Icons, signs, and invention I: the numbers
The Music of Chance: Austin, Marx and numbers that "speak"
Although loathe to creat new threads, the intent of my post seems at odds with the rabid clue-hunting of the Numbers are a red herring in which it is buried. I seek a more general assessment of how the writers employ the numbers, as well as other iconic signifiers in Lost, so I'm kicking off a new discussion below:
Abrams's Alias has gone to great pains in it's exposition of the fantastical Rambaldi mytharc to empirically ground each discovery in objective science/pseudo-science, albeit far-fetched. The obsession with the number 47 in that show serves as a sign that covert forces are near. Primarily a story-telling device, it links disparate events through association, an iconic marker of conspiracy with no explicit agency.
But the numbers in Lost receive far too much emphasis to be dismissed as mere icons. Thus I went to the semiotics of Umberto Eco to reread what he had to say on iconic codes and their creative reinterpretation.
". . .iconic signs may possess:
a. optic (visible)
b. ontological (supposed)
c. conventionalized properties of an object. . . .
..anything taken as an iconic sign must be viewed as: (a) a visual text which is (b) not further analyzable either into signs or figure."
Umberto Eco's typology of modes of sign production:
1. Physical labour: effort required to produce the sign.
2. Recognition: object or event is recognised as expression of a sign content,
as with imprints, symptoms, or clues.
3. Ostension: an object or act is shown to be the exemplar of a class of objects
or acts.
4. Replica: tends towards elements that can be easily assimilated, or foreseen,
by the code (cf. symbols in Peirce's terminology) in principle, but takes on
features of codification through stylisation. Examples are emblems, musical
types, mathematical signs.
5. Invention : the clearest case of elements that cannot be easily assimilated
(cf. Peirce's notion of icon). Unforeseen by the existing code; is the basis
of a new material continuum.
What Eco proposes via his model is the need to account for the language system's capacity for renewal and revitalisation.
"In order to force the listener to pay attention to the premises and arguments one must stimulate his attention; it is here that rhetorical figures (or various figures of thought, figures of speech, and tropes) comes in, these being the embellishments by means of which the discourse acquires an unusual and novel appearance, thus offering an unexpectedly high rate of information."
Here's my take on how this might apply to the numbers:
Numbers are icons that resist semantic reinterpretation; while abstract, their meaning is, in context, univocal and clear: they refer either to quantity or sequence . The rhetorical reinvention of the Lost number sequence, and its appearance in so many disparate diegetic locations (the radio broadcast, quantity of beans, lottery numbers, girl's shirts in airport), confounds our understanding of it as a simple icon that either orders or measures. The ubiquity and apparent agency of individual numbers resists interpretation on every conventional level, and forces us to "invent" a new meaning for iconic signifiers we thought were immutable and unchanging.
Since the numbers reproduce memetically throughout the series, we cannot confine them to one plot thread or even one field of play (e.g. Hurley's life, the American or Australian continents, the island's past). Since their very existence is opaque, they are paradoxically free to suggest new meanings to us until some internal textual frame "freezes" them by assigning them a provisional meaning, one that provides a plausible explanation for the web of associations they create within Lost.
The danger is that this pervasiveness breeds transparency; the numbers risk becoming merely the "wallpaper" of the plot, rather than a sign of mystery, meaning or agency. And, of course, the longer the mystery continues, the greater suggested payoff. Should the numbers never be explained, the writers would have to transfer the significance they've borne in the plot to date to some other device or code.
What I'm hoping you might contribute is some insight regarding how this transformation from icon to active, semantically-weighted signifier might be taking place: in effect, when is a "number" no longer a "number" but a "word," polysemous (capable of multiple meanings) and promiscuous (capable of entering into new relations with external signifiers)?
This past week I have been haunted by one particular observation, shared by many on this board, concerning season 2 of Lost. Whether one places one's faith in the Dharma Initiative project's Station 3 as a bulwark against armageddon, or whether one views the entire hatch exercise as a cruel and unusual psychological experiment, there exists no satisfactory explanation as to why Desmond had to type a numerical sequence - much less that numerical sequence - into his doughty Apple IIe every 108 minutes. Why not employ at least a semi-automated system, and why employ this number sequence as a dead-man's switch?
A logical corrollary to this speculation is a larger question: why does the ubiquitous number sequence hold such proprietary power, and why does Hurley, as did Lenny before him, chant them like a mantra, a koan to ward off evil or placate some spirit of ill luck or blind fate?
The numbers pose a seemingly insoluble paradox: they are abstract (nowhere) yet embodied (everywhere) in hatch inscriptions, connect four games, and lottery tickets. The more we know of the numbers the less certain we are of their "identity," mere static symbols that "act" with apparent agency. They penetrate the realm of the public and private without distinction, showing little regard for personal or institutional boundaries. Although they pulsate with a sense of the uncanny, we could yet deny their universal import prior to Hurley's flashback episode. Numbers, however, seemed to drive the last nail into the coffin of sheer coincidence.
The diegetic introduction of the numbers into the Lost universe follows a distinct and progressive pattern: 1) the numbers were first broadcast over the air, drawing Danielle's crew to a disasterous fate, and "infecting" Sam Toomey and his friend Lenny with their suggestive power. Lenny is institutionalized and spends his days vocalizing the numbers, which "spread" to Hurley, who serendipitously plays them to win the lottery.
In the pilot episode, which is more than midway through the series narrative (including flashbacks) we find two consecutive numbers cataloging the flight. Thereafter they are sprinkled through the backstories at will, branding innocuous props and junctures in each flashback with an aura of ambiguous but unmistakeable import. We then discover that Danielle has been writing the numbers over and over, although they stand apart from surrounding equations and drawings. And last, we find them inscribed permanently on the hatch, as though they had always been there, waiting patiently for our arrival.
Then in the premier of season 2 we meet Desmond, who is all too acquainted with the numbers. Desmond does not hear them, say them, nor write them. Desmond types them 13.3 times a day, every day, for nigh on four years. Desmond, as did Lenny and Hurley, performs the numbers, to produce some unknown result, signified only by the ghostly replication of them in yet another form, as a countdown timer that begins with their sum and peels them away in layers en route to a dreaded outcome. Again, a paradox: the numbers count down to (supposed) disaster, yet they prevent disaster, through their active and deliberate performance .
Two posters have recently grappled with this paradox on the theories and speculation board. Jays tao proposes the following:
I still contest that it is all about ritual. By conforming to some ritualised system one [insulates] themselves from 'distractions' that may be harmful to their [psychosis]. The numbers were related to the quarantine and in that the sickness, maybe they help 'protect' against that sickness which is the manifestation of chaos. Ritual sequence to me means order, and the whole typing in the numbers still seems like a mantra to a quantum/chaos/spell that must be kept or 'bad things' will manifest (that is why a computer cant do it, only a human mind and its spiritual complexity can give the sequence any real power).1
Bernie Roehl takes a different approach to the mystery of the numbers:
What I'm thinking is that many in cultures (notably Japanese) there is a concept of "lucky numbers", or sequences of numbers that bring good fortune. Let's assume that there's some truth to this, and see where it takes us.
Let's say that what we think of as "luck" is essentially a random variation in the probability field. Human beings can influence their luck by using various sequences of numbers. When they do, the person who uses the numbers gains luck. However, the total amount of luck in an area is constant, so gaining luck locally means everything around you loses luck. There's also a delay in the process, so as long as you keep using the numbers everything is fine, but when you stop using them everything around you suffers the pent-up bad luck.
Normally, the effect of these lucky numbers is quite limited. However, on the island this effect is greatly magnified for some reason. When the numbers are used there, it can have far-reaching consequences. 2
I'm going to look at each of these notions in turn, but take a slightly different tack, beginning with Jays' notion of ritual and and protection "against that sickness which is the manifestation of chaos." I will look specifically at the fact that the numbers have negative connotations unless they are performed , liberated, as it were, from an inert iconic status. The performance of the numbers appears to, as Jays notes, insulate one from the chaos that results when they appear as mere signs that project a very negative connotation. Performing the numbers transforms them from signs into words, with the power to speak, and the power to act in our favor.
The number sequence thus function as a performative gesture, neither true nor false in itself but exisiting as the statement of an action, one with an intended, consistent outcome. Performative is a term coined by the linguist and founder of speech-act theory J. L. Austin to describe an activity that creates what it describes, a "doing that constitutes a being." I find this a very Heidegerrian proclamation, but it is often written as "to say something is to do something."
The class of statements called performative are neither true nor false but illocutionary, as in "I now pronounce you man and wife." In trying to think of another example I am reminded of the new Battlestar Gallactica's "so say we all." That example came to mind because performatives depend on social relations to be understood and accepted. Thus marriage relies on a social convention, as does the "religious" nature of the BSG statement (much like the function of "Amen" in Christian services, with that emphatic "we" thrown in for good measure).
The meaning of a performative text is not an abstract quality but is created in action, and thus depends on context, conventions, social relations, and personal history. A corollary to this is that there is no single fixed, "correct" reading of a text. Two different readers of a purgatory theory may both say "right on, brother!," yet through their tone of voice impart vastly different meaning to the same phrase. Radical performative theory argues that a text has no meaning except when and as it is performed. That is, the meaning as read arises as one "says it" in one's mind's eye (for one always imagines words "performed" with a particular inflection or delivery).
Performatives can be either "happy" or "unhappy" depending on how they gibe with their context (as with the two readers of the infamous purgatory theory when viewed in light of the original theorist's intent). Assessing whether the speech act is happy or sad relies on both internal and external circumstance: the sincerity of the speaker and the truth-value of the situation in which they see themselves. For instance, a bigamist may sincerely want to marry a second wife; nonetheless, the second marriage is void.
In the article "Promises, Promises: Speech Act Theory, Literary Theory, and Politico-Economic Theory in Marx and de Man," J. Hillis Miller details how objects such as "linen" and a coat made of linen "speak the language of commodities," operating performatively, on their own, without the intervention of the self-conscious I or ego uttering deliberately.
It is the commodities, products of man's labor--linen or a table--that speak and promise, that make decisions, on their own. . . .Both, moreover, ascribe an autonomous performative power to sign systems. These may have been created by man in society but they now act on their own, independently of any conscious human volition.. . . .
What in the world can it mean to say that the linen speaks, that it says, happily for Marx, just what Marx himself has been saying about commodities and value[?]. . . . Since the value the linen embodies is entirely generated by social relations and since language. . . is inextricably entwined within social relations, . . . then it follows that [the linen manifests its value in relation to the coat] in speech, since everything social is embodied in language. Since commodities are part of an intricate sign system, they can properly be said to speak. . . This is not a figurative invention or a "poetic" way of speaking on Marx's part. It is not a prosopopoeia ascribing speech to something inanimate. It is the literal truth. The linen speaks. 3
So we have the linen - as a low-level commodity - "telling" us that it is somehow equivalent to the "coat," a higher-level object, but still a commodity. But how exactly does that happen?
Value, [the linen] says, is not . . . "its stiff and starchy existence as a body," but a "purified" or "refined" "objectivity as value" . . .exceeding direct human comprehension and only visible in the signs of it, signs that are always incommensurate with what they signify. . . . Value cannot be seen directly. It can only appear in signs for it, in this case in its appearance as a coat, the exchange equivalent of the linen.. . . This means that the relation of the coat and the linen is an odd sort of tautological metaphorical equivalence. The linen is like the coat. The coat is like the linen. This likeness, however, is not just a similarity but an identity, though one may be substituted for the other, as in metaphor. All this the linen says, speaking the language of commodities.
So the likeness is a metaphorical one, which of course we would express quantitatively, with number.
. . .this saying is also a performative promise. The linen promises its possession of value and its exchangeability with the coat. This promise is embodied in the speaking appearance of the linen as value. It promises something that we would not otherwise have known or it brings us good news not otherwise available, namely that the commodity system will work, that there is value, Wert. Like all sublime revelations, it also makes a messianic promise: I promise you I have value and my value is manifested in the appearance of a coat, thereby guaranteeing my exchangeability with the coat. . . . A promise is not really a promise until it is fulfilled. It binds the future. It is only completely itself in the future. That fulfillment, however, may not happen, in which case the promise would not really be a promise.
And a promise is the par excellence of a speech-act, in Austin's parlance: it acts on the future, and as a performative is neither true nor false in itself but either brings about a particular result, leads to larger truth, as it were.
The numbers in Lost do not speak the ordinary, quantitative language of numbers, the logic of numbers as an instrument of rational thought. The speak a symbolic language, one that promises "I will bring momentous results," be those results fortuitous or ill. But the performance of the numbers is a promise that evil will be averted, a prayer, a bargain with the devil. As is the Marxian commodity, they were once created by man in society but "now act on their own, independently of any conscious human volition." The numbers promise something different than the commodity, however: not value but protection; from what, we do not know. Protection from evil, protection from the vagaries of chance, protection from themselves, in an inverted form?
Having explored the numbers as ritual performance, let us return to the notion of luck introduced by Bernie Roehl as a reified substance, instantiated in a material form that might be transferred from bad to good as matter may be transformed into energy, or like the metaphorical transference of value (the value here being good=material gain, bad=material loss) among Marxian commodities. Hurley's flashback brought to mind a wonderful film based on a Paul Auster novel (with his blessing), The Music of Chance (1993).4 In this story two sadistic widowers, made wealthy by playing prime numbers ("souled" numbers, as the Joel Grey character calls them) in the lottery, imprison a card shark and his "chance" companion for an indeterminate time after an odd, eviscerating all-night poker game strips them of everything they own.
Similar to the enigmatic Alvar Hanso, the elder men are bent on constructing the perfect world, albeit one in miniature, that represents many different time schemes juxtaposed (childhood alongside the history of the men's luck), and includes prisoners who are more than glad to be performing manual labor as just punishment. As "punishment" for losing 10,000, the two travelers must constuct a pointless monument from 10,000 imported stones, the ruins of a medieval Irish castle, a task that can't help but remind one of Desmond's Sisyphean task in the hatch, especially since, on the appointed day of freedom, the stonemasons are told that they must pay off yet another overwhelming debt which had not been foreseen.
Here we see luck as again a contingent but nonetheless excessively powerful commodity, one with a very tenuous connection to human volition (we are never sure if the younger men lost "fair and square" or were bilked out of their life's savings). Numbers are everywhere in the Music of Chance: the prime numbers that made the elder men rich, the 10,000 they initially lost to the card shark (and which was later stolen from him in a brutal robbery), the 10,000+ which the elder men win back, and of course the stones that construct the monument over a set period of days and weeks. As did Lenny, Sam, Hurley and Desmond, the two younger men seem to submit somewhat passively to their fate, accepting their loss and subsequent labor like a Greek hero submitting to the fates. All of which suggests the promise inherit in numbers: performing the Music of Chance numbers directly affects the future, and it is how they are performed that tips the scales of chance for good or ill.
As Lost unfolds we will likely "hear" more from the numbers themselves, and gather more clues as to the promise they offer. What we already know is that they are far more than numbers already. The sequence 4-8-15-16-23-42 is a phrase of a powerful language unique to Lost, a musical refrain that functions as a "call" to some as yet unknown "response." And like our castaways, we will be straining to hear the answer as we "count down" to the season finale.
The author would like to thank Warthawg, Spooky, Homer Noodleman, MonsterEatsPilot and Star4OBU for inspiring this post. Post a reply.
References
1 Jays tao, re: time line Hurley
2 Bernie Roehl, Lucky numbers
3 J. Hillis Miller, "Promises, Promises: Speech Act Theory, Literary Theory, and Politico-Economic Theory in Marx and de Man," New Literary History 33.1 (2002) 1-20.
4 Philip Haas, dir, The Music of Chance (1993), film based on a novel by Paul Auster.