Petertwo assumptions in the speculative world of "The Last of Us" that bother me: 1) society will immediately collapse and turn to ultra-violence in the absence of a top-down capitalist structure telling everyone what to do, but also 2) capitalist products like bullets, fossil fuels, roads, and men standing around with guns are a natural part of the world that can be expected to exist in the absence of capitalism.
this stuff is important because speculative fiction is the stories we tell ourselves about what is possible. we are sitting around a virtual campfire discussing who we are and what we can do as a society, and the ideological assumptions in the background of a show like "The Last of Us" will either open up new possibilities or trap us in existing modes of thought.
when you really interrogate the show's (and the video game's) assumptions, it's actually very limited and dark in its view of who we are and who we can be. it assumes the capitalist products that control our lives are simply human realities that have always existed, and that we humans are not capable of organizing ourselves into productive, loving, supportive groups and are safer and better off in isolation, in ones and twos, nuclear groups, hording rather than sharing.
this is a fundamentally reactionary worldview and it runs contrary to all the actual evidence we have about how people act during disasters and crisis. humans in isolation are weak, stupid, frightened, vulnerable. it is only in groups, in cooperation, working together and helping each other, that humans are strong. the lie of capitalism is that we are nothing in the absence of a profit motive, and that our selfishness makes us strong.
this is what i mean when i say that we've been lying to ourselves that Hollywood is liberal or progressive. it's not. while superficially, the sci-fi, comic book, and speculative fiction movies and shows appear to wave a progressive flag in the culture war, the bones of products like "The Last of Us" are profoundly reactionary, libertarian, conservative.
Gerard Cunningham ✒️@peter
There's a striking difference between American and Asian/Korean zombie shows I've seen.
For Americans, the metaphor is social collapse, civil wars, where fellow survivors are enemies to be killed in a competition for resources.
On Korean TV, the metaphor is disease, and the story is about cooperation, communal responses, quarantines, and individual sacrifice for the greater good.
There's a striking difference between American and Asian/Korean zombie shows I've seen.
For Americans, the metaphor is social collapse, civil wars, where fellow survivors are enemies to be killed in a competition for resources.
On Korean TV, the metaphor is disease, and the story is about cooperation, communal responses, quarantines, and individual sacrifice for the greater good.
JoeChip@peter
It seems strange to take one aspect of human nature and make it exclusively the organizing principle of human life.
Why do civilizations based on avarice and violence always seem to take center stage, and those based on cooperation seem so fragile and short-lived? Or is this a false perception of history?
Supership 79@peter like this is a complete misreading of the show and game on such a level that suggests you maybe read a brief summary at most
Ash_Crow@Supership79 @peter Yup, I don't understand how this can be concluded from the show. If anything, that seems like a critique more suited to The Walking Dead.
ZenobiaVayne@peter when I realistically think about what would happen in a crisis, I can be pretty sure that my neighbours on my street who routinely do nice things for each other like shovelling driveways, helping each other out by putting out trash carts when one of us forgets, and bringing over baked goods, having group garage sales, it makes the whole idea of this kind of apocalyptic individualism seem ludicrous.
@peter and I also wonder if that’s why many of these sff stories start by making sure that the catalyzing event sort of “kills the neighbourhood” by isolating people from each other by making it so that each of the protagonists has had their whole support network/family/community annihilated. (See I am Legend, Zombieland, many other examples I’m sure)The idea of community and mutualism is very dangerous to capitalist profit motive
@peter idk if you’ve watched the show but episode 6 is about a commune that’s by far the nicest and most functional society in the world that does exactly what you describe.