The Mise-En-Scène of a Decade: Visualizing the 70S Adam Charles Hart

Home , Chris Adams (character), Futureworld, Mosaic (murder mystery), The Bicameral Mind, Westworld

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CONTRIBUTORS ANDREW PENDAKIS Publication details, including open access policy NATHAN HOLMES

ISSUE 9-1 COLIN WILLIAMSON and instructions for contributors: K. R. CORNETT

FRASER MCCALLUM http://imaginations.glendon.yorku.ca THE MISE-EN-SCÈNE OF A DECADE: VISUALIZING THE 70S ADAM CHARLES HART

KAITLIN POMERANTZ

SEB ROBERTS The Mise-en-scène of a Decade: Visualizing the 70s October 29, 2018

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THE MISE-EN-SCÈNE OF A DECADE: VISUALIZING THE 70S

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To cite this article: Williamson, Colin. “‘An Escape into Reality’: Computers, Special Effects, and the Haunting Optics of Westworld (1973).” Imaginations, vol. 9, no. 1, 2018: Web (date accessed), pp. 19-39. DOI 10.17742/ IMAGE.p70s.9.1.3. To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.p70s.9.1.3

The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. “AN ESCAPE INTO REALITY”: COMPUTERS, SPECIAL EFFECTS, AND THE HAUNTING OPTICS OF WESTWORLD (1973)

COLIN WILLIAMSON

Abstract | As one of the earliest experiments with integrating Résumé | Le film de science fiction de Michael Crichton, computer-generated special effects into celluloid filmmak- Westworld, (1973), l’une des premières expériences d’intégra- ing, Michael Crichton’s science fiction film Westworld (1973) tion d’effets spéciaux créés sur ordinateur dans l’industrie imagined the transition into a digital future with a familiar cinématographique, imagine la transition dans un futur dig- apocalyptic narrative about disobedient machines and vir- ital au sein d’un récit apocalyptique sur la désobéissance des tual realities. In this essay I move away from “escapist” and machines et les réalités virtuelles. Dans cet essai, je m’éloigne “futurist” readings of the sci-fi genre and explore how West- de la lecture divertissante et futuriste de la science fiction world was “an escape into reality,” to borrow Isaac Asimov’s pour explorer comment Westworld a constitué une “évasion phrase, that immersed audiences in the computerization of dans la réalité”, pour reprendre les mots d’Isaac Asimov, qui life, visuality, and the cinema in 1970s America. My focus plonge le spectateur dans une vie informatisée, la visualité will be on mapping the film’s use of computer simulation as et le cinéma de l’Amérique des années 70. Ma recherche s’ef- part of a constellation that includes everything from moder- forcera de documenter dans le film l’emploi de la simulation nity in fin-de-siècle amusement parks and early cinema to par ordinateur comme une partie de la constellation de tech- discourses on postmodernism (Baudrillard) and dehuman- niques utilisées depuis la modernité des parcs d’amusement ization (Sontag). I will also consider how the recent HBO fin-de-siècle et des débuts du cinéma jusqu’au discours sur le series Westworld (2016) reimagined Crichton’s film as a way postmodernisme (Baudrillard) et la déshumanisation (Son- of visualizing and historicizing questions about the virtual in tag). Je vais également examiner comment la récente série our digital moment. télévisée Westworld (2016) sur HBO a réimaginé le film de Crichton comme une manière de visualiser et d’historiciser les questions portant sur le virtuel dans notre époque digitale. AN ESCAPE INTO REALITY

Brood of hell, you’re not a mortal! by setting the robot on fire (fig. 1). Reflecting Shall the entire house go under? critically on the film in 1975, Mead and Apple- Over threshold over portal baum argue that the burning android conjures Streams of water rush and thunder. “the image of some ‘madman’ igniting himself in Broom accurst and mean, front of impassive onlookers” (12-13). The refer- Who will have his will, ence is most likely to Malcolm Browne’s photo- Stick that you have been, graph of the Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc’s Once again stand still! self-immolation in Saigon on June 11, 1963. The resemblance is striking and pointedly unexpect- -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ed, not least because one image depicts a spec- “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1797) tacular destruction of a fictional machine in a Hollywood film and the other is a record of a n a provocative review of Westworld (1973), human being’s profound protest of the govern- Michael Crichton’s science-fiction film ment in South Vietnam. By linking the two im- about a futuristic, computerized theme park ages together Mead and Applebaum demand Icalled Delos, Gerald Mead and Sam Applebaum that Westworld be seen, especially by Ameri- of Jump Cut link the film to the visual culture can audiences, not as an escape into an imagi- of the Vietnam War. At the end of Westworld nary futuristic world but as a kind of futuristic one of the main characters destroys a homicid- reimagining of the present, what Isaac Asimov al android gunslinger (played by Yul Brynner) called “an escape into reality” (332).

Figure 1. Westworld: the burning android.

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It is easy to see Westworld as a reflection of a The loss of control inWestworld is a familiar world that was for many in the 1970s alarm- one. Advertisements for the film emphasized ingly out of control. The film focuses on two the volatile relationship between humans and friends, Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John machines by featuring the now commonplace (James Brolin), who visit Delos to revel in the figure of the computer “glitch.” Posters with theme park’s fantastic worlds populated by the tagline “Where nothing can possibly go exceptionally convincing hu- manoid robots. Early on Peter and John make their way to the part of the park known as West- world to immerse themselves in a simulation of the Wild West in the late 19th century, a period in American history with strong parallels to the violence, imperialism, and racism of the Vietnam era. Upon their arrival, a voice on a loudspeaker reassures the visitors that they are “free to indulge their every whim” because “nothing can go wrong.” Every- thing, obviously, does go wrong. Along with the computers that control the park, the robots begin to malfunction, supposed- ly through the spread of a virus, or what one of the park’s experts skeptically calls a “disease of machinery.” The initial promise of freedom quickly gives way to a total loss of control over computerized technologies: the robots rebel, the simulations become real, and visitors start dy- ing. Ultimately, John is shot and killed by the android gunslinger, and a chain of violence ensues that climaxes at the end of the film when Peter burns the robot “alive” and order, it seems, is re- stored to the park. Figure 2. Theatrical release poster for Westworld (1973). Source: The Official Site of Michael Crichton.

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worng” contain a minor misspelling that pres- and philosophical implications of these chang- ages disaster (fig. 2); when the line is spoken es by imagining possible futures and endings in voiceover in a trailer for the film, the audio for a society in transition. Toffler famous- is plagued by a similar glitch: “Where noth- ly characterized the transition as a “super-in- ing can possibly go wrong … go wrong … go dustrial revolution” that threatened to outpace wrong.” The fatal computer malfunction that society’s ability to adapt to changes that many undoes the safety of the amusement park re- held to be the stuff of science fiction rather calls “HAL” in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space than realities of contemporary life. Rehearsing Odyssey (1968) and the long history of what earlier criticisms by Georg Simmel and Walter Scott Bukatman calls “disobedient machines,” Benjamin about the shocks of modernity at the from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s magic end of the 19th century, Toffler remarked: brooms in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1797) and the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein In the coming decades, advances in these (1818) to the rebellious robotic creations in Me- fields [of science and technology] will tropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Blade Runner (Rid- fire off like a series of rockets carrying us ley Scott, 1982), and Ex Machina (Alex Garland, out of the past, plunging us deeper into 2015), to name a few. As part of this history of the new society. Nor will this new society (dis)obedience, Crichton’s film grapples with quickly settle into a steady state. It, too, enduring questions that have long been staples will quiver and crack and roar as it suffers of the science-fiction genre: Will the technol- jolt after jolt of high-energy change. It of- ogies we create improve humanity? Will they fers no return to the familiar past. It of- replace us or destroy us? Will they make us less fers only the highly combustible mixture human? How much control do we really have of transience and novelty. (217) over them? It is precisely this imagined future of a present While Westworld’s narrative taps into well- world on the verge of going up in flames that worn anxieties about technology, the film still haunts Westworld and is reflected, I argue, in has much to teach us, particularly about how the figure of the burning android. Americans were navigating the rapidly changing techno-scientific landscape of their histor- In what follows I explore how these concerns ical moment. Shadowing Crichton’s futuristic about “future shock” in the early 1970s get nego- theme park were widespread efforts to com- tiated in Westworld’s treatment and use of com- prehend and cope with astonishing develop- puters. In 1973, computer technologies were ments in everything from space exploration just beginning to radically transform Ameri- and Cold War science to mass communication, can life and, over the decade, would “create a molecular biology, and computers. The 1970s totally new human environment,” to borrow were ushered in by a wave of cultural criti- Marshall McLuhan’s words (viii). At stake in cism—for example, Nigel Calder’s Technopo- this transformation was the stability of not only lis (1969), William Braden’s The Age of Aquar- the architecture of society but also convictions ius (1970), Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Between Two about foundational categories such as “reality” Ages (1970), and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and “humanity,” which were being challenged (1970)—that grappled with the social, political, by computers’ capacities for simulation. It is

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significant, from this perspective, that Crich- imaginary—but also as a meta-text about the ton’s film was among the earliest experiments changing nature of the science and technology in combining computerized special effects with that went into making the film itself. celluloid filmmaking in Hollywood. For Bryn- ner’s character, Crichton collaborated with ex- Futuristic Visions of a Digital Present perimental computer animator John Whitney, Jr. to simulate the villainous gunslinger’s robot- Computers are mostly used ic point-of-view, which was achieved by using against people instead of for computers to transform celluloid footage into people; used to control peo- highly pixelated images.1 On the surface, the ple instead of to free them. resulting electronic machine vision—essen- tially Westworld as “seen” by a computer—is a -People’s Computer Company (1972) small but marvelous special effects innovation. Considering the climate in which the innova- mong the special effects employed in tion occurred, however, I argue that the use of Westworld is a curious spectacle of see- digital special effects, to borrow Kristen Whis- ing through a robot’s eyes. After the sel’s term, “emblematized” the emergence of a Aandroid gunslinger shoots John dead, it sets new way of seeing (and seeing with) comput- out in relentless pursuit of Peter, whose per- ers in 1973. spective on the chase is periodically intercut with shots of the gunslinger’s point-of-view. To this end, I situate Westworld’s “robot POV” The robot POV is signaled by the appearance of in a broader discourse of uncertainty that took highly rasterized footage that consists of pixels shape around the spread of computerization in arranged in an array of 3,600 rectangles. The early-1970s America and that helps us, look- array is introduced in the first shot of the gun- ing back on that decade, see how the film res- slinger’s view of Peter desperately fleeing on onated and resonates in complex ways. West- a horse from the scene of his friend’s murder world’s use of special effects, and the narrative when he realizes that the robot is out for blood in which it embeds them, make the film part (fig. 3). The effect is an early version of a -com of a rich constellation that includes everything puterized film aesthetic and a novel attempt to from the modernity of fin-de-siècle amuse- visualize the optics of an electronic machine, ment parks and early cinema to ideas about a kind of topos in the history of what Alex- postmodernism and the posthuman that con- ander Galloway calls “computerized, cyber- verge around computers in the late-20th centu- netic, machinic vision”—variations of which ry and that continue to unfold. Furthermore, would later appear in science-fiction films such that Crichton’s film was recently reimagined in as RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987), Preda- our digital moment as an HBO television se- tor (John McTiernan, 1987), and Terminator 2 ries suggests that the original was both timely (James Cameron, 1991) (Galloway 53).2 and prescient. Looking closely at this constellation, I read Westworld not only as an allegory From the audience’s perspective, the amount of for a world in crisis—for example, as a haunt- abstraction in the image makes Westworld’s ro- ed inscription of the visuality of the Vietnam bot POV difficult to read. The mosaic of tiny War or a reflection of an apocalyptic Cold War rectangles used in the special effect registers

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most part the robot POV is a cinematic attraction, an interesting technological artifact.

The use of special effects to imagine how a computer sees was the result of a rich convergence of art and science. The robot POV was created by experimental filmmaker and computer animator John Whitney, Jr., who was given the task of simulating how the gunslinger’s electronic eyes broke the world down into small animated rectangles. The desired effect was limited by conventional special-effects technologies at the Figure 3. The rasterized robot POV. time and the fact that the film industry had not yet adopted the digital methods made available only general impressions of shape, colour, and by computers. Whitney found inspiration and movement. The gunslinger’s lack of visual acu- a solution in the scientific visualizations made ity is exploited for dramatic effect at sever- by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory during al points during the chase when Peter briefly the Mariner program (1962-1973). In particu- avoids detection by becoming motionless and lar, the program successfully used a spacecraft blending with the other information in the to transmit close-up images of Mars in binary gunslinger’s visual field. At one point, for ex- code, which was converted by computers back ample, Peter masquerades as a broken android on Earth into photographs that consisted of and lies down on a table in a lab where ma- coded shades of black and white compiled into chines from the park are brought for repairs rasterized images (fig. 5). Whitney collaborat- (fig. 4). Peter is ultimately discovered when he ed with computer scientists to develop a sim- moves slightly and gives himself away.3 How- ilar technique whereby a computer scanned ever, this small narrative function aside, for the celluloid footage and converted each frame of film into a series of values that could be manip- ulated at will for aesthetic purposes. Whitney explains:

Once the computer has “read” the image and converted it to a series of num- bers, there is tremendous flexibility in what the computer can then do with this numerical information. The image can be reconstituted with different contrasts, different resolutions, different colors. We can enlarge, stretch, squeeze, twist, rotate it, position it in space in any way. In fact, Figure 4. The gunslinger’s view of the tables in the lab the only limitations are imposed by the where Peter is hiding.

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creative talents of the person operating Kennedy Space Center, and the other was Dis- the machine. (1478) neyland (“Behind the Scenes” 1397). The surveillance system in Westworld is used to con- In other words, the computer transformed the trol the androids’ behavior in scenarios that are celluloid image into a kind of “plasmatic” dig- designed to fulfill each guest’s desires, such as ital painting.4 winning a gunfight without the stakes or con- sequences of committing an act of violence

Figure 5. Bottom half of Mariner 4 photograph of craters on Mars, 1965. Source: NASA Image ID number: Mariner 4, frame 09D. against a real human being. Indeed, the entire premise of Westworld is that computers make it Whitney’s celebration of the “limitless” artis- possible for each guest “to indulge their every tic control afforded by computers echoes the whim” without limits. very utopian fantasy about the relationship between humans and machines that animates This premise was already in the popular imag- Westworld. Within the film, the amusement ination by 1973. Three years earlier inFuture park’s simulations of the Wild West and two Shock, Toffler speculated on the impending re- other “worlds”—Roman World and Medieval alization of World—are made possible by an intricate net- work of computer technologies. The androids simulated environments that offer the cus- are linked to a command centre where techni- tomer a taste of adventure, danger, sexu- cians observe all of the activities in the park on al titillation or other pleasure without computer screens and video monitors (fig. 6). risk to his real life or reputation. Thus The resemblance to NASA’s mission-control computer experts, roboteers, designers, room is unmistakable (fig. 7). Crichton claims historians, and museum specialists will that one of the inspirations for the film was the join to create experiential enclaves that

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Figure 6. The computer control room in Westworld.

Figure 7. View of Mission Control during lunar surface Apollo 11 extravehicular activity, 1969. Source: NASA Image ID number: S69-39593.

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reproduce, as skillfully as sophisticated visitors. The computerized command centre technology will permit, the splendor of functions as a kind of omniscient dream ma- ancient Rome, the pomp of Queen Eliza- chine where engineers and technicians take on beth’s court, the “sexoticism” of an eigh- the role of all-powerful artists who, like Whit- teenth-century Japanese geisha house, ney, have complete creative control over every and the like. Customers entering these detail of the park’s mise-en-scène. The artists pleasure domes will leave their everyday behind the scenes use computers to simulate clothes (and cares) behind, don costumes, realistic worlds; puppeteer the androids that and run through a planned sequence of make those simulations look and feel so real; activities intended to provide them with surveil and manipulate; fulfill desires; and bend a first-hand taste of what the original—i.e., reality itself to the will of those in charge. There unsimulated—reality must have felt like. is no limit, it would seem, to what humans can They will be invited, in effect, to live in the do with the computers they created. That is, of past or perhaps even the future. (228) course, until the puppets cut their strings.

Toffler saw such simulated environments tak- The robot rebellion that throws Delos into cha- ing shape in the ways that artists were begin- os is obvious and inevitable, partly because it ning to experiment with the uses of electron- was foregrounded in Westworld’s marketing ic media to create immersive and interactive campaign, but also because the trope is perva- virtual-reality experiences that would con- sive in science fiction and animation. Before the tinue through the decade. Bracketing the re- gunslinger shoots and kills John, there is grow- lease of Westworld, for example, are comput- ing concern among the park’s experts that the er artist Myron Krueger’s pioneering “Psychic machines are malfunctioning—a robotic snake Space” (1971) and “Videoplace” (1975), inter- bites John in the desert and a knight stabs a active (audio)visual installations that allowed guest—but the aberrant behavior is considered users to control computerized environments to be a glitch, like a computer virus. When the by moving through “responsive” spaces outfit- gunslinger misbehaves, it is clear that the glitch ted with state-of-the art sensors, cameras, and is actually a sign of life and that the machines projectors.5 are not malfunctioning but rather asserting their autonomy from the artist-engineers who The way that Westworld represents the possibil- created and controlled them. Thus, when we ities of computerized simulations is not only an see through the gunslinger’s electronic eyes, we invocation of these kinds of real and imagined are asked to see the android as more than a ma- experiments, but it also calls to mind the dis- chine; this is a vision that has a life of its own. course of power in the history of animation. As We literally see with the computer as it be- Donald Crafton explains, early animated films comes uncontrollable. That this way of seeing frequently displayed hands in the act of ani- the android as a transgressive figure occurred mating drawings—what he calls the “hand of at a time in American history when computers the artist” motif—to reflect how animators ex- were just beginning to set radical transforma- ercise a “god-like” control over their cinemat- tions in motion makes the trope of the disobe- ic creations (415). In Westworld, experts wield dient machine in Westworld deeply historical. computers like gods to animate Delos for park

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It is not coincidental that the spectacle of the the Washington Post reported similarly: “To- robot POV is introduced at the same moment day’s monsters seem to be flashing dials, end- that the utopian fantasy of Delos collapses. less banks of computers whirring silently be- When Whitney turned to computers to craft hind walls of gleaming glass” (Kriegsman C1). Westworld’s special effects, the United States The narrative structure ofWestworld —from was in the midst of what Carroll Pursell refers freedom to disaster—reads like a roadmap to as a “crisis of confidence” about technology of competing discourses on computers and (134). The crisis was broadly a shift away from the broader crisis of confidence taking shape postwar optimism toward “anti-technology around technology in postwar America. Yet views” (172). The views were largely motivated the artists behind Westworld’s digital aesthet- by Cold War uncertainties about uncontrolla- ic also wielded computers to produce wonders, ble technologies and growing fears of experts, and in this respect the film is as much a futuris- corporations, and the military-industrial com- tic vision of computers in the early 1970s as it is plex in light of the technological realities and an experiment in testing their creative powers. violence in Vietnam. This shift in perception extended as prominently to the machinery of Westworld and/as the Cinema war as it did to computers. In the years between 1971-1973, computer science made unprece- The imagery of disaster in science dented advances in cybernetics research, the fiction films is above all the -em invention of the internet, and the development blem of an inadequate response. of microprocessors that gradually made computers available to the public. Views of these -Susan Sontag, “The Imagi- innovations were not entirely utopian. Com- nation of Disaster” (1965) bined with McLuhan’s radical critical theories of the electronic-information age and the fact n addition to coinciding with key inno- that computers were largely the domain of cor- vations in the history of computers, West- porations and government entities rather than world appears at a point in the history of of “the people,” the computer, Pursell explains, Ispecial effects when Hollywood was just begin- developed a “reputation … as an impersonal— ning to explore the aesthetics of computer-gen- even antipersonal—force in society” (185). erated imagery (CGI). In the 1960s, computer graphics related to techniques and technolo- It is significant that computers were concur- gies of the moving image circulated mostly in rently taken up by science-fiction films and the realm of experimental animation. Main- imagined as disobedient machines. In 1974, stream innovations in what we now call digital Vincent Canby reflected in theNew York Times special effects did not rise to prominence un- on a trend rooted in 2001 and taking shape with til the late 1970s and early 1980s with the use films such asWestworld and Richard Heffron’s of computer technologies in films such as Star then-anticipated sequel, Futureworld (1976): Wars (1977) and Tron (1982).6 Westworld thus “The computers of today are the Frankenstein made its home in an important transitional pe- monsters of yesterday’s gothic fiction. We are riod in American film history that saw a new tampering with the Unknown” (8). Quoting cinematic optics emerge from the intersection Michael Webb of the American Film Institute, of older filmmaking practices—namely those

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related to the photorealist tradition—and the Seven (1960). Brynner apparently wears the digital aesthetics made possible by computers. same costume in both films (fig. 8).

From this perspective, Westworld is quite rich By weaving a narrative out of androids and as an allegory for the cinema. In a 1973 inter- amusement parks, Crichton (intentionally view with American Cinematographer, Crich- or not) taps into two of the cinema’s longest ton acknowledged that the premise of the standing affinities. With regard to the gun- film—visitors living out fantasies in a futur- slinger, it is important that the cinematic ap- istic amusement park—was deeply cinemat- paratus was linked from the very beginning, ic: “In some ways,” he explained, “it’s a mov- technically and theoretically, to the automaton. ie about people acting out movie fantasies … As Alan Cholodenko argues, the link is one of wondering what it would be like to be an actor the most enduring throughout film history be- in an old movie” (“Behind the Scenes” 1397). As cause the automaton’s ability to blur the line

Crichton would have it, when Peter and John Figure 8. Left: Brynner as the android gunslinger in Westworld. Right: Brynner as Chris Adams in The visit Westworld they are not simply experienc- Magnificent Seven. ing a simulation of the Wild West, but stepping into the cinematic Western. Delos is the “old” between human and machine speaks to the cinema remade as a “new” immersive virtu- very nature of the cinema: they are both “vital al-reality system, an updated version of Bust- machines” capable of producing uncanny illu- er Keaton’s dream in Sherlock Jr. (1924) of pro- sions of life and motion. In Westworld, for ex- jecting himself into the movies. The reflexivity ample, the robots are only recognizable as such in Westworld touches on everything from the by their “shimmering” eyes. We have seen how resemblance between the computerized com- the gunslinger’s disobedience makes the an- mand centre and the behind-the-scenes la- droid within the film a vital machine, a com- bour on a movie set to the fact that the android puter that appears to have a life of its own. The gunslinger was played by Yul Brynner, who question of vitality is complicated by the fact appeared notably as the gunslinger Chris Ad- that, for audiences of Westworld, the android ams in John Sturges’s Western The Magnificent is played by a living human being. Following

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Cholodenko, the gunslinger can also be seen as Pegasus … they felt themselves passing an embodiment of the cinema, for the cinema into a special realm of exciting possibility, is an automaton.7 a distinctive milieu that encouraged types of behavior and social interaction that in Consider that the special effect Whitney cre- other contexts would have been viewed ated to simulate the android’s vision was made askance. (41) possible by a computer: that is, the computerized robot’s vision was in fact computer gener- The parallels with Crichton’s amusement park ated. A curious doubling is at work in Whit- are revealing. Delos is pitched in the film as ney’s footage whereby the “real” computer— “the vacation of the future,” where reality is re- Whitney’s—is folded into the “fictional” one, made into a fantasy and visitors are “free to in- implicating both machines in the narratives dulge their every whim” by immersing them- of freedom and disaster that play out in the selves in a simulated world without limits. The film. There is a nice resonance, for example, film also opens with a scene that closely resem- between the gunslinger who digitally “reads” bles Kasson’s description of visitors arriving at the landscape within the film and the comput- Coney Island. When we are introduced to Peter er that “reads” the celluloid image to produce and John, they are travelling by hovercraft to the special effect for the gunslinger’s POV. The Delos. After they disembark from this mech- doubling act is particularly significant in light anized Pegasus, they take on new identities as of the fact that the robot POV is a moving im- cowboys in Westworld, where they are free to age in transition. Whitney’s special-effects se- indulge in violence without consequence be- quence was striking in 1973 because it resem- cause reality in Delos is a game. The hovercraft bled early arcade video-game aesthetics more sequence even includes a view from the cockpit than anything “cinematic” at the time. that simulates one of the earliest convergences of motion pictures and technologies of virtu- The representation of Delos is doing simi- al travel: the Hale’s Tours ride simulators that lar reflexive work. Like automata, amusement populated fin-de-siècle amusement parks and parks share a history with the cinema that can World Fairs.8 be traced to the emergence of motion pictures. Beginning in the 1890s, amusement parks and It is remarkable that Westworld should reani- the cinema co-evolved as emblems of moderni- mate these affinities amidst a “crisis of confi- ty. They were both sites where the novel shocks, dence” about technology. In Electric Dream- dangers, and bewildering experiences of mod- land, Lauren Rabinovitz argues convincingly ern life were transformed and put on display as that at the end of the 19th century “amusement safe, entertaining, and even liberating specta- parks and movies taught Americans to revel in cles. Coney Island, for example, was designed a modern sensibility that was about adapting as a virtual city apart—like the Emerald City in to new technologies” (2). That is, by experienc- Oz—where, John Kasson explains: ing the realities of modern life virtually and safely—e.g., as a mechanical ride or a motion [V]isitors were temporarily freed from nor- picture—people could better adjust to radi- mative demands. As they disembarked cally new technologies and environments that from ferryboats with fanciful names like were, in reality, overwhelming, frightening,

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and potentially disastrous. Angela Ndalian- Symbolically, then, we might say that the ro- is has argued similarly that, because special bot POV is what Vivian Sobchack calls a “tran- effects tend to display broader technological sitional object,” hovering somewhere between changes during periods of intense innovation, the past and the future, utopia and disaster, they “have a great deal to do with acclimatizing the familiar and the unfamiliar. Writing about audiences to different forms of visual engage- computer animation in WALL-E (Andrew ment” (259). By embedding its special effects in Stanton, 2008), Sobchack proposes that the a narrative about automata and an amusement titular character, a mechanical trash compac- park modeled on fantasies about computers tor with a microchip core, “serves [in our con- and the cinema, Westworld reads like an edu- temporary moment] as a bridge to the future cation in the rapidly changing technological present of technological development” (387). landscape of its historical moment. For Sobchack, WALL-E’s embodiment of the old and the new, the mechanical and the elec- The idea thatWestworld is “about adapting to tronic, allegorizes and mediates the transition new technologies” is useful for making sense of in the cinema from a celluloid past to a digital the film’s impulse toward reassurance. Almost future. I suggest we read Whitney’s special-ef- as soon as Westworld imagines computers re- fect artifact in Westworld similarly as a kind of belling and threatening humanity it imagines “bridge” that, although it is ultimately set on the machines’ spectacular destruction: the an- fire, mediates an aesthetic and cultural transi- droid gunslinger is ultimately burnt to ashes. tion shaped by the cinema’s intersection with The significance of this narrative of (un)con- early computer animation techniques. (The trollability is deepened in light of the fact that parallel that Ingmar Bergman draws in Persona computers in the 1970s were revolutionizing [1966] between the footage of a self-immola- the relationship between humanity and tech- tion that appears on a television screen and the nology. Cybernetics and philosophy were rais- subsequent melting of the celluloid filmstrip is ing profound questions about what it means to uncannily resonant here.)9 be human, to be conscious, and to be alive. As N. Katherine Hayles has shown, early comput- As if haunted by the growing power of com- ers contributed to conceptualizing “humans as puters to pull reality and humanity apart at the information-processing entities who are essen- seams, the spectacle of the gunslinger’s “death” tially similar to intelligent machines” (7, orig- thus seems to invite the audience to bear wit- inal emphasis). In this analogy, the human ness to humanity asserting its definitive con- mind was reimagined as a thing that was not trol over an increasingly computerized world. bound to the human body, a “posthuman” idea A central concern about the ways that comput- that gets visualized in Westworld by the robot ers were revolutionizing life in the early 1970s POV: we transfer our subjectivity to a com- was the loosening of what Toffler called “man’s puter. Although more latent in 1973, comput- grasp on reality” (231). The concern was fueled ers similarly upended the nature of the cinema by a sense that computer technologies were be- when the digital image began to erode the cel- ginning to erode the distinction both between luloid image’s indexical bond to reality, which reality and illusion in their capacities for sim- set in motion a crisis of visuality that continues ulation, and between human and machine in to unfold today. their implications for philosophy and biology,

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including the possibility that “life” and “hu- course of scientific and technological innova- man” would have to be re-imagined if comput- tion is imperative and requires action. ers were successfully combined with living or- ganic material. The erosion was compounded It is precisely what Westworld does not ask au- by the fact that computers were opening the diences to see or do that motived Mead and human experience up to infinite new possi- Applebaum to invoke “the image of some ‘mad- bilities at a rate that threatened to exceed peo- man’ igniting himself in front of impassive on- ple’s ability to anticipate, let alone control, the lookers” with which I began this article. Draw- short- and long-term effects of the changes taking a parallel to the Western genre’s tendency ing place: “The problem,” in Toffler’s view, “is to mythologize and glorify American imperi- whether [humans] can survive freedom” (187). alism, they criticized Westworld for protecting Considering this, we might say that, if Delos the American psyche from the dark social and is a computerized “electric dreamland,” a vir- political realities of the early 1970s. While I am tual space where the freedoms made possible primarily concerned with the representation of by computers are unleashed, the unravelling technology and disaster in Westworld, their in- of that dreamland is presented as a nightmare dictment is worth quoting at length for what from which American audiences can wake up. it reveals about the reach of the film’s fantasy In delivering this lesson Westworld positions of control: the cinema as a safe space for playing with and alleviating anxieties about frightening techno- It is not [the guests’] conscious aware- logical changes that were already underway in ness that these are robots, non-human American culture. machines, that determines their reac- tions, but rather their feeling and convic- Writing in the 1960s, Susan Sontag called the tion that these “others” are some kind of trend of “imagining disaster” this way in sci- less-than-human humans, real, living ob- ence fiction an “inadequate response” to real- jectifications of their fantasies. So what we ity because it does not oblige audiences to ad- have in fact are the beginnings of a rath- dress the very real “terrors” that get fictional- er thinly disguised racial perspective, an ized and resolved in the cinema. Westworld’s exploitation justified by an explanation— reassurances no doubt make the film complicit the “others” are less than human—and by in preserving an illusion of safety in the face an economic right—the “guests” pay … . of radical changes that radiate outward from Nor does it seem coincidental that for the film and computers to the fate of humanity it- leader of the robot revolt Crichton should self. The act of covering over can be seen as an cast the former king of Thailand, the lead- attempt to make the uncertainties of modern er of the mad Huns, Mexican radical, in- life bearable, to imagine safety in the ongoing scrutable hired killer, the suggestively nightmares of the Cold War, for example, when Mongol-featured Yul Brynner. Along with humans were grappling with the possibility of infrared sensing devices, weapons that kill their own self-annihilation, which, as Sontag only the “enemy,” willing, thankful prosti- points out, “could come at any time, virtual- tutes, etc., Westworld simply provides the ly without warning” (224). What gets left out, triumphant, guiltless hero that Indochina however, is a clear sense that changing the didn’t. (12-13)

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Much more can and should be said about West- through the cinema to experiment safely with world as a kind of racialized war game—Mead the realities of its unsafe historical moment and Applebaum offer a fairly thorough discus- while covering over a whole range of social and sion of this. Here it is notable that the film’s political issues. Looking back on the film from “vacation of the future” premise conjures a re- our contemporary moment, the future present lated discourse of power in histories of travel that Crichton imagined in 1973 feels very close in film and related media. Delos’s promise of to home. Given that our networked, media-sat- safety and freedom to visitors who embark on urated, and increasingly virtual reality resem- futuristic journeys in the park is reminiscent of bles Delos more than it ever has before, we the kind of mastery promised by amusement might ask: What kind of work can Westworld parks, World Fairs, and the travelogue genre in do for us now? the cinema. These other forms of virtual travel are historically wedded—particularly in the The Memory of Reality early-20th century—to what Jennifer Peterson calls a “visual imperialism,” a mode of repre- Don’t give yourselves to these un- sentation filtered through “racial perspectives” natural men—machine men with of colonialism and tourism that rendered for- machine minds and machine eign and exotic places safe and consumable for hearts! You are not machines! Western audiences (8) (see also Ruoff, Virtual Voyages). -Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator (1940) This is all to say thatWestworld was engaged in a similar kind of cultural work aimed at ren- n 2016, HBO renewed Crichton’s film as a dering the “monstrous” and “villainous” com- 10-part television series that deviates sig- puter safe at a time when the effects of that nificantly from the path Westworld imag- technology were only beginning to come into Iined in 1973. The new version follows the tra- focus. This dimension of the film betrays the jectory of the original, but it unfolds largely simplicity of its narrative of reassurance, not from the perspective of the androids, name- to mention the simplicity of its special effects. ly a rancher’s daughter named Dolores Aber- Crichton offers the computer up as a highly se- nathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maeve Mil- ductive machine—like the cinema—with the lay (Thandie Newton), a madam in a brothel potential to satisfy an enduring human desire in Westworld. Whereas the gunslinger’s POV to exceed the limitations of reality and the hu- was an important special effects attraction in man experience. The fantasy is a messy one in Crichton’s film, the shift to the android per- which the computer emerges as neither utopi- spective in the HBO series is primarily a nar- an nor dystopian; it is an object of debate and a rative device. Dolores and Maeve are unaware tool Crichton uses to grapple with the difficulty of their machine natures, but as they play out of comprehending what a digital future might their programmed roles over and over for the look like, and what might become of humani- park’s guests, they slowly become haunted by ty if it continues to push technological innova- memories that cause them to question what tion in the direction of that future. The fanta- they consider to be their humanity. Their ques- sy is also not simply escapist. Westworld works tioning is profound—What does it mean for a

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machine to feel uncertain about its nature? Or existential crises unfold it becomes more and for humans to imagine a machine’s uncertain- more difficult for them and for us to determine ty for that matter? The questioning is also the if their questioning is a sign of life or the result source of the androids’ disobedience: Dolores of their programming; if the memories that embarks on a quest to unravel the mystery of haunt them are real or fake; and if what we are her place in Delos, and Maeve arranges her witnessing is occurring in an android’s dream own escape from the park by modifying her or in “reality.” The narrative also employs an in- programming. Ultimately, it is revealed that creasingly ambiguous flashback structure and one of the park’s founders, Robert Ford (An- “reboots” so often that even determining pre- thony Hopkins), spent decades secretly design- cisely where, when, and if events occurred being the androids’ search for answers that would comes a challenge. The web of uncertainty is lead to their rebellion and freedom. Unlike the one from which there is apparently no escape original Westworld, however, there is no fi- for us. ery android death; in 2016 the machines win and, as if taking up Chaplin’s call, declare their Yet why weave the web? If Peter’s destruction of humanity. the gunslinger in 1973 is more or less comfort- ing, what is the successful robot rebellion in While a lengthy analysis of the series is beyond 2016 doing? The difference no doubt makes the the scope of this article, the manner in which new Westworld more distinctly postmodern the 2016 version renews the allegorical dimen- than its predecessor. Take, for example, Jean sions of the original is worth mentioning, even Baudrillard’s quite fitting assessment of the if only to open up a dialogue about what the spectre that haunts both Westworlds: Disney- connection reveals about our enduring fasci- land. Writing in 1981 in the light (or shadow) of nation with that decade and how we are deal- the impact of electronic media on conceptions ing with the “future shock” of our contempo- of reality, Baudrillard claims, “Disneyland is rary moment. Most notable here is the fact that presented as imaginary in order to make us be- the lack of reassurance in HBO’s Westworld is lieve that the rest is real” (12). In other words, pervasive and daunting. Whereas Brynner’s humans create “simulations,” such as amuse- gunslinger is cold and mechanical, these new ment parks, androids, and the cinema, to an- androids are humanized and sympathetic, the swer the question of what is “real”—i.e., reality tragic victims and playthings of humans who is real because Disneyland is fake. Baudrillard commit acts of murder and sexual violence suggests that the faith we place in this distinc- almost mechanically. Seeing humans mecha- tion covers over the fact that the distinction is nized and machines humanized compels us to imaginary, that there is no “real” and “simula- question our humanity, especially when by the tion” but only the “hyperreal” (12-13). Where- end we might find ourselves rooting, against as Crichton questions but ultimately preserves our nature, for our own demise. To compound this faith—Peter successfully defends reality the inversion, some characters that we are ini- against the simulation and secures the distinc- tially led to believe are human—such as the tion between both categories—the HBO series lead programmer Bernard (Jeffrey Wright)— seems to be exploring what it would be like are later revealed to be androids, which makes to embrace hyperreality, perhaps as a way of everyone in Delos suspect. As the machines’

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working through the unique challenges of our that define how we experience, understand, historical moment. and “design” our environment, as Nolan puts it. Seeing from the perspective of the androids In an interview about Westworld (2016), the now is not like imagining seeing through the show’s creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy eyes of an unfamiliar machine—as the com- suggest that their version grapples with the puterized robot POV allowed audiences to do fact that, in the 21st century, humans are living in 1973—but like encountering something like very real lives in the virtual realities made pos- our android selves. It is also revealing that the sible by videogames and the internet. Nolan perspective audiences are asked to take now is explains: shifted from the predominantly male cast in 1973 to female leads in 2016, and that many of As our world becomes more cloistered the central characters in the TV series are peo- and the experiences we choose for our- ple of colour, especially given the prominent selves, especially in the West, we’re able lack of diversity in the original film. The new to design not just our environment but Westworld seems to grapple more openly (al- also our intellectual environment to suit though problematically) than the original with our preferences and predilections. We the politics of race and gender that are current- are, you know, sort of designing this odd ly playing out, sometimes violently, in the me- prophylactic universe in which we can—we dia, in the cinema, and in society in the United can do whatever we want (qtd. in Gross). States.10

On one level, the idea is that computerized It thus cannot be coincidental that Westworld technologies have finally transformed our real- has reappeared at a time when humanity is once ity into the Delos that Crichton imagined. On again being torn apart at the seams by forces another, we have so thoroughly diffused the that are increasingly incomprehensible. Just as real into the electronic phantasmagorias we Mead and Applebaum saw their violent histor- create that “reality” exists for us in the digital ical moment reflected and refracted in the sub- age only as a flickering memory. TheWestworld lime image of the burning android, we might be that Nolan and Joy imagined is thus a fraught haunted by the uncomfortable and quite devas- escape into the plural realities in which we find tating familiarity of the new Westworld. Partic- (or lose) ourselves every time we turn on our ularly in the United States, the techno-scientif- TVs, boot up our computers, or pick up our ic realities of surveillance, cyberwarfare, social smartphones. media, and governance are wreaking havoc in old and new ways on everything from politics, By asking us quite unapologetically to bear race, gender, and class to civil liberties and the witness to the disappearance of reality as we very fabric of culture, if not humanity, itself. Is knew it, it may well be that that the dark mir- it any wonder that the first season ends with a ror the HBO series holds up to us is doing a striking scene of a diverse android army led by different kind of work than the original. The women emerging from the woods on the edge series is noticeably less about special effects of Westworld seeking violent retribution? (fig. and more about the impossibility of disentan- 9) Viewers find no solace in this place because gling humanity from the digital technologies this is not a cinema of reassurance.11 Indeed,

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perhaps that is precisely the point: to bring us closer to what Sontag might call an “adequate” Works Cited response to the terrors and uncertainties of our present realities. If nothing else, when looking Asimov, Isaac. “Escape into Reality.” The Humanist out at our Westworld, we should feel the deep vol. 17, no. 6, November-December 1957, pp. 326-332. urgency of Goethe’s question, “Shall the entire Print. house go under?” Bady, Aaron. “Westworld, Race, and the West- ern.” The New Yorker, 9 December 2016, http:// www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/ how-westworld-failed-the-western.

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press, 1994.

“Behind the Scenes of Westworld.” American Cine- matographer vol. 54, no. 11, November 1973, pp. 1394- 1397, 1420-1423. Print.

“The Bicameral Mind.” Westworld. Written by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, directed by Jonathan No- lan, HBO, 2016.

Bukatman, Scott. “Disobedient Machines.” In Be- yond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science. Ed- ited by Roald Hoffmann and Iain Boyd Whyte, Ox- ford University Press, 2011, pp. 128-148.

Canby, Vincent. “Movies Are More Sci-Fi Than Ever.” New York Times, 17 March 1974, pp. 1, 8.

Cholodenko, Alan. “Speculations on the Animatic Automaton.” The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation, edited by Alan Cholodenko, Power In- stitute Foundation for Art and Visual Culture, 2007, pp. 486-528.

Crafton, Donald. “Animation Iconography: The ‘Hand of the Artist.’” Quarterly Review of Film Stud- Figure 9. Top: Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) taking aim to assassinate Robert Ford ies, Fall 1979, pp. 409-428. (Anthony Hopkins) and initiating the android revolution. Bottom: The android army emerging from the woods to bring a violent end to humanity. Episode: “The Bicameral Mind.”

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Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein on Disney. Edited by Mead, Gerald and Sam Applebaum. “Westworld: Jay Leyda. Seagull Books, 1986. Fantasy and Exploitation.” Jump Cut, no. 7, 1975, pp. 12-13. Fielding, Raymond. “Hale’s Tours: Ultrarealism in the Pre-1910 Motion Picture.” Cinema Journal vol. Musser, Charles and Carol Nelson. High-Class Mov- 10, no. 1, Autumn 1970, pp. 34-47. ing Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920). Princeton Univer- Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic sity Press, 1991, p. 55. Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Ndalianis, Angela. “Special Effects, Morphing Mag- Gross, Terry. Interview with Jonathan Nolan and ic, and the 1990s Cinema of Attractions.” Meta-Mor- Lisa Joy. “‘Westworld’ Creators Explore the ‘Dark phing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Thrills’ of the Digital Age.” NPR, 7 November 2016. Quick-Change, edited by Vivian Sobchack, Univer- http://www.npr.org/2016/11/07/501009226/west- sity of Minnesota Press, 2000, pp. 251-271. world-creators-explore-the-dark-thrills-of-the-digital-age. Nolan, Jonathan and Lisa Joy, creators. Westworld. HBO, 2018. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Infor- Peterson, Jennifer Lynn. Education in the School matics. University of Chicago Press, 1999. of Dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film. Duke University Press, 2013. Kasson, John. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. Hill and Wang, 1978. Pursell, Carroll. Technology in Postwar America: A History. Columbia University Press, 2007. Kriegsman, Alan. “Visions of Futures Past: Future Visions.” Washington Post 13 May 1971, pp. C1, C4. Rabinovitz, Lauren. Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity. Columbia Krueger, Myron. “Responsive Environments.” University Press, 2012. AFIPS Conference Proceedings–1977 National Com- puter Conference, edited by Robert Korfhage, AFIPS Rogers, Ariel. Cinematic Appeals: The Experience of Press, 1977, pp. 423-433. New Movie Technologies. Columbia University Press, 2013. The Magnificent Seven. Directed by John Sturges. Performances by Yul Byrnner, Eli Wallach, and Steve Ruoff, Jeffrey, ed.Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Trav- McQueen. The Mirisch Company, 1960. el. Duke University Press, 2006.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. MIT Shilina-Conte, Tatiana. Black Screens, White Press, 2001. Frames: Recalculating Film History. 2016. State Uni- versity of New York at Buffalo, PhD dissertation. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Ex- tensions of Man. The New American Library, Inc., 1964.

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Sobchack, Vivian. “Animation and Automation, or, Michael Crichton. http://www.michaelcrichton. The Incredible Effortfulness of Being.”Screen vol. 50, com/westworld/ no. 4, Winter 2009, pp. 375-391. Figure 3. The rasterized robot POV. Reproduced Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” from Westworld, directed by Michael Crichton Against Interpretation, and Other Essays, Farrar, (MGM, 1973), DVD. Straus, and Giroux, 1990, pp. 209-225. Figure 4. The gunslinger’s view of the tables in the Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. 1970. Bantam Books, lab where Peter is hiding. Reproduced from West- 1984. world, directed by Michael Crichton (MGM, 1973), DVD. Turnock, Julie. Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Tech- nology, and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aes- Figure 5. Bottom half of Mariner 4 photograph of thetics. Columbia University Press, 2015. Print. craters on Mars, 1965. Source: NASA Image ID number: Mariner 4, frame 09D. Westworld. Directed by Michael Crichton, performances by Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, and Figure 6. The computer control room in Westworld. James Brolin. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1973. Reproduced from Westworld, directed by Michael Crichton (MGM, 1973), DVD. Westworld. The Official Site of Michael Crichton. http://www.michaelcrichton.com/westworld/. Figure 7. View of Mission Control during lunar surface Apollo 11 extravehicular activity, 1969. Source: Whissel, Kristen. Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI NASA Image ID number: S69-39593. and Contemporary Cinema. Durham: Duke Univer- sity Press, 2014. Print. Figure 8. Left: Brynner as the android gunslinger in Westworld. Reproduced from Westworld, directed by Whitney, Jr., John. “Creating the Special Effects for Michael Crichton (MGM, 1973), DVD. Right: Bryn- Westworld.” American Cinematographer, vol. 54, no. ner as Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven. Re- 11, November 1973, pp. 1477-1480. produced from The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges (The Mirisch Company, 1960), DVD. Williamson, Colin. Hidden in Plain Sight: An Ar- chaeology of Magic and the Cinema. New Brunswick: Figure 9. Top: Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Rutgers University Press, 2015. Wood) taking aim to assassinate Robert Ford (An- thony Hopkins) and initiating the android revolu- Image Notes tion. Bottom: The android army emerging from the woods to bring a violent end to humanity. Repro- Figure 1. The burning android. Reproduced from duced from Westworld (Season 1, Episode 10), di- Westworld, directed by Michael Crichton (MGM, rected by Jonathan Nolan, (HBO, 2016). 1973), DVD.

Figure 2. Theatrical release poster forWestworld (1973). Source: “Westworld.” The Official Site of

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Acknowledgements

I would sincerely like to thank Nathan Holmes and 6 For more on the early computerization of special Andrew Pendakis for their excellent editorial guid- effects, see Turnock. ance, and two anonymous reviewers for their help- ful comments on an early draft of this article. Part of 7 Martin Scorsese’s digital 3D film Hugo (2011) of- this paper was also presented at the 2018 Society for fers an interesting allegory of early cinema as an au- Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Toronto, tomaton. For more on this, see Williamson. and I am grateful for the generous feedback I received from panelists and attendees there, particularly Tanya 8 For more on Hale’s Tours, see Rabinovitz 2012 and Shilina-Conte. Fielding 1970.

9 I am very grateful to Tanya Shilina-Conte for Notes bringing this connection to my attention. For more on the parallel between the self-immolation and the 1 John Whitney, Jr., is the son of the American ex- burning celluloid in Bergman’s film, see Tatiana Shi- perimental computer animator John Whitney, Sr. lina-Conte, Black Screens, White Frames: Recalculat- Both were pioneers in early computerized special ef- ing Film History, PhD dissertation, State University fects. The avant-garde connection is visible in the ab- of New York at Buffalo, 2016. stractness of the gunslinger’s POV. 10 In an outstanding article on the subject, Aaron 2 For more on iterations of machine perspectives, Bady argues that the HBO version gestures beyond see also Rogers, Cinematic Appeals. but ultimately does not escape the Western genre’s historical sanctioning of American racism and 3 Indeed, Crichton would use the play between an- imperialism. imate and inanimate similarly in the context of characters trying to avoid being detected by dinosaurs in 11 I am borrowing “cinema of reassurance” from his 1990 novel Jurassic Park, which Steven Spielberg Charles Musser and Carol Nelson’s description of adapted for his landmark special effects film three how Lyman Howe’s early-20th century travelogues years later. preserved an ideal image of America against the realities of racism and imperialism at the turn of the 4 See further Eisenstein 1986 and Manovich 2001. century.

5 See further Krueger 1977.

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