The Postapocalyptic Frontier Hero: The (Weird) Western, Cowboy Masculinity, and Regenerative Violence in The Last of Us (2013)

Abstract

The following article argues that Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is a Weird Western that, despite imaginatively reinventing the Western genre by setting it in a near-future, postapocalyptic United States, reiterates many of its core tenets. Among these are the inclusion of a cowboy-like, white, male hero, namely the game's protagonist, Joel Miller, and the depiction of gruesome violence as both regenerative and justified. To conduct this analysis, the article adopts a cultural studies perspective, bringing together different disciplines that engage in the field of American studies, namely literary criticism, film studies, gender studies, and game studies, while also relying heavily on Bogost's concept of procedural rhetoric.