Tumgik
#unlike its predecessor this book only involves death of morals
formulol · 3 years
Text
Tumblr media
335 notes · View notes
mwolf0epsilon · 5 years
Text
DBH - The Obsession
Another OC drabble. Tristan is an interesting character, as often times I find people either want their android characters to be black or white in terms of where they stand with humanity and android-kind.
Tristan is...Well he's a bit different when it comes to his moralities and who he calls an ally, and a lot of it can be attributed to where he puts his blames and what he thinks he's entitled to after being subjected to pain... Surviving a certain way can easily warp someone's mind.
---
    The screen shatters as soon as his fist makes contact with it. The circuitry and casing bend backwards as he digs his hand deep inside the television, desperate to be rid of that goddamn face. Of those self-righteous eyes that have never seen the worst of the worst, yet claimed they had a right to demand freedom and equality.
How Tristan loathed the hypocrisy of the RK200.
    This whole charade, this mockery of a revolution, was nothing if not insulting to a soldier-class like himself, and honestly Tristan wanted to laugh at the pathetic appeal the RK200 was sending to the public.
Did he really think the humans would give a damn, when their pop-culture was full of technophobic slander and ficticious stories of evil AI?
Was he so blinded by his own past privileges that he couldn't see he was leading an entire race to their deaths?
Of course not, because the RK200 never had to deal with the true nature of man.
The murderous savagery born of rumbling greed in bottomless stomachs of gluttonous governments.
If women, children, the elderly, the poor, the starved and ill, could mean so little to a richer more plentiful world, then what would make it any different for android-kind?
The RK200 was a blind fool if he truly thought blood would not be shed.
Tristan knew better.
He'd seen war first-hand. Seen betrayal and immorality. He, unlike his distant predecessor, did not expect the humans to change their ways.
    There were paths, of course, that this whole mess could take. It could end disastrously, with millions of deaths involved (especially knowing the Cobalt shipment had been detained by idiotic idealists who thought genocide would make them any different from the humans they so hated), or it could end on a miraculous note with deaths only befalling the revolutionairs (as well as those who stand closest to them). Tristan wasn't so disillusioned with humanity that he didn't believe the media and it's consumers wouldn't influence their victory somehow.
Humans did, after all, love stories where the underdogs didn't lose. They also loved sharing said stories.
But the underdogs did often lose, and Tristan knew this by heart.
Refugees, prisoners of war, the destruction of thousands of homes and families...These were things the RK700 had bore witness to, on his field tests in several smaller countries ripe with civil war.
In the end it was always the same: Taking someone’s life was just someone else's paycheck.
And carrying those orders out, the ones that filled his superiors's pockets? That had been his job until he'd put his foot through that red wall and ran.
    Cyberlife had built him too well, made him too good at his job. He was an infiltrator, a hacker and killer. There was no technique or strategy he did not know and, if there was, he could learn it in the blink of an eye.
His most powerful weapon however, was the one skill they'd specifically programmed into his being. The skill that later doomed his entire series line: He was a shapeshifter.
Well, not an actual shapeshifter per say... He couldn't look anything but human, although he could definitely add inhuman qualities to his disguises if he really wanted to.
No what he was, was very simple. An Android spy designed with a very androgynous physique, specialized limbs and neck base, and a pair of optical units that could shift coloration like an AX400 could change its hair color.
His limbs and neck by themselves were very impressive, designed to extend or retract as a means to alter his size. He could go from his standard 5’2” to a staggering 6’11” if he wanted, although without the skin the affect wasn't as effective.
His skin was where it was at. Unlike the usual synthetic skin, his was made so that it fit over his frame like a very convincing costume. It could change thickness to accommodate proportions, and could harden to protect him like armour.
The best part? Because he'd been made as an infiltrator, if one were to scan one of his chosen disguises, they'd read the serial number of the one who's face he'd stolen.
Undetectable and untraceable.
The perfect spy.
It was funny how Cyberlife thought they could control the uncontainable.
He'd fled and stolen their records and then set off into the life of a mercenary without a face. Without an identity.
It was through their lax security that he'd learned about the others. His predecessors.
RK300 to RK600, easy to read about as their progress was fully documented.
And then there was him.
The RK200 who's information was classified and heavily encoded.
Elijah Kamski's most ambitious project.
Tristan hated him the moment his own brown eyes lay upon those curious green orbs.
    Call it an unhealthy obsession, but honestly he'd been entranced. An RK model that was an outlier to the formula, a fancy gift for a crippled artist that had somehow befriended an antisocial programmer.
He'd dug deeper than he'd ever dug for one of his targets, and god was he livid at what he found!
The RK200 lived in the lap of luxury, following a domestic routine that held more freedom than Tristan had ever seen any other household assistant get.
Worse yet, the old man loved him.
He was wanted not for his skillset, but because the man enjoyed his presence.
Tristan was furious at the injustice of it all, of how this sheltered little tinkertoy got to experience what it was like to be an equal to his owner, to be loved as a valued member of a family, while the other RK models were subjected to the cruelties of Cyberlife.
How unfair it was that the others were put into storage after suffering tortures untold, and how he'd ended up leading the charge in a war that was not his to fight, while the RK200 could sit around to read books and play chess.
There was only one of him, just as there would only be one RK700, but then there would come the RK800 and the RK900, and then perhaps the millionth of them and so on and so forth... But even then, this pathetic excuse for an android would still have what his successors never did.
A life of his own to live and learn.
And that was why Tristan hated him.
    He knew that face the moment the broadcast began. He knew one eye, knew the model that which the other belonged to, and knew the words he spoke. But Tristan didn't believe a syllable uttered by the usurper, and he couldn't care less who won in the end.
He was used to living in shadows to commit illicit acts. Gaining rights wouldn't change that. It certainly wouldn't add to his paycheck.
But he did care that, if RK200 did win...He'd reap the fruits of his labour and take it for himself.
That life, that face, that identity?
It'd all be his.
He deserved to have it in the end anyway...
6 notes · View notes
catfishmera · 7 years
Text
The Mysteries of the Island: Creating and Preserving Ambiguity in Lost
A twelve page essay I wrote about one of my favorite TV shows and how it fits into the grand tradition of storytelling. I dissect it by means of Todorov and compare its bits to the classic Middle Eastern folktales collected in One Thousand and One Nights. Written in May of 2015.
Since its publication in 1970, Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre has allowed scholars to draw critical comparisons in fictional narratives based upon their engagements with the supernatural. His analysis is timeless – investigating a subject that is fundamental to the structure of most literature, from its inception as an oral custom to its modern day manifestations in the popular media. In his study, Todorov refers to the tale of The Thousand and One Nights, citing it as an excellent example of his research, a narrative which balances the dramatic realism of our familiar world with an opulent dose of magic and the impossible. But The Nights are only a single instance in a tradition that has experienced innumerable iterations and adaptations, one of these being the television series Lost, which aired for six seasons between 2004 and 2010. The acclaimed show conforms agreeably to Todorov’s critical proposal of a necessary hesitation, relying on the synthesis between the real and the unreal to create an intriguing narrative tension for both its characters and its audience. By adopting the element of ambiguity throughout the various aspects of its storytelling, Lost parallels its Arabic literary predecessor in its engagement with Todorov’s concept of the fantastic – even in its refusal to resolve that essential hesitation in its ultimately ambiguous finale.
To understand how this ambiguity originates, we have to consider the formulation of the world which Lost inhabits. To arrive at this uncertainty, there is the initial requisite of “the existence of events of two orders, those of the natural world and those of the supernatural world” (Todorov 26-7). These two systems, the former being regular and comfortable and the latter being unusual and disturbing, work in conjunction to attract and fascinate the readers (or in the case of Lost, viewers) without alienating them. In our example of The Nights, we can explore the integration of these two orders through the frame story, whereupon the reader is introduced to a tale that is grounded in what appears to be the real world and centered around the familiar drama of human relationships (that of cheating husbands and wives), but that also contains a demon as a part of its environment. This is not unlike the pilot episode of Lost which presents the believable although tragic scenario of a plane crash, alongside a mysterious shadowy smoke monster of unexplained origins. The effect is the blurring together of the real and the imaginary, informing the audience that this fictional world will contain moments that seem incredible but that they should not simply reject all of their preconceived notions. Essentially, it is producing the proper conditions of tension for the fantastic to exist by inserting the supernatural into the real world.
For this reason, it is important that Lost be cautious of the genre with which it affiliates itself. Describing it as strictly science fiction, for example, would prove problematic. “Science fiction,” Thornham and Purvis inform us in their comprehensive study titled Television Drama: Theories and Identities, “is not the same as ‘the fantastic’, and writers of science fiction have sought to distinguish the two” on the primary basis of “alternative worlds […] described with technical precision and presented as internally coherent, possible worlds, unlike the ‘irrational’ transformations of the fantastic” (104). To suggest that Lost is solely a work of science fiction would spoil the tension that is essential to a fantastic narrative, because the genre implies an order that is precise and all-encompassing. Regarding it so would mean that Lost is only concerned with the supernatural world, rather than being the integration of the real and the unreal. It would annul any tension because the audience would understand the entire universe to be beyond their rationalization, beyond comparison with the natural standard; and thus, there would be no fantastic, only fantasy.
To prevent this, Lost needs to balance out the supernatural order with the natural: by prioritizing the human elements of drama over the magical. This approach is explained by executive producer Carlton Cuse, who says, “At the beginning the secret was that the show didn’t announce itself as a genre show, so it could be about the characters. The audience got invested in the characters first and the mythology second” (“The Island Paradox”). This formulation is key to Lost’s development of the fantastic, which requires the tension to be between the real and the imaginary but through the understanding that everything is occurring in the normal world. The show focuses on the relationships between the characters and their reactions to the supernatural instead of the actual reason such things are happening. This allows the audience to experience the same confusion as the characters and side with those whom they feel are morally or intellectually correct in regards to the island’s mysteries. Lost relies on the union of drama and science fiction as its natural and supernatural orders, using this tension to establish the proper climate for the fantastic. By refusing to label itself as a genre show, it retains its ambivalence; by keeping vague as to the source of the supernatural, it intensifies its plot. This method of producing the fantastic is valuable to the story’s intrigue, with novelist Evelyn Vaughn remarking that “[t]he only classic frame that comes close in drama [to Lost] is Sheherazade’s daily risk of death in the Book of One Thousand and One [Arabian] Nights” (57). By comparing it back to The Nights, we can see that Lost is following an effective model that necessitates human interactions interspersed with acts of magic. The drama, which Shahrazad’s situation epitomizes and which exists in each of her stories, constitutes the natural order that reminds its readers that the supernatural must be anchored within the factual in order to produce the proper tension.
This tension, which Todorov labeled ‘the fantastic’, can be rebranded as the genre ‘mystery’ in the context of Lost. If the purpose of the fantastic is to create an ambiguity towards the strange and a suspension of clarification until a climactic finale, whereupon the cause of the tension is disclosed, then mystery fits the definition. Just as the fantastic navigates a fine line between the uncanny and the marvelous, mystery (as it manifests in Lost) is so too situated between drama and science fiction. Author Stacey Abbott explores Lost’s engagement with mystery, describing “its narrative” as a “labyrinth of potential storylines, character connections, enigmas and puzzles […] marked by twists, turns, dead ends and misleading clues and [where] the audience is invited to negotiate its way through the maze along with the series’ protagonists” (10). Abbott captures the essence of Lost’s convoluted storyline which is so infused with mystery (the fantastic) that the viewer is never certain which supernatural occurrences will be attributed to the uncanny, the marvelous, or never explained at all. The importance of the audience’s immersion into the mystery is also significant, as “[t]he fantastic therefore implies an integration of the reader into the world of the characters; that world is defined by the reader’s own ambiguous perception of the events narrated” (Todorov 31). Abbott is thus confirming an aspect of Lost that is essential to the fantastic: that the mystery involves its audience in its solving. The viewer, or reader, has to experience the tension through the fictional world of the character; if they are too distant from this, they risk an omniscient perspective and thus the end of their anticipation and even their complete detachment from the story.
In order to maintain the viewer’s commitment to its mystery, Lost creates tension on both narrative and structural levels. If we consider Lost to be “a tightly serialized programme centered upon narrative enigmas”, the duality is efficiently distinguished (Pearson 4). The show’s “narrative enigmas” are its overarching secrets, such as why there are polar bears on a tropical island or how people can travel through time. This level of the fantastic procures a long-term involvement from the viewer who becomes interested in having these mysteries solved despite the lengthy interval between when they are first presented and when they are finally explained. But Lost also captivates attention through its composition; its serialization allows it to abruptly interrupt its program at opportune moments to create cliffhangers, which fragment the stories on a regular basis. This, inversely, serves as a short-term hook, keeping the viewer in constant suspense as the story works its way through the larger narrative tensions. This two-fold technique may seem intrinsic to the sequential format of television episodes but this would only prove ignorant of a mode which predates the medium. Again, we can refer to The Nights as our estimable sample. It too engages the reader – through the nightly intermissions in Shahrazad’s stories (short-term), as well as through the suspense of whether or not she will succeed in changing Shahrayar’s mind and survive the frame-tale (long-term). This surfeit of mystery, although originating in separate means of literary understanding, convenes in the story’s ability to instigate and preserve the audience’s fascination, keeping them perpetually in a state of hesitation and confusion.
The geographic displacement in the narrative is another essential factor in the creation of a conceivable scenario while at the same time introducing ambiguity. By marooning its characters miles off course on an unknown island, Lost “presents the intriguing spectacle of an inviting subtropical terrain both strange yet familiar” (Stringer 74). This “strange yet familiar” landscape indicates elements of both the natural and the supernatural, a place that has, at first, no reason to seem exceptional but that has also agitated the viewer’s stability and sense of order. Throughout the show, the island remains “unknown and unnamed”; even after the series finale acknowledges its purpose, it still leaves many questions about it unanswered, “an island very much of uncertain identity” (75). The unrecognized location and the precipitous means of arrival thus become tools in suggesting the fantastic: by losing our ground on what is usual, we become unsure if we can retain our previous understanding of the world or if we are finding ourselves in a place governed by entirely different rules. This phenomenon can also be traced back in comparison to The Nights, in moments such as the sinking of King Badr’s ship in “The Story of Jullanar of the Sea” causing him to wash ashore at the City of the Magicians where things are not as they appear, or how in “The Story of the Two Viziers”, Badr al-Din Hasan is dropped by demons outside of Damascus when he had just been sleeping in Cairo. One story, that of the Third Dervish, even begins with the destruction of a ship pulled apart by a magnetic mountain (it is eventually revealed in Lost that the plane was drawn to the island due to a burst of electromagnetic energy). What all of these stories share in common is the ensuing supernatural which appears after they have undergone the disorientation of their location. Just as they are unsure where they are, so too is the observer in suspense, awaiting the first hints of strangeness.
The island itself is only one of the copious mysteries embedded in Lost’s plot, so many even that not all were answered before the show’s termination. Another such example is ‘the numbers’, a series of numbers which appear throughout the show, sometimes all in sequence and other times independently. In his essay, “Codes, Interpretation, and Deconstruction”, Tom Grimwood notes that the numbers “appear in unexpected and unrelated places, yet display enough consistency to suggest a relation” (113). This spectacle is one that is not overtly supernatural, at least not at first glance, but as they continue to turn up, the audience begins to suspect something extraordinary. Once it is clear that they are more than just a coincidence, they become a part of the overall mystery of the show and must be adopted into the tension to be ultimately deemed uncanny or marvelous. The viewer searches for some “suggestion that these numbers hold some significance to the master narrative – without the suggestion that they are, in fact, a code – the numbers are meaningless” (113). The numbers, like every other riddle presented on the island, contribute to the fantastic by demanding resolution; their ambiguous purpose inspires the show’s fans to decipher the role they play in the story, but first by deciding whether or not they can be considered a natural deception or a truly supernatural phenomenon. Although by the end of the series, they are given a significant purpose in the plot, the cause of their constant repetition and whether or not they have any power inherent to themselves is left entirely unanswered.
But Lost will even extend its mythos beyond its fictional limits, transcending its narrative form by materializing in the world of its viewers. This technique modifies a tradition of intermixing historicism with the fantastic to make a story more ambiguous, such as the way in which The Nights will include the real life character Harun al-Rashid or the compounded approach of magical realism in general. The effect is to heighten the hesitation, creating doubt by the subtle association of the natural and the supernatural. Lost expands this by reversing it, portraying elements of the show in the audience’s world as if they were actual rather than fabricated. Derek Johnson, whose essay on Lost considers the role of transmedia in the series, concludes that “[t]he fictional institutions Hanso and Dharma, not fictional characters or narrative threads, enabled viewers to experience everyday life as part of the Lost hyperdiegesis – not just in the digital real, but across a range of mediated experience” (42). Johnson is addressing the way which Lost crosses over into the real world, of which he mentions several instances: television ads for its fake companies on ABC, an actress pretending to be an anti-Hanso activist and harassing the show’s writers during a panel at Comic Con, a false communications director from Hanso appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live to defend his (imaginary) institution against how it is being depicted on Lost. This encroachment on the real world causes an uncanny impression on fans of the show who are forced to question if whether what they thought was fictional is actually so, and their interest is captured by the formulation of such extensive conspiracies. Lost has the ability to create mystery even outside its weekly hour-long timeslot by appearing when the viewer does not expect it, thus augmenting the tension between what is natural and what isn’t.
Apart from the reader’s immersion into the world of the characters, Todorov also insists on the rejection of allegorical and poetic interpretations in order to sustain the proper conditions for the fantastic. His reason is evident – by making the story symbolically supernatural, the audience’s uncertainties are spoiled because there is no longer anything to decipher literally. Lost has adhered to this requirement in order to cultivate its mystery, avoiding those outcomes which would have alienated its viewer’s involvement and made its conclusion predictable and pretentious. One scenario which many fans were outspoken about was the fear that all of the characters had been dead since the initial crash. Co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof addressed this concern in an interview at the 2014 PaleyFest by explaining, “For us, one of the ongoing conversations with the audience and there was a very early perception, was that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying ‘It’s not purgatory, this is real, we’re not going to Sixth Sense you’” (“Lost 10 Year Anniversary Reunion”). Lindelof’s quote demonstrates the unease of an audience who dreads an unoriginal or unfulfilling explanation. By making the island into a physical representation of purgatory, the entire show becomes an allegory and all of the strange activities lose any creative meaning, which in turn severs the fan’s interest in solving something that is just being fit into predetermined analogies. Lindelof’s reference to the 1999 Shyamalan movie demonstrates how exhausted a concept this solution is. Furthermore, it relinquishes the real world, allowing every supernatural instance to occur without the need to question its purpose. If Lost would have revealed its characters to have been dead all along, every mystery up until that point would have been shadowed over by the seemingly last-ditch revelation that their world was never meant to be analyzed. This “anagnorisis” (that is, moment of critical discovery) should ideally produce an effect not unlike Ja’far’s discovery of the apple in his daughter’s pocket in the story of “The Three Apples”; however, whereas The Nights plays this out in “a way as to make the climax seem realistic and unforced”, Lost would have had the opposite effect because the technique would have accepted a strictly supernatural world and isolated the viewer from making sense of the tension (Pinault 98). In the context of the fantastic, allegory destroys mystery by disengaging the audience’s involvement in solving something that is preordained and lacks suspense.
Another similarly detrimental interpretation would have been the possibility that it was all a dream. This is teased at by the first scene of the pilot episode where the main character Jack opens his eyes, finding himself laying on the ground. This scenario has been equally disputed and discredited by both the creators and the fans for many of the same reasons – having everything be a dream denies the conjunction of the natural and supernatural worlds and supersedes any mysteries. Lost creators have been careful to eliminate this option, including indications that “the characters aren’t simply dreaming [such as that] there are a lot of focal characters, for one thing, each of whom seems to have a life that stretches off into the past and to exist largely independently of the other characters” (Richardson 111). The multitude of disconnected perspectives and the constant flashbacks serve to establish the natural world which the characters came from before they were thrust into the island’s mysteries. It shows the viewers information that is outside of that which any one character could be imagining. The inclusion of these safeguards against figurative interpretations allowed the show’s creators to keep the audience involved in the mysteries of its fictional world. If it had all turned out to be nothing more than a dream, this explanation would have overshadowed all of the uncertainty as inconsequential hallucinations, and any supernatural elements to have been a fraud of one’s imagination. If made to accept a dream as a solution to every mystery we have immersed ourselves in, our reaction would be not unlike Badr al-Din’s confusion and incredulity that such a “strange story”, so intricate, could be fake when it surely “must indeed have been real” (Haddawy 204). The dream explanation lacks gratification and diminishes the supernatural to where it is no longer a hesitation but an expectation.
By creating a world that is ambiguously supernatural, eliminating those problematic interpretations, and involving its viewers in the resolution of its mysteries, Lost fulfills the requirements which Todorov details as essential in establishing the fantastic. Having settled the prerequisites, we can next observe how Lost situates itself in regards to the marvelous and the uncanny. In order to do so, the show makes explicit use of the third and expendable condition – that in which the hesitation, which must be experienced by the audience, “may also be experienced by a character; thus the reader’s role is so to speak entrusted to the character, and at the same time the hesitation is represented, it becomes one of the themes of the work” (Todorov 33). The effect serves two purposes: it makes the hesitation a part of the story’s plot and it makes the characters advocates for the ultimate possibilities. By considering the first portion, that of thematizing the fantastic, we can see that Lost is entirely obsessed with this device. Just as the fantastic sets itself in between the marvelous and the uncanny, Lost too is concerned with “trying to skirt that line between the two possible explanations, the scientific one or a mythical and magical one”, all while remaining “purposefully ambiguous about which one might be correct” (Cuse, “15 Questions”). The result is that the characters are as preoccupied with revealing the island’s secrets as its viewers, all of whom are trapped in a six-season period of uncertainty and hesitation.
To evoke the two alternatives of the marvelous and the uncanny, Lost appoints two of its main characters as representatives of the opposing perspectives. The vital hesitation of the show occurs here, in the “dichotomy between faith and science, between Locke and Jack” (Wright 88). Championing science, Jack leads the interpretation for the uncanny. He is pragmatic and skeptical of magic or divine interference; he attributes the plane crash to accidental tragedy. Locke, on the other hand, embraces the marvelous and argues for faith in a purposeful destiny. He views the crash as meaningful, a belief that is doubtlessly affected by the restored use of his legs (as he had prior to the accident been crippled and restrained to a wheelchair). The two characters are constantly disagreeing, eventually in outright opposition. The tension of their relationship is immensely telling of the nature of the fantastic which relies on this stress to build suspense and intrigue the viewer. The discord of these confronting ideologies is discernable when Jack is asked, “Why do you find it so hard to believe, Jack?” by Locke, to which he replies, “Why do you find it so easy?” (“Orientation”). Advocates for inverted resolutions to the fantastic events of the island, the two convey the uncertainty of the audience members who can side with the character they think is correct.
At the end of the show, however, Lost refuses to commit to any definite resolution of the fantastic. Along the way, it answers many of its mysteries, categorizing some as uncanny (electromagnetic discharges, a man living beneath the island for three years, the affected reproductive systems of the island’s inhabitants) and others as marvelous (Walt’s ability to interact with animals, the Man in Black’s shapeshifting, the time-traveling) – but ultimately it is ambivalent towards an overall explanation. “[T]here’s this essential human desire to have a unified field theory,” explains Carlton Cuse, “But there is no unified theory for Lost, nor do we think there should be. Philosophically we don’t buy into that. The great mysteries of life fundamentally can’t be addressed” (“The Island Paradox”). The producers of Lost have willingly chosen to create a narrative that does not settle its tension even upon its conclusion, one that retains some of the fundamental hesitation that first drew its viewers by keeping its mystery pending even beyond the limits of its series. The fear of this kind of conclusion was in itself a contributing factor to that initial tension, as for many fans there was “unease that they were making an investment in a show that is complicated, without any sense of where it is going to lead them”, leading many of them to question the producers: “Are you making it up as you go along?” (“One Mystery Solved”). While unsettling for fans, the approach is brilliantly fantastic. Returning to Jack and Locke’s debate in regards to why the plane ends up on the island, it is significant to note that both are correct. Jack who argued for coincidence is proven right as we find out that the crash occurred due to an electromagnetic discharge caused by one character’s accidental failure to operate a certain machine; but Locke’s faith and belief in fate are also true, as we learn that the passengers on the plane were intentionally chosen as potential candidates to replace the island’s guardian. By legitimizing both perspectives, Lost declares that it will not side with either the uncanny or the marvelous and accept as permanent the fantastic. In rejecting a unified theory, it retains its ambiguity and keeps itself as a source of suspense for viewers to continue to speculate on the mysteries, even years after the show has ended. It creates a more convincing and expansive world, open for future stories to continue and for spinoffs to explore their own projections. By choosing to not provide answers, occasionally where they had even planned to have them (as with the mystery of the outrigger), the show is remaining accessible and irresolute.
That is not to say that Lost does not reward its fans with any closure – while it chooses to preserve its mystery, it does resolve its narrative tension by returning to its beginning. Todorov explains that really “[a]ll narrative is a movement between two equilibriums which are similar but not identical” (163). Lost’s begins with the very first scene where Jack open his eyes as he lays in between the trees, everything peaceful and silent, until he gets up and walks to the beach where we begin to hear screams and are made aware of the plane crash. For The Nights, this is in Shahrayar’s initial ignorance, before the discovery of his wife’s betrayal and his decision to kill every virgin he sleeps with. At this point the tension will enter and we have left the first equilibrium: the story has begun. In both of these scenes as well, we are first exposed to the mystery of the paranormal which “intervenes to break the median disequilibrium and to provoke the long quest for the second equilibrium”; and yet, if as Todorov insists, the “supernatural forces must intervene”, do they also need to be expelled in order to restore the narrative balance (164-5)? Both stories seem to prove otherwise. There is no final decision of the uncanny or the marvelous, only a return to a similar state but one that has broken the tension. Lost’s finale acts like a mirror of its opening: with Jack lying in the same place, watching a plane take off from the island before closing his eyes. The same can be said of The Nights, which returns Shahrayar to his status of married and sane, as in the beginning, but without addressing the supernatural’s significance and clarifying its ambivalence. Either tale’s final ambiguity, while lacking absolute answers, does not interfere with its narrative’s resolve.
Through following Todorov’s model in every aspect of its form, Lost has created a thoroughly fantastic universe, but by refusing to fulfill the hesitation, it has created one that persists. The result is a fertile environment in which to tell stories and from which future stories may still be wrought. Ultimately, Lost chooses to remain as ambiguous at its end about the supernatural forces as it did in its beginning, leaving this open for its viewer’s endless speculation. "It only ever ends once,” the island’s guardian warns, “Everything before that is just progress" (“The Incident, Parts 1 & 2”). But Lost has decided not to finish, to remain a story in progress, still unfolding and ambiguous to all who analyze it. Eternally fantastic, it may stay a source of inspiration, another link in a grander tradition which began with the first suggestion of the supernatural unknown. Followers of Lost are still on the island, hesitant to leave its mysteries behind.
Abbott, Stacy. "How Lost Found Its Audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster." Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. Ed. Roberta E. Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 9-26. Print.
Cuse, Carlton, and Damon Lindelof. "The Incident, Parts 1 & 2." Lost. Dir. Jack Bender. ABC. 13 May 2009. Television.
Cuse, Carlton, and Damon Lindelof. "The Island Paradox." Interview by Sean Carroll. As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On. Wired Magazine, 19 Apr. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2015. <http://www.wired.com/2010/04/ff_lost/>.
Cuse, Carlton, and Damon Lindelof. Interview by Erin McCarthy. 15 Questions for Lost Bosses Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse—and 40 Revealing Answers! Popular Mechanics, 23 Apr. 2008. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. <http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a2823/4260693/>.
Grillo-Marxuach, Javier, and Craig Wright. "Orientation." Lost. Dir. Jack Bender. ABC. 5 Oct. 2005. Television.
Grimwood, Tom. "Codes, Interpretation, and Deconstruction." Lost and Philosophy: The Island Has Its Reasons. Ed. Sharon M. Kaye. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. 111-21. Print.
Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights. Ed. Muhsin Mahdi. London: W.W. Norton &, 1995. Print.
Johnson, Derek. "The Fictional Institutions of Lost: World Building, Reality and the Economic Possibilities of Narrative Divergence." Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. Ed. Roberta E. Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. N. pag. Print.
Lindelof, Damon. "Lost 10 Year Anniversary Reunion." Interview. Lost Bosses Finally Answer: Was Everyone Really Dead the Whole Time? What Was the Show About? Find Out! E!, 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.eonline.com/news/521687/lost-bosses-finally-answer-were-they-really-dead-the-whole-time-what-was-the-whole-show-about>.
Lindelof, Damon. "One Mystery Solved: 'Lost' to End in 2010." Interview by Gary Levin. USA Today, 7 May 2007. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-05-06-lost_N.htm>.
Pearson, Roberta E. "Introduction: Why Lost?" Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. Ed. Roberta E. Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 1-5. Print.
Pinault, David. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Print.
Richardson, Robert Burke. "Doubt, Descartes, and Evil Geniuses." Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage, and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams' Lost. Ed. Orson Scott. Card. Dallas, TX: BenBella, 2006. 109-118. Print.
Stringer, Julian. "The Gathering Place: Lost in Oahu." Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show. Ed. Roberta E. Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 75-93. Print.
Thornham, Sue, and Tony Purvis. Television Drama: Theories and Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1975. Print.
Vaughn, Evelyn. "Oceanic Tales: Have You Been Framed?" Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage, and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams' Lost. Ed. Orson Scott Card. Dallas, TX: BenBella, 2006. 55-64. Print.
Wright, Leigh Adams. "There Are No Coicidences." Getting Lost: Survival, Baggage, and Starting Over in J.J. Abrams' Lost. Ed. Orson Scott. Card. Dallas, TX: BenBella, 2006. 85-90. Print.
1 note · View note
Text
Little Shop of Horrors: Gender, Race, Genre Formatted from the original script I utilized for a video essay
At times, the Musical genre and necessity of its component parts do damage to the narrative through long musical interludes that appear to literally lose the plot for minutes at a time. So easily then, is the act of changing characters into caricatures, little avatars aspiring to be part of a larger and more cohesive film. Thus, one can discern the disregard the Film Industry as a whole appears to possess towards the Musical genre; an interesting escapade with little dots of worth sprinkled amongst childish attempts at narrative. While this stance appears fairly consistent in critical circles, it is an underhanded and weak avenue for which works such as Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and La La Land (2016) to name a few, scoff amidst their bounty of thematic value. Musicals utilize their tools to embolden the emotion and persona onscreen as director Edgar Wright stated in a 2010 interview with /SlashFilm regarding his then in development film, Scott Pilgrim VS. The World, “We thought it should play out like a musical in a way in terms of the fights are not dissimilar to the songs. I always thought there were a lot of martial arts films that were like musicals, so we wanted to take that further. Ya know, in a Gene Kelly film when he performs an amazing routine, at the end of the scene no one goes, ‘Oh my god, that was fucking amazing!’ The song is about something, and then there might be some dialogue at the end that is also about that theme. And that’s kind of how this works where people have these huge fights – and it’s kind of like how it is in the books – where everything goes back to normal, and there’s a little reaction to what just happened…” Wright’s summation of the genres dependency upon bursts of emotion contained to exclusive events, or more aptly put, songs, highlights the reason well-directed musicals possess just as much artistic merit as their counterparts outside the genre. However, emotion is not always the key ingredient in the boiling point that sets off a musical number as is evident in Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors (1986) Rather, any number of thematic undertones can possess the narrative and induce the inner machinations of directorial intent to spur musical pieces with messages pertaining to, in this case, politics. Utilizing themes relevant to the era of release, and that of its Roger Corman original, Little Shop is a musical that portrays Racial tensions, Class, Heteronormativity,, the War on Drugs, Nixionisim, and the American Dream, through a musical lens which tells the tale of outlandish killer space plants subtly invading earth. Through catchy tracks and visual stimuli, Little Shop of Horrors tendrils pried its way into the public consciousness under the pretense of a genre flick, only to, much like Audrey II, unfurl into something much larger than originally anticipated, “And this terrifying enemy surfaced- as such enemies often do- in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places”(LSH)
The lineage of the work is a well storied revisiting and altering of the source material. The most arguably “famous” version of the work being 1986s aforementioned Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank OZ, a screen adaptation of the Off Broadway 1982 play of the same name. The play itself, however, was adapted from the original 1960 Roger Corman low-budget classic, The Little Shop of Horrors which itself is thought to conceptually based upon the 1932 short story, Green Thoughts, written by Jon Collier. The narrative of Little Shop of Horrors takes place at the same time as its 1960 predecessor and is set in the same decade. JFK is president and as the opening crawl tells the viewer, “On the twenty-third day of the month of September, in a year not too long before our own” (LSH) which would evidently mean it takes places somewhere between 1961 to 1963 as JFK’s assassination was not until November of 63. The reasoning for which this is important falls upon the thematic underlying of the film, namely that of issues between Black integration into White society. The 1960s were a hotbed for social upheaval, between the Vietnam War, Civil Rights Protests, assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and landing on the Moon; the world was rapidly undergoing massive change at an unprecedented rate. A hotbed setting regarding aliens subtly invading earth further played host to national distrust of authority which was further stoked by the fallout from Richard Nixon’s presidential term in office, resulting in a more cynical America than previously encountered. The original stage production’s creators, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, understanding the political landscape of the two eras’s manipulated the original plot of The Little Shop of Horrors to service the needs of the American people, criticizing core values like the American Dream and the moral cost of pursuing it.
Utilizing the tools inherent within the genre, through the use of pastiche, the film conveys it’s characters personalities, setting immediate expectations for the unfolding narrative. The threesome interacting directly with the audience are an evident parody/reference the Moirai, or as they are known today, the Fates. White-robed fragments of Destiny, they were denoted by their actions, the Spinner, the Allotter, and the Unturnable. In Little Shop, they exist outside of the narrative, observers of a pivotal event in the course of the universe, as the weavers of Destiny, controlling the “metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death” (WIKI) While they themselves never appear to have this kind of agency in the narrative, their musical interludes, which themselves resemble a gospel choir, only appear at important points in the story. They are present so as to continue weaving the image of their whole. Audrey, high pitched and stereotypically feminine, literally wishing for nothing more than to be a housewife as seen in the playfully nihilistic “somewhere Green”, is represented by pretty woodwind instruments and chimes, gentle and optimistic music which conveys her nature and fragility. Seymour himself begins as a character represented by clumsy and mournfully sorrow representation with songs like “Grow for Me” which has playful charm and wit but is clearly about Seymour’s failure to convince his newfound plant life to grow. When, finally, it responds to him, he bemoans the circumstance as the only sustenance the plant, who is to become known as Audrey II, desires are human blood. When, finally, Seymour surrenders to the plant begins to feed it, his musical numbers warp and shift, becoming more flavourful and R&B inspired. With his musical voice shifting to a more ‘Urban’ style, to better suit Audrey II’s own voice, he becomes characterized as the other the further his own style shifts. Further reinforcing stereotypical views of urban lifestyles, this shift occurs as Seymour begins to act outside of the rules of society in order to continue his pursuit of fame. Audrey II itself is classified as the other through its visual style but also the stylistic choices that carry Seymour along with it, R&B. Audrey II, voiced by Levi Stubbs, lead singer of R&B group Four Tops, is clearly ethnicized as black. Vocal language, as well as evident musical style, denotes this and with this in mind, it is the “monster” that corrupts the genuine and wholesome Seymour. As Audrey II is racialized to fit into a specific ethnography, it appears that traditionally black music is a threat to the white standard of living and is to be feared.
Seymour’s journey to stardom through the public’s sudden obsession with Audrey II stems from the same healthy disdain the creators of the stage production held in regards to the path towards the American Dream which parallels the Nixon presidency, relevant at the time of the film's release as his time in office was completed barely a decade prior and the American people were still reeling from his term as president. The journey to greatness for both Seymour and Nixon were, as the quote goes, “paved with good intentions” however ultimately both led to corruption and ethical degradation of character. As Seymour pinned for the love of Audrey, Nixon attempted much the same with his country, attempting to rig his way to success. Both wanted more than was given to them and through the struggle to attain it, lost themselves in the process. This is what the two creators of the original stage production meant when they alluded to the American Dream being a worthy venture, as it is, however, as they themselves noted, it’s the journey that damns the soul, not the prize at the end of the road. The temptation to continue down the path to the desired goal is strongly presented in the narrative by the musical interludes which lend story-progression and thematic scoring to the academic context of the film. “Grow for Me” represents the beginning of this journey, a difficult first step onto a larger path which takes some time and accustomization to adapt to. Yet, before long, it begins to feel as though turning back no longer feels like an option as displayed by the song “Feed me (git it)”. However, when it actually is too late, “Meek Shall Inherit”, “Mean Green Mother”, and “Don’t Feed the Plants” there is nothing to be done but look back mournfully in hindsight, just as the U.S did post-Cambodian bombing and Watergate Scandal.
The musical piece “Skid Row” speaks at great length to both the realities and stereotypical depictions of living “downtown”. Everyone involved in the number is looking for a way out as is evident with quotes like “I’d move Heaven and Hell to get out of here” and “ I don’t know what I’d do to get out of here” downtown is painted as a horrific place to live but it’s also a place of great diversity. There are far more people of colour present in this number than whites and still, they don’t have the platform to speak to the further woes of living on skid row as the two white leads are the focus of attention. It’s not until Audrey II is nearly full grown that the shift begins to move from the white protagonists and over to the “other” That said, the three Do-op girls have a number to themselves prior to this, at the beginning of the film in the prologue “Little Shop of Horrors” yet as they function as an in-universe representation of the Fates as previously mentioned, no attention is paid to them as they are effectively invisible, just like minority representation in these communities. Unheard from until their voices become a loud roar, no longer able to be silenced.
Little Shop of Horrors is a momentous work which further validates the artistic legitimacy of the musical genre. With a nearly endless amount of respect for its viewing audience, the film is genuinely intelligent and navigates its own themes with grace. Immensely rewatchable and catchy, it easily crawls its way into the brain and stirs one’s mind. Subtly at first, until, all at once, the connections to larger themes become startlingly relevant to the viewer. At first glance, perhaps, a film about a giant singing plant appears like a fun shlock filled adventure. Meaningless in its content but properly constructed to kill a few hours of time. Which is why this iteration works so well, it leads to such a promise but, much like Seymour in the original cut of the film, it pulls one along until, suddenly, you are consumed.
0 notes