The Protagonists of the Fantasy Drama Lost: From Stereotypes to Flexible Identities

Résumé En

In capturing a worldwide audience on the Internet, I argue that Lost (2004-2010) has emerged as the prototype of the fantasy drama in the post-network era (Lotz, 2007): its characters are typically those of 'a series-content' and not a 'televisual programme' (Combes, 2013). Through a socio-economic and a semiological analysis, I explore two dimensions : 1) the first seasons marked the program in the editorial line of ABC by introducing stereotyped characters (gender and race) typical of a Disney product ; 2) then, as the content met a growing success on the Internet, Lost clearly switched into the fantasy genre and erected the entire world as a backdrop to its stories : its characters, whose identities became "flexible" (Constant, 2000), seemed to evolve in the same global village. In doing so, Lost distances himself from certain criterias of the Quality Drama (Thompson, 1997): it is no longer a question of showing a dark, realistic, and critical mirror to the American viewer, as did The X-Files (Fox, 1993-2002), but of building a world turned towards escape, exoticism, and the spectacular, likely to be invested by an international and connected audience.