LOST maternity t-shirt

My friend, who is pregnant and also a big LOST fan, sent me a link to this Dharma initiative baby hatch maternity tee.

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Anonymous

I don’t watch TV, so I am left wondering what the baby’s relationship is to the I Ching.

Can anyone explain?
mkultra

I like the idea of this, but with all of the talk about infertility, miscarriages, dead mothers, and all that stuff in the first few seasons… I would be really reluctant to give this as a gift to someone who was preggers. People can get very superstitious in stressful times.

I can see buying it for yourself though, if you’re a big fan.
Anonymous

I’m completely clueless about “LOST”, but having recently seen “Coraline” (the spiderweb climax) there’s a whole ‘nother level of creepiness here.
Antinous / Moderator

It’s a feng shui device to protect the baby. You hang that pattern to break up ‘killing chi’ in places like opposite the front door if you’re at the end of a cul de sac.
Anonymous

Thanks for the link to my T-shirt, I’ve gotten a few hits from it. :)

Interesting to read the comments. While I’m a big LOST fan, I don’t over-analyze every episode. It was simply meant to be the basic Dharma hatch logo … with a baby. I’d made alternate versions with a pirate symbol, gas mask, etc. No harm or disrespect intended to anyone, just something for fans of the show. (My personal favorite is the one with the gas mask, relevant to The Purge.)
jenjen

I’m with mkultra – the last thing a pregnant woman wants to think about in connection with a baby is the word Lost.
Unless of course, she buys it for herself in which case it’s cute and fun. :(
Anonymous

I read this as “lost maternity” T-shirts. A celebration of miscarriages?
Cnoocy

Anonymous @1: My understanding, as a non-watcher of Lost, is that the creators of Lost aren’t very creative, so they ripped off a lot of eastern religious symbols, most notably the Ba Gua and the term “Dharma” to make their plot seem more “mystical” and obscure the fact that they don’t know where it’s going.
- Gloria
  
  I actually just choose to see it as the writers’ making fun of all the *real* cheesy, faux-mystical, New Age/hippie groups that have come and gone over the decades. Makes sense to me.
- StudioRobot
  
  I hate when people pull this crud. FYI, the last few episodes of LOST have tied together 100 episodes worth of story lines…no humble feat. There is no WAY they don’t know where the story is going. In fact, there are quite a few tricks they have laid out in the storyline that PROVE they know what will happen ahead of time. And you know what? It pretty much all makes sense. Even the POLAR BEARS : ) …you’re missing out, I used to be a hater too!
Anonymous

@Cnoocy Well, not exactly. Most of the eastern symbols on the show were put there by a 70s hippie commune who would be exactly the sort to misappropriate such things. So it’s reasonably fair to say that they don’t mean anything, but not as a slight against the writers.
- Cnoocy
  
  Anonymous and Gloria,
  Fair enough. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of context that gets lost when all one sees is people pointing at millennia-old symbols and saying “Hey, I love that show!”
  - Oskar
    
    @Cnoocy: Well, the thing with the Dharma initiative logos are that they all follow the same basic pattern, the traditional octagonal I Ching pattern with an a symbol in the middle representing the name of whatever it is the logo stands for (here’s a lists). It’s the baby in the middle that makes typical Lost. If it had been the Yin and Yang symbol most people wouldn’t associate it with Lost, but since there is a descriptive symbol in it, it’s pure Lost.
    
    And by the way, your central thesis is sort-of offensive. It’s not like Lost stole a symbol from a traditional religion and passed it off as its own work; in the show it’s a very clear reference to traditional Chinese religion. Are you saying that story-tellers are never, ever supposed to use traditional symbols or archetypes? That’s just insane. Lost is an incredibly smart show that very deliberately uses things like this, in a way that credits the writers and shows respect for the viewer and the culture it references.
    - Cnoocy
      
      Well, I’ve seen Lost fans point to the symbol with the yin-yang and say “Hey, Lost” so I don’t think they’re all as clued in as you might think. I don’t mean to say that nobody should use traditional symbols or archetypes, but to point out that it’s going to rankle people who are familiar with an ancient symbol when some corporation with a huge megaphone drowns out the original meaning with a new use. From your description and others’, it sounds like its the characters who I should in theory be annoyed at, but I’m not sure that it should be necessary to be familiar with the show in order to be annoyed with it making free with ancient symbols. And I apologize to Lisa for being grumpy all over her fan-aimed post.
      - Anonymous
        
        well the fans who don’t realize what these symbols really are aren’t really true fans who get everything out of the show. The writers have reasons for every little image on the show and it ties into the plot one way or another. if the don’t realize that these symbols were not invented for Lost they are missing the whole point….
      - Anonymous
        
        you’re assuming family guy-style references when, if you watched the show, you’d see they’re more along the lines of early-simspsons ones. any cultural references in LOST – ancient, artistic, religious, or otherwise – are made out of reverence and appreciation, and with respect and attention.
IronEdithKidd

Man, I took the weekend off and missed some silly stuff here at BB.

I’m gathering that folks making comments about miscarriages on the island either don’t watch the show or have missed a fine point that at least two children have, in fact, been born there. Danielle and Aaron.

Being a fan and having brought a little one into the world 9 months ago, I would have loved this as a gag-gift. Except for the color. Powder pink is an atrocity.