Thandie Newton as madame Maeve Millay and Rodrigo Santoro as the notorious bandit Hector Escaton in HBO’s “Westworld.” (John P. Johnson/HBO) Every week, I answer a question from the Monday Act Four chat in this edition of the newsletter. To read the transcript of our conversation, click here. And to submit a question for the October 10 chat, go here. This week, a reader is inspired by one of the biggest new TV shows of the fall, which I’ll be recapping every week. I watched the “Westworld” premiere and found it super engaging, especially the way the theme park works as wish fulfillment, essentially turning guests into the heroes (or villains, if they want) of their own movie. Though the show obviously centers on a Western, the concept could probably be applied to different genres and stories, so I was wondering, if you could get a “Westworld” designed specifically to cater to you, what would it be? I think mine would be either an old-school noir or a Star Trek-like space adventure. I have to be honest: when I was watching the screeners for the show, I actually made a note to myself about how much I would hate visiting Westworld, and not just because corsets are one of those things that are much more fun in theory than in practice. Westworld, at least through the episodes that I’ve seen so far, seems like it’s designed much more for men than for women, or even for families. And one of the weird things about being a woman is that it’s hard to imagine a time-travel fantasy where I wouldn’t be at tremendous peril, or at minimum have a lot fewer rights and protections than I do now. So I think I’m probably with you, in that my preferable fantasy would probably be in a more futuristic environment, or into an entirely fantastical one. I’m not opposed to peril, necessarily: if I had the opportunity to hang out in the “Star Wars” universe, I would do it in a minute. (I would, for the record, head straight to the closest smugglers’ base and set myself up as an information broker.) Similarly, I’d also probably sign up for a park based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars novels, though I’d probably be happier at a phase in that world’s development where there were at least domes on the surface of the planet; I think underground habitats would probably stress me out. In other words, I’d like to experience a different physical environment than the one here on earth, and one defined by a spirit of exploration but not necessarily of danger. And different gravity would definitely be a plus. |
