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Submitted by Abalieno on August 17, 2010 - 03:05.
I'm following Anime and quickly commenting them on Twitter. Anime in Japan are divided in the four seasons, each season corresponding to about 12 (weekly) episodes. Most anime are usually made of 12 or 24 episodes in total. The great thing is there are no "vacations", so you get stuff to watch along the whole year with no summer or winter or spring breaks. There are about 10-30 brand new series every season. No scarcity of great stuff then.
So in the last year and half I tried at least to watch the very first episode of every new series. It's fun and I got to sample some absurd stuff across all kind of genres. Anime can be quite versatile.
Making a list of the good stuff takes too much time because I can enjoy the most disparate things for a number of different reasons, so I'll point just two that maybe aren't even the best, but that are unique in their own way.
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Nino is just a too wonderful character and I'm in love with everything SHAFT (the animation studio) does. This is filled with quirky, bizzarre humor in a way that only Japanese can achieve. Completely batshit crazy with a wonderful direction and SHAFT-typical outrageous experimental stuff. Everything is excellent here, art, voices and songs.
Get it here: http://mudabone-subs.blogspot.com/search/label/Arakawa
(and make sure to switch to Nutbladder subs)
Kimi ni Todoke
This is instead school romance. But done in a way that makes it excellent and not trite. If you still have an heart somewhere you should watch this. It is also somewhat subversive in the way very typical situations are developed. It is made of win. Excellently done. Great characters. Also unbelievably immune to drama.
A batch is here (24 episodes total, for now): http://eclipse.speedsubs.org/projects/todoke
Submitted by Abalieno on June 30, 2010 - 19:08.
 Official release is: 25th November 2010
The prologue is at Malazan forums.
Whoever picks the cover for Esslemont books must be fond of boats. The cover is "ok" but otherwise unimpressive (reads as: generic, relatively anonymous).
EDIT: I read the prologue even if I'm far from the position of the book in the series. Safely, since there's not spoilery stuff. I liked it enough but I still see the shadows of what I criticized in my review of "Night of Knives". The first potential problem is that the characters do too many flourishes and exaggeration (the portrayal of just standard-types), and when you try to draw from real themes exaggeration is the worst enemy of truth. The other problem is that again the story is built solely by what surfaces. Lacking subtlety and real depth. For example the arrival of the priest, the description of the occupation, the plan for recruiting. All ideas ripe for development, yet they seem to be played plainly and obviously. Too much polish, lack of conflict, lack of complexity. Characters playing their roles instead of coming out as real persons. Same for the second scene, that seems so biblical that one wonders why it should deserve to be remade (people climb the sacred mountain to go speak with their goddess). Goddess donates magically-heated chest to the population that keeps cold Stormriders away. We've seen this already in the first book and it was a concept that lead nowhere and meant basically nothing. Hopefully this time things play more unpredictably. Seems like a soup of stories I already know but without a novelty perspective, nothing new added or cleverly played.
Also, nitpicking, before the tsunami shouldn't the boat get sucked seaward as water recedes before rising and rushing in? The process is described, the water level goes down, yet there seem no currents affecting the boat.
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Submitted by Abalieno on June 29, 2010 - 00:19.
 Once again on the purpose and role of fiction. Whether it is about a book or a movie, or whatever else.
This is the movie that won the prize at a local festival about independent and experimental movies. The translation of the motivations of the prize:
With his feature-length debut movie the young Korean director Jang Kun-jae transforms a private page of his sentimental education into a fresh, pleasant and audaciously sincere tale. The pain, melancholy, helplessness of a small amorous catastrophe narrated through the fond vertigo of a lost age, not yet removed from his memory. For the two protagonists of the story being eighteen represents the most lacerating of the seasons of life. The first act of a past that can't be left behind. A past that one can let go through the therapy of cinema.
My comment: take "In the Mood for Love" by Wong Kar-wai. This is an unpretentious adolescent version, extremely blunt and sincere, yet delicate. It leaves you with a similar kind of hollow, haunting feeling. Also, a real story.
Another journey in the search for meaning. These types of movies can really stab through your heart and leave it bleeding.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 10, 2010 - 18:09.
It seems there's some stir today as Tor begins to promote Sanderson's latest and most ambitious epic. I'm enjoying the atmosphere, honestly. In spite of all the seemingly negative things I've written about Sanderson I still said I plan to buy the book on day 1 and read it. I also expect at the very least to enjoy it. But if it doesn't offer something that stands apart the next volumes will probably sit back on the reading pile.
Anyway, part of the promotion are the first 50 pages or so of the book, right now. Or at least Prologue and Prelude, the rest requires some sort of registration.
I haven't read that, and I will likely wait for the full book before commenting, but that first word is a very bad way to start a book, especially for something that is going to span 10 books.
This isn't really criticism to Sanderson, it's just that I always thought it's awful to open a book with a first name. "Kakak rounded a rocky stone ridge". Why should I care? First names are something you acquire. They are meaningful when they define someone you know. But throwing the name before everything else is like an unnatural thrust into a character that expects you to know him already. It's like forcing familiarity to the reader without earning that familiarity.
Let's make examples. I have recently written about Pynchon, so take Gravity's Rainbow:
- A screaming comes across the sky.
That's a hell of way to start a book. It sets the tone and definitely lacerates the curtain to let the reader in. (I appreciate the present tense)
Another of Pynchon I have here:
- "Now single up all lines!"
Yeah! Let's fly!
Philip Roth:
- She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.
I guess literary guys know how to begin their books.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.
- A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
No comment.
Gene Wolfe's New Sun:
- "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future."
It couldn't have set the tone and eccentricity any better.
David Copperfield:
- Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Well yes, I'm unfair. You can't beat that.
R. Scott Bakker:
- One cannot rise walls against what has been forgotten.
That's Bakker. It's him telling it's him. "Hey, it's me."
Glen Cook:
- There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.
This gets a first name, but as you see the precedence is given to what is being said, which fits.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead:
- Howard Roark laughed.
OK. First name. BUT IT IS AYN RAND. If she isn't allowed to open a book with a first name than no one else can.
Which naturally leads to Terry Goodkind:
- It was an odd-looking vine.
...Huh?
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2010 - 03:05.
 
I am onto something.
I was supposed to write this more than a week ago but never did it. Nothing really relevant, just something I enjoy. I already said I like to follow links between the most disparate things, find correspondences. I also said that in literature I look for "truthfulness" which I consider the most (if not only) relevant quality. I was actually struggling finding a definition because I was absolutely sure I found something I wanted the moment I found it, but couldn't pinpoint what it was that some books gave to me and some other didn't. Something more visceral like a deeper form of accord. I agreed to define it "truthfulness" since it's strictly related to the use of language and has a well defined opposite that is "rhetoric". Or: tell me something that is true.
It's on the same line of a comment I wrote to Erikson's blog:
I’ll just say that it’s also one significant strength of your series if it’s not just ambitious, staggering and broad in scope, but also personal, and so not a safe or steady, unfailing journey. Without that, its echoes would be echoes of emptiness.
It’s the reason why while reading “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace, a completely different book, I arrived to similar conclusions and similar feelings coming out of it. In the end the purpose of fiction, and other forms of art, is to say something truthful. Nothing else matters. So you’re right in what you imply: your crisis feeds this narrative, and your lack of definite(-ive) answers is itself a more important truth. Lots of writers had to come to terms with their craft (or at least those who explore uncharted lands). Some didn’t survive, some other found their hands empty and just felt helpless. It’s a kind of obsession.
It’s also why “magic”, even if it makes a significant impact, never comes ahead of the narrative. In the end it is all “fluff” if it’s not somewhere and somehow deeply rooted into something “true”. Creating fictional worlds gives that type of conceit and delusion, you think you are creating something other and independent, but it would be all truly meaningless if whatever level of abstraction wouldn’t come back on the ground to feed on something true.
At some point I was convinced that "feeding on something true" means that things are ultimately linked, because if something is true, then it should also be universal in a way or another. So you dig and enjoy the discovery.
Sometimes links are fun if relatively harmless. For example this. I ordered two books. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and its companion since I read it's good and I always enjoy to tap on more insight and have more ways to understand a text. For me, the more the better. If I enjoy a book I could as well read about the book forever, especially if it allows for this depth.
Gravity's Rainbow is a book that should do that. Being much more staggering than its physical shape. Like Erikson or DF Wallace. Books that aren't simply contained in this world, but that actually seem themselves to contain the world. The display of the omnipotence of literature. Actually, I don't know if GR does this. I bought the book because I hope it does.
GR is also itself made of links. Which makes it challenge definitions and boundaries. Defy whatever limit you put in front of it. It's "just" 776 pages, but they can sure bite your ass.
Anyway, the harmless links are to "Lost" (the TV series). This was still happening a few days after Lost finale, so everything echoed nicely. The very first page that starts with a quote:
"Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death." -Werner von Braun
Quite fitting since we were dealing with the afterlife after Lost finale. From the companion:
"I believe... that the soul of a Man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this." -Benjamin Franklin
Even more fitting, don't you agree?
Pynchon's depictions of technological, psychological, and paranormal research all demonstrate how modern culture secularizes that redemptive hope.
I'm actually convinced that "culture" is our true redemptive hope. And the book in question is so defined:
American Pop and material culture, the occult, varieties of pseudoscience, real science, vernacular geography
Or:
Perhaps if you smashed together the dozen best novels of Philip K. Dick you would have something that approaches it - a pulpy low-culture version of Gravity's Rainbow, it's tempting to say, except that not the least of Pynchon's revolutions is how he obliterated the distinction of low and high culture, at least for anyone paying attention.
Lots of stuff, apparently un-linked. Good stuff. Coherent with what I wrote here and before. Don't let genres and boundaries limit your perception. Reach out and enjoy something true, no matter how outrageous or absurd it appears. You are your own limit.
This should be fun.
P.S.
No idea if there's some truth, but my first thought about the rocket on the cover was that it symbolizes a... pen. The writing seen as the ultimate truly subversive or catastrophic activity.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2010 - 00:47.
So, blogger I overall admire writes about "myopic" points of view, and to illustrate his theory he shows how myopic is himself. I can't comment in detail because I've not read most of that stuff, but:
R. Scott Bakker, The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor series - Bakker is a friend of mine, and while I do enjoy his erudite take on epic fantasy, his is not (as he'll readily admit) a story that's going to have mass appeal outside of certain gender/age demographics and online forums.
I haven't read Bakker in detail, and while it's obvious that his series doesn't have a "mass appeal", it's the qualification to be rather hypocrite. "certain gender/age demographics and online forums" shows some serious generalization and prejudice. Why the need to build these sharp boundaries and categories? There are surely more useful considerations to make instead of deciding in advance who could or couldn't enjoy a particular book or writer.
Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont, Malazan books - Although each has some interesting anthropological perspectives that enrich their shared-world setting, I wouldn't think of these books as being anything more than just continuations from what Glen Cook, Jack Vance, or Michael Moorcock has done with their epic fantasy/sword and sorcery tales.
Huh? No really. I've read Erikson. Saying that his books have the same intent of Glen Cook or Moorcock (haven't read Vance enough to say) is some silly claim. Glen Cook inspired Erikson directly, he took and played with certain aspects of those books and the terse prose, and of Moorcock there's only a vague similarity of mood. But that would be the same as every writer out there who read and was inspired by someone else. Is David Foster Wallace irrelevant or lessened because of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon? Really? So we can roll all those writers into a generalized "Don DeLillo"? They all do the same stuff and so are not relevant to be considered on their own terms? They write a genre and are limited by it?
You really think literature is that powerless and strictly bound? You really think that those writers merely stand in someone else's shoes? That's ungrateful for every name I made, the same as with Erikson and those other names. For them it would probably be the biggest offense you can make.
Then there's the link to Werthead's article. Which is pretentious fluff:
THE STATE OF MODERN EPIC/SECONDARY WORLD FANTASY
The 'new fantasy' is much harder to pin down. Broadly it refers to fantasy which is either grittier and more realistic than previous 'safe' authors, or to traditional epic fantasy which has taken on some of the ideas and tropes of steampunk and the New Weird (a fantasy movement sparked off in 2000 with China Mieville's PERDIDO STREET STATION but which has now more or less merged with fantasy in general). Or indeed, both.
"It refers"? You mean you stumbled on a piece of paper that had "new fantasy" written on it and you started to wonder what it may be about? Nothing refers to anything, especially "made up" words. It refers to whatever you want it to mean, and as long you persuade enough people to agree on that definition.
Here you make it sound like you gawked at the sky to discover some kind of truth pertinent to a category of books.
a number of more 'old-school' authors who reject some of these new ideas in favour of a solid story, well-told, are also incorporated into the movement, leading to the conclusion that 'the new fantasy' is nothing more than fantasy works simply published in the last few years.
The mind boggles. So you're saying that "solid story, well-told" is antithetic to "New Fantasy". This new fantasy must really suck if it's qualified by a weak story badly told.
But, HEY, it seems there are also good writers that found themselves into this new genre, so I guess it's not possible anymore to claim: New Fantasy = CRAP.
So, basically, here we learn: Beware, not all New Fantasy is crap.
The following is a list of authors who may be said to work in this movement:
"May be said". By who we'll never know. It must be some mythical creature who tells the writers in which "movement" they are supposed to work. And don't dare contradicting the Beowulf, or it swallows you whole.
Follows a list of relatively well known writers and his overall opinion about them. I wouldn't criticize this all that much because it's supposed to just give a general idea so that a reader may then look further if there's something that gets the attention. I could argue endlessly about what he says, for example calling Abercrombie's first novel "very traditional" gives a very wrong idea of it. If it was "very traditional" the book would've never ended in my reading pile and I wouldn't have read it and considered it excellent. Daniel Abraham gets the benefit of the longest description and a summary, probably because he's his current "protege" that needs promotion since the first series didn't sell enough and the last book didn't get the mass market edition. He defines Bakker as "adventurous", which is really perplexing. Martin is "Martin's A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE remains the dominant work of epic fantasy in the genre". Dominant of what or who? Sales? Aren't sales consistently lower than, say, Jordan or Goodkind? I'm really asking. I know the series sold a lot, but I don't think it "dominated" the sales of the whole genre. Or maybe those are too old? But wasn't "New Fantasy" the fantasy released in "the last few years"? Martin released one book in the last 10 years. I doubt he "dominated" anything at all. But in general I wouldn't mess or argue too much with opinions. Everyone is entitled to his own and they are good for a more specific discussion. It's when they are set as absolute canons that they are dangerous.
But the discussions on genres and classifications are ALWAYS stupid for the simple reason that it's implied that a "genre" is a strict definition that corresponds to an objective "Truth". So the need to define absolute canons and even a neatly organized ladder from "most relevant" writer to the least. With the illusion that this is actually something more than a very personal opinion.
We have from a side one who claims he can define objectively "The state of modern epic/secondary world fantasy". The supreme judge. And on the other side one who criticized the first for being myopic because his view of the genre is too narrow in scope. This is not a problem of scope, this thing is stupid because these are irrelevant generalizations that have no place in reality. They represent your, and only your, limit and consequent necessity of simplification and generalization.
Hint: "genres" do not exist. They are created and used to simplify things. They are tools, not canons, to reduce the world out there to a manageable state. Like words in general, "genres" are arbitrary categories where you put whatever you want. It means that what you put in there is decided by you, not by any objective rule. There are no sharp boundaries if not those you arbitrarily make, so there's no correct or better definition of a genre. Debating whether a book is in or out a certain genre is like debating in which bookcase of your bedroom this or that book goes. It's the same of someone who argues aloud with himself. So if you are the one who makes the choice have at least the courage to take the responsibility of it. It's not "THE STATE OF", it's "my opinion on some stuff I read recently".
Define the market if you want, since the market follows certain concrete rules, facts and categories, but do not try to categorize and define culture. The boundaries and limits only exist in your head.
You want to make a blog about "fantasy", or whatever definition of fantasy that is so broad that includes everything, go on. The god of Language won't come to take its toll. I titled my own blog "Cesspit". You can be sure that everything can fit in.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 27, 2010 - 00:13.
I spent lots of words to interpret the finale, but I didn't answer the most basic question: did I like it or not? Now that is over, was it worth all this time?
Yes. But I don't intend to ever re-watch another episode. It's since the finale of Season 5 that the plot has progressively fallen apart and crumbled. I've already said that I started to enjoy the show only from Season 2 when the mythology was being flashed out and hint at the possibility of it not being a fraud, but in the end it's the mythology that got dumped in favor of empathy with characters, letting just the emotion to drive the show to conclusion. I have zero interest to rewatch it because I consider it a closed experience. I enjoyed it, but the show exhausted its meaning for me. Evangelion, for example, I always gladly rewatch because every time I discover something new, some nuance, or it gets me thinking. This happens because I believe it taps into something "true". Lost also taps into something true, but in a kind of superficial way that doesn't make it flourish. Lost exploits more than makes thrive. And in the end I don't enjoy much its "carrot on a stick" model that ultimately lead to something entirely different than what it promised.
Maybe with the exclusion of the finale: I think the finale was probably the most honest and truthful part of the show. But it was also optimist to the point that for me felt too gratifying. And I always distrust gratification.
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Submitted by Abalieno on May 26, 2010 - 21:47.
I spent some time reading official and unofficial interpretations of the finale and there's a lot of ambiguity and derailed interpretations that are starting to be shared by the majority. I cling with the interpretation I've given because it's coherent with what we've been shown, while all other interpretations I'm reading have various crucial lapses of logic.
At the end the only way to find the "best" interpretation is to pick the one that is the least contradictory, and that's what I was doing.
Let's begin.
First there's Jeff Jensen again, who followed one of those hyperlinks no one bothers to follow, and discovered something meaningful and that reinforces my theory that most of the mysteries in Lost have to be seen and interpreted in a symbolic way, and not literally as many are wont to do.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Haroun is a self-aware fairy tale about a young hero (whose name means ''Aaron'') who has an adventure in a realm that happens to be the source of all stories.
Haroun fights a monstrous, shape-shifting Man In Black who seeks to destroy the ''sea of stories.'' The villain is a crazed, control freak man of science/political tyrant who wants to put a cork in the wellspring of meaning itself and then spike the Sea of Story with a toxin of ''anti-story,'' or meaninglessness.
Haroun saves the day, and for his trouble, the administrators who manage the fantastical realm give him a happy ending. Haroun is slightly troubled by this; he feels this ''happy ending'' business is terribly contrived. Yet he accepts the gift anyway, and appreciates it more and more as the benefits roll in. Love. Hope. Forgiveness. Empowerment. Redemption. Reconciliation. Restoration. In the end (and this is just my interpretation), Haroun decides to worry less about the origin of this windfall — an inexplicable palette drop loaded with yummy, nourishing soul food — and instead decides to worry more about living a life worthy of these eternal values. The mechanism of the delivery may have been contrived, but the values themselves are truthful and real.
This works way too well to not be acceptable. It wraps completely what happened in the whole series, comparing mysteries and everything else as "devices" in order to enjoy a finality.
It only leaves to interpretation the Purgatory part, that is now the most controversial and the one whose interpretations I see as inconsistent. Including the one given by Jeff Jensen (I'll continue to use Jeff Jensen as a template since he spells things out clearly and his interpretation is the one most widespread).
In particular the object of discord is the interpretation of what happens to Ben at the end.
The widespread interpretation I criticize:
We begin with Benjamin Linus. I was surprised and moved to learn that the bug-eyed devil got a ticket to the castaways' afterlife rocket launch, that he was even considered a member of this spiritual clan. How very ''love thy enemy.''
Here I agree. These are the people that Ben got connected the most with. But accepting this, means that the second part is wrong. Which "ticket" to get is NOT a choice. This, and just this, is the clan he gets to be with. He doesn't get another. In his life Ben connected with THESE people.
Ben chose to stay in the Sideways world instead of joining the castaways in their communal upload into the Source. He said he still had some things he needed to work out for himself. I've heard that some fans didn't like the implications of Ben's decision. If souls are allowed to kick around Purgatory for eternity and figure themselves out, then doesn't the Sideways world effectively cheapen the Island story? If our redemption issues can be processed easily and painlessly in the cushy limbo of our own blue heaven, then what does it matter what manner of evil that we commit or suffering we endure in the world of matter?
Yes, you can stay and ''figure things out,'' but this introspection doesn't change who you are. Or rather, were. You don't get to craft a flattering interpretation of yourself. You don't get to accumulate more experience to improve your chances at heavenly election. You only get one life to live, and the opportunity that the Sideways world provides is the chance to puzzle together and come to grips with the person you became while you lived it.
The second paragraph shares the same explanation I've given: you don't get a second chance in Purgatory. What matters is the "first" life and whatever you've experienced/learned there. Purgatory only represents consequence of your life, but you don't get to fix mistakes and become a better person in Purgatory so that you can too aspire to paradise. What is done is done. Do we agree up to this point?
Agreeing with this means that the beginning of the first paragraph is WRONG. Ben doesn't choose to stay in the Sideways world.
So everything lies in the interpretation of Ben's statement: "I have some things that I still need to work out. I think I'll stay here a while."
People doing wishful thinking have straightly assumed that it means that Ben decides to stay out in the Purgatory and awaken Danielle and daughter or something like that, and it's with them that he'll do the afterlife rocket launch into bright light. I don't swallow this interpretation because it contradicts every other premise.
First: Ben lost his chance to bond with other people. He wasn't able to create real bonds in his life, if not maybe with Hurley in the island time span we don't get to see. Danielle and her daughter represent missed opportunities.
Second: the Purgatory is a construct. It is fake wishland. It's just a preparatory set-up so that the "soul cluster" can meet and move on together. Its function is merely of "acceptance". Letting go what you thought was meaningful. Its function is merely revelatory and transitory. Meaning that Ben can't go out and get a second chance because Danielle and her daughter are also fake constructs. Wishful thinking. They are furniture. In the same way the plane not crashing was solely a symbolic event they decided to put at the basis of their Purgatory construct. In the same way Jack's son was also wishful thinking and furniture. In Purgatory you don't craft a better life for yourself or get to fix your mistakes. Purgatory is made to reveal and accept what you've been and just that.
This is again reinforced by the fact that every slightly meaningful role is taken by someone who appeared in the show. We get to see a cameo of basically every character because this sideways reality was effectively built by those who end up in the church, with everyone else being merely a construct:
The Sideways world is a manifestation of the castaway soul cluster's collective yearning. They wanted a world where they never crashed on The Island. They wanted a world where The Island had no sway over their lives. Ergo, their purgatory paradise reflects that yearning.
I have also seen The Island as a symbol for a world with objective meaning. Truth is ''out there;'' it can be sought and found, even if it ultimately requires individual interpretation. The destroyed Island in Sidewaysabad is a symbol for subjective, meaning-challenged world where the only things that are truly real — the Island-world souls of the castaways — are literally submerged and lost in the murky depths of their Sideways avatars.
This still doesn't explain what Ben says and why he decides to not join everyone else in the church.
My interpretation of his words and intent: Ben is outside, sitting alone and looking miserable. He is exactly like Scrooge in the Dickens' Christmas tale. He gets to see people happy and understands how miserable he was. Ben wasn't able to connect enough with Danielle or his daughter to be there with them. He lost his chance and now he's alone.
It's fairly silly to expect him to go out and awaken them. First because it's too late to bond with them now, secondly because everything out there isn't real. And trying to awaken Danielle is like trying to awaken furniture. Ben understands this. He will ultimately follow the others into the light (the last thing Hurely tells Ben is "I'll see you", nodding with his head toward the inside of the church), but he'll still feel missing something.
He's screwed and looks miserable. It's a sad ending.
Also: this can be used as a parallel for another meaningful message the show tries to reveal. Remember the scene when Jack fills the plastic bottle with water to transfer the guardian role to Hurley (and plausibly grant him immortality and other undisclosed powers)? Well, the pragmatist in us would say that it couldn't work. Because Jack didn't say the magic words. In the exact same way the pragmatist in you pretends that Ben doesn't share his companions' destination in the bright light, simply because he's sitting outside.
The point, and something that the show tried hard to prove, is that the "rules" can be made along the way. They are arbitrary customs so that we can make ourselves understood. They are conceits. They can be this and that, but it doesn't matter in the end. If you cling to the rules you cling to the part that doesn't matter. Magic words or not, in or out the church. A word represents meaning, but the meaning isn't the word. Those are the same aspects of life that you are supposed to "let go". Same for the hardcore explanations for every mystery: they aren't the point. Clinging to strict rules is about clinging to the delusion of an imaginary world. Like Jack clinging to the idea that his son is "real".
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Submitted by Abalieno on May 25, 2010 - 15:39.
My yesterday's post was too long and even a bit too vague, so I'll use a forum post to illustrate better my point of view on the mysteries of the series and why I say that we were given all the answers that we needed to understand it fully.
JeffL: Sure, I have a ton of imagination, probably too much for my own good. But if they wanted me to make up all the answers to the fundamental questions, they could have just have one season and then a panel that says "OK, we gave you the template, now you come up with all the stories and what happens next."
It's really not that.
It's a mix of laziness and it being not the point. If you want to fill the gaps you can try, but the message of the show is that it's not the point. It shouldn't matter. The mystery stays unresolved because it's the nature of the mystery, and not because an answer has been denied. Things remain "abstract" like they can be in a dream. The mechanics of a dream do not follow logic, because they are symbolic. And a lot of mysteries in Lost aren't to be "resolved" because their purpose is entirely symbolic. Or better: things need to be interpreted, not explained.
Trying to solve or understand a dream through the sheer logic of what happens in that dream is the very best way to miss its meaning.
But the MIB/Smokey story line was set up by the writers, and people like Jacob spoke as if they knew what the horror of him leaving the island would be. Yet - we're given no real indications of why it would be so bad. The only thing MIB ever expressed was frustration that his un-mom lied to him, that there was an entire world out there, and he wanted to see it but he was told by his un-mom and then his brother, no, you can't leave and see the rest of the world.
MiB (in smoke form) represents hate and vengeance. When Jacob sends his dead brother in the magic pool, he unleashes/shapes an "evil" part of the island that absorbs MiB's original goals and twists them. The magic pool worked in that case like a sort of amplifier of the last bad thoughts stuck in that body. Even here the menace is entirely abstract because it is symbolic. There is no need or way to detail what concretely happens if the smoke monster is unleashed on the rest of world. It's just a symbolic threat.
Jacob was himself a flawed protector because of his deranged mother. He inherits and brings along the flaws of his mortal self. Becoming immortal and drinking the magic pool kool-aid doesn't make him better or particularly enlightened, in fact Jacob is an idiot (and you see in my longer explanation why this is a core point of the whole show). It's Jacob who causes all this mess, and it's Jacob who tries to close the loop he created by having the smoke monster destroyed (through Jack). Hurley becomes Jacob's successor, but it's implied that he'll be a much better successor because he's already a better person. Even the island mythology gets some kind of "betterment" from the process. But this process of "betterment" is always "human"-driven.
When he becomes Smokey, all of his actions still appear to be focused on just getting off the island.
Because the smoke monster is the manifestation and perversion of the original intent MiB had. It is twisted into hate, representing that "bad" part that makes humans human. So flawed.
It basically means: at the beginning our aims are always legitimate and good. But they can be twisted toward hate and nihilism. (see my post about chains and choices)
The smoke monster simply represents the corruption of a legitimate intent.
So yeah, the one thing I would have preferred is a simple dialog where Jacob or Jack or whoever states why Smoky getting to see the rest of the world would indeed end the world.
The threat is symbolic. It implies the danger of men giving up to their "bad" side (which is the fear and belief of Jacob and MiB's mother). The smoke monster represents that possibility.
In the end if there's something that the finale makes clear is that the "finality" is represented by choice and human will. Every supernatural element in the show is SUBORDINATE to the human struggle. The supernatural element is merely a "device" for the human struggle to surface and happen, and not "the point". This is why the writers themselves continue to repeat that in the finale they wanted to focus on the characters and their lives, because the characters are what matters the most in the show. The Indiscriminate Happy End reinforces this concept: the journey existed because the characters faced their problems and got a chance of resolving themselves. This is why every character has a personal story arc, with flashbacks and everything. It is to show that these people had to face their problems, making mistakes or making progress. What they learn determines what they become, and, ultimately, what they bring along in the afterlife. What matters: what they have become and the people they got linked to. What doesn't matter: the physical world they leave behind and "let go", including the concrete answers to the mysteries.
Every threat or mystery they face is symbolic or thematic. They are "devices" used from a side to capture the attention of the audience (us, watching the show), from the other as symbols and metaphors of everyone's journey and struggle. If some of you still think there are unexplained things it's probably just because you don't want to accept the real answers.
So you are left in Purgatory, forever looking for answers that do not exist.
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Submitted by Abalieno on May 25, 2010 - 02:36.
This started as a forum reply, then it got too big. So I post it here.
Hold on a sec.
We all agree that the sideways reality we've been shown is now officially "purgatory", waiting for the light representing paradise. One decides if this was a satisfying resolution or not. But what about what happened BEFORE?
People who don't get to live fancy sci-fi adventures don't go in paradise? How this mythology propagates to the rest of the world? What if a character decided to kill himself at some point? In the end they all went in paradise, so why bother fussing in the previous life?
If you buy this metaphysical package then you HAVE to deal with it. If you accept that paradise exists, then not only the purgatory is so, but even the previous island life. Everything is preparatory and transitory to the new happy, un-flawed life. So, if we all go in paradise in the end, why the need to bother with a mortal life? So that we can set up an heartwarming get together party? Or it's just a trick so that you can offer an "happy end" when there was no way for the plot to go someplace?
In other words, instead of addressing the central mysteries that have driven the show since the beginning, the writers conjured up a brand new mystery at the beginning of this season, and then used the *series* finale to resolve only that new mystery. And the resolution to that mystery - that this group had such fun times on the island that they decided to share a slice of afterlife together - is utterly unconnected to any other mystery that has ever been raised in the show. How anyone could watch this and conclude the writers totally had this planned out from the start is beyond me - there's nothing in the finale that would support that interpretation.
Seriously, if you think about it, this "they had such fun together they decided to meet up again after they all died" device could be used as a feel-good tear-jerker ending to *any* ensemble show. It's really a totally meaningless cop-out ending.
Because you can use that type of ending for EVERY story (TV series, books, movies, whatever): there was a big fuss, but they eventually, sooner or later, died, and were happy in paradise. You must be pleased. You got six seasons of characters being tortured, then you get to see them finally happy. Everyone. Even those who died two episodes ago. Doesn't this make YOU happy?
So let's re-interpret: the bomb did nothing at all beside getting Juliet killed so that she could go do Visitors. Whatever happened happened. Hurley and Ben took Jacob's role for an indeterminate amount of time, and maybe managed to ship Desmond back home (unresolved). Jack died just after re-corking the steaming shithole, saving the world (from what, we'll never know). The rest of the crew got off the island and, presumably, landed safely. Claire got to try being a mother, maybe going insane from time to time so that life would not get too boring, Kate would probably try to kidnap Ji Yeon (Sun & Jin daughter), since that daughter is now an orphan, probably finishing in the very evil hands of Sun's father. Sawyer got nothing if not a sorrowful life, maybe he gets to help Kate kidnapping Ji Yeon and play the father. It would be nice if this makes Sawyer get two wives when in paradise, and Jack nothing. Jack got a kiss, hope it was satisfying because it's all you'll get. Yet it's absolutely coherent to assume that Sawyer gets to pass his life with Kate for what is left of their lives in the normal world. He already managed to get it to work with Juliet, so he'll probably manage to get it to work even with Kate.
Obviously nothing of this could have been shown explicitly while at the same time making it satisfying and conclusive. So we don't get that and we get the "Cumulative & Indiscriminate Happy End" in its place.
The fact is, the ending we were given would be rather sad if you take away the whole side-reality part. Too sad to swallow. So they figured out this trick that would offer an ULTIMATE happy end, no matter what. Or maybe it matters, since the whole point is leaving a sweet aftertaste instead of a bitter one. Then, at least SOME of the audience will be pleased. Or not?
Or NOT? What if the purgatory scene is solely Jack's wishland? The way he hallucinates the story to end? And he figures HIS happy end in regards to everyone he knows. He definitely prefers Sawyer with Juliet, while he gets Kate all for himself. Quite neat. Why does Sayid get to be with Shannon and not Nadia? Because Jack only saw Shannon, not Nadia, so Nadia was not invited to Jack's wishland party. Heh. Other findings?
Those who have seen Evangelion probably arrived to the same conclusion since Evangelion ended in a similar way to Lost. If you never watched Evangelion I wouldn't suggest doing it if you don't dig that type of thing, but at least you may try to read the script of the last episode (TV, not the movies). The end of the Evangelion TV series mimics exactly the spiritual part of the end of Lost, and does it in an even more direct and open way. In Japan this last episode produced a huge outrage and the director received a lot of personal death threats. This because the last episode of the TV series completely dropped the "plot" and only focused on the "message" they were sending, using the plot merely as a means to carry that message. People were focusing TOO MUCH on what didn't truly matter for the director. The discussions existed solely about the plot, mysteries and their details, disregarding the real message and purpose of the show. So the director decided (since they were also running out of money) to drop every plot-related element and just leave the essence of the message. It led to a final episode that was abstract and stylized, completely different from the rest of the series. The director of Evangelion, not unlike Lost, was accused of not answering any of the mysteries of the show and all this produced an unprecedented outrage. In the end they decided to make two more movies that do not expand the "meaning" or message of the show, but conclude the mysteries they left behind and the plot itself.
I kind of chuckle at people trying to figure details such as how Jack got out of the glowing pool. If there's something this finale has made clear is that it's not like the writers didn't give a proper answer to mysteries, it's that the answers simply do not exist. Or better: solving mysteries is beside the point. If you really want to speculate fancy solutions, go on. But that's not part of the purpose of the show.
Instead there's another aspect that is worth discussing, and it is about the relationship between the lives of the characters.
So see me trying to wrap everything together in the way it should have been, without making anything up:
Level 1: Quantum reality. A whole, completely unresolved part of this series is "time travel". The concept itself is in the show a loop that never closes. Merely a plot devices that doesn't connect with a true meaning. They played a bit with the scientific theories, but ultimately this lead to a dead end. Unresolved, if you are an optimist, a failure if you're not. An interesting aspect of the quantum reality theory, is the quantum immortality part. It's loosely based on the concept: "I think, therefore I am". It means that if there's a conscious being aware of himself, then that conscious being must be immortal. The "quantum immortality" theory relies on the assumption of another theory, one requires the other: "many worlds interpretation". This because the immortality of conscience relies on the fact that it will always exist in some other "world". Being the worlds and possibilities infinite means that a conscious being can never completely cease to be. Desmond is clearly a mechanism of these theories. We aren't being shown him simply as a bridge between sideways reality/purgatory and island. If I remember correctly (please point out the details if you remember) when Desmond time travel is described we see him looping quite a bit between alternate universes. Over and over. In the show we watch one world-story, but it is implied in the official mythology that there are infinite numbers of possible alternate worlds, maybe all pivoting on some immutable events, but still existing in parallel.
Level 2: I woke up early to watch Federer at the Roland Garros, then I was too tired and decided to nap before watching Lost. I dreamed something, not even too weird. Then I watched Lost. About 2/3 in, I was interrupted by something (not important what) that gave me a sudden deja-vu of what I dreamed just before. This happened right when in the show the characters were getting constant flashes of their island memories. This analogy got me realizing that all of us get these kinds of flashes daily. Sometime something we do makes us remember something weird we dreamed that night. What we live influences what we dream, and what we dream influences what we live, especially on a deep subconscious level. Then this can be linked back with Level 1: what if our conscience in all parallel worlds has a way to send some sort of feedback, and that feedback help us making choices in a precise instance of parallel universe, and then send back more feedback. Again and again. You are looped to yourself, and then linked to others.
Level 3: Jeff Jensen realized all of this in February, just after that awful Kate episode. He noticed that WHAT the characters did in the island time was then "informing" the sideways reality and made characters self correct. Many times we see a a flaw in a character in the island time that feeds and gets converted into something positive in the sideways time. It's made explicit that (1) in the sideways time the characters have still their problems to deal with but (2) they learn to deal with them better. This is repeated over and over through the season, the sideways reality is in most cases a better reality simply because the characters learn from their mistakes. Nothing really comes as a "gift" (beside Hurley being lucky, but even that is probably a product and effect of perception), they EARN their "betterment". The contemporaneity of this process is explicit even if Christian in the end says that the sideways reality has no time. Yet we see actions in island time that translate directly to sideways reality, and at the very least this is done to tell us that the characters are learning directly. And what happens in their "real" life has a finality because what they will become DEPENDS on what they learn and what they have been. It basically means: afterlife doesn't lead to enlightenment. The enlightenment is something you bring along from your former life.
FINAL level: we do not get to see what the light past the door of the church represents. But it's explicit that what they bring along from their previous life is ALL that matters, and that there would be nothing past that door if you didn't bring along your experiences. The fact that this exists as a "pocket reality", where only people that matter to you get to show up, means that it's who you are and what you learned matters, even, and in particular, past the door.
Which all leads to the general concept of "Culture". The show also represents the struggle of men Vs nature. Science Vs belief. The great intuition Jeff Jensen had is that the (island time - sideways reality) relationship is a metaphor for "fiction" in general. We, real people, become the object of this show (instead of the wreckage of the airplane, the final scene should have been about people watching TV, as in a mirror. That would have been a wonderful ending scene with cool subversion included). We watch these characters, get feelings about them. A few of you have cried. The involvement you can have with "fiction" has the same power of the relationship between the realities in the show. We learn things even if we don't get to live directly those stories. The show, as fiction, tells and teach us stuff. It doesn't impose anything, we get the choice to learn what we want, or discard everything. The same theme of choice that plays through the show: it's the characters who do mistakes or learn to correct themselves. They go through a journey and this journey matters solely because it determines what they become. Lessons may be harsh, mistakes leading to tragedy, yet it all has a sense of finality.
The weakness of the ending was that the scene in the church gave more an impression of "nothing really matters, in the end everyone is happy", when instead the actual message is that the happiness exists and is possible BECAUSE of what they lived, and that the room would be empty if they didn't get through what they went through. Ben's character and his reactions are especially meaningful. His life was so filled with hate and selfish drive that he feels uncomfortable joining the others. He's ashamed of himself. In the end he connects with Hurley because Hurley is the one he gets to spend time with (on the island) and maybe redeem himself. If everyone gets a pocket reality of afterlife shared with the people that matter the most for him, we realize that these are the people that are the most important for Ben, yet he's still uncomfortable being with them. And this makes it a rather sad and revealing ending. Ben brings with himself the legacy of his previous life. Everyone does.
The smoke monster, the island, the magic pool... Everything was simply a device. Used from a side to capture the attention of the audience and carry us through an extraordinary journey, from the other used so that these characters would face their obsessions and fears, their past. So that they would be tested and get the choice of resolving themselves, making themselves better. They face nightmares and dreams becoming real. The plot was made to liberate you, similarly to how the characters had to "let go" so that they could embrace a new life. If you let the plot & mysteries details tangle you, you'll sink with them and won't get the chance to understand what this show is telling you.
You'll become like Eloise, who was so enamored of the fake reality that she preferred to stay out there.
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Submitted by Abalieno on May 12, 2010 - 20:00.
Comparing Lost and the Malazan series comes natural. Because I'm watching Lost right now as well reading the fourth book in the Malazan series. But also because they have various points of contacts in the way the narrative is being shaped.
For example the interconnections of the plot. The kind of satisfaction that comes, in this last episode of Lost, when we're being shown who are the skeletons that Jack found in season 1. Parts that move and lock into position. Then how the mythology is filled with mysteries and yet grows exponentially from the initial premises. This kind of vertical expansion that becomes staggering and awesome when you are on top and look back.
But every time I bring this up as the type of quality I admire in Lost, I can also see that Malazan tries to follow similar patterns, on an even bigger scale, and does it more successfully. Every mystery revealed in Lost is followed by some delusion. And then the examiner in me wants to dissect these structures to understand what works in one and what doesn't in the other.
The image I got is of a table covered with cards, arranged in rows and face down. Every card is part of the bigger scheme and the more you turn and reveal, the more you get to see the big picture. Or, if you prefer, closed doors that hide answers. But the important point is that answers need to be interconnected to form a bigger picture, so let's continue with cards (whose position is sometime more important than what they hide). What we have in this season of Lost is that mysteries/cards are turned and revealed, but then they are discarded. One item finally revealed and checked off the TO-DO list. It means that Lost is basically made by smoke and mirrors, curtains that are progressively drawn. The result is that the actual game is "shrunk", reduced to the essential. The more cards revealed and discarded the more we approach a much simpler "core" of the show. Lost's path is one of simplification, where every mystery doesn't add to the big picture, but actually "leads back" closer to another mystery at the core. It's essentially a backtracking, following a trail and discarding all the illusions that were built along the way.
The dissatisfaction that follows the revelation of a mystery is caused by the fact that the mystery revealed was just a "curtain" for another mystery that is higher up the trail we are following. So we get to know the origin of Jacob and the Man in Black, but that revelation only leads to another mystery: the pool of light. Originally it was: why the plane crashed? This lead to an infinite expansion/development toward science. Mysterious experiments with magnetism made by Dharma, that caused an anomaly, that caused the plane to crash. But that was just a circular pattern because the plane crash wasn't an "incident". It was instead orchestrated so that the passengers would arrive on the island and fulfill their destiny. The island (through Jacob) called them and brought them there. They are supposed to be there for a reason. So, as you see, we are still backtracking the same big questions. We know why the plane crashed? Not really, because we know the plane crashed because someone or something decided to make it happen. Why? Because it was required so that people would arrive and then be chosen as guardians to prevent "something" to escape from the island. But what is that they have to guard? Where's the danger? The smoke monster. Why? What's its origin? Why this island has all sort of magical powers? The mystery must be behind the guardian (Jacob) and what he guards (smoke monster). But now we get to see Jacob and his brother's origin. Was the mystery finally revealed? Nope, because everything originated from a pool of light. And so on we continue backtracking answers without being given even a single real one.
Lost has moved, from the beginning of 2nd season onward, through a process of expansion. A mythology that got more and more complex and intricate. Mixing science with supernatural events. A mythology that seemed extremely coherent and solidly built. Driven by purpose. Now with the 6th season it is going through a process of contraption, like an infinite regression. Cards are removed from the play. We backtrack mysteries, lead toward a core. But we've been given no actual answers yet. Nothing is revealed because the nature of the mystery is constantly pushed back. Hoping that the final destination doesn't coincide with the true origin of myth: "we can't tell you [because there's no answer]". (which is also connected with the theodicy)
Or, better summarized than I ever could: "It's turtles all the way down". It would be rather sad if Lost really came down just to that.
How Malazan manages to do it more successfully? I've only read to 600 pages in the 4th book, on a series of 10, but even if it ended here the series would be already immensely gratifying and successful. Something that I could never say about Lost at any point. Malazan isn't just one long, reckless chase toward an ultimate mystery that has to sustain and motivate all that came before. This because the cards that are turned up, STAY in the game. They aren't removed. While the mythology in Lost was mostly misdirection as a whole (leading to a simpler core), in Malazan all elements stay in play and are all connected to a bigger picture. The books are deeply interconnected and layered but none of these are "smoke and mirrors", if not smoke and mirrors that reveal different paths and motivations.
There was for example a lot of confusion about the "warren of Shadow". It was at times referenced as "Meanas", and at times as "Rashan", or even "Meanas-Rashan". Now, in the 4th book, it is revealed that the warren of Shadow is a shattered warren. Contested. And that it is being tainted (partially taken over) by the warren of Shadow. The warren of Shadow is called, simplifying, Rashan. While Shadow is supposed to be Meanas. And that explains all the ambiguity in the previous books. Shadow is not whole and tainted with Darkness, hence the confusion and blur between names. But it doesn't end there, because we also discover that the "Whirlwind Goddess", previously just the goddess of some tribes in the desert who are fighting against the Malazan colonization, isn't just a local cult. It has deep roots in the overarching mythology. The Whirlwind Goddess is itself a "redress" of a fragment of the warren of Shadows, and this revelation leads to more things making sense. Everything is linked together, misdirection isn't just smoke and mirrors because its motives are themselves revealing. The books are generous, offering plenty of answers and surprises and intuitions constantly through the narrative. The story doesn't run out of steam because it is intricately woven and every part has its meaning and theme.
There's intent in the narrative of the single book, with stories coming to a resolution and some assertions of themes fully developed and "delivered", then there's a contribution to an overarching structure, a vaster movement that links every book together winding intricately story threads back and forth. There's a definite progression but the motives are never constantly pushed back and unanswered. You are instead brought to cower since what is revealed always opens on a vaster scenario that couldn't be previously fathomed. It's like something buried in the ground. The mystery is: what is it? You try to guess. But then when you start digging you discover it's HUGE, and far, far beyond what you could ever imagine.
Which all leads to a final element that makes Malazan superior to Lost. In the Malazan series the "knowledge" you acquire, can then be used to understand more and more. The stories rely on what you learn. This gives a satisfying idea of progress. You embrace what is going on and slowly understand. With Lost instead, two episodes from the end, our guesses are worth the same as everyone else's. What we learned? Not much. We now know we didn't know anything. Distracting details and derails. Clinging on the hope there's something redeeming in the last episode that finally gives us a proper answer. The more is revealed, the less we know: we are still at the point of a mythical island containing a mythical power.
The rest was just an elaborate castle of cards woven with human drama.
"We must make sure no one ever finds it."
"It's beautiful."
"Yes, it is. And that's why they want it. Because a little bit of this very same light is inside of every men. But they always want more."
If it's immortality then the theme was explored much more deeply and meaningfully in Malazan. In Lost we are still wondering, two episodes from the end, why it's wrong that men want more of that light (whatever it is).
Brought to: we can't be happy because someone decided so. Good. Let's go challenging whoever decided it, once for all. Let's make a revolution. (this is also being handled in Malazan)
The smoke monster has to be freed from the dumbness of this story and its vapid motives and justifications. The world will end, but it will be for a good cause.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 5, 2010 - 21:52.
After I saw the previous episode, two weeks ago, I thought the show was basically done, at least the plot-related narrative. The writers openly embraced the idea that Jack is the one among "the candidates" appointed to take Jacob's place.
Adam Roberts wrote this at the beginning of this season:
All the smoke-and-mirrors of [Lost] are on the surface, as it were; narrative misdirection designed to spin out the franchise as long as it’s commercially profitable. But it’s all in service of a much more straightforward ‘solution’, which this final series is now galumphing towards.
In fact it seems that the four seasons in the middle were generated by plugging "science" into "mysticism". So we got the Dharma and all the rationalization of the plot. 1 & 6 seasons got back to the mysticism and completely dropped the scientific aspect. Ideally all the seasons in the middle were filler. Or at least feel like filler now (I actually started to like Lost AFTER season 1, when the plot started to look grounded on something).
Which is the reason why every revelations this season is accompanied by some disappointment. Don't misunderstand this aspect, it's not something unavoidable and that is in the nature of mystery itself. It happens when mysteries aren't properly hung onto a solid framework and are revealed as just "curtains". They come in a gratuitous, untruthful way. Instead of being hooked onto something bigger, they are solved and then pushed out of the picture (for example: Jack's father appearing on the island in Season 1. Jack asks the smoke monster, gets a confirmation. And so the whispers in the jungle. Explained, acknowledged and put aside. Nothing of this is contributing with purpose. It's only done to archive questions left hanging for far too long).
What happened to Sayid in this last episode follows a similar pattern. I was never convinced that he went through a "transformation". It was just a typical Lost "dressing" of characters motivations and purposes. I think Sayid is out the show. Meaning that the motivation of his behavior is to be looked in what we have already seen. Sayid for the whole time has never been "evil". What happened to him was entirely un-mystical. He was resurrected by the smoke monster, so convinced himself that he owed to him. He's evil because he thinks his destiny is in doing what Locke asks. He was being granted life, so he owes everything to Locke. His transformation is the one of someone who, after death, has lost all points of reference. The only beacon being owing his life to Locke, because what Locke did was the only "truth". Being reborn and without a real explanation means that he lost entirely his "moral". As if you play a video game, losing contact with the physical reality.
But then he understands, right when Jack explains it, that Locke is doing everything to his own advantages (including resurrecting Sayid, to then use him as an ally/tool and then proceeding to persuade everyone to join his side). Saiyd regains a purpose as he understand Locke true motives. Locke can't kill the people in the sub, and he can't kill Desmond. That's why he needed Sayid to kill Desmond. Carlton Cuse commented this directly:
"There is no ambiguity. [The Man In Black] is evil and he has to be stopped..."
That's the purpose of this last episode: they wanted to clear the ambiguity about Locke in order to prepare for the finale.
The dropping of all misdirection, as the season progressed, lead to the dropping of layers of the narrative, and the result is something that comes out weaker. Instead of acquiring solidity, this surge toward the end gets more and more shallow. Being only held together by the dramatic intensity, but more due to the spectators' personal investment in the characters than to a story that moves toward its apex. Characters die, but the plot has lost drive and purpose. It feels as if the rest is filler to keep the very last trick for the end.
So we get to the end. It is now obvious that the duality of Jack and Locke throughout the whole show, along with the themes of leadership and faith that represented the struggle and friction between the two, is neatly flowing in the duality represented by Jacob and the smoke monster (then one could even groan at the names Jacob/Jack). It all fits so well that I'm sure there's no possible misdirection here. We got the pattern.
Locke the believer who clings to the island and becomes the one who wants to get away, and Jack the unbeliever, who now embraces the belief and predestination and is the only one convinced he's there for a reason.
This I was writing two weeks ago. The next episode (yesterday's one) was focused on Jack and Locke, the next is Jacob/smoke monster. After that there's another episode and then the season finale. They won't stray form the Jack/Locke pattern.
Sayid (awakened to the real truth) says to Jack: "It's going to be you." Meaning that Jack is the true Jacob successor (Jack for the whole episode confirms this).
The finale: Locke is evil, wants to be free, and he can only gain freedom if all the candidates are dead. But he can't kill them himself, and so needs some other way out of this. That's our context. We get two missing pieces: the first is how the alternate timeline fits in all this, with the missing link being obviously Desmond. The other missing piece is where Widmore fits in this big picture and what he's trying to achieve.
If you want, an italian website has published six pages of the screenplay of the first part of very last episode. I've read it and the script seems legit since it's plausible and well connected with what happened previously. It's relatively safe, with the exception of who's there, whose presence may be a spoiler already.
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Submitted by Abalieno on April 2, 2010 - 09:00.
Yeah, almost over, even if it doesn't seem set for a satisfying end.
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Submitted by Abalieno on March 17, 2010 - 12:09.
I meant to write this after the Kate's episode, and especially after reading this long but interesting commentary. So this works like an unplanned follow-up to my previous conclusion about Lost.
It's here, but also in other similar stories, that two parallel tracks start to get revealed. One is strictly plot. What people do, how the story develops and ends. Another is thematic and about abstraction. As to squeeze "meaning" or "purpose" out of a story. Some kind of message that is supposed to reach you. The first track, about the plot, in this show is about the medium that carries the message.
In my previous post I explained my theory about Lost: it's empty of meaning because it may represent the triumph of form over meaning (metalinguistic study). They show you the power of storytelling but it's nothing more than that. Power without purpose or moral. The plot is convoluted around the medium and hides a secret core that in the end will be revealed for what it is. A fraud.
I explained the reasons for this theory in that previous post. What happens here instead is that Lost writers may have a far greater ambition. One that, if revealed as true, is staggering and awesome. Maybe Lost has a point, and it's something quite powerful and that I admire. This new perspective & interpretation is revealed in that article I linked, and the problematic part is that the idea, if proven false since at this point it is as reliable as fanfiction, risks to be way cooler than what Lost actual writers have planned for the show.
That theory was written after the second episode of this last season. Now we are at episode eight. The theory still holds, maybe also because not much is happening even if time's running off. But it's still a theory that is consistent and coherent with everything else, little subtle aspects that make sense.
What's this theory about? It is about the relationship between the two timelines. We all expect that they are going to connect plot-wise soon. That one will collide with the other in some way, but the relationship, see above my reference to the two parallel tracks, may be entirely thematic. Consider this: I've said this show is a display of competency in the use of medium, and that the show may be a study done only to refine it. One of the most obvious methods used in the show, as a medium, is the flashback, flashforwards, flash-sideways. These are methods of screenplay. How you tell a story. Pacing and so on. If you analyze how flashbacks are used in the show, you notice that they are very carefully placed to maximize tension and curiosity. Obviously they aren't random, but till this season they worked simply as well placed insights into some character. What if this season changed the rules and the relationship between the two timelines lies right in the way they are connected? The thematic purpose linked to their use as a medium. The two timelines are related thematically in how and when they appear.
The Sideways world story line very clearly mirrored the Island world story line. Kate chases after Sawyer; Kate chases after Claire. Is there a physical, cosmic connection between the two realities?
is Lost doing this just to be all fancy-pants literary, or could it be that Lost is trying to tell us something? Could it be that the creative design of Lost's sixth season, embedded and suffused with past episode resonance, is a clue to resolving the mystery of its seemingly split reality?
I am wondering — and perhaps you are, too — if these corresponding events across parallel realities are meaningful synchronicities. It's almost as if no matter the world, these people are destined to intersect and to play out variations of the same essential drama.
That's the suspicion. Here's the theory:
Now here's the crazy thought I had — an alternative to past-life/reincarnation theory. I submit that when Kate saw Jack at the airport, she established a psycho-spiritual circuit with her doppelganger self on he Island, and specifically the moment between Jack and Kate in Temple. This circuit facilitated a transference of psychic energy that flowed from Island Kate to Sideways Kate — or rather, from Redeemed Kate to one of her Fallen Kate selves in another world. That energy? Strength. Selflessness. A sense of sacrifice. A sense of ''You All Everybody'' idealism. All qualities that Kate embodied in her Island story — and all qualities that Kate gained during her Sideways story.
In fact actors trigger these flashes with more active acting than usual. Flashes don't just happen between a scene and another, placed carefully, but they are "acted" as afterthoughts. As if the character is influencing or being influenced by the transition. They are fluid. What happens in a timeline kind of flows into the other, and not by mere thematic association, but concretely with meaning.
What I say (or mostly who wrote that article) is that we use to think to these flashes structured by a third party narrator. We got someone who's putting the story down for us in a way that is compelling. So scenes are placed following a "screenplay" that was made by this hidden narrator. But the story in the flashes is, like, real world. As if you go dig in a attic, find an old toy, and start remembering some past scene that involved that toy. In the real world your past DOES influence what you do in the present. So something that you remember can influence what you decide to do. Maybe it's not a case, to underline something special is going on, that these flashes's influence goes backwards. The 2004 timeline seems influenced by the 2007's one. There's something new that goes on there. The link is made plain and can't be ignored or considered normal as previous flashes. These characters seem to communicate to their alternate version. Arguably, we could also consider the 2004 timeline like some kind of improvement. Implying an idea of "progress". Let's say human betterment.
So here's the thematic meaning:
To put it more simply: Island Kate inspired Sideways Kate. Bottom line: The Sideways-Island relationship is a metaphor for our relationship to fiction. It's about how fantasy redeems reality.
What's the use of stories that aren't even true? Lost answers, They teach us how to make the real world a better place.
And that's how everything may come together. I theorize that Lost is all form and execution. A wicked study on how you can manipulate an audience. An cynical experiment not unlike Dharma's own. But here, if this other theory is true, we get to see the other side of the moon: what is fiction ultimately about. A soul. Something that tries to reach out and actually tell us something that is TRUE. Especially in a show (see 8th episode) where everything is a trick and deceit. The possibility is that once all layers of this onion made of lies are peeled off, we get to something that is truthful.
Fiction, like every form of culture, makes us better and strive for progress. The only concrete aspects that makes us different from all other animals and living things of this world is that we have language (whose most peculiar function is, interestingly, metalinguistic, so about the medium itself), and so culture. In this war against nature, culture's the only weapon men have. And its use, a choice (another theme of this show), is what makes the difference. It's about us.
Let's hope the smoke monster saves us (but this will be explained at another time).
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Submitted by Abalieno on March 17, 2010 - 09:59.
There's veeery subtle subtext here. Can you spot it? ;)
Straight from tonight's Lost episode (also: the episode starts with a nice and well executed subversion):
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Submitted by Abalieno on March 3, 2010 - 16:58.
So I'm attached to this website even if it isn't used much these days, and was torn inside to see it die.
It happens early today (I was going to bed and instead six hours later I'm still up) that I check the website and it gives me a 500 internal server error. So I go to the Dreamhost page to report the problem but I soon notice that I can access the databases and FTP. So it's not down, it's broken. I go to the support page and I see a warning stating that they are moving the site on a different server and if I had a custom PHP (I have, because they already broke my site once and I had to resort to that) then it was going to be broken after the move.
The problem is that I don't remember anything about how I actually made the custom PHP. Not even a vague idea. The perspective was starting to feel rather gloomy. But then looking at the root of the site I notice that I left all the stuff still there and it's actually working, including the old script I used and modified (because it also didn't work right away back then). Only that even my script doesn't work now (I'll explain the tech details later).
And there starts the odyssey, looking through all kinds of websites, copy/pasting errors and whatnot. I rarely made a so hectic journey through the internet. The old engine just didn't seem compatible with the new server and wouldn't compile. In six hours, without knowing any damn think about all this, I think I tried a hundred of different solutions, editing scripts and makefiles for the compiler even if I never really saw one before.
Well, I'm happy. Now it works again. Dunno if it doesn't break suddenly at some point because there are still some tricky things, but at least I got to see my site once again. It was truly so close to being gone and I was hopeless because Dreamhost simply told to deal with it and that they would not offer any support of any kind.
Later I'll have to go and documenting this a bit, I'll do my part and also update the broken wiki page at Dreamhost.
UPDATE:
I'm not really sure I want to go down in detail to explain what I did because I don't want to make the site even less secure and broken. Here's the essence of what happened:
The website runs on custom compiled PHP. The website gets moved to a 64bit machine and so all the old code is now broken. I need to recompile.
I still have everything from when I did compile PHP last time, so I try to rerun the same script. But it breaks:
configure: error: Cannot find OpenSSL's <evp.h>
Apparently Dreamhost doesn't have anymore support for OpenSSL and PHP requires it. Where things really start to get gloomy is when you look for the error online and find other Dreamhost users who faced the same problem and asked in forums and blog posts... years ago and unanswered. The internet reveals the desperation of passing time and unanswered calls for help! That's the kind of ending that I was looking at. Doomed.
So I try to look for the source code and compile it locally, which isn't simple, because adding it to the other script didn't work. The "configure" command didn't work, I read that it used "config" instead, but it still wouldn't run properly. Follow an endless number of attempt and I think I was able to finally run it through "sh", the shell.
Then I had to make PHP know where to find OpenSSL locally, which required a lot of juggling of directories (while also many attempts to see if I could compile PHP without SSL support, maybe) which is hard because you don't know if it doesn't work because pointed in the wrong location or because it isn't compatible or misses some part. At the end OpenSSL works but the script breaks again two checks after:
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc-client
skipping incompatible /usr/lib/libc-client.a when searching for -lc-client
Fun! I later figure out that the lc-client is compiled in the IMAP module and copied over. I tried compiling a more recent version (but the problem was elsewhere) but that lead to a whole host of new problems since I was getting incompatibilities with IPV6 and the program attempting to overwrite (and failing) some main files on the server. Then it turned out that IMAP also required OpenSSL, but it wasn't smart enough to look at the local copy I installed (nor had a configurable "config"), and so continued to fail. So I tried to get my hands down deep in the makefile itself, trying to link manually my OpenSSL, but I only got more and more errors and screen showing fancy characters. No good at all. I tried with different version of IMAP hoping maybe one would be compatible.
This goes on a while, with my root directory filled with sss aaa abba azazphp aaaphp and so on because every run of the script pretended I erased the directories and doing it through FTP would take an insane amount of time and I didn't remember the Unix command that would delete a directory with everything inside (rm -r), and I was too busy with a million of other thoughts to look that up.
In the end I got through, managed to compile IMAP and have it digested by PHP. And the site ran again.
I also suspect that lots of troubles also came from the possibility of having code half compiled and uncleaned since I compiled PHP last time.
(this omitting many steps in the middle, like installing other libraries that may be connected and swapping source versions with newer ones)
Submitted by Abalieno on February 7, 2010 - 06:41.
This is quite fitting since I'm reading Infinite Jest and in the book there's an experimental movie called, incidentally, "The Joke" that represents a metalinguistic experiment with an audience (where the audience isn't simply spectating, but actually the object of spectation).
Now you expect I draw a parallel between what I'm reading and the TV show I'm watching, but the truth is that I only see even more evidently, and am convinced of having been right and to the point, what I write down after the very 1st episode I watched, back in 2006 when Lost began airing here. Comments particularly interesting because warning about "premature" judgment, and "giving it some time" in order to "be surprised" since "it's not what you think it's going to be".
Four years and six seasons later I can now declare that I'm now even more convinced that: it's exactly what I thought it was.
Actually during the show I started to think that maybe it was going to be something more than I thought, but now that the end approaches I'm more and more convinced that my first interpretation was the very best and more precise.
This is how I rephrased it even before going back to read the old blog post:
--
Was its worth 100% dependent on payoff?
Season 1 was a big metalinguistic joke about TV series. It was the american Battle Royale, filled with gratuitous spooks and illogical plot twists to show that you could make a good show out of nothing just through good execution of technique.
Then they saw it worked, grew attached to it, and decided to add a plot that would somehow give a sense to what was actually built for the purpose of being senseless.
Lost is basically an exercise to show how much writers can be in control and use their own audience as a joke that the show is ultimately about.
--
Quoting the 2006 post:
It has the exact same scheme and feel, the exact same use of narrative structure and expedients, like the mix of different characters that don't know each other and then the use of neatly placed flashback to reveal part of their stories just before the character is involved into something in the main plot. Making the audience connect & sympathize a moment before something horrendous and life-threatening happens to them.
Basically there's nothing original if not a nearly infinite list of stereotypes and references (across all forms of media). Borrowing hands down from sci-fi and horror expedients to "conceal" and keep up the tension. Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is another one, the expedient to never let you "see completely" to build up the tension (also "Alien") and the shaky camera + "close up" of a terrified face taken right from "Blair Witch Project" (the trick of not-showing, or seeing an horrified face but not seeing the object of horror).
--
So what's the deal with the polar bear?
Not something brought there to be the object of some sort of scientific experiment, but just a dissonant note used to amplify the effect of a spook. "A polar bear in a tropical island", that's the correct way to see it. It's something unsettling and mysterious that is shown not for a logic reason or external purpose, but solely for its properties of being unsettling and mysterious through the univocal act of being shown, so made to be, existing. Everything on screen in Season 1 (and the exact reason why each following season failed to recapture both the mood and the ratings) appears solely for its effect and never for its meaning. It's use of (visual, cinematographic) language not for its meaning, but for what it is. It's the use of language applied to language. So metalinguistic, or the property of the language to describe itself.
Put in another way: it's a joke that the authors played on the audience. A game whose object is the audience itself and its reactions. Where the audience's theories are part of the puzzle. A recursive game and sort of annular relationship between audience and showmakers. One feeding the other in recursive fashion of obsession.
It also says: we have the power of doing everything. We have control even when there's NO control, because it is language that represents the perimeter of what can be experienced and it is through language that we can manipulate what is perceived/true, and change it, overturn it, every time we want. They tried to push this to the point that the relationship writers-audience was so bent that it was on the point of snapping: in Season 3 they introduced two new characters (the loved Nikki & Paulo) that have always been there but never seen, put in place through an elaborate ret-conning exploiting plainly the "perimeter of what can be experienced" represented by the limited and finished space that comprises a filmed shot. You can't see what's behind or what's at the far margin. With the purpose of showing the audience that they could be shown everything and they would still fall for it. "Open wide and wait for the spoon". Only that the relationship was so bent that this didn't actually work out and the writers had to stagger back and reappraise the power of their egos.
This means that "Lost" is a study on language, its power and its effect on the broadest audience possible. A use of medium not to convey a message, but a medium that feeds on itself and is self-aware. A study on the production of meaning or its absence in favor of form.
Ultimately, whatever "plot" or "ultimate meaning", that the show may or may not have, is entirely secondary and tacked on. That's why up here I wrote: "Was its worth 100% dependent on payoff?" It's not. The payoff is supplementary in order to not delude the audience and entirely break the relationship of love. It's akin a spectacular action scene that serves no real purpose beside amusing & contenting (also called fanservice). But the truth is that the true experiment is involving the audience in the same way one Dharma experiment involved observers being observed. Which is exactly the type of mockery they love the most: they show you exactly what they are doing, in a slightly refracted context, and yet you fail to put the pieces together.
I think it worked perfectly.
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Submitted by Abalieno on February 3, 2010 - 23:50.
We got the first two episodes that pave the road for the beginning of the end, and I tried to parse the elements while ret-conning them to the considerations I wrote at the end of season 5 (part 1 - part 2).
To begin with, Lindelof own words:
We will say this: season 6 is not about time travel. It’s about the implications, the aftermath, and the causality of trying to change the past. But the idea of continuing to do paradoxical storytelling is not what we’re interested in this year.
I'm rather glad about the first part of the show because the plot at the moment is extremely simple, and, especially, it is coherent with what I had written a year ago when the series closed.
After the finale a year ago I wrote:
If I have to guess the anti-Jacob is also the smoke monster, who is also evil-Locke. Jacob enjoys messing with people, while anti-Jacob is the one who prefers being left alone and would like as well to get rid of Jacob and enjoy a quiet life.
I think this is going to be a theme important to keep in mind. It's Jacob who messes with people, who calls the boat the first time and who gets the losties on the airplane the second time.
The anti-Jacob instead is the one who now wants to "go home". Whatever it means.
We also know that anti-Jacob killing Jacob means that the island (2007 version) isn't anymore in the balance of power. But. It's also possible that Sayid is now possessed by Jacob the same way Locke is now anti-Jacob (what is sure is that Jacob wants to keep Sayid alive and has sent a message to his "Others" faction through the message hidden in the guitar case that Jacob himself gave to Hurley).
It's also interesting because the way things went had the result of solving the time paradox they created last season. Me again a year ago:
But before they (the losties) can save themselves, they all have to die. Those in the past in order to complete the plan and let their copies live. Those in the future because they are orphans of a timeline (the island blew up, so Locke and Ben can't be on it, timeline-wise those scenes happen BEFORE what we're seeing in the past).
There's a problem, though. Sun has a picture of them in the Dharma initiative, and there's also a sixth season to fill. So this hints that, if the future is their future as that picture hints, they won't succeed in blowing up the island.
Lindelof again:
We knew that the ending of the time travel season was going to be an attempt to reboot. And as a result, we [knew] the audience was going to come out of the “do-over moment” thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story.
My theory at that time (before the end of season 5) was that the entire timeline would be erased, because that future (Lock revived returning to the island with Sun & Ben) was strictly dependent on the past going the way it did.
So, either that timeline was "true" (hence losties not succeeding exploding the bomb) or it was going to be erased, so that, in order to trigger the "better world" (what we now see as flash-sideways) all of them had to be erased from existence. Meaning that in order to have themselves in the future have a better life, they had to sacrifice all they lived till that point. Also meaning that the whole TV series would be basically erased because they were successful in preventing the whole thing and triggering the reboot.
We now know things didn't go that way. The bomb did explode and the (arguably) better future was triggered, but the "copies" of the losties weren't "erased" and now persist in another timeline that goes to overlap exactly with the old 2007 version from season 5. Where anti-Jacob kills Jacob and now probably wants to take over the island in order to take off and return to Mars.
The big question in this series is about how the alternate timeline (2004) is going to fit in the context. Either it is there simply thematically to prove a point (that the new life isn't that better) or it will have to collide again in some way (Widmore maybe?).
Theories?
Thematically the theme has been already highlighted. Locke revived in this episode talks with Ben about the former Locke and says:
"He (Locke) was the only one who realized how pitiful the life he left behind really was."
And this kind of commentary is mirrored by something similar that happened last season, but that referred to the exact opposite situation (the life they lead after the crash):
"It was not all misery."
"Enough of it was."
We have now these two realities: the 2004 reboot and the 2007 as we know it.
A few important things to keep in mind:
- The main point is that it is JACOB who has caused the bomb to explode and the new 2004 timeline to exist (this inferred by the fact that it's Jacob himself who persuades most of the losties to return to the island. And if he's not manipulating them directly for his own will, at the very least he is the one who gave them the "choice").
This may lead somewhere if things are considered that way. We do not even know that anti-Jacob is aware that his timeline (the 2007) is now somewhat secondary. Jacob at this point is apparently successful. Anti-Jacob may be the one tricked and now trapped not in the island, but in the surrogate timeline.
It's also possible that the two timelines will be personalized: Jacobs has the "white" 2004 no-crash timeline, while anti-Jacobs has the "black" standard timeline where he's now free.
Also, let's work with two archetypes. Jacobs represents white and progress made of men, and the will of men to alter destiny and have a role, and decide their own life and try in spite of all misery and failure and whatever. It's a kind of positive, merciful drive that often fails but always tries.
Anti-Jacobs represents wild nature. Unmerciful, cruel. That doesn't tolerate men messing up. That wants the island untouched, and wants it back, away from men. That also represents destiny as a self correcting fixed thing that has its own survival as first priority.
We know Lost is built through dichotomies, and the dialogue at the end of Season 5 crystallizes the contrast between Jacob and anti-Jacob:
anti-Jacob: "Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?"
Jacob: "You are wrong."
anti-Jacob: "Am I? They come. they fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same."
Jacob: "It only ends once. Anything that happens before is just progress."
Which is also one of those broad themes about the human condition, and here's a link to what Steven Erikson writes:
The Chain of Dogs had fallen at the foot of Aren. Pormqual's ten thousand danced on trees. Leoman's rebel army was destroyed at Y'Ghatan. It was clear -- it could not be clearer -- that for all there was to learn, no one ever bothered. Each new fool and tyrant to rise up from the mob simply set about repeating the whole fiasco, convinced that they were different, better, smarter. Until the earth drinks deep again.
This is where things stand now and the whole thing was fairly simplified as I expected. As for the last season we lack a lot: "motivations". So the big mistery is how the two timelines are related, how they'll resolve, and in particular what's Jacob and anti-Jacob's plan.
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Submitted by Abalieno on February 1, 2010 - 07:33.
TV-Nihon has released the "All Riders Versus Dai Shocker" movie, probably bad as a movie but filled with this kind of fanservice.
Both great and ridiculous at the same degree and at the same time. So, awesome.
From left to right (mistakes are possible): Shin, ZX, Super-1, Skyrider, Stronger, Amazon, X, Riderman, Agito, Ryuki, Faiz, Blade, Hibiki, Kabuto, Den-O, Kiva, Black, Black RX, ZO.
On bike: V3, No. 1, No. 3.
Submitted by Abalieno on November 20, 2009 - 05:50.
On Twitter I said that the RPS review of Modern Warfare 2 is one of the best reviews I've ever read. Precise, insightful and to the point. Instead I disagree with the sort of rant that Kieron Gillen wrote today about the particular level. So here is what I think about it:
Modern Warfare 2 never intended nor was expected to be a realistic simulator. It's not Arma 2 or Operation Flashpoint. It's instead a bombastic, gratuitous and exploitative Hollywood experience. It wants to be cool without being smart. So, as with everything, the point is to criticize it for what it wants to be. What this game wants is to sell copies and be hugely profitable, shatter records. And it seems that it is doing just that. What it is interesting is to understand why it happens and why this game sells so much and is so much successful.
It's successful because it arrogantly boasts how rich it is. In your face. That level is no exception compared to the others. It's lush. The shock value is secondary to the visual, and even in that level the gameplay is gold. Many people this week go to see that awful movie that is 2012. In a very vaguely similar way Stephen King wrote a book where he traps a small town within a dome. To observe people get pushed to the limit and see how they react. That level in the game doesn't need to be realistic. The RPS article says: "As others have noted, the most disturbing part of No Russian is its context. A few seconds previously you’re involved in a high-speed James Bond chase involving snowmobiles. A few seconds later, you’re mowing down civilians. That tonal shift isn’t brutal. It’s laughable." There's no brutal transition instead. The whole game is like that. In the same way the snowmobiles chase was so utterly unrealistic and bombastic, so is what follows. The game wants to resemble reality, pretend to be recognizable and familiar enough to be fun. So what they do in that level is putting a lot of work in the animations and scripting to the extremes and polish and detail. Make an airport and make it good to watch and play in. Make it lavish. Tons of stuff goes on and everything is very nicely done and resembling reality enough to feel somewhat unsettling. What works here is not the moral dilemma, it's just that kind of open massacre that, justified or plausible or not, stays in the mind of the people. In the same way you could have set it in a school or some other densely populated place (a church, a mall, whatever). It works.
They could do it, so why not? It's cool in a stupid way. The plot doesn't make sense but it never wanted to. It's a joke, an excuse to be spectacular. I suspect that even the purple prose about war is just there as a parody and the fake pretense to make it "serious". Bombastic drama. But not serious in the sense that it has (or wants to have) an actual depth, it only needs to give an excuse to explore the possibilities that are "cool" to see and play, and that are vaguely connected with a common idea of "modern" warfare. A massacre in an airport is cool to see and play. The russian invasion is cool to see and play, so is the snowmobile chase. These are all silly excuses to "enable" and pack together the most disparate experiences I've seen in a shooter. If you strip that level of its story elements you get a very fun shooting sequence. You can replay it various times and always find something new you didn't notice. The first part starts in black, hearing just sounds, then a terse dialogue that builds the tension, then the opening that is rather spectacular and sudden. From that point onward the experience is mostly visual and well crafted. The music is right, the extremely slow speed mimics in a way how you are trapped in a role, forced into a role. This slowness also makes everything kind of detached, yet deliberate and unavoidable. It doesn't want to really make sense, it just sets a mood. Then there's the sequence where you fight the cops. Again wonderfully executed. You can blow up the airplane engines, you can shoot at the helicopters and make them explode, lots of stuff going on and a rather fun shooting sequence with lush graphic everywhere. No other shooter out there is so well realized and filled with details. Beautiful to watch, fun to play.
This controversial level in the end won't produce any important debate, or make people think. It doesn't want. It wants to be cool and spectacular. In the end that level sells copies, and it probably sells more copies than if it wasn't there. People talk about the game, it draws the attention even from those that wouldn't look at it otherwise. In the end people don't buy it because the plot gave them deep thoughts, but because the game is lush, rich, fun to play, varied, spectacular.
The story stays stupid enough to not get in the way of the shooting. This sells copies. There is no over exposition or dense stuff that would turn people off. It's what Entertainment wants to be. Accessible and straightforward and without any other pretense than selling copies without scruples. It's the simple and cynical and deliberate and lucid commercial success, done the way it has to be done. The writers that worked on Modern Warfare knew what their role was and didn't pretend to act as protagonists. They knew very well the story is very secondary, only "enabling" the shooting to happen and weakly link together the most disparate and edgy shooting scenes.
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