Partner and I have been watching The Last of Us because we stan Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
I was telling my partner not to expect a good character story for The Last of Us Season 2 since the show has been faithfully relaying the plot of the games especially in it’s scene composition.
For those who don't know TLOU Part 2 was explicitly written to be Israeli propaganda.
Neil Druckman (grew up as a West Bank Settler as a child, until his family moved to the US) has explicitly gone on the record to say that the story was inspired by the 2000 Ramallah lynching among other experiences in the West Bank. He’s a reflexive center left Zionist which means he’s an ultra lib loser and he donated $2,500 to both sides after October 7th and the subsequent reprisal. Also he’s a huge loser who fell for the beheaded babies propaganda.
He has explicitly gone on the record to say he wanted to essentially do what Kill BIll did for the concept of “when you seek revenge dig 2 graves”, where the ending both reifies it but also waters down its inherent tragedy in the eyes of the audience.
“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”
So essentially the POV is that you’re supposed to want to feel the currently very Israeli coded feeling of being so racist, self righteous and hateful that it drives your society to hollow itself out in it’s irrational crusade to extinguish the subject of these feelings. But in a, you know, rationalizing, this is fine, this is normal, this is just people and there’s nothing you can do and some of it is kinda good actually way.
I’m incredibly curious as to how TLOU Season 2 walks this tight rope with the source material, political climate, and especially since Bella Ramsey has been so outspoken about the genocide.
My partner didn't believe me about the source material, and we started watching S2E4. Within 5 minutes they changed their tune.
Because the cold open is Isaac torturing a Seraphite while reiterating Israeli style talking points about how he doesn’t care about who’s actually doing the most killing, and that he has some abstract right to kill all of the Seraphites as revenge / preemptive self defense / etc. When the Seraphite tells him that the WLF is eating itself and their troops are joining the Seraphites and never leaving, it leads to him getting irrationally mad and just straight up executing the Seraphite. Outside the door one of WLF guards looks a bit upset for a second before the second one said “Good he got what he deserved”.
Grimly realistic stuff. Gonna be interesting how they thread this needle.
I don’t know how you can get to the end of lou2 and view it as any sort of endorsement of revenge, or of justifying Israeli violence. Did i miss something?
Nice to hear Bella Ramsey is cool. I haven’t watched game of thrones but I’ve seen some clips of them as Lyanna Mormont and they’re good as hell in that. Not a lot of child actors do a particularly good job ime but they absolutely killed it.
“I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.”
This is so telling and horrifying. There are people who don’t experience hatred this strong. The fact that it feels so universal to an Israeli is alarming.
I remember after 9/11, my reaction was anger over the deaths of thousands of people, but I wanted to understand why and how it happened. Nobody wakes up in the morning and just decides to hijack an airliner to kill a bunch of people on a whim. I thought even if I don’t agree with their reasons and methods, they still have a reason. I tried my best as a middle school/high school student to learn about the history of Osama bin Laden, Islam, and whether Islam condoned what happened.
I learned Osama was cast out as being heretical, his beliefs considered blasphemy. He broke a lot of Islamic laws with 9/11. I also learned how the US funded him in hopes he’d do 9/11 to the USSR. It started to become obvious the US retaliation against Afghanistan was misplaced and we were using the Taliban as cover to loot the country.
All this to say, I never experienced the hate this fucking Israeli piece of shit experienced. I never thought about torturing the people responsible. I became against the torture used by the Bush regime. This guy is a colonizer and his material interests are going to inform his views.
and he donated $2,500 to both sides after October 7th and the subsequent reprisal.
Distilled Pro-War Move. Literally just fanning the flames. I just hope everybody shoots each other
I brought this up earlier after the season 2 premiere.
Looking back now, season 1 did have some zionist brainworms poking through. Season 2 has been repulsive with its fascism. The characters justify murdering people out of bloodlust and the whole thing is nihilistic. There’s an “ends justify the means” assumption about humanity, like everyone is supposed to torture and murder people in an endless cycle of violence.
That’s not what’s happening in Palestine. The Palestinians aren’t killing Israelis because they want to. They’re doing it to get colonizers out. There’s a coherent objective being carried out by Hamas. TLoU reduces this struggle as revenge for the sake of revenge, because Israelis are genocidal fascists who kill children without remorse. The show constructs a strawman and tries to get us to agree to this strawman as a fundamental part of human nature. Then it tries to get us to agree to a centrist “Well the situation is complicated. There will never be a solution because the cycle has to continue.”
No, the situation is not complicated. The cycle ends when European settlers take their asses back to Europe where they belong. By creating a fictional story analogous to Palestine, the writers have created a scenario that benefits the oppressors and validates their beliefs.
While knowing the motive behind the series erases any interest I might have in it, honestly I’m fine if they want to promote a narrative of “revenge is okay no matter what” or “pre-emptive self defense.” It won’t work out the way the director, or the west in general, think it does though. The majority of the world has seen who is real offender, the one who has brutally massacred the other from the start and constantly rejected and betrayed peace. The majority of humanity understands on some level what imperialism and colonialism feels like and has been and remains victim to it. Even across the west many are thoroughly disgusted. People know which side actually starves and slaughters babies and the vulnerable, which side actually acts like imperialist barbarians.
Settlers can play these games all they want- and they inevitably will- but it won’t end well for them. And I can’t claim I’d shed a tear when it happens, I’d have compassion and work towards minimizing or preventing harm to (actual) innocents always, sure, but this is what they will have brought on themselves if and when the tables turn.
If they had sense they’d stick to the dehumanization and denial narratives, IMO… though even then the hypocrisy and blood libel is blatant, anything else is simply teaching the rest of the world just how incompatible their mentality is with coexistence and how far humanity at large will have to go to wholly disarm and de-fang the imperialists in turn.
For those who don’t know TLOU Part 2 was explicitly written to be Israeli propaganda.
This was such an interesting piece of info. It makes total sense, but since I never played the games, I wasn’t even aware, and I do really like watching Bella Ramsey, so I was thinking this would be acceptable stuff. But hey, Israelis are prominent throughout the gaming industry, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Thanks for sharing, I’ll be sure to look out for how the show does it.
Im going to sound like a massive rube here probably but i’ve enjoyed The Last of Us, both the two games and two seasons of TV. I dont really buy that the game is some sort of Israeli propaganda piece, just based off the evidence of Neil Druckman being Israeli and saying that the story was inspired by the experience of seeing a lynching as a teen. I appreciate the games for their satisfying gameplay, and i think that the combined story they tell is interesting and emotionally complex.
Before you scoff at that last line, I may also be biased towards liking the series, on account of how GamerGate-esque the reception to the second game was. Just the absolute worst youtube personalities going on about how the franchise is ruined, what happened to my wholesome Foster Father SimulatorTM, Abby has muscles while also being a woman (egads!), etc… Usually when chuds cry about a piece of media, I have an inclination to check it out, and I’ve enjoyed what i got to experience out of that this time.
I think the moralistic inclination that’s derived from consoomer culture that you must like things that are “good” and dislike things that are “bad” is awful and focuses people on the dumbest things in order to extract the max amount of money via advertising/marketing spend.
I think it’s perfectly fine to like works regardless of their morality or quality, I just think people should be honest about it. I like plenty of things that are shitty or problematic I’m just clear eyed about them. I do like The Last of Us, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s something it’s not.
Spoilers for season 2
spoiler
So far, my biggest problem with Season 2 is that Ellie’s slow turn to obsession over revenge is seemingly nonexistent. At this point in the game, she’s already had numerous chances to stop and go home. Dina has told her. Jessie tells her. Everyone is like, hey this is a bad idea, maybe lets just go home and she pushes them away literally and figuratively on her quest. None of that has been present and I feel like its really undercutting the whole message.
And! They for some reason cut out the entire conversation between Dina and Ellie about “do you think you could make someone talk?” even though in season 1, we saw the torture method Joel and Tommy used in game to get people to talk. Cutting this takes away from the brutality of the end of the Hospital sequence, where Ellie forces Nora to talk. I don’t get it.
I was so happy with season 1, and I thought all the changes and cuts served to better tell the story. So far, I think they’ve left too many important tidbits on the cutting room floor and its got me really soured on season 2.
Yeah I agree with that. Ironically all of those messages were from the other WLF members towards Abby in E2.
Bonus Video Game Brain content:
Why does the actor who is playing a character that canonically has PTSD from watching her father be tortured and killed in a brutal way look haunted / sad / upset all the time? I feel like the actor doesn’t have the skill to play this character with such a shallow emotional portrayal. That thread very obviously gets misogynistic and ablist very fast.
Mans wants everybody wearing kabuki masks so he can tell what emotions they’re supposed to be feeling
I’m never gonna play these games. How does fungus zombies translate to support for Pissrael? I’ve definitely heard this take before but I guess I don’t know the Context.
Just watch the gay episode and move on
I’m gonna be honest, I never understood where the Zionist propaganda was supposed to be located in Part 2
The Seraphites are supposed to be Palestinians? Well that wasn’t remotely obvious, they’re clearly coded as some kind of amish-like post-apocalyptic cult and the Wolves are clearly presented as the principal aggressors, picking a fight with an island people that suffered just as much under FEDRA as they did
And the Seraphaites come out in the end winning a shocking and theatrical victory against the Wolves
So is the propaganda in the revenge story? If that’s true, Elies narrative is too personalized for some geopolitical narrative building
Propaganda doesn’t have to be a thinly veiled metaphor rich in polemics like Iron Man. That’s actually often the most boring an ineffectual propaganda. Propaganda works best when it creates a heuristic response that muddles emotions and logic.
The propaganda in TLOU Part 2 comes from the ludonarrative dissonance that actually just reinforces the idea that “this is just complex stuff and you shouldn’t be ‘too moral’ about it”. For example are we ever really made to feel that Ellie is bad for choosing to avenge Joel?
Ellie’s story and the WLF/Seraphite conflict mirror each other in the whole “I don’t want to have to do this but I have no choice” -> “I did a thing and I had no choice and now I’m traumatized from my non-choice” -> “more non choices incoming”. The reality is that the story consistently creates apologetics to further and further these cycles in the eyes of the player who themselves commit the atrocity. This essentially undercuts the eventual resolution of “you didn’t have to do all that”.
Comparing this with a game like Spec OPS the Line that forces you to commit atrocity because you’re playing “da hero” and then admonishes you for the immorality of it. Martin Walker is shown to be a piece of shit. He’s traumatized and abused sure, but that doesn’t take focus away from the fact that he’s a piece of shit that burns women and children alive with white phosphorous.
spoiler
The emotional resonance and the visceral nature of beating the shit out of Nora with a lead pipe is explored and centered more than the supposed “moral of the story” that you shouldn’t travel 200 miles and kill 2 people one of whom was just a victim of circumstance to get information on the next person you’re gonna brutalize with a lead pipe. How does the game handle these scenes? We’re made to feel bad for Ellie! She’s traumatized! These scenes aren’t clearly shown for their ultimate immoral implications that create dissonance with the supposed moral of the plot.
We see so much “consequence” to validate the “cycle of violence”, but we don’t really see or play through any significant consequential atonement that bears the same emotional weight as the atrocity itself. It’s more of a shrugging apologetic for cycles of violence than an argument against it. On top of that the ludonarrative doesn’t give us much choice about it, nor does it give us commentary about that lack of choice unlike Spec Ops.
A good example as to how these stories can be written in a “game style” but not have this dissonance that’s both plot based and ludonarrative based is if you stack the emotional and logical judgements of the PC’s actions towards the end of the game and heighten the impact. A good example is Mouthwashing where over the course of the game you discover that you’re actually a huge piece of shit in context. The things that seemed innocuous at the beginning of the game were actually your PC being a huge piece of shit. Ultimately these actions got a whole bunch of people killed and they were done because the PC is an incompetent ego maniac with a huge chip on their shoulder about their lack of achievement in life.
For example are we ever really made to feel that Ellie is bad for choosing to avenge Joel?
Yes? She lost everything in her pursuit of revenge. Who walks away from the end of the game and thinks “worth it 😄”
Druckman definitely sucks, of course
Yes? She lost everything in her pursuit of revenge. Who walks away from the end of the game and thinks “worth it 😄”
There’s a ton of mouth breathers on forums arguing that Ellie should have killed Abby. I don’t think they’re stupid because they “don’t see the real message”, I think they’re stupid because they don’t reject the message they actually see. There is a real argument for the existence of the message of “why not just kill Abby” in the construction of the game.
There is a real argument for the existence of the message of “why not just kill Abby” in the construction of the game
I just can’t see that in any reasonable way after someone plays all of it, but I’m also approaching this from a perspective of a marxist/anti-zionist so maybe that’s why. I am aware of the horrific responses this game got
The obvious choice to me was turn away at any of the many points Ellie had a chance to instead of ruining the many lives around her (and her own)
They arent coded as Amish. Hell Lev’s entire plot is about queer people being “honour killed” and him rejecting his “culture” and choosing to integrate with the liberal Zionist. Lev was also planned to be a child bride to a “prophet” (the whole aisha thing), the seraphites are primitive, brutish, zealots and homophobic who dont have an survival instinct and just throw themselves at the WLF. The WLF was created under FEMA occupation and gained independence due to the aid of terrorism (irgun). The seraphites are literally every Islamophobic stereotype since 9/11, but just because the games tells us that they are “Christian” people overlook it.
That’s because it isn’t. His comments say it was inspired by, but he’s talking about the themes, and yes is certainly a zionist, but neither the game or the show have anything that can even tangentially tied to Palestine. The narrative has you realizing that none of the factions are “good”, they’re all fucked, and revenge is bad.
Hell, if it were Isreali propaganda, the show wouldn’t feature the very scene OP mentions, with Isaac torturing and murdering a Seraphite. Maybe you could argue its propaganda in that the idea that there are no good guys leads to apathy over the genocide, and while that would be quite insidious, its not quite the same as Isreali propaganda. Isreali propaganda is always going to have Isreal as the one true king, god’s favorite little girl, etc. This show aint that
Isreali propaganda is always going to have Isreal as the one true king, god’s favorite little girl, etc. This show aint that
This isn’t true at all. There are plenty of movies like Beaufort that attempt to thread the needle of “maybe a state of perpetual war and occupation is bad” (because our soldiers get sad and weepy when retreating) without confronting the fact that the logic of Israeli ideology and it’s self characterization as a state, requires it to be in a state of perpetual war and occupation. TLOU2 does this same thing where it attempts to separate the consequences from the choices that precipitated the consequences without truly examining them. It makes you feel that the choices are sacrosanct and understandable.
A good example is what you mention in your other comment:
spoiler
In the beginning of Part 2, Ellie’s friends attempt to dissuade her from seeking revenge by her friends out of the fear for her personal safety not out of the position that violence begets violence or any sort of moral hazard. Ultimately the moral of the story is the moral hazard. This tension is never actually resolved.
Ask yourself, at what point does Ellie regret or feel anything but vindication about her choice to seek revenge for Joel? She doesn’t. What ends up happening is that she decides to kill Abby because she thinks it will stop her PTSD, and then she realizes during the fight scene that it won’t.
Neither the game nor Ellie actually confront the original sin or the subsequent choices to sin. Neither does the WLF/Seraphite storyline. The same exists in Israeli propaganda, the re-framing and argumentation about a year zero while committing atrocity. The description of the tactic through visual form e.g. the torture scene, is not necessarily communicating a refutation of the tactic. That’s you engaging with the work through your morality, not the morality of the work itself. The WLF is framed as the antagonist, and Ellie is framed as the protagonist, but their arcs are the same in terms of how they act and the consequences of their actions.The context is fairly interchangeable. They’re simply cast in different lights for the purpose of narrative. Ultimately this means that the stance is “well I guess it’s bad but it’s just kind-of a wash so you shouldn’t be too hard on other people or groups that have this same form and maybe do the same things you did with Ellie where you focus on the good stuff not the bad stuff”.
The moral ambiguity in the work matches the moral ambiguity and squishiness of Neil Druckman’s liberal Zionism and of all liberal Zionists.
She doesn’t. What ends up happening is that she decides to kill Abby because she thinks it will stop her PTSD, and then she realizes during the fight scene that it won’t
It isn’t to stop her PTSD, I didn’t get that at all. She couldn’t leave Joel unavenged, then she realizes the futility of it in the end, literally saying “just take him”.
