TV/Series, Hors Séries 1 | 2016 Hurley, Or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost 2
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
TV/Series Hors séries 1 | 2016 Lost: (re)garder l'île Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost Bertrand Nouailles Translator: Chloe Farrell Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/4961 DOI: 10.4000/tvseries.4961 ISSN: 2266-0909 Publisher GRIC - Groupe de recherche Identités et Cultures Electronic reference Bertrand Nouailles, « Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost », TV/Series [Online], Hors séries 1 | 2016, Online since 01 December 2020, connection on 05 December 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/tvseries/4961 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/tvseries.4961 This text was automatically generated on 5 December 2020. TV/Series est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost 1 Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost Bertrand Nouailles Translation : Chloe Farrell 1 There is no subject that can be considered by nature "unworthy" of philosophical reflection. This is especially the case for popular culture as it manifests in television series. After all, if we subscribe to Canguilhem's idea that, "Philosophy is a reflection for which all unknown material is good, and we would gladly say, for which all good material must be unknown,"1 it follows that television series therefore make up an unknown material of this sort. Yet the way in which philosophy relates to series should be established from the outset. According to Stéphane Llerès2, there are two approaches: Either philosophy itself aims—with largely pedagogic intentions—to demonstrate concepts or problems that it has developed itself through television series, or it aims to offer a philosophy specifically tailored to the series it has taken as a subject of study by creating original concepts designed for the series in question. From this point of view, the series as a generator of ideas has an effect on philosophy. In the following article, we hope to delineate a third approach—one that will be increasingly hermeneutic, producing an experience of truth that concerns the art-object that is the series Lost3. 2 Of course, it is a question of presenting one experience of truth, not of carrying out an exhaustive analysis whose target would be to uncover and articulate all possible meanings—a task that could prove unending. Yet among the hermeneutic tools at our disposal to analyze a series, one of the most powerful is represented by the characters, if we think of them not as simple narrative figures subject to psychological analyses, but as small "mechanisms" that produce the serial nature of the series. Each of Lost's characters represents a "becoming-series" for themselves, through which the series as a narrative chain of events escapes all closure. One of the characters is particularly interesting, as a minor character: Hugo (Hurley) Reyes. We argue that he illustrates a stoic direction or tendency that is inherent to the series. Of course, it is not certain that Hugo is an entirely stoic figure, because we find many characteristics or events in TV/Series, Hors séries 1 | 2016 Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost 2 which he is involved throughout the series that could contradict the given image of the stoic sage. Yet it is possible to argue that, to a certain extent, Hurley offers a stoicism that will ultimately be successful in calling into question the figure of the hero itself. Lost: A Series of Series 3 The series Lost is remarkable because it creates many series simultaneously within itself, whether it be through flashbacks or flashforwards, through temporal jumps, through the two possible simultaneous presents in season 6, or even through the repetition of the same event seen from different perspectives—the 48 days experienced by the survivors of the tail of the plane (season 2), or the plane crash as seen by the Others (season 3)—without forgetting the many episodes in which a proliferation of independent actions are set in motion by various characters, thus creating multiple possibilities. By drawing upon Deleuze's ideas in The Logic of Sense, Stéphane Llérès reminds us that in this instance, a series is created precisely from this ability to create multiple series, so much so that "the serial form is thus essentially multi-serial.4" 4 Henceforth, we must ask what the relationships are among these multiple series and the elements that constitute each of them. In Lost, the meeting point between two series—for example, that of the survivors from the front of the plane and those of the tail of the plane, or the encounter with the Others (and Ben in particular)—produces a reconfiguration that tends not toward a homogenization of the two series that meet but, on the contrary, toward an increase in heterogeneity—toward the emergence of new alterities, in the form of new and completely unforeseen initiatives. It thus seems that Lost is subject to the logic of series creation put forward by Deleuze in The Logic of Sense: … [T]he terms of each series are in perpetual relative displacement in relation to those of the other. … There is an essential lack of correspondence. This shift or displacement is not a disguise covering up or hiding the resemblances of series through the introduction of secondary variations in them. This relative displacement is, on the contrary, the primary variation without which neither series would open up onto the other. Without it, the series would not constitute themselves through this doubling up, nor would they refer to one another through this variation alone.5 5 It is remarkable that the series Lost does not seem to seek out a focal point from which the different series that pass through it create a sense of coherence and unity that we could call synthetic. It seems that the series has the tendency of increasing its own fragmentation. 6 We can go so far as to note a multiplication of series insofar as the characters in Lost, as comprising elements of series, are themselves potential breeding grounds from which new series might spring—so much so that not only do they allow the series for which they are one of the constituent elements to maintain its variation in relation to other series, and thus to maintain certain distances between series so that no convergence may occur, but also to bring variation into the series in which they take part from the inside, so that each series differs from all others, and also constantly differs from itself. 7 Let us draw upon an example. Characters are a source of variation based on their actions, yet it must be noted that their actions never involve the group in its entirety— there are never collective actions taken by the entire group, only ones that involve TV/Series, Hors séries 1 | 2016 Hurley, or the Destiny of a Stoic Figure in Lost 3 small groups or even one character acting alone. Furthermore, this can lead to dilemmas within the decision-making process. (Think, for example, of the first episodes of season 3, in which Jack, Sawyer, and Kate's solitude is represented by the cages in which they are confined.) When communal action begins to take shape, different interpretations of the information to which the characters are privy often leads to multiple initiatives. At the beginning of season 4 (The Beginning of the End), when Jack— with Rousseau's help—begins his search for Naomi, who was previously stabbed by Locke, he disagrees with Kate regarding which path they should take. She then decides to act alone, thus creating a parallel series in the search for Naomi. 8 What is the mechanism through which the heterogenous multiplicity of series is produced? What is such a divergence between series based upon, that it complicates the establishment of a common world? What is it that allows difference and variation to repeat continually? Although not all series respond with a system of cross-references and relationships that create a coherent whole—although they ultimately begin, continue, fail, and transform themselves in relation to their own internal logic—all of them aim to bring into play a reality that does not allow itself to be described or understood through the logic of the series; they all aim to deploy a "a very special and paradoxical case… without being reducible to any of the terms of the series or to any relation between these terms. 6" In Lost, this case can be nothing other than the island itself, in relation to which all of the series converge and—at the same time—which maintains their heterogenous multiplicity. 9 The island functions as an enormous reservoir of potentials that generate multiplicity because it "…is never where we look for it, and conversely that we never find it where it is.7" This is why it is not certain that the survivors are lacking in character or identity, or that they feel lost in the beginning: In the beginning, it is possible to assign them a category; they maintain their positions, or their roles, so to speak. On the other hand, that which is impossible to determine, that which evades all definition and situation, is the island itself. This is implied in the episode with the polar bear—the first hint that the island is perhaps not what it appears to be; in other words, that it is not consistent with the image of a mere island of castaways. As stranded survivors of a wreck, the characters are in their rightful place on an island; yet it is precisely this particular island that will elude them as an island.