Posted by: eastwest at May 26, 2010 1:04 AM"
ALSO this on Little Green Footballs.
And does this look familiar?
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Posted by: eastwest at May 26, 2010 1:04 AM"
ALSO this on Little Green Footballs.
And does this look familiar?
"LOST has always had its sympathies with eastern religious tradition, namely Buddhism and Hinduism. A big part of that religious tradition is the focus on questions and questioning and less on universal answers. The belief is that there are very few, if any, universal answers. LOST seemed to hammer that point home over and over again. Locke wants answers, thinks first the answer is in the Hatch and then with Ben and then with Jacob. Each time, those potential sources for answers prove not to have answers at all. Jacob was set up as a Jesus Christ figure and then was revealed to be just a man who had a task to do that he didn't even really choose to do. Meanwhile, the tragedy of Locke is that he couldn't simply appreciate the fact that he was a paraplegic who was now walking around. The obvious contrast was Rose, who simply lived in the moment. No need for answers. She was alive and with the man she loved. That was enough
I found that this was implicit in the LOST story, but unfortunately we have had a lot of shows that fixed on setting up mysteries and then trying to reveal them in somewhat lame ways (X-files and Twin Peaks come to mind). This may have set the expectation for LOST and the writers didn't do anything to dispel that. Let's face it - if Cuse and Lindendorf said, "Hey, LOST is a Buddhist pulp fiction." they could have kissed their shrinking audience goodbye. And so here we are. Anger, confusion, feelings of betrayal. That's what you get if you try to go subtle with a mass medium that's intended to entertain.
I enjoyed the ride, but I also expected very little by way of answers.