LOST: Transmedia Gets Meta

I’ll be honest, I never liked LOST. Granted I was too young to enjoy it when it first aired, but I couldn’t get into it later in life, either. However, when it comes to the concepts of transmedia (storytelling across multiple platforms) and being meta, I have to give this show immense props. Until recently, I didn’t know how much of “a thing” transmedia was. Upon finding out that shows like Sherlock were known to utilize multiple platforms–radio broadcasts, character’s blogs, etc.–to, sort of, keep the world of the show going, sometimes even when the TV series wasn’t actively releasing new episodes, I was fascinated and in awe. Positively capitalizing on fans’ love and dedication to a fandom, as well as relatively new advancements in technology, transmedia is, in my opinion, one of the most innovative ways to keep an audience invested in a series. And, though I was in elementary school when LOST was coming out with new content, new ground was being broken.

In Steven E. Jones’ chapter “The Game of LOST,” from his book The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies, he writes about how the characters interact with the island on the show as if it is a “puzzle” of sorts, by saying, “On one level, this is a metaphor for how the viewer relates to the writers behind the scenes of the mystery show, who are producing meaning week to week (and rumor has it, sometimes on the fly, in response to fan feedback). But on the other hand it also describes how any player approaches most video games…” (Jones 3). Jones is right; characters are indeed as “in the dark” as viewers are when they watch LOST without spoilers, traversing their own “jungle” that lacks full understanding and comprehension, and picking up new clues and ideas along the way, with the characters.

This is what makes LOST‘s version of transmedia so meta. Not only are viewers trying to find the answers to their personal questions, as well as the content that will fill in plot holes, in their minds while passively watching the show; they are on the hunt, as well. The shows writers created Lostpedia (an archive of all things LOST, where cast members and writers would often interacted with fans) and The Lost Experience (an alternate reality game version of LOST used to fill in time between seasons 2 and 3). On sites like Lostpedia and The Lost Experience, fans were on the hunt for clues, across multiple media platforms, to make sense of what was going on in the show, as well as fill the downtime in the series with more Lost to satiate their love and dedication to the fandom.

Once again, I find these innovations fascinating, brilliant, and lucrative. But I still find how meta the entire process of navigating the transmedia is to be the most fascinating. As Jones said, fans were treating the show like “most video games,” as were the characters with the show’s island. Characters stumbled through the forests of the island on LOST, and, once the episode concluded, fans would take to their computers (most likely to access sites like Lostpedia and The Lost Experience) , and stumble through the other (digital) jungles of bedlam and confusion that writers had strategically modeled. Concepts such as fan fiction and cosplay have proven that fans often seek a level of immersion that literally brings them into their beloved fandom, and LOST seems to be one of the first TV shows to allow fans to do just that. It’s meta, it’s lucrative, and it’s fun for the fans. Everybody wins with the LOST legacy.

Destiny, John, is a Fickle Bitch

(to those who don’t watch the show: the title is a quote from Benjamin Linus, aka the best character on the whole show, and the picture is not only one of the characters, but has been living in my folder for so long. I can’t wait to actually put it to good use.)

Video games and television series have always played together so nicely. In my experience – maybe not with Fifa or any of the other strictly sports games, although sports is a tv show that is widely watched throughout the world – they have the same general lineup. In Joe Monninger’s words, there’s a beast chasing the main characters, they often have to find something to progress the plot, and main action sequences are isolated from the general storyline. In video games, the beast is often real, something the player has to fight in the form of a boss in order to advance to the next part of the game. In LOST, television series phenomenon and the closest I’ve ever seen to a video game in the form of a series, the beast is real. It is called the Man in Black, and he appears as a puff of smoke, a literal man in a black shirt, and John freakin’ Locke.

It was actually pretty funny to read Jones’s paper on the Game of Lost. A lot of the points he brings up were things I thought of during the show. The characters are isolated into particular categories – the “has-been, drug addicted rock star” (Jones), for example, that is Charlie. Video games adopt this principle too – characters envelop a certain trait, especially when the gameplay is focused on storyline. Until Dawn is a great example of this: the player learns about the characters through several traits revealed upon their first time onscreen, and the characters stick to the traits throughout the game, forcing the player to choose different scenarios based on character capabilities and the aforementioned traits. LOST does this as well – it provides characters, that the fans eventually called “Lostaways” according to Jones, that stick to certain traits, forcing watchers to either love or hate them as they travel through their challenges.

This is such an incredible concept. There are so many pieces to the game that LOST inhabits – the extra storylines that appeared in between hiatuses which discussed pertinent information which would be revealed later on, the websites, and the show which displayed hidden secrets. All of these, as Jones points out, is in the style of a video game. Watchers become players, although with no real influence on the show, especially after everything is said and done. I would have loved to have watched the show during its hay day, and been able to experience the website and the other games in full swing. I wonder how that would have changed the viewing experience.

That’s the rub – the viewing experience. LOST is like a video game, so it changes the experience for those watching. It provides a new approach to viewers and players and readers, just as all the other forms of digital literature and otherwise have undergone. LOST creates a universe for the viewers to interact with, leading them to draw their own conclusions. This was, as far as we know, the main reason for the ending being so ambiguous. I haven’t seen a show with this much viewer influence, and I doubt I will ever see one again. LOST was built for the viewers, just as the interactive poems were, the choose your own adventure twines were, and so on. It’s amazing to see them all come together.