black
figures of power were crucial to the Bush administrations foreign and domestic
policies after 9/11 and during the Iraq war:
Neither Powell nor Rice consciously allowed their racial identity to substantially influence
or characterize their participation in the defense and projection of US hegemony although
52 Janani Subramanian

they would both use their racial identity and experiences in key circumstances to argue and
defend Bush administration policies. In this sense, they occasionally practiced what could
be called strategic racial affinity, that is, bringing race off the shelf when useful. (3)
Claims of colour blindness or a post-racial America notwithstanding, both fig-
ures and the governments they worked for used the gravity and moral authority
of their experience of being black in America in the service of US aggression.
President Obama is similarly held up as evidence of the distance black Ameri-
cans have come, and it is not surprising that he suggested, supposedly in jest,
that Will Smith play him in movies about his life: both are black American stars
who confirm a carefully constructed narrative of racial progress on an inter-
national stage. Nevilles and Smiths representation of racial identity uses a
safe, non-confrontational blackness for the good of the State, and that State is
definitely positioned by the end of the film as a hopeful site for the resurrection
and continuation of a multiracial America.
Although the films setting and Nevilles characterisation indicate a desire
to shy away from racial themes, one aspect of the narrative supplements the
racially confused analysis of Smiths portrayal of Neville and his battle against
the colourless zombies. The inclusion of Bob Marleys music (specifically, the
1984 album, Legend, and in particular the track Three Little Birds (1977), which
Neville plays and sings along to) adds an Afro-Caribbean dimension to the film
and associates Smith with Marley a sole revolutionary who survives against
the odds. Addressing the symbolic and material effects of Marleys circulation
in the US, Michelle Stephens argues that both his mysticism and association
with the real contribute to his mythic status:
On the one hand his black body represents everything concerned with reggae and a primi-
tive Caribbean. On the other, Marleys natural blackness unites in one body a vision of
racial harmony built on simple universalist ideals mystically removed from the history of
race relations in the United States, Marley offers an image of blackness that has helped to
preserve a North American identity built on the integration of racial differences into one
unified national body politic. (142)

Marleys story is often told as a progression from revolutionary to racial paci-

fist, and as Stephens points out, black music in general has been described
in terms of its ability to bring people together, an example of a specifically
American national myth of liberal pluralism and multiculturalism that often
ignores the history of racial conflict and divisiveness in the United States (153).
Marleys Legend was key in representing the progression from rebellion to plu-
ralism, drawing from an untapped archive of images in order to humanize the
performer and make him more accessible to an audience initially intimidated
 Alienating identification 53

by the revolutionary aspects of Third World music in the 1970s (148).

Marley is connotatively linked to Neville as a black revolutionary whose
blackness and radical nature are muted in order to restore harmony in the
world, with Marleys sanitised image suggesting that Smiths star power also
depends on the circulation of safe black imagery as commodity. The confla-
tion of Marley with Neville and Smith brings a mystical universalism into I
Am Legend s post-apocalyptic world, producing a similarly utopian and com-
mercially viable racial harmony that depends upon the death of a black man.
At the end of the film, Neville gives himself over to the zombies so that the
ambiguously Hispanic Anna (Alice Braga) and young, white Ethan (Charlie
Tahan) can escape with a sample of his virus-immune blood to a survivors
camp in Vermont that resembles a quintessential American small town, thus
ensuring humanitys multi-racial future. However, rather than tap into fears of
miscegenation, the careful construction of Smiths legend as both authentic-
ally black and universally human black sacrificial lamb and world saviour
works to incorporates the use of Nevilles blood into the films vision of an ideal,
multiracial future: all races as one race, which eventually becomes no race. In
the well-known, but now chilling, words of Marleys Three Little Birds, dont
worry about a thing, Cause every little thing is gonna be all right.

Conclusion

The final context I Am Legend calls to mind is the most recent and historic
American presidential election, in which the black candidate and victor was
repeatedly proclaimed the hope of, and a change for, America. This future
orientation suggests a move away from traditional modes of representation
which associated black identity with a history of degradation and the lack of
a future. Will Smiths Hollywood heroes indicate a similar shift in the cultur-
al valence of blackness, but are still constrained, sanitised, made safe. This is
made apparent by the contrast with The Brother from Another Planet, a film
that engages with, rather than tries to erase, the economic and political dis-
enfranchisement of a black urban population. Just as I Am Legend requires
us to negotiate the competing notions of blackness evoked by Will Smith and
Robert Neville in the neoliberal context, so the current political conjuncture
requires us to negotiate heroic discourses of blackness and futurity with a crit-
ical perspective that considers the very real ways that blackness is produced
and circulated.
54 Janani Subramanian

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