BLOG POST ABOUT LOST'S SHITTY TREATMENT OF WOMEN
SEXIST BEATDOWN: Lost Appreciation Edition
You know what we have been talking about lately at the Tiger Beatdown? Serious subjects! And you know what is not a serious subject: LOST.
Oh, wait, yes, it totally is! If you are one of the many superfans of the show! You guys, are they on a spaceship? Are they all in Hurley’s imagination? ARE THEY IN A SNOW GLOBE? IS EVERYBODY DEAD?
In this very special episode of Sexist Beatdown, Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I answer exactly none of these questions! Instead, we pose new ones, which are: Why does every single lady on this show end up with a baby and a boyfriend and also occasionally lethal injuries? Are we supposed to be sad that Sun escaped her abusive marriage? (One of us is, actually! It is somewhat messed up.) Who replaced interesting Juliet with Boyfriend-Centric Robot Juliet, and why? And, was it really necessary for Shannon to redeem herself from “heartless bitch” status with her vagina? (Before getting shot, obvs! Ladies, do not date Sayid. You will get shot. Or run over, with a car. He’s Just Not That Into Your Odds Of Continued Survival, apparently.) And, most importantly: WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO KILL JACK???? Please, someone kill Jack. Please. We are begging you.
ILLUSTRATION: That’s a dealbreaker, ladies. That is like five dealbreakers, actually. Not pictured: stalking, yelling, controlling, drinking, pills.
SADY: Hi there! Are you LOST? Have I LOST you? It would be a shame if I LOST my internet connection! Also, kill me.
AMANDA: Wait, let me do one: I’m beginning to think i have “LOST” interest in LOST this season.
SADY: I have LOST track of all the times I have LOST interest in LOST, really.
AMANDA: It’s part of the whole deja vu thing.
SADY: It stems from the fact that we seem to have LOST 98% of all the female characters.
AMANDA: Right. I think we’re down to two now! Wait, plus, Ana Lucia 2.
SADY: Yes, that Ilana chick! I do not know what is up with LOST (not letting go of the caps!) and the death of all the ladies. It is true, however, that it is a big hit on some fronts! For example: having more than one character of color, and having them have conversations with each other. Conversations that do not go like, “I am an Asian man! I hear that you are Latino! Truly, neither of us is a white person.” Instead, they talk about Star Wars fan fiction. Which is fine by me!
AMANDA: Sure. And all-capital LOST has always had a tendency to dispose of characters after their most compelling storylines have been drained, or before even. I mean, a lot of people die on this show. What I want to know is where this murderous impulse was when Jack was bloated on pills and drunk at work and wouldn’t shave and was trying to make his fake baby fly back with him to a magical island? I could have dealt with Jack dying.
SADY: I can constantly deal with Jack dying. Every episode, I hope it will be the one where Jack makes a cry face or starts to make a speech about “fixing things” and then a polar bear sneaks up behind him and eats his entire head. My problem with the “most interesting story lines” though, to be troublesomely ladybusiness for a moment, is this: Claire’s most interesting story line was having a baby and a boyfriend. Sun’s most interesting storyline is having a husband and a baby. Kate’s most interesting story line is having two potential boyfriends, between whom she cannot choose, and also a baby eventually. Juliet’s most important storyline was that her boyfriend might have thought for 1.5 seconds about liking another girl so she had to fall down a mine shaft and explode three times on screen.
AMANDA: Shannon has the best ladybusiness storyline, which is revealing to viewers that she’s not a stuck-up bitch by making sweet love to a man she had previously regarded as a terrorist. I had forgotten that Shannon even existed until LOST had to go back and reset this whole thing. But yes. Yes. Juliet’s death is the one that really bothered me, because she is this woman who always had really interesting motives that had little to do with which boyfriend she wanted to pick. And she was never all that likable. She was the woman you were supposed to not root for while you were rooting for Kate to claim both of the boyfriends. But then, LOST turns her into the Dharma initiative’s model wife - a role that she has played before, except that she was unhappy and independent and rebellious in that role. And after LOST made Juliet accept that role happily, boom. Dead! Storyline resolved.
SADY: Yeah, precisely. And I want to believe that she just exploded because she got a role on a TV show! But it is true that she showed up, and she had all of these complicated, unreadable motives, and this completely complex and interesting back story, and then she was like: hey, a boyfriend! I love my boyfriend. Oh no, my boyfriend! EXPLODE. And this is a thing that is interesting to me, because: I don’t think LOST is great art. I think LOST is good-to-great pulp fiction. I have a high tolerance for good-to-great pulp fiction, as it happens. But it’s so masculinized - it’s seen as such a boy thing - that the only roles for women (or plotlines for women) are things about love interests. The boys are all saving the world and the girls are all saving their marriages.
AMANDA: Yeah. And we have to make sure to fix Jack so that Jack can get back to saving us. But can we turn to one of the only remaining original ladies for a moment, the one with the most explicitly ladybusiness plotline?
SADY: Yes! Let us do so!
AMANDA: I am speaking, of course, of Sun, who crash-landed on a desert island with her abusive husband and then gradually taught him not to be such a huge jerk anymore so they could fall in love again.
SADY: Ha, yeah. And then we learned that she had to keep her cardigan buttoned on a tropical isle because SHE WAS A CHEATER! CHEATER! And he was insecure.
AMANDA: The interesting thing about Sun’s plotline now, is that if the plane hadn’t crashed, we see Jin being taken away by customs and Sun escaping him. And we’re supposed to be… sad… about this development, because we know that if Sun had just WAITED IT OUT on a DESERT ISLAND, Jin would have come around.
SADY: Ha, yeah. And here is where my feelings about feminism and romance and storytelling get all complicated, because: I actually do love the romance of Sun and Jin on some levels. I like that it’s a story of a marriage getting into this unbelievably shitty place, because two people misunderstood each other, over and over, profoundly. I know that story. “I was trying to be what you wanted! So now I am unhappy! And mad at you!” “Yes, well, I was trying to be what YOU wanted, so now I am EQUALLY UNHAPPY, and mad at YOU.” And I like that it’s a story about two people getting to re-know each other. But, yeah: Sun getting away from Jin in the airport? Not such a bad idea, given the story we were told! Actually!
AMANDA: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of long-running stories like this often engage with storylines where stuff like abuse is eventually just forgotten in order to preserve these relationships between the show’s main characters, when really: Kate, a person who BLEW UP HER STEPDAD because he abused her mom, would probably never have indulged Jack in his fantasy to crash land herself on the island, given his extremely unstable behavior in front of the child they were raising together. But Kate and Jack, it must endure, so of course they are going to go back together.
SADY: Right. I mean, Jack? Unstable, abusive, alcoholic stalker. With lady problems. Who will not trust a grown lady doctor to do a basic surgery on him without passing up anesthesia so he can be hyper-critical of her operating moves the whole way through. THE ROMANCE OF KATE AND JACK MUST NEVER DIE! Because… they gave each other sexy looks in the pilot episode? With all the plot threads they have exploded or forgotten or just plain shrugged and said “sorry, not going to happen” about, I really am puzzled as to why THIS is the one that they will just never, ever, ever drop.
AMANDA: Right. And I was discussing with someone earlier how the most exciting thing about LOST has always been figuring out the rules to the game, but now that we’re getting to the final season, it’s becoming more and more obvious that there are no real rules to figure out, and that the creators are more interested in putting the finishing touches on these longrunning personal relationships. Perhaps they will surprise me in the end! But from where I’m standing now it looks like they’re putting more effort into reestablishing John Locke as Disabled Character who falls off his wheelchair out of pride-I mean really?-than explaining to me where the fucking black hole is or whatever
SADY: Yeah. The plot points are being doled out! However, what is more important, for some reason, is making sure that we know who ends up with who running whose temp agency. So… okay. My prediction is that Hurley and Kate end up together. That’s what I’m pushing for!
AMANDA: Haha. I know. I love how that was set up as such a MYSTERIOUS REVEAL. It is ROSE who runs the temp agency!
SADY: “Welcome to Healthful Lectures Employment Services. How may I lecture you today?”
AMANDA: So, I’ve been watching the episodes this season around my male companion, who has not watched the rest of the show
SADY: Oh, FOR REALS? That has got to be a bucketload of explanations!
AMANDA: Well … he just overhears the dialogue. And so I have on many occasions had the opportunity to hear his reaction to the dialogue in these episodes, and his reaction is, “This show sucks so hard.” And he’s not wrong. It is often terrible. I’m not going to stop watching it, but I do wonder how much I’m going to end up hating it when it’s over.
SADY: I know. I’m hoping for a “Battlestar Galactica” finale where the answer turns out to be, like, Cavemen. But I do love the final seasons of shows, because you have to stop dicking around and decide what you are saying and amp up all the drama and emotion as far as you can. And for that, I am enjoying this season immensely. When it is over, however, I am confident that I will have learned one thing: JACK NEEDS TO FIX THINGS. That, I will never forget. Give Jack a thing! He will fix that thing! He needs to fix the thing you gave him! Does the thing need fixing? Jack Jack fixing fixing Jack fixing Jack.
AMANDA: And of course this final season is about Jack Returning to Being A Person Who Can Fix Things and Not a Dangerous Alcoholic Stalker Who Cannot Fix a Drink Without Spilling It All Over His Ridiculous Beard. It is Jack’s greatest fix of all. Fixing himself.
This is pretty long but I think a worthwhile read. I disagree about something things like Jack dying obvs and Sun's character arc. But I think they hit on some pretty key points like how every female character's story revolves around a dude and how Juliet's character was pretty much
gutted to become a love interest.
HERE'S THE SOURCE SORRY I FORGOT: http://tigerbeatdown.com/
You know what we have been talking about lately at the Tiger Beatdown? Serious subjects! And you know what is not a serious subject: LOST.
Oh, wait, yes, it totally is! If you are one of the many superfans of the show! You guys, are they on a spaceship? Are they all in Hurley’s imagination? ARE THEY IN A SNOW GLOBE? IS EVERYBODY DEAD?
In this very special episode of Sexist Beatdown, Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I answer exactly none of these questions! Instead, we pose new ones, which are: Why does every single lady on this show end up with a baby and a boyfriend and also occasionally lethal injuries? Are we supposed to be sad that Sun escaped her abusive marriage? (One of us is, actually! It is somewhat messed up.) Who replaced interesting Juliet with Boyfriend-Centric Robot Juliet, and why? And, was it really necessary for Shannon to redeem herself from “heartless bitch” status with her vagina? (Before getting shot, obvs! Ladies, do not date Sayid. You will get shot. Or run over, with a car. He’s Just Not That Into Your Odds Of Continued Survival, apparently.) And, most importantly: WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO KILL JACK???? Please, someone kill Jack. Please. We are begging you.
ILLUSTRATION: That’s a dealbreaker, ladies. That is like five dealbreakers, actually. Not pictured: stalking, yelling, controlling, drinking, pills.
SADY: Hi there! Are you LOST? Have I LOST you? It would be a shame if I LOST my internet connection! Also, kill me.
AMANDA: Wait, let me do one: I’m beginning to think i have “LOST” interest in LOST this season.
SADY: I have LOST track of all the times I have LOST interest in LOST, really.
AMANDA: It’s part of the whole deja vu thing.
SADY: It stems from the fact that we seem to have LOST 98% of all the female characters.
AMANDA: Right. I think we’re down to two now! Wait, plus, Ana Lucia 2.
SADY: Yes, that Ilana chick! I do not know what is up with LOST (not letting go of the caps!) and the death of all the ladies. It is true, however, that it is a big hit on some fronts! For example: having more than one character of color, and having them have conversations with each other. Conversations that do not go like, “I am an Asian man! I hear that you are Latino! Truly, neither of us is a white person.” Instead, they talk about Star Wars fan fiction. Which is fine by me!
AMANDA: Sure. And all-capital LOST has always had a tendency to dispose of characters after their most compelling storylines have been drained, or before even. I mean, a lot of people die on this show. What I want to know is where this murderous impulse was when Jack was bloated on pills and drunk at work and wouldn’t shave and was trying to make his fake baby fly back with him to a magical island? I could have dealt with Jack dying.
SADY: I can constantly deal with Jack dying. Every episode, I hope it will be the one where Jack makes a cry face or starts to make a speech about “fixing things” and then a polar bear sneaks up behind him and eats his entire head. My problem with the “most interesting story lines” though, to be troublesomely ladybusiness for a moment, is this: Claire’s most interesting story line was having a baby and a boyfriend. Sun’s most interesting storyline is having a husband and a baby. Kate’s most interesting story line is having two potential boyfriends, between whom she cannot choose, and also a baby eventually. Juliet’s most important storyline was that her boyfriend might have thought for 1.5 seconds about liking another girl so she had to fall down a mine shaft and explode three times on screen.
AMANDA: Shannon has the best ladybusiness storyline, which is revealing to viewers that she’s not a stuck-up bitch by making sweet love to a man she had previously regarded as a terrorist. I had forgotten that Shannon even existed until LOST had to go back and reset this whole thing. But yes. Yes. Juliet’s death is the one that really bothered me, because she is this woman who always had really interesting motives that had little to do with which boyfriend she wanted to pick. And she was never all that likable. She was the woman you were supposed to not root for while you were rooting for Kate to claim both of the boyfriends. But then, LOST turns her into the Dharma initiative’s model wife - a role that she has played before, except that she was unhappy and independent and rebellious in that role. And after LOST made Juliet accept that role happily, boom. Dead! Storyline resolved.
SADY: Yeah, precisely. And I want to believe that she just exploded because she got a role on a TV show! But it is true that she showed up, and she had all of these complicated, unreadable motives, and this completely complex and interesting back story, and then she was like: hey, a boyfriend! I love my boyfriend. Oh no, my boyfriend! EXPLODE. And this is a thing that is interesting to me, because: I don’t think LOST is great art. I think LOST is good-to-great pulp fiction. I have a high tolerance for good-to-great pulp fiction, as it happens. But it’s so masculinized - it’s seen as such a boy thing - that the only roles for women (or plotlines for women) are things about love interests. The boys are all saving the world and the girls are all saving their marriages.
AMANDA: Yeah. And we have to make sure to fix Jack so that Jack can get back to saving us. But can we turn to one of the only remaining original ladies for a moment, the one with the most explicitly ladybusiness plotline?
SADY: Yes! Let us do so!
AMANDA: I am speaking, of course, of Sun, who crash-landed on a desert island with her abusive husband and then gradually taught him not to be such a huge jerk anymore so they could fall in love again.
SADY: Ha, yeah. And then we learned that she had to keep her cardigan buttoned on a tropical isle because SHE WAS A CHEATER! CHEATER! And he was insecure.
AMANDA: The interesting thing about Sun’s plotline now, is that if the plane hadn’t crashed, we see Jin being taken away by customs and Sun escaping him. And we’re supposed to be… sad… about this development, because we know that if Sun had just WAITED IT OUT on a DESERT ISLAND, Jin would have come around.
SADY: Ha, yeah. And here is where my feelings about feminism and romance and storytelling get all complicated, because: I actually do love the romance of Sun and Jin on some levels. I like that it’s a story of a marriage getting into this unbelievably shitty place, because two people misunderstood each other, over and over, profoundly. I know that story. “I was trying to be what you wanted! So now I am unhappy! And mad at you!” “Yes, well, I was trying to be what YOU wanted, so now I am EQUALLY UNHAPPY, and mad at YOU.” And I like that it’s a story about two people getting to re-know each other. But, yeah: Sun getting away from Jin in the airport? Not such a bad idea, given the story we were told! Actually!
AMANDA: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of long-running stories like this often engage with storylines where stuff like abuse is eventually just forgotten in order to preserve these relationships between the show’s main characters, when really: Kate, a person who BLEW UP HER STEPDAD because he abused her mom, would probably never have indulged Jack in his fantasy to crash land herself on the island, given his extremely unstable behavior in front of the child they were raising together. But Kate and Jack, it must endure, so of course they are going to go back together.
SADY: Right. I mean, Jack? Unstable, abusive, alcoholic stalker. With lady problems. Who will not trust a grown lady doctor to do a basic surgery on him without passing up anesthesia so he can be hyper-critical of her operating moves the whole way through. THE ROMANCE OF KATE AND JACK MUST NEVER DIE! Because… they gave each other sexy looks in the pilot episode? With all the plot threads they have exploded or forgotten or just plain shrugged and said “sorry, not going to happen” about, I really am puzzled as to why THIS is the one that they will just never, ever, ever drop.
AMANDA: Right. And I was discussing with someone earlier how the most exciting thing about LOST has always been figuring out the rules to the game, but now that we’re getting to the final season, it’s becoming more and more obvious that there are no real rules to figure out, and that the creators are more interested in putting the finishing touches on these longrunning personal relationships. Perhaps they will surprise me in the end! But from where I’m standing now it looks like they’re putting more effort into reestablishing John Locke as Disabled Character who falls off his wheelchair out of pride-I mean really?-than explaining to me where the fucking black hole is or whatever
SADY: Yeah. The plot points are being doled out! However, what is more important, for some reason, is making sure that we know who ends up with who running whose temp agency. So… okay. My prediction is that Hurley and Kate end up together. That’s what I’m pushing for!
AMANDA: Haha. I know. I love how that was set up as such a MYSTERIOUS REVEAL. It is ROSE who runs the temp agency!
SADY: “Welcome to Healthful Lectures Employment Services. How may I lecture you today?”
AMANDA: So, I’ve been watching the episodes this season around my male companion, who has not watched the rest of the show
SADY: Oh, FOR REALS? That has got to be a bucketload of explanations!
AMANDA: Well … he just overhears the dialogue. And so I have on many occasions had the opportunity to hear his reaction to the dialogue in these episodes, and his reaction is, “This show sucks so hard.” And he’s not wrong. It is often terrible. I’m not going to stop watching it, but I do wonder how much I’m going to end up hating it when it’s over.
SADY: I know. I’m hoping for a “Battlestar Galactica” finale where the answer turns out to be, like, Cavemen. But I do love the final seasons of shows, because you have to stop dicking around and decide what you are saying and amp up all the drama and emotion as far as you can. And for that, I am enjoying this season immensely. When it is over, however, I am confident that I will have learned one thing: JACK NEEDS TO FIX THINGS. That, I will never forget. Give Jack a thing! He will fix that thing! He needs to fix the thing you gave him! Does the thing need fixing? Jack Jack fixing fixing Jack fixing Jack.
AMANDA: And of course this final season is about Jack Returning to Being A Person Who Can Fix Things and Not a Dangerous Alcoholic Stalker Who Cannot Fix a Drink Without Spilling It All Over His Ridiculous Beard. It is Jack’s greatest fix of all. Fixing himself.
This is pretty long but I think a worthwhile read. I disagree about something things like Jack dying obvs and Sun's character arc. But I think they hit on some pretty key points like how every female character's story revolves around a dude and how Juliet's character was pretty much
gutted to become a love interest.
HERE'S THE SOURCE SORRY I FORGOT: http://tigerbeatdown.com/