I've linked to his blog, The Pop Culture Initiative, on the bottom right hand side of the page, but I'm under the impression that most of you don't click on the links that I provide.
Therefore I'm going borrow his intellectual property and re-post his most recent work, even though it's about a television show that I have never seen. Yes, it's about the LOST finale, but trust me when I tell you that you don't need to be a follower of the show to enjoy it. He ends the post with a cheesy line, but it's truly an excellent article. In fact, he claims that Entertainment Weekly re-posted it on their website.
Lastly, before I get to the article I've got two things to say to those of you that regularly read this blog and Frank's.
1.) You should because they're both awesome
2.) This article is worth reading twice, so I'm sorry I'm not sorry for re-posting it.
"Mystery, now more than ever, has special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the Age of Immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider—or, at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours…The experience of the doing really is everything. The ending should be the end of that experience, not the experience itself.”
- J.J. Abrams
In about 96 hours, give or take, LOST will be over. No more waiting for answers, you’ll have them (or at-least you’ll have the answers the writers and creators want you to have). No more being teased into waiting a week or sometimes months at a time for the next episode, for the next morsel of an answer to the puzzle that is LOST. You will have all the puzzles pieces that you will ever have. Will the picture make complete sense to you? Probably not. Knowing LOST as well as I think I do (we’ve been married for about six years now), the puzzle picture will probably be a picture of another puzzle. This will also most likely enrage the majority of the people who tune in. However, to these people I say, you’re missing the point.
Mystery is a rare commodity in today’s world. Almost nothing is mysterious anymore. If you want to know something about someone somewhere you have more tools now than any human has had in the history of mankind. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Bing, Skype, AIM, cell phones, digital cameras, cell phones that are digital cameras, etc., etc., all exist to make sure you never have to wonder about anything ever again. These tools should make us feel like Gods. Unfortunately, they make us feel like ants, and ants under a burning microscope. Why is this? See, another question that needs an answer. Well, it’s because we have sacrificed mystery in to the unholy God of answers that we don’t even really want. We’ve fast forwarded to the end of the book in hopes that ending is a happy one. What we failed to realize is that by not reading the whole story, or better yet, letting the story fully develop we have given up the chance of ever understanding if the ending is in fact happy. Truthfully, we’ve given up on the whole story itself.
Ask most people and they’ll tell you that having the ability to know anything and everything whenever you want to know it is something they greatly cherish. These people are simply liars or completely stupid. Probably both. People don’t want to know answers. Deep down, people don’t want to know anything. They want to act like they want to know because they think everyone else wants to know, but deep down livin’ is easy with eyes closed. Now, am I saying that being stupid or unaware is the right way to live? Not at all. Are there benefits to be able to find out any answer with a click of a button? Ummm… yeah (a duh). However, has it made everything duller and less interesting? Ummm… yeah. Finding out answers is what makes life meaningful, but it’s about the finding of the answers rather than the answers themselves that makes it all special.
Imagine for a moment you needed information about the Battle of New Orleans. Why the Battle of New Orleans? Who knows? Stop asking questions! How would you get that information? Well, you’d probably Google it or if you’re lazy, Wikipedia it, and a half an hour (maybe less) you’d know everything you’d ever really need or want to know about the Battle of New Orleans. Now, imagine if you couldn’t use those resources. How would you find out the information then? Well, you’d probably have to put pants on (yikes), leave your house (double yikes), go to a library and look through dozens of books (triple yikes) until you found the answer you were looking for. Maybe you’d even have to look up a professor who was qualified on the subject and actually have to interact with another human being that was smarter than you (yes, nerds, leaving your computer and getting sunlight sounds completely horrible, I know. Just kidding, nerds! I love you!). Both of these ways may give the same basic answers, so what’s the difference between the first search and the second? Not the answer; that like I said remains the same, but rather the entire experience.
The lack of mystery in today’s world is sucking the life right out of us without us even knowing it. It’s making us bitter, miserable, and completely inpatient to listen to the entire story at hand. You want to know what a G7 chord sounds like on a guitar? You don’t even have to pick up a guitar or play one to find out. Experience lost. Boyfriend or girlfriend’s Facebook status different from what he/she said they were going to be doing? Well, why listen to their entire story? They lied, there’s your answer. Experience [relationship] lost. Hell, this entire site is even to blame; for example, you want to know if the ending to The Graduate is happy or sad? Well, there’s a whole 1,500 word post on it from a couple weeks back! Looks like you’ll never ever have to watch the movie to make up your own opinions about it. Experience lost (I’m sorry I’m not sorry). The Age of Immediacy, as Mr. Abrams beautifully put it, makes us bitter because everyone thinks they know they answer when they didn’t even bother to hear the question. It makes us miserable because the most interesting parts of an experience, the mystery, is being taking away. And makes us inpatient to the whole process because for some reason we’re all in a rush to get to the ending, which is the least interesting part. But why? Why are we in such a rush to spoil everything?
The best part about all these spoilers is that there’s this subconscious backlash going on when it comes to finding out TOO MUCH. I mean Facebook is about to be burned down with torches because the same people who tag pictures of themselves drunk on the toilet (I’m looking at you every girl ages 18-24 that has ever been on Facebook ever) are upset that their privacy is at risk. Really? What Privacy? If that was the case, people wouldn’t be on Facebook to begin with. The truth is that all of us are subconsciously scared of losing not our privacy, but our mystery. Whether people will admit it or not, most people only want to tell you the answer they want you to know. They want to maintain their mystery because it’s their most interesting aspect. So I ask you, reader who probably hates LOST for being so flighty with answers: How is this any different from LOST?
Short answer, it isn’t, and that’s what I’ll miss most about the show. This is show that kept me thinking and was completely entertaining year after year, a show that helped give this entire website it’s namesake (ya’ know like The Dharma Initiative. A bunch of you just went, “Oooooh!”), a show that will probably go down as my favorite television show ever, so a few loose ends are fine by me. This is because what I will miss more than anything is the mystery of LOST. I mean do I want to know what the Numbers mean, or what is the Monster, or what was the deal with Walt, or how a spinal surgeon like Jack Shephard got field training with ammunition (BIGGEST MYSTERY OF THEM ALL)? Of course I do. Will it be as interesting and meaningful as the six seasons of mystery that the show gave me? Not in this life, brotha’.
So reader since we’re at the end of the post I’m guessing you want me to give you some sort of answer? Well, how about do you want to know what I think the Island is? (you nod “yes”). Well, I think the Island is just that, an island. A magical island, sure, but just an island. It’s not the Garden of Eden or a spaceship, and it sure as hell better not be purgatory. That’s literally my big theory. Am I right? Maybe. We’ll find out Sunday night, but then again maybe we won’t.
Either way, if “The End” of LOST leaves me to die alone after six seasons of living together then at-least I found something within the wreckage of the show that’s hard to find nowadays: a mystery that was worth getting lost in.
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