When is the podcast due out? Looking forward to your and everyone's appraisals.

Posted by Lying in the Statue's Shadow, 14/06/2010 5:22pm (2 years ago)

Sorry - what I meant to say I agreed with was that changing/widening perspective was used to great effect and was a big part of establishing the suspense element of the drama, especially early in the series.

Posted by Mike Drew, 13/06/2010 7:41am (2 years ago)

All: in my voicemail I talked my way into making a statement about the cultural moment from which Lost emerged that was much more specific and about the specifics of the moment in U.S. politics than I meant it to be. I really meant that point to say that 'Lost' tapped into a feeling of meaninglessness and disconnectedness in the culture that was made very conscious and acute by 9/11 and the events that followed (but which probably preexisted 9/11 and is likely rooted in the modern globalized, hyperaware culture and economy that has emerged in the last three decades - hence the prominence of intercontinental air travel and globally diverse characters). I regret making the observation be about a less universal and more divisive thing like politics. I think that was simply incorrect as analysis.

I mentioned an article in the Vancouver Sun about Lost's strong and weak points. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/bMUoFJ

It's worth browsing around the 'related stories' links there too, as I find that their writers have unexpectedly insightful and balanced things to say about the show at large. No offense to the Sun, or anything...

Posted by Mike Drew, 12/06/2010 11:32am (2 years ago)

LOST: The Mystery of the Elements Combined
For several years I have been a dedicated fan of the TV series LOST. I have rewatched episodes, scoured Lostpedia for deeper understanding and read and reread works of philosophy and literature mentioned in the show. I have spent hours listening to fan podcasts dissecting the show episode by episode or podcasts that have tried to offer synthesized character and mythological analysis. Yet, when I try to explain why I became so engaged in a television show, I often find it hard to put my finger on the “why.”
When Robin invited the listeners to join in his series reviews of LOST: the Good, the Bad, the Unknown, etc., I began to try to formulate a contribution to the discussion. As I thought about what I would say, my mind jumped from element to element of the show that I found particularly attractive, interesting or exciting. Still, I hesitated to post a comment to the blog for the thoughts seemed a jumble or mere flashes compared to the richer, fuller experience of enjoying LOST. And as I realized I could only capture the flashes, I realized I had my theme for the essay. LOST is not a recipe for success for any other television show, for it is not just the elements of the show that make it so powerful -- it is the combination. LOST is a mysterious stew that despite our ability to identify component parts, we will never quite be able to identify the blending and reforming of the elements that forms the experience of consuming the whole.

THE RECIPE:
Take one part adventure tale; add one part philosophical assessment of the nature of humans and their ability to live in a harmonious collective; add provocative narrative and stir with the mysteries of time and space, sprinkle throughout with fantastically beautiful natural settings and beguiling people and deepen the flavor with orchestral scores and visual settings that reward close attention: result more than 100 hours of television that delights, frustrates, intrigues and invites. LOST is a fabulous stew that will leave many of us hungry for more.
ADVENTURE TALE
Since I was a very young child, I have loved adventure stories. The mundane of finding shelter or food is suddenly a quest. The normal boundaries of family dynamics or social role are stretched and/or abandoned as humans have to adapt to the most important quest: survival. From Robinson Crusoe to The Hobbit, from Wagon Train to Lost in Space, literature and television have allowed us to learn about characters and moral choices as people face change and life threatening isolation. For some of us, the survival scenario alone is enough to have us wondering how will people who survived a modern jet liner crash on deserted island survive, but the creators of LOST added mysterious forces and iconoclastic devices that made the story one larger than mere survival for it transported the tale to the exploration of a new world. Charlie’s famous query at the end of the pilot “Where are we?” is exactly what made us what to explore with the survivors. Where are they and how will they survive? And as with all great adventure stories there were long term and short term quests. These quests could be long such as the quest of rescue (or enlightenment; see discussion of philosophical elements below). Yet episode by episode, the series did a good job of providing short quests of finding water, identifying why the radio transmissions were blocked, aiding an injured survivor or reconciliation among members of the island survivors after conflicts large or small. And equally important, and different from many of the archetype adventures, within our core set of characters we had people who did not necessarily share the same immediate goals. Relatively quickly we learned that for some of the survivors, rescue was not in the least desirable. Rose and Locke found the island to be a healing, rewarding place. In later seasons when the writers introduced “The Others”, Dharma, and the divisions within those groups, we found ourselves engaged in adventure tales that did not have the simple us and them tale of many great quest adventures with a unified oppositional force (e.g., The Wicked Witch of the East in the Wizard of Oz, The Empire in the Star Wars Saga). We had to keep struggling with the survival really not knowing where we were or where we stood. If you love adventure and quest tales, you could immediate join in the story of LOST and as I will note below, the writers were able to deepen and complicate the quests to keep people engaged in the story of any particular quest. We could not predict where the show would go or even why any particular resident of the island would join in or try to frustrate any particular quest.

LET IN THE LIGHT OF PHILOSOPHY
In one of my favorite courses in college, a course entitled Ritual, Symbol and Myth; I read an excerpt from Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge. That book once treated as ethnography and now largely discussed as fiction, presented the author trying to interview a Yaqui shaman, Don Juan. Don Juan tells him that he must spend the evening on the porch of his house and if he can find his place, he might accept him and allow him to spend more time with him. Don Juan then goes inside his house and Castaneda is alone and confused on the porch. What did Don Juan mean, how was he to interpret it. Castaneda searches through all of his knowledge of the Yaqui people and the anthropology of the customs of the people desperately trying to divine what Don Juan meant. Eventually he falls asleep on the porch and in the morning Don Juan finds him there and laughingly wakes him saying “I see you found your place.” [I am paraphrasing the story from my memories of having read this more than 25 years ago]. The class and stories like the story of Castaneda and Don Juan opened my worlds for me. What are we looking for when we look for meaning, spiritual enlightenment, and truth? It is not that the world’s great philosophies and religions don’t have a great deal to teach us, but the context of our experience and engagement with the ideas, rituals and mythologies is as important as the knowledge. LOST referenced deeper meaning by teasing hints in hieroglyphics on a 1970’s era counter in the hatch or by character names that referenced famous scientists, philosophers and mystics. Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass and his book BE HERE NOW is a great example of how the writers of LOST allowed some viewers to have flashes of deeper commentary. We could take the hints as a direct instruction of direct meaning or we could enjoy the metaphor of the references. Whether the reference made us think about the essential nature of man (Rousseau) or the development of engineering theories (Faraday) or the struggle for most of us to live in the moment (Zen Buddhist master Dogen), by adding these flavors of larger eternal questions into the episodic stories, the writers told us we were in a longer quest. If you like, you could say that the experience of trying to understand LOST and its meaning is a metaphor for our trying not to be lost in our own existence. Or, you could simply have fun remembering the powerful moral tale of Watership Down, and wondering if you really were a snob all your life for not reading Stephen King’s Carrie when Juliet declared it her favorite book. The ability to look for larger philosophical themes in LOST added a great deal to my enjoyment of show and reminded me of watching the work of Joss Whedon where existentialism and a myriad of other philosophical themes are dramatized and explored to great effect in the tableau of a surreal world with supernatural challenges (Buffy and Angel) or in a complex future world with technological and neurological advances (Firefly and Dollhouse). But most powerfully, it wasn’t just the oblique references to world religious or ancient civilizations or the name dropping power of referencing great thinkers, it was that these elements elevated and complicated the engagement in the quest/adventure tale. My favorite type of philosophical book or novel has always been the story of trying to build a just and fair society. Plato’s Republic, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, or the dystopia of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle or B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two: all of these books and many more explore the greatest adventure there is--how can men and women organize their lives to live together. Jack’s claim “If we can’t live together, we die alone!” echoed powerfully throughout the series and is a blunt restatement of a larger political and social question of the role of the individual and the state. So if you just wanted to enjoy LOST as a story in part of the politics of humans and the organizational structures of their societies you could do that as well. [When we turn to the weaknesses of LOST, it is here that we might question whether the writers could have developed the motivations of the Dharma Initiative members (scientific socialism?) and Widmore (capitalistic individualism?) or the Others (Buddhist guides/protectors?) in a clearer and more provocative manner.] Very importantly, the writers and producers used a technique of integrating these elements of philosophical debate into a visual medium. Though we often wished the character would communicate more and more clearly, we surely would have been turned off by long philosophical debates of the purpose of life or the nature of the just life. The soulful sorry and brevity of Ekko, the brief, anxious, declaration of Lock of “what if we came here for a purpose?” supported by the allusions to larger philosophical themes work for this media. Even the great writer, Tolstoy, is criticized for the exposition between his fascinating characters when they engage in political and philosophical debates within his masterpieces Anna Karenina and War and Peace. For me, letting the philosophy in, not only distinguished LOST from most television, it took the adventure to a deeper level.
IT’S HOW THE TALE IS TOLD
For most of us, at some point, we discover a story that didn’t begin with “the beginning” and we are delighted at the surprise, the enchantment of the experience. Later, if we reread, we shake our heads at how the joy and delight of the story is somehow a bit less when we know the “whole” tale. If you know that Dorothy hit her head in the tornado and that Oz and all its wonderful adventures may not have been real, you feel just a little bit less frightened when the winged monkeys snatch Dorothy and Toto to the witch’s castle. In other great works, it maybe the trusted voice of the narrator has suddenly become false, distorted, mistaken and you are forced to reexamine the entire story to see if you know what you think you know. In many great books, there are huge debates about the reliability of the narrator that continue on and due to the subtle mastery of their authors, may (hopefully) never be fully resolved. Is Nick truthful in his tale and description of Gatsby or is he blinded by desire and idolation? Is the sad, loyal butler in Ishiguru’s masterpiece Remains of the Day, an innocent dupe or a complicit fool? Is Ben, the tool of the smoke monster/spurned and bitter brother of Jacob, or is he a manipulative, selfish small minded man driven by fear and insecurity? Is Jacob a wise and mysterious leader imbued with power and knowledge or is he feeling his own way, doggedly following the instructions of his Mother, the only human he has ever known intimately besides his brother? Almost every character in LOST was made more interesting and complex by the fractured, non-linear narrative and by the ability of the authors to give us varied contexts and points of view to examine the qualities of the characters. Good or bad, trustworthy or manipulative, it was nearly impossible to judge any character for long. And yet, these shifts in perspective did not feel unduly arbitrary because of the ways the writers used flashbacks and other narrative devices to keep us surprised and continuously enlightened and then uncertain. The plotting of the time travel season was, in full retrospect, one of the most powerful designs of the series. If the writers did not intend it from the beginning, it is even more remarkable for the plot unwinds to reveal again that the adventure we have been watching is also an epic exploration of eternal questions of determinism and freedom – “whatever happened,happened” and in large part we helped to create the world we experience. We own our suffering. Bravo to the brave complications the network allowed the writers to develop. We had not only seasonal arcs but metastories or “long cons” that allow us to now revisit the story with new eyes.

A FEAST FOR THE SENSES
While a mean meal of crackers and cheese can taste wonderfully refreshing if you have been hiking all day, the most memorable meals are those where food and setting combined to enhance our enjoyment. LOST invested in playful and serious visual storytelling. Many noted the use of mirrors or the repetitious physical blocking of characters such as Ekko or Jack or Lock, standing two feet in water, looking out, legs braced apart surveying the world. The stunning beauty of Hawaii and the unsual plants added to the adventure and just as in on a real island, the plants, the mountainous territory, the curve of cliff marked shoreline, blocked our ability to see ahead, to watch the way behind and to anticipate who might be waiting in ambush. All might be an ordinary element that would enhance any television show, but again, here the landscape complimented the larger metaphors and explorations within the show itself. All the sets had stories to tell, some with great mystery: the Hatch and the blast door map, the cliffs with the cave, the Dharma houses, and others perhaps were intriguing but ultimately a bit less successful: the Temple, Widmore vast corporate empire, Hawking’s Lamppost station in a church. LOST went the extra step to make careful viewing and really seeing important. Paintings, text, colors, shadows all added and amplified the mysteries. The visual storytelling was terrific and reminded me of how simple visual mysteries can really make you watch! The white bouncing balloon like ball in The Prisoner, the plastic dinosaurs in Wash’s pilot station in Firefly, the Dharma logos in LOST…visual clues that speak volumes.
And because LOST invested in the orchestral score as well, the music of Michael Gianchino became a part of the narrative. While I often didn’t notice it as I watch any particular episode, Gianchino was able to establish motives and silences in the series that added depth and made some of us even think he was privy to the narrative reveals. One could generate dozens of additional theories about the motivations of the LOST characters simply by studying the themes and techniques Gianchino used to establish emotional tableaus for the action. One brief example, when the Mother is introduced in Across the Sea, the music that plays as we see her reflected in the stream is music and sound effects used when we meet the Smoke Monster. Immediately we distrust her. Brilliant storytelling, cryptic dialogue, entrancing acting but all pulled together and seasoned by the visual and aural clues.

The Best of Lost
It is the whole, the experience, the immersion and the opportunity to allow the imagination to explore beyond. I don’t know when television will offer such a meal again.

Posted by Lenni, 09/06/2010 4:42pm (2 years ago)