The Aaron Theory ... etc

[verdantheart]

From Entertainment Weekly:

EW senior writer Jeff Jensen solves the show! (Or so he thinks...) Disagree with him? Then post your own best guesses about the hatch, the Dharma Initiative, and other mysteries

Every month EW will turn to our shadowy operative inside the world of Lost for insight. Burn this when you're done. The truth is out there.

1. THE ISLAND: It's Alive!
Our theory of Lost begins with the question posed in the pilot by smack-addled rocker Charlie: ''Guys...where are we?'' Some have argued that the island could be a hallucination — ''A Psychological Shipwreck,'' to use the title of an 1879 short story by Lost-linked author Ambrose Bierce. Or an alien twilight zone. It's tempting to go with ''limbo'' — an elastic enough idea to corral the show's incredible coincidences and odd details, like a smoke monster and a band of child-swiping Others. But we believe the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 aren't stuck in a mass delusion or a satanic mousetrap. They're alive on the island. A haunted island. And it was made that way by the Dharma Initiative.

2. THE DHARMA INITIATIVE: Head Games
What we know about Dharma is incomplete at best, utterly bogus at worst. According to a choppy ''orientation film'' found in the hatch, Dharma founders Gerald and Karen DeGroot established a research facility on the island in the 1970s to conduct experiments in meteorology, zoology, electromagnetism, psychology, and parapsychology — a dubious science that believes the brain houses mind-over-matter powers. (Think X-Men, Jedi Knights, and sci-fi author Robert Heinlein, whose 1941 short story Lost Legacy is about kids realizing their psychic potential under the tutelage of — COINCIDENCE ALERT! — Ambrose Bierce.) Our theory is that intentionally or not, the Dharma team pulled loose psychic powers from one of its test subjects — skip to No. 5 for the answer about who that might be — with disastrous results. How? With fear. Where? Where else, down in...

3. THE HATCH: Human Testing
The orientation film claims the hatch was originally used to study the island's ''unique'' electromagnetic energy. And indeed, there is a curious wall that seems to be humming with the stuff. But the filmstrip also states that the DeGroots were following B.F. Skinner, a psychologist famous for his Skinner boxes: controlled environments used to study animal behavior. Folks, the hatch is a human Skinner box.

Why wasn't this mentioned in the orientation film? Because the orientation film is part of the experiment! The film was fiction, designed to induce paranoia and fear and observe the test subject's reaction. What Dharma was studying was the behavior every Lost fanatic engages in: the human imperative to organize seemingly random details into some kind of order. The problem is that someone — someone we haven't seen or met yet — was put in the hatch and had a psychic break of world-altering proportions.

4. THE NUMBERS: Those Damn Yankees!
It has been Lost's most baffling conundrum: the seemingly inexplicable connection between Hurley's havoc-causing Lotto picks — 4 8 15 16 23 42 — and the hatch's computer code. This is a two-part riddle. First, the original purpose of the numbers: Skinner box experiments require test subjects to execute empty tasks, like pulling levers or, say, inputting digits into a computer. The Dharma-ites chose the sequence because...they were big Yankee fans, and each number correlates to a retired Yankee jersey. But the second question is far more important: What purpose do the numbers serve now? There are lots of out-there (and fun) ways to go with this, but the truth is that the numbers don't do anything. The ''cursed'' digits are just one more sinister detail in Dharma's elaborate sleight of hand intended to freak out test subjects. The problem was that extreme stress on the subject in the hatch combined with the electromagnetic energy down there to jar loose some suppressed psychic powers. And it jarred them loose in the wrong individual. In that explosive moment, the once meaningless digits were encoded with devilish life. Hence, Hurley's bad luck, and a virus that is rewriting reality on the island.

5. THE ANSWER TO 'LOST': The Island Is Haunted by a Powerful Psychic
The Dharma experiments resulted in the creation of a potent disembodied being. A being deeply steeped in pop culture — think about all the novels, comic books, and random flotsam that make up the DNA of Lost — and powerful enough to bring those bits of pop culture to life. Someone who imprinted his consciousness on the island. Someone whose radioactive corpse was walled up in the hatch. Someone named Aaron.

So how did the Oceanic crew end up on the island? Aaron summoned them, because he has as-yet-undetermined uses for each of them...and he needed a new body. The body of a then-unborn baby. Claire's baby. Which is why the Others (Aaron's followers) have tried to kidnap her child. And why they had to snatch poor, psychic Walt — remember that dead bird from season 1? — who was the only one with the ability to see through their plan.

Of course, the castaways could all be dead. It could be a mass hallucination. The Others could be trying to secure franchise rights to the Twilight Zone Dairy Queen. But this is our story, and we're sticking to it. At least until the start of the next episode.

Go to the link to email Jeff with your response or alternative theory.

 

[verdantheart]

Follow up, at EW:

'Lost' in E-Mails

Jeff Jensen responds to your burning questions about his Big Theory (next week: a round-up of reader theories)

''Brilliant!'' ''Impossible!'' ''I didn't understand one word of it!'' ''You have wayyyyy too much time on your hands.''

Yep: Doc Jensen's Lost Super-String Theory certainly got a reaction out of you — a whole heaping bunch of 'yous.' As I write these words on Thursday morning, less than 12 hours after the ''Maternity Leave'' episode of Lost (Claire! Eko! Scary needles! Even scarier close-ups of Rousseau's haunted French face!), your e-mail responses continue to flood my inbox. Sample: ''Your theory sounds an awful lot like the plot to Akira,'' writes Jesse. (Dear Jesse: You're right! Mad props to manga auteur Katsuhiro Otomo!) ''Wow, that's some deep stuff and I must admit I LOVE it,'' raves Mindy Cardenas. ''You have been officially labeled a Crazy.'' (Dear Mindy: I wear ''Crazy'' with great pride. Namaste!)

Of course, there was also this from a reader named Hen: ''Such felgercarb.'' (Dear Hen: ''Hen''?) And Haneen Hussein was even more succinct, writing simply: ''Lost.''

Indeed, even among those who really dug my argument — that the island is being controlled by a powerful disembodied psychic named Aaron who's conspiring to take possession of Baby Aaron (let's call it ''the Aaron Theory'' for short) — there were some nagging doubts and burning questions about my kooky conclusions. So here's what we're going to do. This week, I'm going to answer some of these questions, and in the process, throw some radical new ideas and analysis at you. (Can't wait to get your feedback on my ''Satanic'' interpretation of Lost — see below.) Then, next week, I'm going to report on all your theories — from Sean Dunleavy's elaborate comparison of Lost to Animal Farm, to Patrick Lucy's ''nature versus nurture'' meditation, to the countless variations of the popular ''I think everyone's dead and stuck in Purgatory'' theory. So, without further ado:

BURNING QUESTION: How does the new information about the Others disclosed in ''Maternity Leave'' affect the Aaron Theory?
ANSWER: The Aaron Theory stated that the Others are working to put Evil Aaron's disembodied mind back into a body. ''Maternity Leave'' didn't offer any proof to the contrary — though the discovery of costumes, fake beards, and makeup glue in the Hospital Hatch indicates that the Others aren't the tropical hillbillies we thought they were. Perhaps this Cult of Aaron is akin to the real-life Raelian movement, a high-tech UFO religion fixated with immortality and cloning. Regardless, it appears the Others — who may be part of the Dharma Initiative, or may be a separate group that has hijacked or co-opted Dharma's facilities — have a flair for the theatrical. Which makes me wonder if creating drama — or psychodrama, to be Freudian about it — is part of their plan.

BURNING QUESTION: Why does Doc Jensen believe that the Aaron Theory's disembodied psychic — a former Dharma test subject who went psycho from Skinner-box experimentation — is, like Claire's baby, named Aaron?
ANSWER: Your most frequently asked question. I based this idea on the incident in the episode titled ''The 23rd Psalm,'' in which Mr. Eko asked Claire why she named her baby Aaron. ''I just... like it,'' she said. This struck me as conspicuously ambiguous, and led me to wonder if perhaps some subliminal force — say, a certain disembodied psychic entity — prompted Claire to take a shine to this name.

BURNING QUESTION: How does the Aaron Theory explain the incredible coincidences in Lost — everything from Desmond, an acquaintance from Jack's past who was found in the Hatch, to the way all the characters intersect in the flashbacks?
ANSWER: Your second most frequently asked question. And the answer is: synchronicity — as in Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity, a subconscious force that binds all life. The Police recorded a song about Jung's hypothesis, and Sting's lyrics do a much better job of summing it up: ''A connecting principle/ Linked to the invisible/ Almost imperceptible...'' (In fact, the song ''Synchronicity'' may sum up a lot of Lost. For example: Does ''They know you/ They know me/ Extra-sensory/ Synchronicity'' = The Others and Evil Aaron?) The upshot of synchronicity is that nothing is coincidental — we just can't see the complex sequence of factors that shape what we call ''reality.'' In this regard, synchronicity is echoed by various theories within the field of quantum physics. Now, sci-fi writers looooove synchronicity theory and quantum mechanics, because both allow for the possibility that that the fabric of reality and even the space/time continuum can be manipulated by psychic minds and mad scientists. Hence, someone who could access and wield these forces could do things like, say, forge connections between strangers, or even alter reality so that people could survive a plane crash. Specifically, how does this explain Desmond? Given the clout that Jack has among the castaways, the good doctor is a significant threat to Evil Aaron's plans. The attribute that Jack possesses that makes him so threatening is his skeptical, hyper-rational mind. Therefore, it's in Evil Aaron's best interests to make Jack doubt his own instincts. What I'm saying is that Desmond was brought to the island to basically fry Jack's logic grid. But that's assuming that Desmond is actually real; he could easily be a hallucination.

BURNING QUESTION: So… just how did Doc Jensen come up with the Aaron Theory?
ANSWER: By following the clues, dudes! Lost has a conspicuous habit of name-checking books, like The Turn of the Screw, The Third Policeman, and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Screw is a trippy ghost story/psychological thriller; Policeman's main character is a dead guy; Bridge is about a guy who fantasizes about surviving his own execution. Now: All three books are examples of trickster fiction that employ what lit majors call an ''unreliable narrator.'' With that in mind, consider anew the Hatch, a.k.a. Station Three: The Swan. In fact, go to this website and check out the Station Three logo: Is that really a swan surrounded by I Ching symbols — or is that a serpent trapped inside a snake charmer's basket? Now, click on that swan/snake and watch the orientation film. That music at the beginning and the end — that's snake-charmer music, people! And Dr. Marvin Candle's closing salutation, ''Namaste''? You can anagram that word into ''Me Satan.'' Finally, remember the episode ''One of Them,'' which introduced us to an alleged Other named Henry Gale? The episode is actually an elaborate homage to the classic Twilight Zone episode ''The Howling Man,'' in which a reclusive religious order captures a man suspected of being Satan. YOU MUST WATCH ''THE HOWLING MAN''! The phrases ''Dharma,'' ''Lost,'' and ''One of Them'' are all conspicuously referenced. Am I suggesting that Dharma was trying to capture Satan, or perhaps cure mankind of ''original sin''? Maybe. But at the very least, these devilish little details — combined with the Skinner-box nature of the Hatch — strongly suggest that nothing is what it seems when it comes to the Dharma Initiative. Which is why I think the orientation film is totally bogus. Now, a skeptical mind could conclude that the Dharma mythology, combined with the costumes and fake beards found in the Hospital Hatch = ''giant hoax.'' However, ''giant hoax'' doesn't quite explain the monster, or how all these people could have survived that plane crash, or Hurley's cursed numbers, or Walt's peculiar psychic abilities. So what I decided to do was pull a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup: I combined ''supernatural'' and ''giant hoax'' into one great taste! And there you go: the Aaron Theory.

BURNING QUESTION: How come Locke can walk?
ANSWER: Many of you wondered why the Aaron Theory failed to address this question. Simple: I ran out of space! Locke's ability to walk anew is neatly explained by the popular Purgatory or Hallucination theories of Lost. But the Aaron Theory works, too: Evil Aaron could have repaired Locke's legs, or, because the island is suffused with ESP energy, Locke could be subconsciously harnessing it and willing himself to walk again — a true example of mind over matter. HOWEVER: I'm betting that Lost is plotting a big twist about Locke's legs. After all: we're only assuming that Locke was paralyzed or paraplegic. What if he wasn't? What if Locke was in a wheelchair because of a psychosomatic illness? Yep: I'm thinking Locke could walk all along — he just thought he couldn't. (Forgive me for being simplistic about a serious psychological malady.)

BURNING QUESTION: Was the Aaron Theory incorrect in claiming that the Numbers were ''retired Yankee jerseys''?
ANSWER: Apparently so, according to dozens of e-mails we received from various New York Yankees fans and astute sports nerds. Paul Bosler wrote: ''...the number 42 is NOT retired. It is still worn by Mariano Rivera, the Yankees' closer. Major League Baseball has requested that every team retire 42 because of Jackie Robinson. As far as I know the Yankees are the only team that has not done so.'' We stand corrected, though in our defense, the Aaron Theory survives this inaccuracy, because it argues that The Numbers were a string of arbitrary digits that originally had no intrinsic meaning or function, but became ''cursed'' as a consequence of a psychic catastrophe. Nonetheless: We should have been more careful with our facts and words, especially around touchy Yankee fans. We're sorry. Now: Can you stop flooding my e-mail box with Bronx cheers?

BURNING QUESTION: Why couldn't Doc Jensen just make it easy on himself and fall back on the Purgatory Theory to explain everything?
ANSWER: Purgatory is, by far, the most popular Lost theory out there. Personally, I'm not wild about it: Purgatory is both a very specific religious idea and a pretty nebulous creative concept. Sure, purgatory as an abstract notion could explain all of the show's baffling details — but it would be as unfulfilling as chalking everything up to magic, or saying it was ''just a dream.'' However, I would be willing to accept the Hallucination Theory — specifically, a mass hallucination, built out of bits and pieces of everyone's imagination. In fact, I was actually torn between running the Aaron Theory and what I'd like to call the ''Fear of Flying'' Theory. I am specifically referring to a comic book story called ''Fear of Flying'' that was published in Swamp Thing #71, circa 1988. In this tale, Swamp Thing is flying through the sky and encounters a ghostly plane filled with disembodied souls who think they're still alive and still travelling to their destination. Notes the hero: ''As a group, they have refused to accept the loss of their physical bodies. So they carry on, as if nothing happened. Reinforcing each other's skewered vision of reality. Haunting the sky itself.'' I think this idea can be applied to Lost without asserting that the characters on the show are actually dead... but that's a theory for another time. As for why we ultimately decided to go with the Aaron Theory, and its contention that the island is a real place... well, because it was more interesting. And frankly, anything else — even Hallucination — feels like a cop-out.

BURNING QUESTION: How does the Aaron Theory explain Smokey the monster?
ANSWER: Back in January, I postulated that Smokey was created by the Dharma Initiative to serve as a quality control agent on an island that is basically a giant factory designed to manufacture better, more enlightened people. Some of you asked if the Aaron Theory marks a repudiation of my original Smokey hypothesis, to which I say: ''Yes.'' I now believe that Smokey is actually the manifestation of Evil Aaron's superego, responsible for squelching all of the island's bad ideas — and perhaps, Evil Aaron's own dark thoughts. It could be the case that Evil Aaron is actually at war with himself: Smokey the superego could be trying to stop this mad plan to hijack Baby Aaron's body. However, Smokey could be a separate bundle of weirdness altogether. If you belong in the camp that believes that the island was enchanted well before Dharma and the Others got there, Smokey could serve as its guardian — much like the Marvel Comics character Man-Thing, a twisted twin of Swamp Thing. Man-Thing is a mindless beast that has a nasty habit of killing anyone who shows fear — shades of Smokey, no? Moreover, Man-Thing's job is to protect something called ''The Nexus of Realities'' — a portal to alternate worlds. Wouldn't it be funny if in the end, Lost is revealed to be a crazy synthesis of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing comic books?

BURNING QUESTION: Does Doc Jensen REALLY believe in his ''Aaron Theory''?
ANSWER: Honestly, it doesn't matter. For me, Lost is an allegory for a troubling age of catastrophe and confusion, manipulation and misdirection. Lost is a mythology show about mythology shows; it dramatizes the romance of mystery and the impulse to impose order on chaos and how the two compliment and nullify each other; it shows how far we'll go to find something to believe in — and how far we'll go to not believe in anything. That's Doc J's real theory of Lost... but writing about disembodied psychics is so much more fun!

 

[verdantheart]

A couple of comments. First, I find the Aaron Theory rather amusing, but just as hokey as anything else. If it boiled down to "evil disembodied psychic schemes to be reborn," I'd be a little disappointed, I must say. :lol: And, the answer to "So… just how did Doc Jensen come up with the Aaron Theory?"? Well, that's clear as . . . mud. BTW, I remember "The Howling Man" very well. Not quite sure what it has to do with the Aaron Theory, though. Um, "it argues that The Numbers were a string of arbitrary digits that originally had no intrinsic meaning or function, but became ''cursed'' as a consequence of a psychic catastrophe"? Any low-digit number can be given significance--and therefore any high-digit number can also when broken down into low-digit numbers. Give me a sequence of numbers and I'm sure I'd be able to figure out some meaning to them. It's what numerology is all about. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the numbers have intrinsic meaning or not; people will give them meaning. Oh well, enough quibbling for now! :lol:

 

[ConcreteGirl]

I recently read the article. I found it very interesting. While I don't put much stock in the Aaron theory, I thought what they said about the Skinner box very interesting and seems to fit right in. The garbage about the Yankees retired numbers don't work. Number 42 was Jackie Robinson's number which was recently retired by every team in the league...this number was retired after Darhma Initutitve was started.

 

[Scarlet Crystal]

"Me Satan," an anagram of Namaste... Oh dear. :lol:

 

[verdantheart]

While I don't put much stock in the Aaron theory, I thought what they said about the Skinner box very interesting and seems to fit right in.

There's definitely some Skinner in there somewhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some Jung aso (talk about opposing points of veiw! :lol. I'll be coming back with more from EW's crazy Lost analyst later, he's had more to say since.

Oh, BTW, TV Guide had the hieroglyphs decoded by experts, who said that they mean the command to "Die." Interesting, no?

 

[verdantheart]

From Entertainment Weekly:

Source Material

Hey, ''Lost'' obsessives! EW senior writer Jeff Jensen posts a favorite reader theory about the show, and finds a possible link between a comic book, a horror writer, and the mystery island

Among hardcore Lostophiles — or at least among obsessives like me who try to decipher the show the way Dan Brown tries to decode Da Vinci paintings — there can occur what I like to call a ''Road to Damascus'' moment, the giddy euphoria that can consume a soul after an encounter with epiphany. For the less religiously inclined, we can call this a ''Keanu Reeves says Whoa!'' moment, as in, ''Dude! I just saw through the Matrix! Whoa.''

Shortly after Entertainment Weekly published Doc Jensen's super-string Aaron Theory of Lost, hundreds of you wrote me with your own theories and Whoa! stories, and beginning next week at EW.com, I'm going to share some of your scholarship and personal testimonies twice a week, in addition to giving you some new Lost gold nuggets (or fool's gold, depending on your POV) of my own.

To kick off the weekly dialogue, I'd like to turn you on to fellow Lostologist Sean Dunleavy. You can check out his intelligently reasoned mega-theory that Lost is an intricately and knowingly constructed allegory for the Patriot Act age in general and the war in Iraq specifically at his website. But several days after e-mailing me his politically charged manifesto, Sean sent me another e-mail, this one bursting with Whoa!-moment giddiness:

''I've just had a massive revelation re: the Flashbacks, the bizarre coincidences found in the Flashbacks, the Hatch, and the Numbers... The coincidences never occurred. The Flashbacks can't be trusted. Why not? Because inside the Hatch there's a great big transmitter, and everytime someone enters 'The Number' into the computer and presses the button, it gets activated, and starts transmitting. But what's it transmitting? Well, if I've got it correct... it's transmitting BELIEFS.'' In a nutshell: Sean thinks the Dharma Initiative is essentially reprogramming human beings with new values and beliefs for the purpose of building a new society. (You can read more of Sean's new theory at the aforementioned website.)

*

Like Sean, my mind changes about Lost every time I watch a new episode, or stumble upon some potentially revealing information. And when I do, man, can I froth at the mouth with Whoa! mania. When I was holed up in my office and manically constructing the Aaron Theory a few weeks ago, my wife and colleagues were convinced I had gone Unabomber on them. They were inches away from calling the boys in white with the butterfly nets. I remember the day I discovered the Wikipedia.org entry for Aaron Charles Donahue, and raved wildly about my (momentary) conviction that the crazy-spooky worldview mythology of this alleged ''remote viewer'' explained much of what was happening with the Dharma Initiative, the Others, Claire's abduction, and the Monster. (Curious: Donahue's personal website is registered to a small island off the coast of Australia. Hmmmm...)

I had another Whoa! moment a few weeks ago during a restless slumber while traveling to Chicago to visit the set of Prison Break. (See next week's EW for that report.) I had just finished reading three volumes of a truly cool, Must List-worthy comic book series called Planetary, which to this day I am convinced is one of the secret source texts of Lost. (More on this later.) This was shortly after the episode ''One of Them,'' in which Sawyer squished a frog to death. My sleepy brain was putting stuff together: a Planetary story about a psychotic suicide cult on a monstrous island; vague memories of reading something about how certain frogs secrete psychedelic enzymes or something; and the opium poppies in the Virgin Mary idols in the Hatch. The word psychotropics came to mind, as in, ''Heroin belongs to a family of drugs called psychotropics.'' Suddenly: Whoa! ''Psychotropics = Psycho Tropics = The island on Lost.'' I was so convinced I was onto something, I woke up the guy next to me on the plane and explained it to him. Before I knew it, an Air Marshal was summoned, a sedative was administered, and I woke up inside a holding cell inside O'Hare Airport. (Please don't tell my editors about this.)

*

Seriously, though: I do think my ''psychotropic'' epiphany sheds some revealing light on the mysteries of Lost, in that I believe Lost is sending secret messages to its audience — and perhaps misdirecting its audience — through sly allusions and a conspicuous choice of words. Recall the whole business with the Black Rock last year. For most of the first season, most of us naturally assumed the Black Rock was Rousseau's name for a foothill or butte or cliff or something — not the literal name of an ancient slave ship inexplicably beached in the middle of the jungle. (Burning question: Didn't Rousseau also say that the radio tower that was broadcasting the Numbers, and later her S.O.S. signal, was located near the Black Rock? Weird how the castaways have never tried to find it....)

But here's a more recent example: I'd love to hear from you H.P. Lovecraft experts out there about the possible overlap between the author and Lost. Of course, a mysterious land mass in the South Pacific, with a weird, mythic history and protected by a formless, monstrous guardian, evokes the writer's classic At the Mountains of Madness. And aesthetically, Lovecraft's pioneering blend of science fiction, horror, psychological suspense and invented mythology seems to have much in common with Lost's creative modus operandi; and considering the fixations with science (both mad and sound), metaphysics, mental illness, blurred lines between fact and fantasy, any Lostologist should consider picking through the author's (formbidably dense) oeuvre for clues.

But Lovecraft may have darker connections to the show. One of many myths about the author — vigorously disputed by his defenders — is that Lovecraft was an eccentric shut-in who lived under the thumb of his two aunts after the tragic deaths of his parents and a brief, failed marriage. In fact, in an issue of Planetary (which also features a character inspired after another Lost-linked author, Ambrose Bierce), Lovecraft is depicted as the original, prototypical basement geek, who dwells mostly within the cellar of his aunt's haunted house. (By the way: In the same story, Lovecraft manages to conjure a supernatural, snowflake-shaped quantum computer in his basement lair that allows him access to alternate realities. Think: the Hatch.)

According to Lovecraft biographer, scholar, and apologist S.T. Joshi, the author's father died in a mental hospital due to syphilis — a disease whose symptoms seem very similar to the symptoms that have been attributed to the phantom virus allegedly on the loose in Lost. Lovecraft was a troubled soul — his youth profoundly affected by intense emotional trauma — and also allegedly something of a bigot; his work is marked by some truly unenlightened language, and the man even named his cat after a certain unprintable racial slur.

Lovecraft's elaborate Cthulhu psuedo-mythology included a Cygnus creature, or ''swan,'' and after his death, he was buried at Swan Point Cemetary in Rhode Island. His gravestone is a granite marker that reads I AM PROVIDENCE, which spoke to the writer's intense identification with his hometown... although the declaration is also a line attributed to Satan in the book The Life of St. Anthony.

Finally, on a more benign note, one of the murkiest if more entertaining bits of Lovecraftian lore is the legend surrounding The Necronomicon, a sinister spell book referenced in several of his stories and allegedly chockablock with symbols and hieroglyphics. So many curious stories surround this thing that it reminds me of a comment one Lost producer made not long ago about Mr. Eko's walking stick. To paraphrase: ''This thing has its own backstory.'' Some say The Necronomicon is a real spell book that was used by Lovecraft for his fiction. Others say Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon was turned into a real book by enthusiastic fans and Satanists. I dote on The Necronomicon because of the hieroglyphics business, but also to establish firmly in your mind its status as a real-life example of a blurred line between fact and fiction, which seems to be recurring theme in Lost. Bookmark that idea; we'll come back to it next week.

Now: apply Lovecraft to Lost's island, Monster, ''Black Rock'' (racist attitudes + granite gravestone = slave ship?), ''Station Three: The Swan'' (whose logo, as discussed last week, also resembles a devilish snake), the Disease, and the Hieroglyphics in the Hatch — are all these things allusions to Lovecraft? Is Lovecraft the Rosetta stone that can decode the language of Lost's mysteries?

Now I know what you're thinking. You think I'm nuts. Or, at best, you think I am mistaking interesting but utterly incidental or merely coincidental similarities for some grand creative conspiracy. And when it comes to this Lovecraft stuff, I'm willing to concede that you might be right. (But if it turns out that the Others are a Cult of Lovecraft who think the island is some Chthulu hellhole posssessed by the author's ghosts — you heard it here first!) At the same time: This is Lost, a show all about the coincidences that may be or may not be part of some grand and wicked design. Besides, there can be no argument that the show is chockablock with a large amount of meta-fictional wordplay, hidden cues, secret symbols, and explicit nods to external sources. Recently, the producers confirmed to EW that the ''Dharma'' in the Dharma Initiative is actually an acronym. (We'll explore what ''Dharma'' might mean next week.) Earlier this season, the producers loudly announced that a Lost-referenced book, The Third Policeman, is filled with clues. But perhaps the most provocative proof that Lost's subtext is rife with revealing bits and deliberate nods to real-life authors is Hurley's recent discovery of a manuscript amid the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 called Bad Twin, written by an author named Gary Troup — an anagram for ''Purgatory.'' Next week at EW.com, I'm going to tell you all about Bad Twin, which is going to be published in our real world in May, and how the book links to writers Paul Auster and Robert Heinlein, and how it all adds up to a brand new Doc Jensen theory I like to call the Ghost Writer Hypothesis. It's going to explain the coincidences, the flashbacks, the blurring of fantasy and reality, and how it all connects to Mr. Eko's current fixation with cutting down trees. If you want a hint, I'll give you one word: Grok. Look it up: Grok explains everything. But that's next week.

 

[verdantheart]

... and here's what viewers had to say about all that! (see article)

In the meantime, you can always write me with your Lost thoughts. Or, you can liken me to animal feces. To wit:

''Jeff: You're nuttier than squirrel poop.'' — Andy

And that, in a smelly nutshell, is what many of you thought about Doc J's recent Lost rumination on the parallels between our favorite television obsession and legendary horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft, one of the literary forerunners of Lost-esque cult pop. [see above] for a recap — or by all means don't, urges Cookie McKinney: ''I do not care for your Lovecraft Theory. Too hard to follow, therefore, I'm not interested.'' Okay then! How about you, Bruce Meyer? ''JJ: Have the divorce papers shown up yet...where do you find the time???'' Oh, how you kid, you jokesters! (Actually, they arrived yesterday.)

But some of you Lovecraft fans out there have my back. ''In [Lovecraft] stories,'' writes Taylor, ''the 'Old Ones' are able to control the dreams of people through their immense power. This could be why everyone keeps having flashbacks, and why Jack saw his father and Kate saw the Horse... The people controlled by the 'Old Ones' dream of seeing a city made of a shiny black obsideon, a dark black rock, which was the first thing I thought of.... When Rousseau talked about the Black Rock, I assumed they were going to find part of the black rock city.... Sorry for ranting, but I've been thinking about this for a while.'' So have I, Taylor. Just ask my wife.

But enough about me. Let's talk about you. As in, your Lost theories. Keep sending 'em, folks, because I read all of them. And they never fail to intrigue or enlighten or... well, leave me as baffled as I often leave you. Say hello to my new friend Arthur Tulee. ''How would you yourself proceed on the show?'' his e-mail begins. ''Would you form an alliance with any particular people on the show or keep it all ad hoc and functional? Would you engage the Others? Do you have any psychic abilities, or would the island bring something out of you that you didn't know was there? Would you seek out what I like to call 'Nietszche's Abyss creature' (because everyone will sooner or later look into it: Locke has and so has Eko)? Would you find the Japanese Imperial Forces' WWII tunnels on this island and try to map them?''

Uhhhh… my answer to all these questions is Yes. I think.

Of course, Rick Lannoye has the whole darn Lost thing licked: ''I have MORE than a theory about where Lost is going. I think the entire island experience of each passenger is really a breakdown of what is going on in each of their minds while they [were] physically unconscious from the loss of [oxygen], while actually speeding on their way down to die from the plane's original crash. If the writers are smart, they'll eventually take us back to little clues about where the passengers got glimpses of the Others, who were actually kiosk attendants at the airport before takeoff, and so on. The point of all this, of course, being that, in the last moments of life, not only do past lives flash before us, but our brains, and perhaps our Collective Unconscious, will try to resolve any deep inner conflicts that were left unresolved.''

I would pay good money to find out the fake-bearded Mr. Friendly actually operates a smoothie cart at the Sydney airport.

Speaking money, James Anderson Merritt has a sneaking suspicion that someone on Lost is trying to steal Hurley's gold. Or steal something. ''All of the strange linkages between the castaways, and the uncanny coincidences, which are apparent in the flashbacks, suggest to me nothing so much as 'a long con' in progress. Who are the confederates — Locke, Eko, Sawyer, Hugo (Hurley)? And what is the prize? Hugo's fortune? Claire's baby? Locke's mobility? A life free of domination and retaliation by Sun's father?''

Like many of you, Merritt picked up on the Henry Gale/Wizard of Oz connection, but he poses an interesting question: Why haven't the Lost castaways picked up on it too? ''I found it very interesting that Henry Gale allegedly came to the island in a balloon with his wife. What was her name? Auntie Em? The story the captive told sounded like a total con to me: the suggestion that he came to the island in the same way that the Wizard came to Oz sounded like just so much humbug. I'm surprised that Locke didn't pick up on the obvious 'coincidence,' given the other literary allusions he has made. If not a 'con,' exactly, I am thinking that the island situation is definitely a game, being consciously played by perhaps Locke and at least one other castaway. Are the rest along for the ride, or are some of them also players, to one extent or another?''

Meanwhile, Eileen La Chance didn't e-mail me with her own theory, but she seems very proud of her husband's scholarship. ''My husband Pierre believes they all actually died in the crash and the ones we are seeing on Lost are in Purgatory. It's more complicated and elegant than that, but you get the gist.'' I get the gist: Your husband is one lucky guy to have a fan like you. If only my wife was as supportive. Why oh why can't she see the dark brilliance of my Lovecraftian demon hellhole theory? WHY?!?!

(Ahem.) Well, for the record, I don't think I believe in ''a long con'' — a little farfetched for me (though clearly, Cthulu demons and disembodied psychic forces are not) — and ''purgatory'' leaves me a little cold. Zachary Brandon, however, left me feeling like hell. ''The island is a metaphor for Armageddon. [The castaways] have already experienced a rapture... Since the Others appear to be scientists, perhaps it is possible that the design of their experiment is to see which can/will win the last battle: Good or Evil. In this experiment they remove all of the truly pure people from the equation (rapture) and leave only morally ambiguous and downright evil people behind. In this situation evil people (Sawyer and Charlie, who are beginning to sound like Lords Sidious and Vader from Star Wars) will deceive their way to the top (anti-Christs) while good people worry about simplistic moral questions: to torture or not to torture?''

That is a good question. But what I want to know is: How come so many of you are feeling biblical these days? Paul Koch forwarded me an impossibly long theory by someone called ''Tripping Goddess'' who believes that the Monster, the electromagnetic energy, and the island's mysterious illness all have to do with a new Ark of the Covenant built in the United States back in the mid-'50s and relocated to the island. Here's the Bible passages that at the very least make an interesting connection to the original Ark of the Covenant: Leviticus 16, Joshua 10:12, Joshua 10:13, and Habakkuk 3:11. Or, if you don't have a Bible, you can just watch the last 20 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

That's all for now. Tune later this week for a new Doc J theory — and next week, for even more of your theories. As for me... I'm off to marriage counseling. Namaste!

Theories R Us? :lol: Follow the link if you want to comment.

 

[verdantheart]

The latest, with Grok and Hurley theories, can be found here, where connecting links are preserved. Basically, the "Grok theory" boils down to:

My theory: The psychic boundaries between people's minds are weakening. Psyches are starting to intermingle. Hence, Charlie's mind is being flooded with Mr. Eko's Catholic-saturated subconscious. Sawyer is ''channeling'' Kate's dead dad.

I don't particularly like this one because this would mean that the pre-crash connections between people are false--they are not real connections, but simply imagined connections as a result of shared consciousness. Real connections between them are much more interesting to me than false ones . . . that would, to me, constitute a "cheat" by the writers, as in, "It looks like we were setting up this really neat world with all these connections between people that we'd eventually detangle & explain, but---no! GOTCHA! HAHAHAHAHA! It was all a fake mind game." I've seen it proposed that their entire backstories are imagined, which would be even more of a cheat, so that (to my mind) better not be what they come down to or I will be royally p---ed. I mean, why would these psych majors be plucking these people out of their environments to study how they react to being able to start over if what they were starting over from was all an illusion. Pfffft. That would be a total waste of all of our time.

Yeah, there are mindgames going on, but it's to study actual people, so it's more judicious. In other words, they're not overwriting these people completely, that would be a waste of time if they want to study them. They're just doing certain things to influence them, as far as I can tell. It's more insidious, like Gale's supposedly off-hand questions and remarks. This wouldn't study them because it takes too much context away from them . . . IMHO, anyway.

As to the Hurley story, it's basically just a variation of the Aaron theory:

My fleeting Hurley theory went on to speculate that perhaps Hurley did what so many enlightened beings do. He transcended himself. Ascended into Heaven. Or at the very least, became a disembodied being, disappeared from the island, traveled the world, and ultimately found himself inside the head of Hugo Reyes. Alas, the insertion of another psyche drove poor Hugo crazy, and the dude wound up in a mental hospital, where he was taught by a psychologist (perhaps Libby) to regain control over his mind. But then Hugo came in contact with the Numbers, which, per this theory, were being broadcast throughout the world by Dharma in an attempt to get a message to the Hurley intelligence. That message: ''Come home!'' Thus, Hurley has brought his host (and a bunch of his fellow Oceanic 815 passengers) to the island, following that command.

:lol:

Send in your loose ends for the compilation!

 

[verdantheart]

See EW online for the latest motherlode of theories. Interesting comments this week:

Actually, whether I'm right or wrong, my hunch is that the lockdown has launched some kind of endgame for the Hatch — meaning I think the Hatch won't be coming with us into season 3.

Reaction: Huh? There have been previous lockdowns . . . why is this one so all-fired special? Jes' askin'. This idea seems to be based on a "history theory" which as far as I can tell is yet to be published.

Many of you have e-mailed me various theories that are different permutations of the same idea: [1] The castaways are test subjects in an experiment designed to ''fix'' humanity by altering their memories or reshaping their consciousness. Perhaps the castaways are being programmed (or reprogrammed) with some kind of ideology or dogma or belief system. [2] Or maybe Lost is a lot like the Michael Douglas movie The Game, in which the hero is plunged into an elaborate and even life-threatening psychodrama designed to get him to confront various troubling issues in his life.

Or maybe the answer is this:

[3] In Lost, the psych experiment taking place on the Island is an inquiry into human curiosity, or lack thereof. Mysteries and intrigue are the treats and the bait, designed to lure us into an adventure of our own creation. In Lost, there is no destination — it's all journey. The discovery is what we (or the characters) learn in the midst of the exploring.

Pretty deep. Pretty meaningful.

And pretty unsatisfying, don't you think?

[1] ... or, perhaps, competing belief systems to see which works best? But, then, they seem to have certain people in mind for removal from this game/experiment . . . hm.

[2] Odd, my reaction to The Game was that all it was in the end was just that: a game. Did he really confront anything? Nah, it was just a scare-the-hell-out-of-you funhouse in which after it was all over with, you just realized that it was all fake, a rollercoaster ride, took a deep breath, and laughed. What's more, it was reasonably clear that it might all be fake throughout! (Which does have some Lost parallels . . . ) But, confronting? What confronting? It was moving too fast . . .

[3] Yeah, well, they pretty much warned us it wouldn't be satisfying, didn't they. After all, series television is pretty much forced to be open-ended. If you have a series with a natural arc, where do you plan to close it? 3 years? 5? 7? If it's successful, they'll want you to drag it out; if it's not, they'll cut you off at the knees before you can draw things to a satisfying conclusion. Even the ones that have a fair idea of when they're going to be packing it in rarely have the chance to do it right. The only ones that ever have the opportunity to conclude gracefully are limited series (almost always non-US).

With Lost, the journey might be much more satisfying than the conclusion.

 

[verdantheart]

Go here for the "History Theory" + more theory ranking after "Dave." Careful, though, if you want to avoid spoilage; Jensen claims confirmation (under "3. Hurley/Dave") from an inside source.

Additionally, continue here for more theorizing for "SOS." This includes the "loose ends" list plus the following:

In his recent book The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects — a play on his oft-quoted ''The medium is the message'' — media theorist Marshall McLuhan writes:

''The medium, or process, of our time — electronic technology — is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and reevaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution taken for granted. Everything is changing — you, your family, your neighborhood, your education, your job, your government, and your relation to 'the others.''

:lol: Interesting, huh? Even if it doesn't mean much.

Additional comments:

In the "history theory" he says "HANSO/DHARMA INITIATIVE ERA: A relatively brief era, and most likely, its true nature remains a mystery — meaning, the Orientation Film is bogus." Hm, well, then, why bother? :lol: Further, someone is an expert mind-game player, and who better than a psychologist? (A con man?) Had to come from somewhere.

However, I think there might well be more than one group of Others around, who knows? If there are, they may well have differing agenda. They may both have sprung out of Dharma groups (that would be sort of interesting, no?), or not.

A lot of these meanderings seem a little strange. Of course a lot of people think about this a LOT harder than I do!

One "loose end" question I didn't see there is "Why the heck did someone cut out a chunk of the film and hide it in another hatch?" That just seems strange to me.