Search

In 2019, screenwriter Damon Lindelof will direct his major project, the audiovisual adaptation of Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s comic book, Watchmen. Watchmen re-reads superheroic mythology as the flipside and legend of the contradictions of an American society that is individualistic and liberal, imperialist and democratic. The television adaptation is both a sequel and a return to the origins of the comic book universe. At the same time, it is a critique of the way in which America writes its own history. The plot takes place in an alternate reality but opens on a real event: the race riots and massacre of African-Americans in Tulsa on 31 May and 1 June 1921. The narrative reinterprets the prohibitions of history (fiction and historiography), what must not be said and what is between the lines, between the boxes of the comic: the systemic persecution and invisibilisation suffered by the African-American minority.Lindelof sees the super-heroic representation of watchmen subjectivity as a will to power or monster love. She is a "monster" because of the double entendre of watch: she looks and is seen (watch). She is a 'monster', too, in that she plays the watch as she recounts her apocalypse. Gibbons and Moore have already presented the process of superheroic subjectivation, or even of the Nietzschean Übermensch as a Body. They turned it into an ideological version of the subjectivity of the normal man as a man of resentment: the identity troubles of masked (or unmasked) heroes questioned the persona incarnation of the contemporary subject. The heroes were thus plagued by the "watchmen question", inspired by Juvenal's "Quis custodiet ipso custodes" (Who watches the watchmen?).The series radicalises the ambivalence of this reading of the superhero as a power-hungry mask and a body bursting with power. On the one hand, it exhibits the power apparatus and latent racism of the aforementioned mythology as an instrument for regulating a society of panoptic control, that of the Cyclops organisation, guardian of a xenophobic norm. On the other hand, Lindelof claims to give a voice, an image and a body back to the traumatised and abnormal, nurturing a resistant and powerful subjectivity: blue nudity. This is how Lindelof presents us with a capitoline triad to unmask: Hooded Justice/William Reeves (Louis Gossett Jr), Sister Night/Angela Abar (Regina King) and Dr Manhattan/Calvin Abar/Jon Osterman (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).

This essay deals with the themes of the leap of faith, the ritual and the sacrifice in the television show Lost, concentrating mainly on season 2. It questions Lost’s promise to spectator as far as narration is concerned. This promise seems to be paradoxical: the story requires the viewer to be suspicious and even to distrust what s/he sees. Our work examines the Swan Station apparatus and the opposition between belief and knowledge which is reflected in the antagonism between Jack Sheppard and John Locke and finds a solution in the sacrifice of Desmond Hume. The essay analyses the episodes “Man of science, Man of faith” (S02E01), “?” (S02E21) and “Live together, Die alone” (S02E23-24). The first episode is interpreted in relation to Kierkegaard’s works to show that belief and knowledge are two phases before a character’s leap of faith, which consists in being open to others. However, the repetition of this leap is problematic; the second episode is understood as a focalisation on the despair of one character, Locke, who gives us a reflexion on the way to look at the TV show as an undecidable oscillation between distrust and trust, i.e. between the Pearl and the Swan. The third one, compared with David Hume’s writings and to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, allows to reveal the solution offered by the show, which would be self-sacrifice, mainly the sacrifice of one’s own pride, evident in Desmond and Penelope’s relationship.

This essay analyses The Leftovers’s last episode, “The Book of Nora” (S03E08), in its opposition with the episode “The Book of Kevin” (S03E01), as rival interpretative legends focusing on the scapegoat theme and its audiovisual processing in reference to the special persona of Nora (Carrie Coon). Meanwhile we interrogate the meaning of the accusation of being Azraël uttered against her in the episode “Lens” (S02E06) and what makes The Leftovers an apocalyptic show. Far from designating Nora as responsible for the original incident, we see her as being the one who represents the true version of the narrative and reveals to us our own accusing look on it. Then, associating the Giorgio Agamben’s parodical profanation definition with René Girard’s studies on the sociocultural phenomenon of the scapegoat, we’ll attempt to reveal the rising tensions and double frenzy throughout The Leftovers, inside the fiction but also in regard of Damon Lindelof’s previous television show, Lost. Can we expect a return of Lost’s Island in The Leftovers?

Lost is a polysemic show which mobilizes, for that purpose, the trope of homonymy. Many characters go by the name of great historical figures. This process questions the theme of utopia and ideal society. Yet Benjamin Linus, the main antagonist from the 2nd season to the 5th, is impersonated by an actor named Michael Emerson, whose name is the same as the American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, on whom Cavell says that is one of the repressed founding father of American thought. Under what circumstance can we consider that this homonymy constitutes a reference to understand the fictional narrative without taking the risk of confusing our desires with reality? Our thesis is that Lost encourages this sort of risk-taking. The story is a narrative experience, in the wake of Emerson’s self-titled essay. It incites us to rely on ourselves, to dare claim that each of us is special, in order to think a televised subjectivity and intimate recognition at odds with the egocentric voyeur’s posture of the standard viewer.

This essay deals with the themes of the leap of faith, the ritual and the sacrifice in the television show Lost, concentrating mainly on season 2. It questions Lost’s promise to spectator as far as narration is concerned. This promise seems to be paradoxical: the story requires the viewer to be suspicious and even to distrust what s/he sees. Our work examines the Swan Station apparatus and the opposition between belief and knowledge which is reflected in the antagonism between Jack Sheppard and John Locke and finds a solution in the sacrifice of Desmond Hume. The essay analyses the episodes “Man of science, Man of faith” (S02E01), “?” (S02E21) and “Live together, Die alone” (S02E23-24). The first episode is interpreted in relation to Kierkegaard’s works to show that belief and knowledge are two phases before a character’s leap of faith, which consists in being open to others. However, the repetition of this leap is problematic; the second episode is understood as a focalisation on the despair of one character, Locke, who gives us a reflexion on the way to look at the TV show as an undecidable oscillation between distrust and trust, i.e. between the Pearl and the Swan. The third one, compared with David Hume’s writings and to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, allows to reveal the solution offered by the show, which would be self-sacrifice, mainly the sacrifice of one’s own pride, evident in Desmond and Penelope’s relationship.