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🪞⚔️👁️ Post-Feminizm 🪞⚔️👁️

(Turkish)

In The Last of Us, the zombie apocalypse is not just a backdrop for horror or a metaphor for plague. It is the direct, pathogenic backlash against what can be called the Dictatorship of Aestheticism. The monsters—the infected, the bloaters, the clickers—are the repressed “ugliness” of humanity returning to avenge the smug, aestheticist culture embodied by the Fireflies and their promises of a cure. Within this framework, Ellie’s deliberate lack of “prettiness” is not a flaw but a narrative necessity: she is the living rupture in the regime of beauty, the point where the dictatorship begins to crumble, and the monstrous returns to claim its due.

The Dictatorship of Aestheticism and Its Backlash

Contemporary society, as shown in the research on aesthetic ideals, is shaped by a relentless pressure to conform to manufactured standards of beauty—what the research calls the dictatorship of aestheticism [*]. Digital filters, cosmetic surgeries, Hollywood standards, and the culture of “Instagram Face” all reinforce a system in which anything “ugly,” unfiltered, or uncurated is violently repressed. The psychological cost is clear: anxiety, body dysmorphia, a market for ever-more-perfect appearances. Historically, every era polices its own narrow ideal of beauty, but today’s regime is global, digital, and inescapable.

The infected in The Last of Us are the revenge of the ugly. Their grotesque forms are the return of what was cast out by the aesthetic regime. Their existence is the backlash against a society so obsessed with surface perfection that it forgot the cost: those who fall outside the standard—those not “pretty,” not “normal”—are cast into the darkness. The zombie, in this reading, is not just a monster. It is the aesthetic dictatorship’s repressed truth made flesh.

Ellie as the Symptomatic Breakdown

The backlash takes a human form in Ellie. Her immunity is not merely biological, but symbolic: she cannot be infected because she is not fully inside the regime of aestheticism. The casting choice to make Ellie “not as attractive as in the videogame” is not just a matter of realism or subversion. It is a deliberate declaration that the “cure” is not beauty, but its breakdown. Ellie’s very face is a wound in the fabric of aesthetic order—a reminder that immunity begins with noncompliance.

Throughout the series, Ellie’s presence disturbs the aesthetics of both sides: she does not fit the mold of the cinematic heroine, nor the monstrous grotesque of the infected. She is the crack through which the dictatorship’s internal contradictions leak out. She cannot be digested by the monsters of beauty or by the monsters of ugliness—she exists at the symptomatic intersection of both.

The Fireflies: Exploiting the Conflict

The Fireflies, instead of representing hope, are just another manifestation of the dictatorship. They exploit the beauty/ugliness conflict for their own agenda. Their promise of a cure is just another form of aestheticist utopia—another attempt to restore a world of filtered surfaces, order, and “civility.” In reality, they are invested in the continuation of the struggle, profiting from both the suppression of the ugly and the commodification of beauty.

Abby as Aestheticized Torturer

Abby’s role is especially revealing. Her body, sculpted and athletic, is the fantasy of Instagram-era aesthetics. She is the regime’s product—an image of “strength” and “beauty” forced upon the screen and the viewer. When Abby tortures Joel, her violence is not just physical but symbolic: it is the violence of aestheticism against the noncompliant, the violence required to maintain the standard. Every time Abby appears, the tension between her hyper-aestheticized image and the surrounding grotesquery intensifies the show’s core message: violence is the price of the dictatorship of beauty.

Violent Scenes as Symptoms of the Regime

Every violent scene in The Last of Us is a symptom of the ongoing war between aesthetic order and its monstrous remainder:

• The infected swarms are the literal eruption of suppressed ugliness into the world of the living.
• Joel’s violence, and later Ellie’s, is the desperate resistance to being devoured by either side—neither fully beautiful nor fully monstrous.
• The Fireflies’ manipulations, culminating in their willingness to sacrifice Ellie, are exposed as just another attempt to restore a lost aesthetic order through any means.

The most brutal confrontations—whether between humans, between humans and infected, or between Ellie and Abby—are not just about survival. They are the inevitable convulsions that occur whenever a regime of beauty, maintained through exclusion and violence, begins to collapse. The monsters are not the other. The monsters are the return of what the regime sought to erase.

Conclusion: Ellie’s Immunity as the Antidote to the Dictatorship

Ellie, “not pretty,” is the cure only in the sense that she represents the breakdown of the dictatorship itself. Her immunity is the system’s inability to assimilate her. As long as the regime of aestheticism rules, there will be monsters—ugly, hungry, vengeful. When the dictatorship collapses, immunity ceases to be special, because the line between beautiful and ugly, human and monster, finally disappears.

In The Last of Us, the apocalypse is not the end of humanity, but the end of the illusion that beauty is safety, that perfection is possible, or that ugliness can ever be truly banished. Every moment of violence, every rupture, every scar is a reminder: the revenge of the ugly is not just coming. It’s already here. And the cure was never beauty—it was always what the regime could not accept.

Do not mistake the Fireflies for heroes. They are merely the last bureaucrats of a dead aesthetic order, desperately clinging to the power to decide who is beautiful enough to live and who must be sacrificed for a “cure.” The real revolution comes not with them, but with the end of the aesthetic dictatorship itself.

Prompt: [4.1] Collect info about Ellie in The Last of US not being as attractive as in the videogame! / Read the info below, read the report attached, and write a new article: The zombie apocalypse in the series stands for the pathogenic backlash caused by the Dictatorship of Aestheticism: the ugly monsters avenge the aesthetist smugness of humanity that Fireflies represent. This is why “Ellie not being pretty” is a deliberate choice to substantiate her secret immunity to the zombies, because she represents the symptomatic point where the Dictatorship of Aestheticism breaks down and invites the revenge of the ugly zombies. This explanation frames every violent scene throughout the series, especially Abby as the aestheticized torturer. Explain every scene and focus on my message! Don’t praise the show, don’t praise Fireflies! They are just exploiting the conflict! (season 1-2 episodes from Wikipedia, The Dictatorship of Aestheticism: Evidence and Impacts)