Lost in Hypertext1
Introduction
Alice in Wonderland
Bierce, James and O'Brian
The Dark Tower
The Wizard of Oz
Out Mutal Friend
The television
show Lost is an important contemporary
example of the use of hypertext – the linking to, or referencing of,
other ‘texts’, including literature, other television shows, films, and video
games. This virtual enlargement of the already complex entity of Lost provides the willing viewer/reader, with a virtually
limitless string of interconnected characters and themes, one that encourages a
more personal and individual experience of the show. Allowing, even
encouraging, viewers and readers to create meaning is the very definition of
reader response and hypertext theory.2 Julia
Kristeva (who coined the term intertextuality in 1966), suggests
that one cannot possibly understand one text without reference to other texts;
this interdependence of texts makes finding a single definitive meaning in one
text impossible (Kristeva 212). The reader or viewer always brings a frame of
reference which will inevitably be used to comprehend new information and
stories. For author and critic Roland
Barthes as well, intertextuality relies on the idea that the reader
or viewer creates the connection or completes the circuit. Meaning can only
arise when someone views the work through his or her own personal experiences
(Barthes 1975).
Intertextuality
can be defined in many ways, but for the Lost, it is primarily seen in the direction quotation of, or allusion to,
recognizable literary and philosophical material; the two separate pieces
– pre-existing text and contemporary television narrative - are, in one
way or another, linked. This is most effective when this process is thematized
within these links – when these additional texts question or examine the
nature of reality itself..
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis
Carroll is referenced early in the series. In "White Rabbit," John
Locke converses with Jack, who believes he may be going crazy chasing
someone who is "not there." Locke refers to this as "the white rabbit"
from Alice in Wonderland and makes his first declaration of the special nature of the Island.
"Is your White Rabbit a hallucination? Probably, but what if everything
that happened here happened for a reason?" You could almost call the
island Wonderland for all the absurd and symbolic things that happen there.
Both Alice in Wonderland and Lost are dense with layers of meaning behind a
deceptively simple story line (though at this point this could be contested for
the latter), and both are too strange to interpret literally. The character of
Alice, according to the metaphysical Sabian scholar Marc Edmund Jones,
illustrates that while her growth is realized through a magical transformation
from tiny to gigantic, her real self is changeless. And if one denies the
inner truths then that hypocrisy is self-destructive. Furthermore, we see that
size and other such external accidents have nothing to do with reality. We
must adapt to our surroundings and put these misfortunes to work for us. If we
are to succeed in life we must learn to unclench and let go as Alice does,
recognizing that every activity is made possible by the interlocking ritual of
the cosmos itself. (Jones http://www.sabian.org/alice.htm) Alice in
Wonderland was written by a mathematician
who was inspired by the idea that anything is possible if you can imagine it.
So far, this seems to be a constant in the Lost world: anything is possible; nothing is impossible.
Bierce, James and O'Brian
Sawyer is reading a copy of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce in the episode “The Long Con.”
Bierce’s story deals with death and perception. The main character of this
gothic short story is killed on a bridge, but the reader does not realize this
until the last paragraph. The story unfolds in the main character’s escape and
supposed return home. But he begins to notice things are not completely as
they should be and then he understands that he is not home, he is dead.
Although the writers of Lost continue to deny that the survivors are all actually dead and in purgatory,
this allusion – and recent plot developments -- might make you dubious3.
Whether the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 are dead or not, the theme of
perception and the afterlife is an ongoing undercurrent in the show. In
addition An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge also deals exclusively with the technique of flashbacks, which the Lost writers have used extensively to both clarify, and
undermine, the audience’s perception of a stable reality for the characters.
Another text is introduced in the episode “Orientation” when Desmond
tells Locke and Jack that an orientation film is hidden behind the book The
Turn of the Screw which is on the bookshelf
in the hatch. In Henry James’
chilling psychological thriller, a woman comes to be a governess to two
well-to-do children and finds that their home is haunted. The question left in
the reader’s mind is: Is the haunting all in the governess’s head or are there
really ghosts wandering around? And in the viewer’s: Could the monster, the
polar bear, the black horse, Jack’s father, and Walt all be hallucinations or
ghosts? Are they all the character’s heads or are they real? And a larger
question: Is the island haunted or are the survivors crazy? In the tradition
of The Turn of the Screw, the
writers of Lost leave these
events open to interpretation.
The Third
Policeman by Flan O’Brian is also seen
briefly in “Orientation” when Desmond stuffs a bag full of personal things and
flees the hatch. Producers of the show claimed that fans should by The
Third Policeman in order to gain insight
into the show (Reardon 2005). The book, however, is an exercise in absurdist
thinking. The narrator claims that the laws of physics that govern our
everyday life do not apply to the space between life and death. The main
character of The Third Policeman has murdered someone and is dead himself. He goes on a wild, nonsensical
journey after his death - instead of going directly to heaven or hell he is
stuck in a quasi parallel universe trying to make sense out of nonsense. The
novel is often satirical, particularly with reference to the absurd
philosophies of the often mentioned, but never seen, de Selby. De Selby
believes that life is about the destination alone because all we have are a
serious of points – the idea of in-between places that can be called a
journey is just an illusion. It sounds absurdist, but with reference to
Einstein and Quantum Physics – specifically Quantum Leaps - it begins to
make sense, suggesting a parallel island universe as one possible explanation
for the Lost mystery. However,
more than anything, as hypertext, this book seems to be above all, a red
herring.
The Dark Tower
Series Creator Lindelof, a self-professed Stephen King fan, has embedded several references to this author’s work in Lost. For example, in the season 1 episode “The Moth”
there is a scene of a hand reaching like in the movie Carrie. In King’s novel The Talisman there is a character named Jack Sawyer. Most
influential, however, is probably The Dark
Tower series.4 The most important
reference occurs when Locke gives a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov to Gale during his captivity in “Maternity Leave.” Gale asks if he could
have a Stephen King novel instead. The Dark Tower Series is a dark, compelling story about an unpredictable man named Roland who isn’t
clearly good or evil. Although Sawyer has a gunslinger-like swagger to him,
Henry Gale is probably the character meant to refer to the protagonist of the
series, Roland (aka The Gunslinger). In the second book of the Dark
Tower Series, The Drawing of the Three, King presents a scene in an airplane with Eddie Dean that reminds one of an
episode featuring a Heroin snorting-Charlie in the bathroom of Oceanic Flight
815. In book three, The Wastelands,
we see Eddie killing a crazed bear—not unlike Sawyer killing the polar
bear. The bear in King’s book is an ancient guardian placed in front of the
gate or portal that is both flesh and machine. Could the polar bear have been
placed on the island as a guardian as well? Reading The Dark Tower
Series, the magnum opus of Stephen King,
seems to provide influence and insight into the world of Lost, but this is yet another link that suggests
increased complexity, rather than closure.
The Wizard of Oz
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Ozma of Oz by L Frank Baum are never read by any of the survivors. Instead, they appear in the name of one of the “others,” Henry Gale. Henry Gale is Dorothy’s beloved uncle and husband of Aunt Em. The reference may be a nod to both the MGM’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1939) and the series of books written by Baum. In the film, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard ended up in Oz when his hot air balloon drifted and he became lost. When he landed in Oz he assumed the role of ruler. He wasn’t a real wizard - he was only maintaining this charade in order to keep control of the situation. When Dorothy exposes him for who he really is, he turns out to be a decent person. Eventually, throughout the book series, the Wizard learns real magic and become invaluable to the real ruler of Oz—Ozma.
The character of Henry Gale in Lost is similar to the Wizard in many ways. He is not
who he says he is, but he is not necessarily a bad person, though there is
plenty of evidence to suggest this possibility. The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz was also the first great American
fantasy epic that drew from other classics. Like the castaways on Lost, Dorothy is on a quest to find her way home again.
Along the way she must travel through the magical Land of Oz. The castaways
must also take their own, seemingly magical, journeys on the island before they
can go home.
The surname of Gale does not appear in the first book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but
in the third book, Ozma of Oz.
In the third installment of this classic fantasy series, Dorothy is aboard a
steamer ship with her Uncle Henry Gale on their way to Australia. During a
terrible storm Dorothy is blown from the ship and castaway on a deserted shore.
She discovers that she is in magical land called Ev, which is on the same
island as Oz, but separated from it by a huge poisonous desert. In other
words, the fairy tale Land of Oz is located somewhere between California and
Australia, just like the island upon which the characters of Lost find themselves stranded.
Our Mutual Friend
The character Desmond Hume is found of reading extremely long and complicated Victorian novels. Desmond mentions in the episode “Live Together, Die Alone,” that he wanted to read Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens before he died. The novel, which is prominent in Season Two’s final episode, relies on a very intricately interwoven plot of seemingly random characters. (It also deals with the idea of doubles or twin that parallels both The Dark Tower Series and the novel, Bad Twin, discussed below.) The narrative structure of the Our Mutual Friend parallels the narrative structure of Lost. In Season One, using flashbacks, connections were made between the survivors. Until the crash, most of these characters were unaware of the ways in which their lives interconnected. The writer’s continued crisscrossing the lives of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 in Season Two, building to a new potential complexity at the end of Season Three, with the first ‘flashforward’. These crossovers sometimes take the form of Easter Eggs, or hidden messages featured in objects such as movies, books, CDs and DVDs. Walt appearing as a missing child on the carton of milk from which Hurley drinks is but one such example.5.
Perhaps the
most important contribution that Our Mutual Friend makes is as an actual book carried by Desmond. He is
in love with the Penelope, daughter of a wealthy man named Mr. Widmore - a
variation of Wilfer from our Mutual Friend (and the same name that is featured in Bad Twin). The book The Odyssey is mentioned in Bad Twin and it so happens that Penelope is the wife of
Odysseus, who leaves home for ten years to fight in the Trojan war and then is
lost at sea for another ten years. Desmond was the British Army before he was
imprisoned. When he is released, he decides to participate in a race around
the world sponsored by none other than Mr. Widmore. At the end of the episode,
we see Penelope being alerted to the fact that Desmond’s whereabouts have
finally been located. There has been much speculation that the Widmores have
funded the Hanso Foundation and, in turn, the Dharma Initiative. Is Mr.
Widmore behind the whole experiment?
Bad Twin
The novel Bad Twin by Oceanic Flight 815 member Gary Troup was published April 2006, Hyperion as a fictional tie-in to Lost. Although Stephen King was rumored to have been the ghostwriter, it was actually the work of Lawrence Shames (Zeitchik 2006). The manuscript penned by the fictitious Troup appears two separate episodes. In the episode “The Long Con,” first Hurley, then Sawyer, is seen reading the unpublished manuscript. Other than a brief reference to the Hanso Foundation, at first there doesn’t appear to be much of a crossover between the novel and the show. But the novel and the television show share a similar subtext. Bad Twin makes an effort to continue the idea of hypertext and metafiction, reiterating references from the show, including The Lord of the Flies and the Turn of the Screw, and introducing links to new sources, including The Odyssey (as cited above), The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf and King Lear. Dante’s Divine Comedy is introduced with respect to the idea of purgatory. Even if the island castaways are not dead, and the themes of death and rebirth are more symbolic than literal, the island still functions as a place to purge one’s sins and begin anew. Troup also discusses The Great Gatsby and A River Runs Through It, effectively linking to another medium – film. The character of Paul Artizan mentions how he tends to see films alone, not reading the books upon which they were based. The producers and writers of Lost are trying to get their fans to read, and the fact that the book Bad Twin hit the New York Times Bestseller list in June of 2006 indicates that they have succeeded in doing just that.
In the Bad Twin, Detective Paul Artisan is hired to find Cliff Widmore’s evil twin Zander, but this character turns out to be a good guy in the end, and Artizan comes see that good and evil are really two sides of the same coin. In his quest to find his evil twin, Cliff fails to see the evil in himself and in his stepmother, who, with her ex-husband (and current lover) is the true villain of Bad Twin. The ending tells us that evil is always hidden within and in everyone around us, a theme that returns to the “Others” and the Dharma Initiative.
One of the important crossovers from Lost to Bad Twin is the philosophy of John Locke. In Bad Twin, he is mentioned by the New Age foundation Helios, which is connected to the Hanso Foundation. The philosopher John Locke believed that it was our duty to find lasting and solid happiness in our lives. This is what Zander manages to do - he has journeyed through is long, dark night and managed to emerged on the other side a better person for it. Zander, we find out, is the embodiment of St. Augustine’s Confession, and his story is one of redemption, in turn a primary theme in Lost.
The Lost Experience
Last, but certainly not least, is The Lost Experience reality-based game. Using well-placed commercial during the show, a variety of mock websites, emails, voicemails and even newspaper ads, Lost fans are able to piece together clues like a detective. Among the clues are interviews given by the fictitious Gary Troup and files dealing with the crimes committed by the Hanso Foundation employees. Gary Troup discusses his forthcoming work called The Valenzetti Equation, which has its base in the real-life Drake Equation. Although the series creators deny that the “Others” are aliens, the Drake equation might make fans think otherwise. The Drake equation is a probability formula for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence used by SETI. There is also a reference to Persephone and her numbers, and by extension, the numbers featured on the television show. The mythological Persephone’s journey may well be a symbolic clue to the journey of those in the Lost world. There is also a link to something called the inmate asylum, which is presumably where Hugo and Libby were resident, and is presumably run by the Hanso Foundation. In addition, there is information on IGA or the Institute for Genomic Advancement.
The most important
literary allusion to come out of the Lost Experience is the reference to the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore. Damon Lindelof is quoted in
Entertainment Weekly as calling Watchmen “the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced.” The
twelve-issue comic book ran from 1986-1987. It is set in 1985 in an alternate
reality, where a group of people are trying to save humanity. Many of the
characters and themes of Watchmen are alluded to in the Lost Experience. For example, there is a character named Adrian Veidt in the Watchman
who theorizes that world destruction is emanate due to environmental damage, so
he hatches a plot to save humanity that will end up costing the lives of many
innocent people. Veidt has a secret island on which he conducts his evil
experiments. Enzo Valenzetti from the Lost Experience parallels Veidt and has a similar theory and
plotline. The name Blake appears in both the comic and the Lost
Experience. Adrian Veidt’s name as a
masked adventurer was Ozymandias, which was the Greek name for Ramses II. In
the poem by Horace Smith about Ozymandias there is mention that only the leg of
the Greek statue remains. This reference could explain the presence of the
mysterious one legged statue that appears in the season two finale “Live
Together, Die Alone.
The modern
viewers of Lost have a very large
database of knowledge from which to draw connections – one that is as
likely to include Stephen King as it would Shakespeare – but even for the
most educated and invested, catching every intertextual reference is difficult
and time-consuming. Internet forums ameliorate this task by allowing viewers
from around the world to share and discuss discoveries with other fans of the
show. Thus anyone can following the white rabbit down various intertextual
rabbit holes - it is as simple as opening a book or clicking on the links on a
website.6 In following the links from literary
reference to literary reference, reading becomes an exercise in hypertext. Lost creates a sense of interaction by leading
the viewers on journey outside of the TV show itself. It allows the viewers to
create their own meaning and their own experiences within the Lost world. These Lost hyptertext references and often raise more questions
then they answers, but the producers of Lost promise to connect all these many seemingly random
events as the show continues to unfold in the remaining three seasons. While
secrets will be revealed, the intertextuality of the show will endure,
continuing to expand the experience of Lost and resisting any ultimate attempts at closure.
Cari Vaughn
Notes
1The author would like to thank Michelle Lang for her assistance in the preparation of the final version of this article. back
2 See especially Gaggi, Landon, Iser, and Tompkins. back
3 Specific episodes and scenes that toyed with the audience’s suspicions include 3.1, "A Tale of Two Cities,” 3.7 "Not In Portland" (specifically Juliet's Flashback), 3.16 "One of Us" (again, Juliet's Flashback), 3.17 "Catch-22" (Naomi parachuting onto the island), 3.20 "The Man Behind The Curtain" (Ben's Flashback), and 3.22/23 "Through the Looking Glass" (Jack's Flash-Forward!) back
4Damon Lindelof has been widely reported as attached to direct a Dark Tower film adaptation; http://www.slashfilm.com/tag/damon-lindelof/; http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/lindelof_and_abrams_working_on_stephen_kings_dark_tower; http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=40310. back
5 The crossovers begin with Sawyer having a drink with Jack’s father Christian before Christian died. Sawyer did not realize it was Jack’s father until Jack gives a bit of background. Likewise, Sawyer stumbled into the diner where Kate’s mother worked and again ran into Jack’s father and Ana-Lucia outside of a bar. Jack marries the woman who was in the car accident that killed Shannon’s father. Shannon alerts security to a suspicious Sayid at the Airport. The US solider Kelvin Inman that teachers Sayid how to torture was Desmond’s partner in the hatch. Rose helps a wheel-chair bound Locke at the Airport. The psychic that Claire went to is also the father of the miracle girl Eko goes to see. Libby is at the same asylum that Hugo was and she was the one to loan her deceased husband’s boat Elizabeth to Desmond for the world race he enters. He crashes this same boat on the island just two years before Libby finds her way to the island as well. back
6This Internet fan phenomenon has had a very dramatic effect on how television and texts are experienced. The investigation of this type audience participation has been steadily gaining momentum as a part of the Comparative Media Studies field, largely due to the work of MIT professor Henry Jenkins, whose in addition to notable publications publishes research on his weblog, “Confessions of an Aca-Fan” (http://www.henryjenkins.org/). back
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