Amy Smashes Through the Looking Glass: FEAR & Identity

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RESIST TABULA RASA

In my last post on Memory and Identity, I brought up the T.V. show Dollhouse.  It's a little sci-fi/Joss Whedon show that ended its two year run January 2010.  The show was about an uber-company (Rossum) that develops advanced medical research/technology to empty and reprogram the human brain.  Memories can be scanned, stored, manipulated and uploaded into someone whose mind has been wiped clean and prepped for upload (called a 'doll').   Rossum runs an exclusive business with this tech: they create custom ordered personalities, upload them into dolls and then rent them out to customers for a LOT of money.   Once returned to the Dollhouse, the dolls (or actives) have a "treatment" where everything is erased back to zero.

The dolls are men and women who have voluntarily signed contracts (5 years) to allow their bodies to be used this way (usually for shady reasons like escaping the law or a traumatic emotional experience like LOSING A CHILD).  When their contract's up, their entire dollhouse experience is erased, their identity is restored (uploaded) and they walk out the door with a lot of cash and none of those pesky problems they walked in with.

While they are in a "doll state," referred by the Dollhouse's boss as "Tabula Rasa," they are basically like really submissive children.  They don't act like children, but their emotional state is child-like.  Raise your hand if you know why.  Anyone?  That's right!  Because your emotional maturity is dependent on your experience more than anything else. No experience, no emotional maturity. No complex thoughts either.  (It probably helped that they were kept on a constant cocktail of really cool drugs to keep them happy.)

Yeah. It was dumb. It tried not to be a sex slave show, but let's face facts. Why else would really rich people rent hot men and women programmed to authentically want to do whatever they say?  The show's premise did, however, raise some very interesting philosophical questions that pertain to our discussion of LOST.

Those questions center around the main character, Caroline, who checks into the Dollhouse in the pilot. Her memory (her GHOST) is scanned and stored. Then her ghost is erased where there's no "Caroline" left in her brain, but her brain and body are still functioning just fine (doll-state).  The Dollhouse assigns names to each "active" from the military radio alphabet, which replaces every letter with a word beginning with that letter.  Caroline's body without Caroline's ghost in it is called Echo.

(Yeah. I said Echo.  Other names on that military alphabet list?  Michael and JULIET.  Interested yet?)

The philosophical question: Is Echo a person? Is she alive? As long as she keeps to her doll-like state and keeps getting erased back to zero, this question doesn't seem to apply.  She isn't sentient as Echo.  Echo isn't a ghost.  She's a substitute.

Meet Alpha.  He was originally recruited from a prison for the criminally insane.  Turns out, that's not a good idea cuz broken brains don't really doll-state all that well.  He has a "composite event" accident where 48 different imprints (manufactured ghosts) are uploaded into his brain all at once.  He is "people."  He goes crazy and breaks out, but not before he falls in psycho love with Echo.

Alpha decides he needs to WAKE Echo UP.  He arranges for her to be rented by a pal who takes her camping and bow-hunting.  Just when things are going fine, he tells her she's got 10 minutes to run because he's hunting her.   During the chase she is 1) drugged 2) knocked unconscious and 3) scared out of her WITS.  In the final confrontation, before she kills this dirt-bag, she starts to flash. She starts to remember being other people. All of those imprints weren't really erased from her mind after all.  Lucky for her, a few of her previous imprints have some excellent firearms, hand-to-hand combat and first aid skills.  As she faces a new situation and the need for a skill pops up, she can access the skill without changing into someone else.  Get it? Memories of the skills are buried in her brain, and she can only access them when she needs them.  After, they go back into storage.

[This, by the way, is the ENTIRE PREMISE of a little show called CHUCK. Maybe you've heard of it?]

After returning to the Dollhouse, her brain is wiped as usual, but this time, it doesn't take.  Echo has become sentient.  Echo has become her own ghost.  So basically Alpha has engineered an experience for Echo that drives her to primal fear -- the fear of death -- and experiencing primal fear "wakes her up" from being a drone (if you fear death, it's because you want to stay alive).  After this experience, Echo is 'real.'  Echo is a ghost.

So here's the question:  Which ghost does the physical body belong to?  Caroline or Echo?

Should Echo be erased just because she was artificially created?  [Erasing her, by the way, is essentially killing her.  She would "simply cease to exist."]  She certainly wouldn't be alive any longer.  So if Caroline's ghost is put back into her body, what happens to Echo's ghost?  Can they co-exist separately in the same body?  Which one gets to be 'real?'

This would be VERY close to existential questions explored in Ghost in the Shell and Bladerunner, both covered HERE.

Interesting, right?

ANYTHING YOU FEAR CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU ON THE ISLAND


I think we can all agree that before Desmond has this car crash experience with Charlie, he doesn't remember anything about the island or Penny.  He notes Claire's baby might be a boy at the airport, but he doesn't recognize her like Jack recognizes him in the plane (the Claire business is a classic Darlton trick!  That's not even Claire!).  Even if you are convinced that somehow Desmond had an inkling of events on the island early on, he still doesn't remember anything about PENNY until he sees Charlie's hand pressed against the window after the crash.  At that point that same hand on the window at the hatch ("Not Penny's Boat") flashes before his eyes (get it?).

Remember way back in"316" Mrs. Hawking tells Jack, Desmond, Sun and Ben that they have to duplicate the circumstances of their first flight as much as possible in order to get back to the island on the Ajira flight?  Well, Charlie underwater with his hand pressed to the window after the car crash is an excellent duplication of Charlie underwater with his hand pressed to the glass before he died when The Looking Glass control room flooded (thanks to Mikhail's hand grenade).

That moment, btw, when Desmond and Penny hear each other just before Charlie closes the door is the LAST TIME DESMOND interacts with Penny on the ISLAND.  Not a coincidence that the image Desmond sees (Charlie's "Not Penny's Boat" hand) connects to the last time he saw her face (on the radio view screen) and heard her voice on the ISLAND.  Later in the MRI, he hears Penny call his name -- that's the last words he heard her say before Charlie closed the door.  [Think about that - we'll come back to it later.]

Let's take the time to examine the sequence of events leading up to Desmond's first flash.

Desmond Remembers Image From The Island.

1. Given a warning/choice (By Flash Charlie - Let me show you or get out of the car).


2. Primal fear aka "Fight or Flight" response (car goes into the water)


3. Knocked unconscious (Desmond wakes up under water)


4. Visual trigger (Charlie's hand at the window)


5. Flash/vision (of "Not Penny's Boat" hand)


6. Result:  Starts to look for Penny.

Oh, my lovely LOST readers! Are you ready? Watch this!

Boone's Save My Sister Shenanigans

1. Given a choice (by Locke - "Are you SURE you want to tell your sister about the hatch?")


2. Knocked unconscious (whacked in the head by Locke)


3. Primal Fear (Locke throws knife)


4. Audio trigger (hears Shannon screaming)


5. Flash/Vision (Shannon's Death)


6. Result:  Lets go of his obsession with Shannon.

Claire Names Aaron (on-island)

1. Given a choice (whether or not to let Danielle hold the baby)


2. Knocked unconscious (we assume by Danielle)


3. Primal fear (baby is gone)


4. Audio trigger (Charlie promises to get Aaron back)


5. Result: Finally names Aaron

Are you seeing it?  Isn't this fun?  Okay, just one more:

Ben Cons Sawyer

1. Given a choice (to submit or stop fighting  back)


2. Knocked unconscious (Ben whacks him w/his badass stick)


3. Primal Fear (freaks on operating table; worried about pacemaker killing him)


4. Visual Trigger (Ben shows him they are on different island)


5. Result:  Sawyer gives up.

Whoa.  That pattern (or a variation of it) we see is a pattern of manipulation used on our losties to "change their minds" Kinda like Richard does at the end of "Ab Aeterno" -"I changed my mind! I changed my mind!" Question is: WHY?

[Watch your wordplay - Richard's MIND is changing - his identity, his 'ghost.'  That's why, regardless of what Ricardo experiences, "Ab Aeterno" is not Richard's backstory.  The backstory stuff is just filler.  It's the system tying up all the loose ends AND this is a training run for HURLEY, who is generating this flash (like Jacob and Mock Locke can do).  This is Richard's FLASH, it's artificial and it's engineered by Hurley to see if he can do it.  Before the flash, Richard's  an unknown. He's blank.  After the flash, he's a man mourning the death of his wife.  By "Everybody Loves Hugo," he's blank again - NO NECKLACE.]

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMEMBER


I think there's more than enough evidence in Season 6 to prove that our losties are being manipulated to take certain steps down a particular path by two or more outside parties in order to get something done (or prevent that something from being accomplished).  [My personal theory is that "they" are shutting down the island and helping all the peeps who are trapped by it.]  And clearly Mock Locke is 1) working a plan toward and endgame and 2) changing/influencing our losties.

If Mock Locke is using primal fear as a catalyst to change or influence our losties, the question is: change them from what? Is he waking them up? Is he brainwashing them (like Clairuso)?  If he IS waking them up, then why were they asleep?  And how does he recognize them as asleep?

All interesting questions.

We return, yet again, to Desmond.  In "Everybody Loves Hugo," why is Mock Locke so surprised at Desmond's lack of fear?  When Desmond says, "What's the point of being afraid?"  Mock Locke get's IRKED. Quick!  He dumps the smiling Desmond head first down the well.  Desmond's "AAAAHHHHHHHH!" as he falls tells me he might be feeling a little  fear now.  Is that why Mock Locke tells Sayid "You don't have to worry about him anymore"?

Let's think of other losties who have nearly fallen to their death (and were definitely afraid).

• Jack tumbles off a cliff chasing Christian's ghost. Mock Locke hauls him up and chats with him about chasing the white rabbit.


• Sawyer tumbles off a cliff on the way to Graffiti cave with Mock Locke, who then shows him names and numbers, followed by his own : James Ford.


• Kate nearly falls out of a tree picking mangoes. Then she sees the black horse for the first time.


• Kate nearly falls out of a tree after the incident.


• Kate nearly falls into the hole at the temple before the smoke monster breeze by overhead.


• John Locke falls to the ground when his father pushes him out the window.

So you tell me.

Can you think of any losties that were shocked by car accidents?

Any losties you can think of terrified enough to press a button every 108 minutes for three years to prevent the end of the world?

Yunh-hunh.  I'm with you!