Big Hollywood links to the above photo with the headline Lost Final Season Art Mocks “The Last Supper” at #7 on its marquee as of this posting. In a very literal sense it’s a “mock” up of Leonardo’s fresco “The Last Supper” of course, but the headline reads in a very condemnatory way to me. I may be reading too much into Big Hollywood’s intent of course, but given Lost’s themes of redemption, betrayal, faith, love and forgiveness (and mystery) the above photo neither bothers me nor seems anti-religious to me — especially in light of the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was hardly an orthodox Christian and unless the Apostles were in a sitcom they were likely sitting around the table during the real Last Supper in any case (yes Virginia there IS a Jesus).
I await the final season of Lost with anticipation. Don’t screw it up fellas.
I’m no fan of “Lost”, so that probably colors my viewpoint, but I think the photo trivializes both Da Vinci and the actual Last Supper.
This is nothing new. If anything, they should be criticized for their use of an old cliche. (See the suicide scene in MASH).
Floyd’s right.
Spot on,Floyd…little wonder that John Locke is at the center of the tableau,don’t you think?
I’m with Floyd on this one. In fact, I find the outrage-meter at BH to be overly pegged sometimes.
I’m more interested in who is and isn’t in the picture.
Where are Jin and Daniel? Why’d Pierre Chang and—I forget her name, the bounty hunter—make the cut and not them?
And Claire is coming back?!
Jin is there,Mike,to Locke’s left…under Jack
Whoops. Thought that was Chang
No Juliet…and 14 people..hmmm
I should probably leave. I am only a little over halfway into Season 1.
This is hardly the first, nor certainly the last, of Last Supper imitations in film and TV. No problem with it at all. (And I haven’t seen a single “Lost” episode). But, whatever the context, I can’t see that this is an exception to the “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” rule.” I’m with Floyd.
BSG did this with in the last couple of years.
I think it’s more an over reaction because we all know what would happen if that were an icon of a different faith. Christians are tired of it.
Me? I got no problem with it. Of course it doesn’t really even bother me when people say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas either. I’m just glad they didn’t flip me off or say something rude about my family size. I have a high tolerance and low expectations.
I love the sacred, I wish there was more of in my church, but since those aren’t the things that saved me, and the One who did was treated like trash on his last day, I’m not going to start a fight with anyone over it. Now if they say *I* have to do it, or take away my right to treat certain things as sacred, we got a fight.
I was going to point out that BSG did this same thing a while back, but David beat me to it.
Is it offensive? “Offence” depends on the viewer, I suppose. It’s parodying a famous vision of an important religious scene, however the famous vision isn’t even remoley accurate (They weren’t all on one side of the table, they didn’t use chairs, models were used for Jesus and the Disciples, etc), so it could be viewed as a parody of the painting, or a reference to the event itself. And it could be taken as a mockery or as a tribute with equal ease. So it comes down to the viewer, who will ultimately perceive the picture according to their own predisposiitons.
FWIW, I think the Galactica Last Supper was better done, but of course Lost has never taken itself as pretentiously as BSG did.
Count me among those who say “Meh”. I have to admit to never watching “Lost” but that’s due to my aversion to TV in general. Someday I’ll watch it since it seems to rate some merit among Threedonians.
I think it was JohnFN who commented “the outrage-meter at BH to be overly pegged sometimes.” I agree. I have no idea what the producers were trying to convey by placing certain people in the famous pose of “The Last Supper”. I’m willing to bet that they are referencing a famous, if cliche, work of art, not that they were attempting to make a character Christ-like.
So no reason to get our undies in a bunch (no reference to the Undie Bomber intended.)
This is a semi-spoiler, CW, so perhaps you shouldn’t read it if you’re going to watch the show. (I’ll try to stay as vague as possible.)
They are trying to make a character Christ-like, and I’m still okay with it, because the show has very clearly set him up as a “Christ-figure.” (Like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings was a Christ-figure.) The thing is that the show treats the issue of faith very seriously, and unless the previous five years have all been a setup for a gigantic “sucker punch,” I’d say that the show has earned the right to simply allude to a painting of the Last Supper—with all the ideas about faith, betrayal, and revelation that evokes—because those are the very themes that the show explores on a weekly basis. On one level, Lost is a goofy sci-fi show, but it’s using that vehicle as a way to get at very important themes, and it is the themes that compel me to watch the show every week.
Thanks, Mike. I’m sure when I eventually get around to watching “Lost” I won’t recall the spoilage if indeed there was any spoilage in your comment. I like it when Christian themes are worked into plot points of film and literature. I like it because people respond to them and then they get the whammy on them when they realize the undercurrent.
At the risk of drawing R3’s ire, I’m going to mention Star Trek and how slow I was to get the Spock sacrifice in “Khan”. I was a teenager and having a conversation with a priest about Spock’s death as sacrifice for others in “Khan”. Then he pointed out with amusement that he’d heard that plot somewhere before. It was like a light bulb (incandescent) going off over my head. Whammy!
Nah, I don’t hate Trek, I’m just bored by it. (And admittedly annoyed at the mouthbreaters who insist that Trek invented everything from the Cellphone to Internet Porn.) To be honest, I never particularly saw Spock’s sacrifice as Christ-like, just heroic. Granted, he came back to life in the next movie, but *nobody* had that in mind when they killed him off. Nimoy just wanted out, so they wrote a big death for his character, and Saavik (The Kirsty Alley character) was supposed to be his replacement in the movies from then on out. Then Nimoy announced he wanted back in…
On the other hand, the death and resurrection of ET is considerably more overt.