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IMAGINATIONS
JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES |
REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE
ANDREW PENDAKIS
COLIN WILLIAMSON
http://imaginations.glendon.yorku.ca
ISSUE 9-1 THE MISE-EN-SCÈNE OF A DECADE: VISUALIZING THE 70S
K. R. CORNETT
FRASER MCCALLUM
KAITLIN POMERANTZ
SEB ROBERTS
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“AN ESCAPE INTO REALITY”: COMPUTERS, SPECIAL EFFECTS,
AND THE HAUNTING OPTICS OF WESTWORLD (1973)
COLIN WILLIAMSON
Abstract | As one of the earliest experiments with integrating Résumé | Le film de science fiction de Michael Crichton,
computer-generated special effects into celluloid filmmak- Westworld, (1973), l’une des premières expériences d’intégra-
ing, Michael Crichton’s science fiction film Westworld (1973) tion d’effets spéciaux créés sur ordinateur dans l’industrie
imagined the transition into a digital future with a familiar cinématographique, imagine la transition dans un futur dig-
apocalyptic narrative about disobedient machines and vir- ital au sein d’un récit apocalyptique sur la désobéissance des
tual realities. In this essay I move away from “escapist” and machines et les réalités virtuelles. Dans cet essai, je m’éloigne
“futurist” readings of the sci-fi genre and explore how West- de la lecture divertissante et futuriste de la science fiction
world was “an escape into reality,” to borrow Isaac Asimov’s pour explorer comment Westworld a constitué une “évasion
phrase, that immersed audiences in the computerization of dans la réalité”, pour reprendre les mots d’Isaac Asimov, qui
life, visuality, and the cinema in 1970s America. My focus plonge le spectateur dans une vie informatisée, la visualité
will be on mapping the film’s use of computer simulation as et le cinéma de l’Amérique des années 70. Ma recherche s’ef-
part of a constellation that includes everything from moder- forcera de documenter dans le film l’emploi de la simulation
nity in fin-de-siècle amusement parks and early cinema to par ordinateur comme une partie de la constellation de tech-
discourses on postmodernism (Baudrillard) and dehuman- niques utilisées depuis la modernité des parcs d’amusement
ization (Sontag). I will also consider how the recent HBO fin-de-siècle et des débuts du cinéma jusqu’au discours sur le
series Westworld (2016) reimagined Crichton’s film as a way postmodernisme (Baudrillard) et la déshumanisation (Son-
of visualizing and historicizing questions about the virtual in tag). Je vais également examiner comment la récente série
our digital moment. télévisée Westworld (2016) sur HBO a réimaginé le film de
Crichton comme une manière de visualiser et d’historiciser
les questions portant sur le virtuel dans notre époque digitale.
AN ESCAPE INTO REALITY
Brood of hell, you’re not a mortal! by setting the robot on fire (fig. 1). Reflecting
Shall the entire house go under? critically on the film in 1975, Mead and Apple-
Over threshold over portal baum argue that the burning android conjures
Streams of water rush and thunder. “the image of some ‘madman’ igniting himself in
Broom accurst and mean, front of impassive onlookers” (12-13). The refer-
Who will have his will, ence is most likely to Malcolm Browne’s photo-
Stick that you have been, graph of the Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc’s
Once again stand still! self-immolation in Saigon on June 11, 1963. The
resemblance is striking and pointedly unexpect-
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ed, not least because one image depicts a spec-
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1797) tacular destruction of a fictional machine in a
I
Hollywood film and the other is a record of a
n a provocative review of Westworld (1973), human being’s profound protest of the govern-
Michael Crichton’s science-fiction film ment in South Vietnam. By linking the two im-
about a futuristic, computerized theme park ages together Mead and Applebaum demand
called Delos, Gerald Mead and Sam Applebaum that Westworld be seen, especially by Ameri-
of Jump Cut link the film to the visual culture can audiences, not as an escape into an imagi-
of the Vietnam War. At the end of Westworld nary futuristic world but as a kind of futuristic
one of the main characters destroys a homicid- reimagining of the present, what Isaac Asimov
al android gunslinger (played by Yul Brynner) called “an escape into reality” (332).
worng” contain a minor misspelling that pres- and philosophical implications of these chang-
ages disaster (fig. 2); when the line is spoken es by imagining possible futures and endings
in voiceover in a trailer for the film, the audio for a society in transition. Toffler famous-
is plagued by a similar glitch: “Where noth- ly characterized the transition as a “super-in-
ing can possibly go wrong … go wrong … go dustrial revolution” that threatened to outpace
wrong.” The fatal computer malfunction that society’s ability to adapt to changes that many
undoes the safety of the amusement park re- held to be the stuff of science fiction rather
calls “HAL” in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space than realities of contemporary life. Rehearsing
Odyssey (1968) and the long history of what earlier criticisms by Georg Simmel and Walter
Scott Bukatman calls “disobedient machines,” Benjamin about the shocks of modernity at the
from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s magic end of the 19th century, Toffler remarked:
brooms in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1797)
and the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein In the coming decades, advances in these
(1818) to the rebellious robotic creations in Me- fields [of science and technology] will
tropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Blade Runner (Rid- fire off like a series of rockets carrying us
ley Scott, 1982), and Ex Machina (Alex Garland, out of the past, plunging us deeper into
2015), to name a few. As part of this history of the new society. Nor will this new society
(dis)obedience, Crichton’s film grapples with quickly settle into a steady state. It, too,
enduring questions that have long been staples will quiver and crack and roar as it suffers
of the science-fiction genre: Will the technol- jolt after jolt of high-energy change. It of-
ogies we create improve humanity? Will they fers no return to the familiar past. It of-
replace us or destroy us? Will they make us less fers only the highly combustible mixture
human? How much control do we really have of transience and novelty. (217)
over them?
It is precisely this imagined future of a present
While Westworld’s narrative taps into well- world on the verge of going up in flames that
worn anxieties about technology, the film still haunts Westworld and is reflected, I argue, in
has much to teach us, particularly about how the figure of the burning android.
Americans were navigating the rapidly chang-
ing techno-scientific landscape of their histor- In what follows I explore how these concerns
ical moment. Shadowing Crichton’s futuristic about “future shock” in the early 1970s get nego-
theme park were widespread efforts to com- tiated in Westworld’s treatment and use of com-
prehend and cope with astonishing develop- puters. In 1973, computer technologies were
ments in everything from space exploration just beginning to radically transform Ameri-
and Cold War science to mass communication, can life and, over the decade, would “create a
molecular biology, and computers. The 1970s totally new human environment,” to borrow
were ushered in by a wave of cultural criti- Marshall McLuhan’s words (viii). At stake in
cism—for example, Nigel Calder’s Technopo- this transformation was the stability of not only
lis (1969), William Braden’s The Age of Aquar- the architecture of society but also convictions
ius (1970), Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Between Two about foundational categories such as “reality”
Ages (1970), and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and “humanity,” which were being challenged
(1970)—that grappled with the social, political, by computers’ capacities for simulation. It is
significant, from this perspective, that Crich- imaginary—but also as a meta-text about the
ton’s film was among the earliest experiments changing nature of the science and technology
in combining computerized special effects with that went into making the film itself.
celluloid filmmaking in Hollywood. For Bryn-
ner’s character, Crichton collaborated with ex- Futuristic Visions of a Digital Present
perimental computer animator John Whitney,
Jr. to simulate the villainous gunslinger’s robot- Computers are mostly used
ic point-of-view, which was achieved by using against people instead of for
computers to transform celluloid footage into people; used to control peo-
highly pixelated images.1 On the surface, the ple instead of to free them.
resulting electronic machine vision—essen-
tially Westworld as “seen” by a computer—is a -People’s Computer Company (1972)
A
small but marvelous special effects innovation.
Considering the climate in which the innova- mong the special effects employed in
tion occurred, however, I argue that the use of Westworld is a curious spectacle of see-
digital special effects, to borrow Kristen Whis- ing through a robot’s eyes. After the
sel’s term, “emblematized” the emergence of a android gunslinger shoots John dead, it sets
new way of seeing (and seeing with) comput- out in relentless pursuit of Peter, whose per-
ers in 1973. spective on the chase is periodically intercut
with shots of the gunslinger’s point-of-view.
To this end, I situate Westworld’s “robot POV” The robot POV is signaled by the appearance of
in a broader discourse of uncertainty that took highly rasterized footage that consists of pixels
shape around the spread of computerization in arranged in an array of 3,600 rectangles. The
early-1970s America and that helps us, look- array is introduced in the first shot of the gun-
ing back on that decade, see how the film res- slinger’s view of Peter desperately fleeing on
onated and resonates in complex ways. West- a horse from the scene of his friend’s murder
world’s use of special effects, and the narrative when he realizes that the robot is out for blood
in which it embeds them, make the film part (fig. 3). The effect is an early version of a com-
of a rich constellation that includes everything puterized film aesthetic and a novel attempt to
from the modernity of fin-de-siècle amuse- visualize the optics of an electronic machine,
ment parks and early cinema to ideas about a kind of topos in the history of what Alex-
postmodernism and the posthuman that con- ander Galloway calls “computerized, cyber-
verge around computers in the late-20th centu- netic, machinic vision”—variations of which
ry and that continue to unfold. Furthermore, would later appear in science-fiction films such
that Crichton’s film was recently reimagined in as RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987), Preda-
our digital moment as an HBO television se- tor (John McTiernan, 1987), and Terminator 2
ries suggests that the original was both timely (James Cameron, 1991) (Galloway 53).2
and prescient. Looking closely at this constel-
lation, I read Westworld not only as an allegory From the audience’s perspective, the amount of
for a world in crisis—for example, as a haunt- abstraction in the image makes Westworld’s ro-
ed inscription of the visuality of the Vietnam bot POV difficult to read. The mosaic of tiny
War or a reflection of an apocalyptic Cold War rectangles used in the special effect registers
creative talents of the person operating Kennedy Space Center, and the other was Dis-
the machine. (1478) neyland (“Behind the Scenes” 1397). The sur-
veillance system in Westworld is used to con-
In other words, the computer transformed the trol the androids’ behavior in scenarios that are
celluloid image into a kind of “plasmatic” dig- designed to fulfill each guest’s desires, such as
ital painting.4 winning a gunfight without the stakes or con-
sequences of committing an act of violence
Figure 7. View of Mission Control during lunar surface Apollo 11 extravehicular activity, 1969.
Source: NASA Image ID number: S69-39593.
Toffler saw such simulated environments tak- The robot rebellion that throws Delos into cha-
ing shape in the ways that artists were begin- os is obvious and inevitable, partly because it
ning to experiment with the uses of electron- was foregrounded in Westworld’s marketing
ic media to create immersive and interactive campaign, but also because the trope is perva-
virtual-reality experiences that would con- sive in science fiction and animation. Before the
tinue through the decade. Bracketing the re- gunslinger shoots and kills John, there is grow-
lease of Westworld, for example, are comput- ing concern among the park’s experts that the
er artist Myron Krueger’s pioneering “Psychic machines are malfunctioning—a robotic snake
Space” (1971) and “Videoplace” (1975), inter- bites John in the desert and a knight stabs a
active (audio)visual installations that allowed guest—but the aberrant behavior is considered
users to control computerized environments to be a glitch, like a computer virus. When the
by moving through “responsive” spaces outfit- gunslinger misbehaves, it is clear that the glitch
ted with state-of-the art sensors, cameras, and is actually a sign of life and that the machines
projectors.5 are not malfunctioning but rather asserting
their autonomy from the artist-engineers who
The way that Westworld represents the possibil- created and controlled them. Thus, when we
ities of computerized simulations is not only an see through the gunslinger’s electronic eyes, we
invocation of these kinds of real and imagined are asked to see the android as more than a ma-
experiments, but it also calls to mind the dis- chine; this is a vision that has a life of its own.
course of power in the history of animation. As We literally see with the computer as it be-
Donald Crafton explains, early animated films comes uncontrollable. That this way of seeing
frequently displayed hands in the act of ani- the android as a transgressive figure occurred
mating drawings—what he calls the “hand of at a time in American history when computers
the artist” motif—to reflect how animators ex- were just beginning to set radical transforma-
ercise a “god-like” control over their cinemat- tions in motion makes the trope of the disobe-
ic creations (415). In Westworld, experts wield dient machine in Westworld deeply historical.
computers like gods to animate Delos for park
It is not coincidental that the spectacle of the the Washington Post reported similarly: “To-
robot POV is introduced at the same moment day’s monsters seem to be flashing dials, end-
that the utopian fantasy of Delos collapses. less banks of computers whirring silently be-
When Whitney turned to computers to craft hind walls of gleaming glass” (Kriegsman C1).
Westworld’s special effects, the United States The narrative structure of Westworld—from
was in the midst of what Carroll Pursell refers freedom to disaster—reads like a roadmap
to as a “crisis of confidence” about technology of competing discourses on computers and
(134). The crisis was broadly a shift away from the broader crisis of confidence taking shape
postwar optimism toward “anti-technology around technology in postwar America. Yet
views” (172). The views were largely motivated the artists behind Westworld’s digital aesthet-
by Cold War uncertainties about uncontrolla- ic also wielded computers to produce wonders,
ble technologies and growing fears of experts, and in this respect the film is as much a futuris-
corporations, and the military-industrial com- tic vision of computers in the early 1970s as it is
plex in light of the technological realities and an experiment in testing their creative powers.
violence in Vietnam. This shift in perception
extended as prominently to the machinery of Westworld and/as the Cinema
war as it did to computers. In the years between
1971-1973, computer science made unprece- The imagery of disaster in science
dented advances in cybernetics research, the fiction films is above all the em-
invention of the internet, and the development blem of an inadequate response.
of microprocessors that gradually made com-
puters available to the public. Views of these -Susan Sontag, “The Imagi-
innovations were not entirely utopian. Com- nation of Disaster” (1965)
I
bined with McLuhan’s radical critical theories
of the electronic-information age and the fact n addition to coinciding with key inno-
that computers were largely the domain of cor- vations in the history of computers, West-
porations and government entities rather than world appears at a point in the history of
of “the people,” the computer, Pursell explains, special effects when Hollywood was just begin-
developed a “reputation … as an impersonal— ning to explore the aesthetics of computer-gen-
even antipersonal—force in society” (185). erated imagery (CGI). In the 1960s, computer
graphics related to techniques and technolo-
It is significant that computers were concur- gies of the moving image circulated mostly in
rently taken up by science-fiction films and the realm of experimental animation. Main-
imagined as disobedient machines. In 1974, stream innovations in what we now call digital
Vincent Canby reflected in the New York Times special effects did not rise to prominence un-
on a trend rooted in 2001 and taking shape with til the late 1970s and early 1980s with the use
films such as Westworld and Richard Heffron’s of computer technologies in films such as Star
then-anticipated sequel, Futureworld (1976): Wars (1977) and Tron (1982).6 Westworld thus
“The computers of today are the Frankenstein made its home in an important transitional pe-
monsters of yesterday’s gothic fiction. We are riod in American film history that saw a new
tampering with the Unknown” (8). Quoting cinematic optics emerge from the intersection
Michael Webb of the American Film Institute, of older filmmaking practices—namely those
related to the photorealist tradition—and the Seven (1960). Brynner apparently wears the
digital aesthetics made possible by computers. same costume in both films (fig. 8).
From this perspective, Westworld is quite rich By weaving a narrative out of androids and
as an allegory for the cinema. In a 1973 inter- amusement parks, Crichton (intentionally
view with American Cinematographer, Crich- or not) taps into two of the cinema’s longest
ton acknowledged that the premise of the standing affinities. With regard to the gun-
film—visitors living out fantasies in a futur- slinger, it is important that the cinematic ap-
istic amusement park—was deeply cinemat- paratus was linked from the very beginning,
ic: “In some ways,” he explained, “it’s a mov- technically and theoretically, to the automaton.
ie about people acting out movie fantasies … As Alan Cholodenko argues, the link is one of
wondering what it would be like to be an actor the most enduring throughout film history be-
in an old movie” (“Behind the Scenes” 1397). As cause the automaton’s ability to blur the line
Crichton would have it, when Peter and John Figure 8. Left: Brynner as the android gunslinger in
Westworld. Right: Brynner as Chris Adams in The
visit Westworld they are not simply experienc- Magnificent Seven.
ing a simulation of the Wild West, but stepping
into the cinematic Western. Delos is the “old” between human and machine speaks to the
cinema remade as a “new” immersive virtu- very nature of the cinema: they are both “vital
al-reality system, an updated version of Bust- machines” capable of producing uncanny illu-
er Keaton’s dream in Sherlock Jr. (1924) of pro- sions of life and motion. In Westworld, for ex-
jecting himself into the movies. The reflexivity ample, the robots are only recognizable as such
in Westworld touches on everything from the by their “shimmering” eyes. We have seen how
resemblance between the computerized com- the gunslinger’s disobedience makes the an-
mand centre and the behind-the-scenes la- droid within the film a vital machine, a com-
bour on a movie set to the fact that the android puter that appears to have a life of its own. The
gunslinger was played by Yul Brynner, who question of vitality is complicated by the fact
appeared notably as the gunslinger Chris Ad- that, for audiences of Westworld, the android
ams in John Sturges’s Western The Magnificent is played by a living human being. Following
Cholodenko, the gunslinger can also be seen as Pegasus … they felt themselves passing
an embodiment of the cinema, for the cinema into a special realm of exciting possibility,
is an automaton.7 a distinctive milieu that encouraged types
of behavior and social interaction that in
Consider that the special effect Whitney cre- other contexts would have been viewed
ated to simulate the android’s vision was made askance. (41)
possible by a computer: that is, the computer-
ized robot’s vision was in fact computer gener- The parallels with Crichton’s amusement park
ated. A curious doubling is at work in Whit- are revealing. Delos is pitched in the film as
ney’s footage whereby the “real” computer— “the vacation of the future,” where reality is re-
Whitney’s—is folded into the “fictional” one, made into a fantasy and visitors are “free to in-
implicating both machines in the narratives dulge their every whim” by immersing them-
of freedom and disaster that play out in the selves in a simulated world without limits. The
film. There is a nice resonance, for example, film also opens with a scene that closely resem-
between the gunslinger who digitally “reads” bles Kasson’s description of visitors arriving at
the landscape within the film and the comput- Coney Island. When we are introduced to Peter
er that “reads” the celluloid image to produce and John, they are travelling by hovercraft to
the special effect for the gunslinger’s POV. The Delos. After they disembark from this mech-
doubling act is particularly significant in light anized Pegasus, they take on new identities as
of the fact that the robot POV is a moving im- cowboys in Westworld, where they are free to
age in transition. Whitney’s special-effects se- indulge in violence without consequence be-
quence was striking in 1973 because it resem- cause reality in Delos is a game. The hovercraft
bled early arcade video-game aesthetics more sequence even includes a view from the cockpit
than anything “cinematic” at the time. that simulates one of the earliest convergences
of motion pictures and technologies of virtu-
The representation of Delos is doing simi- al travel: the Hale’s Tours ride simulators that
lar reflexive work. Like automata, amusement populated fin-de-siècle amusement parks and
parks share a history with the cinema that can World Fairs.8
be traced to the emergence of motion pictures.
Beginning in the 1890s, amusement parks and It is remarkable that Westworld should reani-
the cinema co-evolved as emblems of moderni- mate these affinities amidst a “crisis of confi-
ty. They were both sites where the novel shocks, dence” about technology. In Electric Dream-
dangers, and bewildering experiences of mod- land, Lauren Rabinovitz argues convincingly
ern life were transformed and put on display as that at the end of the 19th century “amusement
safe, entertaining, and even liberating specta- parks and movies taught Americans to revel in
cles. Coney Island, for example, was designed a modern sensibility that was about adapting
as a virtual city apart—like the Emerald City in to new technologies” (2). That is, by experienc-
Oz—where, John Kasson explains: ing the realities of modern life virtually and
safely—e.g., as a mechanical ride or a motion
[V]isitors were temporarily freed from nor- picture—people could better adjust to radi-
mative demands. As they disembarked cally new technologies and environments that
from ferryboats with fanciful names like were, in reality, overwhelming, frightening,
and potentially disastrous. Angela Ndalian- Symbolically, then, we might say that the ro-
is has argued similarly that, because special bot POV is what Vivian Sobchack calls a “tran-
effects tend to display broader technological sitional object,” hovering somewhere between
changes during periods of intense innovation, the past and the future, utopia and disaster,
they “have a great deal to do with acclimatizing the familiar and the unfamiliar. Writing about
audiences to different forms of visual engage- computer animation in WALL-E (Andrew
ment” (259). By embedding its special effects in Stanton, 2008), Sobchack proposes that the
a narrative about automata and an amusement titular character, a mechanical trash compac-
park modeled on fantasies about computers tor with a microchip core, “serves [in our con-
and the cinema, Westworld reads like an edu- temporary moment] as a bridge to the future
cation in the rapidly changing technological present of technological development” (387).
landscape of its historical moment. For Sobchack, WALL-E’s embodiment of the
old and the new, the mechanical and the elec-
The idea that Westworld is “about adapting to tronic, allegorizes and mediates the transition
new technologies” is useful for making sense of in the cinema from a celluloid past to a digital
the film’s impulse toward reassurance. Almost future. I suggest we read Whitney’s special-ef-
as soon as Westworld imagines computers re- fect artifact in Westworld similarly as a kind of
belling and threatening humanity it imagines “bridge” that, although it is ultimately set on
the machines’ spectacular destruction: the an- fire, mediates an aesthetic and cultural transi-
droid gunslinger is ultimately burnt to ashes. tion shaped by the cinema’s intersection with
The significance of this narrative of (un)con- early computer animation techniques. (The
trollability is deepened in light of the fact that parallel that Ingmar Bergman draws in Persona
computers in the 1970s were revolutionizing [1966] between the footage of a self-immola-
the relationship between humanity and tech- tion that appears on a television screen and the
nology. Cybernetics and philosophy were rais- subsequent melting of the celluloid filmstrip is
ing profound questions about what it means to uncannily resonant here.)9
be human, to be conscious, and to be alive. As
N. Katherine Hayles has shown, early comput- As if haunted by the growing power of com-
ers contributed to conceptualizing “humans as puters to pull reality and humanity apart at the
information-processing entities who are essen- seams, the spectacle of the gunslinger’s “death”
tially similar to intelligent machines” (7, orig- thus seems to invite the audience to bear wit-
inal emphasis). In this analogy, the human ness to humanity asserting its definitive con-
mind was reimagined as a thing that was not trol over an increasingly computerized world.
bound to the human body, a “posthuman” idea A central concern about the ways that comput-
that gets visualized in Westworld by the robot ers were revolutionizing life in the early 1970s
POV: we transfer our subjectivity to a com- was the loosening of what Toffler called “man’s
puter. Although more latent in 1973, comput- grasp on reality” (231). The concern was fueled
ers similarly upended the nature of the cinema by a sense that computer technologies were be-
when the digital image began to erode the cel- ginning to erode the distinction both between
luloid image’s indexical bond to reality, which reality and illusion in their capacities for sim-
set in motion a crisis of visuality that continues ulation, and between human and machine in
to unfold today. their implications for philosophy and biology,
including the possibility that “life” and “hu- course of scientific and technological innova-
man” would have to be re-imagined if comput- tion is imperative and requires action.
ers were successfully combined with living or-
ganic material. The erosion was compounded It is precisely what Westworld does not ask au-
by the fact that computers were opening the diences to see or do that motived Mead and
human experience up to infinite new possi- Applebaum to invoke “the image of some ‘mad-
bilities at a rate that threatened to exceed peo- man’ igniting himself in front of impassive on-
ple’s ability to anticipate, let alone control, the lookers” with which I began this article. Draw-
short- and long-term effects of the changes tak- ing a parallel to the Western genre’s tendency
ing place: “The problem,” in Toffler’s view, “is to mythologize and glorify American imperi-
whether [humans] can survive freedom” (187). alism, they criticized Westworld for protecting
Considering this, we might say that, if Delos the American psyche from the dark social and
is a computerized “electric dreamland,” a vir- political realities of the early 1970s. While I am
tual space where the freedoms made possible primarily concerned with the representation of
by computers are unleashed, the unravelling technology and disaster in Westworld, their in-
of that dreamland is presented as a nightmare dictment is worth quoting at length for what
from which American audiences can wake up. it reveals about the reach of the film’s fantasy
In delivering this lesson Westworld positions of control:
the cinema as a safe space for playing with and
alleviating anxieties about frightening techno- It is not [the guests’] conscious aware-
logical changes that were already underway in ness that these are robots, non-human
American culture. machines, that determines their reac-
tions, but rather their feeling and convic-
Writing in the 1960s, Susan Sontag called the tion that these “others” are some kind of
trend of “imagining disaster” this way in sci- less-than-human humans, real, living ob-
ence fiction an “inadequate response” to real- jectifications of their fantasies. So what we
ity because it does not oblige audiences to ad- have in fact are the beginnings of a rath-
dress the very real “terrors” that get fictional- er thinly disguised racial perspective, an
ized and resolved in the cinema. Westworld’s exploitation justified by an explanation—
reassurances no doubt make the film complicit the “others” are less than human—and by
in preserving an illusion of safety in the face an economic right—the “guests” pay … .
of radical changes that radiate outward from Nor does it seem coincidental that for the
film and computers to the fate of humanity it- leader of the robot revolt Crichton should
self. The act of covering over can be seen as an cast the former king of Thailand, the lead-
attempt to make the uncertainties of modern er of the mad Huns, Mexican radical, in-
life bearable, to imagine safety in the ongoing scrutable hired killer, the suggestively
nightmares of the Cold War, for example, when Mongol-featured Yul Brynner. Along with
humans were grappling with the possibility of infrared sensing devices, weapons that kill
their own self-annihilation, which, as Sontag only the “enemy,” willing, thankful prosti-
points out, “could come at any time, virtual- tutes, etc., Westworld simply provides the
ly without warning” (224). What gets left out, triumphant, guiltless hero that Indochina
however, is a clear sense that changing the didn’t. (12-13)
Much more can and should be said about West- through the cinema to experiment safely with
world as a kind of racialized war game—Mead the realities of its unsafe historical moment
and Applebaum offer a fairly thorough discus- while covering over a whole range of social and
sion of this. Here it is notable that the film’s political issues. Looking back on the film from
“vacation of the future” premise conjures a re- our contemporary moment, the future present
lated discourse of power in histories of travel that Crichton imagined in 1973 feels very close
in film and related media. Delos’s promise of to home. Given that our networked, media-sat-
safety and freedom to visitors who embark on urated, and increasingly virtual reality resem-
futuristic journeys in the park is reminiscent of bles Delos more than it ever has before, we
the kind of mastery promised by amusement might ask: What kind of work can Westworld
parks, World Fairs, and the travelogue genre in do for us now?
the cinema. These other forms of virtual trav-
el are historically wedded—particularly in the The Memory of Reality
early-20th century—to what Jennifer Peterson
calls a “visual imperialism,” a mode of repre- Don’t give yourselves to these un-
sentation filtered through “racial perspectives” natural men—machine men with
of colonialism and tourism that rendered for- machine minds and machine
eign and exotic places safe and consumable for hearts! You are not machines!
Western audiences (8) (see also Ruoff, Virtual
Voyages). -Charlie Chaplin, The
Great Dictator (1940)
I
This is all to say that Westworld was engaged in
a similar kind of cultural work aimed at ren- n 2016, HBO renewed Crichton’s film as a
dering the “monstrous” and “villainous” com- 10-part television series that deviates sig-
puter safe at a time when the effects of that nificantly from the path Westworld imag-
technology were only beginning to come into ined in 1973. The new version follows the tra-
focus. This dimension of the film betrays the jectory of the original, but it unfolds largely
simplicity of its narrative of reassurance, not from the perspective of the androids, name-
to mention the simplicity of its special effects. ly a rancher’s daughter named Dolores Aber-
Crichton offers the computer up as a highly se- nathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve Mil-
ductive machine—like the cinema—with the lay (Thandie Newton), a madam in a brothel
potential to satisfy an enduring human desire in Westworld. Whereas the gunslinger’s POV
to exceed the limitations of reality and the hu- was an important special effects attraction in
man experience. The fantasy is a messy one in Crichton’s film, the shift to the android per-
which the computer emerges as neither utopi- spective in the HBO series is primarily a nar-
an nor dystopian; it is an object of debate and a rative device. Dolores and Maeve are unaware
tool Crichton uses to grapple with the difficulty of their machine natures, but as they play out
of comprehending what a digital future might their programmed roles over and over for the
look like, and what might become of humani- park’s guests, they slowly become haunted by
ty if it continues to push technological innova- memories that cause them to question what
tion in the direction of that future. The fanta- they consider to be their humanity. Their ques-
sy is also not simply escapist. Westworld works tioning is profound—What does it mean for a
machine to feel uncertain about its nature? Or existential crises unfold it becomes more and
for humans to imagine a machine’s uncertain- more difficult for them and for us to determine
ty for that matter? The questioning is also the if their questioning is a sign of life or the result
source of the androids’ disobedience: Dolores of their programming; if the memories that
embarks on a quest to unravel the mystery of haunt them are real or fake; and if what we are
her place in Delos, and Maeve arranges her witnessing is occurring in an android’s dream
own escape from the park by modifying her or in “reality.” The narrative also employs an in-
programming. Ultimately, it is revealed that creasingly ambiguous flashback structure and
one of the park’s founders, Robert Ford (An- “reboots” so often that even determining pre-
thony Hopkins), spent decades secretly design- cisely where, when, and if events occurred be-
ing the androids’ search for answers that would comes a challenge. The web of uncertainty is
lead to their rebellion and freedom. Unlike the one from which there is apparently no escape
original Westworld, however, there is no fi- for us.
ery android death; in 2016 the machines win
and, as if taking up Chaplin’s call, declare their Yet why weave the web? If Peter’s destruction of
humanity. the gunslinger in 1973 is more or less comfort-
ing, what is the successful robot rebellion in
While a lengthy analysis of the series is beyond 2016 doing? The difference no doubt makes the
the scope of this article, the manner in which new Westworld more distinctly postmodern
the 2016 version renews the allegorical dimen- than its predecessor. Take, for example, Jean
sions of the original is worth mentioning, even Baudrillard’s quite fitting assessment of the
if only to open up a dialogue about what the spectre that haunts both Westworlds: Disney-
connection reveals about our enduring fasci- land. Writing in 1981 in the light (or shadow) of
nation with that decade and how we are deal- the impact of electronic media on conceptions
ing with the “future shock” of our contempo- of reality, Baudrillard claims, “Disneyland is
rary moment. Most notable here is the fact that presented as imaginary in order to make us be-
the lack of reassurance in HBO’s Westworld is lieve that the rest is real” (12). In other words,
pervasive and daunting. Whereas Brynner’s humans create “simulations,” such as amuse-
gunslinger is cold and mechanical, these new ment parks, androids, and the cinema, to an-
androids are humanized and sympathetic, the swer the question of what is “real”—i.e., reality
tragic victims and playthings of humans who is real because Disneyland is fake. Baudrillard
commit acts of murder and sexual violence suggests that the faith we place in this distinc-
almost mechanically. Seeing humans mecha- tion covers over the fact that the distinction is
nized and machines humanized compels us to imaginary, that there is no “real” and “simula-
question our humanity, especially when by the tion” but only the “hyperreal” (12-13). Where-
end we might find ourselves rooting, against as Crichton questions but ultimately preserves
our nature, for our own demise. To compound this faith—Peter successfully defends reality
the inversion, some characters that we are ini- against the simulation and secures the distinc-
tially led to believe are human—such as the tion between both categories—the HBO series
lead programmer Bernard (Jeffrey Wright)— seems to be exploring what it would be like
are later revealed to be androids, which makes to embrace hyperreality, perhaps as a way of
everyone in Delos suspect. As the machines’
working through the unique challenges of our that define how we experience, understand,
historical moment. and “design” our environment, as Nolan puts
it. Seeing from the perspective of the androids
In an interview about Westworld (2016), the now is not like imagining seeing through the
show’s creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy eyes of an unfamiliar machine—as the com-
suggest that their version grapples with the puterized robot POV allowed audiences to do
fact that, in the 21st century, humans are living in 1973—but like encountering something like
very real lives in the virtual realities made pos- our android selves. It is also revealing that the
sible by videogames and the internet. Nolan perspective audiences are asked to take now is
explains: shifted from the predominantly male cast in
1973 to female leads in 2016, and that many of
As our world becomes more cloistered the central characters in the TV series are peo-
and the experiences we choose for our- ple of colour, especially given the prominent
selves, especially in the West, we’re able lack of diversity in the original film. The new
to design not just our environment but Westworld seems to grapple more openly (al-
also our intellectual environment to suit though problematically) than the original with
our preferences and predilections. We the politics of race and gender that are current-
are, you know, sort of designing this odd ly playing out, sometimes violently, in the me-
prophylactic universe in which we can—we dia, in the cinema, and in society in the United
can do whatever we want (qtd. in Gross). States.10
On one level, the idea is that computerized It thus cannot be coincidental that Westworld
technologies have finally transformed our real- has reappeared at a time when humanity is once
ity into the Delos that Crichton imagined. On again being torn apart at the seams by forces
another, we have so thoroughly diffused the that are increasingly incomprehensible. Just as
real into the electronic phantasmagorias we Mead and Applebaum saw their violent histor-
create that “reality” exists for us in the digital ical moment reflected and refracted in the sub-
age only as a flickering memory. The Westworld lime image of the burning android, we might be
that Nolan and Joy imagined is thus a fraught haunted by the uncomfortable and quite devas-
escape into the plural realities in which we find tating familiarity of the new Westworld. Partic-
(or lose) ourselves every time we turn on our ularly in the United States, the techno-scientif-
TVs, boot up our computers, or pick up our ic realities of surveillance, cyberwarfare, social
smartphones. media, and governance are wreaking havoc in
old and new ways on everything from politics,
By asking us quite unapologetically to bear race, gender, and class to civil liberties and the
witness to the disappearance of reality as we very fabric of culture, if not humanity, itself. Is
knew it, it may well be that that the dark mir- it any wonder that the first season ends with a
ror the HBO series holds up to us is doing a striking scene of a diverse android army led by
different kind of work than the original. The women emerging from the woods on the edge
series is noticeably less about special effects of Westworld seeking violent retribution? (fig.
and more about the impossibility of disentan- 9) Viewers find no solace in this place because
gling humanity from the digital technologies this is not a cinema of reassurance.11 Indeed,
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Acknowledgements
I would sincerely like to thank Nathan Holmes and 6 For more on the early computerization of special
Andrew Pendakis for their excellent editorial guid- effects, see Turnock.
ance, and two anonymous reviewers for their help-
ful comments on an early draft of this article. Part of 7 Martin Scorsese’s digital 3D film Hugo (2011) of-
this paper was also presented at the 2018 Society for fers an interesting allegory of early cinema as an au-
Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Toronto, tomaton. For more on this, see Williamson.
and I am grateful for the generous feedback I received
from panelists and attendees there, particularly Tanya 8 For more on Hale’s Tours, see Rabinovitz 2012 and
Shilina-Conte. Fielding 1970.