Writing About the Media

       'Semiotic guerilla warfare' is, according to Inglis, "reinterpreting televised texts to their own liking and often in a way that is oppositional to the interests of programmers and, more broadly, the capitalist system." It is a study of how people react and live their lives under the constant influence of the media (television, music, movies newspapers, the internet, etc.) Semiotic guerilla warfare also speculates which thoughts and ideas are totally original and which thoughts are influenced by an unauthentic external source.

         The assignment is to interview five people about a provocative popular culture item- I chose the ABC television series, LOST. Lost is a television series about a group of people who crash-land on a seemingly deserted island. Over time they discover that the island is not so normal (i.e. the Smoke Monster). They also find out that the island is not really deserted; that there are 'others.' Seasons three through five consist of the characters interacting with the 'others,' trying to figure out how to get off the island, and figuring out how to get past personal and group dilemmas. It is filled with mysteries, affairs, battles, psychological confusion, and a lot of metaphorical connotations. Many people consider its confusion, thriller endings, and viscous love triangles to come off a little provocative. It's 'rough around the edges' approach give it a raw, realistic approach dispute it's obviously fictional script. I have personally seen every episode thus far, and look forward to the final season premiering in January.

             I asked random people on my college campus two questions- "Have you seen, read about, or heard about the show, LOST?" "What do you like or not like about the show? If you have ever seen the show, metaphorically, does it mean anything to you?" Unfortunately, I would consider my interviews rather unsuccessful. Even though three out of the five people I interviewed had see the show, none of them really gave any brilliant metaphorical incite relative to the show. In my hypothesis and personal experience I thought the contrary. In relation to the topic though, maybe LOST is so complex and 'mind boggling' that people have a hard time metaphorically applying it to their lives. Could this concentration on confusion and lack of understanding of the underlying premise of the show be a result of pop culture reviews? I believe so. In my own experience of reading and hearing reviews of the show I rarely here about how the character's issue's in LOST transcend into our daily life. Person 5 said, "It doesn't really have any metaphorical application to my life. It is kind of another world." But if people think it has no personal application into their own life, then why are they so intrigued by it? Again, the issue doesn't lie in the reason for watching the show.

            The issue lies in the amount of external influence we allow by media and the people around who sway our opinion and knowledge. Maybe I personally find a lot of metaphors in the show because I have watched every episode by myself- with no one else around. This way I have been able to form my own opinions and thoughts about the show, without relying on the dramatic cues based on the facial expressions of people watching the show with me. Inglis makes a very interesting observation with this idea of 'semiotic guerilla warfare' in that, American society has been so skewed by media and the ultimate desire of hyper-individuality that we are slowly becoming less original and less innovative in our own thoughts, thus being the very antithesis of capitalism.