One of the newer monster television series that I’ve watched recently is The Last of Us. It’s a series inspired by the video game of the same name, that I must say up front I know nothing about. My kids didn’t play this game and I am not a gamer. I have just read about it–but I really liked the television series. Do we call them that anymore? I don’t even have a television. Do I call it the streaming series? I don’t know. Anyway… you get the idea.

The Last of Us may look like a zombie story at first glance but it’s not. It certainly has that feel sometimes but the monsters in this story are not undead. They are humans infected by a fungi that connects them through a mycelial network that allows them to communicate with each other and act as one big unified human gobbling force. One might argue there are two kinds of monsters in this series–the humans infected by a cordyceps fungus and the humans fighting for survival that are infected with toxic ideas of self reliance. How American, right?

Throughout the series we meet all kinds of characters, some more sympathetic than others. Concepts of community and family and the dangers of tribalism and power mongering are explored. As each episode unfolds, ideas about survival and loyalty and all of the different things that can mean are broken down in interesting ways. Each story made me shake my head and ask myself how humans, even in the face of a global pandemic (fictional and non-fictional) can get things so wrong. Why do we always give into fear and hate and destroy ourselves?

After living through the pandemic, the first Trump presidency, the January 6th insurrection and then the death of my husband from an ugly and aggressive cancer, The Last of Us resonated on so many weird levels. Firstly, because ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a real world insect-pathogenic fungus that turns ants into zombies so that they will do the bidding of the fungus to spread spores. It was pretty easy for my tired and anxious mind to connect the Covid virus and cancer to the invasive fungus in the show. It wasn’t a big leap to connect what was/is happening in our country right now to this analogy either. Those people scaling the capital walls on January 6th sure looked a lot like a zombie hoard to me–or worse a group infected with toxic ideas about power.

Before the pandemic and cancer skewed my perspective and before the volume was turned way up on the hatefulness that seems to always be bubbling up just under the surface in this country, I was already making art using mushrooms and lichens but the metaphor I was reaching for was one of regeneration and healing. After 2021, when all kinds of shit hit the fan at once, I started making things like the zombie ant seen in the first image in his post. I am still making the hopeful earthy characters I call my Lichen Sisters and I still see them as positive pieces about healing. Shelf fungi, lichen, moss, flowers and insects cover my female figures in ways that are intended to be decorative and beautiful and rich and restorative like the forest floor. (The stupid AI autocorrect monster keeps trying to change the word forest to first. How does it not know the word forest? ) In my most recent work, there has been a shift. The colorful fungi is now wrapped around and pushes through my figures and architectural structures (usually houses/homes) and have become a metaphor for something different–something scarier. Something invasive and pervasive.

The infected creatures in The Last of Us are scarier to me than zombies. They aren’t like the dumb flesh eating zombies. There is a purpose driving them and this purpose is to spread and grow by continually seeking out and infecting more hosts. I can’t help but think about the Borg collective from Star Trek–or social media. As we become more and more connected online, we seem to be growing into this big interconnected stupid monster thing. Our addiction to information and attention is eating away at our brains and our self esteem and our families and communities. The ideas are getting scrambled and independent thought is being co-opted. We are also becoming more and more disconnected from the natural world and these disconnects from each other and our values and our life giving planet is killing us. It’s like we have stopped thinking about the survival and preservation of our species and we are being eaten alive by our own insatiable hunger for what? Money and dopamine? Hate?

So the long and the short of it is that this series really got me thinking about the way we define the concept of unity and survival . Those are words we use in ways that imply something positive but maybe the unification of toxic forces is what will be the end of us. Maybe survival at the expense of our well being, decency and dignity isn’t enough.