Abstract

The cultural narratives that supported the United States’ War on Drugs in the 20th century relied overwhelmingly on racial stereotypes to prove drugs were dangerous to both the human body and the nation as a whole. Since the Modern Alcoholism Movement in the 1960s, medicalized perspectives have attempted to remove blame from the addict. However, narratives of addiction and recovery continue to be shaped by racial stereotypes. Two films by Robert Zemeckis—Cast Away (2000), the Oscar-nominated robinsonade starring Tom Hanks, and Flight (2012), the Oscar-nominated story of a drug and alcohol-addicted airplane pilot, played by Denzel Washington—make visible larger cultural narratives about race in addiction in the 21st century. I argue that both films are addiction and recovery narratives. However, the narrative structure of recovery in each differs, with Washington’s character requiring external human intervention and Hanks’s finding recovery through divine assistance and technical ingenuity.

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