The Magic Box

1
The Magic Box
I can show you things. Things I know you want to
see very badly. Let me put it so you'll
understand. Picture a box. You know something
about boxes, don't you John? What if I told you
that somewhere on this island there's a very
large box . . . and whatever you imagined . . .
whatever you wanted to be in it . . . when you
opened that box, there it would be. What would
you say about that, John? Ben Linus in The Man
from Tallahassee (Season 3)
2
The Magic BoxLosts Mysteries and Enigmas
3
The Magic Box

• Lost
• (2004-2010)

4
The Magic Box

• Science is the eradication of mystery.--B. F.
  Skinner
• Damon Lindelof (r) claims to be an admirer of
  BFS.

5
The Magic Box
Paradoxically, the very serial elements that
have been so long reviled in soaps, pulps, and
other low genres are now used to increase
connotations of quality . . . In television
drama.
U. S. television has devoted increased attention
in the past two decades to crafting and
maintaining ever more complex narratives, a form
of world building that has allowed for wholly
new modes of narration and that suggests new
forms of audience engagement.
From Jeff Sconce, What If? Charting Televisions
New Textual Boundaries
6
The Magic Box
Certainly, chief among Losts pleasures is the
shows ability to create sincere emotional
connections to characters who are immersed in an
outlandish situation that, as of this writing, is
unclassifiable as science fiction, paranormal
mystery, or religious allegory, all constructed
by an elaborate narrational structure far more
complex than anything seen before in American
television. Jason Mittell, Narrative Complexity
7
The Magic Box
8
The Magic Box
Jason Mittell a growing tendency to push the
operational aesthetic to the foreground, calling
attention to the constructed nature of the
narration and asking us to marvel at how the
writers pulled it off often these instances
forgo realism in exchange for a formally aware
baroque quality in which we watch the process of
narration as a machine rather than engaging in
its diegesis (Mittell 35).
9
The Magic Box
John Millais, Pandoras Box
10
The Magic Box

• HURLEY So, dude? What do you think is inside of
  that hatch thing?
• LOCKE What do you think is inside it?
• HURLEY Stacks of TV dinners from the 50's, or
  something. And TVs, and cable, some cell phones,
  clean socks, soap, Twinkies -- you know, for
  dessert, after the TV dinners. Twinkies keep for,
  like, 8000 years, man.
• LOCKE laughing I like Twinkies, too.
• HURLEY C'mon, really, what do you think is
  inside?
• LOCKE Hope. I think hope is inside. (Exodus,
  1.23)

11
The Magic Box
Perfect Circles, Six Feet Under (3.1)
12
The Magic Box
13
The Magic Box
Inside Schrödingers Box
14
The Magic Box
15
The Magic Box
16
The Magic Box
17
The Magic Box
18
The Magic Box
19

• Lost fans are like Talmudic scholars. They
  have created a body of scholarship about every
  episode.
• Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost writer, Seasons 1
  and 2)

20
The Magic Box
21
The Magic Box
22
(No Transcript)
23
The Magic Box
24
The Magic Box
25
The Magic Box
The Oceanic Airlines Website
26
The Magic Box
The Hanso Foundation Website
27
The Magic Box
28
The Magic Box

• The
• Lost
• Library

29
The Magic Box
30
The Magic Box

• Lost
• Mysteries Enigmas

31
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Dharma Initiative
32
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• The Crash of Oceanic 815

33
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Adam and Eve
34
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Agelessness of
Richard Alpert
35
(No Transcript)
36
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Bens Secret Door
37
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Bens Murder by Sayid
38
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• The Black Rock

39
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Dharma Initiative
40
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Blast Door Map
41
The Magic Box
The Owl Cave Petroglyph from Twin Peaks
42
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Fail Safe Key
43
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Four-Toed Statue
44
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Four-Toed Statue
45
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Frozen Donkey Wheel
46
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Hatch Mural
47
The Magic Box
48
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Mrs. Hawking

49
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Mrs. Hawking

50
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• The Islands Healing Properties

51
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Hit by a Bus

52
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Hurley Bird
53
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• The Incident

54
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Infant Mortality
55
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Jacob

56
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Jacobs Cabin
57
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Jughead
58
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Lost Crosses

59
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Lost Crosses

60
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Mysterious Arrivals on the Island

61
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• The Numbers

62
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Numbers
63
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Numbers
64
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Orchid
65
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Orchid Lab
66
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Orchids Exotic
Matter
67
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Room 23
68
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Brainwashing in Room 23
69
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas Christian Shephard
70
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Sickness
71
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Sickness
72
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas
• Smokezilla

73
The Magic Box
74
The Magic Box
75
The Magic Box
76
The Magic Box
77
The Magic Box
78
The Magic Box
79
The Magic Box
80
The Magic Box

• Lost Mysteries Enigmas Time Travel
• Time Travel by Consciousness
• Time Dislocation

81
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Temple
82
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Temple
83
The Magic Box
Lost Mysteries Enigmas The Temple
84
The Magic Box

• Lost
• Conspiracy
• Theories

85
The Magic Box
From Lostpedia In February 2007, Damon Lindelof
opened a question on Yahoo! Answers about the
nature of the Monster. The answer he and Carlton
Cuse liked the best was given by user ar233. Out
of over 8000 submitted answers, the winner
was   I think the Monster was originally a
highly advanced security system designed to
separate participants in the experimental DHARMA
hatches. I think it was an effect that was
designed to frighten people (smoke, noise) if
they strayed too far from their experiment
location. (A bit Wizard of Oz like) However, the
electromagnetic force has mutated it - in the
same sense as Desmond experienced time travel and
can now see the future after exposure - and made
it malevolent and able to physically grab things
in its force (Eko, the Pilot, Locke). So in
theory it may be able to be deactivated, if they
can find the control room for it (which would be
another hatch somewhere yet undetected).
86
The Magic Box
The producers' explanation as to why they picked
that answer was   We were amazed at the
imagination and prodigious creativity applied to
answering the question, what is the Monster? We
have chosen our favorite answer. Not that's its
the right answer. Sorry, but we can't really give
away the ultimate secrets of the Monster quite
yet. The answer we selected might be somewhat
right, totally right -- or completely off-base.
But we liked it and found it very cool and
intriguing. Thanks to everyone who took the time
to write in. We loved reading your thoughts --
and thanks for watching!--Carlton and Damon
87
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• The Casimir Effect

Hendrik "Henk" Brugt Gerhard Casimir (1909-2000)
88
The Magic Box
Exotic matter with negative energy density is
required to stabilize a wormhole.15 Morris,
Thorne and Yurtsever16 pointed out that the
quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be
used to produce a locally mass-negative region of
space-time, and suggested that negative effect
could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow
faster than light travel. This concept has been
used extensively in Science Fiction.from
Wikipedia
89
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• String Theory Tessaracts

90
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• The 2009 Theory

91
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• Atlantis

92
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• The Collective Consciousness Theory

93
The Magic Box

• Lost Conspiracy Theories
• Purgatory

94
The Magic Box
95
The Magic Box

• He sank so low that all means
• for his salvation were gone,
• except showing him the lost people.
• For this I visited the region of the dead . . .
• Dante, Purgatorio (quoted as an epigraph to
  Walker Percys Lancelot, a book Sawyer is reading
  in Maternity Leave, 2.15)

96
The Magic Box
G-a-r-y T-r-o-u-p P-u-r-g-a-t-o-r-y
97
The Magic Box

• Lost
• and Fan Dissatisfaction

98
The Magic Box
On Twin Peaks, Coopers recall (and ours) of the
Man from Another Places dream insistence in
episode 3 (April 19, 1990) that that gum you
like is coming back in style in episode 17
(December 1, 1990) allows him to identify Laura
Palmers murderer. Most of Twin Peaks phenomenal
original audience was long gone.
Lost expects/assumes our encyclopedic knowledge
of its narrative (in present tense, via
flashbacks, and, now, in flash forwards) over its
six year run.
99
The Magic Box
100
The Magic Box
The Idiot Box
or The Magic Box
101
The Magic Box