#it was so. surface level there was no substance they wanted me to feel something soooo bad and well

akajustmerry

Frank’s challenge to Bill’s isolationism is framed, not as a larger social issue in which Bill is keeping essential resources from those who may need them on pain of death, but merely as a conflict within their relationship. As the audience, we’re never positioned to question Bill’s isolationism outside of how it limits his social life. We’re meant to admire and sympathise with how his attitude allows him to build the queer life he never got to lead before the world ended. 

In 2007, Jasbir Puar coined the term ‘homonationalism’ to describe LGBTIQ people and movements who align themselves with nationalist attitudes; queer people who ascribe to an ‘us vs them’ mentality to the detriment of less privileged groups. People like Bill, whose queer marginalisation doesn’t push them toward radical empathy, but toward supremacist attitudes. 

But It is hardly surprising that The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann uses queerness to pinkwash harmful libertarianism. Druckmann grew up as an Israeli in the occupied West Bank of Palestine — one of many of Israel’s “settlements” where Israel’s checkpoints, walls and military forces prevent Palestinians from accessing resources like water and electricity (sound familiar?). 

There’s no denying that portraying queerness at the end of the world is always somewhat refreshing. Apocalypse media has long been critiqued over its lack of imagination for envisioning futures where only the most privileged survive. But to see episode 3 so celebrated brings the disconcerting reminder that the majority are still most comfortable with celebrating queerness that aligns with conservative values of individual liberty over community good.

‘The Last of Us’ Has A Pretty Big Problem With Pinkwashing by Merryana Salem