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Showing posts from October, 2016

Westworld and Meta-Narrative

I have a theory about Westworld . It's not about the world outside the park or whether or not Ed Harris is a cylon. My theory has to do with the show itself, which seems fixated on the concept of narrative. Westworld  is already drawing comparisons to Lost  and Battlestar Galactica , two shows that trafficked heavily in managing and playing with viewer expectations, but they were still narrative shows that took place in their own worlds. Westworld  is a slightly different animal. Thematically, it's about entertainment that turns against its consumer. So while it has echoes of Lost  and BG , and the obvious antecedents of the 1973 Westworld  film and Jurassic Park , I think there's a strain of influences that are more akin to The Ring  and Mulholland Drive , horror movies that invite the viewer to be just as much of a victim as the characters on screen. The former posits a world in which viewing a film is a death sentence. The latter creates a distorted and disorienting worl