Nostalgic Dystopia

28 July 2023

How Nostalgia and Companionship Serve as Survival Coping Mechanisms in the Dystopian Environments of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and HBO’s The Last of Us

The collapse of civilisation is a topic that has always ensnared readers’ attention. Recently, it seems that our obsession with dystopia has increased as it has infiltrated our very lives. With the dangers of climate change, a global COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis, the fall into dystopia has never been so within reach, or so extensively represented within our media. Approximately 3 million people died from the covid pandemic in 2020, and yet, we still enjoy consuming media that details similar devastation to the population. Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven wipes out ‘99 per cent’ of the population with the Georgia Flu, and yet it sold 1.5 million copies by 2020. Similarly, HBO’s television adaptation of the 2013 video game The Last of Us demonstrates a collapse in the population when a deadly fungal infection turns people into zombie-like creatures, and they hit 8.2 million watchers for the finale of the show. In both of these dystopian contexts, however, hope remains through the characters’ nostalgia for the previous world and the forging of new relationships. Looking at the work of Matthew Leggatt, Kristen Bussière, Gregory Claeys, and other critics, will highlight the critique of nostalgia. However, this essay will also explore the alternative, instead demonstrating the benefits of nostalgia as a concept and how, when paired with interpersonal companionship, it can be utilised by characters as a successful coping mechanism to survive the dystopian environments of Station Eleven and The Last of Us.

The dystopian environments in both texts are evident through Mandel’s lexical descriptions and HBO’s various compositions of the mise-en-scene in shots. Mandel uses the simile that ‘the flu exploded like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth’ to describe the devastation that the pandemic caused. This description is apt for the dystopian genre, as many texts of this category evoke images of nuclear ‘mushroom clouds’ and ‘roaring planes […] dropping bombs’. Despite the nuclear warfare that often causes dystopian environments, as Gregory Claeys describes here, Mandel uses nuclear lexical choices despite the lack of warfare in her novel. Although conflict did not cause the pandemic, instead it was simply an unlucky hand dealt to humanity, the detrimental effects of the disease are similar to those effects caused by war. The same applies in The Last of Us: the collapse of humanity, which happened in a single weekend according to Joel, was the fault of the cordyceps fungal infection, not from warfare. Yet, similar to Mandel’s war-ridden lexical field, the images shown in The Last of Us on the day the infection takes hold are violent and explosive. When Joel, Tommy and Sarah are trying to drive to safety, the camera shots repeatedly cut between different characters, creating a sense of urgency as they drive past burning buildings, the light of the fire cast over the characters’ worried faces. At one point, Tommy just barely evades other cars crashing into him, and the mise-en-scene of the shot pointing forward, out of the car’s windshield, is full of people running and screaming, being tackled to the ground by the infected. When the shot cuts away it reverses, pointing out the back windshield instead of the front, the mise-en-scene filled with fire and explosions as a plane crashes into the ground. Pieces of debris fly through the air while people scream but, when a piece hits the truck, the shot cuts to black and the sound is removed, emphasising the devastation of the situation. Both of these descriptions are indicative of the dystopian genre of the texts as their sense of urgency and collapse is ‘intimately interwoven with discourses about ‘crisis’’ which, in these contexts, involves the crises of being ‘overrun by monsters or, […] ravaged by viruses.’

Another aspect of these texts that is innately dystopian is the sense of inescapability. In Chapter 7 of Station Eleven, the third person narration describes ‘the first unspeakable years when everyone was travelling, before everyone caught on that there was no place they could walk to where life continued as it had before’. Not only does the adjective ‘unspeakable’ portray the danger and lack of civility typical to a dystopian environment, but the lexical phrase ‘no place’ is particularly apt as it links to the literal translation of utopia from the Greek. There are three main parts that make up the noun: Topos, meaning place; Eu, meaning good; and Ou, meaning no. Therefore, we can translate utopia as meaning there is no such good place, as is described in Station Eleven. This inescapability, or, at least, lack of refuge, is similarly invoked in The Last of Us when Tommy attempts to drive himself, Joel and Sarah to safety. Non-diegetic music has been added to the scene, a rhythmic drumming that increases as the shot continues in order to build a tone of urgency and anticipation. This tone is reinforced through Sarah’s anaphoric dialogue: ‘Maybe it’s everywhere. Maybe there’s nowhere to go.’ The repetitive structure of these short sentences emphasises ‘a sense of hopelessness’ that Claeys aligns with the concept of ‘doomerism’, otherwise defined as a response of despair to an ‘environmental collapse.’ This phenomenon not only creates a sense of futility in those subjected to it, but also breeds ‘a paralysing inactivity’ that we can see in Sarah as she is forced to sit, unmoving in the backseat, watching, terrified, as the world collapses around her. Furthermore, the juxtaposition between ‘everywhere’ and ‘nowhere’ in Sarah’s dialogue links again to the notion of utopia and its lack of location, described by Lucy Sargisson as ‘here and else-where, impossible and desired, imaginable and yet beyond our ken.’ In Sarah’s perspective, utopia simply equates to an escape, a way out of the dystopia she has found herself in. Here we discover how ‘permeable’ the ‘borders of utopia and dystopia’ are as genres. Although, in both texts, we have yet to see the utopia within the dystopia, that does not mean it is not there. The appearance of nostalgia and companionship in both texts creates not only the opportunity for survival, but also for utopia in otherwise wholly dystopian settings. ‘Visions of the apocalypse are at least as old as 1000 BC,’ according to Claeys, and yet dystopian and apocalyptic fiction remains popularly saturating the 21st century literature markets. The question begs, then, what is our obsession with the end of the world, especially when we are perhaps within a century of reaching it? Hillary Kelly offers an answer, stating that ‘there can be something reassuring about taking in a fictional disaster in the midst of a real one. You can flirt with the experience of collapse. You can long for the world you live in right now.’ The verb ‘long’ is a fitting lexical choice by Kelly as the act of sentimental longing that defines the foundation of nostalgia is inextricably entwined in both dystopian texts discussed here. Mandel embeds nostalgia for the past world whilst simultaneously describing what no longer remains of it. The beginning of Chapter 6 offers an anaphoric ‘incomplete list’ of everything lost in the new world, the narrative taking on a stream of consciousness style:

‘No more diving pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. […] No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take photographs of concert stages. […] No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; […] No more countries, all borders unmanned.’

The majority of this list details the loss of technology, specifically electrical lighting, transportation, and telephones. However, it is Mandel’s attention to detail, her vivid imagery and description, that instils in the reader a sense of nostalgia, for things that we have not yet even lost. Sensory imagery is repeated throughout this passage, specifically with visual imagery such as the pools ‘lit green from below’ and the ‘floodlights’ that illuminate the ball games. Furthermore, Mandel encourages us to envision the ‘fluttering’ of moths under lights and the reflective ‘half-light’ that shines from people’s phones. All of these descriptions create a vivid image of different, disconnected memories. The images presented, despite their detailed descriptions, are generic so that the nostalgia we have for these memories, that are not even necessarily ours, is collective. This notion of collective memory is reinforced by the repeated use of adjectives, such as ‘fluttering’, ‘dazzling’, and ‘glimmering’, which create a romanticised tone, thereby emphasising nostalgia and its idealising nature.

The description of airplanes is interesting because despite stating that flight no longer exists, airplanes are still very much around, ‘here and there.’ Instead, though, they stand ‘dormant on runways and in hangars.’ Similarly, in The Last of Us, planes remain in the world, although these mostly exist as wreckages, like the abandoned plane carcass that lies across a hilltop in Episode 3. When Joel and Ellie come across the plane, the camera cuts between them and the hilltop, flicking back and forth occasionally as the two converse. Ellie’s fascination with the plane is clear when she tells Joel he is ‘so lucky’ to have ridden in one. Her dialogue and wistful expression suggests a nostalgic tone to the scene, despite the fact that Ellie is longing for an experience of a time period that she has never personally experienced. Joel’s retort clearly shows he holds a more pessimistic view, as he recounts being ‘shoved into a middle seat and charged twelve bucks for a sandwich.’ Ellie simply replies, ‘Dude, you got to go up in the sky.’ The juxtaposing dialogue here demonstrates the opposing opinions of the two protagonists and, more broadly, the balance between pessimism and optimism. Richard A. Slaughter explores this issue, noting that dystopia often ‘reflects the human tendency toward a polar choice between optimism on the one hand and pessimism on the other.’ This ‘polar choice’ is demonstrated not only in the opposing personalities of Ellie and Joel, but also in the mise-en-scene that depicts the place crash site. The final shot of this scene is taken from behind Ellie and Joel. With their backs in the foreground of the shot, the background consists of the airplane stretched across the hilltop. The juxtaposition between pessimism and optimism is shown here symbolically, as the area surrounding the plane is full of hope and life, vivid with greenery, shining sunlight, and diegetic bird song. This directly juxtaposes the rusting carcass of the plane that has been shattered in three places, as well as the morbid insinuation of all the passengers that died during the crash. This juxtaposition between lively environment and the death of the airplane passengers is summarised in Ellie’s monosyllabic final line in the scene, before she follows Joel out of the shot, ‘Grim.’ Optimism versus pessimism often pervades dystopian literature because utopia is generally associated with optimism, and dystopia pessimism. However, we can also see how such values fall into the concept of nostalgia itself. Ellie is evidently nostalgic for the positive experience of riding in a plane, whereas Joel only remembers the disadvantages of flight, thus subverting his nostalgia into a negative experience.

Ellie’s longing to experience an airplane is an interesting example of nostalgia because it is enacted by somebody that did not experience the past they are longing for. Therefore, Ellie’s nostalgia relies on the imagination of the experience, not the reality which, according to Joel, is far less glamorous. This demonstrates the weakness of nostalgia and why many critics disregard it. Susan Steward describes it as a ‘social disease’, Claeys as the ‘rewriting of history’, Leggatt as ‘unproductive’, and Bussière ‘as uncritical and counter-progressive’. Regardless of individual labels, the overarching argument of all of these critics agrees that nostalgia is untrustworthy because it idolises the past, creating a falsified representation of it that, often, results in the same mistakes of the past being repeated in the present. Such a ‘selective remembering’ of the past is problematic because we repress certain issues, and instead focus only on ‘the virtues of history’. However, there are also advantages to this kind of forgetful nostalgia. In Station Eleven, Kirsten is a particularly nostalgic character, evident in her possession of a paperweight from the world before, her collection of old gossip magazines mentioning Arthur Leander, and her habit of searching through abandoned buildings. All of these suggest an attachment to the past world, but Kirsten’s introspective inner monologue reveals that another cause for the dependency on nostalgia is the rapid rate at which the past is deteriorating: ‘Because there isn’t much time left, because all the roofs are collapsing now and soon none of the old buildings will be safe. Because we are always looking for the former world, before all the traces of the former world are gone.’ The verb ‘collapsing’ and adjective ‘old’ suggests the fragile antiquity of not only the buildings but the very past itself. It creates a sense of urgency that Kirsten must seek out ‘all the traces’ of the past before it vanishes forever. Again here, the sense of being forgotten is entwined with nostalgia. This is also evident in Kirsten’s first year of travelling where she ‘can’t remember the year [she] spent on the road,’ for which she feels grateful she ‘can’t remember the worst of it.’ The aforementioned critics have argued that the forgetfulness that nostalgia causes is a weakness of the concept, however here we can argue the opposite. What good would come of Kirsten remembering the first brutal year after the pandemic, when lawlessness was rife and tragedy unavoidable? By suppressing the traumatic memories of the first year, Kirsten is able to carry on with a sense of normalcy, taking comfort in her nostalgic habits of searching for the lost world. This therefore demonstrates how nostalgia, even if it results in the suppression of memory, is a necessary survival technique for characters living within dystopian environments.

One of the most prominent examples of nostalgia in The Last of Us is the living circumstances of Bill and Frank. Bill, a toughened survivalist who thinks the ‘government are all Nazis’, manages to avoid the evacuation of his neighbourhood and, when everyone leaves, turns it into his own self-sufficient haven. Bill’s happiness at his complete isolation is evident in the episode’s use of non-diegetic music. When he steps into the empty neighbourhood, the camera cuts to an up-close shot of his face, and his usual grumpy expression changes into a small smile. The track ‘I’m Coming Home To Stay’ by Fleetwood Mac begins to play, its upbeat tone clearly signifying Bill’s happiness, and the following montage of shots portray Bill gathering all the supplies he needs. Even the title of the track suggests that this new isolated world is a true homecoming for Bill, who was otherwise alienated in society before. Again, in another scene, music is used to symbolise Bill’s content at being alone, with the upbeat tempo of Cream’s ‘White Room’ playing as he drives into his own gated home with another haul of supplies. The cheerful and upbeat music that symbolises Bill’s inner feelings offers an alternative response to the pandemic that we had not yet seen in the show, or, indeed, in other dystopian literature, including Station Eleven. However, nostalgia becomes even more evident when Frank is introduced and takes up residency with Bill. Their relationship highlights how entrenched their current lives are with nostalgia because they live, for the most part, as though nothing has changed. At one point, Frank begs bill ‘for some paint and some gasoline for the lawnmower’ so that he can fix up the neighbourhood to look how it did before the collapse of civilisation. Even Bill insists on setting the dinner table with cutlery, napkins, and fancy crystal glasses. These attempts to maintain appearances to how they were in the past demonstrates how Bill and Frank’s nostalgia for the old world is so prominent that they have literally recreated it within the neighbourhood: a utopian haven within an otherwise dystopian world. However, Bill and Frank’s relationship demonstrates more than just nostalgia, it reveals the underlying story of the whole show, which is ‘ultimately […] about love’. The companionship between the two is shown in various ‘vulnerable moments’ that are embedded from the very outset, for example when Bill plays the piano for Frank. The filming of this scene is poignant in itself, with up-close camera shots cutting between Bill’s face with his eyes closed, his fingers slowly moving over the keys of the piano, and Frank’s face that is full of emotion, tears in his eyes. The soft ambient lighting that streams through the windows and lights up the dust floating in the background of the shots adds to the raw and emotional tone of the scene. Furthermore, the lyrics that Bill sings, from the Linda Rondstadt song ‘Long, Long Time’ which is also the title of the episode, foreshadows the romantic homosexual relationship that develops between the two characters:

‘Love will abide

Take things in stride

Sounds like good advice

But there’s no one at my side

And time washes clean love’s wounds unseen

That’s what someone told me

But I don’t know what it means

‘Cause I’ve done everything I know

To try and make you mine

And I think I’m gonna love you

For a long, long time.’

The fourth line of the song indicates how Bill has been living since the outbreak of the pandemic, isolated and alone, with ‘no one’ at his ‘side’. However, the penultimate and final lines of the song foreshadow the development of his relationship with Frank, whom he comes to ‘love’ for ‘a long, long time’ until they die at an old age in each other’s arms. As we watch their relationship develop, the scenes jumping chronologically across different years and decades, we see that their relationship is what keeps them going against the dystopia that the world has fallen into. Even Bill’s character development shows how, after meeting Frank, he becomes more trusting, eventually sharing the neighbourhood with other people, like Tess and Joel. Ultimately, their relationship provides ‘a compelling love narrative that explores companionship and human nature.’ It demonstrates how both nostalgia and companionship work to keep characters alive and hopeful in their dystopian environments. Bill even admits this himself in a letter addressed to Joel, confessing that he hated the world until he realised ‘there was one person worth saving.’ This really reinforces how integral companionship is to survival in a dystopian setting because ultimately the only roles that men like Bill and Joel can have are to save and protect others. Bill summarises this succinctly in the end of his letter, telling Joel they ‘have a job to do, and God help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.’

Companionship is similarly portrayed in Station Eleven in The Travelling Symphony, a group of actors that band together after the pandemic and tour round the remaining communities to perform Shakespeare plays. Unified for their love of the arts, the small community of The Travelling Symphony symbolises how companionship is essential to surviving a dystopian environment and how people can band together in the face of disaster, despite their differences. Indeed, the Symphony is intersectional in its configuration as each member is vastly different to the next. Gil, the director, is ‘seventy-two years old,’ while ‘the Symphony’s youngest actor’ is Alexandra, at just fifteen. Then there are the children, either picked up on the road or borne of the Symphony’s members, such as Olivia who is just ‘six years old’. But age is not the only differentiating factor here, many of the characters have different cultural backgrounds and also different relationships with each member. There are close-knit friendships, like August and Kirsten who ‘made a secret pact to’ each other to be ‘friends forever and nothing else’. The finality of the noun ‘pact’ and adverb ‘forever’ suggests that Kirsten and August’s friendship is long-lasting, a constant lifeline in an otherwise tumultuous dystopic world. Romances are formed, like Kirsten and Sayid’s two-year relationship, and also ended, when Kirsten sleeps ‘with a travelling peddler more or less out of boredom,’ resulting in her having ‘trouble meeting [Sayid’s] eyes’. Companionship is not even reserved solely to the human members of the Symphony; Dieter has his own ‘favourite horse’ in the band, called ‘Bernstein’. What is important to note here is that these interpersonal relationships are not perfect, or utopian, but they do provide respite to an otherwise dystopian world. Their small community is described as a, ‘collection of petty jealousies, neuroses, undiagnosed PTSD cases, and simmering resentments [that] lived together, travelled together, rehearsed together, performed together 365 days of the year, permanent company, permanent tour. But what made it bearable was the friendships, of course, the camaraderie and the music and the Shakespeare, the moments of transcendent beauty and joy’. Here again, the diversity of the group is signified through the different range of ‘neuroses’ and ‘undiagnosed’ mental conditions. However, despite the ‘jealousies’ and ‘resentments’ that demonstrate how imperfect these connections are, the repeated use of the adverb ‘together’ and adjective ‘permanent’ ultimately portrays how these ‘friendships’ are beneficial and necessary to survival because they bring ‘moments of transcendent beauty and joy’ to the dystopian world they are living in. Ultimately, their relationships consolidate the Symphony’s motto that ‘survival is insufficient’, as it is the ‘collectivist ethos’ of the characters that keep them living instead of surviving, sacrificing ‘their individual interest to the common good.’

As this essay has demonstrated, both nostalgia and companionship serve as useful coping mechanisms for the characters surviving the dystopian environments in The Last of Us and Station Eleven. Although in some circumstances these ideals have offered an escape to dystopia, like the self-sufficient haven that Bill and Frank create, it would be too far to suggest that these offer a utopian way of living. Despite the nostalgic comfort of Frank and Bill’s living conditions, they still suffer from the dystopian setting when raiders attack their home. Similarly in Station Eleven, the companionship of the Symphony does not save them from their dystopian world when Dieter and Sayid are captured and held hostage by the religious fanatic, Tyler. However, this does not diminish the utility of nostalgia and companionship. They still offer a partial escape to the dystopia, in the forms of a more ‘inward’ mental ‘escape route’ that is often so necessary in dystopian worlds. Consequently, we cannot call these survival mechanisms utopian, and yet we cannot ignore the escapist utopian qualities that they possess. Therefore, we might instead utilise Margaret Atwood’s term ‘Ustopia’ which combines ‘utopia and dystopia – the imagined perfect society and its opposite – because [..] each contains a latent version of the other.’ Here is what the argument thus boils down to then, because just as the dystopian environments themselves possess utopian qualities, the survival mechanisms of nostalgia and companionship that characters need to survive these environments are, in themselves, both dystopian and utopian: Ustopian.