J’s blog

Powell's Books Lost blog: Through the Looking Glass

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 26 May 2007 16:43:03 -0400

This is it – this year's final Powell's Books Lost blog post for this season. The episode was a mindbender, pulling together threads from previous episodes and previous seasons, knotting them up, and leaving new ends of narrative trails to follow. And the mirror-twinning aspect was in full effect.

There was also something I've been holding on to for a while; since “Not in Portland” and the Clockwork-Orangish overstimulation chamber, I've been looking for nods to Kubrick. The finale sealed it. The Looking Glass hatch doesn't have a will of its own like HAL, but both seal off human communication, and many of the shots in the Looking Glass recall shots from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There's also a bit in there about the strange symbols seen throughout the season, again with a nod to Kubrick.

And since the Minkowski thing was pretty much verified (the guy on the freighter answered “Minkowski”), I tried to work out a good way to explain how this works – because it's not all that difficult once it's understood. It works like hacking a CSS file. So here it is:

DES HACKING FATE'S CSS FILE

Any web site has two basic elements, content and presentation. All presentation is controlled by a single file (or sometimes a few different ones, for flexibility). Think of the Powell's Books site; there are thousands upon thousands of pages, and they all have a consistent look to them. That look is controlled by four CSS files if you look at the source code).

Change one element in one of those CSS files -- like the color of the banner -- and the banners on all of those thousands of pages change.

If we're dealing with Minkowski space (and I think we are), the past/present/future are all existing simultaneously, just like all the pages in the Powell's web site are existing simultaneously. We just don't experience them all at once. So when Des alters the outcome of one of his flashes, it's like he's hacking fate's CSS file. He makes one change, and the entire site changes, every page, past/present/future.

But something to consider is if a site isn't well-designed, you can break some pages when you change the CSS file. I've done it plenty of times. And that raises the question: Are we dealing with a poorly-designed site/world? In a poorly-designed world, one CSS change could break the logic of some of the other pages in the site – like the dead having never died in the first place (like Christian).

If we go back to all the various theosophical/gnostic elements alluded to throughout the season, we can look at how those traditions view our world. And they're not kind. In fact, in the gnostic tradition, god didn't create this world, because god is perfect and this world is far from it. That tradition, laid out most clearly in the Nag Hammadi library, suggests that this is a poorly-designed world made by a demiurge that exists between us and the perfect god. Their line of thinking is that the way to get around this is through accessing wisdom, as opposed to faith. Think of this demiurge as a programmer.

Taken all together, we have a poorly-designed (i.e. poorly-coded, poorly-programmed) world having its CSS file hacked by someone who isn't sure what he's doing, Desmond. And he's breaking some of the pages.

Portholes

Grates

Symbols

Kubrick_eyes.wide.shut

Logos

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Powell's Books Lost blog: Greatest Hits

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:23:34 -0400

The Powell's Books Lost blog post for "Greatest Hits" is up, and there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

It looks like we have some evidence that every time Des saved Charlie, he not only changed the future, but the past and present as well. Because first season, Charlie couldn't swim. Some real proof would be from past Charlie flashbacks; if he was taking scag and not wearing the ring, then we have something. "Fire + Water" complicates that, because in one flashback when he wakes Liam from a nod, it doesn't look like he is, and in the diaper commercial flashback he is.

And there's plenty in there about Tolkien, Nick Hornby and Kierkegaard. And little Lewis Carrol and Joseph Campbell thrown in for good measure.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Gift Set

J.R.R. Tolkien

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby

The Essential Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Mythos Books)

Joseph Campbell

The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll

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If you thought Jacob was Locke...

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 12 May 2007 11:24:06 -0400

Just have a look at this picture. I think the bald foreheads say they look similar, but the nose and the eyebrows say they're not. And it's not like we haven't seen look-alikes on this show; both Juliet and Michael have look-alikes in the Others.

Locke_jacob

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Powell's Books Lost blog: The REAL Man Behind the Curtain

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Fri, 11 May 2007 23:32:42 -0400

Now we've finally seen Jacob, and I've posted a column about it at my Powell's blog. The real question at this point is if Locke actually did or didn't see that strange old man.

The biblical overtones are getting interesting. In Genesis, Jacob gave Benjamin this blessing: "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning devouring the prey, and at evening dividing the spoil."

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Powell's Books Lost blog: The Brig

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:21:21 -0400

"The Brig" was the first episode written by Darlton Cuselof we've seen in a long time, and it was well worth the wait. The post is up at the Powell's Books Lost blog, and there's a lot there about war and slavery. It all comes from Locke and Cooper's namesakes; the philosopher Cooper had a theory of moral sense that the narrative is developing (especially with Sawyer), and the philosopher Locke had a particular approach to war and slavery that gets enacted by Lost Locke putting Lost Cooper in the slave ship's brig. I've never seen television perform ideas like this.

The episode has quickly made the shortlist for best of the season. For a lot of people, it made up for Bai Ling.

Shaftesbury: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times

Lord Shaftesbury

Second Treatise of Government

John Locke

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Lost Blogging at the Washington Post

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:06:49 -0400

Liz Kelly and Jen Chaney invited me to write with them this week about "The Brig."

We used 37 Signal's Campfire app, which was perfect for a quick, private multiple-user chat. (But it does throw up a tiny ad on occasion, which you get unless you pay for the service. It's a small inconvenience for a very useful app.)

As they told me, Liz is the pop culture person, and Jen is the religion person, and they asked me on to be the literature person. A good time was had by all, and the first commenter thought the episode was awful and proved the writers didn't know what they were doing. The trolls always bite first.

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Lostpedia OpenSearch Plugin

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:50:55 -0400

I've got somethign for y'all: A Lostpedia OpenSearch plugin.

If you use Firefox (or, as I understand it, the new Internet Explorer 7), you know about the search plugin function in the upper-right of your browser. Usually they're defaulted to Google Search, but you can add other search engines to the drop-down list.

So I made one for Lostpedia. It's currently at Mozilla's Mozdev.org Mycroft page, and needs testing/judging. I've been using it for about a week with no issues.

The idea is you go to that page, click on the name and it'll automatically install the search plugin (for Firefox or IE7 -- it's based on OpenSearch standards). Then choose the Lostpedia search engine from the drop-down menu, type your query, and if it's in Lostpedia, it'll pop right up.

And if it works for you, go ahead and judge it at the Mycroft page, and it'll go live.

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Powell's Books post: D.O.C.

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:26:58 -0400

The discussion on the "D.O.C." Lost blog post at Powell's Books ramped up in no time. This "D.O.C." was more of an extension of "Catch-22," and carries over many of the book's themes, as well as some by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's "God and the State."

There's plenty going on with the narrative's own mirror-twinning; this episode thickened some of the thematic webbing.

And if you go there, check out the easter egg grab on Charlie's "Highway 61" t-shirt; the first verse of Dylan's song is about the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice Des and Campbell discussed.

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

God And The State

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin

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Powell's Books post: Catch-22

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:54:17 -0400

There's a great discussion developing on my Powell's Books Lost blog about the latest episode, "Catch-22." I dig Heller's book; it's creepy and funny, and the writers did a fine job of incorporating elements of its narrative into this episode -- nothing overt, it's all worked into the story. Which is something Lost is proving all the time -- showing is always better than telling. What's interesting is the ways they developed their various catch-22's in the episode; the basic one is that the only way to not have to sacrifice a person is to accept that you have to sacrifice a person. I'm starting to think every time Des saves Charlie, he's changing the past, present and future.

Two other references that were there, but seemed to take a bit to hit the internets, was Lord of the Flies (Naomi the parachutist at the end, but instead of a dead man, it's a live woman hung up in the trees -- goddess from the machine), and the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher George Campbell, who had a real beef with David Hume and his take on miracles.

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

Lord of the Flies (Casebook) (Casebook Edition Text Notes and Criticism)

William Golding

The Philosophy of Rhetoric

George Campbell

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A couple of interviews

nobody@vox.com(Living Lost) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:01:47 -0400

Two recent interviews about Lost:

Living Lost Author Interview at TVSciFi (she's still a kid, 13, and asked some fantastic questions)
On the Shelf with J. Wood at living read girl's blog.

These were both pretty fun. There's another one coming up with Daniel Robert Epstein on Suicide Girls. The one thing I'm finding in a lot of these interviews is that the interviewer is only somewhat familiar with Lost, but even at that, they have a good idea of the mythology of the show and that it's something "important." Which just goes to show what an impact this show is having -- it's not just television, it's cultural moment. A friend of mine who also has yet to watch it but knows a lot about it, said he's going to have to get into it this summer because Lost is creating the text of the future.

Damn right.

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