I've been thinking about Lost a lot lately. Part of it has to do with my neighbor watching it. He's a gregarious fellow and is the type of philosophical/sci-fi dude I would have assumed had watched Lost before. So he's been talking to me about it as he goes through and his mind. Just. Gets. Blown. Which is so fun and satisfying to watch!!!
But then I began to think about it.
I owe Lost a whole hell of a lot.
Lost, along with Clannad, cemented my tastes in high-concept and character driven fantasy. It also pushed me fully into mythology, reading classics, and demanding intensive character work in my RPGs. Much to the chagrin of literally everyone who has played with me since.
So I'd actually had a pretty low-magic/tech sensibility before Lost. Firefly is absolutely my preference over Star Trek, for instance: the problems of the human heart don't change, regardless of tech level. I had made the mistake in assuming that high-concept meant bad character development. Lost and Clannad changed that, being very high concept shows that used their concepts to forward character development. And I've not quite recovered from that rush of adrenaline since.
I was always interested in mythology. I read a lot of Greek mythology as a kid, imbibing a lot of those stories. Contrary to what a lot of people may think, I always found them to be very character-driven. And I enjoyed the arcs that mythology had to offer. Heracles and his constant drive to get ahead of Hera's jealousy, leading into his eventual ascent to godhood. The Trojan War is a key part of my consciousness. Lost reinvigorated my childhood love for mythology, and I have been slowly arcing back to a study of the older stories. It's a long work, recovering what we lost. But I have found a depth in the older works that have been preserved that we don't have these days, by and large. Lost seems to have inherited some of the older stories. And it was Lost that reminded me that I still preferred them.
Lost also lit a fire in my heart about reading the classics. Most of the characters in that show are either an overt reference to something classical or an actual author. Some of the references were merely surface level, but a lot of them weren't. And that piqued my interest. I've barely gotten through two in the ten years since: The Brothers Karamazov and The Count of Monte Cristo... although I'd count the Solar Cycle in that reckoning, even if they're not universally recognized. So I guess that's a total of seven. I've also dived a lot into primary sources in the Orthodox faith, in large part because of the uncertainty of knowledge presented in Lost. While I'd been interested in the Fathers and liturgics before then a lot of what I did after that point was because of the skepticism I found in myself to be in consonance with the show.
But the nail in the coffin was the character work. Lost was always about the characters. Always. Bad, good, inbetween, it didn't matter. Watching how the characters evolved from such basic events as needing to get food to the of the world was the point. Anyone wanting answers about the setting missed why the setting elements existed in the first place: to change the characters as they encountered the unexplainable. Wanting answers was against the point of the whole endeavor. We were meant to watch characters change in the face of the numinous.
I've talked with Peter, my sole Peanut Gallery patron. We both want to see some commentary on this ground-breaking show, which changed so much in our world. So I'm going to start looking at this show, with the ending, the mythological framework, in mind. Hopefully y'all will find it as illuminating as Peter and I. I got a lot from and out of this show. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe it's gratitude. Maybe I just want something to chew on for a long time.
Regardless, we are here.
No comments:
Post a Comment