So, I meant to make a post last night but LOST happened at 9 PM and, just like every Tuesday night, my brain imploded/exploded/ceased to exist for the rest of the night. I'm not going to rant or rave about how much I love it (which by now should be obvious), but I will attempt to relate it to our coursework. Honestly I just can't get my brain on much else right now.
For any non-LOST viewers, it begins when, in 2004, a plane crashes on a mysterious Island and 40 some survivors attempt to stay alive and get rescued. While stuck on the island for 108 days, we get an intimate view on about 15 of the main character's lives. To make a long story short, 6 of the survivors get rescued and later return, the rest are temporarily and randomly stuck on the island travelling through time, there is a giant smoke monster thing and enigmatic people on the island, and countless historical and literary references throughout the entire show. There's no simple way to explain it.
Somewhere in the small portion of remaining my brain tissue I thought, "Huh, this is kind of like Faulkner." Of course not the time travel and smoke monsters, but the narration style of the television show. Throughout all 5 and a half seasons, the show is constantly jumping back and forth. On the island, off the island. 3 years flashback, 3 years flash forward. And NOW there is a whole other "sideways" dimension in which the characters live their lives as if the plane never crashed! Like Faulkner, no? He jumps from narrator to narrator, writing only jumbled thoughts and occassional long scenes, Darl being the most descriptive and useful. Even though I had read As I Lay Dying in the past, it's amazing how much I missed or didn't pick up on from the unique writing style. Similar to LOST, Faulkner always keeps you guessing and makes you think.
Almost done, I promise! So, because this is an American Literature class, I thought I would share another interesting facet of LOST. Like I said, the show is riddled with historical and literary references. One of the main characters, Sawyer, reads constantly and relates much of island life to the books he's reading. I'm happy to announce that LOST has its own book club. There is a great selection, a lot of it from authors we've read (sadly no Faulkner). It's not every day you find a TV show that combines a love for history, sci-fi, and literature all at once.
I was going to watch this season, but I haven't kept up with any tv shows since college started. I usually marathon through a season during the summer, but I remember Sawyer reading Watership Down in an early season and catching the similarities between the island characters and the novel. I felt smart for a moment.
ReplyDeleteWhat if--stay with me on this one--life itself is the island on which all of us are lost, fumbling around, finding our way, questing for unity? That, in many ways, is a question Faulkner might be asking us.
ReplyDeleteAlso, think in terms of today's composite discussion. Cash does, in effect, travel through time when he looks at Addie. We, similarly, travel through time as our minds drift forward and back, minute to minute. That said, I don't know what our experience of smoke monsters might look like.
ReplyDeleteI had never read Faulkner before. When I first started reading the other day, I wasn't really sure I liked it. The jumping from character to character to character and even past to present annoyed me a little bit. However, as I get further into the story and learn more about each character, I find myself hooked and wanting to know more just like LOST. LOST (which, by the way, I am obsessed with) devotes episodes to specific characters' development and background just as Faulkner devotes chapters to characters points of view. Its fun to see how the different perspectives overlap or in LOST's case, how the characters are connected. I guess my main point is that I judged Faulkner too quickly. At first I was annoyed, but now I'm intrigued.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a huge fan of LOST. One similarity I see between watching the show and reading As I Lay Dying is that both are frustrating to follow. You aren't sure what is really going on, and you aren't sure if whatever conclusions the stories come to will ever be satisfying enough to make the process worth it. Yet I'm still curious to find out. I think Prof. Fisher is right to suggest that maybe Faulkner is asking us if we are all stumbling around looking for truth, whether it be within our own lives or within some work of fiction.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen LOST but I have read As I Lay Dying several times and each time I find myself realizing things I had not picked up on in the previous reading... the structure serves as a way to hyperfocus on each character BUT I think it also offers insight into the other characters via the perceptual strainer of others.. some characters are given so few excerpt that you must almost depend on the outlook of other characters to create a total image of that less vocalized character
ReplyDeleteI know I'll come under some wrath for this, but I have never watched a full episode of LOST. You can call me all the horrible names you want and mock me for it, but I just have never watched it through. I was doing work while one of roommates watched the season premier and I was lost--no pun intended--the whole time. That was mostly because I was not really paying attention to it, but, after reading your comparison between Faulkner and the show, I definitely see the elements of a stream of consciousness in each. I was disoriented and totally baffled as to what was going on in LOST--namely because it jumped around and showed such a variety of thoughts, places, times, etc.
ReplyDeleteProf. Fisher, in regards to your notion that life is analogous to being on the island, I agree with the idea but argue that we are stuck on the island of life and simply need to find our way ON it, as opposed to OFF and away from it as I suspect they are trying to do on the show (?). Unless, of course, someone in class has a way of transporting us to another planet!
Insightful, Phil. Insightful.
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