It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
I just got done watching The Last Of Us on HBO and it got me thinking.
What is it about zombie apocalypse that people love so darn much?
I have a theory. We love zombie stories because they give us that breathtaking moment, when the world as we know it disappears. When our normal (and sometimes, monotonous) routines are shattered and we glimpse another world. A place where things are much, much worse...
We needed that during the COVID pandemic. It was interesting what people were reading when the coronavirus started to spread. For a few weeks, Emily St. John’s Station Eleven, a grim novel about a flu that wipes out 99% of humanity, was on the bestseller’s list.
“I felt profoundly uncomfortable about it,” the author admitted in an interview.
She went on to explain why she thought her book was so popular.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, I remember the difficulty of adapting to a life of pure uncertainty. I wanted clues about how this might go, or how it might end. I wanted certainty about the future. Maybe that’s why people reached for Station Eleven, to try to force ourselves to confront what could happen.”
Now that we are emerging from the pandemic, with the coronavirus (sort of) under control, some of us want to look back. To reassure ourselves we’re okay. What better way to do it than a show like The Last Of Us? Where we can see how much worse the pandemic could have been?
By the way, if you haven’t seen it, The Last of Us a masterful series, a prime example of what I call horror with a heart. You care about the characters in the story. They are fleshed out, full realized human beings. And that first episode, when everything goes to hell...
I was caught up in the wildfires in Northern California, when a significant segment of Sonoma County had to evacuate. The scene when Joel and his family navigated the chaos and mayhem of that first night rang true. I felt my hands gripping an invisible steering wheel as I remembered my own wild flight from the fires. If you’re curious, here’s a short clip of that pivotal scene.
The murkiness, the uncertainty, the world turned upside down, it’s all there.
And we’re still here, to look back at the fictional chaos. We’re not The Last Of Us. At least not yet…
