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."
...and problems holding on to the "red thread", not really knowing what direction to go with it all. The writing started showing escalating signs of "crackelation" and inconsistency somewhere in the middle of the 3rd season - and by this I don't mean the "hypertext narrative" that was obvious already from the first few episodes. I tried to watch the current season recently, and I was truly more lost than ever.
'Coz it seems as if she can't, or refuses to look backwards in history - the "flashback" occurance in story-telling is older than the pen and paper. Is she really implying that this is something new that popped up after the web? :D To me, her writing appears to be just vacuous bollox in fancy phrasing making it appear bigger than it is.
I wrote: Because nobody ever told stories with large amounts of flashback before the advent of hypertext.
To emphasise this: what exactly does the author in the article that couldn't be applied to a story that clearly was not influenced by hypertext storytelling because it hadn't been invented, e.g. Joseph Heller's Catch 22: a highly nonlinear story which switches attention between numerous different points in its protagonist's career as the reader needs to learn more about the character's history in order to understand what comes next (or before). What the author describes as "levelling up" is generally called "raising the stakes" by most writers and is a widely used trick to keep readers/viewers interested in a long story. See, for example, Lord of the Rings, where it occurs several times: when Frodo et al reach Rivendell, in Moria, when the Fellowship splits. Allusion is a very widely used technique, and has a very long history in filmmaking. A good example of a pre-hypertext film with a lot of allusion is Blade Runner.
What is perhaps interesting is that Lost has a lot more popular appeal than the examples I quote above, so maybe this type of storytelling is becoming more appealing to the average TV viewer?