Consolations Of The Apocalypse

Pop culture and the meaning of life. Mini-essays written and illustrated by grimy, human hands. 

This post is about The Last Of Us and contains no spoilers, unless you count stating its theme as a spoiler. If you do, then yeah...teeny tiny spoilers. 

While bingeing rotten vistas and homicidal mushrooms, a thought: the Zombie Apocalypse is the most comforting of horrors. 

It promises us perfect independence–assuming we possess the requisite combination of DIY skills, capacity for murder, and canned goods. 

Yes, the dead will rise, and we shall fall. And, yes, all that remains of humanity's glory will be flannel shirts, aesthetically pleasing skeletons, and our tendency to resort to fascism when stressed. 

But wouldn’t that be a relief? Not the fascism part, obviously. The collapse of the known part. After all, money would be useless (“A devil in our pocket,” as movie director Alejandro Jodorowsky hisses in Jodorowsky’s Dune), the taxman just another corpse. No colleagues, no clients, no transactional semi-friendships. Somebody bossing you around? Nothing stops a bully like a pump action. 

From this perspective, the Zombie Apocalypse is a libertarian fantasy: every remaining human for themselves, like a Western with fungus monsters. 

Zombie stories provide many possible functions: they symbolise our fear of people (The Walking Dead), they provide an opportunity for satire (Dawn Of The Dead), they show us how to grieve (The Last Of Us), and warn us of nature’s impending revenge (also The Last Of Us). 

But perhaps they’re also about our joyous, wild need for freedom, right alongside the tragedy. Which even I find attractive, and mum raised me red.