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Nobody came to "Get" [i]Lost[/i].

Started by Robert, April 08, 2018, 08:21:25 PM

Robert

I started a multimedia lecture series as Sussex Co. Community Col. to explain Lost, the TV serial.  I was a friend of the guy who made the show since he was a teenager, and I knew where it came from and how it really made sense if you could read the clues.  It was cleverly written to hide from the audience that it was not fantasy or SF (except for 1 small element) but actually a cloak-&-dagger story they could solve as a mystery, not even revealing that overtly at the end, but you needed a lot of background in detective fiction & drama to "get" it.

I was surprised to find out at the beginning of the term that half a section of biology I teach was interested in attending such a lecture series.  Apparently the show's had a new life on Netflix.  But when it finally arranged, none of them came.  Maybe after several weeks of hearing me in class, they weren't interested in hearing more from me even on an unrelated subject.  Only one other person showed up, maybe its being Good Friday evening held down attendance.  Unfortunately technical difficulty caused me to cancel that evening.

The following Fri. there was no tech problem, but the 1 who showed up the previous week didn't come, & the other person who heard of it thru the same channel (Nextdoor.com) & said she wanted to come the previous Fri. didn't show up either.  Possibly for the 1 who did show up, the syllabus I passed out was more convenient for him to research on his own.  Or maybe I'm just boring in person.

Maybe my friend Damon Lindelof was right not to have a denouement of Lost.  Maybe practically nobody cared about a solution, except for a few hardcore mystery fans.  So they just pretended it'd been a nonsensic fantasy story, w people acting strangely for no good reason.

Robert

Darn, this was supposed to be in Random Topics.  Well, it's about TV, which is a kind of radio, right?

Rix Gins

Quote from: Robert on April 08, 2018, 08:21:25 PM
I started a multimedia lecture series as Sussex Co. Community Col. to explain Lost, the TV serial.  I was a friend of the guy who made the show since he was a teenager, and I knew where it came from and how it really made sense if you could read the clues.  It was cleverly written to hide from the audience that it was not fantasy or SF (except for 1 small element) but actually a cloak-&-dagger story they could solve as a mystery, not even revealing that overtly at the end, but you needed a lot of background in detective fiction & drama to "get" it.

I was surprised to find out at the beginning of the term that half a section of biology I teach was interested in attending such a lecture series.  Apparently the show's had a new life on Netflix.  But when it finally arranged, none of them came.  Maybe after several weeks of hearing me in class, they weren't interested in hearing more from me even on an unrelated subject.  Only one other person showed up, maybe its being Good Friday evening held down attendance.  Unfortunately technical difficulty caused me to cancel that evening.

The following Fri. there was no tech problem, but the 1 who showed up the previous week didn't come, & the other person who heard of it thru the same channel (Nextdoor.com) & said she wanted to come the previous Fri. didn't show up either.  Possibly for the 1 who did show up, the syllabus I passed out was more convenient for him to research on his own.  Or maybe I'm just boring in person.

Maybe my friend Damon Lindelof was right not to have a denouement of Lost.  Maybe practically nobody cared about a solution, except for a few hardcore mystery fans.  So they just pretended it'd been a nonsensic fantasy story, w people acting strangely for no good reason.

So if nobody shows up for your lecture, do you still get paid?.   

MV/Liberace!

Quote from: Robert on April 08, 2018, 08:21:25 PM
I started a multimedia lecture series as Sussex Co. Community Col. to explain Lost, the TV serial.  I was a friend of the guy who made the show since he was a teenager, and I knew where it came from and how it really made sense if you could read the clues.  It was cleverly written to hide from the audience that it was not fantasy or SF (except for 1 small element) but actually a cloak-&-dagger story they could solve as a mystery, not even revealing that overtly at the end, but you needed a lot of background in detective fiction & drama to "get" it.

I was surprised to find out at the beginning of the term that half a section of biology I teach was interested in attending such a lecture series.  Apparently the show's had a new life on Netflix.  But when it finally arranged, none of them came.  Maybe after several weeks of hearing me in class, they weren't interested in hearing more from me even on an unrelated subject.  Only one other person showed up, maybe its being Good Friday evening held down attendance.  Unfortunately technical difficulty caused me to cancel that evening.

The following Fri. there was no tech problem, but the 1 who showed up the previous week didn't come, & the other person who heard of it thru the same channel (Nextdoor.com) & said she wanted to come the previous Fri. didn't show up either.  Possibly for the 1 who did show up, the syllabus I passed out was more convenient for him to research on his own.  Or maybe I'm just boring in person.

Maybe my friend Damon Lindelof was right not to have a denouement of Lost.  Maybe practically nobody cared about a solution, except for a few hardcore mystery fans.  So they just pretended it'd been a nonsensic fantasy story, w people acting strangely for no good reason.

I began watching Lost during the airing of its final season, catching the final 5 or six episodes as they were broadcast.  At the time, I couldn't have been more disappointed with how the series wrapped up.  I recall the final season being a train wreck, but the finale felt particularly amateur hour and relegated the show to a regrettable investment of TV viewing time when, instead, Lost could have been a classic.  Rather than make sense of things as it should have, the finale seemed to celebrate the show's inability to tell a story.  The finale could have at least made an attempt at tying together the shards of broken storytelling the writers had strung viewers along with for several years.

In subsequent years, I've seen a few websites attempt to make sense of it all by piecing together clues, hoping to salvage the show's legacy and convince readers of the genius behind Lost's creators.  I'm not convinced.  It seems to me that if a PowerPoint presentation is required in order to make sense of a TV show, the TV show has failed to tell a story.

Having said all of that, I would be interested in seeing your presentation.  Is there video of it?  I've been considering watching the series again to see if eight years of separation can lend a new perspective.

LOST is part of the Tommy Westphall Multiverse.  8)





Robert

Quote from: mv on April 09, 2018, 12:10:10 AMI began watching Lost during the airing of its final season, catching the final 5 or six episodes as they were broadcast.  At the time, I couldn't have been more disappointed with how the series wrapped up.  I recall the final season being a train wreck, but the finale felt particularly amateur hour and relegated the show to a regrettable investment of TV viewing time when, instead, Lost could have been a classic.  Rather than make sense of things as it should have, the finale seemed to celebrate the show's inability to tell a story.  The finale could have at least made an attempt at tying together the shards of broken storytelling the writers had strung viewers along with for several years.

In subsequent years, I've seen a few websites attempt to make sense of it all by piecing together clues, hoping to salvage the show's legacy and convince readers of the genius behind Lost's creators.  I'm not convinced.  It seems to me that if a PowerPoint presentation is required in order to make sense of a TV show, the TV show has failed to tell a story.

Having said all of that, I would be interested in seeing your presentation.  Is there video of it?  I've been considering watching the series again to see if eight years of separation can lend a new perspective.
Sorry, no video.  However, if you want to "Get" Lost, you'll need to watch a lot of video, not just of Lost itself, but of its precursor material, especially Department S.  For an introduction, see the chronologic entries I made during, and then following, the run of Lost; I'm still making entries there as I find more clues & cx, but I haven't consolidated it into an explanation.  It'd be easier to convey in a present'n + Q&A format live.  In the meantime if you want to save time, read the 1st entry, then skip to the last few.  For ultra-short, that index page has on "an index card" the plot outline that Lost's makers could fit on an index card, with superimposed on it a 1-word title alluding to the means by which the audience would be clued in.

Lost was a cloak-&-dagger story disguised as SF/fantasy.  Once you figure out what was really going on on it, you'll see there was no fantasy & only 1 piece of sci-fi: a machine which could induce brain damage, by which one could knock a target out & induce a stuporous, suggestible state.  This was Faraday's machine, which did nothing like time travel but only "mind travel" under suggestion, apparently inspired in the writing by Marvel Comics character Jason Wyngarde -- who was based on Department S character Jason King, played by Peter Wyngarde.

It is possible to trace the development of Lost by Damon Lindelof via allusions such as in the previous paragraph, & from the conversations & shared experiences I had w him in years preceding Lost.  I was as frustrated as you at the conclusion of Lost, because I'd expected a conventional denouement as typical in detective drama & fiction.  Instead the makers of Lost pretended there'd been no mystery after all, & that it'd just been something of a sloppily-made shaggy-dog-cum-adventure tale.  Once you solve it, though, you'll see the "prod'n mistakes" were all clues.  You'll laugh where you cried; you'll suck in breath where you laughed, once you get the import of the events.  Many things were the reverse of what they seemed.

There were clues in the dialog, action, props, scenery, character names, acting, music, promos, & podcasts.

If you want to study the background material on your own, I can supply a syllabus.  I can also address questions here.

Robert

Among points I've determined about Lost:
There was no time travel.
The Monster was not a being, and had no intelligence or will.
The real Oceanic 815 was the one shown on the bottom of the sea.  Nobody survived that wreck.
Most major characters had, or were, doubles.
The Island had nothing geologically special about it.
I know where the main Island was, but other bases of operations were versions of that place elsewhere.
Kate gave birth to Aaron, but that wasn't the real Kate.  Claire's pregnancy was fake.
The Sawyer who claimed to be the John Ford whose parents were swindled by a Sawyer was actually that Sawyer.
Alvar Hanso was dead for some time before Oceanic 815 crashed.
That airliner was brought down by internal sabotage, not some magnetic Earth-spasm.
It was Jack's inebriation, not his father's, that caused the death of that patient.
The problem with pregnancy on The Island was that it tended to get you murdered.  There was no mystery disease.
Jin didn't learn English on The Island, he knew it all along.
There was no problem navigating to or from The Island.  You just had to know where it was.
Charlie wasn't addicted to heroin.
Kate's airplane was not in her time capsule when she dug it up.
Miles's ability to hear from the dead was a scam.
Faraday's machine produced brain damage.  That's all it did.
Walt was a scam & sleight-of-hand artist too.  He even slipped loaded dice into the backgammon game.
All hx of The Island going back more than a few years was imaginary.  No H-bomb, no ancient settlement, no '70s.
Zuckerman's diamonds were fake.
Hugo never won the lottery.
Jacob was not a real person.  Neither was Dave.
Cindy was a gold digger.
The examples of pneumothorax & hemopericardium relief were phony.
Desmond could not see the future, except for what was staged.
The Black Rock was not wrecked there.  Its dynamite load was not naturally aged.
The miraculous cures and healings were all phony; in some cases, the injury or illness had been faked.
Several deaths & gunshot wounds were faked.
Said wasn't really Muslim.
The alt.world wasn't an alt.world.
Jack smuggled the heroin bag into Charlie's mouth.  Charlie smuggled a blood squib into Claire's.
Walt's backward speech resulted from his mishandling of a tape recorder.
The Swan station had been adapted from a synchrotron installation.
The Lighthouse was a holograph.
The big statue was a hologram.  There'd never been more than a "fine foot".
The chamber Charlie supposedly drowned in had to be specially vented to admit water.  He didn't drown.


Robert

Quote from: ItsOver on April 11, 2018, 02:41:37 PMIs that all?
No, I wrote "Among points"; It was all I could quickly recall.

In a podcast at the close of season 5, Damon said, "You know, by now they have enough clues that they could solve it."  Carlton Cuse replied, "Yeah, but they won't."

Some of the clues were blatant:

Some of the clues were really blatant, like this.

Others were subtle enough that you had to slo-mo DVD playback.  For instance, look at the scene in season 1 where Shannon supposedly grazes Locke w a bullet.  You can tell that Shannon, Locke, & some other characters were in on the act, performing a version of the bullet catch, if you slow the shots down enough.  Shannon fires one shot into the ground, as a magician would to prove the gun is real and the ammo is real -- well, at least a round is.  Then she turns her gun away to shoot just before Said hits her.  Had she waited to turn her gun until she took an unexpected shove from Said from her L, her shot would've missed to Locke's L.  Instead her shot must miss to Locke's R, but he clutches the L side of his head w his R hand.  He must've concealed a sharp object in his L hand to cut himself.  None of that was needed to produce the scene for an edited TV show, but only to fool someone on-scene.  Slick, huh?  Damon loved magic tricks.

Horrible show.  Watched about 20 minutes of it once before giving up.  Which was about 10 minutes longer than I gave ''Weeds'' and ''The Walking Dead''.

I'm not turning on any more shows that sound awful, just because company comes over and wants to see them

ItsOver

I think I'll just stick with Steve McGarrett battling Wo Fat.


Robert

Quote from: ItsOver on April 11, 2018, 08:36:15 PMI think I'll just stick with Steve McGarrett battling Wo Fat.

Speaking of fat Chinese guys on detective shows, Lost was in small part a continuation of the running joke of Mr. Cuse's previous show Martial Law.  They ended one season with a cliffhanger: Sammo Hung falling out of a flying airplane w no parachute, not expecting to get another season.  Next season they resumed as if nothing had happened, eventually covering w some lame-o story about how he'd, I dunno, landed in a pile of shaving cream or something.  Mr. Cuse said he wanted to inaugurate another program w some fat Chinese guy coming down & splatting onto the ground.  Damon then took that up in an episode of Crossing Jordan that started like that.  Lost was the sine qua non of that gag, an airliner full of people crashing from the sky & surviving w/o explanation

Dr. MD MD

I knew it was one of those shows that you can't miss a single episode or you're fucked and I was very busy at the time and so never got into it. Since then I've come to think of JJ Abrhams as somewhat of a douchebag hack. The only thing I've ever seen by him that I thought was good was a movie called Super 8, which is basically an homage to Spielberg SciFi movies.

paladin1991

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on April 12, 2018, 09:46:19 PM
I knew it was one of those shows that you can't miss a single episode or you're fucked and I was very busy at the time at the gerbil ranch teaching the gerbils to dance the Hustle up my ass, and so never got into it. Since then I've come to think of JJ Abrhams as somewhat of a douchebag hack. The only thing I've ever seen by him that I thought was good was a movie called Super 8, which is basically an homage to Spielberg SciFi movies.

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: paladin1991 on April 12, 2018, 10:37:58 PM


Boy, you are a severely butthurt little faggot, aren't you?  ::)

Tell ya what, Hillbot, I'm gonna keep posting and being ugly and mean and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Muhahahahahahahahaha!!! ;D

Robert

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on April 12, 2018, 09:46:19 PMI knew it was one of those shows that you can't miss a single episode or you're fucked
As it turned out, that was the case only if you watched it w the same attitude of most viewers.  There were actually so many clues that if you were good enough at picking them up & interpreting them, you could've missed half the content & still solved most of what was to be solved.  Season 6 was notably poor in clue content.  However, the more you watched of seasons 1-5, the better your chances were.  Season 6 looked like it was done mostly to make things harder for someone who already had it figured out.
QuoteSince then I've come to think of JJ Abrams as somewhat of a douchebag hack. The only thing I've ever seen by him that I thought was good was a movie called Super 8, which is basically an homage to Spielberg SciFi movies.
Of the creative team, the only one I was friendly w was Damon Lindelof.  So much of what I saw in the show was pure "him", I have trouble imagining what the rest of them contributed!  But I'm sure that's because of the things I was tuned to.  It's like the way I watched Smallville, such that after Gough & Millar stopped writing, there wasn't much left to it.

Jackstar

Quote from: Robert on April 08, 2018, 08:21:25 PM
I started a multimedia lecture series as Sussex Co. Community Col. to explain Lost





Go deep, or go home.

Jackstar

Quote from: mv on April 09, 2018, 12:10:10 AM
Rather than make sense of things as it should have, the finale seemed to

Try watching it with the sound turned on. Actually listening to the dialogue would make a big difference.

Jackstar

Quote from: Robert on April 10, 2018, 09:24:30 PM
need to watch a lot of video, not just of Lost itself, but of its precursor material, especially Department S.


What, no :magnet link? This study hall is ghetto.

Robert

Quote from: Jackstar on April 13, 2018, 08:57:06 AMTry watching it with the sound turned on. Actually listening to the dialogue would make a big difference.
Strangely enough, the finale was not that clue-ful, w/ w/o sound.  I'd expected a denouement.  Instead it was more of a distraction.

The main thing to understand about season 6 is that there was no "side world", as Damon's mother Sue (whom I should remember to phone soon) called it.  Many of the island scenes in season 6 were cover story, and much of the off-island action happened only in Desmond's head under the influence of the electric brainwashing box he'd been put in.  (You didn't think that when the episode ended, that was the end of what was being implanted in his head, do you?  Clever of the makers of Lost extending subjective scenes past "curtain", huh?)  Much of the rest of the off-island stuff in season 6 occurred before most of the rest of the action of Lost.

But overall, it'd actually be easier to understand Lost if you skipped season 6.  There were a few clues given that season, but the amount of mindfuckery designed to throw you off the trail was much more in that season than in the previous ones.

Robert

Quote from: Jackstar on April 13, 2018, 12:29:06 PMWhat, no :magnet link? This study hall is ghetto.
You mean links to the Dailymotion files of those Department S episodes?  Or to places where some of the other stuff might currently be hosted?

Or do you mean for my "Get" Lost entries?  That's here.

Or do you mean to an article about magnets?  Like explaining their use in a synchrotron, which is what the Swan station on Lost apparently had been for?  Or pointing to the reference in A.C. Doyle's "The Horror of the Heights" (collected in his Tales of Terror and Mystery, which Lost alluded heavily & cleverly to) about the magnetic deflection, which apparently is what inspired the makers of Lost to use a magnetism-oriented plot theme as a cover story?  Or how The Monster consisted of magnetically levitated particles under remote control?


Jackstar

Quote from: Robert on April 13, 2018, 02:38:15 PM
Like explaining their use in a synchrotron, which is what the Swan station on Lost apparently had been for?


Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?


Robert

Last night on my way w a friend to see another friend in Jesus Christ, Superstar, we passed the room where the sign for my room change that I'd taped up for "Get" Lost was still there.  Seems much of the Performing Arts & Health Sci. Center doesn't get much use.  Even the opera wasn't a student prod'n, but community theater by Drama Geeks Prod'ns.

Robert

I haven't mentioned my latest deduction: that Lost character's Sawyer's name & persona were mostly derived from that of Ray Shaw, the Manchurian Candidate, the book by which name I've been reading recently.

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