Lost has received widespread acclaim as one of the most innovative, intelligent, and influential dramatic series in television history. Central to Lost’s success has been its capacity to evoke audience interpretations of its mysteries, undiminished even with the series’ definitive conclusion.
This collection of fifteen essays by critics, academics, and philosophers examines the complete series from a diverse but interconnected array of perspectives. Complementary and occasionally conflicting interpretations of the show’s major themes are presented, including the role of time, fate and determinism, masculinity, parenthood, and the threat of environmental apocalypse.

Randy Laist is a professor of English at Goodwin University and the University of Bridgeport. He has authored and edited several books on literature, popular culture, and pedagogy. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Edited by Randy Laist
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 260
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4716-9
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8588-8
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction

RANDY LAIST      1

PART ONE: LOST IN TIME

“We Have to Go Back”: Temporal and Spatial Narrative Strategies

ERIKA JOHNSON-LEWIS      11

Narrative Philosophy in the Series: Fate, Determinism, and the Manipulation of Time

MICHAEL RENNETT      25

“Enslaved by Time and Space”: Determinism, Traumatic Temporality, and Global Interconnectedness

ARIS MOUSOUTZANIS      43

New Space, New Time, and Newly Told Tales: Lost and The Tempest

RYAN HOWE       59

PART TWO: LOST PHILOSOPHY

Lost and Becoming: Reconceptualizing Philosophy

JASON M. PECK      75

Lost in Theory: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lost but Were Afraid to Ask Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault

GIANCARLO LOMBARDI      90

“So This Is All in My Mind?” Hugo Crash-Tests the Contemporary Crusoe

MATTHEW PANGBORN      105

Primitivizing the Island: The Eclectic Collection of “Non-Western” Imagery

RENEE MCGARRY      120

PART THREE: LOST MEN AND LOST WOMEN

The Lost Boys and Masculinity Found

DAVID MAGILL      137

“It Always Ends the Same”: Paternal Failures

HOLLY HASSEL AND NANCY L. CHICK      154

Lost Children: Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Potential

DEBORAH DAVIDSON AND WAYNE JEBIAN      171

PART FOUR: LOST IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Lost in Capitalism: or, “Down Here Possession’s Nine-Tenths”

ELIZABETH LUNDBERG      189

“Strangers in a Strange Land”: Evading Environmental Apocalypse Through Human Choice

CARLOS A. TARIN AND STACEY K. SOWARDS      202

Securitizing the Island: The Other Others’ Defense of Environmental Management

J. L. SCHATZ      216

We Have to Go Back: Lost After 9/11

JESSE KAVADLO      230

About the Contributors      243

Index      247