{"id":618859,"date":"2023-03-17T09:49:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/the-last-of-us-is-bleak-but-its-the-bleak-you-need\/"},"modified":"2023-03-17T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:49:00","slug":"the-last-of-us-is-bleak-but-its-the-bleak-you-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/the-last-of-us-is-bleak-but-its-the-bleak-you-need\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Last of Us’ Is Bleak, but It\u2019s the Bleak You Need"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Monitor is<\/span> a<\/em> weekly column<\/em><\/a> devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0is bumming everyone out. Mostly because the HBO series\u2019 juggernaut first season ended on Sunday, beginning the long arduous wait for a second season. But also because\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is really freaking sad. The series began with a man watching his daughter die, and ended with him shooting his way through a makeshift hospital to ensure another kid didn\u2019t meet a similar fate. In between, everyone died or killed (or ate) someone, and short of some\u00a0gay<\/a>\u00a0gardening<\/a>, there were few odes to joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And truly, despite chatter online decrying the show\u2019s dour denouement, that was the point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Look, I get why curling up on the couch to stare at a big pile of bleak isn\u2019t everyone\u2019s favorite thing to do. Banks are\u00a0collapsing<\/a>,\u00a0Joe Exotic<\/a> wants to\u00a0run for president<\/a>\u2014doubling down on your Sunday scaries with\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is not a choice everyone wants to make. But this is not a shortcoming of the show or its storytelling. It\u2019s a matter of preference.<\/p>\n

Also, despite the darkness,\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0remains a form of escapism. Bleak as it is, it\u2019s still fiction\u2014fiction about a pandemic worse than\u00a0the one<\/a> currently raging that\u2019s intended, on some level, to give viewers the opportunity to think about something else. Granted, it mostly makes them ponder what happens when humanity decides the only way to save a lot of people is to slaughter many more, but still.<\/p>\n

In other words,\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t trade in darkness for darkness\u2019 sake. It\u2019s not a DC Comics film trying to be edgy. It\u2019s not even\u00a0Squid Game<\/em><\/a>, which in a way was even more depressing in its \u201coh yeah, that could happen\u201d-ness. As it stands, the world is not infected with a zombifying fungus, but it\u2019s full of people who will do anything to stay alive and\/or make money. If anything,\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em> is a parable for what could happen when that\u00a0Cordyceps<\/em>\u00a0fungus is introduced into a place that often prizes rugged individualism over community.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are probably scriptwriters out there who would have suggested to Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin that they inject a little emotional reprieve, one episode that ends on a happy note. But if you believe, as Vulture\u2019s Roxana Hadadi\u00a0does<\/a>, that\u00a0The Last of Us<\/em>\u00a0is a commentary on the many flaws of American exceptionalism, then those looking for slivers of hope are destined to be left in the dark.<\/p>\n

All of this came to a swirling conclusion in Sunday\u2019s finale. In the final moments, Joel (Pedro Pascal) learned that the Fireflies would likely kill Ellie (Bella Ramsey) trying to find a cure for the\u00a0Cordyceps<\/em> fungus. He shot nearly every Firefly in sight to save her. Some folks argue he went too far, slaughtering many people to save one; others feel his actions were justified. But the point isn\u2019t to figure out whether he\u2019s \u201cright\u201d or \u201cwrong.\u201d The point\u2014as my\u00a0colleague Adrienne So<\/a> noted over Slack this week\u2014is that a society that would kill a child to save itself maybe isn\u2019t worth saving. Anyone who read Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s\u00a0\u201cThe Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas<\/a>\u201d knows this.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it doesn\u2019t matter whether Joel is a hero or villain. What matters is what his actions reflect. As Hadadi noted, \u201cThe Last of Us<\/em> has painted a portrait of an American identity incompatible with drastic change.\u201d When the pandemic hit, all of the country\u2019s selfishness and individualism transformed into something even more virulent than before. It\u2019s bleak, but it also feels that way because it\u2019s familiar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Angela Watercutter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.The Last of Us\u00a0is bumming everyone out. Mostly because the HBO series\u2019 juggernaut first season ended on Sunday, beginning the long arduous wait for a second season. But also because\u00a0The Last of Us\u00a0is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":618860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29038,25685,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-618859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-its","8":"category-bleak","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}