To the underworld
Apr. 9th, 2009 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniI don't know if I should be punished but, instead of marking papers in the afternoon I downloaded the last episode of Lost, "Dead is Dead" and then I watched it...
Here comes a long review with a lot of Egyptian stuff.
At least we know about Penny! I mean I couldn't believe that she was dead and I was sure that Desmond was the one who had beaten Ben to a pulp but I needed that scene. Thank you Lost.
It was a nice echo to the night when Ben took baby Alex – little Charlie playing her role as the innocent baby while Penny played both her role as the potential murdered daughter and Rousseau's role as the mother who had to be spared– and it added to Ben's character study. We were told in the previous episode that young Ben must have lost his innocence, yet he showed mercy and didn't want to kill mother and child. I think that Alex, because she was a harmless and vulnerable baby, represented his lost innocence, something he couldn't help but clinging to. It made sense that the smoke monster took her shape eventually. In a way young Ben left his "soul" in the underworld where Richard Alpert took him to save his life. There's always a price to pay, according to some balance that the Island borrowed from the Classics(the Greeks but also the Egyptians, hence the hieroglyphs, Anubis facing the monster). Alex had to die because Alex embodied the sacrifice that the island asked for when Kate and Sawyer made the decision to save Benjamin. She was Ben's heart. By the way the theme of sacrificing/saving a baby has been used on the show before with Aaron, recalling Abraham's trial and the Old Testament this time. It's also a tropes in Greek Mythology and tragedy...especially when it comes to daughters(Iphigenia for instance).
So under that temple, Ben has been facing his greatest sin but also showing his inner goodness, in a travesty of a trial that looks like the Egyptian weighing of the heart (Ib). The episode works like the book of Dead.
I really like the fact that Ben is both instrumental to the other characters' journey (something that "What Happened Happened" pointed out) and a true character himself, with weaknesses, emotions and a kind of a journey.
John Locke was uber cool again. Terry O'Quinn never ceases to amaze me. He is such a talented actor! I like self-confident Locke as much as I like vulnerable Locke. And he still wanted to help Ben in the end. There's something very pure in Locke. If I wanted to connect his journey to ancient Egypt again, I'd say it is his Ka or rather his Akh (which is the Ka released by death plus the Ba), a sort of ghost living in afterlife– that is seen walking around.
Or perhaps Locke is Osiris himself...except that the role kinda suits Richard Alpert, the man who wears khôl and never ages!
Also what Ilana (whom I recognised at least as the bitch Gaia from Rome!) asked Lapidus before hitting him was quite intriguing: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?". Well, the shadow (sheut) was one of the various parts of someone's "soul" (along with Ib, Ka, Akh, Ren and Ba). Nobody could exist without a shadow for it contained something of the person it represents. The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure painted completely black, as a figure of death.
Isn't Ben supposed to become John Locke's shadow now, following him everywhere?
But there's more. Ba was everything that made an individual unique, similar to the notion of "personality'", so it struck me that John Locke insisted in telling Sun that, despite having died and then being back to the living(or so it seems), he was still the same man he has always been. He also pointed out that Ben following and asking questions he had no answers to, was a way for Ben to know what it was to be him(that is John Locke).
So actually many scenes of this episode recalled The Book of The Dead.
The Book of the Dead, is the collection of spells that helped a person in their afterlife journey, had the Egyptian name of the Book of going forth by day. It was about avoiding the perils of the afterlife so it contained spells to assure "not dying a second time in the underworld".
What did John Locke say again to Ben when they arrived on the main island's dock? That there would be no point for him to die a second time!
And the ghost of Alex warned Ben against not trying to kill John Locke again. The spells from the Coffin Texts were also there to "grant memory always" to a person, so I wonder if there's a connection to what happened to young Ben when Richard Alpert brought him to the temple and if it could somehow explain Ben's memory loss.
Speaking of docks, I liked the parallel between the Locke/Ben scene on the island and the marina scene, with Ben being trown this time off the dock and into the water after Desmond beated him. Little details like that make me love Lost.
Speaking of little details I'm wondering whether Rousseau's music box that the camera showed when Ben stole Alex, was supposed to establish a connection to Sun and her ballerina.
On a last and more shallow note, the way Ben summoned the Smoke Monster made me laugh. I mean, it was like flushing the toilet or rather emptying the very dirty water ouf of a bathtub/basin and it reminded me of the French phrase "ne pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain!" which fitted the episode. But I guess it's simply a metaphor about the muddy waters of one's subconscious and about clearing up one conscience.
In other news I really hope that Fox isn't going to cancel Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It has flaws but I'm hooked, and it's funny to watch the birth of A.I on that show especially since I'm reading Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 .
Did I say how much I love Richard Powers? He's really becoming my favourite American writer, along with Daniel Mendelsohn.
Here comes a long review with a lot of Egyptian stuff.
At least we know about Penny! I mean I couldn't believe that she was dead and I was sure that Desmond was the one who had beaten Ben to a pulp but I needed that scene. Thank you Lost.
It was a nice echo to the night when Ben took baby Alex – little Charlie playing her role as the innocent baby while Penny played both her role as the potential murdered daughter and Rousseau's role as the mother who had to be spared– and it added to Ben's character study. We were told in the previous episode that young Ben must have lost his innocence, yet he showed mercy and didn't want to kill mother and child. I think that Alex, because she was a harmless and vulnerable baby, represented his lost innocence, something he couldn't help but clinging to. It made sense that the smoke monster took her shape eventually. In a way young Ben left his "soul" in the underworld where Richard Alpert took him to save his life. There's always a price to pay, according to some balance that the Island borrowed from the Classics(the Greeks but also the Egyptians, hence the hieroglyphs, Anubis facing the monster). Alex had to die because Alex embodied the sacrifice that the island asked for when Kate and Sawyer made the decision to save Benjamin. She was Ben's heart. By the way the theme of sacrificing/saving a baby has been used on the show before with Aaron, recalling Abraham's trial and the Old Testament this time. It's also a tropes in Greek Mythology and tragedy...especially when it comes to daughters(Iphigenia for instance).
So under that temple, Ben has been facing his greatest sin but also showing his inner goodness, in a travesty of a trial that looks like the Egyptian weighing of the heart (Ib). The episode works like the book of Dead.
I really like the fact that Ben is both instrumental to the other characters' journey (something that "What Happened Happened" pointed out) and a true character himself, with weaknesses, emotions and a kind of a journey.
John Locke was uber cool again. Terry O'Quinn never ceases to amaze me. He is such a talented actor! I like self-confident Locke as much as I like vulnerable Locke. And he still wanted to help Ben in the end. There's something very pure in Locke. If I wanted to connect his journey to ancient Egypt again, I'd say it is his Ka or rather his Akh (which is the Ka released by death plus the Ba), a sort of ghost living in afterlife– that is seen walking around.
Or perhaps Locke is Osiris himself...except that the role kinda suits Richard Alpert, the man who wears khôl and never ages!
Also what Ilana (whom I recognised at least as the bitch Gaia from Rome!) asked Lapidus before hitting him was quite intriguing: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?". Well, the shadow (sheut) was one of the various parts of someone's "soul" (along with Ib, Ka, Akh, Ren and Ba). Nobody could exist without a shadow for it contained something of the person it represents. The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure painted completely black, as a figure of death.
Isn't Ben supposed to become John Locke's shadow now, following him everywhere?
But there's more. Ba was everything that made an individual unique, similar to the notion of "personality'", so it struck me that John Locke insisted in telling Sun that, despite having died and then being back to the living(or so it seems), he was still the same man he has always been. He also pointed out that Ben following and asking questions he had no answers to, was a way for Ben to know what it was to be him(that is John Locke).
So actually many scenes of this episode recalled The Book of The Dead.
The Book of the Dead, is the collection of spells that helped a person in their afterlife journey, had the Egyptian name of the Book of going forth by day. It was about avoiding the perils of the afterlife so it contained spells to assure "not dying a second time in the underworld".
What did John Locke say again to Ben when they arrived on the main island's dock? That there would be no point for him to die a second time!
And the ghost of Alex warned Ben against not trying to kill John Locke again. The spells from the Coffin Texts were also there to "grant memory always" to a person, so I wonder if there's a connection to what happened to young Ben when Richard Alpert brought him to the temple and if it could somehow explain Ben's memory loss.
Speaking of docks, I liked the parallel between the Locke/Ben scene on the island and the marina scene, with Ben being trown this time off the dock and into the water after Desmond beated him. Little details like that make me love Lost.
Speaking of little details I'm wondering whether Rousseau's music box that the camera showed when Ben stole Alex, was supposed to establish a connection to Sun and her ballerina.
On a last and more shallow note, the way Ben summoned the Smoke Monster made me laugh. I mean, it was like flushing the toilet or rather emptying the very dirty water ouf of a bathtub/basin and it reminded me of the French phrase "ne pas jeter le bébé avec l'eau du bain!" which fitted the episode. But I guess it's simply a metaphor about the muddy waters of one's subconscious and about clearing up one conscience.
In other news I really hope that Fox isn't going to cancel Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It has flaws but I'm hooked, and it's funny to watch the birth of A.I on that show especially since I'm reading Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 .
Did I say how much I love Richard Powers? He's really becoming my favourite American writer, along with Daniel Mendelsohn.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 05:36 pm (UTC)Any explanation for Christian? And Claire? I'm completely baffled by those two.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 05:48 pm (UTC)Well Christian was already dead when the show started, and was coffin-man a long time before Locke. I think that Claire died too. She died in the explosion.
But maybe they all died in the crash to begin with but haven't accepted it yet. Or maybe they are all dying in that plane crash but fulfilling their journey in their last seconds that stretched into 6 seasons of Lost thanks to some poetic licence.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that the show keeps telling us that the island is either the place of death or an afterlife. Jin said it was death, and this episode isn't titled "Dead is dead" for nothing.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 05:55 pm (UTC)Them being dead/dying is a theory that makes sense, but the writers said all along that it wasn't that ... I guess it's possible that they were telling porkies but hmmmm, I don't know. I'm just sooooo confused, Chani!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 07:31 pm (UTC)It's funny how much it looks like Richard wears kohl, and how the rumor has gotten so bad that Nestor Carbonell commented on it, apparently he doesn't use it at all! :)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 08:09 pm (UTC)I am not convinced by what Nestor Carbonel said. ;- )