[ad_1]
Wn the time of the pandemic, many films had their turn in the spotlight. Contagion was one of them, to contextualize the scale of the virus and teach everyone what an R number was. The same was true for Jaws, with the mayor denying security of Amity Island, Larry Vaughn, serving as an analogue to any authority figure who was skeptical of the concept of lockdown.
To a certain extent, these films make sense. In times of great uncertainty, we look to the familiar for guidance. But sometimes it’s a bad idea. Because sometimes what they are looking for is the Will Smith movie I Am Legend.
You will remember that I am a legend. Coming to the end of his turn as the world’s greatest movie star, the film saw a lone Smith struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic New York that had been ravaged by mutant vampires (who look more like zombies ). I Am Legend entered the pandemic conversation because a small insistent group started asking a simple question, “Wait, have these nice people turned into mutant vampires because they took the Covid vaccine?”
It is not necessarily a new development. In December, as vaccine trials drew to a close, rumors that the vaccines created vampires became so persistent that Reuters had to publish a fact-check article to deny it. The mutant vampires in I Am Legend became mutant vampires because they were exposed to a genetically modified strain of the measles virus in order to cure cancer (courtesy of the ambitious doctor Emma Thompson) . No vaccine was involved. But again, the damage was done. When a globally respected news agency has to use its precious resources to explain the plot of a disappointing Christmas movie from a decade and a half ago, you feel the battle is already lost.
Still, the I Am Legend theory gained momentum this week when the New York Times ran an article on anti-vaccines, claiming that an eyewear store employee refused the vaccine because “she thought that a vaccine had caused the characters in the movie I Am Legend to turn into zombies. ”This, in turn, led the film’s co-writer Akiva Goldsman to Tweeter: “Oh. My.God. It’s a movie. I made that up. Sound. Not. Real.”
In truth, it’s very difficult to find a movie where the vaccine is the bad guy. In World War Z, for example, zombies are created with a virus and the hero must find a vaccine. In The Omega Man (the first adaptation of I Am Legend), Charlton Heston only survives a vampire-zombie wave because he is vaccinated. In Outbreak, a virus spreads and the heroes rush to find a vaccine. The 1980 Japanese film Virus ends with the protagonist kissing vaccinated aliens and declaring, “Life is wonderful.” Granted, there’s the 1973 horror film Sssssss, where Dirk Benedict is subjected to a series of injections that tragically turn him into a snake, but sadly those injections are not vaccinations. They were designed to turn Dirk Benedict into a snake from the start. Again, there is ultimately proof that medicine is doing its job.
Arguably the only mainstream movie to ever portray vaccinations as a force of evil is actually X-Men: The Last Stand, in which a wealthy industrialist discovers an inoculation that targets the gene that gives mutants their abilities. And even that doesn’t work, for several reasons. First, the movie’s vaccine is designed to deny mutants their truest versions of themselves, and even the most foaming anti-vaxxer wouldn’t claim that the coronavirus was an integral part of their personalities. And second, you’ll remember that X-Men: The Last Stand culminated in an uncontrollable unvaccinated mutant threatening to tear apart all tissue in the universe as we know it, so maybe the idea of a vaccination isn’t that dumb after all.
Of course, none of this matters. If anti-vaccines can convince themselves that a half-remembered Will Smith movie can serve as a tight scientific explanation for not wanting to get bitten, then they can basically use that justification on any movie. Their arguments are unforgivable for a number of reasons, not least because it kind of makes me want to watch I Am Legend again.
[ad_2]
Source link