Lost-Season 6-Reading the Alt-- A False Sense of Diversity?

Happiness, apparently, is being an American.

That's the unintentional conclusion drawn by Lost. I say 'unintentional' because I don't think the showrunners intend any kind of cultural bigotry, but there are some uncomfortable themes suggested by the conclusion. For a show that broke a lot of ground in cast and character diversity, it's surprising that it concludes with almost every one of those diverse non-Western characters rejecting their cultural heritage.

Let's look at the alts of the four main characters who come from Eastern stock: Miles, Sun, Jin and Sayid, and let's see how every last one of them [Bono voice] runs... into the arms...of AMERICA.[/Bono voice]



STRAUME UND CHANG

First off, I'm not implying that because Miles comes from Asian ancestry that he's therefore not a "real Amurrican." Not at all. Guy is an American off the bat. His parents are Americans. He begins and ends as an American.

However, the issue of his last name...well, it bugs. I know that the writers have said that they wanted a character whose name sounded like 'maelstrom.' However, they created this name using a Germanic first name and a Latvian last name and assigned it to a character who ultimately was revealed to be Pierre Chang's son. Pierre Chang has been part of Lost since Season 2, so this isn't a case of the show just doing some colorblind casting. Miles Straume was an Asian character. Given his past anger at his father's abandonment, his name change is unsurprising. (Plus, Pierre Chang himself was known to pick up the odd European alias or three.)

But then we move into the alt, where Miles and his father seem to have a good relationship, again unsurprising since Miles eventually learned during his life that his father never abandoned him but sent him away from the Island for his own safety. Yet alt-Miles remains "Detective Straume," not Chang. You could say that he kept his old name just because it was simpler. Yet Daniel Faraday was seamlessly transitioned into "Daniel Widmore."

By itself, this isn't much. But let's keep going.

MA-WIDGE IS WHAT DOESN'T BWING US TOGEVAH TODAY

Sun and Jin in the alt: still working for Daddy Paik. Still on the run from Daddy Paik. Still packing fetus.

But there's a crucial difference: they're not married. This is not a big deal in and of itself, until you start to think about what it represents. You could say that a lot of their heartache resulted from the marriage-- it's what sucked Jin into being Paik's henchman, for starters-- but in the alt, he's still Paik's henchman. Not being married didn't change that.

The wedding was a key event in both character's lives for another reason besides the obvious one: it's where they were marked as candidates by Jacob, and in fact the temple where they were wed is reflected in Jacob's lighthouse mirror. While we don't know what faith Sun or Jin profess, the temple is similar in style to a Buddhist temple, and as the majority of South Koreans of faith identify as Buddhist, we can assume that the wedding was as well. (Interestingly, it is not customary to hold South Korean weddings at temples; traditionally they were held at the bride's home and in modern times, they're held in 'wedding halls' in hotels.) The characters have two wedding portraits, showing them in both traditional Korean and Western wedding clothing; while this is a common practice in modern Korean weddings, it also serves to illustrate the creeping encroachment of Western culture into this Eastern couple's lives.

Were they trying to escape their candidacy? Perhaps. Coming to the Island ultimately got them both killed. However, it also restored their relationship, revived Jin's beater tadpoles and resulted in their daughter Ji-Yeon. They became better people for being candidates, and if they had to die, they died together with their daughter safely elsewhere.

Deep-sixing the wedding didn't set them free from the negative associations surrounding their marriage. But it does eliminate the markers of the Korean culture and tradition from whence they came. Perhaps this isn't entirely a bad thing; one of the series' more heartbreaking moments comes when Jin's father insists to Sun, after cheerfully inquiring about the wedding from which he was excluded, that Jin should continue to pretend that his father is dead, as having a fisherman for a father is shameful (Season 3, "D.O.C."). Cultural norms haven't been terribly kind to either character. But pointedly removing this aspect of the Kwons' relationship serves to symbolize a rejection of their specific cultural identity.

The rejection is underscored by their awakening ending with both of them speaking English instead of Korean; Juliet even comments on how "you both speak English just fine."

Now let's turn to Sayid. Oh, Sayid.

I WISH THEY ALL COULD BE CALIFORNIA GIIIIRLS

One of the first things we learn about Sayid on the show is that he has a star-crossed love, Nadia, and that he boarded 815 to find her in Los Angeles.

Nadia reappears in his alt (and as she was never on the Island, alt-Nadia is not 'real' here; she's a sock puppet), but this time, she's married to his brother. A lot of other people have already remarked on this and the consensus appears to be that this represents Sayid's sense of being unworthy of her. I think that's primarily the case here. However, let's look a bit deeper.

(Disclaimer: As a European-American Christian who holds exactly zero degrees in Middle East studies or religion, the following breakdown is based on some research that I think is valid. However, if I've misunderstood or misrepresented something here, please feel free to correct me.)

We know two things about Sayid's background: 1) he's a practicing Muslim (at least at the beginning) and 2) he hails from Tikrit, Iraq. This information enables us to make some educated guesses about his religious and cultural views (and as his alt is a creation of his psychology, its features are going to be informed to some extent by these views). As a Muslim, he's influenced to some extent by sharia (God's law--the "way") and as an Iraqi by tribal laws and customs. Based on his hometown, we can assume (but not conclude, mind) that Sayid is a Sunni Muslim and a member of the Al-Bu Nasir tribe.

It's really interesting that Sayid hasn't just married alt-Nadia to somebody else; he's married her off to his brother. Why? Because, this way, she's still possibly available to him. The archaic practice of levirate marriage obligates a man to marry the widow of a close male relative and is still practiced throughout the Middle East. The tribal law (fiqh) followed by the Al-Bu Nasir tribe, the Hanafi, tends to skew more "liberal" than other fiqh (for example, brides get to consent to their marriages and have the power to contract their own marriages independent of their families), but it does not forbid levirate marriage. Neither does the Sunni interpretation of sharia. Sharia does proscribe marital relations between certain classes of family members (the off-limits relatives are known as mahram), but brothers- and sisters-in-law are not among the banned relationships. Based on this, we cannot declare that Sayid absolutely embraces levirate marriage, but he would not absolutely reject it either, and it would be part of his cultural landscape that informs his alt.

In this light, marrying his beloved to his brother is a very, very loaded choice. It means that, should his brother die, Sayid might still be able to-- nay, be obligated to!-- marry Nadia and adopt her children, who just happen to resemble him. And surprise, surprise, Sayid has placed alt-Omer in mortal peril. He could go at any moment and his safety is in Sayid's hands, both in terms of the scenario and in terms of the alt overall.

Sayid's relationship with Nadia in the alt represents the Iraqi/Muslim part of his identity, and he's trying to work out if he still wants it. And guess what he ultimately chooses to do?

That's right-- he leaves it all behind when he meets up with Shannon, who's 1) not an Arab, 2) not a Muslim, and 3) not exactly conservatively dressed. Sayid in the end is only completed by a blond, promiscuous American woman. Yes, you can argue that Shannon accepted him for who he was, flaws and all, but this ignores that Nadia was never shown to be particularly judgmental, so I'm not sure what the problem was there. Was it that she didn't put out as easily? Or was it that she became a symbol of the checkered past he desperately wanted to escape? There's several things going on here, but once again, the end result is that the non-Western is rejected in favor of the Western.

SO WHAT GIVES?

I really do think this is unintentional, at least not in a "West-rules-East-drools" kind of way. Clearly the show is loaded with Eastern imagery and symbolism and I think the writers respect the cultures and ideas from the non-Western world. (This is partially why this is so mind-boggling.) I think they would also argue that these specific characters couldn't find happiness in their origins, and that they're not claiming that these cultures can't work for anybody. Probably. I also think that, as a bunch of Americans, the writers seem to espouse a triumph-of-the-individual, reject-the-system, follow-your-bliss, live-your-truth mindset that is fairly uniquely American. Damon and Carlton are saying that fulfillment is being...just like Damon and Carlton.

By calling this mindset "American," I'm not implying that everybody else in the world is a bunch of repressed drones-- far from it. I happen to think that there's nothing wrong with having to occasionally put your needs secondary to obligations to family and community, and that a lot of the time, living your truth just turns you into a self-centered creep, and that this version of American-ness is not always ideal.

But didn't it ever occur to anybody that, when every character who's non-Western ends up as, well, American (or is omitted from the alt-- hello, Mr. Eko), that this implies something other than respect for a lot of the cultures that served as your source material? I mean, yes, everybody in some way is escaping their past, but you don't see the American characters specifically rejecting the trappings of their culture and adopting those of another. (Imagine an Iranian show where the handful of American characters all end up becoming Iranians at the end. You'd laugh and call it propaganda, right?) Nobody in that writers' room thought that there was anything troubling about this?

I love Lost. (Clearly, I spend way too much time thinking about it.) But there's a lot of things about it that bother me. They've taken a lot of credit for diversity on the show, but I'm not sure how much of it is warranted. It's great to be from another part of the world, as long as in the end you come to America. Add to it a conclusion where the one black character who moves on the end is married to a white man (while another black man's soul can't even escape the Island because he murdered two people, a body count which for this show is laughably low), and nobody has a same-sex soulmate, and most of the women are reduced to mere instruments of a male character's salvation...

*headdesk*

Namaste.

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