“Who Made Who II,” a.k.a. Westworld
The second season of HBO’s Westworld kicks off Sunday night (4/22). Much like the first season, the excitement around this return feels more like a flickering candle than a bolt of lightning. From the pilot episode on, Westworld felt more like a thing to be studied and dissected in a college course than to be enjoyed over popcorn, which is damning with high praise.
Of the many things Westworld is, however, one of the things it is not is a Western.
Sure, most of the scenes are set in an artificial old-timey Western environment, inhabited by artificially intelligent beings dressed like old-timey Western characters. In fact, many of the scenes in Westworld are inspired directly by classic Westerns. And the setting and disconnect are what makes it such fun as a piece of science fiction. Those old enough, nerdy enough, or bored enough to have known about Michael Crichton’s original movie would have known much of this. (And if you’re nerdy and bored enough, I recommend checking it out, seeing how it was in many ways Crichton’s initial inspiration for Jurassic Park.)
As science fiction, the show is perfectly connected to my previous write-up about AC/DC’s “Who Made Who,” but Westworld draws me back to a different song from my youth when I’m watching or pondering it.
“Wild West Hero” by Electric Light Orchestra is no more a song about the Wild West than Westworld is a Western. Rather, it’s an electric song about someone very much enjoying the comforts and accommodations of a much more modern and technological world, wishing — if only fleetingly — they were back in a simpler time, one we could control with our own imaginations.
Sometimes I look up high
And then I think there might,
Just be a better life
Away from all we know
That’s where I wanna go
Out on the wild side
Neither the tourists nor the song’s narrator genuinely desire to find themselves transported into the reality of the late 1800s. Few sane people watch smallpox ravage the town of Deadwood, or watch as generally vulgar, unattractive people slog through the mud in a town beyond laws or civilization, and think, Man oh man, I wish I could be there. That looks fun. Even Deadwood is, in its own twisted way, a romanticized version of an even less glamorous, uglier reality. Deadwood is my all-time favorite TV show, yet I’ve never found myself wanting to be more than a mere fictional character in that fictional version.
Ride the range all the day
Till the first fading light
Be with my western girl
Round the fire oh so bright
I’d be the indians’ friend
Let them live to be free
Ridin’ into the sunset
I wish I could be.
Great plan, Dances with Wolves. See how that works out for ya. And your little dog, too! These lyrics do not portray what the West was like. This is the City Slickers version written by a Billy Crystal type, and true cowboy Curly craps bigger ’n’ that guy.
If Jeff Lynne really meant what he wrote in these lyrics, shouldn’t the song sound much more Avett Brothers and much less… well, ELO? ELO is the utter antithesis of singing a campfire song in the Wyoming hills circa 1879. ELO was about spaceships and futuristic retro, not li’l doggies, beef jerky, or gold in them thar hills.
But don’t misunderstand: I love “Wild West Hero,” and it’s one of my very favorite ELO songs.
It’s a beautiful song about wishing we were where we ain’t, wishing we were who we can’t be, wishing we could be some better version of ourselves in a place and time far enough removed from the world we know that we can almost believe the alternative is possible. The urge to be other, to be Not Oneself, to be better/more, to not be trapped by the trappings we have built for ourselves, is a timeless and almost-unavoidable part of being human. Reading about these others, imagining being them, is often what helps us build out our own values and priorities, shapes our own dreams and hopes.
So keep on wishin’, Jeff Lynne, and I’ll saddle up next to you, wishin’ I could write a song so amazing about someone wishin’ they could be something they weren’t.
