« Mental activity halts some of your self-deception and hypocrisy | Main | Markets in everything? »
The secrets of *Lost*, revealed
Arguably this is a spoiler, so I'll put it under the fold. But maybe it's not a real spoiler, I'm just speculating but I do think it is possibly true. I don't want to ruin the show for you but click to read under the fold if you dare...otherwise go on your merry way and visit all the other blogs which don't even worry about this question...
The Buddhist notion of "Dharma" refers to a state of affairs where people are liberated from the cycles of both birth and death. Babies cannot be born on the island and it is an open question whether one can really die there so the island is an attempt to realize this ideal. Of course the original project on the island is called The Dharma Initiative. The Buddhist notion of Bardo involves reviewing the major events of one's previous life, as represented by the show's frequent flashbacks. More generally the islanders are most likely experiencing a cycling of bardos and it is no accident that we are now peering into their futures. Ben and Widmore represent two evil spirits of the Buddhist pantheon, dueling for the power to corrupt and to control life and death. The numbers which reappear in various contexts, including 108, and the sequence of winning lottery numbers, are taken from Buddhist mythology (see the links). Desmond's retreat from the world, and his ability to foresee Charlie's death, are both very Buddhist themes. Claire's baby is probably a reincarnation and John Locke is arguably a Tulku and he is explicitly tested as such in the last season. The names Rousseau, Hume, and Locke are used because one theme is Western philosophy confronting the truths of the East. Here is more and try this too though it is vague. Here's the single best page. Aldous Huxley is an influence as well. The Buddhist interpretation isn't new, but no one quite seems to have said "This is it." Toss in time travel, and a bunch of women who look like underwear models, and you can explain most of the apparent anomalies in the plot.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 4, 2008 at 03:34 PM in Television | Permalink
Comments
Sounds pretty plausible. I think I would have preferred a one season run with a simpler explanation: purgatory.
For me, season 1 of this show is right up there with the first couple of Battlestar seasons, Wondershowzen, and series 1 of The Office.
Posted by: burger flipper at Jul 4, 2008 4:25:37 PM
Actually Nirvana is the state where you are liberated from the Samsara (which is the cycle of death/rebirth). Dharma is usually meant to be the teachings of Buddha or the law of the universe (similar to Tao in Taoism).
Posted by: Daniel Yokomizo at Jul 4, 2008 4:34:17 PM
I thought it was all supposed to be spun out of "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien. (Where someone who is actually dead goes through an extended and bizarre series of events connected to his previous crimes, not realising that's the game, and probably having to repeat it. The book is vastly more hilarious than this gloss suggests.)
Posted by: Doctor Spurt at Jul 4, 2008 5:03:13 PM
I have better things to do than watch television.
Posted by: Area Man at Jul 4, 2008 6:39:04 PM
Thanks, I'll pass this on to my wife. We're both HUGE fans of Lost.
Posted by: Chris Meisenzahl at Jul 4, 2008 6:52:01 PM
Honestly, I think the show has more to do with Hinduism than Buddhism.
Dharma is the law governing the universe in Hindu. Samsara is the continuing
cycle of death and rebirth with Moksha being the liberation from it.
Buddhism is more about ending suffering by accepting the Four Noble Truths
and following the 8-fold path while Hinduism primary focus is reincarnation.
Posted by: James Farrelly at Jul 4, 2008 7:01:43 PM
¿AND WHAT THE HELL IS THE ISLAND MOVEMENT SUPOSSED TO BE?
Posted by: Withd at Jul 4, 2008 7:08:39 PM
Buddhism and western philosophy, along with all the literary references and allusions are just red herrings. The writers put this stuff in so we can look it up on Wikipedia and create our little theories.
In the end, unfortunately, it's just going to be about aliens. That's why we have the hieroglyphs, the four toed statue, "smokey", and the "frozen donkey wheel" that makes the island disappear.
Regardless, on the basis of seasons one and two, it's still one of the best shows of all time.
Posted by: Reel Nerds at Jul 4, 2008 11:44:08 PM
feh. go here:
http://www.timelooptheory.com/
Posted by: trey at Jul 5, 2008 3:01:23 AM
The secret of "Lost" revealed.
Erm, that they're making it all up?
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Jul 5, 2008 5:00:42 AM
or they are in hell similar to No Exit - Sartre.
Posted by: Colin at Jul 5, 2008 6:16:57 AM
The secret is that there's no predetermined ending. Just like all American shows, the writers/creators don't prepare for the ending because they don't know how long the series will run. Likely, they prepared only the first season and the original intent was a purgatory-like storyline, but then the show hit, and they've had to continually add more and more to the mythology. Ultimately, they'll do their best to tie everything together, ad hoc, and there will be many things left unexplained, or tangents that don't necessarily fit.
The only reason they've held the show together this well, thus far, is because of Drew Goddard. He cut his teeth writing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer the series, caught Joss Whedon's attention who then brought him over to Angel the series, made him executive story editor of that show, parlayed that into producing/story supervising for Abrams' first show Alias, and now produces and oversees the overall direction of Lost. He's basically in charge of figuring out how to make the show work now that it's lasted longer than they expected.
Hopefully that doesn't ruin the show for anyone, but they're basically making it up as they go, there's no master plan.
Posted by: cchjd at Jul 5, 2008 6:42:52 AM
Cchjd comment is completely spot on. They are making this up as they go. Now that the series has a defined endpoint (2010), I do expect that the writers are now putting together a storyline that will be played out over the next two seasons- they will be making up much less on the fly than they have.
As a new fan (I watched every episode last month for the first time), I have recently been reading fanblogs on the series, and I can't help but believe that the writers are reading the better one regularly to gather ideas.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Jul 5, 2008 1:32:48 PM
Sorry cchjd, but they do have a definite end-point. There will be six seasons; the 4th-6th season will have 16 episodes each (the writer's strike changed this slightly; shortening the 4th season to 14 eps and adding 1 to the 5th and 6th seasons). This was announced last year (spring 2007) after the less-than-spectacular 3rd season, and the writers/producers attribute the revitalization of the show in the bit of the 3rd season and the 4th season to it. They have an end point, they know where key points in the arc need to be placed, and they can place them there without stringing things out forever.
That said, they've clearly reneged on the psuedo-promise of everything being explainable by science (it isn't; they've even said as much recently). I'm actually happier with this state of affairs, since it means I can just write off various utterly impossible things without trying to figure out what load of BS they're going to pull out to make them "scientific".
FWIW, this is not the first show with a definitive end-point; Babylon 5 is probably the best example. JMS (the producer and primary writer) had a 5 year vision from the start, and this is very clear through the 3rd and first half of the 4th season. The 5th season was spotty (at best) since they ran into contract problems with the TNT network and thought they were going to be cancelled, so JMS had to shovel the last half of the 4th season and the first half of the 5th into the tail of the 4th season. When they ended up being renewed after all, the 5th season got dragged out, and it shows.
Hopefully the remainder of Lost won't suffer any such fate. It's not my favorite show on TV (it probably is my wife's favorite), but certainly having a definite beginning, middle, and end helps telling *ANY* story. A lot of other TV series (and books) could benefit from the same.
Posted by: Zathrus at Jul 5, 2008 3:07:18 PM
Zathrus, I don't think you refuted my point. The fact that they are now figuring it out knowing they'll only go 6 seasons, is my point. It's just like most shows. They meticulously planned out the first season, had some ideas of the second season assuming the show received ratings, and since then, they've been figuring it out on the fly. Now that they know when the series ends, they'll try to tie up most of the mythology they've created over the last two seasons.
Also, I should add, having attended a writer's seminar (my ex is a screenwriter) where Goddard appeared with his mentor Marti Noxon, they both said their method was so fluid that they would only have their writers complete 2-3 shows at a time, see how they shot/filmed, then sometimes completely change the seasonal arc if they thought it wasn't working. The old conventional way was to outline the whole season prior to filming, but they basically have thrown that out. Of course, they need the creators/producers to be on board and have a lot of faith in their process since it's risky, but that's what they said they do.
Posted by: cchjd at Jul 5, 2008 4:34:50 PM
cchjd, wikipedia proves that you are wrong:
"Together, Abrams and Lindelof also created a series "bible", and conceived and detailed the major mythological ideas and plot points for an ideal five to six seasons run for the show.[18][19] The development of the show was constrained by tight deadlines, as it had been commissioned late in the 2004 season's development cycle. Despite the short schedule, the creative team remained flexible enough to modify or create characters to fit actors they wished to cast."
Posted by: show fan at Jul 5, 2008 10:38:08 PM
Wikipedia "proves" nothing.
--their writers complete 2-3 shows at a time, see how they shot/filmed, then sometimes completely change the seasonal arc if they thought it wasn't working
This is clear from various filler episodes. Recently, there was one involving two extras, who in the end, betray each other in such a way as to end up dead. These characters show up in well known scenes from earlier in the seasons, recut, it seems. Except it's clear that they weren't digitally shoved in--they were filmed, and then abandoned. Too boring, or wherever they might have gone with them didnt' work. But they had all the footage of them still around, so they put it all in an episode.
The writers had no idea where this was going, but they seemed to have stabilized on this idiotic Clash of the Titans thing. They have no idea how to explain what the smoke column is, or how the monsters got there, or how Locke's father got there. They still haven't explained why Walt was spooky. They messed up the throwaway time-travel-anomaly plot by getting the directionality wrong, too--they could have had a really cool excuse for everything: because time was moving slower on the island. ie. they could have have the Lost folks thinking it was still 2004, when they are rescued back into "now"--but instead, they had time move faster on the island. (a cool solution to their problem of "real timing" their seasons, roughly. At least in 24, they move the clock up a year in between seasons.)
Looking for answers to this is a lot like look for answers to the X files. The writers just started "borrowing" heavily from the web, and took mythologies from various oddities there. It's clear fans have thought things through more than the writers have, especially for contitunity. The writers now rely on that.
Posted by: mouse at Jul 6, 2008 12:08:04 AM
I sometimes think that LOST fans give more credit to the producers than the producers deserve. During Season 1 a lot of people predicted that they were in a computer simulation and stuff, which I thought was a rather heady and compelling idea for a prime-time drama. I gave the producers lots of credit for coming up with that idea, but once I found out that the survivors were 'just on an island' I sorta felt like I let my imagination run wild.
Not to say that's a bad thing, considering all the crazy stuff that happens on the show.
http://manmarine.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Fiction Man at Jul 6, 2008 12:15:53 AM
The real reason is that they CANCELED MASH! Those bastards CANCELED MASH! Why oh why??? Ever wonder why LOST is also a four-letter word show name? They also canceled SOAP.
Posted by: bib at Jul 6, 2008 7:41:20 AM
Here is the link to the new Lost Book Club: http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=bookclub. It includes the reference to Huxley's "Island" in addition to some other interesting literary influences. HT to Rex Sorgatz.
Posted by: C at Jul 6, 2008 11:32:53 PM
Lost's producers had no idea where the show was going during most of the first season. Toward the end of the first season, they settled on basic overarching mythology and large-scale plot points for the rest of the series, but they didn't have a road map for how to get from point A to point B. They started constructing that map last year after being granted a definite end point. They'll keep filling in details -- and sometimes they'll change things they'd previously settled on -- as they go.
This is not quite the same as "making it all up as they go along." It's also not quite the same as having everything nailed down in advance.
Posted by: Eric D. Dixon at Jul 7, 2008 2:22:00 PM
We can give you the best Final Fantasy XI gold and best service.
Posted by: Final Fantasy XI gold at Jan 2, 2009 2:51:51 AM
buy aion kina
cheap aion kina
aion money
Posted by: aion kina at Mar 18, 2009 8:44:07 PM
aion gold
aion money
cheap aion gold
cheap aion money
buy aion gold
Mabinogi online gold
Mabinogi gold
buy Mabinogi gold
cheap Mabinogi gold
Mabinogi money
2moons dil
2moons gold
buy 2moons dil
2moons dil
cheap 2moons dil
flyff gold
flyff penya
flyff money
buy flyff penya
cheap flyff penya
cheap flyff gold
Dofus kamas
buy Dofus kamas
cheap kamas
Dofus kama
Dofus gold
Dofus money
Knight online gold
Knight Gold
Knight Noah
Knight online Noah
Posted by: aion at Jul 10, 2009 10:31:10 PM
