FICTION IMPOSING Itself on REALITY and (the MISSING STATUE of LIBERTY)
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/westworld-season-4-episode-4-review-generation-loss-fiction-reality-christina/
In ‘Generation Loss,’ Westworld Finds Fiction Imposing Itself on Reality
the fourth season of Westworld grapples with the idea of imposing a narrative upon reality, of bending the outside world to the logic of stories.
The theme parks in the earlier seasons were all built around narratives. As much as they were nominally built around historical eras, in reality they existed to further historical myths. The eponymous theme park captured the story of the Old West, not its reality. It was just as much a fantasy as the Games of Thrones-themed world implied in the third season. It has as much relationship to reality as “Main Street, U.S.A.” in Disneyland.
In Simulacra and Simulations, philosopher Jean Baudrillard argued that Disneyland’s hyperreality was “presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.” To Baudrillard, the imaginary quality of Disneyland was a distraction, one designed to conceal a deeper and more unsettling truth: The world outside of Disneyland was just as unreal.
Maeve and Caleb flee from the park to a construction zone identified as a “Park Expansion Project — Active Demolition Site.” Caleb’s coordinates suggest that this confrontation takes place in California.
The real west is being demolished and a fantasy built atop it. Appropriately, the site is just north of Big Sky Movie Ranch, the source of various iconic depictions of the Old West in American pop culture, from Rawhide and Gunsmoke to Little House on the Prairie.
In “Generation Loss,” it becomes clear that fiction is colonizing reality.
Westworld understands that narratives and stories are an important way of implementing such a system of control. It often doesn’t matter what is actually real; it simply matters which stories people internalize
Generation Loss” suggests that the season is built around another realization of that era — the observation often attributed to Joseph Goebbels,
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
In “Generation Loss,” Westworld suggests that entire worlds can be built on such lies.
This is a common recurring theme in Jonathan Nolan’s work. His short story Memento focused on a man with the inability to create long-term memories, who compensated by constructing a narrative that gave his world meaning.
The final shot of “Generation Loss” features a pan across the southern bay of Manhattan, revealing that ominous broadcast tower standing where the Statue of Liberty should be. The Statue of Liberty represented its own aspirational narrative of what America could be, of a nation that was a beacon to the world and a welcoming home for outsiders. The tower is much more ominous, seeming more like a trap to keep those caught within its broadcast range.
“Generation Loss” suggests that maybe societies should be careful of the stories that they tell themselves, because those stories can occasionally become reality.
Anyone else find it as CREEPY as I do the way that HALE's replaced the STATUE of LIBERTY with that TOWER??? Wonder if LADY LIBERTY will be put back into the place where she belongs by the end of the SEASON???
🤔
Or could a GIANT MICKEY MOUSE one day end up replacing LADY LIBERTY???
And will the country one day end up with more AMUSEMENT PARKS than the other kinds of NATURE PARKS that we now have???
Would people choose to live inside of them in some kind of a DELUSIONAL FANTASY WORLD rather than OUTSIDE of them in this WORLD???
Plato's Cave also comes to mind where people thought the SHADOWS on the WALL were more REAL than the WORLD OUTSIDE of the CAVE.
And we also had the MAN in BLACK killing his REAL DAUGHTER ... because he assumed that she wasn't REAL ... as he also insists that he "KNOWS what's REAL" ... but he REALLY didn't know ... because he'd spent too much TIME in the PARK.
🎹🚂🎠
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