(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

LOST as a post-colonial dialogue: discuss.

There are probably smarter people out there who have already talked about this (and if anyone knows where I might find this, let me know) but the last few episodes could be a really interesting discussion about the way we view colonialism and conflict. Somewhere in this show, there is a fascinating essay about The Tempest, Caliban and the Others, just waiting to get out.



The castaways have come to the island involuntarily; I'm willing to speculate that so did the Others, whether they were paid to come here by the Dharma initiative or for some other reason- ultimately I don't believe they came to the island of their own volition. Anyone further on in the season is welcome to contradict me. The Others are a mix of Prospero and Caliban, or maybe Ariel and Caliban; they seem to have at least some mysterious control over the island, they're barbaric and savage, they definitely know a lot more about the island than the former passengers do (I'm not au fait in this fandom, is there a word for the survivors of Flight Whatever that is generally accepted?) and they use their superior abilities and knowledge to manipulate the survivors.

I really need to finish the season before I talk about this, because I need more information, but you can cast the Dharma Initiative as Prospero: controlling the island in a mystical fashion that the survivors can't understand and the Others resent; the Others may be in some ways pawns of the initiative or in some way subject to their control or influence (even if it's just in the way Dharma influences the island).

Finally, the survivors are the castaways of the Tempest. There's no need to really go deep into the character comparison (except Claire is totally whatsisface, Ferdinand, the guy who marries Miranda; you can stretch Jack into the King and Sawyer into Antonio, I suppose, but it's flawed; there are no true parallels. Echo would be a better King, actually. Scott and Steve can be Trinculo and Stephano, though) but as a group they do resonate with me. They have come involuntarily; some appear to be on the island to be punished or redeemed, others, having lead relatively blameless lives, have their appearance on the island seemingly controlled by a mysterious higher purpose (the Initiative, the island, the Others, who knows? But don't tell me Walt and Claire were on that plane by accident. Actually, all the flashbacks really seem to confirm that no-one was on the plane by accident; they were pre-selected for some reason).

So... what can we draw from this? Nothing really, except the colonial dialogue I want to talk about. In Shakespeare's time, there was a kind of duology of opinion about colonialism: on the one hand, the noble savage; on the other, bringing the gentle touch of civilisation to the barbaric lands, doing them a favour in some way. Othello is the first (loosely); Caliban is the embodiment of the second. We talk about The Tempest as a colonial play because while it is technically set somewhere in the Mediterranean, we know that Shakespeare was interested in the New World, that is to say America, which was being colonialised at this point in time. In fact, some scenes and descriptions follow well-documented letters and articles that Shakespeare would have had access to, like the storm scene which recalls a letter William Strachey wrote to the Virginia Company after travelling to the New World, and some of Gonzalo's dialogue about creating a utopian state which is taken quite directly from Michael de Montaigne's "Of the Cannibals" (about America.) So when we look at the setting of the Tempest and characters like Caliban, we are in some ways looking at Shakespeare's concerns for colonialism. Caliban is this kind of brutish character who is graced by the civilised ways of Prospero and Miranda, who teach him to speak and how to behave in an appropriate fashion.

For most of the play Caliban is characterised as brutish, animalistic ("A strange and fish-like smell" anyone?); he has this great line, "You taught me language, and my profit on't/is I know how to curse," showing how he supposedly twists Prospero's gifts (or is it because Prospero's language is useless form him? -- having no-one with which to converse and being enslaved to Prospero). however at one point in the play he has this absolutely beautiful speech talking about how he has shown the secret and beautiful places of the island to Prospero, who then ousted him from his supremacy on the island, enslaved him, and so forth. It's really pretty. Anyway the point is that this is where the colonialist dialogue is most overt; Caliban as the indigenous people, abused by Prospero who is more powerful and who seems cruel to Caliban. Anyway, the whole thing gets justified away by the fact that Caliban is overtly horrible; he smells, he's ugly and so deformed that Trinculo and Stephano want to take him home to exhibit him as a monster (another colonialist concern) , and he has tried to rape Miranda (apparently.) So it becomes okay for Prospero and Miranda to toddle along and use him up.

Aaaaand this is relevant to Lost! Because! The Others are treated in the same way. In a recent episode the Boss Other says to Jack that, in a nutshell, this is their island and they do not want the survivors there, in fact they want them away post haste, although they'll leave them alone for now. Blah blah blah Boss Other is a lot more powerful than Caliban but also ugly, brutish and short, vulgar, violent, animalistic- in last night's episode Sayid goes on and on about how evil they are, in fact. AND THE POINT IS, clearly we are supposed to be rooting for the survivors because, hey, the Others are mean and nasty and ugly and the survivors didn't mean to get there!

My real question is: how is it that in a post-colonial world, well after Shakespeare's time, we are still viewing the indigenous people in the same way that Shakespeare did, and presenting them like Caliban? Yes, Jack & the Survivors did not choose to be there and so do have our sympathy for that. And yet. The whole time Boss Other is speaking, the audience is clearly intended to feel pissed off- "His island, what does he mean his island, everyone is allowed to be on it, ooh how dare he be so mean" etc etc ad nauseam. But actually it is their island. They live there. Jack & the Survivors are unwelcome intruders. Yes, they don't mean to be there... but can you blame the others for being a little eerie of that?



Anyway, I got a little incoherent towards the end, so I'll stop, but... hm. It's interesting.