i'll send an SOS to the world
I've tried once or twice to get Lost. I watched some of the first season a few years ago and it didn't take, and then I watched the first couple of episodes several months ago and...liked it fine but not enough to distract me from all the fun stuff that was going in in shows currently airing. But then things started wrapping up for the season, and I guess I have been avoiding hiatus-based withdrawals by catching up on the excitement about stuff everyone else got into and then over several years ago. I finally started in earnest, and figured I would try something else new by just doing sassy liveblogging on a side tumblr account, rather than doing the thing that really gets me in over my head, which is digging into it via meta AND DRAGGING YOU ALL DOWN WITH ME, MUAHAHAHAHA!
Clearly, this plan was doomed to fail.
This is the kind of thing that....is WHY I write these things down ahead of time, though admittedly it saves me from having to eat my words or go back on any cognitive commitments. If I'd written a post based on S1 it would've included me wondering how much the survivors don't do any worrying about divisions of labor, resources, or authority - ie, it's apolitical not in the sense of nonpartisan, but in the sense of an obtrustive silence on dynamics which are always present when human beings interact. But now I think there's something so, so interesting happening with the idea of political philosophy on the island. The politics of Lost are the kind of phenomena to which I am usually referring to when I say "politics." Electoral politics - including whether or not to establish a democracy - are a subset of real political philosophy. Very, very important, but not the only one. These type of survivalist politics are about human beings as social animals.
Now that we're down the rabbit hole, they've mostly accepted they're on the island at least for now, and we can dive into the interesting work of setting up a society. During S2, I started to wonder if our time in the island is actually a regression to the garden of Eden, a place where people really do have mostly as clear as possible a slate to set up a society. And, with the introduction of the DI (presumably?) staff in early S3, I'm wondering if indeed this isn't a sadistic ritual, too uncontrolled and flawed to be properly called an "experiment," but certainly a phenomenon involving highly specialized manipulation and observation - cultural anthropology with a mega-fast forward button.
So being within this particular environment, what kind of society were they starting to set up before the DI intervened and caused the crisis? Largely, small-c consevative, IMO. With a few notable exceptions, they work very hard to preserve the social structures in which they found themselves when they woke up on the island. They struggle even to consider moving off the beach in S1; it doesn't seem like they're making full use of the DI cave even as the weather gets more dire. People make very little effort to learn each others' languages, or to create their own. They even have majorly overinvasive interests in each others' romantic lives: as late as S3, other people on the island are pressuring Sun to stay with Jin. But nothing from outside the cabin seems to have taken hold in the same way - nobody's particularly concerned that Claire's all but forgotten about Aaron's biological father; as far as the island and the people on it are concerned, the baby is effectively a virgin birth.
This flash-frozen society is particularly pertinent to Jack. Jack's ER training made him the MVP when they all woke up injured, and so he's remained in charge. I got a little saucy on Tumblr about LOL WHAT IS DEMOCRACY in terms of why Jack is the one who seems to be making all these decisions....and sure enough, the narrative points out more than once that he really doesn't have any right to do so, or to keep the secrets he keeps or delegate authority the way he does. I also just don't know how I feel about the character in general? There are times I'm very sympathetic and times I'm very annoyed, which usually leads me to at least deem a character a success as a character, but I don't see where that emotional torque is coming from with him? He's not a particularly unique character type, though I do think he gets less of a flattering edit than most similar characters, which naturally makes me inclined to enjoy him.
Another character I'm having something of a tough time wrapping my arms around is John Locke. Intellectually, I think neat things are going on with him? Because he's got a few decades on the character type you usually expect to have that insistence on his own Special Destiny. And it makes SO MUCH SENSE, and I really applaud that the show has this whole story about how your search for identity and vulnerability to disillusionment and all that stuff doesn't just magically evaporate when you turn 26. (Relatedly, Rose and Bernard are SO GREAT for ALL THE REASONS.) Maybe it's just a little too obvious how badly he wants to be a master manipulator and the show's doing a really good job of making him off-putting.
Part of the issue for me in S1 was that I couldn't - still can't, to some extent - tell how much the show is playing with narrative conventions and how much it's relying on them. Like, I see no sparks in the Sawyer>Kate
That's true of the less conventional ships as well. The thing about the love stories on Lost is that they're dying to be subverted, but so far they haven't been. Sun and Jin are driving me up a wall as the couple I want to ship except there are so many murky issues about power dynamics and how neatly the story fits into abuse denialism - oh, she was cheating; oh, he was scared; oh, it's all about ~their daddy issues (see also Jack's stalking his ex-wife). The one time someone does intervene, it kind of falls by the wayside. I'm all about humanizing terrible behavior, but still, I feel like Jin gets such a sympathetic POV that the way he's come to scare the hell out of me...might not actually be 100% heading for deconstruction, and that makes me worry.
So those are the tough things. But there's so much I like. Sayid is consistently pretty great, and wow, having an Iraqi character in such a conventionally heroic role must've been a thing as these seasons were airing. (I mean, it's still a thing. But more of a thing.) Naturally I adored Shannon. Boone made me appreciate Somerhalder even more than I already do, because I'm so invested in Damon at the moment, you know? but I still bought the actor as someone so very very different. And oh, man, Hurley. <3
*I've never had a malicious spoiler before, but I made a quick post saying I loved Shannon and didn't want anything bad to happen to her and some rando reblogged it saying "well she dies though." INCONSIDERATE MUCH?! Though I've seen enough of the DVD covers to know that mostly everyone dies anyway, so it was more of a "when" than an "if." STILL.
So! I've seen up through s3e5. THOUGHTS?
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/301286.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
Clearly, this plan was doomed to fail.
This is the kind of thing that....is WHY I write these things down ahead of time, though admittedly it saves me from having to eat my words or go back on any cognitive commitments. If I'd written a post based on S1 it would've included me wondering how much the survivors don't do any worrying about divisions of labor, resources, or authority - ie, it's apolitical not in the sense of nonpartisan, but in the sense of an obtrustive silence on dynamics which are always present when human beings interact. But now I think there's something so, so interesting happening with the idea of political philosophy on the island. The politics of Lost are the kind of phenomena to which I am usually referring to when I say "politics." Electoral politics - including whether or not to establish a democracy - are a subset of real political philosophy. Very, very important, but not the only one. These type of survivalist politics are about human beings as social animals.
Now that we're down the rabbit hole, they've mostly accepted they're on the island at least for now, and we can dive into the interesting work of setting up a society. During S2, I started to wonder if our time in the island is actually a regression to the garden of Eden, a place where people really do have mostly as clear as possible a slate to set up a society. And, with the introduction of the DI (presumably?) staff in early S3, I'm wondering if indeed this isn't a sadistic ritual, too uncontrolled and flawed to be properly called an "experiment," but certainly a phenomenon involving highly specialized manipulation and observation - cultural anthropology with a mega-fast forward button.
So being within this particular environment, what kind of society were they starting to set up before the DI intervened and caused the crisis? Largely, small-c consevative, IMO. With a few notable exceptions, they work very hard to preserve the social structures in which they found themselves when they woke up on the island. They struggle even to consider moving off the beach in S1; it doesn't seem like they're making full use of the DI cave even as the weather gets more dire. People make very little effort to learn each others' languages, or to create their own. They even have majorly overinvasive interests in each others' romantic lives: as late as S3, other people on the island are pressuring Sun to stay with Jin. But nothing from outside the cabin seems to have taken hold in the same way - nobody's particularly concerned that Claire's all but forgotten about Aaron's biological father; as far as the island and the people on it are concerned, the baby is effectively a virgin birth.
This flash-frozen society is particularly pertinent to Jack. Jack's ER training made him the MVP when they all woke up injured, and so he's remained in charge. I got a little saucy on Tumblr about LOL WHAT IS DEMOCRACY in terms of why Jack is the one who seems to be making all these decisions....and sure enough, the narrative points out more than once that he really doesn't have any right to do so, or to keep the secrets he keeps or delegate authority the way he does. I also just don't know how I feel about the character in general? There are times I'm very sympathetic and times I'm very annoyed, which usually leads me to at least deem a character a success as a character, but I don't see where that emotional torque is coming from with him? He's not a particularly unique character type, though I do think he gets less of a flattering edit than most similar characters, which naturally makes me inclined to enjoy him.
Another character I'm having something of a tough time wrapping my arms around is John Locke. Intellectually, I think neat things are going on with him? Because he's got a few decades on the character type you usually expect to have that insistence on his own Special Destiny. And it makes SO MUCH SENSE, and I really applaud that the show has this whole story about how your search for identity and vulnerability to disillusionment and all that stuff doesn't just magically evaporate when you turn 26. (Relatedly, Rose and Bernard are SO GREAT for ALL THE REASONS.) Maybe it's just a little too obvious how badly he wants to be a master manipulator and the show's doing a really good job of making him off-putting.
Part of the issue for me in S1 was that I couldn't - still can't, to some extent - tell how much the show is playing with narrative conventions and how much it's relying on them. Like, I see no sparks in the Sawyer>Kate
That's true of the less conventional ships as well. The thing about the love stories on Lost is that they're dying to be subverted, but so far they haven't been. Sun and Jin are driving me up a wall as the couple I want to ship except there are so many murky issues about power dynamics and how neatly the story fits into abuse denialism - oh, she was cheating; oh, he was scared; oh, it's all about ~their daddy issues (see also Jack's stalking his ex-wife). The one time someone does intervene, it kind of falls by the wayside. I'm all about humanizing terrible behavior, but still, I feel like Jin gets such a sympathetic POV that the way he's come to scare the hell out of me...might not actually be 100% heading for deconstruction, and that makes me worry.
So those are the tough things. But there's so much I like. Sayid is consistently pretty great, and wow, having an Iraqi character in such a conventionally heroic role must've been a thing as these seasons were airing. (I mean, it's still a thing. But more of a thing.) Naturally I adored Shannon. Boone made me appreciate Somerhalder even more than I already do, because I'm so invested in Damon at the moment, you know? but I still bought the actor as someone so very very different. And oh, man, Hurley. <3
*I've never had a malicious spoiler before, but I made a quick post saying I loved Shannon and didn't want anything bad to happen to her and some rando reblogged it saying "well she dies though." INCONSIDERATE MUCH?! Though I've seen enough of the DVD covers to know that mostly everyone dies anyway, so it was more of a "when" than an "if." STILL.
So! I've seen up through s3e5. THOUGHTS?
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/301286.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.