If you’re watching HBO’s The Last of Us, there are some minor spoilers below. Reader beware!
I used to love reading Cracked.com. They were one of those early pioneers of the listicle, back when the listicle was not quite as cringe-y a genre as it is now.
One in Cracked listicle particular, entitled “6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America,” stuck with me over the years (can’t say that about many listicles I’ve read).
The main thesis of this article: zombie and vampire stories in the U.S. gain popularity based on whichever political party is in power. Both creatures represent a form of anxiety held by each party: when Democrats are in charge, Republicans fear vampires. When Republicans are in charge, Democrats fear zombies.
If we buy into this idea, we have to buy in to the idea that our cultural imagination plays off the values and rhetorical strategies of each political faction. In other words: vampires = vice, lust, progressivism, the erotic, homosexuality, transsexuality, and shirking of the traditional ideas that conservative Republications treasure. Vampires suck the blood out of the supposedly innocent and corrupt them, by seducing them and even grooming them if you will. If that sounds familiar, just read some of the transphobic remarks jackass conservatives have been saying over the past year alone.
Zombie stories, meanwhile, are a Democrat’s nightmare because they represent a mindless, violent mob mentality. And Democrats fear the rise of ignorance and thoughtless violence. Again, if this sounds familiar, look no further than the January 6th hearings.
That’s nice, Sarah, but why resurrect a Cracked listicle that is more than a decade old?
Because HBO’s latest zombie post-apocalypse series, The Last of Us, is, in some ways, bucks the trend. Democrats are in power, at least for now. The violent mobs were crushed, no? So why is everyone on Twitter losing their shit over a type of zombie called a “clicker”?
Now may come the time that some of you are likely wondering: why is she taking an ancient by internet standards Cracked article at face value? I do so in part because, as I’ve gone over so many times in this newsletter: horror, sci-fi, and other fantasy genres are always reflections of our current social anxieties. So if we hold this as true, why is a zombie video game franchise/TV series taking over pop culture right now? President Joe Biden’s still in office, so why are we interested in zombies again all of a sudden? HBO knows full and well that their series influence the zeitgeist, and their decision to adapt one of the greatest video game franchises of all time to the screen in 2023 is a fascinating move. Why this story? Why now?
Sure Democrats are in charge, but it’s not as if the Republicans are far behind. As I mentioned, the violence of January 6th is still reverberating in our political sphere and beyond. The House of Representatives currently holds a Republican majority (however messy and slight it may be). And the Alt-Right, extremist, and potentially dangerous far-right mobs are still something we fear. Lord knows I do.
If you don’t know the plot of The Last of Us, and you didn’t read my mini-essay on it last week, here’s a quick overview of the series: The United States is nearly destroyed by a mutated version of a fungus that infects human sufferers, who then morph into mushroom-zombies. A smuggler named Joel, who lost his daughter early on in the outbreak, is given the task of safely escorting a mysterious girl named Ellie out of the quarantine zone and across the country.
The TV show itself is, as I mentioned last week, as much about zombies as Breaking Bad was about the failures of the D.A.R.E program. The Last of Us is prompted by the existence of zombies, but not actually about zombies. Instead, the show is more interested in asking questions like: What do we do when the world is ending and mobs of dangerous, sick people (physically and mentally) threaten to destroy us all? How do we live with ourselves when we can’t protect the people we love most? What do we owe each other after civilization collapses? And how can we be redeemed?
So why this particular zombie-ish story now? Besides the ripple effects of Trump and January 6th, I think we’re all still afraid of the mob mentality that has, in some ways, protected us since COVID-19, but also tyrannized us. In the video game and show, a governing body called FEDRA provides protection in quarantine zones, but also suppression. Surviving Cordyceps means cutting off all contact with those who are sick, or who might be sick, for fear that the hordes of zombies will destroy the few healthy humans who are left.
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