In ads and trailers, prior to the series debut, NBC heavily
marketed the opening scene, in which “Jane Doe” appears naked out of a carry-bag in
the middle of Times Square; and
wisely so. For it contains a
veritable mythologem.
In literature, the best-known birth-from-a-handbag is that
of the titular character of Wilde’s “The Importance of Being E(a)rnest”; he was discovered therein, at a railway
station, provenience unknown.
The next-most-famous Railway Station birth, is that of
Paddington Bear.
For “Paddington Station”, the American update is “Times
Square”. (Note, by the way, the
universal appropriateness of that name.)
Now, if Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank had put their heads
together, they would doubtless have deemed this motif a wish-fulfillment reworking of the Birth Trauma.
The Newcomer appears suddenly in a bruising world of blooming-buzzing
confusion (as each we must); but
as compensation, this rude Awakening is Immaculate, ex nihilo, with none of the
dreadful ickiness of having been whelped by one’s parents, Mom and Dad, via
some penis-and-vagina action too terrible to contemplate.
It is a satisfying fantasy; thus Minerva, born from the brow of Zeus.
~
But now there is a twist; and it deepens things.
Born from a bag, as though from empty space, she nonetheless comes “with
baggage”, in the form of intricate enigmatic tattoos. Like "Memento"s Leonard, alone in his hotel room, having his (latest)
very-first moment of conscious self-awareness. Born with a mission.
He awakens each day to a
world new-made; he spots the writing with the same surprise that
Crusoe spotted footprints in the sand. He cannot really recognize it as
his own: even those he wrote himself, he stippled into the skin – it won’t
resemble his normal cursive – and others he left to the
tattoo-artist. The writing must therefore confront him like that at
Belshazzar’s feast. It is otherwordly. He is wreathed in cryptic
admonitions, some penned in a Gothic script like that of Scripture. He
might almost be forgiven for fancying himself a prophet. And yet – for
here the story is bleakly modern. He pays no mind to the source of these
writings, just takes them for granted. He simply takes the next step
forward, in his appointed task. That Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin has
no resonance, divine or diabolocal.
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/moreismenitto.html
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/moreismenitto.html
Born with a mission.
The show so far is stupid; but I am probably going to watch another episode, simply
from the power of this underlying motif -- this motivating motif. For it applies very broadly: These amnesiacs, with their strange “Thou
must” inscribed scrolls, are like each one of us, adrift in the randomness of
this sublunary life, yet with a sense, that somehow, all of it somehow means something.
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