Necropolitics, Infection Narratives, and The Last of Us

Disease. Disaster. Reckoning. Apocalypse. As social order evolves with the incalculable acceleration of social media, so too does the perception of the proverbial “end of history.” It is no secret that there is a morbid pseudo-curiosity with the very concept of apocalypse. On one hand, diseases and disasters are viewed as an acceleration towards the Biblical prophecy written in Revelation, that the world is approaching the end times where humanity will be wiped from the Earth in an act of divine retribution. On the other hand, however, there is a recognition of the notion that disasters and disease happen, yet humanity has endured without fail. In today’s global economy, the “apocalypse” as a narrative tool in fictional works stems from a long history of survival of “the end.” We can see a fascination with disease as a trendy apocalyptic subject beginning a cycle in the early 2010’s, with video games such as Resident Evil and Plague Inc., or television dramas and films such as The Walking Dead, Zombieland and more recently, The Last of Us (HBO) . The creation of series where an infection breaks out, culling swaths of the population globally rapidly, inducing totalitarian rule as a means of containment have steadily maintained their place in the mainstream outlets of popularity. Despite the often-grim reality presented within these fictitious works, there appears to be an ever-hungry market for the presentation of human resilience against mass infection and the oppressive regimes which subsequently emerge to “contain” it.

When diseases or infections break out, how does a sovereign entity placate the effects? Historically speaking, often there was a process of othering which occurred when a person is contagious – leprosy for example had entire groups of people sequestered away from the main arteries of society out of fear of it spreading. More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic also saw a form of othering, encouraging the potentially exposed to impose self-isolation for the greater goal of maintaining public health. Fear of another “wave” was the driving force which convinced many to follow the directives passed down by their local sovereignty. Authorities had control of the population through the fear of spreading an infection further. Yet within this, there was also significant resistance once the promises of quick resolution faltered, leading to a schism of trust between the subject and the sovereign regarding what is best for the health of the public – outrage of political overreach occurred with mask mandates and curfew hours. Ironically, fear of authority trumped the fear of disease. The uninfected group did not want to be under the same authoritative jurisdiction as the infected group. These practices of managing healthy and non-healthy, or disposable and not-disposable, individuals are part of a greater governmental process known as necropolitics.

Through the lens of necropolitical thinking, this essay will aim towards three goals: first, defining the necropolical parameters of which any given society operates on in consideration to outbreaks. Controlling the spread of an outbreak is not an accidental process, it is part of a complex political machine and its ability to exert authority through the fear of further proliferation. After tracing the implementation of necropolitics as a basis of governmental sovereignty by incorporating numerous arguments and critiques for an against its theoretical existence, this essay will then move towards framing an understanding of how the practice of necropolitics is understood in fictional works. By analyzing the narratives surrounding infection in a fictional setting, this essay will then be able to explore and excavate significant meaning out of the popular video game turned television series The Last of Us. I will compare the experience of playing the video game in contrast to the television adaptation, drawing conclusions about the experience of the player versus the viewer. By illuminating shared elements of the story, there will not only be a deeper understanding of the intricacies of necropolitical behavior, but there will also be a renewed perspective regarding the perception of apocalyptic contagions in media as survivable and why humanity is fascinated and insistent on its ability to endure and survive.

According to Achille Mbembe, the process of necropolitics can be distilled to a simple definition: “sovereignty means the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not.” From the perspective of the colonial state, Mbembe argues that the truest embodiment of sovereignty encapsulates death – the process of ruling involves death, this cannot be denied. Mbembe’s argument for necropolitical thinking is logical, as it builds from the highly controversial yet relevant critiques from Michel Foucault regarding sovereignty, governmentality, and biopower. While he does not outwardly disagree with the notions set forth from Foucault, he is critical of the positioning within his own argument, paying special attention to the colonial state as an unchecked manifestation of biopolitical sovereignty, where terror is used a means of controlling the population absolutely – thus necropolitics must be the term used. Death is not a powerless resource, there is significant meaning within death which is caused by any means of official power overwhelming the disposables. Observation of the colonial is perhaps the most pertinent detail of the necropolitical argument, because if a state is not a colonial one, would the notion of necropolitics be sufficient? Furthermore, what are the parameters for a colonial state, is it possible to create a colony within a locality, or is the definition of colonial strictly for the unequal exertion of force from a superior sovereign state? I would like to push this definition by presenting the following thought: Is it necropolitical to manage widespread disease by establishing quarantine zones as a means of “controlling the spread?”

Application of the theory on necropolitics is concerned with marginalization and abuse of the minorities in colonial states, however, it is reasonable to assume within this presentation of marginalization that Mbembe is also referring to the members of that society who are dealing with sickness. Making the unhealthy invisible, in a sense, strengthens the illusion of a healthy society by disqualifying the protection of contagious or infectious disease through policies which isolate and alienate unhealthy members of society. Governmental action to prevent an illness from spreading rapidly often resorts to actions which restrict social access, arguably stripping rights away from the diseased and healthy members of society. Fear of the spread, paradoxically, creates a dichotomy between government actions which increase authority to decrease infection rates, against the agency of the individual reacting against perceived infringements of rights. Systematically, democratic nations exist because of the ability of a state to express what it feels are essential to the existence of its citizens through the form of rights and regulations. The logic of government presented within Foucault and Mbembe’s theories acknowledges this much, albeit not explicitly stating disease as a potential threat to the order which is carefully crafted by legislation to create a rights-based society.

We can see an example of this within the recent Covid-19 pandemic which created significant issues between the rights of the individual, which were created by the government, versus the enforcement of stricter health standards trying to mitigate the spread of infection globally. In the United States, there was significant backlash against mask-mandates because of this very perception about rights being infringed by a government entity. I agree with the assessment produced by Rob Wallace, that both the Trump and Biden administrations struggled to contain the spread of the disease in its early stages. Further friction was caused when both the World Health Organization, henceforth WHO, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, henceforth CDC, recommended vaccinations be required by law when available, even offering them to be proliferated en masse at vaccination clinics. Recommendations by the CDC and WHO received pushback because of a deep seeded fear of governmental totality – people are afraid of being controlled and are willing to go against executive advisory if it could mean a sliver of independence is preserved. This fear of alienation could perhaps be a derivative of a subliminal awareness of the othering which occurs when a person is ultimately infected with a disease, likely from examples from popular media which highlight the inability to compromise with the other.

At the same time, there appeared to be a level of apprehension within the United States to create and enforce stricter mandates by the WHO or the CDC; Wallace keenly notes that there was a point in time where the restrictions became laxer out of concern for the well-being of a distressed public atmosphere. In consideration of the handling of Covid-19 within the US, the necropolitical power which was developed from the pandemic was quite low, despite the desire to minimize deaths through placing emphasis on vaccinations and quarantining. Othering did take place, and it is likely due to the influence of public opinion within the transition of political power which it was more opportune to present a solution rather than admit that the problem is not going to vanish by allowing it to exist. Regardless, the US citizens public opinion is the essential point within the discussion of handling a virus, because if the public opinion truly was influencing the governmental decision making process against the advice of the experts, that would mean that making decisions regarding disease is not necropolitical in nature; as the whole basis of necropolitics exists under the pretense that the government is willing to sacrifice parts of its society for the sake of control, regardless of exterior influence. But it can also be said that the concern from the public being a reaction to the perception of authoritarian behavior indicates a fear of losing individuality, which supports necropolitical realities.

If concern is indeed so prevalent regarding not only the spread of the disease but the spread of authoritarian rule as well, how do we evaluate where this mindset came from? There could be multitudes of reasons to explain the development of psychological thought concerning disease and official management, however, I would like to point towards the existence and popularity of popular culture production which entertains outbreaks as storytelling lynchpins. Since the early 2010’s, the production of disease or outbreak-oriented media, such as video games, television series, and films, has been consistent and lucrative for providing entertainment and social critiques in easy-to-understand packaging on the premise of surviving. Fiction creates a new dialogue for necropolitical thinking for two reasons: firstly, because it is fictional there is undoubtedly a layer of social commentary from the author of the work, as it is impossible to entirely separate an authors voice from a work. Secondly, the audience digests the fictional work precisely because it is illusory in nature, there is no need to be worried about the implications of the series or game because it is fiction. The allowance of this pseudo-escapism is a key aspect in understanding why outbreak-based series are so popular in the first place. People enjoy having an imagination in which humanity wins in the end and survives because of the greater good in a group of individuals compared to the moral ambivalence of the group which was supposed to control the situation from spiraling beyond recognition. When one gazes closer at these fictional works, they too still exhibit the tendency to create an “us versus them” othering to create a feeling for survival. There is no effort to work alongside the other, because the disease either kills off those it infects instantly, or it transforms the afflicted into a zombie with limited agency. Zombies defy every conventional conception of death, not only serving the purpose of being an allegorical representation of people who have been brainwashed, but also as a grim representation of peace not being found in death.

If we follow the argument presented by Dahlia Schweitzer within her 2018 book Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World, the central point for the existence of “outbreak narratives” is the proliferation of fear across society. Specifically, because of the capability of such narratives to explore concerns about where the world may be heading, closing the gap between what is merely a conjecture and what could breach our reality. When considering the arguments presented by Mbembe regarding the usage of fear, Schweitzer recognizes that within the past three decades in the United States, that fear has been a driving force behind contemporary thought – be it from being afraid of disease because of media sensationalizing events or from government officials spreading rhetoric to create divisions within the public sphere. In either case, the usage of fear as an element of managing or “coercing” the public opinion in a particular direction is in line with the necropolitical argument presented by Mbembe. While not used within the colonial context by controlling an outside state, fear remains a powerful tool for controlling public opinion regarding “exterior” threats, thus, it can be viewed as a form of anti-colony through the cultivation of the “us versus them” paradigm being presented by Schweitzer as an essential component of outbreak narratives. I also agree with the perspective of looking towards the consistent production of such narrative works within popular culture to explain the fascination of impending doom within a society that has been told to be afraid of everything outside itself. If there was not a fascination with the plausibility of societal collapse, the popularity of the outbreak narrative would not be as effective. Socially, it does strike a chord with people to be presented with entertainment which showcases fear in subliminal ways, while highlighting the “greater” element of humanity as the victor against the uncertainty that the infection brings. The juxtaposition of “us” being greater than “them” provides great satisfaction to the viewer, who is seduced into cheering for the destruction of the other in these fictional narratives, precisely because of the feeling of vindication provided by the figurative and literal assertion of dominance and superiority over the thing that is supposed to strike fear in the characters.

From this perspective, it is interesting to consider the format of the media which is presenting the outbreak narrative in the first place. Typically, a story about infection exhibits traits such as: the necessary accident, the othering, security concerns, and relationships between survivors as central plot points which drive the story forward and provide “reason” for the narrative to exist in that world. The disease must manifest through some sort of accident – if nothing happens, it is not possible to explore the “what-if” scenario which is presented by the implication of an outbreak. Furthermore, if containment of the disease doesn’t break down, it is not a cause for concern for that fictional universe. For the author, writing this “accident” is not an accident, the intent of the author manifests the reality in the fictional realm allowing for exploration of themes such as humanity and resilience. This narratology can be utilized for various forms of media presentation, such as video games, television shows, and films, all of which provide different experiences for the viewer as they interact with the story as it unfolds before them. When a user interacts with media, there is a development of a parasocial relationship between the fictional character and the observer because of a presented relatability between the real and the fictional. Specifically, the interaction provided by a video game grants a different experience within the structure of a narrative because of the illusion of “choice” provided to the player by the author. For outbreak-based games such as Resident Evil or The Last of Us, the story structure allows for player flexibility within gameplay, but the story is statically told through cutscenes at specific points on the playable map. In that sense, a video game is not all that different from a film or television series in that the storyline will inevitably take place regardless of what the player does. At the same time, by being able to “be” the main character of a story, a stronger relationship to that character is likely to develop because of the blurred line between fiction and reality that a video game can immerse its player in.

An excellent example of the outbreak narrative as presented by Schweitzer, as well as an example of necropolitical thinking is the popular video game series The Last of Us, which was recently adapted into a television series on HBO. This series beginning as a video game and later being adapted for television showcases the differences in how stories are presented based on their formatting – not everything from a video game necessarily translates effectively to a watchable series. Elements of the story remained intact, with minor changes occurring regarding the visualization of the infection, characterization of minor characters, and the “path” of the journey. The Last of Us was released in 2013 as a video game exclusively on the PlayStation 3 console, including a playtime of roughly twenty hours depending on the pace of the player and difficulty setting, with canon cutscenes being relatively short in length compared to the gameplay portions of the game. In terms of gameplay, it is a loot-based survival game – each “area” you enter provides the opportunity to find items such as ammunition and crafting components, depending on the level of difficulty the availability of resources changes. Additionally, the player has the option to “stealth” around the enemies, be them infected or human, in each area or engage them directly – no matter what option the player chooses the cutscenes which tell the story are unavoidable. The virus which “breaks out” in The Last of Us is a variant of the fungus Cordyceps, which spreads either via spores in enclosed areas within the game, tendrils in the television series, and through being bitten by an infected. Like the real-life fungus, cordyceps in the universe of The Last of Us takes over the brain of its host, forcing submission to become nothing more than an insatiable monster. Because the story takes place over the course of twenty years, the outbreak mutates, creating multiple forms of infected based on how long the individual has carried the cordyceps, in a state which is suggested to be permanent until the host is killed. Gazing at these parameters from the perspective of Schweitzer, The Last of Us takes the narrative of the outbreak a step further by presenting the real-world possibility of mutations occurring because of failed containment. These infected are incredibly dangerous, presenting both a challenge to the player and the grim reality of a fearsome infection which does not simply end with psychological death – the loss of humanity within these infected further fuels the necropolitical narrative as people lose agency to both infection and containment forces. In this sense, the player and viewer are exposed to multiple interpretations of individual agency within the story presented by both game and TV series alike.

Changes were made by the director of the show Craig Mazin along with the director of the game from Naughty Dog studios Neil Druckmann in a joint effort to maintain the storyline from the original video game while also expanding on the short cutscenes from the game into nine episodes which last anywhere from 40 minutes to 80 minutes each. In an interview regarding the premier of the television series, Druckmann and Mazin discuss at length why certain changes were made, with primary reasoning being that certain components of the original game would be difficult to capture on camera, but also because of a desire to create a scientifically viable explanation for the viewer. Because a viewer cannot interact with the television, the immersion and relatability of a character is created by decisions made in game fundamentally shifts when the agency of the player is removed from the equation. The showrunners had to visualize the scarcity of resources to the viewers that are rendered incapable of exploring the world themselves while also capturing the harrowing reality of mutating diseases. The core of the story presented by the video game was also presented within the television series; it is a story of survival against the infection and the cruelty of a collapsed social structure with messages of trust and found family at the center of the narrative against the threat of infected and other survivors. Thus, the next section will examine the similarities and differences between the formats. While the story remains largely the same, playing the game is fundamentally different from watching the TV series because of the removal of the players agency.

The storyline of The Last of Us as a video game is a straightforward implementation of the outbreak narrative which we have discussed. A significant difference within the presentation of the outbreak, however, is that society does collapse, and the story largely takes place twenty years after the “necessary accident” occurs. There is no significant explanation as to how or why the outbreak occurs in game, it was quite literally an overnight collapse of society. The player is given control of a man named Joel, the unwilling protagonist of the outbreak narrative. As a player, you are granted a health bar which allows you to fight opponents and should you “die” you simply restart at the nearest checkpoint, the only deaths that are permanent are ones which are portrayed via cutscene. Joel managed to survive the outbreak the night it happened, losing his young daughter Sarah in the process to National Guard forces that were sent to “contain” the collapsing social network from the people going berserk due to the infection. Within the first five minutes of the game, the player experiences the necropolitical othering and establishment of an “us versus them” narrative when the containment forces kill an innocent girl for approaching the edge of the containment zone, immediately creating a sense of disdain for the overwhelming force which attempted to deal with the outbreak.

Twenty years later, Joel is in the Boston Quarantine Zone (QZ) surviving as a smuggler with his partner Tess. Being a smuggler is inherently dangerous, not only because it is regarded to be illegal by the Federal Disaster Response Agency, henceforth FEDRA, but also because the area “outside” the wall is overrun with the now othered infected. Joel is tasked by an insurgency group, the Fireflies, to “smuggle” a young teenager named Ellie out of the Boston QZ – this becomes even more dangerous when it is discovered early on that Ellie is “infected”, she was bitten by an infected roughly two weeks before the story takes place but somehow did not become one. This detail of the story is interesting, because the existence of Ellie signifies the possibility of “curing” the infection which has decimated society, as well as representing another manifestation of the “necessary accident” to drive the story forward. At first, Joel wants next to nothing to do with Ellie because he hardly wants the responsibility involved with escorting an “othered” person to an unnamed location across the continental United States, yet over the course of a “year”, Joel, and subsequently the player, begins to develop a pseudo-parental attachment to Ellie. This bond becomes the most apparent during the “winter” arc – after leaving Jackson searching for further clues about where the Fireflies are, Ellie is captured by the leader of a small community of survivors who happen to be connected to a group of raiders Joel and Ellie dispatch as part of a cutscene, narrowly escaping with Joel being seriously injured. The leader, David, tries to win Ellie’s trust after capturing her while she was out hunting and looking for medicine, but turns to rage when Ellie breaks his finger trying to break out of her containment cell. Ellie, who is briefly controlled by the player, subsequently has a showdown with David in a burning restaurant where she manages to fend him off before he violates her innocence and then kills her. Joel arrives as Ellie frantically kills David, telling her “I’ve got you baby girl” – a line Joel previously reserved for his late daughter Sarah. For the larger part of the story, the player as Joel had been there to protect her against a significant portion of the horrific realities of the socially decayed society. In this one instance Ellie’s innocence was robbed of her suddenly, highlighting the reoccurring theme that sometimes people are monsters, not the infected. When considering this perspective, the narrative of The Last of Us heavily relies on the “us” portion of the phraseology “us versus them” but can captivate the player through the built-up desire to keep Ellie safe from the dangers of the world.

The final arc of the story is the most titillating for the culmination of the outbreak narrative discussion. Joel arrives with Ellie in Salt Lake City, where they find a hospital which is being run by doctors within the Fireflies organization. The player as Joel has completed the task of delivering Ellie to the Fireflies against all odds, and she is taken immediately by the medical team for testing and surgery to attempt to create a cure for the infection. However, Joel does not consent to this when he discovers that the operation will likely kill Ellie because the cordyceps infection manifests in the brain. The player is given control over Joel in this moment, massacring the soldiers in the hospital indiscriminately to protect Ellie from dying. In the end, Joel succeeds in saving Ellie’s life from the hospital after killing all the doctors and ultimately condemning society to never finding a cure. When Ellie asks Joel about what happened as they arrive back in Jackson, Colorado, he tells her that there were other kids just like her, and that the tests were unsuccessful. He then doubles down that he is telling the truth, concluding the game. Yet, Joel, and most players, do not regret taking this course of action. After all, the narrative of the game created a bond with Ellie, naturally a father figure would not forsake his found daughter, even if it was her wish to be used for the purpose of helping humanity, right? The moral ambiguity of the ending of The Last of Us is intentional, the storytellers had Joel save Ellie to leave the player wondering whether Ellie’s life is worth the possibility of a cure. Another layer to consider is the role of Ellie in all of this; she came to rely on Joel much the way he came to rely on her, when Joel ultimately removes her agency by choosing for her, what does that mean for her having to survive with immunity in a dystopia? While there was no guarantee of success, something which influences both Joel and the player, it is an interesting query to pose against the backdrop of necropolitics: is the world worth trying to save?

Comparatively, the television production of The Last of Us follows the same story arc – Joel annihilates the hospital staff at end, staying true to the end of the game ten years after the fact. The journey across the US is similar too, with only slight changes happening in the way in which Joel and Ellie travel. Characters in the show are human, their lives are finite. Unlike the video game, there is no reason to directly take on a threat unless it is unavoidable. Numerous times throughout the show, we see Joel make active decisions through his experience as a survivor to avoid infected and humans alike as much as possible, explaining to Ellie that it is not worth risking your life on chances outside of a QZ. Despite the QZ’s being regarded as a haven, we are also privy to the corruption of FEDRA due to a lack of resources, where some of the soldiers rely on Joel as a smuggler to provide otherwise inaccessible items. Compared to the game, this more nuanced approach satisfies the viewer because it shows how even those in control are subject to harsh restrictions, creating a commentary on the inability to restrict the individual when a “luxury” is offered. The existence of a black market which breaks the authority convinces the audience that Joel is capable of surviving outside the confines of the QZ, which subsequently serves as the basis in which we, as the viewer, relies on Joel as Ellie does to navigate the horrors outside.

Perhaps the biggest change to the series is the mechanism in which the infection spreads. Within the original video game, the fungus spread itself through spores, which the player could protect itself from by wearing a gas mask. In the TV series, per the admittance of the directors as previously mentioned, capturing a “spore” effect would have been difficult for the cameras, leading to a change in how the disease spreads. The body is “possessed” by the cordyceps infection, developing tendrils throughout the body which connect the host to a larger being. Implying that the infection is not just individualistic in nature, but rather communal as part of an intricate network which is, in theory, sentient. Technically, it could be discerned that the spreading began with spores, as the show explains that the outbreak began because of contaminated flour, which was shipped globally, leading to a sudden and global collapse. The visualization of the cordyceps as a sort of hive-mind suggests that the process of othering is far more complicated than originally presented within the game. While the infected are still dangerous and a threat to humanity, it is curious to be given visual cues of some kind of intelligence and awareness exhibited by those who are part of the commune despite the removal of individuality. Agency being granted to the group that has been othered is a fresh take on an otherwise healthily recycled trope within the outbreak narrative which also challenges the preconceptions regarding necropolitical thinking by presenting death as a non-end, irrespective of consciousness being lost.

Characterization within the show is slightly different as well. Within the video game, conversations do occur as the player traverses the playable areas, but conversations sometimes require the player to engage with a prompt which is often easy to miss. Conversely, the TV series does not have the ability to prevent special interactions from occurring from a player failure. Dialogic sequences on TV operate to tell the story because the viewer does not have the same agency as a player would. Conversations which take place are simultaneously for the characters in the show and for the viewer on the couch, because they provide contextualization to the events occurring while also developing character arcs in a tightly woven manner. In that sense, the dialogue is not a significant departure from what would be contained within a piece of literature, as the structure and poise of the conversation is the intent of the author for the viewer. One example of a key exchange of dialogue within the show takes place in Episode Three – After getting away from the Boston QZ area, Joel leads Ellie to an old friends encampment to gather more supplies for the long journey ahead of them. In doing so, he and Ellie walk past a mass grave after he tries to tell her to follow a different path to protect her from seeing the bodies. He tells her “About a week after outbreak day, soldiers... went through the countryside, evacuated the small towns, told you you were going to a QZ. And you were, if there was room. If there wasn’t…” panning over to a shot showing the now decayed bodies. Ellie is taken aback from this, saying “These people weren’t sick.” To which Joel replies “Dead people can’t be infected.” This scene is important for a few reasons: first, it supports the earlier characterization of Joel trying to protect Ellie from the realities of the outside world. He wanted to go around a location where he knew the government committed an atrocity to preserve Ellie’s mind from seeing that. Secondly, this scene is a clear display of necropolitical thinking, because the totalitarian nature of FEDRA led to a massacring of largely innocent people as a necessary sacrifice – as Joel said, dead people cannot be infected. Healthy or not, their agency was stripped the moment the soldiers collected them. By rounding people up and placing them in QZ’s, an argument can be made that these QZ’s functioned similarly to the concept of a colony with limited resources creating a necessity for population control. Finally, when considering this scene from the perspective of the viewer, it presents another side of the “us versus them” argument; this time critiquing the relationship between state sovereignty against the individual presumed to be guilty. To this end, Mbembe is correct in gazing towards colonies as territories where othering occurs – and this perspective on life and death stands within the fictional realm as well.

Understanding the implementation of necropolitics within popular media creates numerous avenues for discussion regarding the sustainability of outbreak narratives in the present day. The first part of this essay reviewed the theory on necropolitics presented by Mbembe by discussing how he defines necropolitics and the shortcomings of the definition presented. By querying whether it is necropolitical to control outbreaks through establishing quarantine zones. After considering the approach taken by the United States to contain Covid-19 through imposing quarantines but later removing them because of public opinion, it became visible that not every state is necessarily willing to develop strong necropolitical tendencies. Furthermore, the influence of public opinion was not visible within Mbembe’s considerations surrounding necropolitical authority, precisely because a necroplitical state deems segments of populations irrelevant to the greater purpose. Fear of authority, coupled with fear of disease, creates an interesting dynamic in terms of trying to establish control when even expert opinions are doubted from the perspective of a loss of individuality.

Then, I turned to Dahlia Schweitzer and her understanding of the outbreak narrative in fictional settings. Drawing connections between the work of Mbembe and the work of Schweitzer, I was able to suggest that the reason these types of narratives are popular is because of their ability to appear plausible while also presupposing a “greater good” which supersedes the apocalyptic. By building on the tropes which Schweitzer identified as necessary within the outbreak narrative genre, it became possible to expand the discussion to considering the role of a “player” versus the role of a viewer. Utilizing the series The Last of Us as both an example of video game and television show, I explained the differences between experiencing a story as a player compared to being an audience member. While the story that is told within The Last of Us video game remains static because it is told via predetermined cutscenes, the agency of the player creates an experience by being able to interact with the environment and discover dialogue cues by exploring independently. The TV series altered elements of the original story to capture the removal of the player while keeping the canon story intact. Both interpretations explore questions surrounding necropolitical authority by presenting critiques against the FEDRA forces which ultimately failed to contain the outbreak despite having hegemony over the decision-making process. Even though these are forms of popular media, the story presented by The Last of Us exists as an excellent example of the outbreak narrative and an excellent mouthpiece for understanding basic necropolitical thought. The grim realities present within The Last of Us are matched by the overwhelmingly positive resonance that no matter what horrors the world holds, humanity will endure them – with or without a cure. Perhaps this is why this series has remained popular from its genesis to today; it is up to the viewer and player to determine whether this is true.