Boxes

A number of things seem to be pointing me in the direction of posting a somewhat revised version of my old theory about boxes—including having a dream about presenting a paper on boxes!  In response to posting about some of those whacky Lost associations I was having, retro referred to the term “rhizomatic” which was coined by two literary theorists, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatteri, to describe a model of knowledge based not on expertise, hierarchy, rules pertaining to access,etc. but mutuality and exchange.  That’s useful for Lost to describe one kind of “knowing” the characters often indulge in requiring secrecy and decoding of arcane symbols (Locke in season 2, Ben at all times) versus a kind of knowledge the show might be pointing toward which is collective (Jungian).  Deleuze also has another notion useful for thinking about the show—which is that identity derives from difference rather than difference deriving from identity.  The important point there (I think) is that there is no essential identity of things, but rather we note differences and then derive what something is based on its difference from something else.  To illustrate—we think there are essential gender identities, male and female.  And we divide people up according to these identities and put them in their respective boxes (see I got to boxes eventually ) and think these are stable and absolute identifications.  But where we are really starting is in noticing some point of difference and then turning that into the identity.  If we realize this we can see that the difference has become exaggerated by becoming the defining point of identity (and also winds up suppressing other differences within the category). 

 So how might this apply to Lost?

I began thinking about boxes in the episode about Amira, the woman who claimed Sayid tortured her, and who talked about finding a cat who had been tortured in a box.  A cat in a box also alludes to Schrödinger’s Cat.  And then the following week, Ben references the “magic box.”  Here’s the connection I see between those three:

In Ben’s description of the “magic box” the person outside the box has the power. S/he gets what s/he wants just by wishing for it. But what if your desires involve another person—that person’s desires are not taken into account. You are determining their fate—they are inside the box being acted upon, while you are outside determining what happens. This is similar to the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. The poor cat’s life/death is what is at stake, but the cat has no influence on the outcome; it’s the outside observer who determines whether the cat lives or dies when the observer opens the box.

Amira’s relationship to the cat she rescued is completely the reverse of this. She identifies with the cat (she too has been tortured in a box) so can forgive the cat when it hurts her. She can further forgive Sayid, implying that he is not just someone who was outside the box torturing her—but also someone who has himself been inside—abused/tortured/manipulated. So in a sense Amira destroys the very notion of a box, a dividing line, between torturer/tortured; manipulator/manipulated, con-artist/sucker, etc. The show itself seems to support Amira’s view, with many characters who at some point are in the manipulator/torturer position later finding themselves on the other side.  (Deleuze’s idea about the instability of identity.)  Sayid was the example last week, Anthony Cooper this week. Maybe another way of saying this is that if you are the observer, outside-of-the-box, don’t feel too secure.  Karma is going to put you into the box, waiting like Schrödinger’s cat to see whether you are alive or dead.

Heh—thinking here of the people in boxes—Locke & Christian.

And finally bringing in one last box—the television:

Between all the kinds of surveillance, actually seeing each other on tv, and seeing each other in visions, there are lots of ways in which one can apply the notion of either “viewer/writer” to one character and “tv character” to another.  Taking Desmond and Charlie as one example, Desmond sees Charlie’s story—not exactly the way we are being shown it because we tend to see it in a more sequentially clear way—but he is a viewer of that story just as we are. He also makes choices about Charlie that affect the way that story is going to unfold—just as a writer would. Now we have also seen that Desmond himself plays the character part and is viewed/written by at least one other person, Mrs. Hawking, and perhaps others. 

1) A model of the relationship—one person in the box (the character) being watched/manipulated by someone outside of that box. But the watcher/manipulator can be a character in another box being watched/manipulated by someone else.  (This is also Bentham's idea of the Panopticon--even the guard is being watched.)

2) There are two ways that the watcher can evaluate his/her own position. They can see themselves as powerful and in control. The model for this is seen in the way fathers treat children—the children’s revenge on the fathers shows that this is a false evaluation. The person “outside” the box can easily become the one inside (as was shown in the episode about Sayid and Amira). Or they can see themselves as also being in a box—to be equal to the one they watch and manipulate (“See you in another life, brothah!”).

3) If we take a step back—we can see that the writers might be eventually leading us to look at our own position. Are we safely outside the box?  Are we just watching characters?  To me the implication of this is to deconstruct a reality/fiction hierarchy—we the viewers are neither completely powerless watchers of a story controlled by others—we participate in the story-telling, nor are we completely in control of our own stories, anymore than these characters are.  We’re all part of an ongoing creative process—this I think is what the island represents—a source of mythology/stories (heh, note, not the “key to all mythologies”).