Angry Robot

Gnostic Lost

Via Ram comes this post from a site I’m sad to only now be discovering, which points out some very juicy tidbits from Gnostic myth just waiting to be plucked and half-baked into a Lost theory pie (how’s that for carrying the metaphor just a touch too long, yet falling short of comparing the Tree Of Knowledge to the magic light cave, thankfully for all involved):

In Gnostic mythos, God is living energy — pure spiritual light — a tiny spark of which burns inside each of us. Occasionally, this divine light produces avatars of human form, one of whom was Jesus. Another was Sophia, an expression of the divine feminine. Sophia became estranged from God and tried to cure her loneliness by creating a son. But something went terribly wrong, and she gave birth to Demiurge, a being of pure evil with many names, including Satan and Samuel.

Dude, where are you going? I haven’t even gone to Wikipedia myself yet. Here it goes:

Gnosticism presents a distinction between a supranatural, unknowable reality and the sensible materiality of which the demiurge is creator … several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the Supreme God: his act of creation either in unconscious and fundamentally flawed imitation of the divine model, or else formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality.

Boom! I was already thinking about Buddhism in the context of the alternaverse, especially after the last ep where Desmond thought Ana-Lucia “not ready yet,” i.e. not enlightened, not aware of the true reality that lies behind the apparent reality. But move over Siddhartha, time for Sammy McSmoke to drop some Gnosis on that ass.

There’s the idea that some of the pre-crash discrepancies in the Alternaverse could theoretically be attributed to Jacob not having intervened in the lives of the candidates. Also, that when Smokey promises people things “when he gets off the island”, they are things that are true in the sideways world. So then the sideways world is the Smokeyverse, the world that Smokey made by eliminating the island and preventing Jacob from having intervened in said world.

It’s a perfectly serviceable Lost theory. It’ll do until tomorrow.

Lost Season Six Episode Sixteen, "What They Died For"

This was not the episode I was expecting. I hoped the title meant some back-story-rich flashbacks with now-dead characters (Faraday in Ann Arbor, bitches!), not another reiteration of how important it is to stop Smokey blah blah blah. But I didn’t kick it out of bed, as it was pretty straight dope. The body count-o-meter went up a few more notches, the plots advanced on the island and in the sideways world, and the previous episode tied into things, with Jack’s coronation as Jacob 2.0.

Early in the season, we started speculating that the presence of this mysterious alternaverse gave the writers license to destroy one world or another, as they’d always have the other one left over. Seeing as every in-the-know character keeps on telling us that the Man in Black wants to destroy everything (often “everyone you care about”), they may well pull the trigger on the island world right quick, meaning that the locus of action will switch to the sideways world, and Desmond will have to rouse the remaining sleeper characters right quick. To what purpose, of course no one can know – if the sideways world becomes the real world, can they do something to flip back to island reality? What’s so wrong with the sideways world that a character who lives in it would want to go to a world in which they are dead?

As these episodes progress, there’s less fuel for speculation, really, and more a sense of resignation. Not in a bad way, but I’m just eager to watch the series play itself out. That, and I’m thinking a lot about what this series signifies. For me it has been an exceptional ride, quite possibly the most enjoyable show by virtue of the room for speculation and nerd-out sessions that the series’ many mysteries and lacunae have provided. It’s been the most complex narrative I’ve ever been exposed to – Lost needed to be tackled in a group in order to have a remote chance of appreciating it. It’s been the most interactive narrative experience I’ve had outside of a video game, and even if the finale winds up sucking and everything was a dream and none of the various hanging narrative threads are tied together, it won’t change how gol-durned awesome the past six years of Lost viewerhood have been.

Namaste, Darlton.

So with that, I’ll cut short any further speculation, and begin the prep work on the Dharma Mai Tais, Otherton Cave Light Beers, Smokey Soul Tobacco and cans of fucking peaches (oh wait, wrong show) that we’ll need for the finale, which for once may turn out to be the TV Event the promos always promise. See you after that.

Further reading:

AV Club writeup
Lost in Lost’s critical culture

PS no way Alpert is dead.

The Trainees

Let this just be a teaser for something I’ll share with you next week.

Lost Season Six Episode Fifteen, "Across the Sea"

What’s the deal with the magic cave? What happens if it’s destroyed? Who were the proto-others? Who built the statue, lighthouse, etc.? What the fuck is dude’s name already? Did Smokey pre-date the Man in Black (and was released by his insertion into magic cave, and then took his form as he did with Locke etc.), or did the Man in Black become Smokey?

After some reflection, though, I am quite happy with the episode. It could stand on its own as an hour-long story, yet it fits in perfectly with the themes and back story of the show. It functions as myth, structurally for the story of Lost, and formally as a piece of myth – it has myth’s openness to a multiplicity of viewpoints. You can argue that Jacob is right, or that Smokey is right, or some other view, and find evidence for your case. Really, that’s one of the strong points of Lost as a whole.

The lack of answers is something we had best get used to. In Lost as in life, there is no all-knowing deity to provide all the answers. There are other people, like Allison Janney here, whose knowledge is always partial, and you can believe them, or not. She is just one in a line of island protectors, and this was not an island origin story. Judging by the Latin, the statue had already been built. So we don’t know why the fuck there is a Magic Cave / Waterfall, but we know it is the source of everything. It can be tapped – can make you immortal, turn you into smoke, travel in time & space, change dimensions. But I wouldn’t expect to learn too much more about it. It’s a MacGuffin, and its definition or lack thereof will not redeem or ruin your Lost experience.

Moving on, then. It was interesting that the MiB is allied with science (certainly with skepticism), what with the use of ingenious “wheels” to tap the power of the island and whatnot. So that puts him firmly in Dharma Camp, making the Dharma vs. hostiles dispute a Smokey vs. Jacob proxy war. Once the ‘others’ took over – the purge, courtesy Ben – theoretically Jacob would be in charge of the island again, but I’m starting to wonder if Smokey hadn’t “gotten free” by then, imitated Jacob, and caused the entire purge. So when Widmore was trying to get to the island, Ben was following Fakob thinking it was Jacob… phew.

A lot of fans and critics (what’s the difference again?) reacted quite negatively to this episode. To generalize, the argument is that not enough questions were answered, and that the show isn’t going to answer everything, therefore they didn’t really know what they’re doing. It’s a species of Lost Finale Angst, and I certainly understand it – I’ve had my doubts about this season, and my initial reaction to this ep was similar. However, I think it’s too hard to judge until the finale ends. But I certainly don’t think info-dump question-answering sessions make for very good television, and I don’t want everything wrapped up in a bow. Again, one of the strengths of this show is the multiplicity of viewpoints it supports and the discussion it engenders, and I hope the end of the show still leaves some room for that.

Next week: well, if you don’t know the episode title, I won’t spoil it for you. And then the two and a half hour finale on the following sunday… It’s gonna be huge. I hope.

Some further reading about “Across the sea:”
AV Club writeup and discussion
Cultural Learnings writeup