WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

"Who are you? Who are you? Who are you people?"
~"Homecoming," written by Damon Lindelof

I have read and listened to a lot of LOST interviews and commentary by those involved in the making of LOST, and I have also discussed the show online with other fans. I think it is fair to say that, in general, what we all love about LOST--creators and fans alike--is the characters.

When I began watching the show first season, I was intrigued by all that fantastically weird stuff that was happening on the show. Inexplicably, no one comes to rescue them and Boone can't get out a cell phone signal. There's a crazy, strange sounding monster that at first we don't see at all. We have a radio tower that is broadcasting on a repeat loop a distress signal in French. Everyone we meet has survived a plane crash that Sayid points out no one should have survived at all. We see in flashbacks that Locke and Rose were both apparently miraculously healed...and everywhere we look, there is evidence that the people we are following are "not the only people on this island" ("...In Translation," Javier Grillo-Marxuarch and Leonard Dick). I was intrigued with the mysterious island from the pilot episode on, but it was when I watched "Walkabout" that I fell completely in love with the show. Locke, who should have been bound to a wheelchair, wiggled his toes. I knew from that episode on that anything was possible.

However, I don't watch LOST because the writers throw a lot of weird stuff at us. The success of The X Files had nothing to do with conspiracy theories, and Star Trek isn't about how the warp core works. It's cool, yes, but if a narrative is going to sink its teeth into you, you need to care about the characters. Several shows have a lot of weird stuff happening in them that I didn't continue to watch after the first few episodes. With LOST, I cared about the characters. I connected. I wanted to solve the mystery of the defiant expression on Yunjin Kim's face when she unbuttoned that top button more than I wanted to know what the monster was. I wanted to know if a tiger could change its stripes, if our characters with darker pasts could find redemption. I wanted to know what made the doctor get that tattoo. I wanted to know what Kate did. Watching the characters interact on my screen made me laugh, hold my breath, and even tear up. I speculated with my family and friends about who these people really were and what the writers intended for them. Did some of these characters know each other before the flight crashed? Did Sun or Jin actually understand English? With all that strange chemistry going on between them, were Shannon and Boone actually not siblings? Why did Locke seem so sure of everything?

Even in season one, our different characters had stories that paralleled each other, both on the island and in their flashbacks. In season one, the audience's lack of familiarity with the characters and LOST's outstanding ensemble cast were the writers' secret weapons. The actors sold us on all of the drastic character shifts and emotional somersaults. We believed.

As I continued to watch the show, especially upon rewatching episodes, I began to suspect that something strange was going on with identity. I couldn't quite place my finger on it, but there was ample evidence. There were those close ups on eyes. Sometimes characters would do things in perfect sync, as if they were puppets pulled on the same strings. Everyone kept asking each other "who are you?"--"who are they?"--and even, "who am I?" The same situations kept happening over and over, with different characters...

"Everyone was asleep. So, I had an idea. I'm out here looking for some psycho with Scott and Steve, right? And I'm realizing, who the hell are Scott and Steve?"
~"Raised by Another," written by Lynne E. Litt

Background characters Scott and Steve seem interchangeable to both our characters and our writers. On camera, Christian Bowman introduced himself as Steve and Dustin Watchman introduced himself as Scott. Yet after one of the two characters died--Scott, both the characters and the writers insist--it was Dustin Watchman who remained an extra on the show. The writers don't seem to care much one way or another who is playing Steve, as long as we know that it is Scott who is dead. Maybe.

Carlton Cuse: And we were struggling, we actually thought we knew who was Scott and who was Steve, but we really didn't, and in fact…then we got into a huge thing, we got the dailies back, and it was still hard to determine who was Scott and who was Steve.
Damon Lindelof: Then we gave each actor a rock, and then we said, "Whoever's left standing gets to be Scott!"
Carlton Cuse: That's right. So one of them died, but we don't know which one!
Damon Lindelof: We don't know which one. So…that's the true story.

Okay, but who cares about Scott and Steve, right? They're just an ongoing gag...or are they? Is it just me, or does the Scott vs. Steve discussion seem like it could be an important clue in the ongoing discussion about how character and identity works in the mythology of the show? Whether or not the corpse incident was intentional or just an accident that happened on set, the end result is the same. The writers repeatedly claim that LOST is about the characters, but it doesn't seem to bother them too much whether specific actors decide to leave the show or remain. In fact, it's almost like the characters are interchangeable to them.

"So, he's a doctor, right? Yeah, the ladies dig the doctors. Hell, give me a couple of band aids, a bottle of peroxide, I could run this island too."
"You're actually comparing yourself to Jack."
"The difference between us ain't that big, sweetheart. I guarantee you, if he had survived a few more weeks on this island you'd have figured that out."
~"The Moth," written by Jennifer Johnson & Paul Dini

Ever since I started reading and listening to interviews, podcasts, and commentaries about LOST I've heard the producers and actors emphasize that the important element of the story of LOST is the characters. I went searching for a few specific quotes of this sort, and Sam G. from The Fuselage helped me dig up this interview that Lorne Manly did of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof from way back in September 2005: link (Thanks, Sam!)

"The genre aspects of the show are cool, and we have fun doing it,'' Mr. Cuse said. ''But I am much more engaged by the people on the show, and I think that is fundamentally what we try to do."

Apparently, Damon Lindelof agreed with Cuse, for Manly reports that Lindelof apparently chanted the word "character" as a mantra. (As an aside, I would love to know how many times Lindelof chanted the word "character.")

''Everything,'' Mr. Lindelof concluded, ''has to be in service of the people. That is the secret ingredient of the show."

If I understand this interview correctly, they are saying that not only is characterization important, but that all mythology in the show is there to help us get to know the characters. In short, in LOST, the characters are the mythology.

Now check out this video excerpt from an episode of The Write Environment, in which Damon Lindelof discusses LOST and storytelling: Damon Lindelof on The Write Environment

In this clip, Damon Lindelof doesn't seem worried when he suggests that in the next two years that Matthew Fox might choose to leave the show--Matthew Fox, who last time I checked, most people consider to be the leading man! He also tosses out the suggestion that the writers might decide to kill Kate--again, last time I checked, a character most people would consider to be the leading lady in the show. Finally, he suggests that Terry O'Quinn might want to play his character Locke differently. Was this an early hint not that Terry O'Quinn would be playing Locke differently, but that O'Quinn would be playing a different character entirely? Is it, in fact, possible that Terry O'Quinn is not the only actor who is playing multiple characters?!

I believe that any comprehensive theory of LOST needs to consider the evidence that somehow there isn't a 1:1 ratio between actors and characters on LOST. If we accept this idea, both little inconsistencies and dramatic personality changes begin to make more sense. Why do people's eyes change color? Why do our characters occasionally have the voices of other characters? Why are the same phrases repeated over and over by different people? Didn't anyone else think it was odd when Matthew Fox said "Don't tell me what I can't do" when we all knew that was supposed to be Locke's line? Doesn't anyone else find it odd when other actors say "son of a bitch"--especially when we are so used to that line being uttered from the lips of Josh Holloway? How many characters have we seen slap each other? Drink too much? Swim out to sea in exactly the same manner? Change their minds or feelings at the drop of a hat? Who are these people?

As I watch LOST, I am moved by the characters. I love watching how the interactions play out, especially when we have scenes with small intimate groups of two or three. However, do I know definitively who the characters of the show are? In my heart, I feel like I know the character, but from an intellectual standpoint, I'm not so sure. I suspect that the mystery of character is the central LOST mystery, and for that reason the writers probably saved the real meaty questions of existentialism for the final season. Either that, or they never intended to completely delve into that mystery, which is one mystery that takes most of us a lifetime to figure out. Anyway, whatever they have in store for us in season six with the characters, I'm looking forward to it!