Apophenia

recovered from a blog that got deleted falling for the title of the post. Yes, the title of the post was the same even in the blog that got deleted. Cheers.




Lost is not about fate or mathematics or genetics. These are mere mediums to tell the story, to convey the whole point of the endeavor. The production, the way in which the shots are taken, the way in which the story is written, and the whole lost experience, all reek of this point – and if the whole point can be condensed to its bare minimum, to just one word, that word is psychology.



The series is made with a lot of understanding. It plays games with the mind. It knew, for example, that fans of the series would make screen caps, look up the allusions, dissect each and every dialogue, turn audio backwards, and try various other methods to extract information from the series. What the series does, is exploit information from you. This is a new trend, a new method of storytelling, where the audience is first fed information, and the meaning of the information is revealed as the story progresses. This format, makes it necessary for lost to keep referring to itself (the brief recaps at the beginning of episodes is where all the back info given in previous episodes is revealed in a condense form). Lost is however, not the only series that uses this method of storytelling, you can see this everywhere, in desperate housewives, in the Harry Potter series and in movies like the Existenz, Pi, the Matrix, and... The Others. Infact, it is quite a trend now a days, to exploit what has been fed in previously by the story in order to continue the story. What makes lost so different and scary, is that it is telling the story of the very psychology that it is manipulating. Comprehend this, dissect lost, consider its minutest propositions, because the story is being written with you, whatever you end up thinking, all the fan theories, every single bit of information that you receive about lost, is calculated, to a considerable extent, by the series itself. Slightly lost aren’t you?



It is necessary to begin with the very minimum and explain things ahead. The title of the series would be a good place to start. What do you think “lost” stands for? The series makes you think it is a story about a bunch of people lost on a lost island. The title is not extracted from this aspect of the story. Most of the characters in the plane are also lost in their lives, doing something they have no clue about. This strikes at a basic level with the audiences as being lost and having no clue what to do is a very basic psychological fear, which almost everybody will relate to. This is where the series manages to be one step ahead. The title extends to the story arc across the three episodes as well, the story unfolds and is planned in a way where the audience is misdirected, the audience is made to focus on a rapid succession of events, and this is where and why lost uses so many allusions. The audience is made to explore ideas surrounding genetics, and fate and mathematics. These are ideas suggested by the series, the series that allows you to be lost in its own story. You are made to lost track of what is going on… there was a monster in the first season, hatches in the next, and you definitely don’t know what is happening in the third season. It is a brilliant scheme, a plan that is working, not only for entertainment purposes, but on a very psychological perspective as well… I wouldn’t be surprised if the ending of lost involves the audiences in some way.



This blog studies lost. It studies lost with a new approach. It does not look at the story, it looks at the storytelling. Every single piece of information in this blog is derived not from careful study of the story itself, but is derived instead from a comparison between the keywords and motifs and themes predominantly used in the story, to the previous use of such keywords, motifs and themes. The blog traces influence of real life on the series, tries to analyze what the authors were thinking, and where they get their thinking from. There are a bunch of clues to these hidden in the series itself, the nomenclature of the characters (John Locke was a psychologist), the books read by the characters (Hawking’s brief history of time) and the iconic shots in the series (notice principle characters out to do something are always in the dark, holding up a torch, and looking for something when they hit upon something else)… you get the idea.



This is what makes lost so appealing… it extends out of the medium and invades your reality… it is so brilliant, that it was designed to make you come here in search for information about itself.