TheOven
11-03-2004, 11:27 AM
from my website, www.teegerschiller.com/lost-philosophy
Thanks for reading!
Pilot (Part 1)
One by one they disappeared
The minds of science, the nation's leaders
To meet again at destination
Sweating in their seats, anticipation
On the salt flats of Nevada
All those who mattered waited for the word
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh pilot
This paradise is lost forever
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh Pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
Thru the porthole panic stricken
Humanity had been forsaken
The door secured, the cry was distant
But the scratching fingers grew persistent
On the salt flats of Nevada
All those who mattered waited for the word
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh pilot
This paradise is lost forever
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh Pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
Pilot, woah oh pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
-Ian Thomas ("Pilot")
i) "Is there a doctor on board?":
The show begins on Jack, unconscious in the jungle. He is the perfect character to focus on at the start because he is both likeable (he gave up his first class seat to an old lady!) and admirable (a skilled doctor/surgeon), making him an easy "hero" to grasp on to. He wanders onto the beach where he finds what's left of his section of the plane and its passengers. He jumps immediately into doctor mode and handles the situation as best as it can be handled. Boone, a lifeguard, is also trying to help by performing CPR on someone. But not everybody can handle trauma as well as Jack can, and Boone is doing a lousy job. He suggests doing "one of those hole things, where you stick a pen in her throat". Jack is irritated, but humours him and sends him off to find some pens. When he returns, long after the woman has been resuscitated, Jack assures him that the pens are good and thanks him for his help. Make that likeable, admirable, and sensitive too.
ii) The Situation:
Everyone has just survived a plane crash. They lived through those unbearable minutes where they all believed they were going to die. What goes through somebody's head at a time like that? Fear, of course. The worst possible kind of fear. Helplessness. Maybe a little bit of "This can't be happening to me! Not to me!!" (...Shannon?).
And afterwards?
Relief at being alive? No, I doubt it. Probably just confusion. And maybe some horror, due to all the dead B-O-D-Y-S's that are surrounding them. I imagine everyone on the island must have at least a little bit of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (if that's something that can be quantified). The show doesn't really deal with the more serious symptoms of this (at least, not yet), although it can be seen a little bit in, for example, Boone's behaviour described above, or when Hurley looks at the flaming remains of the plane and points out calmly, "The plane crashed".
In general, people with PTSD avoid emotions/relations with others. The emotions they do feel are uncontrollable and intrusive. Our main characters... well... perhaps they've been "chosen" as the main characters because they're the ones who have responded differently. Instead of avoiding social relations, they've sought them out.
iii) Hope, not yet lost:
Now that they're there, on the island, they have nothing much to do except wait for the rescue planes to show up. Shannon points out to Boone, her brother, that the plane had a black box so of course they'll be rescued (unfortunately, a black box is used to record on-board information about a flight, not to send out signals with specifics about a plane's location. Whoops!) Sayid also has hope, and he builds a fire so that they can be seen from the sky when their rescuers arrive. But "they should've been here by now", he points out. And once nighttime rolls around, the truth is starting to sink in that, if they'll be rescued at all, it might not be for a while.
BOOM. Noises in the jungle. Right in time for the scary dark night that everyone must be dreading. Trees get trampled in the distance. This thing is BIG.
(What could be bigger than the fear of isolation?)
"That sound that it made, I keep thinking there was something familiar about it"
"Where are you from?"
"The Bronx."
iv) The Face:
Let me get back to the dead bodies. "Horror" wasn't quite the right word.
People exist, primarily, as social beings. We have these real needs for others in our lives, and all of our strongest feelings stem from our relations with others. We have these ideas about morality and how people deserve to be treated, and they seem to be undeniably true. But, unlike other types of facts, the best justification for what makes our moral ideas real, actual truths doesn't come out of any sort of logical or reasonable argument; it comes simply from gazing at the face of another person.
I don't know if I'm really right about all this because I've never been in the presence of more than one dead body at a time, but if I was surrounded by dead faces, I wouldn't only feel horror. I would feel an extremely strong, deep sense of... violation. The foundations of my existence as a human being would be threatened, as I would be forced to ignore my instincts towards these people... because they're not people anymore. They're corpses. (See Kate's look when she's taking some shoes off a dead man to prepare for their hike).
This may be why some of these characters react not by shutting themselves off socially and emotionally, but by reaching out to the others who are still alive and trying to fulfill their need for... faces.
That's what I would do.
(Note: There are many very attractive faces to choose from on this particular island.)
v) Control: How much do we have?
Jack tells Kate (the person who he chooses to make a therapeutic connection, and possibly more, with) a story of a time early in his career that he was performing surgery on a young girl and he made a dangerous (not to mention messy) mistake. He got really scared. Someone's life was in his hands, and if that life was lost, it would be due to his mistake. Guilt (the thinking man's emotion) would come afterwards, but in the moment, what he felt was closer to fear. (Side note: In truth, these deep-rooted feelings I keep trying to describe are unnamable. Sorry for all the ultimately meaningless word-play). Jack let this fear take him over completely, counted to 5, and then he stopped feeling it. Just by making a choice. He completed the surgery and all was well.
Jack's story reminds me of an idea that, if I remember correctly, comes from Nietzsche. Imagine a man who throughout his life has acted cowardly. Is it in this man's nature to be a coward? Or has he chosen to be one? Well, Nietzsche says, imagine this: After a lifetime of cowardly behaviour, the man is put into another situation that calls for some bravery, and he comes through. And from that day forward, the man acts bravely instead. He goes from being a cowardly man to being a brave man, just by changing the types of decisions he makes. If this situation is imagineably possible, Nietzsche says, if the man could have been acting bravely all his life, but didn't, then he must have been choosing not to. This is basically the idea of "existence before essence". First, we exist. Then we decide who we're gonna be. Nothing is predecided, nothing is insurmountable. We get to become whoever we think is the right person to become (if we choose to). Life's very meaning comes from making that choice. No matter what type of shit life throws at us, we get to decide how to react to it and how to feel about it. Our environment affects us only in the way that we let it.
Jack, it would seem, is an existential genius. He scoffs at his Autonomic Nervous System and just turns the fear off, chooses not to feel it. That's not to mention the enormous open wound on his back, the pain from which he's also able to ignore. And he actually downplays this ability, suggesting to Kate that she could've done the same thing. She says, if it had been her in that situation, she would've run for the door. "You're not running now", he responds. (Likeable, admirable, sensitive and humble!) Jack's control over his emotions is one of the reasons why he is seemingly unaffected by their situation and so capable of jumping into the role of the leader who saves people's lives and goes out on quests to find transceivers.
(Or maybe he buries himself in the doctor role because that's what feels familiar and comforting. And maybe he goes on quests to find transceivers because he has a hero complex stemming from his deep and powerful need to meet the high expectations of his father ... but that's just speculation).
Does Jack really have as much control over his "essence" as his story would suggest? I doubt it.
vi) So what happens?:
Jack, Kate and the as-of-yet comic relief character, Charlie, the bassist of popular British band "Drive Shaft", go on their quest to find the front part of the plane where they might find a radio to transmit an S.O.S. message and get their ***** saved. They get their transceiver and also find the pilot, alive, who tells them that when the plane crashed, they were a thousand miles off course and nobody back home knows where the hell they are or has any way of finding them. Then, they get scared. Jack too, I bet. Their fear manifests itself physically and attacks them, leading to an exciting action sequence that ends with the bearer of bad news, the pilot, the source of their fear, the person who arguably got them into this, the man at fault... dead. REALLY REALLY dead.
Hmmmmmmmm.......
vii) What's in a name?:
This episode, the pilot, does not have a title.
Or does it?
Perhaps "Pilot" is not only referring to the fact that this is the series' pilot, but also meant to suggest that the pilot (the plane's, that is) is quite a bit more important than he seems to be. Frankly, to the analytical but not quite analytical enough viewer, he comes across as little more than a plot device whose purpose is to deliver the "thousand miles off course" news, and get killed by the scary thing to show how dangerous it is. But if I am correct, this episode is named for him, and there's something much more than mere lazy writing techniques going on here...
Thanks for reading!
Pilot (Part 1)
One by one they disappeared
The minds of science, the nation's leaders
To meet again at destination
Sweating in their seats, anticipation
On the salt flats of Nevada
All those who mattered waited for the word
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh pilot
This paradise is lost forever
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh Pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
Thru the porthole panic stricken
Humanity had been forsaken
The door secured, the cry was distant
But the scratching fingers grew persistent
On the salt flats of Nevada
All those who mattered waited for the word
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh pilot
This paradise is lost forever
Oh oh Pilot, woah oh Pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
Pilot, woah oh pilot
We place our trust in the flyer
To deliver us from the fire
We have made
-Ian Thomas ("Pilot")
i) "Is there a doctor on board?":
The show begins on Jack, unconscious in the jungle. He is the perfect character to focus on at the start because he is both likeable (he gave up his first class seat to an old lady!) and admirable (a skilled doctor/surgeon), making him an easy "hero" to grasp on to. He wanders onto the beach where he finds what's left of his section of the plane and its passengers. He jumps immediately into doctor mode and handles the situation as best as it can be handled. Boone, a lifeguard, is also trying to help by performing CPR on someone. But not everybody can handle trauma as well as Jack can, and Boone is doing a lousy job. He suggests doing "one of those hole things, where you stick a pen in her throat". Jack is irritated, but humours him and sends him off to find some pens. When he returns, long after the woman has been resuscitated, Jack assures him that the pens are good and thanks him for his help. Make that likeable, admirable, and sensitive too.
ii) The Situation:
Everyone has just survived a plane crash. They lived through those unbearable minutes where they all believed they were going to die. What goes through somebody's head at a time like that? Fear, of course. The worst possible kind of fear. Helplessness. Maybe a little bit of "This can't be happening to me! Not to me!!" (...Shannon?).
And afterwards?
Relief at being alive? No, I doubt it. Probably just confusion. And maybe some horror, due to all the dead B-O-D-Y-S's that are surrounding them. I imagine everyone on the island must have at least a little bit of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (if that's something that can be quantified). The show doesn't really deal with the more serious symptoms of this (at least, not yet), although it can be seen a little bit in, for example, Boone's behaviour described above, or when Hurley looks at the flaming remains of the plane and points out calmly, "The plane crashed".
In general, people with PTSD avoid emotions/relations with others. The emotions they do feel are uncontrollable and intrusive. Our main characters... well... perhaps they've been "chosen" as the main characters because they're the ones who have responded differently. Instead of avoiding social relations, they've sought them out.
iii) Hope, not yet lost:
Now that they're there, on the island, they have nothing much to do except wait for the rescue planes to show up. Shannon points out to Boone, her brother, that the plane had a black box so of course they'll be rescued (unfortunately, a black box is used to record on-board information about a flight, not to send out signals with specifics about a plane's location. Whoops!) Sayid also has hope, and he builds a fire so that they can be seen from the sky when their rescuers arrive. But "they should've been here by now", he points out. And once nighttime rolls around, the truth is starting to sink in that, if they'll be rescued at all, it might not be for a while.
BOOM. Noises in the jungle. Right in time for the scary dark night that everyone must be dreading. Trees get trampled in the distance. This thing is BIG.
(What could be bigger than the fear of isolation?)
"That sound that it made, I keep thinking there was something familiar about it"
"Where are you from?"
"The Bronx."
iv) The Face:
Let me get back to the dead bodies. "Horror" wasn't quite the right word.
People exist, primarily, as social beings. We have these real needs for others in our lives, and all of our strongest feelings stem from our relations with others. We have these ideas about morality and how people deserve to be treated, and they seem to be undeniably true. But, unlike other types of facts, the best justification for what makes our moral ideas real, actual truths doesn't come out of any sort of logical or reasonable argument; it comes simply from gazing at the face of another person.
I don't know if I'm really right about all this because I've never been in the presence of more than one dead body at a time, but if I was surrounded by dead faces, I wouldn't only feel horror. I would feel an extremely strong, deep sense of... violation. The foundations of my existence as a human being would be threatened, as I would be forced to ignore my instincts towards these people... because they're not people anymore. They're corpses. (See Kate's look when she's taking some shoes off a dead man to prepare for their hike).
This may be why some of these characters react not by shutting themselves off socially and emotionally, but by reaching out to the others who are still alive and trying to fulfill their need for... faces.
That's what I would do.
(Note: There are many very attractive faces to choose from on this particular island.)
v) Control: How much do we have?
Jack tells Kate (the person who he chooses to make a therapeutic connection, and possibly more, with) a story of a time early in his career that he was performing surgery on a young girl and he made a dangerous (not to mention messy) mistake. He got really scared. Someone's life was in his hands, and if that life was lost, it would be due to his mistake. Guilt (the thinking man's emotion) would come afterwards, but in the moment, what he felt was closer to fear. (Side note: In truth, these deep-rooted feelings I keep trying to describe are unnamable. Sorry for all the ultimately meaningless word-play). Jack let this fear take him over completely, counted to 5, and then he stopped feeling it. Just by making a choice. He completed the surgery and all was well.
Jack's story reminds me of an idea that, if I remember correctly, comes from Nietzsche. Imagine a man who throughout his life has acted cowardly. Is it in this man's nature to be a coward? Or has he chosen to be one? Well, Nietzsche says, imagine this: After a lifetime of cowardly behaviour, the man is put into another situation that calls for some bravery, and he comes through. And from that day forward, the man acts bravely instead. He goes from being a cowardly man to being a brave man, just by changing the types of decisions he makes. If this situation is imagineably possible, Nietzsche says, if the man could have been acting bravely all his life, but didn't, then he must have been choosing not to. This is basically the idea of "existence before essence". First, we exist. Then we decide who we're gonna be. Nothing is predecided, nothing is insurmountable. We get to become whoever we think is the right person to become (if we choose to). Life's very meaning comes from making that choice. No matter what type of shit life throws at us, we get to decide how to react to it and how to feel about it. Our environment affects us only in the way that we let it.
Jack, it would seem, is an existential genius. He scoffs at his Autonomic Nervous System and just turns the fear off, chooses not to feel it. That's not to mention the enormous open wound on his back, the pain from which he's also able to ignore. And he actually downplays this ability, suggesting to Kate that she could've done the same thing. She says, if it had been her in that situation, she would've run for the door. "You're not running now", he responds. (Likeable, admirable, sensitive and humble!) Jack's control over his emotions is one of the reasons why he is seemingly unaffected by their situation and so capable of jumping into the role of the leader who saves people's lives and goes out on quests to find transceivers.
(Or maybe he buries himself in the doctor role because that's what feels familiar and comforting. And maybe he goes on quests to find transceivers because he has a hero complex stemming from his deep and powerful need to meet the high expectations of his father ... but that's just speculation).
Does Jack really have as much control over his "essence" as his story would suggest? I doubt it.
vi) So what happens?:
Jack, Kate and the as-of-yet comic relief character, Charlie, the bassist of popular British band "Drive Shaft", go on their quest to find the front part of the plane where they might find a radio to transmit an S.O.S. message and get their ***** saved. They get their transceiver and also find the pilot, alive, who tells them that when the plane crashed, they were a thousand miles off course and nobody back home knows where the hell they are or has any way of finding them. Then, they get scared. Jack too, I bet. Their fear manifests itself physically and attacks them, leading to an exciting action sequence that ends with the bearer of bad news, the pilot, the source of their fear, the person who arguably got them into this, the man at fault... dead. REALLY REALLY dead.
Hmmmmmmmm.......
vii) What's in a name?:
This episode, the pilot, does not have a title.
Or does it?
Perhaps "Pilot" is not only referring to the fact that this is the series' pilot, but also meant to suggest that the pilot (the plane's, that is) is quite a bit more important than he seems to be. Frankly, to the analytical but not quite analytical enough viewer, he comes across as little more than a plot device whose purpose is to deliver the "thousand miles off course" news, and get killed by the scary thing to show how dangerous it is. But if I am correct, this episode is named for him, and there's something much more than mere lazy writing techniques going on here...