International Blog Against Racism Week: 15 awesome, nonwhite Lost characters

[buongiornodaisy]

This comes with a caveat: these are 15 awesome Lost characters who are either not white or who are played by nonwhites. People who've seen Lost all the way through know why that caveat is there. This has spoilers, so proceed with caution.

Comments

[schmiss]

Ahh, see, I love this post - and yet it crystallizes Lost's race problem for me. To whit: Lost is better than 99% of TV shows at the Race Thing - especially fandomish shows, which are almost all hugely white casts with one or two exceptions each - yet all these characters are brought on for mood, or plot, or to kick ass and creep us out, while the ESSENTIAL characters are white and male. There is Richard, but as you point out, we have no idea what he's coded to be (reminds me of Battlestar Galactica where the PoC conversations always get mixed up because, wut, Edward James Olmos playing Jamie Bamber's dad

[buongiornodaisy]

Oh, yeah, I'm not fronting like Lost doesn't have race issues. They do, and they crept their way into this post. I would argue that some of the characters here (Sun, Hurley, Sayid, Jin) are essential, but only in the sense that if they're needlessly killed the writers will catch hell for it. But, obviously, the characters who are the crux of the show's mythology are white males, and everyone else is used as accent pieces.

But I do love that Lost has such a diverse cast and handles diversity in a way that's not Obviously Trying Too Hard. One of my favorite lines of the show is when Michael says, "I don't know how it is in Iraq, but in the United States of America, Korean people don't like black people!" Perrineau delivered it awesomely; that besides, it comes off in a way that feels natural and real to me. Michael isn't making a Statement about the Plight of Black People, he's just telling it like it is, like how he sees it. And as I said with Chang, they do a good job not going all GAISE LOOK IT'S A MINORITY GAISE LOOK LOOK :D :D WE

[buongiornodaisy]

Also, Richard is coded to be "WTF". Definitely a native of WTFistan.

[bookelfe]

Oh yay, I was hoping this was the post you meant! :D I am so glad you did this. When I was watching the show waaay back in the first and second season, Michael, Sayid, Sun and Jin were my favorites of the cast (and one of the things that turned me off was the focus away from their storylines and onto the Eternal Love Triangle of Dooooooooom). And your post is sort of making me wnat ot catch up. >.>

Also, completely shallowly, I could spend a long time just staring at these black-and-white images. They're all so pretty!

[buongiornodaisy]

Love Triangle of Doom is still going strong and, since you've read this post, has gone up by one. Not sure if it's still a quadrangle as the plus one got a little cozy with a hydrogen bomb that may or may not have reset time. But, yeah, that's one aspect of the show that has not gotten better.

Keeping in the spirit of this post, definitely keep up for Richad! I'm definitely a mythology fan of the show, and Richard's one of the best features of that mythology. Also, he is hot.

(This keeps me from saying "WATCH FOR BEN" since Richard is close to Ben...professionally at least.)

[bookelfe]

I won't lie, actually, the main thing tempting me to go back and watch is your #1, Sun. I am kind of a sucker for intelligent, dangerous ladies who can come up with a plan and follow it through!

[buongiornodaisy]

SUN IS LE PLUS AWESOME IN THE LATER SEASONS, FOR REAL. We're talking corporate takeover levels of awesome.

[sunhwa]

First of all:

HOW IS ILANA NON-WHITE. SHE'S RUSSIAN. LOL. Or wait, you mean the actress?

Okay, reading now. And:

SUN

[buongiornodaisy]

DOES ANYONE KNOW WTF ILANA IS LOL

SHE COULD BE FROM GUAM FOR ALL WE KNOW

OR ~THE ISLAND~

[sunhwa]

But they spoke Russian D: Why would they need to speak Russian if she wasn't D:

[buongiornodaisy]

YOU CAN SPEAK RUSSIAN AND NOT BE WHITE YO

[sunhwa]

~~I READ IT ALL

[buongiornodaisy]

THEY TOOK MAH HUSBAND. THEY TOOK MAH HUSBAND RIGHT OUTTA MAH HANDS

ALSO LOL NIKI AND PAULO. I just. They were only good in Expose, which wasn't enough to put them on this list. If it were a list of Lost characters who are not white, they'd be on it. But awesome characters? lol no

[sunhwa]

Oh come on, Nikki's soothing sex talk with Claire was Oscar-worthy.

Yes yes, I just hope they get reunited and Sun finally shuts up. But, oh man, really :(
Sayid doesn't do anything anymore, Hurley seems to get dumber by the minute and Sun/Jin are reduced to being on a mission to find each other.

In other words:

[buongiornodaisy]

Why is Yunjin so beautiful in that. WHY.

The whole thing with Sayid is ridic. I mean, Jack Bauer and James Bond keep losing the women they love and THEY don't sit around feeling sorry for themselves all the time. It's like, they feel sorry for themselves and then something happens and they kick ass again!!! Not "fml I'm gonna go shoot up some kids now brb"

[lady_ganesh]

Sometimes when I see comments on a fandom I only know peripherally, I'll find out someone's not universally liked, and end up going, "huh, wait-- really? People don't like her?"

And so I am now staring open-mouthed at #1 going, "who could possibly not love SUN?"

Anyway, this list is kickass. I dropped out of LOST a while ago but still love how diverse and interesting the cast is. (And that doesn't mean there aren't still issues, but damn! Ten interesting POC! one of whom is Lance Reddick! One of whom is Sayid!)