"LOST" and the Art of Hypocrisy
"LOST" AND THE ART OF HYPOCRISY
The eighth episode of "LOST"'s Season Four, (4.08) "Meet Kevin Johnson", featured the backstory of one of the original Flight 815 passengers, Michael Dawson. Back in Season Two, he had left the survivors' camp to search for his missing son, Walt Lloyd, who had been kidnapped by a group of mysterious people called the Others. Desperate to get his son back, Michael left the Losties' camp and conducted his own search. Unfortunately, he ended up captured. The Others gave him a choice - either help them capture four of the castaways and find a way to release their captured leader, Ben Linus, or never see Walt again. Michael chose to cooperate.
In the end, Michael murdered one castaway - Ana-Lucia Cortez - to help Ben escape. He accidentally killed another - Libby. Then he led four other castaways - Dr. Jack Shephard, Sawyer aka James Ford, Kate Austen and Hurley Reyes - into a trap set by the Others. As the Others had promised, he finally got Walt back and left the island on a boat given to them. In early Season Four, Michael's character returned to the series in the episode, "Meet Kevin Johnson". The episode told in flashbacks of Michael's experiences between the time he and Walt had returned to the United States and Michael's return to the island as a crew member of a freighter called the S.S. Kahana, which some castaways had seen as the source of their rescue from the island.
Two days after the episode had aired, a reviewer named Billie Doux posted her review of the episode. There was one particular passage that caught my attention:
"I am completely and totally down with what Sayid just did to Michael. Michael is still basically unlikeable and unsympathetic, a murderer and a traitor as well as weak and selfish. Even his obsession with Walt is also selfish at its base because it is less about Walt's welfare, and more about Michael's. Especially if Michael actually burdened Walt with a confession about what Michael did to Ana Lucia and Libby. That Mama Cass song we heard twice in the episode absolutely haunted me, and not because Mama Cass is dead, like Patsy Cline is dead. I think it was a musical echo of Michael's double murder in the Hatch, because the first thing we heard in the Hatch at the beginning of season two was a Mama Cass song. (Not the same one, though.)"
I am going to be frank and state that Miss Doux's comments had really PISSED ME OFF. She had pissed me off. She had a right to be upset over Michael's murder of Ana-Lucia and Libby. I certainly did not approve of his actions. What pissed me off was her claim of the possibility that Michael was more concerned about his own welfare than Walt's. I want to call her a name, but that would be childish.
However . . . I am beginning to wonder how much she had allowed herself to be blinded by her feelings about Michael. What in the fuck did she mean that Michael was more concerned about himself than Walt? Everything he DID was for Walt's welfare. Had her memories of past episodes eluded her? Ever since mid-Season One, Michael had been determined to get Walt off the island and to the relative safety of the United States. That is why he had built that damn raft in the first place. That is why he had taken every opportunity possible to find Walt after he, Sawyer and Jin-Soo Kwon returned to the island's shore following the Others' destruction of the raft. That is why he had run off into the jungle in search for Walt. And the latter was the reason why he betrayed the other Losties and killed Ana-Lucia in cold blood (Libby was an accident).
Michael was not the first or only main character from the Oceanic 815 survivors to commit a crime in cold blood:
*Lostie Shannon Rutherford had tried to murder fellow castaway John Locke, because she held him responsible for stepbrother Boone Carlyle's death.
*James "Sawyer" Ford had murdered a man in Australia, whom he had mistakenly believed was the con man who drove his father into an act of murder/suicide. When faced with the real con man - Anthony Cooper - he allowed his rage to get the best of him and murdered the guy via strangulation. He later murdered a member of the Others named Tom Friendly in cold blood after the latter had surrendered, claiming that the latter had shot him during Walt's kidnapping. Although Tom had led the kidnapping, he never ordered it. And Tom never shot Sawyer. One of the Others did when Sawyer tried to draw his gun.
*Charlie Pace had murdered one of the Others, Ethan Rom, for kidnapping Claire Littleton, a fellow castaway that he was in love with. And as I recall, Ethan had not been in a position to defend himself.
*John Locke - lied about Boone Carlyle's injuries and may have contributed to the latter's death. He also tried to murder one of the Others, Mikhail Bakunin, in mid-Season Three. I suspect he did this because he feared that the Other had found out about his previous paraplegic condition. Then he murdered Naomi Dorrit, a mercenary hired by Charles Widmore to protect the Kahuna freighter's science team in order to stop her from communicating with the freighter. He could have achieved this without killing her.
*Jack Shephard tried to murder Locke, because the latter had killed Naomi Dorrit - a woman from the Kahuana, which was situated 80 miles off the coast of the island during Season Four. Whether he called himself acting as judge, jury and executioner or simply being pissed at Locke for nearly ruining a chance for rescue, Jack tried to commit cold-blooded murder. I suspect that Jack was really angry at Locke for the latter reason. He had been angry at Locke since Boone's death, back in Season One. What a hypocrite.
*Ana-Lucia Cortez had deliberately allowed a convict named Jason to go free from imprisonment at a local Los Angeles Police jail in order to hunt him down and kill him in cold blood for shooting her and killing her unborn child. She also tried to assault Goodwin, one of the Others, and ended up killing him.
*Sayid Jarrah had murdered a fellow soldier from Iraq's Republican Guard in order to help a woman - with whom he had fallen in love with - named Noor "Nadia" Abed Jaseem to escape from a military prison. Following this, Sayid ended up killing a good number of people over the years. Following Nadia's death, he volunteered to serve as Ben Linus' hitman in a campaign to get revenge against the man he held responsible for her death.
*Kate Austen was an enigma. Many fans claimed that she had murdered her father Wayne Jensen (whom she had originally believed to be her stepfather) to save her mother from spousal abuse. But she admitted in a private soliloquy that she had murdered Wayne Janssen, because she could not endure the idea that he was her father. Then she went on to use his death to commit insurance fraud.
Considering the number of characters with blood on their hands, why was Ms. Doux that determined to vent her wrath upon Michael Dawson? In her rant, she called Michael a "traitor". As a matter of fact, I have come across the posts and comments of many fans who seemed to harbor the same view of Michael. In the eyes of Miss Doux and these other fans, Michael committed the ultimate crime of betraying Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley to the Others in return for Walt. He betrayed "the Group". He went against Society" for the sake of his son and his fears. And that was a big no-no in the eyes of many. I still find it so hypocritical that Michael was condemned more for betraying four castaways to the people they had considered to be their enemies than for killing two women. The old "the needs of the many over the needs of the few" belief from "STAR TREK". This told me a lot about Miss Doux, these other fans and many people in general. Or this attitude simply came from some kind of "high school" mentality.
Frankly, I never gave a rat's ass that Michael had betrayed those four castaways to the Others. Why should he be more loyal to them than to his own son? Jack and the other Losties had barely lifted a finger to rescue Walt from the Others. Well, Sawyer had fought to prevent Walt from being kidnapped, while on the raft. But once he had stepped foot back on the island, he showed squat concern over Walt. It was not until Michael had returned to the Others' camp at the end of (2.19) "S.O.S." in late Season Two that Jack even considered swapping Ben, who had become the Losties' prisoner, for Walt. Why in the fuck did it take him so long?
Many fans had claimed that four days had passed between Walt's kidnapping and the return of Michael, Jin and Sawyer to the Losties' camp. In their view, it was too late to bother sending a search-and-rescue party after Walt. Yet, when Ana-Lucia, Sayid and Charlie had went on an expedition in (2.16) "The Whole Truth" to find evidence regarding the identity of the Others' leader, Ben Linus aka "Henry Gale", NO ONE HAD COMPLAINED or pointed out the potential futility of this action. Hypocritical much?
In "Meet Kevin Johnson", Sawyer had went into full rant against Michael for killing Ana-Lucia and Libby. He especially commented that Michael had done all of this to get off the island. I knew that Sawyer was guilty of a lot of things. But I never realized that hypocrisy would turn out to be one of his failings. This is a man who has committed three acts of cold-blooded murder. His third victim happened to be the very member of the Others who had kidnapped Walt at the end of Season One - Tom Friendly. Sawyer claimed that he had killed Tom for Walt's kidnapping. What a fucking hypocrite! Sawyer's true reason for murdering Tom was simply good old-fashioned revenge . . . for him getting shot by another member of the Others in (1.25) "Exodus, Part 3" and for his incarceration as one of the Others' captives in early Season Three. Apparently, Sawyer had also conveniently forgotten about Michael's concerns about getting Walt off the island, the latter's despair over the Others' kidnapping the 10 year-old, or his desperate attempts to rescue Walt before the events of (2.20) "Two For the Road".
Many fans have condemned Michael because they viewed his victims - Ana-Lucia and Libby as "innocents". Yes, they were innocents. And yes, he was guilty of killing them. But does this mean I am supposed to excuse the other castaways' behavior because their victims were dubbed as "villains" by the fans? I do not think so. Murder is murder. Whether the victim is a protagonist or "decent" sort or a villain, he or she is an innocent. Ana-Lucia and Libby were innocents. But so was one of Ana-Lucia's victims - namely the convict she had murdered in revenge for her unborn child's death. Her testimony could have easily sent him to prison, but instead, she opted out for personal revenge. The three men that Sawyer had killed - Tom included - were innocents. Sawyer had killed all three when they were not in a position to defend themselves. And his motive for killing all three stemmed from revenge. Ethan was a prisoner of the castaways and an innocent when Charlie murdered him in cold blood. Again . . . revenge. Locke had been an innocent - at least when both Jack and Shannon tried to kill him. Wayne Jensen was an innocent. Kate had murdered him while he was drunk and asleep. Whatever intentions that Naomi Dorrit may have had, she became an innocent when Locke murdered her in cold blood. All of these people . . . these victims were innocents, because when they had been murdered or nearly became a victim, when they were not in a position to defend themselves.
But many "LOST" fans - including Ms. Doux - had seemed incapable of understanding this. They wanted to condemn Michael not only for the two women he had killed, but especially for betraying his fellow castaways for the sake of his son. And because of this, I can only come to the conclusion that they are nothing more than hypocrites.
This hypocrisy has also led me to speculate the real reason behind many of the fans' dislike of Michael. Did they merely dislike him for his crimes? Or did they dislike him for being a father? The jokes of his cry for Walt - "WAAALT!" - has been going on for over sixteen years. Why do many "LOST" fans still make fun of Michael's anxious desire for Walt's return to this day? When late Season Four first aired, someone had posted on the LOST-TV site that Claire Littleton would finally become an interesting character once she and her infant son were separated. Hmmm. Why was Claire only capable of being interesting without a child by her side? Did being a parent rob a character of any glamour in their eyes? Is this a by-product of this society's desire for eternal youth? Oh wait. I forgot about Kate Austen and Aaron Littleton. Many fans had practically worshipped Kate for being the perfect "mommy" to Claire's abandoned son Aaron. And conveniently forgotten that Kate had committed child kidnapping by failing to hand him over to his grandmother, Carole Littleton, following their encounter at Christian Shephard's funeral in the Season Four finale. Perhaps being the series' leading lady and white had led the fans to forgive Kate for her crimes.
Did I ever condone Michael for murdering Ana-Lucia and Libby? No. It was the wrong thing to do. He could have found another way to free Ben. Did I condone him for betraying Jack and the other Losties to the Others? Honestly? No . . . but I refuse to condemn him for this action, as well. I saw no reason why he had to be more loyal to the other Losties than his own son. But I will say one more thing . . . to this day, I still find the views of Billie Doux and many other "LOST" fans rather hypocritical when it came to Michael. I found no reason to condemn Michael for his actions and at the same time, make excuses for the actions of other characters. Either all have to be condemned for their crimes . . . or none at all. In my eyes, one of the worst things anyone can be is a hypocrite. And in the "LOST" fandom, I seemed to have come across a great deal of hypocrisy. Especially since late Season Two.