Abstract

Contextualising Westworld in the long history of robots in American culture, this paper explores how the show’s focus on narrative loops reflects a larger interest in the power of history to raise the consciousness of disempowered peoples. As a twenty-first-century TV show about robots, Westworld is burdened by the plots and tropes that have dominated over two centuries of stories about robots and automata, including the 1973 film of the same name. Like its robotic “hosts,” however, the show is trying to break out of the conventional narrative loop of mechanical rebellion that has become engrained in popular culture. It does so, the paper argues, by substituting a cathartic and supportive narrative of resistance that focuses, contrary to almost all other robot stories, on the bodies and minds of white women and men and women of colour. The show, the paper suggests, is about the consciousness-raising power of history.