POST 02 - IF RACHEL BLAKE SPEAKS, WHY WON'T SHE TALK TO US?
THE DOC JENSEN E.W. RACHEL BLAKE INTERVIEW
Please see the original article as it appeared in the on-line version of Entertainment Weekly on July 22nd, 2006 here:
"Rachel Blake Interview"
Why was ET granted an exclusive interview, when other TLE news organizations, Blog sites and individual players have been trying to get to the bottom of the Hanso Foundations since before Rachel Blake was even a twinkle in "Doc" Jensen’s eye?
For three months associates of TLE have begged Rachel to correspond. A word, just one word from her to anyone else may have assuaged all our "in-game" fears that she was not who she claimed to be or worse that she was working with the enemy. Unfortunately, the few times Rachel deigned to respond, she answered in riddles. Even during the long anticipated face-to-face at Comic-Con all that happened was she spoke, we listened, then she disappeared just in the nick of time—before anyone could ask her a single question.
Why then, did she elect to talk to Jensen? Personally, we have some reservations that this "interview" ever really took place. First, Jensen talks about Hall H at the convention center, which we think does not exist. Also, he mentions burly he-man security guards escorting Rachel from the convention center but the video we’ve seen depicts women security guards and the panel even jokes about that fact. What gives? We’ve decided that "Doc" Jeff Jensen has been recruited by TPTB to be "in-game." He certainly plays along.
Jensen tries to get Rachel to break the fourth wall a number of times in his interview. He asks her if she is merely a character in an alternate-reality game called The Lost Experience, asks her if she has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, implies that she is a member of the Hanso Foundation and worse, tells Rachel that Alias, a real world program, had been cancelled. The very thought of it made her cry. Or was that scary whimpering sob just the sound of the fourth wall cracking under the breaking strain?
We fear maybe that's what the interview was all about, reality spin, a concern that seemed confirmed when Rachel, answering Doc's question about Lost, served up this mind blower:
"RACHEL BLAKE: Lost is a TV show... the Hanso Foundation is real. And if you're looking for a connection, ask yourself why the HF is running commercials during Lost... I mean, doesn't that mean they're essentially paying for the show?"
Look, we're willing to accept that the ARG is playing out in our current time frame and that the characters on Lost are in their time frame, never the twain to meet. Those two do not have to connect, say, at next season's start for us to keep our suspension of disbelief aloft. Stretching our disbelief is what attracted us to Lost in the first place. We've always found Lost to be audacious television. Every week they recreate the reality of the show without any explanation whatsoever--the Others, the Tailies, Desmond, polar bears, food drops, magic, hatches, unnumbered coincidences. Did someone say metafiction? How fun to find it in primetime.
However, if we are now required to assume that the (dare we call it fictional) Hanso Foundation has had a hand in the creation of Lost for its own propagandist purposes, what happens when Lost comes back on the air? Must we then presume that story and those characters are fictional creations of (gasp!) a fictional creation? We don’t want to watch Lost as though the Hanso Foundation were running the show. It’s too much to ask us to deconstruct, plus who cares? It’s a clever thought problem, but only for about five minutes, and certainly doesn’t make up for a total absence of plot. Well, that’s not exactly fair, there’s lots of plot--all plot, all the time--no story. Many beginnings, no middles or ends. Eventually the mystery wrapped in an enigma and an orangutan costume becomes transparently threadbare. Russian roulette is an exciting game, true, until you find out it's being played with six empty chambers.
We don’t want to ask Rachel, as Doc Jensen does, “Do you know who you are?” We want her to tell us if she and D.J. Dan and ROT are working together. And we want her revelations to provide some insight into what’s happening on that Lost Island, which isn’t possible if we must believe it’s a TV program financed by Hanso. Would it kill them to provide just one Alternate Reality, the Hanso world, which included Lost and The Lost Experience, however far apart in time and space? We'll give TPTB a lot of reality rope to play around with… as long as they keep in mind that with much rope comes much responsibility… we'd hate to see it all end in a hanging.
Please see the original article as it appeared in the on-line version of Entertainment Weekly on July 22nd, 2006 here:
Why was ET granted an exclusive interview, when other TLE news organizations, Blog sites and individual players have been trying to get to the bottom of the Hanso Foundations since before Rachel Blake was even a twinkle in "Doc" Jensen’s eye?
For three months associates of TLE have begged Rachel to correspond. A word, just one word from her to anyone else may have assuaged all our "in-game" fears that she was not who she claimed to be or worse that she was working with the enemy. Unfortunately, the few times Rachel deigned to respond, she answered in riddles. Even during the long anticipated face-to-face at Comic-Con all that happened was she spoke, we listened, then she disappeared just in the nick of time—before anyone could ask her a single question.
Why then, did she elect to talk to Jensen? Personally, we have some reservations that this "interview" ever really took place. First, Jensen talks about Hall H at the convention center, which we think does not exist. Also, he mentions burly he-man security guards escorting Rachel from the convention center but the video we’ve seen depicts women security guards and the panel even jokes about that fact. What gives? We’ve decided that "Doc" Jeff Jensen has been recruited by TPTB to be "in-game." He certainly plays along.
Jensen tries to get Rachel to break the fourth wall a number of times in his interview. He asks her if she is merely a character in an alternate-reality game called The Lost Experience, asks her if she has trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, implies that she is a member of the Hanso Foundation and worse, tells Rachel that Alias, a real world program, had been cancelled. The very thought of it made her cry. Or was that scary whimpering sob just the sound of the fourth wall cracking under the breaking strain?
We fear maybe that's what the interview was all about, reality spin, a concern that seemed confirmed when Rachel, answering Doc's question about Lost, served up this mind blower:
"RACHEL BLAKE: Lost is a TV show... the Hanso Foundation is real. And if you're looking for a connection, ask yourself why the HF is running commercials during Lost... I mean, doesn't that mean they're essentially paying for the show?"
Look, we're willing to accept that the ARG is playing out in our current time frame and that the characters on Lost are in their time frame, never the twain to meet. Those two do not have to connect, say, at next season's start for us to keep our suspension of disbelief aloft. Stretching our disbelief is what attracted us to Lost in the first place. We've always found Lost to be audacious television. Every week they recreate the reality of the show without any explanation whatsoever--the Others, the Tailies, Desmond, polar bears, food drops, magic, hatches, unnumbered coincidences. Did someone say metafiction? How fun to find it in primetime.
However, if we are now required to assume that the (dare we call it fictional) Hanso Foundation has had a hand in the creation of Lost for its own propagandist purposes, what happens when Lost comes back on the air? Must we then presume that story and those characters are fictional creations of (gasp!) a fictional creation? We don’t want to watch Lost as though the Hanso Foundation were running the show. It’s too much to ask us to deconstruct, plus who cares? It’s a clever thought problem, but only for about five minutes, and certainly doesn’t make up for a total absence of plot. Well, that’s not exactly fair, there’s lots of plot--all plot, all the time--no story. Many beginnings, no middles or ends. Eventually the mystery wrapped in an enigma and an orangutan costume becomes transparently threadbare. Russian roulette is an exciting game, true, until you find out it's being played with six empty chambers.
We don’t want to ask Rachel, as Doc Jensen does, “Do you know who you are?” We want her to tell us if she and D.J. Dan and ROT are working together. And we want her revelations to provide some insight into what’s happening on that Lost Island, which isn’t possible if we must believe it’s a TV program financed by Hanso. Would it kill them to provide just one Alternate Reality, the Hanso world, which included Lost and The Lost Experience, however far apart in time and space? We'll give TPTB a lot of reality rope to play around with… as long as they keep in mind that with much rope comes much responsibility… we'd hate to see it all end in a hanging.
Reality or Alternate Reality?
posted by The Alternative One at 5:08 PM
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