Perception Lost

From the opening shot of season 1, episode 1, the hit ABC TV show Lost has been all about perspective. Those tuned in to ABC on the night of September 22, 2004 were greeted with a close up of an eye, belonging to Jack Shephard. Minutes later, as Jack is shaking off the cobwebs from his blackout, the camera does this weird thing where it appears to be presenting a view of the island from Jack's perspective, then quickly pans out, does a 180, and is now on Jack. All of this is the writers' way of cluing us in, that things are not going to be quite the way they seem. Again, it's all about perspective.

With this blog, I intend to publish my thoughts about Lost being a show that intends, above all else that it seeks to do, to show its viewers that our perceptions are, at best, faulty. Viewed through this lens, Lost is then essentially about the same thing as the Biblical narrative of the Fall of Adam and Eve in Eden and Milton's Paradise Lost. Recall from the 3rd chapter of the book of Genesis that the sin that beget all Sin involved Adam and Eve eating fruit from a tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The blogs I publish here will all focus on making connections between this fact and the themes of the show. My point will be that the evil we encounter in our fallen world, as well as the problems that present themselves in the plot of the show and in the viewers' perceptions of the show and its characters, are the result of our desire as fallen human beings to judge for ourselves what/who is good and what/who is evil.

I'll post my first full blog soon. I love this show, and doing this should be lots of fun.