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.