meta on Lost 6.16
I had planned on a full month of hiatus, to get my head screwed on straight about what I wanted this LJ to be (and I will definitely be posting about that soon!), but I couldn't resist some thinky meta on last night's episode. Lengthy, too
( Read more... )
I'm all about Lost making sense. And it almost always does, at least from the abstract viewpoint of old school narrative theory. ;)
I'm less certain about Desmond's role in things (I have to see what comes of him in the end), but I do think a lot of the problems fandom has had with the show stem from its beginnings in ostensible realistic storytelling and its transition to something more epic -- which in most critics' terms are two opposed genres, the former an open sort of storytelling based on the individual (free will!) and the latter a closed story, originating from the past, so that the individual's role is already circumscribed by myth.
That transition was nasty, which is why us old-school Jack/Sawyer gals couldn't make it: we were asked to shift paradigms, from an novelistic character view to one more restricted. I think ultimately the show proves itself to be a tug of war between the genres (between fate and free will), a real hybridization of genres rather than a fuckup. This might account for why writers who got into writing the show at a later date (say, season 3 or 4) have less problem with the twists and turns the show takes: because they started writing during the messiest moment of the genres fusing, so it's part and parcel of their understanding of how plot relates to character.
Now that I think about it, this might account for Desmond. When I think of Desmond, I think of his favorite author, Dickens. Having just finished a big-canvas Dickens novel, I can tell you it pushes the envelope, in terms of balancing the concerns of the individual and his or her place in a complex world. Bleak House had a huge cast of characters, many there simply to forward the plot, which was in many ways a mystery plot. Characters were continually subject to the fate of their social class, but the most round of them asserted their free will (which is common in these sprawling Victorian novels, since so many of them focus on the rigid class system and those who manage to move up and down in it, through sheer force of will, like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, or like the countless orphans throughout the history of the novel who discover their true paternity). How this connects to Desmond as a character, I don't know. Hell, it might not. But I'm thinking on it.
Anyway, sorry for the brain dump. I really do plan on working out some of these ideas more concretely, and when I do, I'm sure I'll post them.
Reply
Yes. That.
Except I've been here and writing Jack/Sawyer slash fanfic since season 1 and I seem to have made the transition just fine (?). Granted, I wasn't posting regularly and participating in fandom discussions...at least since I decided the fans on the TWoP boards were sapping my will to live. Maybe I'm weird. Maybe I've been through too many fandoms to get so invested in the direction of the show that I get worked up over the slightest perceived misstep.
Or maybe I just recognize that even the best of television is subject to the limitations of the medium. Am I pissed that Kate has been completely marginalized over the years to the point where we are constantly reminded now that she doesn't matter at all anymore? Yes. But 90% of all television shows reflect a patriarchal society so I'm not surprised. That's one of the reasons *why* we write fanfic, right?
Reply
Leave a comment