richardmurray

 

 

Of those films only the last man of earth actually resembles anything to MAtheson's story. The question is, what is matheson's story? the cheap reader thinks the story is about Neville. the wise reader knows the story is about humanity. Matheson's story post a simple question. What if a Virus kills or makes extremely sick all of modern humanity save one. Modern humanities technology fails to undue the affects from the virus . Modern humanities technology fails to stop the deaths from the virus. One human being is left alone amidst two other human being types, the dead or the infected.

Charlton Heston/Arnold Swrzenegeer/Will Smith saw in the story, idolatry to the individual, perseverance to modern humanity. But the truth is, Neville for all of this loneliness has one great flaw. He is convinced humanity is doomed. He is convinced humanity will die. He sees himself as the last man.  The loneliness /his culture/the human society he was born or raised in can't comprehend the simple truth. Humanity survived. A fourth type of human exists in the book, slowly growing in number. The civilized. Neville, the dead, the insanely infected, the civilized carriers, are the four human being types at the end. And Neville who has become completely uncivilized through years or loneliness plus deadly habit plus negative culture he was raised in, can not exists side the civilized carriers. Moreover he is feared by the civilized carriers, plausibly. I will restate but I will go to the three films that miss this. HEston's film like Will smiths negate the idea, the primary concept, that Neville is the last human like myself. Sequentially, the big failing in telling the story from the book. A main plot point is that modern human society failed, completely. It tried, it worked hard, and it failed. BUT, Nature is greater than human technology, I didn't say  GOD , I said Nature,  and humanity as a child of nature adapted through natural means. I imagine ridley scott wanted swrazenegger to be killed by the victorious vampire-esque infected people. A somber thought that the studios did not like. But, scott or the studios have it wrong. Humanity survived. You see, one of the problems with human beings and the idea of apocalypse is the myth that if humanities technology fails, all is doomed. but all isn't. Women , even infected with various ailments, have children. Some people will act undifferent while carrying a virus that will make others incomprehensible. NEville is so convinced as is most of the producers of the films that humanity is finished when technology fails against a virus that they forget humanity is very old. A virus can kill many, most, but no virus ever killed all humans. No virus has ever killed the entirety of humanity and after every single viral spread the humans who lived... lived... that is what I am legend is about. It is a creation story told from the angle of the last person from the old community. In my mind I can see Obatala/Zeus/Amatarasu/Quetzecoatl as human beings from an old community that are legends that have been given godhood, a controller of nature, a very human mental construct.  Matheson could had told the story from the angle of Ruth, who is a child born from the infected who is infected herself but can live with the virus. But he didn't want that, the trick of the story , is we are getting the creation story from the angle of the last of the old community, the one who is legend. ... One of the finest lines in the book, is when NEville asks ruth , to guide the future humanity, don't let them make the same mistakes. NEville comprehends the technology he needed to change, to improve, was his culture. Culture is what you want to grow. He realize at the end, his heritage, what you carry was the technology that was lacking.  Not, epidemiology or biology or the scientific method. His culture. His ability to accept change he can not control or escape from or immigrate from. Change that will destroy the community , the humanity he knows. A culture that can accept that a new humanity will exists, it will survive through what the old could not. And lastly, NEville realized what all the movies, including even, the last man on earth, fail to show. NEville had a chance to teach, he had a chance to guide the new humanity but he was busy being angry at the death of the old community that he is the last representative of, angry that he was alone, angry that no one else shared his similar experiences, that he spent all that time killing or hunting or treating the coming new human community as villains, merely for living with a virus, overcoming the failing from the virus, he hated.

IN AMENDMENT

Many humans last year, 2020 , and many humans this year, 2021, are just like Robert Neville. From the beginning, I said everything will be alright last year. Not cause I am a mental expert or am wise  but cause I think toward the uncomfortable sometimes. I have learned to that through experience.  But most people were not communicating that experience. They were having the same inner monologues NEville had. Communicating the same fears NEville had. 

My grand mother died, my grandfather died, my mom died, my father died, my wife died, my husband died, my daughter died, my son died,my granddaughter died, my grandfather died,  the stores went out of business, I lost my job, I'm scared! we need a vaccine, we need social distancing, we need masks, we need remote learning, we need remote labor, we need government assistance, we need the businesses to reopen, we need global trade to begin again, people who don't act like me are stupid, people who don't act like me are traitors, people who don't act like me are murderers, people who don't act like me are dangerous... all of that talk is Neville speak. Neville is preoccupied with who has died, what vaccine or scientific assessment or tools he can derive, how different the infected act compared to him. NEville has no thought that everything is alright. NEville can't simply live his life peacefully, calmly, unafraid. Why can't neville accept that if he can live with the virus absent masks, absent vaccines, absent anything even companionship, that maybe others can too, that maybe humanity can. The lesson in the story is what hollywood is too afraid to tell. what most in the paying audience, which is not most in humanity, are afraid to see. What if human technology or human communities all over the earth fail completely and humanity survives and thrives?