PRIVILEGE

Though it was front and center in the series, LOST rarely tackled the issue of privilege and class.

The presumptive aspect of survival has no racial, sexist or class overtones. When Jack told the survivors that they had to work together or die alone, he meant it. He was not dividing the castaways into their social strata, he was trying to unite them toward one goal.

But sociologists and psychologists believe that everything gets filtered through class identification.

For the wealthy, it is a question of privilege over work, success or opportunity.

In LOST, the richest character was Widmore, an industrialist who obtained his vast wealth for one purpose: to reclaim "his" island from Ben. To Widmore, wealth was power. He could do anything, buy anyone, and create any world in his own image. He even broke down and bragged that he staged a fake plane crash, complete with human remains, in order to keep the island hidden from search parties.

Far from it to conclude that the rich and famous are mentally sound.

But even with the secondary characters like Shannon, who was used to being a lazy, upper class rich girl. Even in the face of the prospect of death after the plane crash, she continued to live her life as one being serviced by others. She did not work. She did not want to participate in missions. She would rather get a tan than get blisters on her hand. This attitude is a reflection of her penthouse upbringing and the ability to use her looks, charm and family name to get money, friends, booze, drugs and the other faux happiness aspects of living a jet set lifestyle. But her past did not give her the skill set to survive on the island. Her life did not give her any true or lasting friends prior to Flight 815. She learned to use her step brother, Boone, as her cleaner, her banker and her fool.

Jack grew up in upper middle class world. His father was a successful surgeon in LA. He had all the advantages of being Christian Shepherd's son. But even with an easier road to becoming the top in his profession, Jack was hollow inside because he never learned the gritty nuts and bolts of relationships. In essence, his LOST experience was the means of shedding his privileged baggage in order to learn how to deal with people and problems outside the medical field.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were many characters who did not have fame or wealth. Ben was the son of a drunken janitor. The Dharma move gave him the opportunity to amass wealth and power through barbarian practice of a coup against the island leadership. Kate was a rural farm girl who did not excel at much except getting in trouble. Though she was from a lower middle class background, she never seemed to chase wealth - - - she instead viewed life as best lived being chased by others. She became fixated on danger and heart racing challenge of escape. Locke bounced from low paying job to job with no goal or direction. He grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. He had no family in which to mold his values or goals. As a result, he had no privilege or path as young adult. But he wanted the trappings of privilege - - - recognition, friends, money and status (the things that were dropped in the lap of Jack because of his upbringing.)

And when LOST tried to merge two different worlds together, it got the Jin and Sun story arc. Jin was the poorest of the characters - - - a fisherman's son living in a squalor village. Sun was the daughter of a rich and powerful Korean businessman. Sun's family had the connections to make things happen. Jin only had wild dreams of becoming wealthy. So when Sun rebelled against her father's controlling nature, she wed Jin  who found his doorway to his rich dream. But the couple's diverse background led to issues - - - Jin quickly turned into a lower version of her father, and she began to be treated as a second class citizen. Sun, like Kate, decided that danger and upsetting the status quo would get her the attention and thrill she thought she deserved in her life. Sun had an affair, but that ended badly for her lover. She wanted to runaway, but chickened out since she realized that she loved her family's wealth more than her personal freedom.

The only couple that seemed to get along the best were Bernard and Rose. Both were middle aged professionals who had good careers. They were both hard workers. They were both easy going personalities. They truly loved each other. Since they were compatible in a social class aspect of their relationship, no one really saw the difference in their race.

In fact, LOST took a more utopian view of race. It was not taken as a flash point (with a few exceptions when Sayid was called out as suspect because of his Iraqi background). Blacks were not segregated from the main group. Michael, Eko and Walt were not excluded from the decision making process or main story lines. But if we look at the finale in the church, there was more an assembly of the well-off than those who struggled to make ends meet. Michael, Eko and Walt were not in the church reunion. The lowest class worker in the room had to be Locke, but he was there alone.

But it could be said that those members of the cast in the church had the privilege of becoming friends which each other, through thick and thin, good and bad. And that may have been the most important lesson.