Six Degrees of Lois Weisburg focuses on the idea of networking and people who are “connectors.” Well, the final season of the television show Lost started only a couple of weeks ago, and as soon as I read about connectors, I could only think of Lost. First, let me give you a little background. If you watch or know anyone who watches Lost, you understand how it sucks people in. It’s an all-consuming show; missing one episode is enough to put a fan into a panic, because missing one show means not understanding the rest of the series. I jokingly tell people that watching Lost is as big a commitment as getting married.
So what does this television show have to do with sociology? Well, apart from the general case study style of the show (How do people change after crashing on a very strange “deserted” island?), the creators of Lost are hugely into the idea of six degrees of separation. Damon Lindelof, the executive producer of the show said in an interview, “I minored in sociology in college and a couple of the other writers have a background in sociology.” I believe that the sociology that can be found in Lost is very intentional.
Each character is connected in their pasts, presents, and even futures. You can take any character--however minor--and connect them to any other character. It goes something like this: You take a random character, let’s say Hugo Reyes, one of the survivors of the Oceanic 815 crash. Before crashing on the Island, Hugo’s father took him to a psychic. This psychic had only a few lines, and this was back in Season 3.In this week’s episode, the psychic reappeared, this time not in a flashback, but in a “sideways flash” to an alternate universe--what could have happened if the characters had never ended up on the Island. (Confused yet?) This time she was a job interviewer, talking to another major character, John Locke. John Locke was only at this job interview because he had run into Hugo Reyes in a parking lot and Hugo had set him up with the interview. This is just one example of how each character is connected to every other character in a huge circle.
So why do the writers do this? Is it just to drive us crazy with the recurring characters? Is it because they can’t afford new actors? No. They are making a statement about the six degrees of separation theory. The ridiculous number of character connections (most of them unknown to the characters) show how social interactions, even those we don’t notice, shape our lives. Now that we’ve entered the sixth season, a part of each episode is devoted to showing how each character’s life would be different if they had never ended up on the Island. It is interesting to see how different things turn out when the social environment is changed.
For example, one of the main characters, Kate Austen, would have had a very different outcome without the Island in her life. Kate boards the plane in the beginning of the series accompanied by a police officer and wearing handcuffs because she murdered her stepfather. On the Island, Kate is able to escape her bloody past and quickly becomes one of the most popular people on the Island. She uses her natural talents to help the other survivors and strives to keep the others from finding out about her crime. Later, when she is rescued from the Island, she gets out of her prison sentence because of her good deeds on the Island. She is able to live a productive life and even raises a son. But when the setting is changed, and we see what would have happened if Kate’s plane had never crashed, her future is bleak. Upon reaching the intended airport, Kate attacks her police escort and runs away, back to her old way of life. Without the Island, she loses her chance to atone for her crimes and become a productive member of society.
While Lost takes the six degrees of separation theory to a rather extreme level, that does not mean that it does not exist in real life. Who can say how different our lives would be without the coincidental but meaningful encounters with the people in our own lives?
For more information on character connections in Lost, check out this link:
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