Joel Did Nothing Wrong - The Importance Of Ambiguity

you know if there's one thing that really puzzles me in life it's not allergies seriously why are so many people allergic to nuts these days it was [ __ ] unheard of when i was a kid but anyway on a completely unrelated note one thing that i've never really understood about media analysis is this overwhelming need that people have to lock down every single aspect of a story like they can't rest until they've resolved every question and rationalize the meaning behind every decision now don't get me wrong delving into the deeper meaning hidden within a story can be a rewarding exercise and it's good to explore what creators were trying to do or say when they made their products the problem is that not every product holds up to that level of scrutiny because let's be honest some of them just aren't that [ __ ] smart to begin with and if you find yourself putting more thought and effort into your analysis than actually went into the thing you're reviewing well there's a good chance you're wasting your time but the bigger issue for me is that when it comes to storytelling some questions just aren't meant to be answered that's what we call ambiguity see ambiguity is actually pretty useful too when it's properly used it allows you to explore interesting ideas and ask intriguing questions that'll get your audience thinking it encourages them to interpret your story in their own way and draw their own conclusions from it maybe it'll even help them to see things from a different perspective for example some of the best episodes of star trek used to present their characters with difficult political ethical or intellectual problems which had no clear and obvious solution you know before diverse female space jesus came along to fix everything and save the universe the point wasn't really to show how the crew overcame a problem it was to inspire questions and ideas in the audience it demonstrated usually in a subtle way that there's often more than one valid perspective on a situation that real life involves making difficult choices sacrifices and compromise and that sometimes no matter what you do well things just don't work out it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose that is not a weakness that is life ah remember when writing was smart and subtle and thought-provoking trusting the audience to have a bit of intelligence and common sense i miss those days no ambiguity can come in a lot of different forms but one of the biggest and most thought-provoking is the moral kinds what the [ __ ] do i mean by that well consider the video game the last of us it's a story about two people named joel and ellie trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where a mutant strain of fungus has infected most of the world's population reducing them to mindless zombies civilization has collapsed and all that's left are a few scattered groups of survivors that are gradually falling apart if you get bitten by one of these zombies or breathing the spores that they produce well you're [ __ ] so the general gist is that humanity is on its knees and there's no clear way out of it but at the climax of the story you find out that ellie is immune to the infection and one of the factions involved can harvest a cure from her body nice work chaps the problem is that there's no way to extract the cure without killing her naturally this leaves joel with a bit of a conundrum does he sacrifice one innocent life to potentially save tens of thousands more or does he give up the cure to protect his surrogate daughter this is where the element of moral choice comes into play on the one hand you could argue that trading one life for thousands or even millions more is a rational transaction that you shouldn't hesitate to make because the needs of the many outweigh [Music] the needs of the few on the other hand you could argue that joel is only responsible for protecting the people around him and bigger questions like the survival of humanity are simply too huge for him to control you could also reasonably argue that killing an innocent person for any reason it's all is morally wrong and therefore he couldn't allow it to happen and that's not even mentioning the fact that ellie isn't even aware of this situation and so isn't able to make the decision for herself like i say there's lots of different perspectives on this one all of which have some degree of merits and which one you consider to be correct kind of depends on your own personal outlook and world view the point though is to present the audience with a difficult moral problem that has no obvious solution and encourage them to ask themselves what would i do in that situation in the end it's not a choice that the player actually gets to make in the context of the game joel chooses to stop the procedure and rescue ellie killing those who try to stop him sacrificing the prospect of a cure and possibly condemning thousands of people to their deaths why well for the simplest reason of all he loves her in the course of the story they've saved each other's lives they've fought and killed for each other and they've grown to love one another they've formed a bond that can't be easily broken just as no father would be willing to kill his own daughter so joel refused to give up ellie's life no matter the cost so he saves her and he even lies about what happened to spare her the guilt shouldering the burden for himself the game ends with the two of them facing an uncertain future but prepared to take it on together were joel's actions correct from a moral perspective well not really he killed people to rescue ellie he condemned many more to death in the future and he lied to her about the whole thing those actions were all morally wrong but they were also completely understandable given his situation and consistent with everything we know about his character and in the end the game neither condones nor condemns him for it that is the power of ambiguity in storytelling the writers of the game were smart enough not to make arbitrary judgments about joel's decision or tries to lecture us about what he should have done because they knew they didn't have to it was better and smarter and more appropriate to ask the question and allow the audience to find their own answers what makes the ending of this game even more interesting is the subtle implication that ellie kind of knows she's being lied to i mean look at her facial expression here does this really look like someone who totally believes what she just heard but just like joel she's prepared to play along with the lie to spare him further pain in other words she too is willing to do and accept something morally wrong because she loves him just as much as he loves her it's a pretty [ __ ] cool resolution delivering a complex mature and believable ending that perfectly encapsulate the game's central themes of love sacrifice and redemption in a harsh and unforgiving world it reminds us that real life doesn't always provide neat tidy resolutions to our problems and that sometimes our flaws and weaknesses are the best part of what makes us human which makes it even more of a [ __ ] ball ache that the sequel completely retcons joel's choices changing them from the desperate actions of a loving father into those of a selfish bloodthirsty psychopath who deserves to be mercilessly punished for what he did and to complete the betrayal ellie's tacit acceptance of what joel had been forced to do was completely ignored so they could have a ridiculous and contrived argument and she could berate him for the crime of protecting someone he loves ellie's gay by the way all of the subtlety and moral complexity of that game's ending was wiped away forever replaced by something much more simplistic and contrived even worse it tries to lecture the audience about the selfishness of his actions completely ignoring the context of what was going on and refusing to even let the man defend himself the point i'm making here is that one game was smart and confident enough to deliver a morally ambiguous ending trusting the audience to make up their own minds and the result was one of the most talked about games of its generation the other ones saw fit to undermine it and disrespect the character for the sake of some cheap melodrama and it was widely berated by gamers as a result all the fake awards in the world doesn't make up for the fact that nobody liked your [ __ ] game neil ellie's gay by the way but this kind of ambiguity doesn't just apply to moral judgments it can work just as well for a character's whole sense of identity like at the end of the movie blade runner where deckard has spent most of the film hunting down and killing replicants that have developed free will and turned against their human masters only for the movie to suggest that he might be a replicant himself the film never makes the definitive choice one way or the other because it doesn't really need to the point of the movie is technology advancing to the point where it blurs the line between man and machine what if the person sitting next to you isn't human but you can't tell what if you're not even human yourself and if you can't tell the difference what does that say about what it actually means to be human these are all interesting questions that would have been completely spoiled with a straight up revelation about deckard's identity so in this case ambiguity is the perfect tool to round out the story but you don't even have to stop there movies like joker are able to play with the whole nature of reality causing you to question everything that you've seen at one point we find out that arthur's girlfriend is nothing but a figment of his imagination born out of his desperation for human contact and his increasingly unstable mental state fair enough but we've seen this kind of thing plenty of times before so it's not exactly shocking but the movie goes one step further by getting arthur involved in an escalating series of events from a desperate act of self-defense that sparks a growing revolution to killing a man on live tv to getting arrested and ultimately freed by rioters that have taken over the entire city the film ends with arthur in a psychiatric hospital with no real explanation of how he got there causing us to question how much of what we've seen actually happens did arthur fantasize about appearing on tv and killing the talk show host did he imagine the rioters freeing him from that police car or was the entire movie simply the product of his own tortured mind the film doesn't provide any concrete answers to these intriguing questions because once again it absolutely doesn't need to the point of the movie is that it's told by the most unreliable of narrators it's an insight into the fractured mental state of a man who increasingly struggles to separate fantasy from reality and what better example of this is there than making the audience doubt everything that they've seen just like the last of us and blade runner this ambiguity was deliberately worked into the story to inspire speculation and conversation it challenges you to question your assumptions and reassess your understanding and perhaps see things from a different perspective and you know what that's a good thing yeah ambiguity doesn't work in every situation and there's definitely times when you need to provide your audience with genuine answers instead of vague implications but the point i'm making with all of this is that ambiguity is an extremely useful tool for any storyteller and if it's used properly it can produce characters and narratives that will keep people interested and engaged for generations and like i said at the start sometimes it's enough to recognize that some questions just don't need to be answered anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 776,200

Keywords: Last of Us 2, Ellie, Neil Druckmann, Abbie, feminism, SJW, Bladerunner, review, retrospective, naughty dog, The Last of Us

Id: a-FaVdykpzI

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Spider-Man222]

The mongoloids over at r/thelastofus hate this video. What a surprise.

[u/Irraptured]

Yeah I was about to post the vid here myself if someone else already hadn't. Critical Drinker with another banger vid. Based on my interpretation of the ending of the first game, Ellie knew Joel wasn't telling the truth, but she trusted him and accepted the lie. That "Okay" speaks volumes. And then that all went in the trash in the second game. He explains it perfectly at 7:20 in the vid.

[u/butthurtmcgurt]

I was just about to post this here myself.

Drinker has a wonderful way of delving into a complex subject and weaving an intelligent argument. I love listening to his hours long 'podcasts' where he discusses different movies with a different 'special guest'. I usually do so while playing games like Stardew Valley and Civ6 or while drifting off to sleep.

That's all I've got for today, go away now! lol

[u/AeroAviation]

We need a merch store with "Joel did nothing wrong" shirts aha

[u/tasteprofithill]

The top upvoted comments at r/thelastofus criticizes critical drinker instead of the video. Is it because they don't have good points to counter his points?

[u/Jewlsy_bro]

It’s a pretty nice take on the concept of “ambiguity” in storytelling. And how TLOU1 was great at utilising that tool at the climax of the game.

But I really would of loved the author of this video to dive in a bit deeper into TLOU2 and explore more areas of critic which he had on its storytelling — and perhaps areas of praise (if the author had any).

TLOU2 is an interesting game. It’s a beautifully polished world, but marred with a VERY divisive story. I have read both of the affirmative and negative arguments for TLOU2 story. But for me I just lean a little over to the negative.

It’s just crazy how they ruthlessly they killed off a beloved character and expect the audience to play as his killer for a large portion of the game. Although the reasons as to why you play the character are revealed, it still makes for a very tough pill to swallow and you cannot fault the audience for hating the game because of it. It’s uncomfortable and unfortunate that Neil went sooo dark that it was like an attack on the original writer.

[u/frightener-boy]

If doing everything to survive in a post-apocalyptic world is bad then there's not a single good person left in that world but people can't seem to comprehend that. At least he doesn't torture other for pleasure unlike a certain good someone.

[u/Desproges]

Tlou1 ending isn't even that ambiguous, the fireflies are clearly optimistic hobos in a basement with no idea of what they are doing, no idea of how to do it and no convincing infrastructure to mass produce and deliver a vaccine across a civilization that collapsed and is ruled by gangs. I don't believe anyone played the game and thought joel DID prevent the world from being saved.

Sure it's fun to ponder about it, it's fun to think that some part of him believed in the cure, or that he took away ellie's choice. But the game forces you to experience joel choice quite fast so you don't think about it too much, and you're more busy being shocked seeing him shooting down civilians. It's more of a tough decision than a dilemma since all the information and consequences are given to us. (Like the infected soldiers in mgs5.)

To the people saying "how can you hate tlou2, it's exactly like tlou1", I'll say that joel left more to ponder to the player by changing his mind at the last moment. Than ellie not killing abby when she can, let her save the boy, let them approach a boat, beg for an obligatory boss fight before having a flashback make her change her mind and cry while going home.

While tlou2 ending in unambiguously good (let abby live and leave so she can protect the boy), it tries to play with ambiguity with elements that aren't tangible, explained and understood (psyche, trauma). But there is also no ambiguity to interpretation either: of course the joel flashback made her realize abby was protecting someone like joel and of course the nightmare were cured because she showed empathy. So it leaves with a faux sense of ambiguity, one where you can't even pretend there's a dilemma.

I would've prefer a clear conversation/cooperation and look back on their journey to subvert my expectations instead of a dumb mandatory boss fight between two exhausted characters where everything is clearly put to make everything as miserable as possible.

[u/SerAl187]

Don’t bother. Those people are retarded fucks, they are not worth our time.