"Lost", created by wunderkind J.J. Abrams and aired on the US ABC network and Sky in the UK, began in 2004 and will end after its sixth season in 2010, hopefully with the answers to myriad questions. This book not only offers a rich understanding of the multi-media phenomenon that is "Lost", but is also a valuable demonstration of how the contemporary American television industry works. "Lost" is perfectly designed to serve the new multi-channel, 'multi-plaform' mediascape.Its cinematic visuals and complex narrative place it above the competition, its international cast and ostensibly worldwide locations (actually Hawaii's Oahu island) give it global distribution. "Lost" continues to fascinate - and mystify (that polar bear, that four-toed statue) - today's technologically savvy 'forensic fandom', whose members mobilise i-Pods and cell phones to watch episodes and revel in the complexities of 'The Lost Experience'. These and many more issues involving "Lost's" production, distribution, narrative, and audiences are addressed by this essential book.
Table of Contents
Roberta Pearson
Introduction: Why Lost?
Production/audiences
Stacey Abbott
How Lost Found its Audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster
Derek Johnson
The Fictional Institutions of Lost: World Building, Reality, and the Economic Possibilities of Narrative Divergence
Will Brooker
Television Out of Time: Watching Cult Shows On Download
Julian Stringer
The Gathering Place: Lost in Oahu
Paul Grainge
Lost logos: Channel 4 and the Branding of American Event Television
Text
Jason Mittell
Lost in a Great Story: Evaluation in Narrative Television (and Television Studies)
Roberta Pearson
Chain of Events: Regimes of Evaluation and Lost's Construction of the Televisual Character
Ivan Askwith
'Do you even know where this is going?': Lost's Viewers and Narrative Premeditation
Angela Ndalianis
Lost in Genre: Chasing the White Rabbit to Find a White Polar Bear
Representation
Michael Newbury
Lost in the Orient: Transnationalism Interrupted
Jonathan Gray
We're Not in Portland Anymore: Lost and Its International Others
Celeste-Marie Bernier
'A fabricated Africanist persona': Race, Representation, and Narrative Experimentation in Lost
Glyn Davis and Gary Needham
Queer(ying) Lost
Contributors
Index
