Class Reading - Robbie Heath

I was recently watching an episode of the show Lost which has become a favorite of mine. In watching it through the past few seasons I have seen a strong theme that ties to the idea of the Mysterium and Tremendum in Otto's Idea of the Holy. Throughout the show you follow the story of several survivors that have crashed landed on an apparently empty tropical island in the South Pacific. However as things progress they learn they are not along. The longer the story goes on the more we learn about the natural inhabitants on the island. Now looking back at the end of the 5th season, the fact that I was mesmerized with the mystery in the first season seems trivial. But, it was such a major factor because the makers of the show really knew how to properly used Tremendum and Mysterium. There was always a mystery that the viewer could not understand and this kept the show interesting. There was also the tremendum with the fear of what could happen as the native peoples on the island were attacking the stranded people. In this way the hostiles were powerful and unexplainable much like God, they were the source of the tremendum, and perhaps viewed as a surrogate of the wholly other.