While I was driving home yesterday listening to NPR (yes, I know), Bob Mondelo was clearly in the mood to see a political movie offering commentary on the Long War, and when he watched "I am Legend," he did:
I started needing something else to think about. And maybe it's just that unlike most of you, I've seen a whole fall's worth of War-on-Terrorism, Rendition-for-Lambs -In-the-Valley-of-Elah movies, but what I started thinking about was that I Am Legend fits right in with those pictures.
I mean, it's still a sci-fi blockbuster, but take a look at that plot: Western medicine takes a virus (a bad thing) and manipulates it so that it can fight cancer (a worse thing). Sort of like Western military forces arming jihadists (which they regard as a bad thing) so that they'll fight communists (which they regard as a worse thing).
And then the built-up virus — the bad thing — mutates into something much worse than the cancer, and it turns on its creators. And this starts where? That's right: In New York, which everyone in the movie keeps calling Ground Zero. And some poor schmoe who didn't start the problem has to try to fix it.
But even if he comes up with a cure, a way to make the nasty infected guys human again, they're just going to keep coming, banging their heads against plate glass, destroying the civilized world and — here's the kicker — either killing everyone they come into contact with or converting them into monsters just like themselves. And the only solution is to shoot them dead — or withdraw behind metal walls, into a fortress-like homeland. And that's not working.
That's I Am Legend in a nutshell. A blockbuster for our time, no?
A blockbuster for our time? No. The movie was obviously a remake of the 1971 movie "The Omega Man" with Charleston Heston, I thought, as I listened to his "review."
But Mondelo, jazzed up on too much white wine and fight whines, had to go all ahistorically political.
First of all, we did not create the jihadis we fight today by aiding jihadis fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The jihadi belief system--born in the 18th century--was thriving based on Saudi support before we sent one weapon to them and the resistance to the Soviet invasion was a fact by the time we sent help. The jihadis, being the most fanatical, were the most effective and so our aid went to them to make them more effective.
When the war was over, the jihadis continued on their existing path. Are they a problem today? Yes indeed. Is it good that we don't also face the Soviet Union at the very same time? Yes indeed. Did we create the jihadis? Hell no.
No more than we created Euro Communism by aiding the resistance to the Nazis in World War II Europe. The communists existed before the war, they were the most effective fighters against the Nazis and so our aid went to them, and after the war the Soviets started helping these Euro Communists to make them stronger and undermine Western resolve. We did not create Euro Communism by using them to fight Nazis.
More important, Mondelo could not bring himself to make the next step in his little historical metaphor if he is determined to make a a 1954 book that was the basis for both "I am Legend" and "The Omega Man" into a historical metaphor.
We can't kill all the jihadis and their sympathizers as the "more rubble less trouble" crowd would like to do; and we can't retreat to our fortress America as the defensive "there is no war" law enforcement crowd would have us do.
Indeed, extending Mondelo's analogy just a bit more, President George Bush would have the roll of Smith's Rober Neville who is seeking to cure the diseased killers who have wrecked his city and continue to mindlessly kill though they've already destroyed the world around them in their sickness. George Bush is trying to innoculate the uninfected and cure the sick with democracy and rule of law that will offer more hope than the thrill and satisfaction of killing instinctively.
Film reviewers shouldn't try to out-historical metaphor actual history majors.
