Category Archives: Recurring Themes

Michael Emerson talks about the statue, Alpert, Egypt, John Locke, and more

Posted on March 18, 2009 | 2 comments

Here’s Michael Emerson (who plays Ben) in an interview last month with the Washington Post:

Liz: Will we find out what the deal is with the four-toed statue?

Michael: You are going to learn more about the world from which that statue came. I don’t think we’re going to see the statue again in context, but maybe. You’ll certainly know from whence it is a relic.

He also repeats the claim I’ve seen before (most notably in a Wikipedia article), that Richard Alpert is not wearing eyeliner:

Liz: Is Nestor Carbonell — who plays Richard Alpert — wearing eyeliner?

Michael: No. But he has a kind of genetic beauty that is a rare thing in men or women. No, that’s what he looks like when he wakes up in the morning. It’s hard not to study his face and admire it.

Ha! But Alpert has a dark line that goes straight across the bottom of his lower lid! Was he really born with that, or is everyone who makes that claim just pulling our leg?

Also from the interview:

Liz: Well you’ve probably just put to rest several theories about Alpert being a transplant from ancient Egypt.

Michael: Ah. Well, hold that thought about Egypt. That’s all I’ll say.

So whether or not Alpert is from ancient Egypt, the statue may very well be.

Emerson also says that he has “some crackerjack scenes — epic, vintage Ben and John Locke coming up — in ways you would never expect.” That’s great! The Ben-Locke pairing is one of my favorites.

There is lots more in the interview, including Emerson’s thoughts on whether Ben is purely evil, or if he’s a good person doing whatever it takes to reach his goal, and what kind of roles Emerson would like to play in the future.

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Posted in Alpert's eyeliner, Ben (Michael Emerson), Egyptian mythology and hieroglyphics, Four-toed statue, Interviews, Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell)

I’m now totally convinced that the four-toed statue was based on Taweret

Posted on March 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Here’s another picture, where the resemblance is especially clear:

Taweret, the hippo fertility goddess. in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, California. Photo by Tom Fowler

Taweret, the hippo fertility goddess. in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, California. Photo by Tom Fowler

The round thing on top of this statue’s head is identical to the one on “our” statue. The ears are very similar. The toes — I count four.

It’s no wonder that in LaFleur we could see the statue only from the back — look how distinctive the front is! One glimpse of the front, with its pregnant belly and its hippopotamus face, would have given it all away.

Here are some interesting things about Taweret (sometimes spelled Tauret or Taurt) from the site Ancient Egypt Online:

Taweret … was a patron of childbirth and a protector of women and children….

Initially she was viewed as a dangerous and potentially malignant force…. She represented the … stars of Ursa Minor and Draco … who guarded the northern sky. The northern sky was thought to be cold, dark and potentially dangerous …. However, by the Old Kingdom she was seen as a protective rather than an aggressive force…. As a result, Taweret became a mother goddess and a patron of childbirth….

She was thought to help women in labor and to ward off evil spirits and demons who intended harm to mother or baby….

According to “The Book of the Dead”, Taweret guarded the paths to the mountains of the west which led to the underworld and could also use magic to help the deceased pass safely through that dangerous and frightening land.

Expectant mothers often carried amulets depicting Taweret to invoke her protection….

She was associated with so called “magic wand” or “magic knives” used during labour to ward off evil….

She was depicted as the combination of a crocodile, a hippo and a lion…. She had the paws of a lion, the back of a crocodile and the head and body of a pregnant hippo but with the addition of a woman’s hair. She often wears a short cylindrical headdress topped by two plumes or the horns and solar disk of Hathor, bearing the “Sa” (representing protection) or the ankh (representing life)…..

With so many things about Taweret relating directly to the story of LOST, I think there can be little doubt that the Island statue was based on statues of Taweret. The only remaining question is whether the writers meant for the Island statue to be a statue of Taweret herself (and if so, would that mean the Island was at one time populated by ancient Egyptians?) — or whether the writers used Taweret as a jumping off point, an inspiration to create their own original mythological being.

Photo of the Goddess statue at the Rosicrucian Museum (c) Tom Fowler

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Posted in Egyptian mythology and hieroglyphics, Four-toed statue, Season 5, Theories

The giant four-toed statue

Posted on March 7, 2009 | Leave a comment
The statue as seen in 5x08 "LaFleur"

The four-toed statue as seen in 5x08 "LaFleur"

In the beginning of LaFleur, the Lost-ies were startled to see the back of this giant statue.

It is, of course, the famous four-toed statue that we first saw in the finale of Season 2.

From episode 2x23

From episode 2x23

This past December, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, in one of the “Dharma Special Access” podcasts they made to keep us entertained during the long off-season, had promised that we would see the statue again in Season 5 — and so we have — and that we would see it even more extensively in Season 6.

So I guess we’re going to have to wait until next year for the mystery of the missing toe to be solved.

(The part about the statue starts at 3:40):

The statue reminds me of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

I found a clearer picture of the statue, along with two pictures that compare it to possible inspirations: Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, and Taweret, a goddess in the form of a hippopotamus who was a protector of women in pregnancy and childbirth (!). The resemblance of the Island’s statue to Taweret is striking. Both have similar toes and are wearing virtually identical headpieces. Take a look.

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Posted in Damon and Carlton, Egyptian mythology and hieroglyphics, Four-toed statue, Season 2, Season 5, Season 6

You KNOW, Jack. You know that you’re here for a reason.

Posted on March 3, 2009 | 11 comments

In this week’s official video podcast, Matthew Fox talks about the evolution of his character Jack.

The podcast starts with a clip from the Season 4 finale, where Jack and Locke, on top of the Orchid Station, are having another one of their arguments about destiny.

Locke tells Jack that he is not supposed to go home. Jack gets mad and yells, “What am I SUPPOSED to do?”

Then he says, “Oh, I think I remember. What was it you said on the way out to the hatch?”

He is referring to their argument in the Season 1 finale — the same argument that I wrote about in my previous post.

This is a great example of the crazy intricate way that LOST works. A conversation starts in Season 1, then picks up again, three years later, in Season 4, then is referenced on the internet in a podcast in the middle of Season 5.

I think this conversation is coming up in the podcast now because finally, after four-and-a-third seasons of Jack and Locke having the same conversation over and over, something is starting to shift.

In the Season 1 argument, Locke said that Jack may not believe the Island is his destiny, but he will believe it at a later time.

That later time appears to be now.

At the Orchid Station, Jack says to Locke that back at the hatch, Locke had told him that crashing on the Island was their destiny.

Locke says, “You KNOW, Jack. You know that you’re here for a reason. You know it.”

“And if you leave this place,” Locke continues, “that knowledge is going to eat you alive.”

Which is exactly what we saw happen in the flashforwards.

In the podcast, Matthew Fox talks about how Jack has always needed to be in control, but now he is starting to give that up.

I have mixed feelings about that in terms of the dramatic possibilities. I do like seeing Jack’s character develop and grow, but if Jack gives in completely to his sense of destiny, what will happen to the tension between Jack and Locke that has been such an important part of the show so far?

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Posted in 4x13 There's No Place Like Home, Brought here for a reason, Destiny versus Free Will, Interviews, Jack (Matthew Fox), Locke (Terry O'Quinn)

For a reason — Season 1 finale

Posted on February 25, 2009 | Leave a comment

“Each one of us was brought here for a reason.” — John Locke

This is the line that inspired the title of this blog, and it’s a line that sums up the central mysteries of LOST:  Why were the Lost-ies brought to the Island, and who or what brought them there? Locke says the line, or variations of the line, in more than one episode — most memorably in this scene from the finale of Season 1:

The short scene is like a greatest-hits recap of all the lines that lay out the show’s themes. Man of science versus man of faith. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place. It’s destiny. A sacrifice that the Island demanded. Jack: “I don’t believe in destiny.” Locke: “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet.”

So the groundwork for all these themes was already set in place in the first season. Now, part-way through Season 5, some of them are finally starting to come to fruition.

3/2/09 Editing to add Late last night (actually in the wee hours of the morning), I turned on the TV to see if there was anything on, besides infomercials, that I might watch for a few minutes before I went to sleep. I flipped through the channels, and there was a rerun of an old episode of LOST! About a minute later, the scene in the clip above, part of this post that I hadn’t yet finished, came on! Spooky! Cue Twilight Zone music.

I ended up watching the rest of the episode — the very end of Season 1. Even though I am writing two LOST blogs, I haven’t rewatched many episodes yet — I only became a hard-core LOST nerd recently, as a result of writing the blogs, rather than the other way around. It was interesting to see that piece of the Season 1 finale now — to see Walt so small, to see Hurley freak out when he saw the numbers inscribed on top of the hatch, to remember how it felt to watch that episode the first time, to remember the almost unbearable suspense of wondering what was inside the hatch.

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Posted in 1x24 Exodus, Part 2, Brought here for a reason, Destiny versus Free Will, Jack (Matthew Fox), Jack versus Locke, Locke (Terry O'Quinn)