What they talk about
I’d considered doing another post about LOST today, in honor of the series finale, which I just finished watching. I wanted to talk about how, in the end, the show came back to character and how despite the sci-fi elements, I’m inclined to call it literary. But then I made the mistake of going online to see how other fans had reacted, and I saw a lot of hatred—hatred that I saw mainly stemming from (what I consider to be) a lack of understanding, and I decided I wanted some time to digest the show on my own, without having to explain why the first 120 episodes, each individually, meant more than the finale, but why the finale was still absolutely essential to the closure, and the shape of the show. You’re just going to have to trust me on this, or keep watching over and over until you get it.
Instead, I’m going to talk about the Bechdel Test for Women in Movies, which actually kind of relates, because the criticism that most infuriated me tonight was one where a blogger clearly dissected the entire show to fit an idea she wanted to have about it—that it’s a sexist, racist piece of crap with “plot holes the size of {her} Hyundai,” poor writing, bad dialogue, and the list goes on and on. (I guess the millions of fans are just all stupid, but then again, I can think of some stories I would say similar things about, so maybe I’m just being elitist here.)
Anyway, back to this test. I swear I can stay focused. And that this really isn’t a post about Lost. Not entirely anyway.
This test was created a while back to evaluate gender equality in movies. Take a look below the cut here.
All right. That’s all very well. I even agree: the test doesn’t seem to be asking for much, just that women are shown as, you know, complex human beings who interact with one another.
The problem is, it got me thinking about some of my own writing. I’m working on a novel, and at least as of page 79, I can’t say that I have two MEN talking about something other than women. And now that I’ve thought about it, this rather concerns me.
Now, a novel isn’t the same medium as a book, obviously, but I wonder if the results hold similar for novels or if they have more female presence. Also, I wonder how much this test really says about the development of the female characters. Take UP, for instance, which features one female character (Pixar must have trouble finding women to voice characters or something, since their movies overwhelmingly feature male characters, but that’s another post), but she has spunk and initiative. She’s clearly a strong female character, but she has maybe ten minutes of screen time. So is the message good or bad?
In the end, I think it’s useful to think about these things, but it’s counterproductive to give them too much weight, because it’s just one aspect.
Tags: characters, gender, lost, movies, television, writing
My fiancee and I love Lost.
With that said, by the last few episodes (seasons?), you could tell the writers had given up a lot of the character development because they had to address the 12,000 questions they brought upon themselves with the endless machinations of the plot. Instead of people, the characters became means to an end.
So much so, that in the 6th season, every time someone said the word “destiny” I’d immediately break into “Say My Name, Say My Name,” by Destiny’s Child, which seemed appropriate.
Anyway, I still dig the show. Pretty great overall.
I do think that Lost did more to acclimatize the general populations to a lot of literary tricks–flashbacks have been common place, but there were enough flash forwards and sideways and ups and downs in some of the episodes that it seemed like Robert Coover had a hand as a writer.
Introducing the general culture all those tricks is impressive in its own right, and probably important, as it (probably?) increases the other types of stories can be told.
Am I right? Wrong? Should I stick to poetry and shut the hell up? Discuss.
No, I think you’re right in that the show introduced a lot more thinking to audiences as a whole. Some people’s minds didn’t want to work to process the present story and flashbacks/flashforwards at the same time. It certainly wasn’t a show written to the least-common-denominator viewer.
That said, I disagree that character development sort of fell away in the later seasons. I think it was just being done in a very different way since the cast was so often split up (by time and place) but also because the flashbacks stopped. It’s funny though, because some people say too many questions were answered (and that it took away from the story), while others complain that not enough were. When I finished the show I was only left with a feeling of completion, and other than wondering who shot at our lovely Losties in season five while they were in the outrigger (during the flashes), I don’t feel like there is any big question that I still want answered.
Is there a similar test for “minorities”? I mean, Lost would probably pass that test, hands down. Tons of movies and novels would fail.
Yeah. Except one of the articles written by the woman I mentioned above claimed that Lost was pretty much a nasty racist show too, since the people of color died in order to let the white characters live. We talked about this last night, but the writers killed off characters who affected the viewers most, so that argument just fell super flat to me. But then again, I’m speaking from a point of privilege here I suppose.
So Hugo Reyes, the obese Hispanic, being left in charge of the island doesn’t count as a minority shown in a successful role? So that argument is out, I think. Plus, they’re all dead…
Apparently a lot of people interpreted that as “they were dead the whole show OMG what a waste of my life!” Ah well.
Hmmm. As far as them being dead the whole show, I don’t really think so. However… when did they die, and who was it that died? Was it the people in the parallel universe——tangible and visible ghosts convinced of their life a la Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense?
Or was it first-world people, killed on the Island?
Why were any of them dead? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me, unless they died when flight815 crashed and the parallel universe “realizations” or “memories” or whatever came back to them… and killed them.
Which makes the entire thing Purgatory, which the writers explicitly denied in the first couple of seasons. Ergo, bullshit, but still a fascinating story.