Women Love Fest: Ana Lucia Cortez, Day 1
Ana Lucia is the poster girl for the hated women of the fandom. She was almost universally hated by viewers and critics alike as "one of the most intensely hated characters on television [in the] fall [of 2005]" (quoting after Wikipedia, the original article seemingly no longer exists). Back in 2006, when the second season of Lost aired in Poland, most of my friends admitted to hating her for at the run of several episodes at least, and after that gradually warmed up to her, learned how to tolerate her, or finally got to like her shortly before her demise - with her final episode Two for the Road (2x20, aired a day before my matura exam).
What was it that made her so hated? One can hardly call the survivors of 815 a likeable bunch. They were all deeply flawed, often behaved erratically and selfishly, rarely thought ahead. Why was Ana-Lucia Cortez treated so differently? I'm afraid I can't offer any real explanation to that as I am biased (in favour) and tend to see blatant misogyny where bad writing or personal prejudice and sympathies could be to blame, but I can try.
We meet her first at LAX, along with Jack, where she is presented as a fellow Flight 815 passenger and a future love interest for the good doctor. This is very misleading, since when we next see Ana, she is the peremptory leader of the tail section survivors, and she promptly throws Sawyer, Michael and Jin into a pit, which to me is perfectly understandable, as she has no idea who these three bedraggled men really are. Conflict is at hand: Ana tolerates no dissent, and Sawyer tolerates no authority. These two fight the whole way to the other side of the island; Sawyer is clearly losing, since his bullet wound got infected. Then is starts pouring - a true torrential downpour - and Ana Lucia accidentally shoots Shannon Rutherford.
By that time everyone hated her. The screenwriters must have expected that, so they made a very good move: the next episode that was aired didn't deal with Shannon's shooting or any of that; it showed us the story of the tail section survivors and made me really like and admire Ana Lucia. She was one of the first to drag themselves out of the water and she immediately started helping others. Back then we didn't even know she used to be a police officer, which would explain how she knew what to do and why she was the one to assume leadership over the rag-tag group of survivors; and why she took it so seriously. I believe that was one of the complaints about Ana Lucia: that she had "a perpetual scowl" that she was "dictatorial" and a "nut-job" (once again, Wikipedia, though I remember this stuff from discussion boards and press reviews). If anything, The Other 48 Days proved that she wasn't so far off the mark with her stern decisions and seemingly unnecessary caution; while the fuselage survivors lounged on the beach, sunbathing, hunted boars and argued incessantly, the tail section had to survive each day with what they had on their backs - and in imminent danger of being taken away by the Others.
To me it was clear: Ana Lucia did what she had to do to keep the tail section survivors alive. She made some unpopular decisions and she stuck with them, like that time when she threw Nathan into the pit. When she figured out that Goodwin was a mole, she took him aside and took him on, a man twice her weight, with a little penknife. No wonder that made her paranoid and jumpy; no wonder she wouldn't believe three strange men found on the beach. She was stubborn, domineering and authoritative, but determined and competent as well. Sure, she could have done a better job if she sometimes thought her decisions through, but under the circumstances it was the best one could hope for. She was just an ordinary police officer, probably with basic crowd control and medical training, thrown into a truly horrible situation with a dentist, a psychologist, an air hostess and a priest that refused to speak.
It's only after I wrote all of this down that I realised that it reminded me of another widely-despised woman in uniform: Admiral Helena Cain (BSG). True, the extent of Cain's actions can't be compared to Ana Lucia's and her rag-tag bunch of tail section survivors to Pegasus' civilian fleet, but I read and heard the same complaints about Admiral Cain, and I even used the same arguments to defend her... Even though I agree that what she did was unforgivable, isn't it understandable on some level? She, too, did what she had to do, "and we all felt safer because of it", as Kara Thrace once said (I may be paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it). Ana Lucia was presented with an enormous challenge and she took it. Her performance wasn't entirely unobjectionable, but she did her best, and for that I truly admire her.
That's it for today. Throughout this fest I am going to try and tackle other issues surrounding Ana-Lucia, such as her history and background, the reputation she had among the other survivors of Flight 815, and my own feelings on the subject (which are varied and numerous, I've got a lot of feelings). Thank you for reading!
What was it that made her so hated? One can hardly call the survivors of 815 a likeable bunch. They were all deeply flawed, often behaved erratically and selfishly, rarely thought ahead. Why was Ana-Lucia Cortez treated so differently? I'm afraid I can't offer any real explanation to that as I am biased (in favour) and tend to see blatant misogyny where bad writing or personal prejudice and sympathies could be to blame, but I can try.
We meet her first at LAX, along with Jack, where she is presented as a fellow Flight 815 passenger and a future love interest for the good doctor. This is very misleading, since when we next see Ana, she is the peremptory leader of the tail section survivors, and she promptly throws Sawyer, Michael and Jin into a pit, which to me is perfectly understandable, as she has no idea who these three bedraggled men really are. Conflict is at hand: Ana tolerates no dissent, and Sawyer tolerates no authority. These two fight the whole way to the other side of the island; Sawyer is clearly losing, since his bullet wound got infected. Then is starts pouring - a true torrential downpour - and Ana Lucia accidentally shoots Shannon Rutherford.
By that time everyone hated her. The screenwriters must have expected that, so they made a very good move: the next episode that was aired didn't deal with Shannon's shooting or any of that; it showed us the story of the tail section survivors and made me really like and admire Ana Lucia. She was one of the first to drag themselves out of the water and she immediately started helping others. Back then we didn't even know she used to be a police officer, which would explain how she knew what to do and why she was the one to assume leadership over the rag-tag group of survivors; and why she took it so seriously. I believe that was one of the complaints about Ana Lucia: that she had "a perpetual scowl" that she was "dictatorial" and a "nut-job" (once again, Wikipedia, though I remember this stuff from discussion boards and press reviews). If anything, The Other 48 Days proved that she wasn't so far off the mark with her stern decisions and seemingly unnecessary caution; while the fuselage survivors lounged on the beach, sunbathing, hunted boars and argued incessantly, the tail section had to survive each day with what they had on their backs - and in imminent danger of being taken away by the Others.
To me it was clear: Ana Lucia did what she had to do to keep the tail section survivors alive. She made some unpopular decisions and she stuck with them, like that time when she threw Nathan into the pit. When she figured out that Goodwin was a mole, she took him aside and took him on, a man twice her weight, with a little penknife. No wonder that made her paranoid and jumpy; no wonder she wouldn't believe three strange men found on the beach. She was stubborn, domineering and authoritative, but determined and competent as well. Sure, she could have done a better job if she sometimes thought her decisions through, but under the circumstances it was the best one could hope for. She was just an ordinary police officer, probably with basic crowd control and medical training, thrown into a truly horrible situation with a dentist, a psychologist, an air hostess and a priest that refused to speak.
It's only after I wrote all of this down that I realised that it reminded me of another widely-despised woman in uniform: Admiral Helena Cain (BSG). True, the extent of Cain's actions can't be compared to Ana Lucia's and her rag-tag bunch of tail section survivors to Pegasus' civilian fleet, but I read and heard the same complaints about Admiral Cain, and I even used the same arguments to defend her... Even though I agree that what she did was unforgivable, isn't it understandable on some level? She, too, did what she had to do, "and we all felt safer because of it", as Kara Thrace once said (I may be paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it). Ana Lucia was presented with an enormous challenge and she took it. Her performance wasn't entirely unobjectionable, but she did her best, and for that I truly admire her.
That's it for today. Throughout this fest I am going to try and tackle other issues surrounding Ana-Lucia, such as her history and background, the reputation she had among the other survivors of Flight 815, and my own feelings on the subject (which are varied and numerous, I've got a lot of feelings). Thank you for reading!