Lost - Thinky Thoughts By Proxy

[shipperx]

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Heh.  I have to admit to rather perversely enjoying EW's Lost reviewer because he's just so OTT.  Get a load of the intro to his review for last night's LOST:

It began in the darkest of night, on the shores of a place called Hell. It ended in daylight, in a lush Edenesque patch of The Island, with an ageless enigma standing underneath the kind of massive tree that can only exist in a land of fantasy or myth, trembling with much fear and a glimmer of hope. In between, we got a story that asked questions that we’ve been asking ab aeterno—”since the beginning.” What is good? What is evil? How do we know the difference? Who knows what is truly best for us? Who should we trust? How do we make moral choices amid such ambiguity? Why must we figure this stuff out on our own? Why don’t the gods of the universe play straight with us? How the flaming hell are we supposed to live like this?

{...}  We got the sense that the battle these two angelic/demonic/whatchamacallum entities waged over Alpert’s soul was actually the first phase of M.I.B’s 240 years-in-the-making Smoke-man from Alcatraz escape plan. The episode used a corked bottle of wine as a symbol for Lost cosmology, with The Island playing the role of the stopper that kept something toxic from spilling out and corrupting us all. Of course, that was Jacob’s interpretation. Did you believe him?
 

Complete review here
 

Personally, I'm going to abstain from assigning binary labels of "good" vs. "evil" here until I have decidedly more evidence because I have a rather difficult time assigning the term 'good' to a god-like being that wills humans into a game of "Go" without their consent and without telling them any of the rules.

I'm over with Good Omen's Crowley who suspected that God set the odds against Adam and Eve by placing a tree of knowledge in the center of Eden along with a big neon sign saying "don't touch!"   And I'm not at all convinced that either Jacob or  M.I.B. fit into Alpert's Catholic/Christian philosophy, especially considering he'd been theologically mindfucked by a slave-trading priest.   Beware false gods, false prophets, and immortal quasi-godlike entities that enter into bets or play games with human lives.

And I'm still hoping that the ultimate point of LOST may be that salvation is in fellow men and women not in blind faith, desire for power, or pure acts of id.

Comments

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

I love that review. :-)

Yeah, I think part of the point was to demonstrate that Richard's Catholic theology was inadequate to explain what he was experiencing -- and not even valuable to him as a way of life. The episode was pretty damning about organized religion. I'm surprised Catholics (and Spaniards everywhere aren't protesting this morning. It was almost like a bad caricature of Spanish Catholicism.

In fact, it was clearly all those beliefs that exposed him to the manipulations of MIB (or Flockey McMIB as my godson calls him). He seemed so naive and foolish nattering on about the devil and hell when he was faced with Jacob and MIB. Jacob seemed pretty exasperated with it.

I loved the part when Richard made the very human point that if Jacob won't step in, MIB would -- and then Jacob came up with the idea of intermediaries.

Which I guess has been better in theory than in practice, LOL, since they seem as flawed as the rest of humanity.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think part of the point was to demonstrate that Richard's Catholic theology was inadequate to explain what he was experiencing -- and not even valuable to him as a way of life

In fact I think it actively worked against him!

[queenofattolia.livejournal.com]

Wow - yours is the best assessment of Lost's fundamental premise I've read so far. I think this is what the creators intended all along, despite the convoluted method of getting there.

Oh and the EW reviewer is smoking some kind of fancy crack. Are we sure he's not really Jacob from TWOP?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee! No, I'm not at all sure that he isn't Jacob.

It reminds me of the Barbara Theiring book "Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls" where you read along going "Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense..." Then somewhere whe falls off a cliff and suddenly it's claiming that Jesus faked his own death and ran away with Mary Magdelene living to an old age with a passel of kids and... what?!

Somewhere they fall into a endless cycle of WTF? :)

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

It seemed to me that if we're talking "God" and "Devil" here, then Jacob is obviously the oldest, and most fundamental, Old Testament version of "God" -- a powerful, incomprehensible-to-mortals, somewhat selfish being who does what he wants, for his reasons, and it's good because he says it is and the other guy is bad for the same reason.

Neither of them seem particularly good. I want Jacob to explain why his people, under Ben, kidnapped and killed on a regular basis; when it comes to it, at least MIB does his own killing.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that Ben was following Jacob all those years. He may have been following MIB as Jacob. Jacob didn't seem to know Ben.

That said, wasn't Richard involved in Ben's Dharma Purge? What was wrong with a bunch of hippies? Her the Templars the ones that were the 'hostiles'?

And what kind of benevolent god allows kids to fall into MIB's hands? Because isn't that what's happened with the kids Cindy the Stewardess is schlepping around?

Jacob doesn't seem to be interested in morality beyond a philosophical question. He doesn't seem to value actual human life very much... which may be a consequence of being a God and all, but... come on. We've seen a lot of senseless death. And to see Jacob as benevolent in his luring folks to the island it means thinking that Charlie really is better off drowned. And the pilot of 815 is better off devoured. And all those corpses from the plane over on Hydra -- totally deserved it. And Libby? Guess she had being randomly shot coming to her. And what was Alex so darn guilty of that she deserved her entire damn life on Craphole island. Was she born in need of redemption? Original sin? Oh, so Jacob is that kind of god...

Yeah, I'm still waiting to see evidence that Jacob is actually 'good' as opposed to 'arrogant'

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the thing -- does Jacob actually CARE about the people on "his" island? He doesn't really seem to, although one could then start arguing "free will" and "just because they do things in my name doesn't mean I approve of them" -- but no, I've seen nothing that shows Jacob to be "good" other than we've never witnessed him PERSONALLY doing anything evil, unless you count sort of "kidnapping" people and bringing them to the island, which I suppose he does, although when he needed the Oceanic Six to come back, he talked Hurley into "encouraging" everyone to come back.

I should have saved the episode with all the names written on the wall. I'd love to see which of the other survivors of 815 were candidates (maybe the pilot was one?).

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

I agree with you — it's not so binary. Which fits this show — there are no pure heroes or villains. Everything's been shaded in grey the whole way.

I think if they are gods, they are demi-gods, playing with the Lostees and everyone else.