Lost, and don’t want to be found
“Lost” is “Baywatch” for the new millennium.
And just as Baywatch embodied the values of the 80s, so Lost incorporates our current set of values – all our secret hopes and fears. It must do – that’s why its successful.
So what does the success of Lost tell us about ourselves? Fans talk about the suspenseful story lines and the sexy actors (see the unofficial LOST site).
The great modern fear – death by aircraft, is too obvious to be mentioned. More subtly, the idea of being stranded somewhere and making the most of it, is of course, close to the off-grid life we espouse, and which the success of Lost suggests must be a great hidden theme in our technologically driven advertising- saturated lives. “Lost on paradise isle and never wanting to be rescued” shouts the London Daily Express in one article about the series.
In a nutshell, here’s the plot: The survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 crash on a lush, mysterious island. Each person possesses a shocking secret, but they’ve got nothing on the island itself, which harbors a monstrous “security system,” a series of underground bunkers and a group of violent survivalists hidden in the shadows. The survivalists kill most of the survivors from the tail section of the plane. The front section survivors set about establishing a society on the island.
Lost – The Complete First Season- DVD on Amazon
The fear of survivalists wrecking something that could be beautiful is the other side of the off-grid coin. On the one hand yearning for the simple life, on the other hand — fear of the step into freedom. “Lost” is mining our subconscious desire to go off the grid and our fears of what this unknown life would be like – the fear that a return to a semi-natural state would be a return to savagery is a reasonable one.
But Lost is also a harbinger of another aspect of modern life, what the LA Times calls “the ever-thinning boundary between reality and illusion.” The news that a future episode will involve the finding of a manuscript by one of the deceased passengers which will then be published in the real world by Hyperion is “a fiction that bleeds into fact.” If that’s the case, though, how long is it until reality becomes a fantasy and we believe we are characters in the drama ourselves?
This is how a show like “Lost” wants to operate — framing its viewers as a community and itself as the centerpiece of a shared point of view. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; in fact, it illustrates the nature of fanhood, the way our affinities help us find purchase, a sense of identity in the world.
In fact, the marketing of the novel suggests something far more insidious — that we, the audience, exist not only to be manipulated but to participate in our manipulation by seeing it as cool. This is the kind of thing that literature has traditionally stood against.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I know I often wonder how I would be reacting in situations shown on Lost, which is one of my family’s favorite TV shows this season. Of course, you must suspend disbelief quite a bit to even be able to watch it. :)
I believe we should all be concerned about “the ever-thinning boundary between reality and illusion.” Yet it’s a concept which seems, perversely, to attract us.
An early ground-breaker was the book Masquerade by Kit Williams. What set it apart was that the riddles on each page led to a real-life buried treasure. Inevitably, a cult of treasure-hunters was formed, which drove the publicity for further marketing. The book was enigmatic, artistic, altogether charming. So no problem.
But the marketing possibilities must have been ringing bells all around. The years to come offered us increasing opportunities, such as feeling part of reality shows, being invited to feel that we really knew the people on screen, being cynically manipulated to pay for those shows ourselves through phone voting. Logic might say that it’s money wasted, but every voter must believe his support, his belief, his vote makes a difference. As Nick says, “it illustrates the nature of fanhood, the way our affinities help us find purchase, a sense of identity in the world.”
Mostly harmless… But it’s another step towards our acceptance of mass manipulation.
And the marketing Nick describes, the “fiction that bleeds into fact”, is an example of the progression towards willing suspension of the boundary line. If it’s willing, what could be wrong with it?
Well, we seem to be developing a population which says, “Yes, I know you are feeding me a mixture of reality and illusion, I know you are playing with my mind so I don’t always know which is which, I know you are manipulating my emotions and my actions. I willingly give up that control and suspend my judgement – because I want to feel part of it.”
It is insidious in popular culture and literature, but translate the above for a moment into a political arena. Is that something we are making more feasible? Is it something we would wish? Is it indeed something which is already happening?
Returning to the series, the portrayal of survivalists – negative, secretive, literally underground – could also be seen as having a political agenda. In the coming energy/climate crisis, governments will want everyone sticking together and following the party line, not going off and using their own initiatives, as the off-grid community will be more prepared to do. Watch out for further media portrayals of our shared values as evil, and be sure, such attitudes will cross the line into reality.