Sterotypes
has anyone else noticed how the main charactera have been some sort of sterotype of society? let me show you a few examples
Jack-the skilled surgeon with issues
Locke-One of lifes losers
Hurley-the fat American
Shannon-blonde skatterbrain
Kate-bad girl
Saiyd-Iraqi who is judged
Sawyer-American South bad boy
Jin and Sun-sexually repressed Japanese
Rose and Bernard-older couple who found love plus Cancer victim
Charlie-ex pop star druggie
Michael-black single Dad doing his best in tough times
This is purely for fun but seems odd how every walk of life is covered in Jacobs list like a sample of humanity
I didn’t know these were typical stereotypes.
This is a cool new approach to discussing the characters of Lost. Arew you sure you do not mean ARCHETYPES rather than Stereotypes?
Stereotypes: Origin:1790
Lets look at the above.
Stereotype basically means a conventional or formulaic representation of a type of character.
Does Jack fit the conventional or formulaic representation of a neurosurgeon? Funny line Sawyer has when he hears Jack is playing Golf. Even from the first episode I had no pre-conceived notion of what a neurosurgeon looks or acts like.
Hurley as the latino from a working class LA neighborhood? I have tha baggy pants and gangsta look with a skinny kid with hostile attitude as a stereotype for that. Not the sweet guy with a sense of humourwho works in a chicken shack.
Sayid: the handsome, sensitive and conflicted war criminal. Not really my idea of an Iraqi terrorist.
Kate: the girl next door who happens to be a murderer and wanted fugitive. as the femme fatale, perhaps. I really think she is meant to embody both images.
Jin: The loving Romeo who will sacrifice anything for his beloved Juliet (Sun) Loyal and honest.
Sawyer fits more into the part of the Western hero. Tall and lanky, a man of little words and a loner. The quintessential American hero.
Shanon. yes definitely.
Charlie. Yes, at first glance. He is caught up in the lifestyle, but i think the producers quickly revised the charaacter when they cast Dominic Monahan.
Locke (at first glance) embodies not life’s loser, but the great outdoorsman. Hurley,s ‘Who is this guy?’ when he sees the suitcase full of knives, pretty much sinches it.
Rose and Bernard as the bickering older couple (my parents) who deep down understand each other and could not live without each other.
Archetypes:
An inherited pattern of symbolic imagery derived from past collective experience.
That one is harder. I once read that a psychological study at McGill Univerrsity rconcluded that we all cling to Archetypes to create our own self images. This guy thinks of himself as superman. mild mannered but hiding great strength. Or that girls cherishes the image of herself as Diana the huntress. Or as Madonna. The dominatrix or the Saint or the conflicted bad boy James Dean.
You can see that playing out with Sawyer who assumes the identity of the man who pushed his father to murder-suicide. You can see Charlie living the lifestyle of sex drugs and rock and roll even though he is actually the very conservative religious geek. Claire rebels against the Madonna image. Pregnancy catches her right at the end of her rebellious Punk phase. Our relationship to the images we have of motherhood, fatherhood, etc. are vital.
Locke especially struggles with his image of manly virtue. He likes to hunt and fish and track and be Hawkeye from “The Last Of The Mohicans” (which by the way I am surprised never popped up in the show). But he is good at science and chess and mathematics and more cerebral pursuits.
Jin and Sun are Korean
i love hurley, but it is the whole point of “fat man working at fast food restaurant” image…
shannon – portrayed as a scatterbrain (blonde) – but also the only person who can speak enough french to decode rousseau’s message.
claire – teenage ( i dont know what age she’s supposed to be) single mum, doing what she feels is best for her child..
and i love the whole joke about doctor’s playing golf..
i suppose, the good thing about this stereotypical/archetype list of people, is that at least they weren’t all OAP’s. (imagine what lost would be like if it was)
I didn’t know that “black single Dad doing his best in tough times” is a stereotype lol. Is there any person in the world who doesn’t loosly fit a stereotype?
I love it how you have got sexually repressed japenese as a sterotype