Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Motorpsycho Lost Dream



Ok, normally I don't post anything on this blog that I haven't done some serious thinking about. If I expect you to spend your time reading something, it should be ideas carefully considered, and not necessarily "off the cuff."

But after last week's show, I had a dream. It was one of those long, drawn out ones that are really intense and highly memorable. And it was all about Lost. In it, I was basically watching the final episode, and the major secret of the show was revealed. I've decided to go ahead and share that dream with you now. So if you're into the more serious-minded philosophical musings with actual thought and merit, you can stop right here. If you're interested in hearing about a crazy dream with no logic whatsoever, but still may contain answers to the show's questions, keep reading, you've been warned.

Ok, I need to start by saying that even though I was dreaming this, I wasn't actually in it, I was just watching it, like watching the show.

The first scene (of the final episode) opens up on a boat, about the size of Desmond and Penny's clipper. On the boat is Juliet and Locke, and maybe a couple other Losties. They're out at sea, in an area that resembles the Caribbean, where clear shallow water goes on for miles and miles. They have something incredibly important on board, and they have to protect it. They're constantly on the watch for anyone following.



We never actually see what they're protecting. It's about the same size as J.J. Abrams' mystery box, and kept hidden deep in the hold of the boat throughout.

There's another smaller boat that they're towing, and Juliet (armed with a serious machine gun) goes out on her own on it to do some reconnaissance. Soon she realizes that they're being followed, and quickly makes her way back to the larger boat. But even as she gets there, she sees scuba divers circling the larger boat, coming in to attack. She warns Locke, and begins firing into the water. In a panic, she points the gun into hold of the main boat, intending to fire. She wants to destroy the Important Mystery Object. She tells Locke that it's better to destroy it than to have it fall into the wrong hands. Too many lives have been lost, too much has gone wrong in the past, we have to just give up and destroy it. Locke does what he can to convince her NOT to shoot, and get her to focus back on the people that are currently trying to attack the boat.



Locke, Juliet, and the others on the boat are able to stop the people who are after the object. They capture them, tie them up and interrogate them about what they know and why they're there. Turns out, they're not so evil. They're all young kids - college students who have been trying to find this thing so they can study it. They don't have evil intentions, they're simply there to learn. Locke feels vilified and Juliet is only somewhat relieved that she didn't destroy the thing. Locke says that they have to come up with another solution.

CUT TO...

A significant amount of time has passed, but we're still roughly in the same location. We can see underwater the base of a small coral reef rising up into an atoll. Part of the reef is submerged, part of it is above water, and rises like a small gentle spiral out of the water. Scuba divers are coming out of the water and getting onto the boat, where Locke and Juliet are standing. We realize that they've buried and hidden the mystery object somewhere in this atoll, hoping that no one will know where to look, even if they knew of this location.

The episode is almost over. They're preparing to say goodbye. As they're pulling up the anchor, they're still looking out over the atoll, at the little bit of reef sticking out of the water, and Locke points, and says to Juliet, "look, you can see it already growing." The camera goes closer, and you can see small leaves of grass multiplying and roots slightly swelling. This mystery object that they planted is now causing a new island to be born.



And here's the part of the dream where nothing happens visually, but I suddenly GET IT. I suddenly understand what the island is. It is an alien life form. A conscious and self-aware alien being that expresses itself by organically causing an island to be grown. It communicates to people psychically, and protects those that protect it. And an alien race (four toes) used to live on it and protect it.

But it was just a dream.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Frogurt in our Cultural History

Did Frogurt (Neil) look familiar to you? That's because he was in the original classic "Got Milk" commercial. Someone should point this out to Darlton.

Smokey doesn't like you if you're an a**hole.



Last week we finally got to see how Montand lost his arm. Did you notice how they made a point out of showing how he pushed Jin around for apparently no reason? I think the writers were trying to make a point, that the smoke monster tends to be more dangerous to a people who are violent natured. Remember Ben's warning to the losties when he unleashed the monster on Keamy and his military team - he said to stay as far away from them as possible, knowing that since those dudes were so evil they were gonna be toast.

And even if he turned into a nice guy, Eko killed waaaay too many people to get redeemed. And he even told Yemi that he wasn’t sorry for what he had done.

Locke had never killed anyone when he met the smoke monster for the first time, and he was spared.

I’m not sayin.... I’m just sayin...

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Reincarnated



Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me to get back on the blog bus. In the spirit of starting new after a long absence, I've decided to tackle the subject of Reincarnation, which was handed to us as an anagram in the last episode, "This Place is Death."











Canton-Rainier = Reincarnation

Reincarnation is not so strange a concept. It may sound esoteric to westerners, but the majority of the people on the planet believe in it. And certainly, anyone who would go around saying "Namaste" on a regular basis (a sanskrit word that means "the divinity in me honors the divinity in you" ) would believe in it.

I'll also point out that reincarnation is not the same as resurrection, which is where someone comes back to life in the same body they died in. Lazarus was resurrected, not reincarnated. I'm assuming that this means Locke isn't going to come back to life once his body gets back to the island. But he will come back at some point.

I'm guessing that anyone born on the island (or conceived on the island?) contains the possibility of being a reincarnation of someone from the island's past. Aaron then could be someone incredibly important (possibly Jacob?), as could Ji Yeon.

This is why Ben wants to take Aaron, why he stakes such an importance on being born on the island, why all of the children from the crash were kidnapped, and why Ben so completely freaked when Alex was killed. In fact, I'm guessing that Ben himself is probably masquerading as someone important from the island's past who was reincarnated, which is why he said he was born on the island, when in fact he wasn't.



When Richard Alpert went to visit Locke when he was a child, he gave him a test which was much like the test given to a child when trying to determine who is the next Dalai Lama. They come to the child with objects from the past life, and ask them "which of these objects is already yours?"

So anyone who dies on the island or at least end up with their body on the island (Christian Shepherd, Yemi) could end up reincarnated there. This would explain why some of the Others seem so willing to die (Bea, Mikhail), why Locke will be convinced to undergo death, and why they need to get his body back.

So why do we keep seeing dead people on the island? I'm guessing that they're all currently in the Bardo, which also might explain where the whispers come from.

On a side note - maybe only the people who are special and/or needed by the island will get reincarnated: this may explain the rationale for dividing people into the good ones vs. the bad ones, like the people on Jacob's list. This could also be the rationale behind the "the purge:" Let the island sort out who belongs there and who doesn't (which is also probably the reason for the Smoke Monster's existence).

Other references to reincarnation (thanks to Lostpedia):
  • On the Season 1 DVD bonus featurette "Lost: On Location", director/producer Jack Bender says that Lost is "All about redemption and rebirth."
  • In the episode "Outlaws," Sawyer believed that the boar was a reincarnation of Frank Duckett, and in the same episode, Locke tells the story of a golden retriever that his foster mother was convinced was the reincarnation of his foster sister.
  • The black horse that Kate sees twice appears to be a reincarnation of Wayne.
  • In the episode "Do No Harm," Boone died at the same time as Aaron was born, and the scenes were juxtaposed with one another to show the endless cycle of life.
  • On the Hanso Foundation website, it was written, "the work of the Hanso Foundation has always been intended to bring rebirth to a dying land and a dying people."