Medical Science and the Military in I Am Legend and its Remakes

• In Event: 1555 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Toward a Sociology of Visibility

Abstract

This study addresses whether and how medical science and the military respectively operate to the benefit or detriment of humanity in I Am Legend and its film adaptations, and how these representations change over time. Results reveal the trajectory for science is of increasing effect, causing and solving problems. The trajectory for military is increasingly positive, with rising ability to solve problems. The article contributes a) a discussion of blame and hope to the literature on confidence in military, medicine and science, b) a novel methodology applying Likert-scoring as a coding scheme for qualitative content analysis.

Author

• Jeremiah Morelock, Boston College