Lets be honest though, this is less about anti-Christianity than "progressive" cowardice. The range of acceptable villains kinda shrinks when a primary concern is not being seen as guilty of punching down, or worse yet any sort of "-ism".
It is a real problem in American mythology today, the lack of a real enemy. So much if our art, culture, and self identity revolves around fighting the baddie. The indoctrination starts as soon as we are able to consume stories.
What is left when there are no irl baddies? I think we are seeing the answer: you fight yourself. Hence the internal movement that seeks to destroy Western Civ and cast it as the villain. Has James Bond started trying to overthrow patriarchal capitalism and global warmers yet? Or is he still fighting those high tech super powerful drug dealers/terrorists?
There are not Activists in Hollywood, there are People creating stories they want to create. If I write a book it's my book, there's no real responsibility to the reader or the fanbase. It's not your game, you didn't create it, you didn't spend hours planing it, writing it, coding it. It's not peoples responsibility to work blood, sweat and tears to create something that conforms to your opinion and pleases you. Paint your own Painting. It's their creation and you can like and celebrate it or not.
We are talking about a product that requires 10’s of millions in investment, not a self published novel no one is going to read. Irl, creatives are hired to make money for the owners, and there are powerful systems in place to help ensure that happens. Druckman is not some auteur with a blank check. This game‘s story will have been focus tested and modified a million times to please the audience. There is no way they are going to alienate what they see as their core audience.
If the Last of Us 2 has this story, it's obviously not about loving, reasonable christians. It's about those fundamentalist Christians, that are abusing and misusing it's teaching to make people feel miserable, it's about those us churches that supported throwing your kid out on the street and stop talking to them if they're gay and those groups that financially helped and push Uganda to ratify the death penalty for homosexuals.
So, in your world these are the villains? they are to blame for Uganda’s laws and homeless teens?
They mistake fiction for real-life. If having a fictional religious character be the bad guy were an indictment of the real-world religious group, so would having an Asian guy be the bad guy be an indictment on real-life Asians or having an assexual girl be the baddie an indictment on assexual people.
Our collective view of real life is based on our collective stories. So when you have a mass market story that uses an identifiable irl group as the villain, and a story that justifies 20 hours of interactive murdering of said group...you don't see why some may feel attacked?
Personally, I don’t like using identifiable irl groups as guilt free murder victims in stories because narratives can lead to actual violence. But our stories demand guilt free villains we can physically attack and/or kill. And if we use irl groups, we end up dehumanizing whatever the acceptable villain/group du jour is.
As for claims that the plot makes no sense in the context of a zombie apocalypse, on the contrary. It's because the event is so traumatic, that Ellie is allegedly willing to risk her life to take revenge. It is precisely because their beliefs are the most important thing in their lives that this sect are willing to risk their lives to act them out irrationally.
agree. In a chaotic and deadly world where people have no security, religion is a powerful survival force. Is it any wonder extremistism blossoms in place that suffer from conflict? Want to stop terrrorism? Start by stopping bombing/droning communities and making people insecure and frightened.
www.huffpost.com
