Orion Ussner kidder

I'm watching #FallOut / #FallOutSeason2, and something obvious just occurred to me, but it lead to something that's not obvious.

The premise of post-apocalypse stories is that in the absence of the state, of centralized power, all will descend into chaos, and stay there. "Society" collapses and doesn't do what people do and build new communities, create their own societies. That obvious Thing #1.

#TV #PostApocalypse

Jan 30 at 8:04amWeb
Show threadOrion Ussner kidderJan 30
Obvious Thing #2 is that post-apocalyptic fiction in the US (broadly speaking: film, TV, video games, comic books, etc.) often takes on the flavour of the #OldWest," an era that lasted something like 30 years in actual US history but looms LARGE in the American consciousness, not least because you all worship guns. It's creepy as hell, by the way.
Show threadOrion Ussner kidderJan 30

The old west wasn't a post-apocalypse, though. Well, not for Americans. It was a post-apocalypse for #Indigenous peoples, from the Dene to the Hopi.

Put all that together, and what you get is that the lawlessness of post-apocalypse stories in the US is not in fact after the fall of American society. Instead, it reflects the period of violence and chaos of America *asserting itself* on Indigenous land. The chaos, the brutality, the blood and gore. That's #colonialism, not barbarism.

Show threadOrion Ussner kidderJan 30

Colonizers know, on some level, that what we did is unjustifiable, I think. That's why we constantly make excuses for it. A story like #Fallout is doing a lot of things, some of them I think are quite clever--the anti-corporate angle is obvious to see--but it's also letting show a glimmer of guilt, and spark of awareness, of just how disgusting the founding of America actually was.

And before you ask, yes, Canada is Just As Bad.