Thursday, April 9, 2009

Not so Lost: Dead Is Dead

The tv show Lost actually had an episode last night that, believe it or not, actually answered some questions and made some reveals about how the island works. Probably the biggest was the tie in of the smoke monster, as referenced in Egyptian hieroglyphics, to Anubis (the Egyptian god of the afterlife) and proving that the smoke monster "judges" those on the island and DOES take corporal form of people who have died on the island.

So, the show does kind of touch on theories that have been kicked around for years: purgatory, time travel, giant vivarium,...could aliens be that far behind? Check out the screen-capture below: is that a UFO in the upper left part? Please tell me this show doesn't with a Stargate/Fifth Element ripoff theory?!!!!

The theory of Dharma coming to the island to use it as a vivarium is particularly interesting, especially when coupled with the ideas of flawed heroes who have to save the world from destruction (remember pressing the button every 108 seconds supposedly staved off destruction and cued hieroglyphics in the resetting of a clock?), which is an allusion to the Watchmen graphic novel. This in turn makes one think of Ozymandias from that book, and his misguided intentions to save humanity through whatever means necessary. (Kind of sounds like Ben and Widmore on Lost doing the same for the island.) And coming back full circle (since we know Lost LOVES to reference literary works), we come to sonnets written by Percy Shelley and Horace Smith, each titled "Ozymandias." IMO, these can be alluded to the general themes of Lost:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
—Percy Shelley

And the Smith sonnet:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
—Horace Smith

Guess we'll know once the 4 toed statue is officially explained! It's fairly well known that statue will be Anubis.

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