(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It often strikes me how TV shows and movies often address obvious social or political issues, but choose not to articulate them as anything other than a backdrop. Maybe producers, companies and directors think this will appeal extra if they stay of, acting in the background? Like some kind of archetypal form that seems hidden? I don't know, but what is rarely discussed is how rather stupid series and films can in reality be considered as an exercise in political and social consciousness.
Take the new HBO series Westworld. It's pretty much a good HBO brand – there's no left-hand work here – but it's so much sea besides the fact that it is a "high quality series". It takes place in an indefinable future, which may not be so far from ours, where a team of scientists has created an imitated Western world populated by equally artificial people. It's a whole reality the size of a US state that is being monitored by a 24-hour fighting team, much like in Truman Show. But the actors in this reality are machines, though looks like humans – so-called androids.
Android plays roles in a standardized western drama day in and day out. This fiction on repeat acts as a three-dimensional western movie, where you are not a passive spectator, but an active part of the action.
Software is, in fact, storytelling here, for the company that made it Westworld, have hired their own storytellers who direct the artificial western heroes – and are constantly inventing new stories in which they have roles. is included in the source code so that the different android actors can switch between different scripts along the way. And improvise within the bounds of reasonableness.
Theme Park. Westworld is a theme park of good, old variety, but is far closer to reality than other theme parks – visitors can interact with the machinists, and will not notice them and other real people unless they know that they are artificial. They can get involved in all kinds of activities they would have done outside this artificial world, but here they do not have to bond. Here they can be unfaithful and kill without being punished. The wildest fantasies can become reality – without you becoming a bad person or criminal for that reason.
The clearest, underlying structure is shaped by class contradictions and social inequality. Because, of course, there is always someone who can have fun at the expense of others, without having to pay attention. At least if they sit far enough in the hierarchy of power or have enough money. Android, in other words, is in a world where they are slaves to human imaginations. This level is deepened and nuanced by the artificial people not can harm the real: If they shoot or try to hit them, they will not hit. The violence is bouncing off. While the real people, who end up in an increasingly unlucky light throughout the series, can hurt, rape and kill for the sake of entertainment and recreation.
And it is precisely this that makes the real people so unsympathetic: that when they do not have to take into account the law and can freely do what they really want, it is not neat, what comes out. The film is a developing mechanism for people's repressed dreams – what they do when law, order and ethics are no obstacle.
The asymmetry of life. But then viruses occur in the computer programs. In this case: alternative interpretations of the software. Android connects the different people they have played and sees similarities between their roles access player and previous scenarios they have been a part of. In the past, they have been restarted daily so as not to perpetuate stored atrocities, but as they begin to remember their past lives – the narratives that lay in previous programming – synchronicity occurs between the various narrative layers. The links between the stories cause them to break out of the cycle they are programmed into. This allows them to compare the course, different roles and different variations of the same category of events. First, they begin to see what violence they are subjected to, but they also become aware that the narrative they are currently playing could have been different. In other words, Android gets its own story. With a past and alternative interpretations of what is happening, a comparative thinking arises, and when the optics of comparison expose the future as a place of opportunity, they will need to tell stories that are not programmed by others.
Saying no to other people's stories, breaking out of the role they have been assigned, further distorts the asymmetries of programming. It creates viruses. It creates evolution, will and action. Which in turn leads to wonder, fascination, fear and maybe love.
The dramaturgy of life. As we look, it seems obvious that in fact, it is not just the androids who play roles related to pre-written scripts. No, there are also stories that guide those who visit the theme park. They are also programmed in the narratives and roles they play, although there is no entertainment factory behind and uploads software into their brains.
But what is the difference? In any case, it is clear that the role society plays to this man-made world is more or less the gods that play in the real human world. In this way, the whole can Westworld is considered as a reflection on the relationship between human destiny and the significance of different life stories in general – and especially if it is a god figure, a deus ex machina in the background. Westworld is, we could say, a small story of creation in which paradise is portrayed as a slave state, and becoming a human being with free will is about saying no to the god-given stories.
The core of the series – everything else revolves around – is how people torment and rape again and again, and are not punished for it.
Learning Piece. But the central part of the series – everything else revolves around – is how people torment and rape again and again, and are not punished for it. When a poor android is going to take revenge on his family killed by a (un) human, the bullets do no harm. Gradually, it becomes more and more of a problem for us to consider that someone is responsible for all the abuses and all the violence, while any attempt to rebel is bubbling like water on the goose. The series invests in the frustration of brutal inequality by repeating it in extremis.
In a world like ours, where most people live a satisfying life, class differences can be difficult to spot. IN Westworld they are brought to the surface in a stylized and very clear form.
I like to watch movies as apprentices this way – try yourself next time you see something that pretends to be entertainment. Underneath the smooth surface, you will probably find old, social contradictions that are living at their best. And once you've seen them, you've found a place to watch the movie or series from where – as the action progresses – it becomes clear what you have to learn from what you watch.
That those with power and zero respect for the weakest trips forward is no secret. But we need to remember the class contradictions in the raw form we can see here. We get it served as an exercise in class consciousness – a lesson in thinking about the relationship between power and entertainment.
