“As I reflect on the show having seen all six seasons, I think the central thematic tension of Lost has always been that of the global vs. the local, the big view vs. the narrow view, “for the greater good” vs. ‘my own private island.’The whole post is much longer, and all of it is worth reading. My attempts to come up with something similar kept foundering on the difficulty of pinning characters to the leadership styles of actual leaders — I thought I might have had something with a comparison between George W. Bush and Locke at the height of his man-of-faith phase, but I couldn't really make it fit. But where my allegorical readings stumbled, McCracken's analysis of themes really succeeds.
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“The show presents a way forward for our chaotic, treacherous, ‘WTF?! Where are we??’ world. And the way forward is sacrificial love for our neighbor– ‘neighbor’ meaning our children and love interests, but also our broader global family… those who are very different from us and yet nevertheless struggling to make sense of ‘the island’ we all inhabit.”
19 May 2010
Politics and LOST.
I've been wondering if there's a good way to tie LOST to politics. I'd wanted to chase the leadership angle that Noel Murray at the AV Club often writes about, but Brett McCracken at The Search has beaten me to it by a mile. I really like his explication of the show's geopolitical themes:
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2 comments:
The McCracken post is awfully good; thanks for the link. I think one of the things I've struggled with with Lost is coming to terms with the fact that some of those themes are a lot more important than the specific answers to the sci-fi questions. (And I'm not actually sure that lets the show's creators off the hook for not providing some more answers, but hey, whatever.)
I never thought about George W. and Locke as parallels, but as I wrote over on my blog, I do think there's something to Locke as a symbol of the West gone wrong -- where a vision or an ideal was corrupted by unscrupulous powers. But, y'know, even if that sort of resonance was on the creators' minds, I don't think anymore they meant for it to be particularly clear.
"And I'm not actually sure that lets the show's creators off the hook for not providing some more answers, but hey, whatever."
Maybe they already have the LOST extended universe publishing empire in mind.
All of the LOSTies make huge mistakes when they get too single-minded and inflexible, especially Jack and Locke; I think that's in some way a reflection not just of George W., but of the USA as a whole culture in the last decade. Or, more accurately, American culture is struggling with that impulse.
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