LOST, as you may know, is a cult-classic, TV series sanctified by an avid viewer following. A few Sundays ago, on May 23, 2010, the ABC TV Network broadcast a much anticipated series finale to over 13 million "Lost" obsessives.
Since September 22, 2004, millions of fans faithfully watched the LOST episodes every week for the past six odd-years. After the airing, the "Lostites" dutifully diagnosed the many levels of detail carefully positioned by the show's creators and writers. As a result of this digital, frame-by-frame review, many would speculate on the hidden meaning of the show's many plot elements.
In the spirit of finding a selective, respective, alternate and/or concealed interpretation for what LOST was all about, here is my view (based on what was revealed in the series finale), of what was really happening all those years during all those story-arcs.
But for the moment, let me seem to digress...
The Tibetan Buddhists have a concept called the Bardo of Dying. This esoteric view is part of an ancient text, attributed to Padmasambhava, titled Bardo Thodol. The text is offered as a practical method to live and die with a Buddhist-based focus.
The job of the Bardo Thodol is to provide a road map for the Buddhist practitioner (something to help understand the very intense and dramatic time of death). One basic premise of Bardo of Dying is that at the moment of death reality will play tricks on the dying man's mind. As the body shuts down, the body creates visions of the dying man as he lives out fantastic adventures. These visions are characterized as "dream-like".
While you keep in mind the dying man's visions suggested in the Bardo Thodol of the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities , allow me to (what may appear at first) "go off on a tangent" ...
In Sigmund Freud's, seminal psychological work first published in 1900, "The Interpretations of Dreams", the concept of the individual's Dream-Work is presented.
The Dream Work has a specific purpose in keeping the individual functional in both everyday-sleep cycles, as well as, in sleep cycles during times of overwhelming crisis.
The job of the Dream-Work is to make the conscious review of catastrophic reality-events manageable without inducing madness in the dreamer. During the dream cycle the reflections on the mind-blowing reality-event are put in relatively "benign story scenarios". The Dream-Work creates story arcs that are representative of the reality-events, but the story elements are intentionally hidden in symbolic terms.
Successful Dream-Work symbolism has no easily discerned quid pro quo relation to the actual traumatic reality-events. In fact, the Dream-Work goes to great lengths to hide the real people, places and behaviour from the dreamer. The effect is deceptive but functional. The dreamer's conscious mind is saved from becoming overwhelmed by intense realization of the "too intense to deal with" reality-event; and, at the same time, the dreamer is allowed to tackle a mitigated, easier to fathom, version of said reality-event.
And now back to LOST ...
What exactly is the TV series LOST all about? The answer to that question has more than one valid answer. Remember there are many levels within the overall LOST plot where alternate realities manifest simultaneously:
- The Reality-World where the characters boarded the Oceanic Flight 815
- The Island-World
- The Flash-Back-Island-World
- The Flash-Forward-World
- The Back-Story-World
TO BE CONTINUED ...
We now join are regularly scheduled blog already in progress ...
Previously, on Free Use Fiction blog ... we were finally getting to the point and attempting to answer the question: " What exactly is the TV series LOST all about?"
The evasive answer is that LOST is about different things to different people. Like the songs John Lennon used to pen, LOST is written with a sense of ambiguity that fosters respective interpretations. That being said, here is my respective conclusion about the denouement (based on a freeze-frame, comparative analysis of the wounds on Jack Shepard's right-eye shown in the Pilot & in the Series Finale).
The series Pilot opens with a close-up of the right-eye of Dr. Jack Shepard, who is lying on the ground amidst a Bamboo Grove on a deserted Pacific Island.
The good doctor has landed on his back as the result of falling from the sky after his Oceanic 815 jet flight from Sydney, Australia to LAX has crashed over the Pacific.
Shepard was returning from Down-Under with the coffin and remains of his father, Christian Shepard.
Jack's relationship with his father was lamentable. Both men were surgeons who practiced medicine together. In a tragic set of events, Jack exposed his father as an alcoholic who was responsible for the death of a patient.
Jack's betrayal of his father initiated a regrettable set of events that began with Christian losing his medical license after the malpractice trial. After losing his surgical practice, Christian Shepard relocated to Australia where he became a derelict who died destitute in Sydney.
The unresolved pain that Jack Shepard accumulated due to his role in his father's demise was sublimated. This unconscious baggage remained unresolved. In the pilot episode, as Jack Shepard lies dying in the Island's Bamboo Grove from the wounds received in the plane crash, his mind begins to play tricks on him.
What occurs next (and all that happens in every subsequent plot action during the entire series of LOST) takes place exclusively in Jack Shepard's mind's eye.
In the brief moments of Jack's Death Experience, his mind races to reconcile his relationship with his dead father, Christian Shepard.
During his Bardo of Dying, Jack is visited by the visions that are germane to his mindset. In his case, Jack Shepard uses the relative recent memories of the people he met while he was on the Oceanic 815 flight as characters for the plot of his death visions. Additionally, the dying man uses any other fabricated personalities/events available to be processed by his Dream-Work.
During the last minutes of his life, Jack Shepard's priority is to somehow meet his father so he can reconcile any conflict and make peace with Christian. By making peace with his father, Jack can make peace with himself and justify his life. After this resolution, Dr. Jack Shepard can finally move on.
The opening shot of the LOST pilot is a close-up of Jack Shepard's right-eye. The closing shot of the LOST series finale is a close-up pf Jack Shepard's right-eye. For the TV viewers it took 6 years of weekly episodes and water cooler conversations to piece together the diverse story elements.
All of the 6 years of tv action that leads up to those reconcilliation hugs in the church during the final episode takes place in a matter of only a few real-time minutes inside Jack's dying mind.
For us it may have taken years, but for the good doctor, Jack Shepard, it happened in the "blink of an eye".
by A. D. Camerone 6/21/10
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