Westworld
While flying to
California recently, I watched the entire first season of Westworld.
The premise, taken from the eponymous movie from the seventies, is of
an expansive Western-themed adventure park populated by lifelike
androids. The human visitors are free to engage with this park world
and interact with the androids in any way they like – in practice
mostly violently or sexually. The androids are very extensively
programmed and respond intelligently and with a range of human
emotions, which means it’s inevitable that they become sentient and
their treatment becomes immoral. After being shot, mangled and
emotionally traumatized, their memories are wiped and they are
patched up in a vast futuristic underground complex by staff at the
park.
At this point, I
would like to discuss the moral or philosophical points of the show,
but I can’t. The ideas of robot sentience and what it means to be
alive or human, have been explored so often in various media that
Westworld brings nothing else to the table. It is just a well-made
summary of other fiction works. The story is gripping enough to keep
my attention, at least when the viewer is locked with it in an
aluminium tube – though I did look out over Iceland and Hudson Bay
for a short while.
My biggest gripe
with the show is the poor portrayal of logistics*, taking the
superlative remake of Battlestar Galactica as a benchmark. Humans are
shown on wilderness treks for days, sometimes tied up, without food
and with scarce water – how do they comfortably survive? Why do
even prepared park technicians set out into the hot “California”
sun (that’s where it’s filmed) without taking water or any trail
mix with them? How do revolvers and Winchester rifles fire seemingly
dozens of shots without reloading? What happens when a human visitor
goes on a romantic overnight train ride; the Civil War-era train
would cover 200-300 miles in this time, which is larger than the park
is expected to be? Is the seemingly single train bringing guests in
and out of the park enough to maintain the stated equilibrium
population of several hundred visiting humans? These and a great deal
many other questions are left unanswered – perhaps they were inside
a simulation all along and the humans are really holograms.
Had there been a
noteworthy philosophical message, I would have suggested that it is
overly mired by the gratuitous violence and nudity – practically
every other scene in the park ends with blood and guts, frequently
with an entire town of androids being gunned down, while every shot
in the sci-fi setting has naked androids (i.e. human actors) awaiting
repair in the fore- or background. Speaking of gratuitous violence
and nudity...
Spartacus
This series ("Blood and Sand"/"Gods of the Arena" ...) charts the historically-inspired paths of Spartacus, a Thracian leader of a gladiatorial uprising, and his fellow rebels. The first point to
be made about this series, more so than any others, is that dramatic media invariably play up excitement and downplay the monotony of life; even the most banal soap opera cuts out the characters waiting for a bus or sitting in reception at the dentist's.
For this reason, this show was initially - and perhaps unfairly - labelled as a show purely for teenage boys, due to the copious amounts of sex and gore. But given the setting, this is totally justified: the portrayal of the blood and guts of gladiatorial combat in the late Roman republic is archaeologically sound, if a little embellished - in most arena fights the loser would be allowed to live - while the lewd aspects fit with our view of ancient Rome from the brothels of Pompeii and vulgar poetry.
Overall, I felt the show was very well made. It had the deceit and dirty dealings of any modern political drama and was excellently themed. The most superb touch of the entire show was the way the English script imitated Latin speech - brisker and containing no definite articles. It certainly dipped in the last series, since the format was not really conducive to the massed battles late in Spartacus's campaign, but perhaps no worse than when everyone inevitably turns out to be in The Matrix in future season 36 of Westworld.
*It has been said of me that I "can't enjoy anything" because of my pointed questioning of logistical matters in the Terminator film series.
For this reason, this show was initially - and perhaps unfairly - labelled as a show purely for teenage boys, due to the copious amounts of sex and gore. But given the setting, this is totally justified: the portrayal of the blood and guts of gladiatorial combat in the late Roman republic is archaeologically sound, if a little embellished - in most arena fights the loser would be allowed to live - while the lewd aspects fit with our view of ancient Rome from the brothels of Pompeii and vulgar poetry.
Overall, I felt the show was very well made. It had the deceit and dirty dealings of any modern political drama and was excellently themed. The most superb touch of the entire show was the way the English script imitated Latin speech - brisker and containing no definite articles. It certainly dipped in the last series, since the format was not really conducive to the massed battles late in Spartacus's campaign, but perhaps no worse than when everyone inevitably turns out to be in The Matrix in future season 36 of Westworld.
*It has been said of me that I "can't enjoy anything" because of my pointed questioning of logistical matters in the Terminator film series.
