You believe that Jack Shephard was a one-dimensional character? Really? Hmmm. I guess you’re entitled to your opinion. I guess I just can’t agree with this assessment.

I disagree. I would say that O’Quinn was one of a handful of actors on that show capable of turning any material into a work of art. I would also include Matthew Fox, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Harold Perrineau, Elizabeth Mitchell, Michael Emerson and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. I feel they were the best performers in the series.

Tracing the history of property rights through changes in political theory would be intriguing. It is in the seventeenth century that political theorists try to find reasons to support property laws that don’t appeal to tradition or to divine right. So I wouldn’t expect to find any appeals to laws of nature before then. Instead, we’d get supernatural explanations.

And, really, this is the way that TVD should go. (Perhaps it does. I’m only caught up through s1.) First, they shouldn’t give an explanation. Second, if they do, they should ret-con a magical explanation (much like BTVS did with the slayer mythology in the later seasons). Basically, say that a powerful witch cast a spell for all time that would keep vampires out of domiciles. There’s still questions about how they could get so specific in a spell, but we are used to accepting agent-causation reasons for arbitrariness. (With good reason. “Arbitrary” comes from the Latin “arbitrium” which means the will or the power of choosing. Originally, the English “arbitrary” meant decided by an agent’s will.)

Baudrillard’s reaction was basically to say nothing for ages, then finally throw his hands up in the air and say, “you really have no idea what I was writing about, do you? And to make matters worse you made Reloaded. Unforgivable”

There’s a short translation of an interview he gave on the subject in 2003 here: http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm

I experience a hermeneutical tension when I watch something like Lost, trapped between trying to understand what the original intention of the writers was, and enjoying the show on an entirely different level when viewing it through my own lens. I accept that there are overtly religious references throughout the show, but do not believe that in season 1 the show was envisioned by the writers as an entirely religious parable. Your suggested guide to viewing is valid, and presents an enjoyable experience for the viewer (arguably more enjoyable than that suggested by the producers through their puzzle-solving etc), but just because I can sit back and watch The Wizard of Oz while listening to Dark Side of the Moon doesn’t mean that Pink Floyd intended it to work that way, and suggestions that they did give them too much credit.

This hermeneutical tension is what caused me to dislike Season 6 so much, the gulf between what I thought the writers were doing and what my own interpretation of events were was just too great, I thought they were doing far more than they were and when it became obvious that they weren’t doing so much, I was hugely disappointed. Like standing in line in Disneyland for 3 hours only to realise you’re in the wrong line and end up going on the Dumbo ride. The only adult by themselves on the Dumbo ride (True story).

if you are suggesting that “to get the most enjoyment out of watching Lost, especially toward the end.” you ignore the actual script and filter the show through your own lens, then I agree whole-heartedly.

What is the function of criticism? Is it to understand the meaning of a work as intended by its creator, or is it to interpret the work in a particular context? I would argue both, but as a work exists independently of its creator from the moment it is presented to an audience most criticism tends to fall into the later, interpreting the work through the lens of the critic’s own biases.

In theory I strive to understand the intent of the creator, in practice my own biases pollute such an exercise far too much.

@Trevor

I like that the show changes directions a number of times; I also liked it on Abrams’ previous project, Alias. I hadn’t really thought about the showing being about something different if it had ended at other points, but that seems right to me.

One thing I liked about Lost is that it’s not just about the search for meaning, but about a question at one step removed: the search for the best method of how to find meaning. Is Jack’s early science-only approach sustainable? Should we throw ourselves into the miraculous like Locke? Can Sawyer maintain his cool distance? Will Bernard and Rose be able to live together in quiet? It’s not just about what is the meaning of life, but what approach would best help us discover this.

So while I’m not quite content to define the religious as the search for meaning, I think that Lost thematically parallels a lot of religious discussion in that it is formally concerned with questions of how to understand and intepret events, the role of narrative, and the best approach to discovering value in ways of living.

@Unkie Dave

While I agree that the sixth season in general, and the finale in particular, is more overtly religious than what comes previously, I think the religious questions were always central to Lost’s mysteries. Whether it is the faith and reason debate of Locke and Jack or the instability of clerical authority (represented at different times by Pierre Chang, Ben Linus, Richard Halpert, Jacob, and unLocke), there were always religious questions (not to mention imagery) floating very near the surface.

I also agree that Lost, like most (especially American) television, is multi-authored in a way that is not always sufficiently appreciated. A strong showrunner’s voice does not eliminate the many voices that play out on an episode-to-episode basis.

The way you discuss projecting an idealized version of the show you’d like to see onto the show that is shows a real self-awareness that I appreciate. But I’m not ready to draw the stronger conclusion that you suggest. (And honestly, I don’t take Zizek seriously in his comments on The Matrix. Having read The Fright of Real Tears and too much else written by Zizek on pop culture, I just don’t believe that *he* believes that we shouldn’t engage film and television philosophically or psychologically. Not that I find Zizek particularly “philosophical.”) I’m always concerned about the extent to which we project our interests (especially philosophical) on filmic and televisual “texts.” (Hence the current blogging project on Wartenberg’s book.) What I sought to elucidate in this post was “how to get the most enjoyment out of watching Lost, especially toward the end.” And that was to disengage from some of the Lost fandom’s producer-encouraged puzzle-solving and toward a looser approach to the narrative that would be appreciabley similar to the authors of religious texts’ more varied level of interest in the questions that the readers of religious texts often have.

“When I saw The Matrix at a local theater in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film – namely, to an idiot. A man in his late twenties at my right was so absorbed in the movie that he continually disturbed the other viewers with loud exclamations, like “My God, wow, so there is no reality!” I definitely prefer such naive immersion to the pseudo-sophisticated intellectualist readings which project refined philosophical or psychoanalytical conceptual distinctions into the film.”
- Slavoj Zizek, ‘The Matrix: Or, The Two Sides of Perversion’ from ‘The Matrix and Philosophy”

In other words, “just chill guys, its only a movie.”

With that in mind (and ignoring it completely) its worth elaborating a little more on why I so disliked Lost. When I watch something like Lost I project in my best Feuerbachian style my idealised version of what the show could be onto the somewhat lesser reality of what the show actually is. I want the show to have an overarching mythology, a solid set of mechanics running in the background that makes everything internally consistent and logical, I want to feel like there are clues in individual episodes that all add together to give an explanation at the end, and for three or four seasons my belief in this was strong.

The Reality of the show is that each episode is written by a different set of writers who each have an individual take on who the characters are and what their motivations are, the writers may work to a preset summary of who’s who and what’s what given to them by the producers, but the fact is that there is often no internal consistency between successive episodes, let alone seasons, and the sense of a consistent organic narrative is simply a projection by the fans onto the skimpy bones of the show (what Tim refers to more positively as situation 4 above).

This leads me to feel a) cheated for investing more time in something than the writers themselves did and b) foolish for letting myself be cheated yet again by a vacuous TV show.

I think I would be better off if I just sat back and took Zizek’s advice; a TV show is just a TV show, written as mass-market commercial entertainment. There’s no greater meaning to it, no hidden philosophical message, its just a show designed to put people in a receptive mood when the ads come on.

(I’m sorry from quoting from a “Blah-Blah and Philosophy” book, I’m sure Zizek’s essay has been published elsewhere but I couldn’t find a reference. Also, funny how there seems to be a distinct lack of “The Matrix 2 and/or 3 and Philosophy” books)