[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[binkie]

(16-12-2010 12:06 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  ... but of course in series 9 we learn that Lucas has been trying to forget Maya for 15 years. He could not have only thought of Elizabeta if Maya was such a prominent memory. This is another aspect of series 9 clashing dramatically with the earlier series.

Mmmm... The total failure of season 9 to create an internally coherent rhetorical mechanism by which to explain what it was doing, or trying to do, with Lucas’ memory or objectification of his past or whatever the **** it was supposed to be, makes it incredibly difficult to run a 3-season assessment of the character. In fact, it isn’t even clear if season 9 thinks John-pretending-to-be-Lucas has been trying to forget Maya, or if season 9 thinks Lucas-who-doesn’t-know-he-is-John is oblivious to Maya because he has never met her, or if season 9 thinks John-pretending-to-be-Lucas has forgotten Maya because he has not inhabited his own consciousness for so long. Better just to pretend season 9 does not exist as far as seasons 7/8 character analysis is concerned. If the writers of the show cannot be bothered to work out how their own narrative functions, I really don’t see why I should make the effort to do it for them. Apart from anything else, because neither John or Maya existed at all in the awareness of the script or the actors at the time of the 7.2, I have no difficulty in excluding them and their (alleged) history from any commentary.

(16-12-2010 12:06 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  Back to tattoos, before the Mods have to step in, why do you think Elizabeta was so concerned by them?

I would think it would be very difficult for Elisabeta to find the tattoos anything other than disturbing. They are a violation of Lucas’ guiding will and an assault on his person and his sense of self. They also speak to everything that has been lost in the ruination of the relationship between these two people, and everything Elisabeta has lost in making for herself a new life without Lucas. I think Elisabeta is, in the final analysis, very aware that the tattoos are something that was done to Lucas. In acknowledging this, she is accepting also that they are only a single example of what was done to him. Skin is just a barrier between safety and suffering, and between life and death. Marking Lucas’ skin in this way renders him visible and vulnerable: a target and an object.

Kachimov showed Elisabeta pictures of Lucas in prison a year before the events of 7.2. He told her Lucas would be released if she agreed to do work for the FSB. We don’t know how long, within that year, it was before she agreed to Kachimov’s proposal, but in any case, she has known for all that time where Lucas was, and what were at least some of the physical effects of his treatment. She would presumably not have been able to prevent herself from imagining also the likely psychological effects of captivity on someone with whom she has had what was once a passionate and intimate relationship. A year is a long time for Elisabeta to feel implicated somehow in Lucas’ continued captivity. Kachimov, by making her wait for the end of Lucas’ captivity, has suggested that she must bear some responsibility for that captivity. When she indicates to Lucas her disquiet at the tattooed manifestation of his experience, she is apologising for what she believes – thanks to Kachimov - to have been her part in that experience.