Modular narratives in ‘Westworld’
OCTOBER 18TH, 2016 — POST 288
Will contains spoilers for S01E01-S01E03 of HBO’s Westworld. But decidedly no speculation.
There was always going to be room for metaphor in Westworld. When the premise centres on a life-sized Wild West doll house, there is intrinsic metaphorical in drawing out comparisons to Westworld’s functioning and the functioning of our world. We have creators for one: a stable of human scientists, researchers, and engineers with as diverse desires and motivations as those who sat on Mount Olympus. The theme park itself is a sandbox in which to test morality, identity, and humanity. And whilst the technological background noise of Westworld is eras ahead of our current technological moment, we can’t help but he handed lessons — or at the very least food for thought — on the ways in which technology ought to feature in our lives today. And this is what I expected heading in to Westworld. What I didn’t expect was to be taught about how to construct narratives.
Episode 3 of Westworld — called ‘The Stray’ — gives us the biggest indication yet of the mechanics of storytelling used inside the theme park. Up to now, we’ve heard in passing that the hosts are essentially “on rails” moving between story beats according to if/then statements. If Teddy is able to get to Dolores as she drops the can, then they will spend the afternoon in the wilderness rekindling their romance. If Dolores arrives home without Teddy, she will be attacked by bandits ransacking her homestead and murdering her parents. Viewed through the lens of the complex machine that Westworld is — but a machine nonetheless — it makes intuitive sense that narratives inside the park ought to be executed like segments of code. And like code, it’s editable — but not without carried consequences.
Part of the subplot of ‘The Stray’ is the rolling out of a “narrative update” — essentially an edit to the code of a bunch of hosts’ narratives. That which is paid most attention is the gifting of Teddy a backstory: instead of some nebulous “wound in his past”, he’s given a specific enemy from his past, an enemy who’s addition to Westworld is the centre of this new narrative patch. The metaphor should be clear. The writers show their hand — overtly giving Teddy a backstory as part of the episode’s plot whilst also slipping us the backstory of one of the scientists Bernard. That two characters are now given a chunk of story before the timeline of the show — one overtly, the other covertly — will, like code, have consequences foreseeable and others as yet unknown.
That a host’s loop-long plot can take a variety of routes according to if/thens is not only the manifest content of Westworld but it arguably shines a light to the process of story construction. If we take the metaphor of the creators as authors of the Westworld story (or stories), they set up a series of small instances or modules that are linked (or not) by certain characters — whether host or newcomer. Zooming out, the show’s creators do the same thing. The Bernard/Dolores interactions, it seems, are similarly an instance comparable to the Dolores/Teddy “You came back” meeting. And just like Teddy can’t get shot in the bar for this instance to “pop”, Bernard simply can’t not be wounded by a troubled past for the instances with him and Dolores to “pop” convincingly.
In a very real sense, Westworld demystifies what it even is to write stories, and specifically sprawling serialised television. In reducing the narratives of its world to if/thens, it becomes clear that the entire thing operates in much the same way. But crucial to those who want to learn these lessons on story from Westworld is its implicit acknowledgement that the author can only hope for so much “control” over the “thens”. Dolores was never meant to be able to fire a pistol. There is no “if” that has “Dolores kills” as the then according to the script written by Westworld’s narrative authors. And yet it happens. By metaphorical extension, any character has the power to surprise its creator and for those like myself looking to learn from Westworld, affording characters this freedom is one of the main ways to make a story feel more like a story and less like code.
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