From R.U.R. to Westworld: Personal Revolt, Digital Technology, and the Making of a New Robot Ur-text

• Published in: Comparative drama Vol. 56; no. 4; pp. 363 - 388
• Main Author: Poynton, Bella
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kalamazoo Western Michigan University 22.12.2022; Western Michigan University, Dept. of English; Western Michigan University, Department of English
• Subjects: Algorithms; American literature; Amusement parks; Asimov, Isaac (1920-1992); Baudrillard, Jean; British & Irish literature; Capek, Karel; Consciousness; Criticism and interpretation; Digital technology; Drama; Dramatists; English literature; Jewish literature; Narratives; Plot (Narrative); Portrayals; Postmodernism; Recall; Robotics; Robots; Russian literature; Science fiction & fantasy; Theater; Violence; Wells, H G (1866-1946); United Kingdom
• ISSN: 0010-4078; 1936-1637; 1936-1637
• DOI: 10.1353/cdr.2022.0023

While the epilogue ends on a hopeful note for the robots, there is no suggestion of survival for humans. Since their inception in the theatre, the use of robots as media objects have migrated from the stage to film and TV, featured in films such as Metropolis (1927), Devil Girls from Mars (1940), Forbidden Planet (1956), and Lost in Space (1965-1968). Like Crichton's Jurassic Park (1993), Westworld uses the device of a theme park that allows guests to indulge their fantasies without consequence, though the indulgence of these fantasies ultimately leads to real-world violence and suffering. Most treatments of the robot and robotic rebellion in contemporary science fiction draw on R. U.R as a kind of Ur-text, a seminal or prototypical narrative model.8 In this narrative, androids begin as non-sentient machines who gradually gain self-consciousness through the experience of pain, suffering, and memory Having gained an understanding of their subjugation, the androids band together and revolt against their oppressors. "9 Yet I will argue that HBO's Westworld departs significantly from R.U.R.'s precedent and establishes a new foundation for narratives of robotic rebellion because of three distinct narrative features: first, the individualized journey of each android (called "Hosts") towards consciousness; second, the layered construction of the Hosts' experiences and reality, which render the Hosts examples of living simulacra, things "substituting," as Jean Baudrillard writes, "signs of the real for the real itself"10; and third, the material basis of the Westworld park, which is digitally-controlled yet not entirely virtual (although digital programs control Westworld, the park and its events still exist within material reality, as opposed to a virtual platform, such as those found in Neuromancer (1981), Total Recall (1990), or The Nether (2013)).