Alive and Thriving at the End of the World

'Poker Face,' 'The Last of Us' and the insufficiency of survival.

“Survival is insufficient.” This is the animating motto of a Shakespearean troupe in HBO Max’s Station Eleven, who travel from place to place in a not-too-distant future where humanity has been ravaged by a pandemic that left very few of us alive. Civilization has cratered. Technology is a memory. But the so-called Traveling Symphony still believe in the power of the arts, and hoofs it from colony to colony with homemade props and aging instruments to perform the Bard for clusters of survivors. 

The “survival is insufficient” phrase has an interesting history. It also showed up in Emily St. John Mandel’s book that inspired the HBO show, but its true origins lie in the stars. It’s a line from Star Trek: Voyager, one of Seven of Nine’s many insights. Moreover, it seems like an ongoing theme in a lot of contemporary television. As we emerge from a world that has survived Covid-19 intact but not unchanged, we start to wonder what survival means for us. Or, perhaps, what survival requires from us. Station Eleven faced it head on, but I think this is also the driving idea behind two of 2023’s biggest TV shows so far: Poker Face and The Last of Us.