Abstract
Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and Artz’ critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence’s two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.
Highlights
The present tale of two versions is essentially a story of emphasis
In a marketoriented cultural sector predominantly oriented towards returns of investment, aesthetic, political, societal, and other considerations regularly loose out to allegedly natural market logics that streamline cultural expression with the objective to tailor them to the specific tastes and preferences of hegemonic audiences
Through a comparative reading and subsequent contextualisation of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend, this article has shown that such practices of adaptation to assumed mainstream tastes are never innocent or located above the messy realms of politics
Summary
Contrasting the officially released version of Francis Lawrence’s Hollywood action-flic I Am Legend (2007a) with a director’s cut that has only subsequently been made available on a DVD edition, I investigate, how the profit-orientation of a global film industry translates into aesthetic form that invites hegemonic potentials of meaning and practice. Lastminute alterations to the cinema version of Lawrence’s film were aimed at making the product digestible to mainstream audiences securing financial revenues. These changes align the narrative to hegemonic discursive frames of othering and violent exclusion proving that market-oriented adaptations of cultural products are not politically neutral endeavours. The following text is the story of this shift in emphasis, its probable reasons, and potential implications
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