Slashdot Mirror
"Lost" and the Emergence of Hypertext Storytelling
Hugh Pickens writes "The TV series 'Lost' involves a large cast of characters marooned on a tropical island after a plane crash, with episodes that thread lengthy flashbacks of characters' backstories with immediate plots of day-to-day survival and interpersonal relationships, and a larger 'mythos' involving the strange and apparently supernatural (or science-fictional) happenings on the island. Independent scholar Amelia Beamer writes that the series works as an example of a recent cultural creation: that of the hypertext narrative. 'In Lost, the connections between characters form the essential hypertext content, which is emphasized by the structure of flashbacks that give the viewer privileged information about characters,' writes Beamer. 'Paramount are the connections unfolding between characters, ranging from mundane, apparently coincidental meetings in the airport, to more unlikely and in-depth meetings, reaching back through their entire lives and the lives of their families.' Beamer writes that the series also pays tribute to video games, another relatively recent interactive means of storytelling."
'Lost' requires the viewers to *infer* what is a flashback, flashforward, or alternative universe. Typically, these things are labeled in other movies or fiction. For example, they'll say "Twenty Years ago..." or in a movie, making the screen go all wavy or something similar. 'Lost' just jumps in and hopes the fans figure it out. About the only earlier example that I can think of is Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" , which obviously the scriptwriters of 'Lost' have read
My academic work in semiotics pays off; finally, I'm the one with the credentials in a Slashdot thread! Basically: no. A long, winding story with many characters, capable of self-reference, does not qualify as hypertext. Hypertext is the use of the written text itself as an interface for accessing other files of text. The ability to abstract a particular meaningful concept with another (like, say, compare character A to character B) is a factor of human consciousness, not a feature of the narrative. Basically, what Lost does is introduce a wide-variety of (granted, typically unexpected) characters and and narrative elements, and just keep adding them, not always resolving them in the way we're used to. Because of all this excess narrative (read: crap) it's easy enough for a creative audience to make all of these concept abstractions themselves. Takeaway: the technology the narrative (the media, the story, and the concepts) don't enable any "hypertexting", just our good old fashioned human capacity for abstraction.