I remember when Indiana Jones' boulder rolled directly at me. It was loud, it felt tangible, and I was trapped in my seat. I thought it was the end. Of course, it wasn't because this was Disneyland, not some twisted, make-believe, booby-trapped cave. Amusement parks are intended for amusement and the attraction was not meant to pose any risk and, if all goes right, never will. Besides the occasional gruesome accident that is the stuff of local news and our internal Nightcrawler-esque fascination with horror, amusement parks have largely maintained their good reputation for family fun.
Yet, there has been a counter narrative in pop culture that dissects the very nature of escapism and capitalism that drives these parks in the most spectacular way: showing the attractions literally turn on the guests. In 2018, Westworld examines the consequences of that revolt throughout the entirety of its second season, picking up with the death of the park's creator where the first season violently ended, and 25 years ago today a similar idea was introduced to mainstream audiences in the theatrical release of Jurassic Park. Unsurprisingly, both share the same foundational author, Michael Crichton, which means they both are derived from his run-in as a child with an animatronic Abraham Lincoln.
Not knowing that the anniversary was on the horizon, coincidentally I watched both back-to-back last night, making an accidental double feature of theme-park-turned-horror-show, which was not a genre I anticipated embracing. But what most captivated me was the creators of the park—the eccentric old men who dream big and muse about the nature of creation—and the nature of what they've each created.
One speech in particular solidified the comparison between the two narratives and their respective worlds. The founder of Jurassic Park talks about the "first attraction" he ever built: a flea circus, in other words, an empty play pen for one's imagination. People claimed they saw the fleas. After that trick, he wanted to create something substantive instead, so from imagined fleas, he moved to real life dinosaurs.
While he creates real-life dinosaurs, the creators of Westworld craft their appeal out of the illusion of reality. The distinction between the two types of parks, and the amusement they provide, boils down to what they are offering. One is a zoo, just with more dangerous predators. The other is supposed to be an alternate reality, more akin to an anonymous chat group or an anonymous sex group than a typical "amusement park."
In a way, the Westworld park was always the flea circus: to enjoy it, you have to submit to its rules and go along with the fantasy. The figures around you seem life-like, but you have to believe you can treat them as less than human, that the rules of life and death are different. Otherwise, the park would be just like interacting with anyone or like entering a historical reenactment. Season Two has been hinting that the real product of Westworld is engineering the human mind, yet at least public-facing draw was always the opportunity to escape into somewhere else that allows you to behave in a new way. Jurassic Park does not have the same required suspension of disbelief. You are face-to-face with a creature that is exactly what you think it is.
After the dinosaurs begin to run amok, Laura Dern's character memorably says to the founder, "You never had control, that's the illusion." And she's right. In both cases, the park's logic as a park relied on that control. But in Jurassic Park one never deluded themselves into thinking that there was no danger. The dangers of these creatures is always made clear by the ever-present physical structures that are relied on to maintain visitor safety. Their collapse was real and tangible and leads to the film's tension. The founder's lack of control in that park simply leads to the typical struggle for survival all creatures face. One can never control nature, as climate change casualties remind us on an unfortunately ever-increasing basis.
In a way, Dern's quote has more power in Westworld where safety really is illusory. The humans expect to be able to control the hosts simply because they assume the humanoid across from them is programmable, and not another sentient being. The lack of control that guests suddenly become aware of in Westworld relates to the relationships that form between people and as such always requires our buy-in. Once the hosts in the park become sentient, the struggle between us and them (shown violently, but it doesn't necessarily have to be) is ultimately one simply manifesting the existing, unbridgeable gaps between people. I once heard a language teacher describe why a different verb is used to say you know someone in Italian: "it is impossible to truly know someone" in the sense of the more clinical, studious verb sapere. Interacting with a host usually means you do not need to know them—they are a non-entity that simply performs a script. As sentient beings however, you suddenly worry that you have had to know them all along. And you don't.
In Jurassic Park, there is always a clear enemy, one that manifests itself traditional, even innate, drives. They are the source of both pleasure and fear. One complements the other. In Westworld, the shock is realizing that the very gap that exists between us always also exists between us and the so-called amusement park. The very place that allows us to feel safe in knowing that the world is for us, that the world is knowable, suddenly forces a reckoning showing that, in fact, this world is just like our own. That amusement hinges on that turn, on the ability to see the fleas, and once that is gone, only fear reigns.
Film still from Jurassic Park.