Captain PMS, 10/23

Captain’s Blog Stardate 10/29

Warning: If you haven’t seen last weeks episode of Lost, but are planning to watch it soon, disengage, I repeat, disengage.

C.L. said they wouldn’t want to bother you with their “newly discovered theories about a crazy island and the Others.” This was probably appreciated by most of you, however, I fully plan on bothering you with mine. Mine are not quite theories actually, they are more like comments, since I do my best not to guess at what is going to happen on Lost. This weekend when I sat down and watched the episode, I realized early on why Dr. Rog used the show as an example when discussing Foucault. The pacemaker bit was brilliant although, I must say, predictable if you were in postmodernism class on Tuesday. While normally I might have been wondering if Sawyer’s heart would explode any minute, instead I realized that they had not put anything in him at all, but were using his fear against him to gain control. I can’t think of a better example of the Panopticon prison technique. Then they further their control by showing him that he has no place to go should he escape. Brilliant. The question, of course, is why? We know they want Jack to fix creepy guy’s tumor ridden spine, but unlike prisoners who have committed a crime and been found guilty, the prisoners of Lost are seemingly not guilty of directly hurting the Others, unless you count self-defense. You have to admit though the Others are incredibly discriminating when it comes to the facts they opt to reveal, as if they somehow have a right to pass judgment…which let’s face it, they might. Either way my guess is that neither side is right or wrong and much like the war we find ourselves engaged in now, both sides have their angle and self-righteousness to fall back on, as was witnessed with the Others realization this week that they haven’t adequately protected their own. From above the operating room the husband of the dying woman could be heard saying, “They did this. They did this.” Binary opposition at its best.