[This week’s edition of Overthinking Lost covers all of season one and nothing else.]
I once read that every genre of literature has, at its core, a question. In a romance novel, for instance, the question is, “Will the protagonist find her happiness with her true love?” It doesn’t matter that we know going into it that the answer is, and always will be, “yes.” More important is how the question is answered. Other genres have other overarching questions. A mystery, at its core, will always ask, “Why did this murder occur?” A fantasy novel will often (but not always) ask, “Will good triumph against evil?” A children’s book will tend to ask something along the lines of, “How will this child grow up?” These questions will not always be asked explicitly, nor will the answers always be pat and obvious. But they are there.
Lost does not fall under any of these genres. So, then, what genre is it? I think we have two options. Option one is: Lost is a postmodern ontological mystery (much like, say, Sartre’s No Exit). Option two is: Lost is a work of science-fiction. Or, I suppose there’s always option three: Lost is both.
So far, we have more proof that Lost is an ontological mystery. An ontological mystery is a mystery that asks not, “Why was this person murdered?” but, “Where the hell are we? What is this place the author set up?” This question came up explicitly in Lost’s pilot. Charlie said, “Guys. Where are we?” That is the main question of season one. I will get to the answer, or lack thereof, to that question in a moment.
The other option, which some of you suggested in your comments on my earlier entries of this series, is that Lost is a work of science-fiction. The strange metallic sounds mixed in with the roars coming from the island’s Monster in the season finale strongly suggests there’s sci-fi afoot. (Yes, I’m crossing my fingers for robots. Didn’t you read that comment I made on ShadowBanker’s zombie article?) The major question a work of science-fiction tends to ask is, “Based on where we are now, where are we, as a species, going?”
Let’s consider the “where are we?” question first. So, where are we? What is the island? Why are the characters there? What’s the point?
Burn Notice, for those of you without cable, follows the weekly adventures of Michael Westen, a former U.S. intelligence agent. Put on a blacklist (i.e., “burned”) by his employers, Michael got stuck in Miami with very little cash, no job history he can bank on and a globe full of enemies. To make ends meet while figuring out who burned him, and why, Michael helps people whose enemies live above the law. Think