Reverse Remediation and Intermediality in The Last of Us (2023)

Abstract

In recent decades, videogames and their swift development have become an object of investigation in cultural studies and other related fields, their importance attested by the growing body of literature studying issues such as the tension between narratology and ludology when addressing how videogames work and how people interact with them. At the same time, the fact that videogames have become a major cultural form has also led to videogames being adapted to different media - the film series Resident Evil (2002), based on the eponymous videogame, constitues a well-known case in point. These adpatations lend themselves to productive intermedial analyses that shed light on the relationships between different media and their capacity to mediate other forms. Departing from these premises, this dissertation will exemine the TV series The Last of Us (2023), based on the eponymous videogame (2013), as an exemple of 'reverse remediation', showing how its creators deployed media-specific mechanisms to evoke the medium of videogames. To this end, the study will utilise a theoretical framework that unfolds along two main axes: theorisations on intermediality (Bolter and Grusin, [1999]; Rajewsky, [2005]) and recent studies on videogame adaptation (Newman, [2004]; Flanagan [2017]). Therefore, this dissertation will be divided into two main sections corresponding to the theoretical framework and the analysis of the object under scrutiny, respectively. The first section will deal with the main concepts of 'remediation' and 'intermediality' before moving on to an exploration of contemporary theories addressing videogame adaptation. Lastly, the second part of the study will engage in the examination of the TV series created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, using the theoretical framework to demosntrate how the series exploits cinematographic means to imitate and acknowledge the gameplay characteristic of videogames