I wanted to include some ideas I remember from East Asian Lit. which may be relevant to Lost.

Many of us remember and love the Kung Fu TV series. The structure or type of story is what some would call a Renegade Monk Story. There are lost of stories involving renegade monks in East Asian plays and writings, but Kung Fu was the first time this style of story was ever presented to - so called - western viewers.

Lost may be structured after some East Asian stories like Ghost World stories. There is a common story, usually involving a fisherman, who becomes lost under the sea. While he is under the ocean he finds a whole new reality there with new people to meet and he has a lot of fun there. After a few hours he thinks of his family and friends and decides it would be great to show this new place to other people. He returns to the surface of the ocean thinking he has only been gone a few hours. He goes back to his town and can't recognize many of the buildings. He looks for his wife and friends, but they are no where to be found. Eventually he learns that everyone he knew has died a few hundred years ago - so a few hundred years had passed while he thought he was in this lost underwater world for only a few hours.

Lost could be using East Asian lit. to bring some literary ideas to us so called - western - viewers.

I think a writer could find a life time of work for writing TV shows just looking at some small segment of East Asian writing like Kabuki Plays. East Asia is a vast source of written works most of us westerns know only a sliver about at best.

Labels: LOST