In Another Life @lost-inanotherlife - Tumblr Blog

Hello hello hello! It's high time I wrote an introduction post about myself and about my tags so here we are!

ABOUT ME.

I'll admit that I was more focused on the meaning behind my username rather than, you know, the fact that it was gonna be the way most people would recognize me on here but oh well... if you want, you can call me ananke (she/her), since @ananke-xiii is my main :).

#oh. hello. hi. i didn't see u there.#main post #pinned post

lost-inanotherlife

everybody likes to make fun of "stranger in a strange land" bc it's easy. an episode ABOUT the tattoo of the actor playing the protagonist? i mean, come on. talk about scraping the barrel. what you probably don't know is that in "the leftovers" we have a very similar episode, i.e. an episode about an absurd tattoo nora, one of the main characters, got and why she got it and why she covered it. you might think i am joking but i am not. i guess it's all about execution but also about writers really liking certain ideas and reusing them in their works in different shapes and forms.

lost-inanotherlife

i am inside damon lindelof's brain.

lostecho815

If you haven't listened to the Official Lost Podcast with Damon & Carlton you might not know they were planning the tattoo backstory episode from the very beginning

I don't understand how two brilliant people thought this episode was necessary

lost-inanotherlife

based on the screenshots you've shares, i wouldn't really say it was "planned from the beginning", tbh. it sounds like they were... just aware of the practical difficulties to cover them up and then just decided that they fitted jack as well. which, to be fair, i agree with. i mean, they were right and made a good call. the idea to write a whole episode abt the damn tattoes, on the other hand, matches with the dissatisfaction the writers had towards abc and with their decision, which they have admitted to, to consciously bring down the writing quality of the series to pressure abc to cut the 6-season deal. which may or may not have been a good move but it was the right move bc they did get their deal in the end.

#lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #lost tv series #abc lost #lost tv show #2004 lost

THE ISLAND IS THE BINARY!

#who gets it gets it #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series

post I and post II and post III for context.

time to wrap this up as i already see your attention span leaving your body and soul.

in post I we've seen how experimenting with animals is thematically linked with brainwashing: in order to survive on the island, one must be brainwashed.

in post II we've focused a bit on the main character associated with island brainwashing, that is ben linus.

in post III we've briefly talked about the connection between brainwashing and drugs, specifically LSD.

now it's time to focus on WHO IS BEING BRAINWASHED. but wait, look! it's jack shephard, the dolphin! we've gone back to the very beginning of this rambling! who would've guessed? lol.

as it turns out, people in the 70s weren't only experimenting with LSD, no, no, no. there were some guys, specifically one american guy named John Lilly, who was really into ketamine. like reeeeeally into it. too much maybe.

he was ALSO really into dolphins as he was convinced that we could reach an interspecies communication with these animals. via ketamine, of course.

Lilly's dolphins are so famous that they've infiltrated popular culture from "ECCO the Dolphin" to The Simpsons.

not-so incidentally speaking, although Lilly DID experiment with dolphins and exploited them, it was his work on these animals that contributed to raise public awareness on animal cruelty, specifically animal cruelty for mammals in cages. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 was influenced by Lilly's work.

so the idea behind jack being put inside an aquarium tank like a dolphin is literally meant to make us understand the following things:

he's being experimented with;

he's being experiment with because he's NOT "human", he's a "dolphin" or, in more narrative terms,: he's someone who walks among us but he's NOT one of us;

he's being experimented with bc he's a "dolphin" and, on the island, only trained, genetically modified animals can survive;

bc he's obviously NOT a dolphin this gets translated like this: jack must be brainwashed bc he needs to stay on the Island and serve the Island;

in other words, jack is the one to be "recruited", the one who, more than others, has the potentiality for becoming an enemy spy which, in the economy of LOST, means becoming an Other.

And who does jack join in S3? The Others!

HOWEVER! because he's both "not like us" AND "has the potentiality for becoming a spy" he will INEVITABLY also turn on the Others themselves! which basically means that jack CANNOT be brainwashed. and if you can't be brainwashed, you're not gonna survive on the Island.

which ultimately means that

in a world of black vs white, us vs others, faith vs science, that is a world of strict dichotomy and inescapable binaries...

interspecies communication CANNOT happen.

we CANNOT communicate with jack and viceversa.

therefore, as far as the Island is concerned, since he cannot survive there, jack can ONLY die on the Island.

although brainwashing doesn't work, there's no alternative to it, jack is not granted other possibilities bc of this inherent, rather PARANOID paradox: even when jack finally believes (after he's being made to believe)in the Island, because he's NOT "One of Us", he's not fully human, so to speak, he can always turn, he can always "go back".

too bad that going back, for the Island, is NOT an option, not for him. therefore, as the real enemy of the Island, he must die.

#i've tried to keep it very short. but i'm fascinated with the concept of cold war island. so to speak #where. like. the Island is the enemy. for us. the viewers. wheareas for the island. jack is the enemy #bc of his liminality: he doesn't fully belong to the world but he ALSO doesn't fully belong to the island #what happens when humans do not conform to binaries? are they less human? ofc i don't think so #however. THE ISLAND IS THE BINARY #it doesn't think in other terms than THE DICHOTOMY #therefore jack cannot exist. precisely bc he CAN be brainwashed AND he CANNOT be brainwashed AT THE SAME TIME #island as brainwashing #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series #jack shephard

post I and post II for context.

in post I we've seen how experimenting with animals is thematically linked with brainwashing: in order to survive on the island, one must be brainwashed.

in post II we've focused a bit on the main character associated with island brainwashing, that is ben linus.

now, i've decided to remain vague bc brainwashing is a complex theme that i don't what to touch with a ten-feet pole on here. suffice it to say that themes of paranoia, spy, infiltration and recruitment are ALL related to the cold war period propaganda and narratives and brainwashing is sort of like a bigger theme that encompasses them all: it's not *just* abt the idea of spies being "among us" but the idea that *you* could be a spy and you wouldn't even know it because you had been or could be brainwashed.

the potentiality of being a spy is inside "all of us".

but how can this potentiality manifest itself? how can one be "brainwashed"? well, i'm glad you asked.

LSD and other drugs, for instance, were something that the governments of the period were keen on experimenting with. also other people and entities were interested in experimenting with drugs during this period.

and oh, by the way? do you know richard alpert? no, not OUR richard, the real richard, also known as ram dass who was dismissed from harvard for his research into LSD.

but why am i focusing on drugs? there isn't much drugs in LOST. or, well. it surely isn't a popular theme like ben's manipulations and attempts at brainwashing people.

there is, however, a character in LOST, THEE character, aka jack, who's someone who "walks among us but he's not one of us". what does this mean? he's an alien? he belongs to another species? no, it means that he's a dolphin.

#island as brainwashing #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series #jack shephard #ben linus

part I here for my island as brainwashing short series.

in my prev post i've established how experimeting with animals on the island by DHARMA is narratively linked to the brainwashing methods used by the Others, most notably by ben linus.

i've already talked at lenghts about ben's manipulaton techniques, specifically in regards to food (here for the posts).

now it's important to take a look at these techniques from a broader, cultural point of view.

ben linus is born in 1964 and moves to the island when he's what? 10 maybe 12? so in the seventies. strictly speaking, the DHARMA initiative is funded by the HANSO foundation, a private and international company. the "Internationality" of the DHARMA is important bc it reflects, in-world, the "Internationality" of our losties (aka people from, more or less, all around the world).

In the real world, however, LOST is very much a tv series written, made and produced in the US. So what we have in LOST is an "american take" on "Internationality", so to speak. which basically means that the cultural background of the story is simply american, guys. like, let's all be honest here and, i appreciate the gesture but it is what it is.

one proof for my claim: Mikhail Bakunin. a former soviet soldier living on the island claiming he worked with DHARMA but who, eventually, turned out to be one of the main villains of S3 (the villain in an american tv show is a former soviet dropping a grenade on a former US military base, how shocking!).

why am i saying all of this? well, bc the seventies are key here for two factors: cold-war paranoia and drug culture, specifically psychedelics drugs.

so ben linus, born in the US but raised on the island, doesn't necessarily live the "real" american lifestyle of the period (bc the DHARMA initiative is written with "Internationality" in mind), but is ultimately very culturally american: he does "breathe" a certain, peculiar flavour of american culture in the 70s (bc the DHARMA initiative is, no matter what the show SAYS abt it, very much american-like).

for instance, he's introduced in the series as a an infiltrator (although, obviously, we don't know this at first), just like ethan before him.

unlike ethan, however, ben is not an operative agent, so to speak, he's not there to kill&kidnap like ethan was: he's there to observe, study and, eventually, RECRUIT and manipulate people.

narratively speaking, then, ben is portrayed as the enemy spy. he is, in other words, both literally (as in: in the story) living during the cold-war era (although not directly living the related culture bc the island is a sort of detached paradise) and is meta-literally (lol) portrayed like a very specific type of villains: those of the spy novels.

incidentally, this is what makes him so fascinating as a villain: unlike Mikhail, who's basically a living trope, ben is "one of us" (meaning: an american from an american pov, not mine, lol) and also... NOT one of us because he's the enemy... who not only is INSIDE the hatch, but who's also trying to infiltrate "our" minds via a famous american story (The Wizard of Oz) and via fake familiarity with american lifestyle&culture (although "fake" is a debatable term here bc he is, for all intents and purposes, an actual US citizen and the DHARMA initiative is, despite the writers' weak efforts, culturally american).

AND HE SUCCEEDS! bc we believe him! we believe he's "one of us" while he's... an Other. as a matter of fact, THEE Other.

#island as brainwashing #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #ben linus

okay. so. i've already mentioned here and there how important (to me) jack thinking he's a shark while he's a dolphin is in order to, like, understand him as a character in relation to the narrative he's trapped in.

and i'm not using the word "trap" accidentally: in s3 jack is literally locked up in an aquarium tank, while sawyer is put behind the bars of a cage for bears. but why are there cages and tanks on the island?

well. we know they're there because the DHARMA initiative used to experiment with animals. By the magical properties of narrative parallels, the Others, now using the facilities belonging to the initiative, are conducting experiments with jack and sawyer (we're in S3 territory here).

and so, ofc, the question now is: why was the DHARMA initiative experimenting with animals? Which begs the question: why are the Other experimenting with jack and sawyer?

the answer to the first question is: for genetic engineering and for experiments in electromagnetic research. DHARMA was exploiting animals to see how they would live (and work) under the extreme conditions of the island. In order to do so, they had somehow found a way to genetically modify polar bears, birds, sharks and dolphins (rabbits, too, perhaps) to survive the island climatic conditions. basically, the two things went hand-in-hand: DHARMA had to understand how the island affected people and used animals in their stead; however, comma, it most likely became apparent that, in order to withstand the island conditions, these animals had to be genetically modified.

on a very practical level, we can see this line of reasoning with desmond: for some reasons, he's a sort of "genetically modified" human being who can actually survive the electromagnetism of the island.

on a more narrative, speculative level, jack and sawyer (and to a certain extent kate, too) are the one the Others experiment with. clearly, the Others don't want to genetically modify these men but they do want to manipulate them, to brainwash them, even. this is important bc, if taken to its logical consequences, it means that in order to survive on the island, one must be brainwashed.

#i hope you'll follow me with this one cause it's good i promise #island as brainwashing #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series #jack shephard #kate austen #james sawyer ford #ben linus #lost season 3

tomorrow... tomorrow i will write abt s3, cold war-era typical narrative tropes, brainwashing, ketamine and dolphins. tomorrow i will. it all has to do with the show, i promise.

#the more you know #istg i could write a phd in LOST studies #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series

lost-inanotherlife

everybody likes to make fun of "stranger in a strange land" bc it's easy. an episode ABOUT the tattoo of the actor playing the protagonist? i mean, come on. talk about scraping the barrel. what you probably don't know is that in "the leftovers" we have a very similar episode, i.e. an episode about an absurd tattoo nora, one of the main characters, got and why she got it and why she covered it. you might think i am joking but i am not. i guess it's all about execution but also about writers really liking certain ideas and reusing them in their works in different shapes and forms.

lost-inanotherlife

i am inside damon lindelof's brain.

#jack 🤝 nora #“the leftovers” is hbo lost #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series #the leftovers #strangers in a strange land #don't be ridiculous

lost-inanotherlife

arent dolphins like, worse and more ill-meaning than sharks??

hello! Anon is referring to this post which is a tldr; version of this other post of mine where I basically state that, in his heart of hearts, Jack Shephard wants to be a little bit alexis bad but the narrative doesn't allow him to (he's, and I mean literally, the son of a character named Christian Shephard, I think the guy had a right to break bad lol).

I totally agree, dolphins are worse and more ill-meaning than sharks, I think that episode of the Simpsons has scarred generations :D

But what I had in mind when I wrote the post is that Jack would like to think of himself as a shark, a top-dog, the apex of the food-chain, the "baddie", while for the Others ( re Ben) (and, more broadly, the narrative) he's the dolphin that can be trained and people can come look him play with his ball and do his nice flips in the air. After all Ben wants him to want to perform his surgery. So I was thinking more of the perfomance associated with these animals (and how humans commonly regard them) than the real characteristics of both sharks and dolphins :D

#rb this for reasons #ask #lost abc #lost #lost tv series #abc lost #lost rewatch #lost 2004 #jack shephard #my babygirl jack shepard #lost season 3 #ben linus #and jack is a fascinating hero

lost-inanotherlife

the key to understanding Jack's character is S3E1 "A Tale of Two Cities" when he figures out he's in an aquarium and tells Juliet this:

Jack: This thing's for what -- sharks? Juliet: Dolphins, too.

It's not a conscious thought, of course, but since he's held prisoner inside the aquarium the fact that the first animal that he thinks of are shark is so telling!

He wants to be a shark so badly but Juliet (aka The Narrative) reminds him of his place: he's a dolphin.

#rb this for reasons #jack shephard #lost abc #lost tv series #lost #abc lost #lost rewatch #lost 2024 #lost 2004 #lost season 3 #lost inanother rambling

LOST s3 is the gift that keeps on giving precisely because the writing is good but lazy. the writers were so fed up with abc that they came up with the strangest, most off-putting ideas, the kinds that can only give brainworms.

hating on "stranger in a strange land" is for the weak (just like any jack-centric ep. the point IS to show you his flaws, but somehow people always seem to miss this point).

hating on "further instructions" is for the strong bc in it LOST really said: the fbi will use a man to infiltrate a commune but then they will let this man go without repercussions bc... he's good? he's white? he's a man? all of the above? LOLZ! (mind you that, in the meantime, kate is being hounded by the marshal like a dog, LOLZ 2!).

#i can't believe i used to say that s3 was bad #i wasnt enlightened back then. clearly #lost #lost 2004 #lost abc #abc lost #lost tv series #jack shephard #john locke

missinglost

The ghost of Christian Shephard didn’t come all the way up from Hell to explain the ending of LOST to have you all saying that they were dead the whole time. What kind of disrespect.

#lol #he really spells it out. doesnt he. AND YET.

lost-inanotherlife

I need to know your opinion on Jack's and Juliet's weird relationship

Because for me it looks like most of the time Juliet doesn't really likes Jack that much- not even romantically but like, in general, doesn't like being around him very much (which, fair)

While Jack obviously is interested in her because of Kate's partial rejections and his time with the Others

But also on the flashsideways they are divorced and have more or less an amicable relationship and share a child, and given than the flash sideways is the happy eding every character wanted then it means is mutual and that Juliet did appreciate Jack on some level, but it just doesn't looks like it?

Hello Anon, thank you for the ask, this is a good one!

I need to make a little detour before answering it but I promise it'll make sense in the end.

So. The way I see it, LOST is the "unlikable characters who cry a lot" show. You see, all LOST characters are, from the start, morally grey but, perhpas, some are "greyer" than others. In this show the main characters are cheaters, con people, torturers, murderers etc. and you see them "crying" over their own "sins". There isn't much space for victims and justice in LOST and you're either okay with that or LOST isn't for you. Like, the whole premise of the show is that these people HATE themselves, they hate their past and they hate their lives. The character arcs end the moment they stop hating themselves, hence the importance of the flash sideways (and, imo, the writing cop-out that they are but that's for another day, not blaming the writers because they were in a tight spot but I'm not the number one fan of what they came up with, sorry).

Having said that, we can put up with the fact that we're watching the story of people committing horrible things because their story is tragic. As in, seriously, these people had it bad, like reaaaaal bad. And this is the second point of the show: bringing people to the extremes, forcing them to make a choice and therefore involving the audience in making a choice with the characters as well. It's not always pretty, in fact it's never pretty. We as audience are complicit in what our characters do and we can all together drape ourselves in the flag of tragedy and "justify" the characters' actions to feel less bad about them.

But, you see, among all these tragic characters Jack and Juliet's stories seem to pale in comparison. Like, their lives pre-island weren't exactly amazing but they were... ordinary. Loveless marriage, cheating, substance abuse, parent issues, sick relatives... I mean, this is "normal" life. So what I personally like to look at when I think about Jack and Juliet is that they're tragic because they're prisoners. Symbolically, they're prisoners of their own choices because they're incapable of moving on, "realistically" speaking they're literal prisoners of the Dharma initiative and, at large, of the island.

So, anon, you are right when you say that their relationship is weird because they're both prisoners and wardens of themselves and... of each other. There is no other impending tragedy over them: they seem to do okay in terms of finance, they're both extremely intelligent people with an impossibly high potential, they could do anything they want with their lives and yet they're stuck or, if we want to be corny, they're lost.

For Jack and Juliet the island is the embodiment of everything they've desperately tried to figuratively run away from and that they must face now. There is no escape, quite literally. This is why Jack "has to" go back: the island is his "purpose", something that, unfortunately, he could never find in the "real" world. This is also why Juliet "must" die on the island as well: on a symbolical level "death" means "accepting and letting go" (btw, I don't condone this specific usage of death in fiction, I have lots of things to say about it because I think it conveys a very twisted message wrt self-sacrifice/suicide but that's not for today).

So what's up with Jack and Juliet, then? Well, the thing is that they serve as a constant reminder to each other of who they are and of the things they should do to move on. It's not a coincidence that they "meet" in an aquarium/prison where Jack is written as a parallel to off-island Juliet: a "person" of science abducted and taken as prisoner on an island (they're on Hydra island by now) to help with something related to the specific field of medicine they're expert of.

This means that, the way I see it, it's not that Juliet doesn't like being around Jack because she doesn't like "Jack". As a matter of fact, I think she does like him as his own person but she doesn't like what she sees when she sees him because she sees herself in him. Also, another thing that I always say is that, to me, everybody on the island is a little bit in love with Jack but not everybody "likes" Jack. This is because getting to know the "real" Jack is a. very difficult and b. as much as I love him with all my heart, Jack isn't exactly the life of the party. Like, it's not easy to take to Jack, that's what I'm trying to say.

While Jack represents for Juliet a "bad omen" that says "you have to deal with your stuff or you'll always end up being a prisoner in situations you don't like", Juliet represents for Jack something akin to "hope". This is because Jack has an ambiguous relationship with the Others/the losties/ with the world in general, lol. He wants to desperately belong but... "he walks among us but he's not one of us". Unlike Juliet, Jack is actually "willing" to be a prisoner if this means that he could belong somewhere. This is why he's so tethered to the island in a way that Juliet both can and can't understand because she's on the opposite end of that spectrum (the difference being that she didn't "simply" crash to the island, she was unwillingly "complicit" in her imprisonment and she can't forgive herself for that).

Here comes the perfect metaphor in the flash-sideways: the divorce. Divorce is great, I love divorce. There should be more divorce stories. In the context of LOST, divorce, for Jack and Juliet, means that they can finally let go and move on, that they've failed and that's okay because failing doesn't mean punishment for life. It means that you can leave situations that aren't for you anymore and that's not the end of the world. As a matter of fact, it's actually best for you to do so. So yes, Juliet does appreciate Jack but she can't be with Jack despite the fact that she'll forever be bound to him (the island/the son they have in the sideways). And this is because, surprise surprise!, Juliet and Jack are the same character. In order for them to "grow" and complete their arcs, they must let themselves go, they must divorce "themselves". While on the island this is translated into literal death as I said above, in the flash sideways the writers opted for something a little bit more poetic: love. Love is also a form of letting go and embrace the unknown. Love is a form of meeting... the Other and... having faith in this encounter.

Kate and Sawyer are Jack and Juliet's respective Other, aka they're the ones who can help them move forward along their journey (and viceversa can be said for Kate and Sawyer, of course).

So, yes, anon, you got it right when you spotted the "push-and-pull" dynamic between them. I personally think they're attracted to each other but, as I tried to explain, they can't ever "like-like" each other because if they did, it'd mean that they like... themselves, which they don't (this is the characters hating themselve show as I also said above). The ultimate point of the show is for the characters to overcome this self-hatred and accept themselves for who they are. Hence, the divorce metaphor: Jack and Juliet will always be connected but, in order to move on, they have to let themselves go.

#okay anon i don't know if you wanted a less philosophical answer #but basically i kinda agree and disagree with you. although you've correctly identified the core of their dynamic #personally I see it in more broader terms. because this fucking show which I adore is so highly symbolical it's heady sometimes #but to sum up: jack and juliet are the same person. if they want to move on with their life (because they are LOST)#they must divorce “themselves”#have i said today how much i hate (affectionate) lost writers for being this good #ugh. i hate them #lost #lost 2004 #asks #lost abc #jack shephard #juliet burke

davidfosterwallaceandgromit

if supernatural was about the war on terror, and Fringe was about the war on terror + climate change, and xfiles was about the dawn of the Information Age, what the fuck was Lost about?