The third issue of Lost Online Studies looks back on the seminal Lost Experience alternate reality game, and looks ahead to Lost's future, from the vantage point of season 2 and the six-episode arc that opened season three. The essays below share an intertextual theme; after two complex and intense seasons, we are still haunted by meaning in the marginalia of Lost. As Michelle A. Lang, J. M. Berger, Dorothy Distefano and Sean Casey discuss below, Lost's densely packed allusions to literature, art, music, cinema, religionand myth – like the backstories of our castaways – circle the island like sidereal bodies and throw light on its central narrative.
Thanks to all our new members and special thanks to our contributors. Lost Online Studies is a quarterly publication of the Society for Lost Studies, an interest group devoted to all aspects of the ABC/Touchstone series Lost as a an artistic and cultural phenomenon.
I urge all interested readers to submit article, essays and feedback for our final issue of 2006.
I'll see you on the other side,
Amy Bauer
Lost as the Neo-Baroque
Michelle A. Lang reveals Lost as Neo-Baroque in its violation of frames, active integration into media dominated consumer society and complex, reflexive narrative strategies. Yet in a twist on the postmodern denial of the integrated subject, she maintains that the core of the series remains the integrity of human agency.
Frame Story/Historical Fiction: Understanding The Lost Experience
Sean Casey analyzes the literary techniques of frame storytelling and historical fiction as they combine in the The Lost Experience, and asks why the Lost writers chose to tell their stories as they did.
The Bad Twin: Clues or Diversions?
Dorothy Distefano reviews the Lost tie-in book Bad Twin, cataloguing its wealth of intertextual allusions and characters that intersect with both the Lost ARG and the television series.
The Split/Join Theory of Lost
J. M. Berger proposes that Lost is intended to be a microcosm or allegory of the universal creation story. He follows Lost’s story of existence from creation to collapse using the tools of this archetypical myth.
Truffula ties up the official ARG
The final installment of Truffula's webmaze guide summarizes ABC's The Lost Experience ARG.
The Lost Sonnets
David Ledbetter continues his sonnets on the castaways with a trio on the Lost Sisterhood.
Amy Bauer
Assistant Professor of Music Theory, University of California at Irvine
J.M. Berger
consultant, journalist, producer, writer, Somerville, MA
Michelle Lang
Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Nebraska at Kearney
John Lenarcic
School of Business Information Technology, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia
Douglas Zukunft
candidate for the M.A. in Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary