Reject The Question
“Start bombing.” Ratna continues, “Bomb this city...and everyone in it.”
Hidayat sits in stunned silence. The light of the sunset, which had been warm moments ago, paradoxically seems cold and filtered. In this moment, the roles have been reversed. General Hidayat of the Indonesian paratroopers, a man well-versed in violence and a member of an armed forces that provably engaged in acts that bordered on genocide with the assent of the Indonesian State; this man sits aghast at the brutality of Dr. Ratna’s prescription.
Ibu Ratna, a medical expert, a university professor, and possibly a liberal has offered as the only solution to the crisis a genocidal level of violence, a level of violence that most authoritarian regimes have not engaged in against their own people: The deliberate and calculated murder of 10,000,000 people to contain the coming crisis. To maintain public order. To maintain the Polizeistaat. To maintain normality. When confronted with that which her modernist science said ought to be impossible, her solution is ferocious in its simplicity: “Bomb.” Yet, she says it with such a quavering despair.
Here it should be noted, the importance of the room, the couch, and the sunset. The room and couch are portrayed in a golden glow. The wallpaper, the lamp, the upholstery of the couch, all have a golden tinge that is accentuated by the light of the sunset. It bespeaks, not so much of elegance, but of comfort. The succor of modern society, the luxuries and the niceties, even the cup of tea, a luxury item gifted to Ratna out of sympathy and custom. All of it is lit with the fading glow of the sunset.
The End of the Day.
The End of Niceties and Luxuries.
The End of Comforts and Custom.
The End of Certainty.
The End of Modernity.
The sun is setting on all of it.
As the sun sets on Modernity, the Doctor’s Gaze beholds only one remedy: savage brutality.
Yet, Ibu Ratna’s prescription is not given without remorse. She knows that she would also be consumed in the fire. She asks simply, tearfully, if she could be permitted to go and see her children and grandchildren one last time before the night settles permanently on the world.
Here then, all the threads come together. The Car. The Hospital. The Room. The State. Medicine. Modernity. Everything intertwines with each other to make this scene not only the linchpin of The Last of Us but in my opinion the best scene in Zombie horror. While it is not evident that Indonesia followed Ibu Ratna’s prescription, regardless the death throes of the modern world are violent beyond measure. The Modern State devolves into the Polizeistaat, justified by the Gaze of scientific medicine.
The American response to the fungal pandemic is marked by cold and calculated brutality. On the first night of the outbreak, soldiers are ordered to shoot suspected infected on sight. The Air Force bombs sections of Boston to rubble. As the response delegates more authority to the military, as FEDRA (an analog to FEMA) takes hold, they do not hesitate to massacre whole towns lest they become infected. To maintain public order, FEDRA suspends the constitution, institutes mandatory curfews, strictly rations basic foodstuffs, and publicly hangs malcontents and trespassers. The accused are condemned by military tribunal. The infected, when discovered, before they lash out violently, are put down for public health. FEDRA treats the clinical murder of children as a routine. As Bill puts it angrily: “The government are all Nazis!”[1]
Yet, such a state of affairs should not be surprising, let alone shocking. The End is in the Beginning. The seeds of such authoritarianism lie within the very premises of Modernity: the world is knowable and therefore controllable, the Scientist can know the world through their Gaze, the State has an interest in harnessing that knowledge for the greater good, but in so doing the State gains the power to determine not only what the greater good is but even what is Truth. The Doctor gains their authority through the State, the State justifies itself by the prescriptions of The Doctor.
Yet, though FEDRA is clearly an authoritarian military dictatorship, their enemies are not much better. The Fireflies, the underground insurgents, wish to restore the constitution and regain the civil liberties that have been stolen. Yet, they are not above atrocity. The Fireflies are willing to kill civilians in car bombs, willing to kidnap, to torture, and when given the opportunity take bloody revenge on their former oppressors. The Fireflies likewise believe they are fighting for the greater good and justify their actions in the name of that lofty goal. Though they condemn FEDRA for their actions to defend the greater good, the Fireflies themselves are willing to murder a teenage girl in the name of that same greater good.
There then stands Joel and Ellie, caught between these two forces, each of them representing modernity, each of them willing to do violence in the name of the greater good. Joel’s final decision is an answer to the question of modernity: is there a limit to the Gaze and to the greater good it purportedly supports? Joel decides to save Ellie, ostensibly dooming the world. He refuses to shed innocent blood in the name of a supposed greater good. He rejects the Gaze, he rejects the Polizeistaat, he rejects modernity. He rejects these things in favor of one of the most basic human relationships: the bond between a father and a daughter.
The modernist State took his daughter from him.
Now the supposed freedom fighters wish to take Ellie from him.
He rejects both to preserve something sacred in a fallen world. Something that cannot simply be observed in a laboratory or organized in a spreadsheet or clinically examined.
But this final conflict, this final decision, is framed by Ibu Ratna and General Hidayat. Joel’s decision would not be as significant if it were not juxtaposed to this conversation between the two pillars of modernity: Science and the State. Joel is just a man. He’s not even a good man. He may not know what is best for the world or the public order or the common good. But he knows what’s best for Ellie, and that is to not be murdered as part of a human medical experiment. While Science and the State converse about what is best to do for others in their high-minded technocracy, Joel, the average man, rejects the question entirely. No one bothers to ask Joel what he thinks, no one bothers to ask Ellie what she thinks, no one bothers to ask the American people what they think, no one bothers to ask the people of Jakarta what they think. Science and the State impose their values onto the Joels of the world with no thought to the repercussions. Such a technocratic view of the world is not only at the heart of colonialism, it is deeply totalitarian. To even ask the question “What is best for the public good?” is to set oneself in the mindset of an authoritative manager.
The Last of Us is an amazing television show that I believe reaches into the lofty heights of art. It is a deeply important dialogue about sacrificial love, the importance of fatherhood, and in its subtext diagnoses the problems of managerial technocracy, and if I can be bold, it gives a prescription to these problems: reject the very question. I believe that the deeper themes of the show could not have been achieved without the cold open scene presented in episode two. While the scene is strictly speaking not necessary for the narrative, and while the scene has been rarely discussed in any depth by others, I believe that it is the most important scene in the entire show, and I dare to say that it may be the best scene in the zombie horror genre.
[1] Craig Mazin, writer. The Last of Us. Season 1, Episode 3, “Long, Long Time.” Directed by Peter Hoar. Aired Jan. 29, 2023. HBO, 2023, Streaming.
