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This post has been a long time coming, since shortly after the finale aired in May, but I wanted to let the entire experience stew for me awhile. Since then I’ve rewatched the finale twice, discussed it to no end with my family and a few friends, and now I’m working my way through all of season six on the DVR. And I still think the finale, and the show as a whole, was a glorious piece of work, of art.

The main criticism I’ve seen deals with the shows refusal (or, as some have said, inability) to answer all of the mysteries. I saw it described very eloquently as a failure to pay the bill of dipping into the future, but I still disagree 100%. And here’s why.

The show was never about the mysteries.

Yes, they figured prominently, yes they drove the characters, and yeah, they didn’t always make sense (I still don’t understand how Sayid came back to life after two hours, or what that means about Claire). But in the end—and from the beginning—the show was about a dynamic cast of characters: Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Hurley, Sun, Jin, Ben, Richard (and Juliet, of course). That’s why the writers incorporated the flashbacks in season one. That’s why shows were usually centered around one or two characters, even while the story might touch elsewhere. And so if that’s what the writers most heavily invested in, that’s what the payoff had to be—not answers.

Because the show was based in reality—or rather, it was based in something I’ll call character reality. The characters were dropped onto the island like us, with our range of views and beliefs, our fears and ambitions, our problems and our pain. There were broken families, bitter disappointments, successes tinged with the unexpected. They were lives interrupted, and except for the more extreme circumstances they had been put in, they could have been us. When the mysteries started, they reacted in a variety of ways, as would be expected from what we know of the world. Some characters were easy to relate to while others took more work. For me, I felt most akin to Shannon and Charlie in the first season.

And for me, this reality can logically mean only one thing. There will never be a minute when all, or even most, of what people want to know, becomes clear to them. This is clear in our own lives, without the added benefit of mysteries. I will never know why my first boyfriend was so nasty to me at the end, or how I passed my intro biology class in college. I will also never understand the physics behind what caused the survivors to jump through time in season five, but it is enough that I accept that the island was jumping through time. Yes, there might be a bigger explanation there (and I’d be willing to bet that the writers know and understand at least a significant part of this), but it had no place in the television show. First off, someone please explain to me how that would have ever fit in with the show.

There were many mystery/answer combinations like this in the show that many fans simply couldn’t accept or weren’t satisfied with. My guess is because they didn’t understand or believe the explanation, but if my ex were to come back now and tell me in a few sentences why he treated me that way, I bet I’d react in a similar manner of disbelief or unacceptance. But what matters here is that those things didn’t matter. Rose says this herself when Desmond meets her in season six, commenting on how they’ve moved through time, and it is clear that while she doesn’t understand it, she accepts it. And if LOST is trying to teach us anything (though I would never call the show didactic), it is this.

What the show promised, the show delivered upon. The show had a very definite and satisfying arc, and to me, it was indeed a masterpiece that I will watch again and again over the coming years.

And also, just to clear this up, the finale in no way meant that they all died in the plane crash. The writers are not laughing at you.

If you read my post yesterday, I listed some of my favorite characters from the show, and while I think my Hugo and Ben choices are pretty well received, I think my Shannon and Juliet choices are much less so. I’ve seen these Facebook games where someone posts a list of all the characters in the show, puts the number 10 next to each character, and then turns the post loose. The game is that each new poster copies and pastes the list into his or her post, subtracts one from his or her least favorite character and adds one to his or her favorite character. Once a character hits zero, they’re removed. Though this list seemed a bit strange in that it had Ben being eliminated pretty early, something you don’t usually see in these.

As before, spoilers below.

The general reception to Shannon was especially harsh and overwhelmingly negative. And yeah, she was a bitch through most of her time on-screen, but I always saw depth of character underneath that, and I thought it was interesting that the writers took such a well-known archetype and, in the end, turned it around, complicated it. There were hints of her vulnerability, sympathy, and complexity from the first few episodes: Boone’s comment that she’s a “functioning bulimic”; her conversation with Claire while Shannon is suntanning; her resistance to translating because she might mess it up.

Juliet’s character, on the other hand, was received rather positively by critics, but very negatively by a lot of fans. They criticized Mitchell’s acting because Juliet often came across as flat (for lack of a better word; what I’m trying to get at is that she didn’t react as emotionally as many of the other characters we’d come to know and love), but this is a character trait of Juliet, not a failing of Mitchell. Juliet’s story was always incredibly captivating for me, and so complex, and while she did things that I wouldn’t expect over and over again, afterward, I felt that her reactions were really the only possible ones for her character. She sacrifices much throughout the show, and when she turns on Sawyer in the season five finale, I found it heart wrenching and utterly believable that she would fall back and try to protect herself. And throughout all of season six, her death has been hanging over Sawyer’s character, driving his choices and decisions in much the way I wished the writers had done with Claire after Charlie’s death. If Juliet does not come back during the series finale (she’s not listed as a guest start for “What They Died For,” I will be a very, very sad little Lost fan.

Finally, if anyone is interested in playing along with my favorite character and who-would-win-in-a-fight bracket games, let me know and I’ll post the links here once I make the PDFs.

Best show ever! Except where's Juliet?!

In honor of the looming end of the best television show of all time, I’m going to dedicate some of my blog space to LOST this week and next. And first, for my own personal reminiscence, I want to talk about how I came to this show and why I love it so much.

The previews for the first season didn’t do all that much for me. I only caught a few minutes of the show once, during a boar hunt (maybe the one where Locke, Michael, and Kate go after the boar), and I was bored. Then, the week before the season one finale, a friend of mine had me watch the penultimate episode with him and became hooked. I watched the season finale totally confused and then borrowed all of season one from him. I remember I watched the final twelve episodes in one day because I couldn’t stop.

Since then, I’ve been addicted. I’ve planned my evenings around the show, going so far as to not sign up for classes that met during it (though then ABC changed the day on me and I was screwed anyway). I buy every season the day it comes out and frequently rewatch episodes. About once a year I go through the entire season, starting with episode one. I’ve introduced the show to a handful of friends and also gotten them hooked. Once a year I print up an NCAA March Madness style bracket and then pass it out to people so that we can pick our favorite characters. This year I’m thinking of doing a second one that asks the question, “Who would win in a fight between…?” which is going to take an entire new seed-selection process. I’ve been mourning the end of the show since it was announced a few years back.

And here we are, two episodes and 3.5 hours away from the end. I’m excited and I’m sad, and I love every minute of it.

Spoilers below.

Read more…

If you know me at all, you probably know that I loathe Valentine’s Day, but not for the (horribly) stereotypical reasons of loneliness, jealousy, and cynicism (though I admit, I’m a cynic). In fact, it ranks second on my list of dumbest holidays ever, coming in behind Sweetest Day and right in front of New Years Eve. It’s a Hallmark holiday, hands down. It shouldn’t be about showing your significant other that you care—that should be evident the other 364 days of the year.

I’ve been anti-Valentine’s Day for a long time, and it’s often met by disbelief from the men (boys) I’ve dated. For instance, when I told my first real boyfriend that I didn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day, he stared at me for a full five seconds before asking if that was girl talk for “Buy me something or you die,” but I digress.

30 Rock did a just lovely introduction on Thursday between Tina Fey and a young girl selling Valentine’s Day cookies, so like Tina Fey, I will now be celebrating Anna Howard Shaw Day. And I’m going to celebrate it by doing homework and, if I get enough done, spending some time with my Xbox.

For those of you choosing to stay home (or stuck at home, as you may see it), I present, for your entertainment, what I’ve been enjoying on this here holiday. First, Pride and Prejudice in Emoticons, which covers both holidays fairly well. You’ve got a somewhat sweet and sappy love story, but you also have the story of a woman who dared do things her own way. (And did I mention the link is hillarious?) And second, courtesy of my dad, I have a column from the Lansing State Journal on the dreaded Valentine’s Day Box in elementary school classrooms, which sort of gets at my point of the whole ridiculousness of this holiday. (Though by the time I was in elementary school, you either gave valentines to everyone or to no one; that changed in middle school though, three years during which I never received a Valentine from a male.)

I’ve got a few posts brewing in my head, but I’m still on a high from the game today, so I thought I’d do a quick post of links that I’ve found lately and what I’m thinking about them. Some of these ideas I want to explore in more detail later on.

Girl sues school over prom-wear. This 17-year-old is suing her school for the right to wear a tuxedo to her high school prom, saying that, as a lesbian, she doesn’t identify with the message of sexuality a dress projects. The American Family Association supports the school, saying that her sexual identity is an “impulse” and that her wearing a tuxedo sends “destructive message” to other students. This is blatant homophobia and a push for clear-cut, traditional gender roles, leaving out anyone who doesn’t conform.

Pope claims condoms “aggravate” the AIDS problem in Africa. This is not to say that abstinence is not effective, but this is looking at the spread of AIDS through Western eyes. What about addressing gender roles, rape, women who cannot, culturally, ask their parters (husbands or otherwise) to use protection? What about AIDS education? Why does the Catholic church always seem to spout one idea as the cure rather than look at the problem comprehensively? It seems that they value upholding their law more than the lives of their followers. It’s all about the message and the power, not the people, and, unfortunately, the pro-life people seem to feel the same way: that the fetus deserves more rights than the woman.

Effort in England to improve rape prosecutions.  Now, I have to admit that when I saw this headline, a part of me was worried that it would be about how rape cases are just about crazy girls trying to cover up a mistake, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was about improving the conviction rate. It’s nice to see something that recognizes the difficulty in women (or men, though that’s less talked about) seeking and achieving legal justice for the crime committed against them. Too often certain people are presented as unrapable (the victim was a man, the victim was a woman wearing seductive clothing, was drunk, she was dating or married to the perpetrator, she was asking for it, she engaged in some level of sexual activity, she’s a sex worker, she’s a lesbian, etc…) or as bitches who falsely accuse innocent men and ruin their lives. (As a note, I’ve used one sided pronouns here, not to discount rape of a man by a woman but rather as a reflection of the gender that is most often the victim.)

Tammy Bruce calls Michele Obama trashy. This is just another example of backlash toward the first family for rising up in a white-dominated world. When it’s (mostly) frowned upon to make blatant racist statements, people often resort to messages such as this.

And finally, 14-year-old girl arrested for child pornography for posting naked pictures of herself on MySpace. I find this problematic for a variety of reasons, not least because of the double standard set for females in this country that they must be simultaneously innocent and sexual.

What have you been reading in the news lately?

I’ve been wanting to put together some thoughts on this song for quite some time now, ever since I heard it for the first time three or four months ago. I’m inclined to think I like it, though its mixed and problematic messages stop me pretty much every time I hear it. This is not an argument that the song should not exist, that it should not be listened to, or that Swift and her listeners are somehow stupid. It’s an exploration of the messages that could be pulled from the lyrics in the hope that this will inspire thought and discussion about those same issues. The lyrics can be found here and the music video, here.*

First, I want to address the most obviously problematic part of this song: The myth of the love story. This idea that love can be perfect (once two people overcome the obstacles and finally end up together) is not reality, though it is a commonly accepted myth in this world, even claiming an entire genre for itself in romance novels. Now, I’m not arguing that we should do away with everything that presents love in this sort of light–I’m not a fan of censorship–but I do believe we need to be aware of the impracticality of this belief.

Now Swift does not make explicit statements in her song about living happily ever after, but that idea hangs over the entire piece by repeating her title throughout the song. And I do not think that Swift needs to address this type of issue in her song (just as I do not believe a romance novel needs to), but the listener (and Swift herself) needs to be aware of the fantasy of such a reality.

Another problematic aspect of this song is the final verse. The girl in Swift’s song gets “tired of waiting” for her Romeo to “come around.” Her “faith in him” fades as she wonders when he will “come around.” When she does find him, she asks him to “save” her. Here she not only becomes a passive member in her own love story (which is especially odd since it seems a bit of a role reversal) but also an archetypal damsel in distress. She needs to be saved, but from what? The only problem that seems to occur in the song comes from her family’s (actually, father’s, but that’s an entire other issue) dislike of her Romeo. It’s unfortunate, but it hardly seems a dire situation from which she needs to be rescued.

Finally, there are the references to Romeo and Juliet and, once, to The Scarlet Letter. Here I’m going to mainly discuss how I feel these stories have been misinterpreted and/or distorted in order for Swift to tell her story. (Not that, as a writer, you cannot appropriate.) Romeo and Juliet was not a love story but rather a tragedy that developed out of love. They were not able to be together in the end (save through death, but I doubt Swift intends to send a message supportive of teen suicide). This misinterpretation seems to come–and this is something that really bothered one of my old roommates, so the credit all goes to Lauren–from a misunderstanding of the phrase star-crossed lovers. It’s not a pretty thing; it was not written to call up pictures of lovers with stars in their eyes. It means doomed by fate, by the stars. And since Romeo and Juliet is the story of two star-crossed lovers…well, you can fill in the rest.

The Scarlet Letter mishap is more minor, but still interesting to look at. Hester Prynne was marked with the scarlet letter to shame her, as punishment for her crime (assumed adultery, since no one save Hester knows if her husband is alive or dead). Hester cannot have a relationship because she is married whereas Swift’s speaker cannot because her father says so. And I doubt Swift is forbidden because she committed adultery.

*Eventually I want to embed things like videos, but I do want to do some more research on fair use. I’m pretty sure it’s okay, but I do want to check. I also want to find some way to use something like an LJ-cut for lyrics, but I haven’t explored this theme enough to see if something like that is supported. So for now you’ll have to follow my links.