Posts Tagged ‘ Mythology ’

Lost, Found: Finally

May 23, 2011

If You Don’t Have Something Nice To Say…

On May 23, 2010, Lost signed off with The End. Finally, the finale, after years of mystery. A few days later, one of my local libraries hosted a discussion. Someone there told of how she thought the last season’s Sideways world was real, the result of the series’ characters having successfully changed history by thwarting the Oceanic plane crash that began the series and changed their lives. Then it was my turn. After I shared my take on the final episode, this other person said she could not stay. She got up and left.

I hadn’t started watching the series until after the fourth season ended, catching up on the entire series-to-date in about a month. After that, I decided to blog episode by episode. With so much ground to cover once again and a fairly busy life, time wasn’t on my side, and I gave up on it indefinitely. Toward the end of the series, I wrote a few more posts and intended to write about the finale, in the service of at least getting to some of my bigger ideas.

Between the finale itself and various things show-runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said over the years, in particular in a New York Times article run 10 days before the finale aired, I felt that most of the real substance of my take on the show was, well, substantiated. With so much else written about the show and the finale, in particular the great coverage by Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen, I felt that there wasn’t much to be said, or understood, that hadn’t already been taken care of. So why should I say anything at all? Plus, pressed for time from other things, I let some time slip by and grew to feel that it might be pointless for me to write anything.

Several weeks after the episode aired, a friend asked for my take. When I gave it, he felt my thoughts would be worth sharing, that there was no “too late” for a show that would probably be discussed for years. I didn’t get to it right away. Now it appears it was just as well that I waited for this anniversary, because since that first airing I’ve gained some additional support and perspective on my thoughts about the series and its finale, and from a very relevant source, which I’ll get to later. So now, finally, the finale post.

Heaven on Earth

Flashback, whooosh, to the library.

Someone is giving her reasons for thinking the Sideways world real, the plane crash timeline averted. She acknowledges that all are dead by the end of the Sideways story and poses that each characters’ moment of illumination is their moment of death. I don’t remember other details, only that there were holes in her reasoning. After pointing some of them out, I got to have a turn saying what I thought.

When I first posed my MacGuffin Theory nearly two years before the finale, I said that the truth about the island was not likely to ever be fully revealed and was in any case beside the point. Rather, as I said, “In the end, I think the point is to revel in the mystery, to participate in it, and thereby to learn to do the same for the mystery of our own lives… It’s a mystery that is answered somewhere along the way, by every individual who is inspired by the show to engage in the questions of their own lives and seek harmony.”

Now, having the seen the finale, I naturally think about it in this light. What I said at the library was along the following lines.

What good, I wondered, would the show possibly be doing anyone if it were to present a story about people who went back in time and found a way to stop undesired events from happening? What would that offer us? We can’t go back to right what we later perceive to be wrong turns in our lives. The series had all along been, in effect, about this very conundrum, grappling with how flawed characters could break from their past and find redemption. Surely, I felt, the answer the show would provide to this question would have to be consistent, rather than in conflict, with the truth that real people simply cannot go back. Anything else would render the show fundamentally useless beyond escapist entertainment. This seemed impossible for a show as rich as Lost.

Even before the finale aired, the writers said that the ending would be open to interpretation. Any number of things could be somewhat open. But Sideways world as a real and alternative history, when it ends the way it ends? Its various moments of illuminating remembrance as the characters’ respective moments of death? Locke and Jack touch after the surgery, Locke is illuminated but Jack is not. Can this mean that Locke is dead while Jack lives on? What in that situation would cause Locke to die, and how could a dead Locke still be there interacting with a still living Jack? Same goes for any character’s illumination and the others around them at the time.

Before the finale, I’d predicted that, rather than actually being sideways from the island timeline, the Sideways world was instead a followup to it. In some sense, I was right. Sideways world showed what happened to everyone after their deaths in the real world, including but not limited to all the events of the series’ main timeline. Is it Heaven? This seems entirely unlikely. The Sideways story is one of characters literally not having yet gone into the light, a light they can only even approach after coming to an important realization, so that they are “in the dark,” so to speak, even after their realization, and all the moreso beforehand. Sideways seems to be some kind of purgatory, a place where souls must stay until they are ready to move on. We will only even see some of the characters, not all, reach that point of readiness. But what is it that actually gets them ready to move on?

The Sideways world took the form of a sort of wishful thinking on the part of everyone, but a wishful thinking in which nobody was inclined to make terribly big wishes. The suggestion is clear. They hope beyond hope to erase the past because they think their lives will be so much better. The past, though, includes events prior to those that led to the Oceanic crash. That crash was never the sole cause of pain for any of these characters. In the absence of the crash, some things are a bit better for some characters, some things merely different. Life is not a grand paradise but the usual grab-bag of good and bad. Troubles remain, and characters must grope their way past those troubles to small victories.

Take Jack, for example. He still had a fairly poor relationship with his father, Christian. It led him to have a strained relationship with his own son David. The sins of the father (Christian) became the sins of the son (Jack), who himself was now the father. The old pattern was in danger of perpetuation. In the end, though, he found a way to get on a positive track. David pursues his own authenticity, even if he must do it in secret. When Jack learns the truth, he wants to encourage rather than stop David, and David realizes he need not keep things secret. Better than things went with Christian? Certainly. Still, some fairly modest wishful thinking when it comes down to it. But such modest good things are perhaps all any of us really need when it comes down to it.

The enlightenments led each character to realize the truth of their Sideways wishful thinking, to realize that it was only wishful thinking after all, that none of it had ever happened, that everything from the main timeline, every last bit of it, is what really happened, including their own death. In those moments of realization, they could finally acknowledge, I’m dead, and so be it. Death isn’t horror, it’s nothing to fear. Fearing it all along is what had me so messed up, what had me messing up others. I had some bad experiences long ago when I wasn’t ready to cope with them, and from then on I’d lived my life informed by those experiences, doing all I could to avoid ever having to remember the fear I felt when they were occurring, no matter how much pain I’d bring to myself and others as a result. Now I can face that it all happened, embracing the totality of my past, the good, the bad, the things I couldn’t help, and my own role in the things I could have helped but didn’t. I can finally be content and stop wishing that the past was different. The past is all there, it’s all real, and I can be at peace with it, even my own death. I don’t need the past to have turned out differently.

Those enlightenments could only come through connection with another, with someone who proved a fateful force for them in the “real world,” in their actual lives. These characters needed each other to get beyond who they thought they were, because they obviously were unable to do so on their own. Had they been, they would have done it already.

In the real timeline, then, all there was to do was take the present moment as a new opportunity to change gears and let go of whatever was preserving an undesirable status quo. That would seldom mean completely abandoning who one believed oneself to be. More likely, it would mean a new perspective, carrying certain things forward but in new ways to achieve new results.

This is just what Jack seems to have done. Fixing everything had always been based on some dysfunctional agenda he had, one that would never satisfy him. With the island, he had to completely let go of that agenda and give himself over to the island. The island that was far more supernatural than his Man of Science ever would have liked. The island that for a long time he wanted nothing more than to leave, only then to want nothing more than to get back, only then to question why he bothered. The island that clearly had its own agenda.

In the end, Jack did let go of his agenda, but he didn’t let go of his capacities. He applied his strengths toward a new agenda. What better is there to do than take the best of the past and carry it forward into the future, but a new future that isn’t burdened by the worst of the past? Jack may have “repeated the same pattern” by remaining a fixer, but he did it in a completely new way. He broke the Hypocratic oath by finishing off the Man in Black in order to contribute to a larger healing. He completed that larger healing through his culminating fixes, his climactic doctoring — rescuing the near-dead Desmond, and replacing the island’s stone plug just as if suturing an open wound. Soon after, having fulfilled his purpose and become the hero, the one who genuinely saved everyone in the way that counted most, he dies, and he does so with peace of mind.

But if Jack dies in the main timeline with such fulfillment, why in the Sideways world is his still conflicted, resistant to learning the truth and moving on? Well, it’s one thing to come to accept what is and what you don’t feel you could ever have changed. It’s another thing entirely to come to a similar realization even after having had the opportunity to change things. The Sideways world story is there for the audience, to reinforce the point about acceptance and embracing life in this absolutely crucial way. It tells us not only that it’s possible to accept things as they have already turned out but that there is no point in doing otherwise, that there is no point in wishing for things to have turned out differently. Yes, wish all you like, but if you want change, the only place it will come from is where you are. That is the only place you can move forward from. This is what Jack had to do in the wishful thinking Sideways world just the same as he had to in the main timeline.

Lindelof and Cuse no more propose redemption after death than they propose going back in time to alter the course of events. They don’t want us to think redemption is possible only by going back in time, as the characters hoped to do through their Jughead plan, or only in death, as the Sideways world was revealed to be in the end. What they propose is, in effect, Heaven on Earth, the possibility of a life lived without the burden of terrors past, even if those terrors actually happened. They propose that one cannot deny one’s past but that it is possible to keep it in the past, where it actually is, instead of dragging it continually into every new present moment. You can come to a point, as you live your life, where you can stop fearing death. Indeed you must, because only then can you actually live your life.

Truth in Fiction

I didn’t say all of this in exactly this way to that person at the library talk, but this is more or less what I said. And as soon as I did, she excused herself and left.

Was I judgmental, offensive? Was I self-righteous in poking holes in her reasoning and supporting my own stance? She seemed to think so. More likely, I imagine something else. It will at first sound judgmental, but I mean it in just the opposite way. I say this from a place of compassion. More likely, she herself had things in her own life that she wished she could have changed and was not yet ready to accept their unchangeability in order to move on from them.

I say this as someone who knows all too well how this can be true. I’ve worked hard for some time to face such things for myself, and who knows how much I may still have left to face for myself. It’s likely true of most of us and most everyone we know. Some people simply have a harder time than others facing such things, and some people simply have a harder time than others even acknowledging that there may be anything to face in the first place. Again, this itself was depicted in the show, with not all the characters capable of readying themselves for a Sideways world illumination.

These are not just issues for individuals, either, as I’ve come to understand far more deeply as a result of something that Lost itself led me to.

Months after the finale, I was watching the extras on the final season’s DVD set. One was called “A Hero’s Journey,” exploring how several of the characters played out the archetypal hero’s story, particularly as it has been described by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. I’d been a Campbell fan but had only scratched the surface with his work years ago. This Lost featurette combined with a number of other things on my mind over these last years to inspire me to study Campbell more. I’ve read quite a lot of his work over the last several months.

One of Campbell’s key points is that mythology is of central value to people, providing symbols and metaphors that are supposed to guide people and societies spiritually and psychologically by putting us in touch with the insoluble mystery of existence itself. Since we are part of that existence, we ourselves are part of that mystery along with everything else. In this sense there is little distinction between ourselves and others, even non-human or non-living others, and in this sense there is little distinction between life and death. The great mystery of existence transcends all of it.

Campbell also continually discusses how much ill comes from failing to understand mythology’s purpose. Some people write myth off by equating it with lie and falsehood. Others concretize their myths, believing them to be historically or cosmologically true. In either case, people fail to recognize myth’s identity as metaphor and its purpose as pointing toward spiritual and psychological truths. In either case, people end up failing to connect with any experience of spiritual awe or psychological health. As a result, instead of abiding in our common humanity, those who misinterpret myth as either history or lie end up just fostering enmity, willing to dehumanize and even to kill and die for their “truths.”

And here I was arguing about the primacy of the meaning of Lost over the theories about the island, suggesting that people who spent so much time engaged in debating the “truth” of the series were actually missing the point. My MacGuffin theory was, all along, a mythological theory, the theory that Lost was intended to function as mythology, to point its viewers toward profound mysteries and truths that could make a difference in their lives, just as mythology has always intended to do. Instead, ironically, so many fans reveled in the “mysteries” of the series, but only as mysteries to be solved, puzzles to be completed, various solutions competing until one might prove itself to be “the one.” Just like so many religions, philosophies and ideologies have done throughout the history of civilization.

Why would they do so, missing out on the real mystery that the show tried to put them in touch with, the core that lies deep inside each and every one of them? Because that core is not all that is inside. Something happens to us, and we become afraid. The fear stands in the way between us, between our conscious minds, and that core. When those things happen to us, we cannot cope with that fear, so something yet else stands in the way, protecting our conscious minds from the fear. It was useful to protect us for a time, but the protection ends up outliving its usefulness. What was true is no longer true, but we hold onto it as if it were — a concretized myth. Then there is flaw, neurosis, dysfunction. The layers within recognize what is offered by something like Lost, the possibility of reconnecting, to something beyond the fear, to what the myth is actually pointing to. Those inner layers cannot give up their interest in such a thing. They keep us watching. But the protector continues to mediate, reinterpreting our interest for the conscious mind, deflecting it away from ourselves, from the core, making it about the entertainment, the puzzle.

When I picked up again talking about Lost toward the end of its run, I wondered if the show was going to disappoint me as other works of art had, promising something profound but then betraying itself. I don’t think it did. It boded well that Lindelof and Cuse decided to bring the show to an end on their terms, at a specific time, rather than let it go on indefinitely on the basis of ratings. When they ended it their way, it brought things to a mythologically satisfying close.

Unfortunately, even when artists get it right, it’s still up to audiences to get it at all. Obviously, all too often, audiences are fairly likely to miss the point. Just as all too many people in all corners of the world have, throughout history, failed to get the point of their own mythologies.

Maybe that person’s walking out on me at the library demoralized me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t bother to write about the finale in its immediate aftermath. Maybe what I had to say was worth saying after all, but maybe I didn’t like that such things all too often fall on deaf ears. So why bother saying anything? Here’s why. Because not saying anything definitely can’t accomplish a thing. Saying something at least has a chance, however small.

Quotes

I could talk more about any number of details from the finale in terms of analyzing the text of the story, but I just don’t think there’s much point. This would all just be the trees, and it’s the forest that’s important here. I think I’ve said enough about that myself, so I’d like to start to wrap this up by including some things that Lindelof and Cuse themselves said in the New York Times article I mentioned earlier, all pretty a propos to everything I’ve been saying here:

LINDELOF: If there’s one word that we keep coming back to, it’s redemption. It is that idea of everybody has something to be redeemed for and the idea that that redemption doesn’t necessarily come from anywhere else other than internally. But in order to redeem yourself, you can only do it through a community. So the redemption theme started to kind of connect into “live together, die alone,” which is that these people were all lone wolves who were complete strangers on an aircraft, even the ones who were flying together like Sun and Jin. Then let’s bring them together and through their experiences together allow themselves to be redeemed. When the show is firing on all pistons, that’s the kind of storytelling that we’re doing.

I think we’ve always said that the characters of “Lost” are deeply flawed, but when you look at their flashback stories, they’re all victims. Kate was a victim before she killed her stepfather. Sawyer’s parents killed themselves as he was hiding under the bed. Jack’s dad was a drunk who berated him as a child. Sayid was manipulated by the American government into torturing somebody else. John Locke had his kidney stolen. This idea of saying this bad thing happened to me and I’m a victim and it created some bad behavior and now I’m going to take responsibility for that and allow myself to be redeemed by community with other people, that seems to be the theme that we keep coming back to.

CUSE: It’s far more about the character relationships that resonate. The thing is that people talk a lot about the mythology of “Lost,” but we probably spent 85 percent of our time in the writers’ room talking about the characters, and I think that’s why the show was a broad audience show as opposed to a genre show. While the mythology was important, first and foremost the show was about the characters. I think that a lot of people care much more about what’s going to happen to Kate. Is she going to end up with Jack, is she going to end up with Sawyer? That’s why we feel like a lot of shows that have tried to imitate “Lost” make the fundamental mistake of having the characters just focus on the mythology. If you watch certain shows like that, you’ll see all the characters are talking about is, “What’s that dinosaur in my bathtub?”

LINDELOF: The thing about that episode is it’s very simple storytelling, but very, very complicated storytelling at the same time. The simple part is that this episode is called “The Constant,” and the whole point of it is, is that there is somebody else out there that is your other half. And again, it plugged into, in this very sort of obvious way, this theme that we were discussing earlier, which is: Nobody can do it alone. Desmond was unhooked or lost, he was a castaway bopping around through time, and his only possible salvation was finding the woman that he loved and telling her so and saying, “I need you to rescue me because I’m lost.” This fundamentally tapped into every single theme of the show. You’re basically saying emotion trumps mythology.

Of course, what Lindelof means in that last sentence is that the transcendent connotation that myth as metaphor points to, myth as something fostering of spiritual and psychological growth, trumps concretized mythology, trumps the literal denotation that the myth seems to be about on the surface, which is of course not mythology at all.

Finally, to really put a bow on this, another quote, this time from the lyrics to a rather famous song. I can only hope that more and more of us wretches make an effort to save ourselves and others by finding a bit of Amazing Grace:

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Lost, Found: Last Tuesday

May 19, 2010

By Mark S. Meritt

Last night, the final new Tuesday episode aired. As much as it moved things forward and set up the finale, I don’t have much to say other than this:

I remain pretty convinced of the general direction I posed the show taking in last week’s post and the post from the week before.
For a show so much about history repeating itself, and usually to people’s detriment, the ending can only be satisfying if “the curse is broken” — i.e., if in the end nobody remains “trapped” on the island, whether as protector or Smoke-Monster-prisoner or otherwise. If anyone stays on the island at the end, it must be because they truly want to be there.
Perhaps the very fact of the finale taking place on a Sunday instead of a Tuesday supports my perspective. A change is taking place. The old patterns are coming to an end. Indeed, the series ends on a traditional day of rest — a day for as many characters as possible to find a resolution to their age-old conflicts.

Also, the four remaining lostaways — Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley — not only include, as I noted last week, one of the key conflicted pairs of the series, i.e., Jack vs. Sawyer. They are the very same four who were captured by the Others several seasons ago. And back then, Hurley was “set free” to carry a message to the remaining lostaways, leaving a love triangle captured. That love triangle has become more complicated since then, but there may be an interesting parallel between Jack/Sawyer/Kate and Jacob/Man-in-Black/”Mother.”

Jack and Jacob practically share a name and now they do have the island protector role in common.

The Man in Black has in common with Sawyer a stereotypical “bad guy” persona that is both caused by and tempered for the audience by past traumatic events. There is further the apparent namelessness of the Man in Black paralleling Sawyer’s having over time adopted many different names through his work as a con man.

Kate and the “Mother” share the killing of another inspired by some notion of higher good, and, of course, they find themselves the apex of a strange triangle relationship with the two conflicted males they most deeply relate to.

With Jack having already taken on the protector role and this larger set of parallels between these triangles of characters, I can’t help but wonder just how much else may repeat itself. I’d already suggested last week the possibility of Sawyer’s future as a Smoke Monster. Could Kate’s life be in danger, too?

With the importance of the old cycles becoming broken, I believe we will be in for either another repetition of “curses” followed by a breaking of the curse, or, perhaps preferable, a near-repetition of past pattern, averted in favor of something new to break the pattern without the need for a further repetition.

We shall see.

Lost, Found: Light at the End of the Tunnel

May 12, 2010

By Mark S. Meritt

Good and Evil and In Between

The third from the last episode, and we start to see, literally and figuratively, a light at the end of the tunnel. And I believe more than ever in what I’ve said about Lost providing a complicated, atypical look at “good” vs. “evil.”

A Woman kills the twins’ Mother, apologizing to her right before smashing her face. She raises the kids as her own and lies to them about their origins, telling them they are from the island, that there is no place else in the world, that there are no other people in the world. Later, she’ll smash her “son’s” head with an apology as well, to prevent him from leaving the island, even though she needs only one successor to protect the island. She then kills all of the people in the Man in Black’s settlement after learning of their plans to leave the island.

The Man in Black sees his dead Mother — sees a truth Jacob cannot. He hears what she has to say and wants to honor it. If the other people on the island are his people, he wants to be with them instead of the Woman who killed his mother and lied to him all along. If the island is not his home, he doesn’t want to stay, he wants to find a way to leave. When the Woman subverts his goal, he kills her — an act that doesn’t really help him, but one that is understandable as something other than unadulterated evil.

As for Jacob, he smashes his brother’s face in when his brother wants to go live with the other people (the “Others,” in contrast to the Woman, even though later there will be “Others” serving Jacob himself). Instead of facing the truth, he chooses to stay with the Woman and her lies. When the Woman wants to pass the torch onto him and have him replace her as protector of the island, he does not want the job. He seems insecure and frightened. When he accepts, she says they are now the same — he is now the same as the Woman who has done all the not-so-nice things she has done. Later, when the Man in Black has killed the Woman, Jacob once again smashes his brother’s face in, and punishes him by sending him into the light in the tunnel, the place the Woman described as “Life, death, rebirth. It’s the source, the heart of the island,” right before telling him to never go down there, since a fate worse than death awaits. The fate worse than death is what Jacob wishes upon his brother.

Who is good and who is evil here? It would be too strong to say that the Woman and Jacob are “really” evil and the Man in Black really “good,” but it is equally misguided to pose it the other way around.

The Man in Black merely wants to face the truth about himself and find his way home. The Woman and Jacob are willing to lie, hurt, even kill, all in the service of a story the Woman tells about the source of the island, despite Jacob (and we, the audience) having no real idea whether the story has credence, or how she knows what she says she knows.

It seems that all these characters have elements of what we think of as “good” and of what we think of as “evil.” In other words, they are people, and the fact that they have conflicts merely means they haven’t figured out how to get what they all want collaboratively.

Procreation, Longevity and Power

The episode begins with a birth, of twins. We know that there are issues on the island with fertility, with pregnant women losing their babies. Claire was able to give birth on the island — because of the Others’ medicine, and/or because she was far enough along when she arrived. The twins’ Mother obviously received no such medicine, so her giving birth on the island can only be the result of either the fertility issue not having begun yet or of her having been far enough along.

In any case, consider that the island is known simultaneously as a place where fertility is problematic and where immortality is possible to some extent. Jacob and the Man in Black seem to live forever, even though they may have weaknesses that can cause their death. Richard receives the gift of immortality from Jacob. Even Locke’s having his paralysis cured seems to be of a piece with these phenomena. The island seems to be something of a Fountain of Youth, a place where health, vigor and longevity can be cultivated.

In the mid-1990s, I came up with an idea for a screenplay about Ponce de Leon and his quest for the Fountain of Youth. Some scientists in the modern day conducting experiments in the Bermuda Triangle would somehow discover that their actions have caused an old ship to appear, and on that ship would be Ponce de Leon. He would be grateful for having been freed from the triangle so he could resume his quest for the Fountain of Youth in Florida. Eventually, the story would make clear that the Bermuda Triangle was itself the Fountain of Youth, and that the only way to take advantage of it would be to relegate oneself to it’s parallel-universe-like existence in the middle of the ocean, a place where “real life” simply cannot be lived, since “real life” includes death.

On Lost, the island is, in addition to having these properties of longevity and health, also a place where fertility is an issue. Just as in the story I’d come up with years ago, perhaps wishing to live forever is an ultimately selfish thing that can only be done in a place cut off from the reality of the rest of the world, a place where the normal cycles of life, of generations, cease. The island’s troubles with procreation may be a necessary condition of the presence of longevity/immortality. To be cut off on the island and living forever, one can easily imagine people going mad and wanting to leave, to get back to “life” as it really is. In some sense, the island’s brand of immortality could be tantamount to death itself, a denial of life as it is.

Indeed, what to make of the Woman thanking the Man in Black as her final words, despite him having just killed her? Could she have felt trapped in a too-long life on the island herself? Is this why she killed the Mother and took the babies, grooming them to succeed her — simply to find her own escape? Perhaps she came to know that apparent immortality is more than it’s cracked up to be, and perhaps she needed a loophole to have herself killed, just as the Man in Black sought a loophole, getting someone else to kill Jacob on his behalf. Collateral damage may be necessary to escape the immortality of the island.

In contrast, what do we know of life as it really is, off the island? From most characters’ backstories, we know that they’ve got issues. Problems they struggle with. Violence and heartache and confusion and tragedy. And also good things, too. It’s a mixed bag — just as the Woman, Jacob and the Man in Black appear to be. And, crucially, this is true not only in the original timeline but also in Sideways world. Whatever created Sideways world, it did not “make everything better” in any simplistic sense, as the lostaways had hoped would happen as a result of blowing up Jughead.

Perhaps this all adds up to the very simple message that life must be lived, with its ups and downs, for better and for worse, including the fact of its ending in death, and that any attempt to do otherwise is bound to lead to undesired results.

This is not a lesson learned only through experiences with the island — it is seen even in characters’ regular lives separate from their island experiences. Christian drives his son too hard with expectation. Jack is a compulsive fixer. Anthony Cooper conned people to ensure his own “ups.” Kate killed for the sake of her and her mom’s “ups.” Jin is willing to obey the whims of Mr. Paik for a shot at a decent life. The list could go on and on. At least so far in the story, essentially everyone has failed to find redemption, and this failure appears to be to the very extent that they fail to confront the things deep in their past that have saddled them with a too-strong desire to strive for ups and a too-weak ability to accept life’s downs. If only they could embrace both sides — the ups and downs, the “good” and the “evil” — and let go of the striving, the attachment to only the pleasant at the expense of the unpleasant, then maybe they’d actually get more of what they want.

Long ago, when first writing here about Lost, I talked about the show as a critique of civilization. Civilization is, most basically, a social structure in which power is unevenly distributed, with some having much and most having little. Now consider the island and the light hiding beneath/inside it. It is a place where a special kind of power has been consolidated, with much of the rest of the world lacking it. Originally I’d thought the island to stand in distinction to civilization. While in some ways it clearly does, in its own way it also now seems to just be one more place where the same old things play out.

In civilization off the island — and in various civilization-inspired social structures on the island — the unequal distribution of power leaves many people wanting, searching, striving to find more “ups” to make up for their experience of too many “downs,” while also giving a few people more “ups” than they deserve and leaving them exceedingly protective of their status against the masses who aren’t so lucky.

On the island, the light is a power that is warned against, to be left alone. Somehow on the island, extreme longevity — a surfeit of “ups” — is made possible, surely through something having to do with that light. And yet direct contact with the light can release a Smoke Monster — the inevitable extremity of “downs” that must go hand in hand with ever bigger “ups.” That, too, is true of civilization, where psychological, social and ecological ills increase right alongside — and often because of — the so-called “advances” of civilization.

Jacob described the island to Richard as the cork which keeps evil from being released out into the world. But we already see plenty of evil in the world, and we are starting to get enough information to doubt just how unassailably good and right Jacob may be. Further, if the island needed protection prior to the Man in Black becoming the Smoke Monster, then the Smoke Monster can’t be the evil being corked up.

Was there another monster, which gave the Woman her knowledge of what happens when someone goes into the light? Perhaps it was the Woman herself. Trapped by accident on the island, she stumbles upon the light cave. Drawn in by its beauty, she finds her fate worse than death: she is granted immortality and turned into a Smoke Monster. Unlike the Man in Black, she has no desire to go home — that is not something that must go along with being a Smoke Monster. She perhaps understands the nature of the island’s power and realizes that, rather than it needing protection from people, people may need protection from the island. She resolves to stay, but time grows long, and she wants to be freed from the endless prison of her life. Perhaps this explains why she steals the babies, how she can grant them their own near-immortality, and why she needs a loophole and thanks the Man in Black for killing her. That we never see her turn into a Smoke Monster in last night’s episode may be incidental, since we know the Man in Black only takes that form in particular circumstances. But even if she can grant immortality without Smoke-Monsterhood, wouldn’t she just be setting others up for the same too-long-life? Yes — hence the need for Jacob to find a successor — and the Man in Black’s own long-held frustrations.

Is there some way in which that light itself could somehow be evil as opposed to good, the evil needing to be corked up? Of course, we’ve witnessed two “disasters” on the island, under the hatch at two separate times, where massive explosions caused that Dharma station’s pocket of energy to be released — and in neither case was the world destroyed, as some said it would be in those circumstances. If the light is life and death and rebirth, then it surely must be good and evil wrapped together — pure power, not yet applied. Perhaps, then, rather than seeing the island’s light energy as either something to exploit — as perhaps Widmore and the Dharma Initiative might — or as something to protect — as the Woman and Jacob would — it should instead be understood as something to be released, once and for all, and thereby dissipated. Power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely — therefore enormous sources of power in some sense “should” be dissipated, to reduce the potential for corruption and therefore to bring more balance to the world.

Releasing the island’s energy, then, could be what causes the island to end up at the bottom of the ocean, neutralized, as we saw at the beginning of the final season. Metaphorically, it would show the way for people elsewhere, out in the “real” world, in whatever timeline, to lead better lives. Release power, the need to control. Let power be distributed to all rather than bottled up in small pockets where it can become volatile, corruptible, dangerous. Accept that we all live and we all will die — no immortality for us. Accept that we must do well by future generations — fertility for us, backed up with good parenting, unlike what we’ve seen so often throughout the series and especially in this episode by the Woman. Raise our kids so that they will know from the start that they should do their best but within the context of accepting both good and bad in their lives. Struggle to free ourselves from the resistance we’ve come to have about this very acceptance, so that we will be able to do all these things for ourselves, our kids and others, instead of striving for more and more control and power. Through all this, through this balance, there can be redemption — for the characters in the show, and for anyone who chooses this path.

The End of the Tunnel

I’ve so far avoided making any concrete predictions about the plot. So far, mostly abstract analysis and suggestions about the basic shape of things to come — about the show becoming much more nuanced in its depiction of good and evil and vaguely what a resolution of that dichotomy may look like as opposed to one side simply winning somehow. With last night’s episode having seemed to corroborate my perspective to some extent, and with so little of the series left, this may be a good time to pose some more concrete possibilities.

With Jacob having been killed, the conflict between “good” and “evil” seems difficult to resolve. With his project of finding a successor, though, that becomes more viable. Will a lostaway step in and duel with the Smoke Monster? In light of the nuanced handling of good and evil, this seems doubtful, or at least not genuinely climactic. Perhaps other oppositions will come into play. Most notable seem to be Jack’s man of science vs. Locke’s man of faith, and Jack’s “selfless leader” vs. Sawyer’s “island unto himself.” The former, though, has shown Locke’s faith to have made him a sucker, leading to his death and the ascension of UnLocke, while Jack has himself seemed to give up some of his compulsion while embracing the less “scientific” truths of the island — not quite a resolution, but certainly that conflict is not what it was. As for Jack vs. Sawyer, likewise, Jack spent a fair amount of time very concerned about himself getting off the island, and it only led to the massive guilt he experienced during the flash-forwards, while Sawyer did a lot of growing up during that same time. Jack and Sawyer, though, do remain among the few remaining lostaways/candidates.

In the end, could two lostaways, Jack and Sawyer or otherwise, end up replacing both Jacob and the Man in Black? Perhaps on some level this could happen willingly, mutually, without real conflict, both replacements somehow believing in a need to serve those roles and stay on the island. Perhaps there would not be willingness, no more than Jacob and the Man in Black had themselves shown. However it goes, the show has proved time and again what it’s willing to do to characters we care about — kill them, maim them, torture them. And we have seen that the Smoke Monster we’ve come to know and hate was, as UnLocke had said, once just a man, and not only that but a man who just wanted to be loved and find his way home. Don’t put it past the show’s creators to turn someone we really like into another Smoke Monster.

Given that the island ends up on the ocean floor at some point, I’d guess we’re in for a followup to Jack’s Jughead plan, something to bring closure to “getting a fresh start.” The series, so much about free will vs. determinism, so much about our inability to change the past, seems poised to affirm our ability to affect our future, to change. Juliet had said that the Jughead plan worked — and we have seen the Sideways world which may prove that it did. But we have obviously not seen enough to know the real relationship between the original timeline and Sideways world. The Sideways experiences of Desmond, Charlie, Hurley and Libby suggest it is not mere conjecture, a storytelling “what if,” but something real. Perhaps, and especially if there has been any taking over the roles of protector and Smoke Monster, someone may deliberately cause the destruction of the island. Once and for all, its energy could be released, bringing to an end the dichotomy of protector vs. Smoke Monster, leaving the original timeline behind to somehow cause the Sideways timeline.

The slight hints we have in the Sideways world timeline that things are maybe working out a little bit better for people may be all we get. Jack having a son and making an effort. Kate seeming to be on her way to another chance with a more understanding law enforcement officer holding her custody. Hurley’s success with money and with Libby. Claire and Jack finding family in each other. Locke getting Helen and accepting his limitations. Ben having sacrificed an administrative career for the sake of the success of the “daughter” he mistreated in the original timeline. Jin and Sun finding their way together. And so on. Here in the Sideways world, life is still a mixed bag, full of ups and downs. Sideways world underscores how this cannot be avoided. Accepting this leads not to some trite, pat, happily-after-ever good-triumphs-over-evil ending but, instead, to small, one day at a time improvements. Therein would lie the hope that, whatever else may not be working out in Sideways world, change may be possible. The glimpses the Sideways characters are getting of the original timeline may end up being no more than a reason for them to appreciate what they now have, the proof that any path would be a mixed bag and that there is far more a point in just doing one’s best rather than in always wondering, with regret, “what if.”

Obviously these aren’t totally concrete, specific predictions. Obviously much remains to be addressed — the origins of the temple, statue and lighthouse; the role of Desmond’s parallel-worlds mission; countless other things, many of which are sure never to be fully resolved because they just aren’t core to the main throughline of the story. In any case, these are least some suggestive notions about what may lie ahead.

Lost, Found: That Sinking Feeling

May 5, 2010

By Mark S. Meritt

Yes, I haven’t written about Lost for ages. Yes, I’ve procrastinated across the better part of the entire series in what was intended to be episode by episode commentary. Yes, this isn’t an episode-specific commentary. Yes, I realize nobody probably even reads this or cares much about my take on the show. But here are a few words, summing up why I thought I might have had an original take, why it may have been genuinely important if I was right, how the way things are heading toward an end may seem to go against the perspective I’d had in mind, how the show can’t really be ultimately satisfying except as pure entertainment if I’m wrong — and how it still may be possible that my take my be correct.

At the end of last night’s episode, The Candidate, in the preview for next week’s episode, we saw clips from earlier in the series. Locke explaining backgammon as a battle between black and white. Jacob (in white) and the Man in Black on the beach, the latter declaring how badly he wanted to see the former dead. And if that weren’t enough, there was even a title card in the preview, declaring a battle between Good and Evil in white letters on a black background. And today, The Candidate was described by Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff “Doc” Jensen as providing definitive clarity about a key issue. He says there “can no longer be any doubt about this: The Locke-ness Monster is pure evil.” It certainly seems that way, but in this show, things are often not what they seem. And here’s why I think the same may be true here.

Throughout its run, Lost has transcended the simplicity of black/white, of good/evil. The entire history of the show is filled with nuance, confusion, choices. Even though some characters may seem to be more at the extremes, more obviously “good” or “bad,” it’s hard to say of practically any character that they have been all good or all evil. If the show has seemed to be about anything, it’s the quest for redemption, with practically every character living in the gray areas, having their own past demons, their own transgressions, their own mistakes. All seek to somehow find a way to be free of those things and move into a new phase of life. And yet many of those past “evils” were wrapped up with “good” — Jack’s compulsion to fix and heal, Kate’s wanting to protect her mother, the list goes on and on. We simply cannot say that the characters’ redemption is about leaving evil behind to find good. The matter is always far more complex and real than that.

And so we’re supposed to believe that the Man in Black is just plain evil, and he will unleash terror on the world, and Jacob is just plain good, and he and his successor must somehow manage to keep evil all bottled up on the island, away from the world? When the world is already as filled with illness and damage as it is — evident in the very backstories of each of the characters, above and beyond our own everyday knowledge of the world — how can we possibly buy such a simplistic scenario?

Even if the Man in Black is a psychopath/sociopath, symbolically in the story, that’s just an extreme of immature selfishness. Yet there is in some sense just about as much immaturity in believing that the only thing to do in response to selfishness is to keep it bottled up. Children are naturally narcissistic, and they can grow up to become otherwise. Not when parents let kids run wild, nor when parents squash their impulses — those approaches just ensure that they “grow up” to stay as childish and selfish as they ever were, in one way or other, with demons they’ll have to wrestle with from that point forward, seeking redemption even if they don’t realize it, and yet not knowing how to find it. Kids become otherwise, they actually become mature, when parents help give those kids what they need so that they can get through the naturally more selfish early years and learn to become whole people who know how to balance their own needs with those of others. Selfishness indulged, properly and at the right time, allows a transcendence of selfishness. Nothing else can — especially not forcing selflessness and “maturity” upon someone not ready for those things.

The ambiguity of good/bad, indeed, has been one of the key themes of the show all along. It is there in the ways we’ve learned about each character. In the ways each character has interacted with those around them. In the ways those characters have seen how their choices didn’t always turn out to be wise. In the ways those characters have learned and changed. In the different and changing feelings characters had about being on — or off — the island. And, crucially, in the different feelings and life experiences the characters have in Sideways world as compared to the original timeline.

Significantly, it is also there in the nature of, and relationships different characters have with, “The Others.” The Others claim to be with Jacob, and so are opposed to the Man in Black. Yet Widmore seems opposed to both. Even without figuring in the lostaways, there is clearly a triangle here — and therefore a refutation of the simplistic division of good vs. evil. The lostaways find themselves at odds with all parts of this triangle at various times, though the only part of it they seriously entertain destroying is the weakest. Not the supernaturally powerful Man in Black, nor the financially powerful corporate titan Widmore, but the people who run about the island in rags and barefeet. And those very “others” are the ones willing to share the island, while almost everyone else at one point or other — not only Widmore and the Man in Black, but the Dharma Initiative and even the lostaways themselves — wished the others gone, banished, exterminated.

Who is the better or worse here, the good and the bad? Wouldn’t those who want to pursue harmony and co-existence deserve to be called good in comparison to those who would rather have the island world to themselves? Isn’t this the very difference just mentioned, between kids who grow up self-absorbed as opposed to those who truly grow up and know how to seek balance and harmony? Indeed, more than once we hear some “other” who seems suspect declare, “We’re the good guys.” Who are we to believe?

The inclination to extermination is just the extreme of selfishness, the inevitable conclusion of selfishness. And it is itself entangled with the very reasons certain groups define themselves in contrast to “others.” Defining people as “others” (as the lostaways do), as “hostiles” (as the Dharma Initiative do), as enemy, is a sign of dichotomous thinking. Self vs. other, us vs. them. “We” are always fully human, while “they” are always less so. We are subject, they are object, and they deserve less than us, perhaps even death. It doesn’t matter if they die, they aren’t us, they aren’t people, we owe them nothing. Perhaps we even feel they need to die, or at least to have less, in order for us to be who we are. It is, in terms of game theory, competitive, win-lose thinking — for us to win, they must lose, and vice versa. Again, narcissism is normal in early stages of human development, and even for mature people, this kind of thinking can have its place. But as a general approach to living in the world, it is wanting — evident from the strife we see on all levels through our own world, obsessed as it is with this kind of thinking.

From the start, though, the series has posed that only those who live together will not die alone. It has posed the opposite of dichotomous thinking. It has posed the cooperative, the win-win. This is the maturity toward which all the characters struggle. Some resist it consciously, others seek it actively, but seldom is anyone successful at reaching it or staying with it. Without this thinking, everyone resorts to seeing themselves as good and the other bad. Only with this thinking, only with an attempt to find harmony, can good and bad be transcended, and can we embrace the fact that things aren’t as black and white as we might have thought. This is the redemption the characters seek.

And yet there’s UnLocke, apparently having hatched a plan to have the lostaways collectively off themselves so he can leave the island — not with them as he claimed, not giving them their heart’s desire as he promised, but obviously with some other outcome. The destruction of the world, as Jacob and Richard suggest? Not clear. But what is clear is that he was lying to them about his plan to get off the island and has certainly proved to be something other than the beneficent entity he tried to make them believe he was.

Is the show becoming simplistic all of a sudden, and have I been wrong all along? This has happened to me before, thinking a piece of entertainment might be capable of showing the way toward a real understanding of harmony, beyond the pat contrivances of good and evil. But they somehow seem to betray themselves. Star Wars. Titanic. The Candidate, with the obvious heartbreak of the death of the Kwons and the back-from-the-dark-side Sayid, and the revelation of the nefarious plan of UnLocke, all presented through the sunken submarine, has given me a bit of that sinking feeling again.

However, I still believe there is much evidence on “my” side, and so I continue to hold out hope that something better, something more interesting, is in store for the series’ final hours. Crucially, we haven’t yet been given any idea what the show, the characters, actually mean by the terms “good” and “evil.” From the simplistic us vs. them frame, from a standpoint of win-lose, good and evil become immature and completely relativistic labels, where what’s good for us is evil for them, and vice versa. But growing up our notions and seeing our way to win-win, we don’t have to discard these opposites entirely. We can come to think of them in new way.

On one level, what’s “evil” is dualistic, oppositional thinking itself, and what’s “good” is holistic thinking, thinking that acknowledges the variety of our experience and attempts as much as possible to accommodate as many as possible, thinking that even allows for competitive, win-lose thinking when it’s warranted. From this standpoint, white and black stand together on the evil side, with a rainbow opposing them.

On another level, good and evil can simply be the pleasant and unpleasant things that happen to us, the desired and the undesired, the ups and the down, in which case it’s important to embrace them all as normal aspects of life. It is trying to only have the good in this sense, failing to embrace the bad, that often leads to there being more bad and less good. On the other hand, accepting them both for the opportunities they provide is precisely what allows us to create a bit more good all the time. Here, in some sense, white and black and all else stand together, worthy of embrace, with nothing left as truly evil — the only real evil is denying part of our experience, trying to separate one or more colors from the rest.

Both of these perspectives stand in contrast to a totalitarian view of good and bad as enemies which must duke it out until only one color, white or black, can triumph. And so it may turn out that the Man in Black is evil after all, as Doc Jensen suggests, but that may turn out to mean something different from what anyone expects.

This is where I believed the show was pointing. It seemed a sophisticated deconstruction of our typical notions of good and evil, and it therefore seemed to be heading to a surprising ending, one that might even be jarring or disturbing for those who may themselves be too wrapped up in dichotomous thinking. Such a conclusion could only lead the nuances from earlier in the series toward an unexpected, far-from-trite resolution. And that resolution would have the potential to have a positive impact on the many who watch the show. It would have the potential to actually transform.

It’s not over ’til it’s over. It’s still possible that the show could hand us this very kind of conclusion, a mature and transformative one. Even still, it seems somewhat likely to me. After all, with the story plotted out so far ahead of time and kept such a secret, with so much mystery and subtlety along the way, and with the show’s creators sticking to their guns to end the show both when and how they wanted, completely according to their terms, and repeatedly stating that they have no idea just how satisfied audiences will be, does it seem possible or reasonable that the grand finale could involve a cliche like white beats black? Given the amount of evil clearly already in the world even with the Man in Black already bottled up on the island, how could keeping him there be a satisfying triumph of good over evil?

If a simplistic ending is what ends up happening, though, then Lost will find a spot on the crowded list of entertainments that I’ve enjoyed and will always hold a fondness for but which nevertheless disappointed in the end because they failed to achieve the greater promise I saw in them. If that happens, then I suppose I’ll be pretty glad I didn’t bother spending all that time writing an episode by episode commentary after all. We shall see.

Lost, Found: Raised By Another

October 2, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

Claire dreams of her baby’s disappearance. In the dream, Locke says, “It was your respnsibility but you gave him away, Claire. Everyone pays the price now.” She goes through the crib, only to get blood on her hands. This episode will soon tell us that she wanted to put the baby up for adoption. Is the message that there is blood on the hands of anyone who doesn’t effectively nurture their children, and that such parenting has a broad impact, far beyond just the child?

Charlie overlty offers to be Clarie’s friend, noting how difficult the island experience must be for her, especially since she’s pregnant. If she needs someone to talk to, he’s here. Is he hitting on her, or trying to make a genuine connection, or both? It seems to be the first time that someone on the island is so overly offering to establish a profound connection — and yet this directness itself seems a barrier given that such connections usually best occur organically.

Flashback: A psychic sees something in Claire and refuses to do the reading, sending her away. How certain is prediction, and how does it relate to the series’ theme of not being able to change the past yet staying open to changing the future?

Claire wakes in fight, screaming: “He was tring to hurt my baby!” Much later on we’ll find out about the vaccine and the disease that kills the island’s pregnant women. In fear, not knowing what’s going on, Claire’s assumptions get the best of her here. And yet, what else could she think? When those trying to help don’t make their intentions clear, is it so unreasonable to fear them?

In response to Claire’s attack, Hurley decides to take a census, hoping that if they start “laying down the law” that perhaps people will think twice about such offenses. Is he reproducing civilization here, or just attempting to truly get know his community?

Charlie says he’ll be there all night to protect Claire. But she then flashes back to Thomas, very concerned about their situation, how there are always plans and responsibilities, and worried that it will be even worse when the baby comes. She says, “You can’t just change your mind,” but he leaves her. Thomas wasn’t there for her after he’d promised he would be — can she believe Charlie will be?

Jack is concerned that Claire’s experience was a nightmare. Charlie gets very defensive, “It’s not all in her head.” Soon after, Claire is offended at the same suggestion from Jack: “You think I’m making this up?” She is so put off she leaves the valley camp. The assumption is that if it’s in your head, it doesn’t matter. More to the point would be the fact that, if it’s in your head as opposed to a threat from outside, it certainly matters but must be handled quite differently. Jack doesn’t say it doesn’t matter, but neither do his sedatives offer a way of handling things effectively beyond the short-term — so often the case with the medical model.

Flashback again to the psychic. He seems in pain, horror. “This is important… It is crucial that you yourself raise this child… This child parented by anyone, anyone other than you… Danger surrounds this baby. Your nature, your spirit, your goodness must be an influence… There is no happy life, not for this child, not without you. You mustn’t allow another to raise your baby.” In response, Claire becomes very agitated, thanks him for his time and leaves. She is in denial about this. Is it a very special circumstance this particular person is in denial about, or is this about the responsibility of parenting in general? How many parents “run away” from the prospect of getting in touch with their true selves in order to provide unconditional nurture to their children?

To Hurley’s census-taking, Boone says, “Maybe we’re just not cool with you setting up your own little Patriot Act.” Yet moments later, directly seeking the manifest from Sawyer, he prompts Sawyer to say, “You sure know how to butter a man up, Stay Puft.” Hurley responds: “It’s a gift.” They both seem to be joking, and yet Hurley was effective in getting what he wanted without Sawyer’s usual negotiations. Hurley does seem to have some talent for communication, connection, cooperation — all of which suggest that the census is a bit more innocent than Boone’s accusation suggests.

When Claire experiences severe pains, Charlie runs to get Jack but finds Ethan first and tells Ethan to get Jack. Charlie comes back to Claire, who complains of the pain. With the Ethan connection, we can’t help but imagine, in hindsight, if she is, indeed, going through the island’s pregnancy-related disease.

Flashback: She’s puzzled at the psychic’s suggestion of giving the baby to a couple in Los Angeles when all he’s done is warn her against having anyone else raise the baby. He says, “This is what must happen… It has to be this flight.” Claire believes he was full of it, but Charlie helps her see that perhaps he was not: “All he wanted was that no-one else raise your baby. Maybe he knew.” That is, maybe he foresaw the plane crash, knew he couldn’t tell her about it, yet knew he had to ensure she got on the plane. If it was foreseen, though, did he have to try so hard? Would she have ended up on the plane without his involvement? When even the psychic felt the need to intervene, the suggestion is that the future is malleable. It’s as if he saw not one future but possible futures and became proactive in generating the preferred outcome.

Charlie reassures Claire, “I told you I’d take care of you… I won’t let anything happen to you.” But his promises will go unkept . Should he make such claims just to make her feel better in the moment?

Sayid comes back to the caves. He reports that he found the woman on the island, that “We’re not alone.” Soon after, Hurley informs Jack of a problem: one person in the group doesn’t appear on the manifest. He wasn’t on the plane with them. We now know the survivors are even less alone — and that Rousseau may not be as crazy as she seemed.

Ethan shows up with Claire and Charlie. “Ethan, where’s Jack?” But they just stare at each other. Ethan has not gone to get Jack. He was not on the plane, he was on the island before them, and he has some other purpose here. We certainly are meant to think his purpose sinister. Is it? Can we find the gray area where the survivors’ feelings of threat are understandable, yet without completely demonizing Ethan and the Others? Not for now.

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Lost, Found: Solitary

September 22, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

The survivors can travel with each other, they can bond with others, and they can do so all the more effectively through and after their journeys, but each individual journey is a solitary one.

Sayid finds the cable to the ocean. What is it? A first thought might be some connection to the outside world, reasonable considering the evidence of both human presence and sufficiently contemporary technology on the island. Later, we’ll find out it’s something a little more insular to the island, more appropriate given what we’ve already learned about the island not “wanting” to be seen.

Hurley is sensitive to everyone being tense. He wishes there was something to do. Jack says they’re staying alive, and keeping everyone alive is his main concern. He’s playing into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, noting the fundamental importance of physical needs. But when is it “ok” to move up the pyramid, to move on and go for something beyond mere physical survival? Coming from a civilization so generally bereft of real but intangible satisfactions, it’s easy to understand why the survivors might have an exaggerated focus on physical survival.

Sayid is tortured by his captor. Payback for his torture of Sawyer? Flashback to him torturing someone else — the current torture seems payback for far more than Sawyer.

Walt asks Locke to take him hunting, Michael interrupts, saying it’s not going to happen. Michael is not ready for Walt to follow his own path, even refusing to let Walt be accompanied by someone who seems far more capable of handling danger than Michael himself. Does Michael have an inferiority complex with respect to Locke, or just the usual authoritarian leanings he’s already shown as a parent?

Sayid sees his captor’s name on a jacket — Rousseau, the same name as the philosopher famous for the concept of the noble savage. Is his captor noble? Is she savage? Neither? She refers to “You and the others like you.” It is the series’ first reference to “the others.” The otherness she imagines is bound up with the fear she feels for them. She, though, is mistaken, since Sayid is not one of “the others” she means. She moments later learns his name from the envelope she finds in his bag. There is significance in how they’ve learned each other’s names: by observing what is in front of each of them, outside of themselves, Sayid and Rousseau can learn more about each other than they can by starting with the assumptions and fears they hold inside. They learn names, and become people in each other’s eyes, real people, not dehumanized “others.”

In flashback, Nadia tells Sayid, “You always were older than your years.” Usually considered a compliment. But consider parentification, i.e., when young people assume adult roles before they are developmentally ready. This leads to unhealthy development, and in many ways prevents full development and maturation — the role is taken on without actually being an adult about it, and development can get stuck. Should anyone want to be older than their years? Shouldn’t everyone want to feel and act however many years they actually are? Is it possible that the very fact that people may feel older or younger than they are, may wish they were younger or older, is itself an indicator of immaturity?

Rousseau: “Tell me more about Nadia.” Sayid: “Alex. Who is he?” They each want to learn more, about each other, through knowledge of people important in their lives, paralleling their learning of each other’s names.

One moment, Rousseau is shouting, “Lies.” The next, “I’m so sorry” about Nadia being dead. Her emotional state is incredibly unstable. Is this what the island does to people who’ve been there some time? If we believe there is something meaningful to people’s journeys on the island, then we have to believe that Rousseau, full of fear of “the others” and so unstable even after all this time, has egregiously failed to understand the nature of her own presence on the island. Anyone who goes to her for information and understanding may possibly be misled — and to the extent that they become misled by her, we’ll need to question their own judgment, since they might be the kind of people who may also fail to understand their own life on the island.

When shown Hurley’s golf course, Michael says, “All the stuff we’ve got to deal with, this is what you’ve been wasting your time on?” Hurley: “If we’re stuck here, then just surviving is not gonna cut it…. Fun. Otherwise we’re gonna go crazy waiting for the next bad thing to happen.” Michael, not surprising given his parenting, immediately reacts like Jack, concerned about safety, but Hurley recognizes that there is more to life. Indeed, Hurley recognizes what so many others fail to: that they have been surviving, that there is such a thing as having physical needs sufficiently met, and that this is exactly when it’s not only desirable but crucial to expand one’s life experience into other kinds of satisfaction. Perhaps there is an indication here of some key ability of Hurley’s, the thing he can most contribute to the group. Indeed, it seems truly significant that this leap be made by “the fat guy,” someone who we might imagine would be the most focused on physical needs. The fact that he, of all people, is so motivated to transcend physical needs indicates that the focus others have on these needs may truly be excessive.

Sayid offers to fix Rousseau’s music box, she becomes untrusting, drugs him. We soon discover it was a sedative: “It was the only safe way for me to move you.” She wonders why he’d offer to fix it after all she’s done to hurt him. He will still do it, just wants to know her first name — it is Danielle. How did she come to be on the island? Another crash — a ship. She believes “the others” were the “carriers.” Of what? A disease? Is that what “killed them all”? She tells of whispers in the jungle. Rousseau: “You think I’m insane.” Sayid: “I think you’ve been alone for too long.” Even if she is right about the whispers, the disease, she is still the kind of person who will drug someone to keep herself safe, the kind of person who doesn’t understand why someone else would fix her music box after she’d hurt them. Rousseau has been in solitary on the island and seems no longer capable of connecting. To the extent that anyone is unable to connect, they are likely in their own kind of solitary, a prisoner of their own thoughts, even if they may be continually surrounded by people.

Kate to Sawyer; “One outcast to another? I’d think about making more of an effort.” She is telling him that he doesn’t have to keep himself in a solitary of his own making, that that is the path to being considered an outcast, an “other.” This exchange sheds light on the overall importance of the “others” having been brought up for the first time in an episode entitled “Solitary” — they are reflections of each other. To keep others as “other,” one must put oneself in solitary — and the same holds even for a group, putting itself in solitary, in opposition to all outside, all that then becomes other, enemy. Kate shows us that this can happen in even innocuous ways compared to whatever Rousseau has experienced.

Sayid fixes the music box. “You see? Some things can be fixed.” Indeed, Sayid is right, some things can be fixed — but not all things, and it’s crucial to know what can be fixed and what needs to abandoned in favor of something better. Danielle’s happiness and gratitude give way to fear again when a roar is heard above. She hopes it’s a bear. Sayid wonders if it is the monster, and Danielle says, “There’s no such thing as monsters.” Having been on the island longer, she has learned things that Sayid doesn’t know yet. Curious, though, that she should say this, since someone like her so concerned about “others” seems very much to lean on demonizing people, making other people out to be monsters. If she could get outside her own fear, she might realize that her own statement may be even more true than she knows.

Jack: “I haven’t been sleeping because I want everyone to feel safe, he builds a golf course, everyone feels safe.” He realizes that, though his focus was important, it was extreme. Focus too much on physical safety, and one can easily come to feel unsafe even though one is more than safe. At that point, it truly takes something else to come to feel safe, something emotional, intangible. It isn’t the golf course that did it, it’s the playing on the golf course, the experience, the fun of it. Jack is starting to see this now.

Walt tells Michael, “You left me alone at the caves.” Michael apologizes. The one time he’s apologetic is when he’s totally physically abandoned Walt. It takes that kind of extreme abandonment for Michael to realize that he’s wronged Walt. He doesn’t see the countless less obvious ways he may cause Walt to feel abandoned. All of this, appropriately, parallels Hurley’s great insight — that physical needs are important, but too much focus on them must come at the expense of emotional needs. For Michael, physical abandonment is the only “real” abandonment.

Locke is alone hunting. Solitary. Doesn’t seem to need the fun of golf. Walt comes to find him. Locke is concerned if Michael knows he’s there. Walt wants to learn how to throw the knife into a tree. It seems as if the fun of golf just isn’t fun for Walt. Walt needs something else, and he wants to find it here, learning new things with Locke. The suggestion is that there are levels of fun, enjoyment, satisfaction. Locke has transcended what golf can do, but most the others have not yet. Walt’s interest in Locke, then, suggests that Walt is young enough to not yet have been “spoiled” in some way, that only through some kind of accident — like the accident of authoritarian parenting — would he find himself thinking that golf would be a step up in satisfaction. Walt’s interest in Locke is significant because it seems an expression of Walt’s need to stay on his own path, a path he perhaps had gotten off but now has a chance, far earlier than most, to try to get back on again. Will he be allowed, or will he be denied? Does denial of one’s path mean being thrust into a mental solitary, and staying on one’s path mean freedom from such a prison?

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Mutant Message Down Under

September 13, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

Mutant Message Down Under
By Marlo Morgan

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Apocalypto

September 13, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

Apocalypto
By Written by Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia; Directed by Mel Gibson

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Lost, Found: Confidence Man

September 11, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

Boone going through Sawyer’s stash. Next thing you know, Boone’s bleeding, being helped back to camp. “What happened?” Boone: “Sawyer.” Sawyer, the only one who has seemed to horde property, the only one who has claimed property that isn’t personally useful, is now using violence to protect his plunder. A familiar story to any civilized culture: claiming possession of things that either already had a claim or were in a commons, then using force to keep it. This perpetuates the confusion between assets and income that allows unsustainable practices like economic growth to be pursued as a matter of ideology.

Sawyer’s letter seems to reveal that he seduced and conned a woman and that she and her husband were then killed as a result. And someone wants Sawyer dead. The price of deception is death and loss — and for those who experience that death and loss and don’t know another way to cope, they will want to perpetrate more of the same on those who caused it for them. A vicious cycle. But the vicious cycle is even more vicious, as we will learn, because of a further deception Sawyer is carrying out around this letter.

Shannon’s asthma acting up. The initial response, supported by doctor Jack: drugs, the medical solution, the pharmaaceutical fix.

Sawyer keeps flashing back to the con, in which he pretends to have things he didn’t really have — the seed money, the opportunity to make more money. He uses them — the illusion of them — so that others will give him something. A direct parallel to the asthma inhalers which, we will learn, Sawyer doesn’t actually have. Yet another deception we will only learn about later.

Shannon’s asthma is attacking. Boone insists she needs the inhaler, but Jack insists it’s anxiety for the most part. She breathes in through the nose as he instructs. It works. Hurley thinks it was like a Jedi moment. Was it an “old Jedi mind trick”? If so, then the Jedi aren’t as magical and special as they seemed, because this kind of mind trick is available to anyone. What’s most amazing is that something available to everyone should be used so seldom that it seems amazing.

Sayid says he will get the medicine from Sawyer. Torture. Sawyer is the enemy, the other, less than human, otherwise Sayid couldn’t do it.

Sawyer lets the torture go on, lets them go on thinking that he has the asthma medicine. Jack: “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Sawyer: “Yeah, it does.” After the torture is heightened and Sawyer reveals nothing, Jack wonders about him, “What the hell is wrong with you?” Sawyer only gives in when Sayid threatens to cut out his eye, but he will only tell Kate — why?

Flashback begins with someone asking him, “Do you want to die?” We learn the seed money wasn’t his in the first place, it was just fronted for the con. Sawyer is threatened with torture. Has Sawyer been tortured before? Reached his limits with torture before?

As a condition of telling where the inhalers are, Sawyer insists on a kiss from Kate, just as he’d asked for earlier. “You’re just not seeing the big picture here, Freckles,” he says, wondering if she’d let the girl suffocate because she won’t give him a kiss. She does it, and he immediately lets her know that he doesn’t have the inhalers, that the reason they’d all suspected him, the book — that had been packed with the medicine but that he was now reading — had simply washed up on shore. Why would he put himself through the torture when he didn’t have what they were after? Perhaps the kiss was the goal of the con — a moment of love and connection, even if false and superficial. More likely, it is power itself. He hordes goods, holds sway over those who want things from him. Others show leadership, but Sawyer is an alpha male, and he is doing his best to create an alternate power structure, one in which he can be top dog. If he is willing to endure torture to “withhold” goods he doesn’t even have, what will he be willing to do in the service of his actual possessions? On one hand, this is the true madness of hierarchy. On the other hand, it is, sadly, extremely effective in convincing others to bow to its power.

Sayid loses his temper when he finds out that Sawyer was lying. He believes it’s been lies all along and that Sawyer doesn’t want off the island. Sayid believes Sawyer must have broken the transceiver. They fight and he stabs Sawyer. Is this conflict, is this wound, justified, or is it the result of yet more assumptions and people letting their emotions get the better of them when they’d be better off keeping themselves in check?

Michael brings eucalyptus to Sun as she asked, Jin is up in arms about it, but nothing comes of it. Sun’s power in the relationship is increasing here on the island, where they are immune from so many cultural conventions that previously impacted them. Sun goes to Shannon with the plant.

Jack is holding Sawyer’s wound, keeping pressure on to keep him from bleeding to death. Sawyer says to Jack, “Let go, I know you want to…. If the tables were turned, I’d watch you die.” Does Sawyer actually have a death wish? Does he really want to die?

Flashback to the couple Sawyer was conning. He sees their kid, and we think now more than ever that this is the couple that will die as a result of the con, that this is the kid who writes the letter threatening to kill Sawyer. But he calls off the deal when he sees the kid. Our assumptions were wrong. We’ve been conned by Sawyer — and the writers — into thinking we understood the letter. The man we now know as Sawyer was once a kid, likely no more threatening than the kid we just saw — he has only become who he is now through profound trauma.

On the island, Sawyer wakes up, arm wound treated. Kate says he’s lucky to be alive — possibly little solace to someone who may have a death wish. While he slept, Kate examined the letter, wondering why he’d beat up Boone instead of just saying that he didn’t have the medication — does he simply want to be hated by everyone? Closer inspection tells her the letter is old — he was the kid, the letter written by him to someone whose con led to the death of his own parents. His name isn’t Sawyer. Sawyer was the con man, but then, as Sawyer says, “How’s that for tragedy? I became the man I was hunting. I became Sawyer.” In some sense, it was his only option — his only role model for survival given that his parents died, a role model that forces him to hurt others so that he can live. He wants nothing more now than to hurt the one who hurt him, so see the real Sawyer pay for what he did, to force the real Sawyer to feel the regret he seemed to lack. Perhaps this is why Sawyer wanted Jack to let go of the wound, so that he could know there’d be at least one person having to live with the conscious knowledge of having hurt him.

Sun applied the eucalyptus on Shannon’s chest. Jack realizes what it is and laughs. “Smart, Jack.” He seems embarrassed not to have thought to look for it himself in the island jungle. He thanks Sun, and all seems well. She has used her knowledge and talent, contributed to the group in ways nobody realized she could have, and all while making use of what was on hand, no lamenting what was “missing,” what they were unable to access from off-island.

Sayid decides he can’t stay. “I’ve worse things to fear than what’s in the jungle. What I did today, what I almost did, I swore to do never again. If I can’t keep that promise, I’ve no right to be here.” Sawyer seems successful at continuing to cut off parts of himself from conscious experience — the part that is deeply hurt by his parents’ death, a part which he perhaps feels would consume him if its feelings were permitted expression. Likewise, the parts of him that must regret the impact he’s had on all his marks, the subjects of his cons. Sayid had to squash himself in similar ways throughout the course of his previous torture work, but he obviously wasn’t successful at keeping it up. The shame and regret were powerful enough that he allowed them to be conscious and decided not to torture again. Would Sayid be leaving if the torture of Sawyer had “worked out?” Unknown. But Sawyer’s deception is a blessing in disguise for Sayid. When Sayid realizes the torture was for nothing, that it was only carried out because of Sawyer’s insanity, Sayid seems to recognize that insanity breeds more of the same. Sawyer may still want to live like that, but Sayid does not. Sayid, who knows his most profound fears are inside as opposed to out in the jungle, who wants to stop participating in vicious cycles, goes off to his own walkabout.

Sawyer almost lights the letter on fire with his lighter. But he doesn’t. He can’t shake his past. He’s still attached to it. He’s going to remain so for quite some time.

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Lost, Found: The Moth

September 6, 2008

By Mark S. Meritt

In flashback, the priest tells Charlie, “We all have our temptations, but giving into them, that’s your choice.” When Charlie’s brother Liam tells of the promise of a record contract, Charlie only agrees to proceed with the band if they can agree to walk away if things get too crazy. Charlie is keenly aware of the potential for bad things to come along with good things. Much to say about this moment.

First, before finding out Liam’s news, Charlie says he’s made his choice and knows he must quit the band. In Charlie’s world, the choice is between doing right and good on one hand and, on the other hand, doing what he wants, what he’s passionate about, what he’s good at. Is this a real choice? Is Charlie mistaken about just what temptation is? Shouldn’t there be a way to achieve a win-win between what works for him and what is perceived as good by others?

Secondly, on some level, we don’t have as much choice as we may like in terms of certain temptations. The physiological effects of heroin seem to deny Charlie some of his ability to choose. Likewise, the assumption that most of the survivors have that being off the island would be inherently better than staying on it also denies them some ability to choose, to understand their choices. In the end, it is true, we choose to give into our temptations, but it’s only once we can see our temptations for what they are and truly understand the alternatives that we can be truly free to choose, to give in or not.

Finally, there is power in the notion of walking away. Charlie hopes to find the win-win, to pursue the band while maintaining his values. He is willing to walk away if he gets to a point where he feels he cannot do this. This resonates strongly with Daniel Quinn’s suggestion that people walk away from civilization, acknowledging it not as evil but as something that brings much difficulty along with the benefits we perceive in it. When a situation cannot be resolved and one is left to decide between fighting and fleeing, if one cannot find a way to win, walking away is the only option, to try to fight another day and seek a win-win somewhere else.

Locke makes Charlie have a choice about the drugs. He believes Charlie is stronger than he thinks. Locke has seen himself confront things he didn’t think himself ready to — losing the use of his legs. He has seen himself made stronger by the island, in ways he could never have imagined previously. He has good reason to believe that people are stronger than the realize and can confront and move through and past their obstacles.

Kate to Sawyer: “It must be exhausting. Living like a parasite. Always taking, never giving.” Sawyer, a pack rat, claims ownership of things simply because he takes them. He holds things hostage, negotiating how he can get things for himself in exchange for what others want. Through his accumulation of material goods and sense of private property, Sawyer is recreating off-island hierarchy more than perhaps anyone else on the island.

Jin tells Sun, “What are you wearing? It’s indecent. Cover yourself.” She finally stands up: “It’s too hot.” Now that she has saved him from his imprisonment, she feels empowered and can assert herself. When she conceded, she met him on a common ground that she didn’t like. She is now moving somewhere else and saying, in effect, that Jin must himself move and change in order to find a new common ground with her.

Charlie’s temper — his yelling — brought the cave down. The cave may have been weak anyway, but the cave-in was spurred by Charlie. Weaknesses are only exploited when someone acts out against them before there is an opportunity to provide support for the weakness — in the cave, and in people.

At the cave, there is a leadership issue. Jack is trapped. Locke is away hunting. Others are away, and someone must assert some kind of leadership. Michael draws on his relevant construction experience. He is immediately engaged, using his knowledge and ability to guide the others in working with the broken structure of the cave, just as Jack did when applying his medical abilities right when the plane crashed. Crisis calls for action, and those who are able to step up and offer the best of who they are can make a difference for others.

Charlie finds Locke to ask for the drugs again, but Locke points out the nearby moth cocoon. If he opened the cocoon with his knife, the moth would die, too weak to live. The struggle to get out is what strengths the moth and prepares it for life. Charlie realizes he must face a struggle and volunteers to go in after Jack, noting that so many others are accountable to someone else — a husband, a sister, a son. He’s got nobody on the island and implores the others: “Let me do this.” This particular struggle is all the more important because he believes on some level that Jack is only in danger because of Charlie’s own temper. He is out not only to strengthen but also to redeem himself.

In the cave, the confined space reminds him of another. Flashback to Charlie going through a crowded backstage hallway. He seems uncomfotable. Claustrophobic. He goes to confront Liam, saying that Liam is killing himself with drugs and it is time to walk away as they’d promised each other. Liam says they there is nothing to walk away to and that Charlie is no use if he’s not in the band. This, too, resonates with Quinn, who offers something to walk away, who knows that people can’t move beyond civilization unless they have something else to walk toward. At this moment, despite his pain over the current situation, Charlie has no idea what could exist for him outside the band. He cries, trying heroin for the first time. He admits defeat — he cannot win in the band, nor does he know how to win outside the band, so his only remaining option is to accept that he has lost, to stay with the loss, and to cover up the resulting pain with drugs. For Charlie, the drugs are not recreational. Ironically, given that he just said Liam was killing himself with it, the drugs are Charlie’s only means for survival in the face of no other perceived options — just as so many in civilization turn to escapist activities as their only means of getting through what they perceive to be unpleasant lives with no alternatives.

On the island, Charlie goes through a related trial. He is traveling through a confined, uncomfortable place. At the end of the path lies another man, someone with whom he had a great disagreement, and someone he now feels compelled to confront, no matter how difficult, so that he can try to save that other person. But there is a crucial inversion. Liam brought the drugs on himself, Charlie wants to save him from the drugs but ends up taking the drugs on himself as well. In the cave, it was Charlie who brought the danger upon Jack. Because he is responsible, it is all the more crucial that he succeed now where he failed before. He must make sure that both he and Jack get out of harm’s way, instead of allowing himself and the other to both have danger get the best of them.

Backstage, he could only point out that Liam was killing himself, and that he therefore wanted to walk away. In the cave, Charlie say, “I’m here to rescue you.” He know Jack is not to blame, and he is here to make things better instead of just leaving. He faces trials. Going into harm’s way himself, he could get trapped and killed along with Jack. When Jack’s shoulder turns out to have been dislocated, Charlie doesn’t think he can pop it in. But just as when Jack helped Kate to stitch up Jack’s own wound, Jack is here to help Charlie perform this medical procedure on Jack himself. He tells Charlie that he can do it, that he is more capable than he realizes — echoing Locke’s own assessment of Charlie. With Jack’s shoulder, Charlie literally sets things right.

Flashback, Liam is cleaned up, but Charlie wants a comeback. “They won’t book DriveShaft without you.” Liam can’t get back into that scene, and is dismayed to find Charlie is still using drugs. Charlie puts the blame on Liam, saying that he only starting because of Liam. Was it Charlie’s choice to give into temptation, when he truly saw no alternatives at that point? Liam’s reaction is not to say that Charlie did it to himself. He understands that Charlie would not have turned to drugs if it weren’t for Liam’s own telling Charlie that he would be worthless outside the band. Liam offers to have Charlie stay and get help. He had somehow found a way to do it for himself, and now he knows that helping Charlie quite may be the only way that he can redeem himself in Charlie’s eyes, and in his own eyes. Charlie won’t have it, though. As so often is the case in Lost, there is no clear good or evil here. Charlie only knows how to have the music along with drugs now, and that is because of Liam. But music remains paramount to Charlie, and now Liam denies even that to him. Liam fails to convince Charlie to stay and clean up, but he also fails to help Charlie maintain the music he loves.

Charlie is concerned that Jack thinks him useless — as Liam thought him useless outside the band. But Jack assures him that he’s not useless, that it took a lot of guts to come into the cave after Jack. The recent circumstance haven’t called as much for Charlie’s talent for music as for others’ talents. But his lightheartedness has been appreciated in the midst of crisis, and now he is showing himself to have more in him as well. The cave then reminds Charlie of a claustrophobic confession booth — we are reminded that this is all about Charlie confronting himself and trying to get out the other side rather than retreat or be consumed in the process. And just at that moment, Charlie follows a moth to find a new way out of the cave. Jack tells the others, “Charlie found a way out.” Hurley: “Dude, you rock” — music isn’t the only way Charlie can rock.

Sayid is knocked out just as they are about to triangulate the distress signal. Is this somehow the island once again not wanting to be seen? Later we’ll find out it was Locke, who says he was trying to protect the group — why pursue a distress signal that warns that something killed everyone? Locke’s relationship with the island, though, makes the action somehow seem to fit into the island’s continued “efforts” to keep the outside at bay.

Walt says that the caves make for a cool place and wants to live here. Michael’s response is to look at Sun. We know that he wants to save Walt, to get Walt off the island. In this one moment, Michael is pondering avoiding all possible confrontation. Sun and Jin are moving here, and he has differences with them. The beach is the choice for those who want to be rescued, which is his priority, so why move to the caves just because they are cool? He thinks he knows best for Walt, and so he does not want to honor Walt’s request. It doesn’t matter that Walt has been moved around all his life and has never gotten to pick where to live, Michael cannot yet confront whatever in him makes him an authoritarian parent. And in the end, the caves, compared to the beach, represent embracing the island. And so, in this moment, thinking about avoiding these other confrontations, the prospect of staying here means the prospect of having to confront all that the island might ever make him confront, all he might ever have to confront in himself. Michael doesn’t seem into the idea.

Charlie comes over to ask Locke for the drugs, only to toss them into the fire. He’s made is choice, and Locke is proud, “Always knew you could do it.” He has come over with his sweatshirt hood up over his head, looking almost like a monk having made a powerful religious decision. But his guitar has been found — finally, here, Charlie has the opportunity to embrace his music again without drugs having to go along with it. He sees the moth again, and he knows that he has become stronger, having gotten out of a cocoon of his own.

But there is seldom just one cocoon for each character. Charlie will have to go through the unpleasantness of withdrawal from his heroin addiction. Others will have their own cocoons to get out of. And the fact that this powerful notion, of the moth getting stronger through the struggle to become free, is brought up here in this episode about an addict poses a crucial question: In what ways are the other characters addicts themselves? In what ways are things that we wouldn’t normally recognize as addiction actually very much the same in terms of the way we repeatedly cling to what is unhealthy?

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Lost, Found: Finally

If You Don’t Have Something Nice To Say…

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Lost, Found: Last Tuesday

Lost, Found: Light at the End of the Tunnel

Good and Evil and In Between

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The End of the Tunnel

Lost, Found: That Sinking Feeling

Lost, Found: Raised By Another

Lost, Found: Solitary

Mutant Message Down Under

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Lost, Found: Confidence Man

Lost, Found: The Moth

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