The Apes Get Lost
Lord, I’m getting lazy. But my brain was fried from the past two blogs and some personal stuff. Yeah, yeah, every whiner has an excuse, right? Back on the subject of Lost…. I read this analogy and thought you would enjoy it too. No, I didn’t write it (I said I was lazy), but I took the time to find it, read it, and…. share it with you. That counts for something, right? GG
The *real* Jacob? lol
Click to enlarge
Source: Doc Jensen
Using Planet of the Apes to analyze where Lost has come from.
LOST: SEASON 1
Introduces the world. Establishes a central conflict between castaway visitors and the Others, the seemingly hostile inhabitants of the Island. Ends with the discovery of The Black Rock, a symbolically loaded landmark that speaks ironically to various deep themes.
PLANET OF THE APES
Introduces the world. Establishes a central conflict between castaway visitors and the Apes, the seemingly hostile inhabitants of the world. Ends with the discovery of the Statue of Liberty, a symbolically loaded landmark that speaks ironically to various deep themes.
LOST: SEASON 2
The dramatic arc of season 1 is revisited and reinterpreted through a separate group of castaways, the Tailies. A subterranean-based culture is discovered, one that blends science, religion, and doomsday weirdness. A character of monumental importance (Desmond) appears at the very beginning, vanishes, and then shows up at the very end to activate a bomb. The season ends with an explosive event that sets the stage for a time-travel story in the next season.
BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES
The dramatic arc of the first film is revisited and reinterpreted through a new group of astronauts. A subterranean-based culture is discovered, one that blends science, religion, and doomsday weirdness. A character of monumental importance (Charlton Heston’s Taylor) appears at the very beginning, vanishes, and then shows up at the very end to activate a bomb. The movie ends with an explosive event that destroys the world and sets the stage for a time-travel story in the next movie.
LOST: SEASON 3
A dramatic change of setting and focus: Three castaways — Jack, Kate, and Sawyer — are abducted and relocated to the world of the Others, where they are held against their will in a zoology facility. A time-travel storyline introduces the possibility of a circular framework to the entire saga. The climactic conflict hinges on the future survival of the Others, the ostensible antagonists of the first two seasons.
ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES
A dramatic change of setting and focus: Three protagonists — a trio of refugee chimps — travel into the distant past of their ‘’Others,'’ the humans, where they are held against their will in a zoology facility. The time-travel storyline introduces the possibility of a circular framework for the entire saga. The climactic conflict hinges on the future survival of the entire super-sentient simian species, the ostensible antagonists of the first two seasons.
(Uncanny, huh? And I didn’t even tell you yet how all of this also correlates to Hegel’s five-step Master/Slave myth! Come back in late July for my first special hiatus edition of Doc Jensen, when I’ll show you how the last two Apes flicks — Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes — and Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes will correlate to the final three seasons of Lost!)
June 1st, 2007 at 5:54 am
wow man, just wow
June 1st, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Hi GG and fellow losties!
good stuff about the planet of the apes - never a dull moment around the “island”.
me, I’m working on the correlation between our favorite TV show and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” as my summer project.
google paradise lost and check out the books and descriptions.
afterall, can January be that far away?!!
take care all!!
June 4th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I finally got my first two seasons of LOST that I got for a really good deal on ebay…….I’ve been waiting for weeks, and they finally came, and I open up the package and there they are………………in Chinese.
I am so stinkin pissed off at this moron who was supposedly from Canada that had them on ebay. In the item description, he says they are in English. Gosh I can’t stand this. But now I’m done venting and I’m off to the store to pay full price for the ENGLISH version.
June 4th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Bruce: Please share when you are done. Full credit to you, of course.
Foffman: That is a terrible story. I think you can report them to *the powers that be* at Ebay. We have a used video game store here that also sells DVDs. You should check something like that out (There is also a national chain called EB Games that sells used DVDs). Have you tried Amazon?
June 4th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I’ve found that watching Lost in the original Madarin Chinese yields insights that I hadn’t thought of in the english translations.
I think Foffmann might be acting a bit hastily here - afterall, Mandarin is a language that you can pick up in a few days of focused studying!
Just kidding my brother - hang in there, truly a bummer.
GG - if anything comes of the Paradise Lost connection will be glad to share. the thing I’ve been bouncing around recently - do think that the bulk of the folks on the mountain top with Jack do get rescued by the folks from the ship (kate included). Then, the ones that don’t depart are subjected to the kind of treatment that Ben warned about. So we spend the next season with the on-islanders and the rescued islanders - but the on-islanders are able to communicate to some diminished capacity - which leads the “rescued” to the emotional traumas that we saw demonstrated by Jack. The following season we get the return to the island.
too bad the show doesn’t generate speculation.
As always, GG - thanks for the use of the hall.
Bruce
June 4th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
so anyway, for anyone out there that needs something to play with this summer - courtesy of Wikipedia to get you started…
“Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books; a second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (mimicking the division of Virgil’s Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification.
The poem concerns the Judeo-Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton’s purpose, stated in Book I, is “to justify the ways of God to men” (l. 26) and elucidate the conflict between His eternal foresight and free will.
The main protagonist of this epic is the fallen angel, Satan. Looked at from a modern perspective it may appear to some that Milton presents Satan sympathetically, as an ambitious and proud being who defies his tyrannical creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on Heaven, only to be defeated and cast down.
The story is innovative in that it attempts to reconcile the Christian and Pagan traditions: like Shakespeare, Milton found Christian theology lacking, requiring something more. He tries to incorporate Paganism, classical Greek references and Christianity within the story. He greatly admired the classics but intended this work to surpass them.
The poem grapples with many difficult theological issues, including fate, predestination, and the Trinity” -
and haven’t we been dealing with seasons worth of falling from grace, devil-like characters, fate, predestination, and the Trinity -
let’s see, Ben as God, Locke (who is risen from the dead) at the Christ, and Jacob as the Holy Ghost.
have not we been dealing with the struggle between good and evil.
this should keep us amused until January.
and just think, right now there is someone turning Lost into their Doctoral Thesis.
Bueno!
June 5th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Yeah I WAY overreacted. I was upset at the time, but now that I have it in English, I look back and find it kind of humorous.