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 :).
I decided to create this blog because last June (2024) I finally gave up and decided to rewatch LOST after I swore that I'd never rewatch it again because the finale was the proverbial last straw for my depression (it has NOTHING to do with the way most people talk about the ending, though, it's like a whole other thing because it's more about Jack Shephard, tbh). It really was a case of "Destiny Calls" because in September they released "Getting Lost" for the Lost anniversary and the whole series got dropped on netflix around the same time. We were all hoping for a big "Lost Renaissance" which didn't really happen back then but more and more people are finally (re)watching the show now and that's good for me specifically because it makes me feel less crazy for screaming into the void on here about a show that ended 15 years ago #normalthingsfornormalpeople.
This also means that I'm faced with the necessity to sort out my tags, something I'm extremely bad at so sorry in advance!
MY TAGS. (work in progress)
I always tag my posts with the tags "lost season X" and the names of all the characters that I've mentioned in the post itself so if you want to look for something specific you can search by [character name + surname] and/or specific season.
lost inanother meta: all my metas can be found here. be warned: they're usually VERY long and episode-centric but I swear they aren't a waste of your time. Well, I hope. I do my best to entertain!
lost inanother jate: when I started this rewatch I convinced myself that I wouldn't fall into the jate trap and would watch the series in a more objective way. I was a foolish clown. This is a jate blog, fyi, so all my jate thoughts are grouped under this tag.
queering lost: LOST, notoriously, lacks substantial queer representation and it's in this absence that I find so many beautiful queer gems that I just have to share with the Internet. Sawyer is bisexual in this house.
lost inanother rambling: not metas, not liveblogs but a secret third thing, aka when I want to say something to the world but I don't have it in me to analyze stuff. Lots of my metas come from my ramblings, it's, like, a process.
liveblog together. watch alone: impromptu thoughts/opinions/ideas I have while I watch an episode, this is where you'll find me being grumpy and/or fun, depending on the episode and whether I unashamedly show my crush on the writers or want to strangle them.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST!
This isn't an adults-only blog per se but I am an adult and I will occasionally talk about weighty topics because the show deals with such topics (for example: death, addictions, mental illness, etc). I always use content warnings so please engage accordingly.
I'm not a big shipper. You won't find lots of shipping content on here or lots of romantic-centered posts for that matter. I just don't have the necessary imagination required for shipping characters, I take what the show gives me and that's it. Sorry!
Apart from when I'm writing my metas where I'm very verbose and take my sweet time to get to the point, I can be quite blunt and direct. However, please don't be shy and ask away if you have any questions because I do have a heart of gold! I'm just a *Gemini* (hides behind the gemini excuse).
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now that FROM s4 is over people are rightly talking abt its similarities with LOST, which is only fair.
it's ALSO fair to think abt light vs dark and good vs evil playing games bc well... apart from being an established theme since s1 (of LOST), this is also an ancient mytheme that people can easily recongize in many stories.
what's not FAIR is thinking that Jacob=good and MiB=evil. they REPRESENT the struggle between good and evil on an ALLEGORICAL level but they themselves, the characters I mean, are not good. Nor evil.
This, I think, was the biggest flaw of LOST's final two seasons: Jacob and the MiB weren't strong enough characters to represent such powerful themes. I think the MiB is way more interesing, but Jacob is a total flop.
Each character is LOST stands for an archetype (the hero, the mentor, the jester etc.) and the writers did manage to morph archetypes (static, boring) into characters (dynamic, interesting). So far so good.
When it comes to Jacob and the MiB though.... sorry but I don't see it. You can TELL me all you want that Jacob is GOOD but all I see is some sort of demigod who basically killed his brother and actively brought people to the island fully KNOWING that his brother will try and kill them, yet unwilling/unable to intervene.
The MiB, on the other hand, isn't fully evil for me bc all he wanted was to leave the island and then he got thrown into the very heart of it and transformed into something bodyless and angry. He's an angry spirit trapped in a bottle, so to speak, who obviously has a negative view of humanity. Not saying he doesn't do bad things but he doesn't strike me as The Evil.
For me the real Evil of the story is actually the island itself and the real Good is the people who fight to the death so that other people could leave that place.
So when you talk abt FROM maybe it'll be more interesting if you see the town itself as the real Antagonist and the people, and the things they do for love, as the actual Protagonist of the evil vs good duel.
“What Kate Did” is an absolutely beautiful, painfully perfect episode and here’s why.
It starts off with Jin and Sun (THE married couple of the island, in this episode their role is to be symbols of Kate’s story) getting out of their tent after they’ve visibly had back-from-the-raft-and-back-together sex. Hurley (THE character associated with mental hospital/madness) watches them as they hug and smile. Sun’s eyes move to watch Sayid digging the grave for my poor girl Shannon (JUSTICE FOR SHANNON!). So we as viewers know that today’s themes’ menu will consist of marital love, supposed madness& certain death. I hate these writers. Ugh, they’re TOO good.
We’re then shown the inside of the Swan with Jack-the-Doc flirting with tending fevered, wounded Sawyer. The bisexual man spoils the moment because, in the haziness of his septicemia, he declares that he loves her, her being Kate. But who are Jack and Sawyer for Kate? We’ll discover it in this episode while the fourth, hidden theme is slowly unearthed.
Next scene of course there's Kate, climbed up on a tree picking forbidden fruits and oh-oh! She sees a black horse, a dark horse perhaps? What the hell is that? It’s obviously something related to her past, hence flashback!
Kate’s flashback is… heartbreaking. She’s on the steps of her mother’s house, waiting for her stepfather to come back home. He’s drunk and awful and a piece of shit and he molests her. Kate rightly puts a bomb under the house and it explodes.
She goes to her mother to inform her about the insurance she had taken out on the house under her name. This is important and we’ll see why later on.
Back to the present Kate asks to watch over Sawyer while Jack attends Shannon’s funeral. She’s definitely not okay.
At Shannon’s funeral Sayid gives a little speech where he declares that he loved her. Back at the bunker, Kate is talking to an almost-sleeping Sawyer who abruptly wakes up and shouts at her: “You killed me! Why did you kill me?”. Kate runs away.
In the subsequent flashback she’s also running away. The marshal finds her, though, and informs her that her own mother has given her up.
In the bunker, Jin is freed from his handcuff, foreshadowing Kate’s supposed freeing by the end of the episode. But will it be a liberation for Kate?
Jack finds Kate in the jungle and we have this amazing scene here:
Kate then says that it’s the island, it’s crazy and it’s driving her nuts. (important). Kate kisses Jack.
Themes Convergence Point: Kate is sitting beside Shannon’s grave (reference to the man she's put in the grave) and talks to Sayid (who was in love with Shannon). She reveals she’s going crazy and asks Sayid if he believes in ghosts. Sayid replies that he saw Walt (Walt's name' ll come back by the end of the episode, ugh these writers, I hate them, they're too good) in the jungle before Shannon died: does this make him crazy too?
Flashback to Kate and the marshal in the car: he’s the exposition guy for this scene telling us that Kate was basically a normal girl (straight A’s, couple of speeding tickets, no history of violence) and asks her why she killed him (her stepfather) now. The exposition continues as the man claims he has Kate figured out:
MARSHAL: White trash mom divorces dad, starts up with some guy who's a drinker. Then he knocks her around a little bit, she marries him, because, you know, that's what happens. And then this drunk, this Wayne, he moves into your house, and you get to lay there every night and listen to him doing your mom right there in your daddy's old bedroom. And even that wouldn't be so bad if he didn't beat her up all the time. But she loves him. She defends him. If that don't make a person want to kill somebody I don't know what does. But the question is now, why now? Why after all these years did you just decide to blow poor Wayne up? He come knocking on your door late at night?
KATE: He never touched me.
I’m not necessarily saying that the Marshal is a reliable narrator but I’m inclined to think that, in this case, he is. I think that Kate was a victim of abuse, the text doesn’t explicitly say so in the sense that Kate rejects the Marshal’s implications but we actually saw her stepfather molesting her at the beginning of the episode. So, I don’t know, the text tends more towards ambivalence but a close reading suggests that she was unfortunately a victim of sexual abuse. And this is only a part of the unfortunate story of Kate Austen.
After that, the car the two are in crashes, Kate manages to escape and it’s in that moment that she sees the black horse.
As many symbols, horses and specifically black horses mean a lot of things, too many to list here. My interpretation for its presence in this episode is threefold:
Black horse as in “Kate is a dark horse”: She’s the mysterious, enigmatic type that one way or another manages to win. So far she has showed that she has surprising skills in her pockets and knows her way around winning people over. Yes, she’s definitely a dark horse. In this sense, Kate is facing her own self and is coming to terms with her.
Black horse as in “Good vs Evil”: Twice in the episode Kate states that she will never be good. So it’s safe to assume that the black horse represents the “evil” she thinks she has inside herself.
Black horse as “Past trauma”: Twice in the episode Kate’s past abuse is mentioned. Black horse can represent repressed emotions and I think it’s fair to say that Kate’s got some of them.
Back to the island, after the kiss Jack is chopping wood, an activity that’s strictly connected to Sawyer (Hurley explicitly says so) and Hurley asks him if he’s mad at Sawyer. Jack asks why he should be mad at him and Hurley says because he’s doing something that Sawyer usually does.
[Jack chopping wood, as Hurley approaches.]
HURLEY: Hey. [Jack doesn't answer.] So, Rose's husband's white. Didn't see that one coming.
JACK: Is there something you need, Hurley?
HURLEY: No, just taking a walk, thought I'd say hey. -- Who's taking care of Sawyer?
JACK: Sun is.
HURLEY: So, you're like, mad at him?
JACK: [laughing] Why would I be mad at Sawyer?
HURLEY: Maybe because he's the one that always comes down here and chops wood, and now you are? It's like, transference.
JACK: What, are you a shrink now?
HURLEY: Well, that's what they call it in the mental hospital.
JACK: I'm not mad at anyone.
Note how the themes of madness and marital love have come back (“Rose's husband's white” Sun, THE wife, is taking care of Sawyer, the transference, the mention of the mental hospital, told you Hurley is associated with that). How fucking brilliant is this scene, uh? It’s so good I hate the writers a little bit (a lot).
Back to the Swan Kate symbolically takes over the role of Sun (who’s symbolically The Wife) and takes care of Sawyer.
We see the final flashback: alone and on the run, Kate pays a visit to her father and we have the big plot-twist: Sam Austen is not her biological father, her stepfather Wayne (whom she’s killed) is. Here’s the dialogue, also notice the mention of the war in Korea (Sun and Jin are symbols in this episode) and that Sayid (Kate was talking with him on the island in a pivotal moment) appears on the TV screen in Sam Austen’s office.
KATE: Why didn't you tell me, Dad?
AUSTEN: Tell you what?
KATE: I was making a scrapbook -- a surprise for your birthday. So I called one of your COs to get some pictures of you in uniform. The pictures that he sent me had dates on the back -- photos of you in Korea up until 4 months before I was born. Why didn't you tell me that Wayne was my father? Why?
AUSTEN: I didn't tell you because I knew you'd kill him. And your mother loved him. You were 5 years old. I wanted to take you along with me. She wouldn't let me.
KATE: So why didn't you kill him?
AUSTEN: Because I don't have murder in my heart. I'm going to have to call them.
Fucking great scene. This is the 4th reiteration of the “I love you” theme and twice it’s referred to Kate’s mother’s love for an abusive piece of shit. So how should we interpret all this love? It’s doesn’t feel…healthy. It doesn't bode well for our Kate since she was the first recipient of the first "I love you" of the episode.
Back to the bunker, Kate talks to Sawyer:
KATE: Can you hear me? Sawyer? -- Wayne? [Sawyer stirs.] I'm probably crazy and this doesn't matter, but maybe you're in there somehow. But you asked me a question. You asked me why I -- why I did it. It wasn't because you drove my father away, or the way you looked at me, or because you beat her. It's because I hated that you were a part of me -- that I would never be good. That I would never have anything good. And every time that I look at Sawyer -- every time I feel something for him -- I see you, Wayne. It makes me sick.
Kate will then see the black horse in the jungle, approaches it and nuzzles it before it walks away.
Meanwhile Jack’s on the beach sharing a drink with Ana Lucia and we have this little dialogue:
ANA: Are you going to try to convince me that everyone here doesn't hate me?
JACK: Only if you're going to try to convince me that every woman in the world's not crazy.
Finally the episode ends with Michael sitting at the computer desk, replying to an ominous “Hello” that appears on the PC’ screen. He states that his name is Michael and to that “the computer” replies: "Dad?".
The episode literally ends with this frame:
The hidden, eventually unearthed theme of the episode is fatherhood.
Kate's fathers: the bad, abusive stepfather who turns out to be her real dad and the father she kills and her other father who's a soldier, a morally good person who's abandoned her, though, and left her to her abuse. The Good Father, the Soldier Father who didn't have murder in his heart but sure had some space to abandon a child in the hands of two abusive people.
Kate is drawn to Jack because he represents (in her mind) “the good” or, even better, “The Good Father”. He’s Sam Austen, the guy who doesn’t have murder in his heart (while she does, as he clearly implies or rather downright states when he says that he knew she would have killed Wayne). Kate is attracted to "The Good" but resents the fact that "good" is, for her, forever associated with her being a killer. As in, her good father could never while she, a bad, bad girl could because she has murder in her heart (this is, of course, what Kate thinks, it clearly doesn't reflect the reality of a girl who's victim of terrible abuse and deception by her own parents).
Sawyer, on the other hand, is Wayne, “The Real, Bad Father”, the father who’s biologically a part of Kate, the bad part confirming her suspicion that she would never be good, that she would never have anything good.
And since transference was invoked in this episode, what’s Kate doing with Jack and Sawyer if not that? She basically sees her two fathers in them, the good and the bad and it’s interesting that while she metaphorically kisses the first (while being in a “crazy” state of mind), she favors the second, the one that’s bad and that she has killed.
In this respect, the scene where she nuzzles the black horse is a bit unsettling. Is she at peace with her past and her trauma? The scene is hopeful but I suspect this is not the case. Has she accepted that she will never be good and/or have anything good? I suspect so. Out of the three meanings of the black horse I think that, in this respect, number 2 is the more fitting. "Evil" is what's inside Kate (or so she thinks), it's a part of her, a apart that's forever weaved with her biological, abusive father. The black horse is the Bad Father that she's killed. Sawyer/Wayne, on the verge of death, comes back to life.
And what about Kate's mental state? Is she doing okay? Unfortunately, I don’t think so (and who could blame her, honestly?). Even if he says it half- jokingly, Jack too seems to think she’s a bit crazy, playing into the old stereotype about women being crazy. And the text, unfortunately gives him the last word, casting a thin veil of shadow over Kate's mental wellness.
But is Jack doing okay? Is he a reliable narrator? Clearly not, because the text addresses him, too, as “being mad at someone”. He's also subject to the transference. Interesting that the text uses "crazy" to descrive Kate and "mad at" to describe Jack. Much to think about, right?
Hurley thinks Jack’s being mad at Sawyer (hence the transference and the wood chopping) but the last dialogue with Ana Lucia confirms that he’s actually mad at Kate. He’s chopping woods like Sawyer does not because he’s mad at him but because he wants to be him. Apart from my “Jack is enamored of Sawyer” headcannon, the episode seems to confirm that he wants to be Sawyer because Sawyer is the guy Kate’s in love with. The guy Kate chooses is the Bad Guy, the Black Horse, the thing that makes her sick. And you know what? Jack wants to be that person, our beloved, Good Doc wants to be a little Bad, folks.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode. BRILLIANT, BRRRRRILLIANT.
another cool thing about LOST is how it expanded its point of view as the show went on. s1? losties pov. s2? tailies pov. s3? the others pov. s4? the "normal" world pov. it's so cool! it allows the story to remain the same while sort of "getting bigger" without being actually retold/repeated. i love it! this might be one of the reasons s5 and s6 work a bit less for me, bc it's. like. all of a sudden the view, that once was very broad, gets shrinked and we do start feeling like it's a bit suffocating. which. i believe. was one of the show's intended outcomes given how the story ends (with a desperate need to break free). so i can't say it was a mistake bc it wasn't (at least for the goal the show had set for itself). and yet, LOST s1-4 with all their issues still feel like a bit of "something else" compared to s5 and s6 and. dare i say. something... better.
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i understand how this is clearly not everyone's cup of tea but it is mine: jack refusing to operate on baby ben is such a peak moment, my man is sooooo cold it's actually impossible to defend him on any level but also. thank u for being a "shitty" hero and continuing, on a meta level, the XIXth-century heroism critique that had been going on in LOST since s1. the cherry on top is that it's precisely jack's act of unethical defiance that started the chain of events that would eventually lead to the villain that ben linus is. the pipeline from failure hero (jack) to perfect villain (ben) has never been so narratively tasty.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
