'Getting
Lost' Accurately Identifies the Ongoing Themes of Lost
If there ever was a television series that was tailor-made
for a collection of essays exploring its various elements, it would
have to be the ABC drama Lost. With so many plot-lines, unresolved
mysteries, philosophical innuendos and baggage-heavy characters, volumes
could (and no doubt eventually will) be written about the show. The
first to appear was in 2006, when the series was only two-seasons old,
but the majority of the essays in Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage
and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams’ Lost ((BenBella Books)
reflect many of the themes and fan reactions that has been part of Lost
throughout its six seasons.
Joyce Millman,
for instance, engages in that time-honored tradition of theorizing about
Lost in her essay “Game Theory.” Seeing similarities
between events on the island to the various levels of video games, she
speculates that the series itself is a game being played by unseen forces.
Millman goes so far as to advocate that Lost is an amalgamation
of two previous and highly popular video games, Myst and The
Sims. “Like Myst players, Lost viewers
(and the show’s characters) were plunged into the action with
no preamble, left to negotiate a disorienting environment that has its
own murky rules and logic,” she writes, while in The Sims
“players control the daily lives of characters that are imbued
with individual personalities, needs, wants, fears, and aspirations.”
Much like the characters on Lost.
In “The
Lost Book Club,” meanwhile, Bill Spangler explores the
various tomes that characters on the series are often seen reading.
Even though Lost was only partially through its second season
when Spangler wrote his essay, the list of books spotlighted on the
series was already impressive. From Watership Down to The
Third Policeman to The Brothers Karamazov, the author
correlates how the plots of these books correspond to the storyline
of Lost. Spangler does not firmly believe, however, that the
mystery of Lost can be revealed by reading these numerous volumes
but that they simply add to the enjoyment that is Lost. “It’s
a way of learning about the writer’s influences and getting a
different perspective on the events of the show,” he suggests.
But it’s
more than just books that provide insight on Lost, and Bill
Spangler acknowledges that fact by also discussing the various philosophers
that creep up on the series via the names of the various characters—John
Locke and Danielle Rousseau being the most obvious. Other writers also
explore the philosophical implications of Lost, most notably
Robert Burke Richardson’s “Doubt, Descartes, and Evil Geniuses”
and Amy Berner’s “Double-Locked.”
Not all
of the essays in Getting Lost are philosophical or focus on
various theories regarding the series; a small handful offer comedic
observations instead. Glenn Yeffeth, for instance, writes a highly-amusing,
thoroughly entertaining treatise entitled, “The Art of Leadership.”
Starting with the basic premise that most of the current crop of “leadership”
books on the market are forgettable, Yeffeth argues that we could learn
a lot about leadership by instead studying the actions of Jack Shephard.
But as soon as he begins to analyze the good doctor, he realizes Jack
is not a very good leader at all. He moves on to John Locke and James
“Sawyer” Ford, only to reach the same conclusions, causing
him to eventually settle upon Hugo “Hurley” Reyes as the
true leader of the castaways.
Adam-Troy
Castro, meanwhile, compares Lost with another television series
involving stranded castaway on a deserted island, Gilligan’s
Island. In “The Same Damn Island,” Castro points out
similarities between the main cast of both shows and how their characters
overlap. Hurley, for instance, is “absurdly wealthy,” just
like Thurston Howell, while actress Ginger and rock-star Charlie are
both famous celebrities. Castro doesn’t end his analysis with
these archetypes, however, but also points out similarities between
the plots of both shows.
“We
all know that despite its ‘uncharted’ status, it is far
from uninhabited,” he writes in regards to the island on Lost.
“It is home to crazy French ladies, guys buried in underground
chambers, and mysterious Others.” The island on Gilligan’s
Island, meanwhile, had “a pilot named Wrong-Way Feldman stranded
for ten years,” “a Japanese Soldier still fighting World
War II,” “a feral Jungle Boy,” and “the famous
painter Alexandri Gregor Dubov” all living on it. Coincidence?
Adam-Troy Castro obviously thinks not.
Die-hard
Lost fans have the tendency to explore and dissect every little
detail revealed in any given episode, and often spend hours perusing
the Internet looking for clues and searching for meaning even when there
are none to be found. G.O. Likeskill takes this even further than most,
believing that since there are connections between the characters on
the show—Sawyer, for instance, shared drinks in a bar with Jack’s
father in season one—the same could very well be true of the actors
who portray the characters. In the form a diary, he writes about his
twenty-nine day lunch-break quest to find those connections. While he
eventually is able to link all the major actors from the first season
to each other via films and television shows they have previously appeared
in, the entertaining aspect of his essay is the conclusions he often
makes because of these connections.
“Do
actors who do guest appearances on CSI: Miami stand a fifty
percent greater chance of having their characters killed off if they
are later regulars on a different hit series?” he asks on day
five, while day nine causes him to wonder, “If the actors are
connected at a one-step remove by two other actors who play husband
and wife, does that increase either actor’s chance of playing
a drug addict?”
Although
Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams’
Lost was published barely a third of the way through the ABC drama’s
six-season run, it still does a remarkable job of highlighting the many
key elements and discussion topics the series has attracted through
the years. While it may not contain any discourses on four-toed statues,
time travel or the mysterious Jacob, Lost still provided the
book’s authors a multitude of things to write about—from
smoke monsters to Others to the Dharma Initiative—and the resulting
essays are not only educational and entertaining, but have withstood
the test of time as well.
Anthony
Letizia (February 1, 2010)
