Not the Last of Them

The HBO remake of the video game The Last of Us plasters a progressive veneer over a conservative settler colonial genre structure. Plus! The viral (fungal) appeal of Pedro Pascal's queer masculinity.

Unlike Ellie in the massively popular video game and HBO series The Last of Us, I am not immune. I’ve never played a video game, but the TV narrative, its characters, its visual landscape, compel me in spite of myself. Why? I have never liked horror, zombie movies, postapocalyptic scenaries outside the writing of Octavia Butler, or pandemic panic stories other than the British TV series Years and Years. And TLOU is such a conventional version of the classic, mutating drama of the morally compromised, emotionally wounded tough guy, existing outside of any domestic world, learning to care as he battles human savagery and the natural world, committing necessary violence to survive and protect. Often, he is challenged by a “spunky” woman! Yawn.

This is the cowboy/western narrative rooted in gendered, racialized settle colonial dynamics, that has shifted to encompass contemporary forms of “savagery” and environmental disaster. So now it’s zombies or The Infected rather than “Indians,” but some group has got to die en masse to establish the bonafides of the anti-hero as he navigates a forbidding landscape. In another context, this is the structure of the romance narrative from Harlequin novels to Fifty Shades of Grey—the hard, wounded, remote and withholding hunk is softened in spite of himself by the bold heroine. It’s another kind of journey, the marriage plot (or the creepily similar father/daughter romance) from the pov of The Girl.

Given this genre history, it is not surprising to discover that one of the video game creators and TV series co-writer/directors, Neil Druckmann, spent his early childhood as an Isreali settler in the West Bank. Not to be reductive about this fact—it does not determine the shape of the narrative of TLOU, but it does contribute substantially. Unpacking the massive popularity of the game and TV series requires a grasp of both how the story recapitulates old familiar tales of race, gender and the “necessary” violence of imperial expansion, in both the US and Israeli context, while also contesting and transforming them into a format that contemporary Hollywood multiculti liberals can love. I’m not just posing as critically superior here! I also loved the show and its characters in spite of myself. Hey, I know better! Yet still……

Ok, so let’s start with why I loved it, and then go on to why I shouldn’t have! Then we shall conclude with an analysis of why/how Pedro Pascal, off of any film/tv set, is so hot right now.

So let’s start with Bella Ramsey and Murray Bartlett. OMG. Love. The actors not the characters. But these actors play queer characters in expansions of the video game plot. The only active positive desire explicitly depicted onscreen in the TV series is queer desire. In the postapocalytic world “natural” families have been fractured and “found” connection is key to emotional and physical survival. None of the female characters are conventionally sexualized. The gendered dynamics of the story are continually upended with men failing and women/non binary characters doing the “saving.” The inclusive representation ranges from multi-racial and Native American characters, to a deaf character played by a deaf actor for whom many on set learned ASL. The post-apocalypse military dictorship is challenged by a range of resistance groups, and alternative formations to the militarized quarantine zones are presented—a patriarchal religious groups that is revealed as almost cartooninshly evil, a communist utopia with black female leadership, and a group working toward a cure for the fungal pandemic. The story has political as well as representational range. The pervasive violence, central to the video game, is presented as tragic and not always necessary. The locations are spectacular and the attention to visual detail is astounding.

But. The representational inclusiveness is not fully integrated. The queer love stories are clearly differentiated from the main tale, in their own separate episodes. The racial inclusiveness appears without context—why are these Native American characters entirely alone in the wilderness? what are the racial histories and dynamics of the groups and communities? etc. The “spunky” teenager who challenges the gruff anti-hero, played by non-binary actor Bella Ramsey, just has to be sexually assaulted. Has to happen. And it is only after then that her “father” breaks his defended mode. I mean, he doesn’t save her—she saves herself! But still. Of the “strong woman” characters only one survives the season—Maria back at the communist utopia. Others are infected (Tess, Kathleen) or murdered (Marlene). Lots of men die too! But there’s something so familiar about positing the “strong woman” and then taking her down. One account of the making of the video game reports that originally the fungus only affected women, so the game player was saving Ellie by shooting exclusively female Infected in the head. Apparently, one or more of the female game developers objected….. Meanwhile, the show does employ a trans masculine actor. But they are cast to portray a submissive widow and mother in the religious cult. Oy.

But the most important problem with TLOS is the fundamental structure and theme of the story. Druckmann has said it is “about love”—both positive and negative aspects of love. Love underpins connection and survival, but also murderous tribalism—protection and revenge in defense of one’s “own” people. There is a liberal “cycle of violence” argument laced throughout the episodes. Love and hate are universal, violence is necessary when survival is threatened, people will do anything to protest their “own.” What we get is a naturalized human tragedy, rather than an economic political analysis of the asymmetries of power, the pursuit of profit and domination, the dynamics of extraction and exploitation that underlie imperial expansion, capitalist plunder and climate disaster. When, at the end of season 1 of the HBO series, Joel commits mass murder to save Ellie—it is horrible and tragic, but understandable because he has come to love her. Thus are we to understand imperial wars! Thus are we to comprehend the cycles of vengeance underlying the Israel/Palestine conflict! Bullshit. Tribal love and vengeance have historical contexts in massive power differentials, there is nothing “natural” or “both sides” about it.

One more issue to add here—the communist utopia in Jackson Wyoming is the place where the “natural” multiracial, gender equal, democratic family can be restored! Maria’s pregnancy by Joel’s brother Tommy represents the most hopeful possible future—not the set aside queer love stories, where 3 out of 4 characters die.

So of course Hollywood liberals and a huge viewing public love this series. It does a lot of work to appeal to all our hopes for a more democratic, egalitarian and inclusive world. But it does that over a profoundly conservative genre structure that valorizes individualized struggles for survival against hostile forces—one of the gay male characters, played by the utterly charming Nick Offerman, is a paranoid survivalist who hordes resources. We come to love this stand-in for the hard core right wing, because individualized, isolated, bunkered queer love humanizes him. Oy. I love Murray Barlett too! But I am not following them down this pink-washing path of sentiment.

The mass appeal of the series is a combination of thematics that both reproduce capitalist and imperial assumptions, and echo conventional gender relations, even as it also challenges and upends them. It tries to bring the contemporary right wing and the “woke” together—literally in the Bill/Frank episode! Can’t we all just get along? If we ignore history and power dynamics?

And in conclusion….. why is Pedro Pascal so hot?

From Twink to Daddy

Inquiring minds want to know! Maybe not all are as invested in this question as I am—currently driving my friends off a cliff sending them Tiktoks and IG fan account photos and comments at all hours of the day and night. It may not make sense that a commie pinko queer fem dyke would pursue such an obsession. But there are reasons for it!

Pedromania reflects this political moment—when queerness is being widely embraced at the same time as it is being widely and viciously targeted. To begin, Pascal is the one man Village People of TikTok right now—masses of followers pretending they think he is straight. Like playing YMCA at a Trump rally, this is hilarious. Pascal is so obviously gay. He plays with gay subcultural tropes all the time, with a knowing smirk. But he withholds confirmation of this fact, allowing himself to become a projection screen for all genders and sexualities. On the one hand, this is the most common phenomenon in popular culture. Male celebrities either in a glass closet (Hollywood style), performing fem queerness (pop culture style), or virtually creating hetero romance culture (Broadway style). Nothing new at all.

This historical moment presents a particular set of contradictory demands for this kind of thing to work though. Pascal has mastered the contradictions. He is publicly strongly pro gay and pro trans rights, embracing his trans sister and non-binary co-star, while exhibiting an intimate kind of physical affection for other men—straight, gay and otherwise. But he keeps his own relationships and practices hidden. If he “came out,” he would lose roles and audience—just look at the limits placed on amazing gay actors like Murray Bartlett and Colman Domingo. But if he proclaimed himself straight or had a public girlfriend he’d lose his viral appeal. Everyone actually knows he’s probably gay—however vociferously they need to deny that. And it is precisely his *queer* masculinity that constitutes his hotness. It’s not that he is all that good looking—a lot of actors are more classically handsome or more pornishly hunky. He projects non-toxic, non-predatory cis masculinity—and the yearning for that right now is so massive. I confess this is what I look for in dyke partners myself (all but the cis part). He performs all the tropes of cis masculinity (Village People style)—and undercuts them with every giggle and wink in his interviews.

The only non-gay (but possibly bi or pan) cis male actor who comes close to Pascal on the viral thirst register right now is Oscar Isaac. Which then highlights the role that racialization plays. Both actors are Latinx, both racialized and white passing. But only Pascal jumps into the contemporary Valentino stratosphere of sexualization. No one acknowledges the racial “Latin lover” component of this. In addition, Pascal is distantly related to Salvador Allende, and escaped the Pinochet regime in Chile with his parents when he was a baby. His politics on the surface are cliche Hollywood liberal, but there are little outbursts of things like “Socialism!” on his late great Twitter account. He seems to give a shit? which is hot……

As for my own obsession, I confess that I have reincarnated the late beloved José Muñoz as Pedro. In my demented fantasy life, I am Pascal’s queer best friend actress Sarah Paulson, with a butchier version of her partner Holland Taylor at home waiting for me, while I hang out all hours with my queer bestie José/Pedro. As in fact I used to do.

Postscript:

In a year or so, the second season of TLOS will appear on HBO, based on Part II of the video game. Here are links to a couple of articles on that Part II that are quite illuminating for thinking about Part I as well…..

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8da4/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii

https://www.tarekyounis.org/blog/blurred-violence-the-last-of-us-part-ii-israel-and-the-erasure-of-power