Zetona.org - Mark Wahl - The Wild West Death Game (20090215)

Mark Wahl

The Wild West Death Game (20090215)

The romanticized "wild west" is filtered through the preconception of the storyteller of how the wild west should work. Their environment and assumptions might mix with the reality and myth of the actual US Western frontier times to make a hybrid that appears more familiar, believable or understandable. Karl May's universe seemed to have an inordinate number of German emigres wandering Arizona. Similarly, James Thurber (in "Wild Bird Hickock and his friends") describes a French Far West story, in which, when suspicious strangers come to town

The sheriff listened gravely for a while, got up and buckled on his gun belt, and said, "Alors, je vais demander ses cartes d'identite!" [Then we will demand to see their identity cards!]

A principal expectation of the wild west is the ever-present risk of death. Even in the 1880s a "Wild West" show included spectacles: a simulated attack on the Deadwood mail coach...a faked battle with Indians. The movie The Great Train Robbery (1903) was described as having ...been posed and acted in faithful duplication of the genuine `Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West, and only recently the East has been shocked by several crimes of the frontier order, which fact will increase the popular interest in this great Headline Attraction. Furthermore, this movie ended with the outlaw taking aim and firing point blank at each individual in the audience, causing those not familiar with the motion picture concept to scream in fear.

The "new" Old West of the mid to late 1960s films, including the so-called spaghetti westerns with settings inspired by the constraints of low budget filming in Spain, was immediately followed by western simulations in science fiction TV episodes. The TV shows were set in present-day or far future times, but would drop into a simulation of the wild west to show the theme of unescapable killing.

One example is the "gunfight at the OK Corral" simulation in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun" (1968). This simulation, controlled by the Melkotians, is decidely not realistic: clocks float in the air, the Enterprise crewmembers brought into the simulation do not even know initially who they are supposed to be, a force field prevents them leaving, and even if they choose not to participate, they are transported into the Corral at the predetermined time to play out their role as victims in the shootout.

Yet there is an unusual relationship between the simulation and the participants. By refusing to accept what they are experiencing is 'real', Kirk, Spock and McCoy do not believe that the bullets shot at them will affect them, and thus within the simulation they do not: the bullets pass right through them.

Spock: Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality.

However, the simulation keeps running even though the unreality of this situation becomes apparent to the simulation characters as well. Furthermore, the Enterprise crew are able to continue to interact with the simulation characters in other ways: e.g., Kirk then attacks the simulated Wyatt Earp in a fistfight and even considers shooting him, but decides not to. The simulation ends when the Melkotians see this as an interpretation of human behavior which seems worthwhile to them.

Due to the intense drugging, the simulated wild west experience in The Prisoner episode "Living in Harmony" (1968) is accepted by Number 6 as real. The opening credits in this episode re-state the background of the series, with the key elements transplanted to this new environment: Number 6 resigns as a marshal, is subsequently captured and taken to a town (Harmony) he's never heard of. As in the Village, leaving Harmony is not possible, and he's initially questioned by the local authority about his reasons for resigning. Analogous to "Spectre of the Gun", this simulation is also being run with a scripted pattern of interactions:

Number 8: It's always worked and it would have worked this time if you hadn't...

Number 2: But it didn't, did it? "Give him love; take it away, isolate him, make him kill, then face him with death: he'll crack. Break him, even in his mind, and the rest will be easy!" Hmph. I should never have listened to you.

The simulation fails: Number 2, Number 8 and Number 22 have gotten caught up in the action; in the simulation Kathy is killed by the Kid, the Kid is killed by Number 6, the Judge shoots Number 6. After being "killed", Number 6 wakes up, sees himself dressed in his village clothes and the town of Harmony as just false fronts and cutouts, and the episode ends as the simulated murder replays within the world of the Village.

Many places in the US have movie set reconstructions of western towns, where the visiting public can stand by and watch simulated showdowns and shootouts occuring several times daily. There is no risk to visitors, and their interaction with the simulated, presumably highly scripted, events occuring is limited.

Umberto Eco, in Travels in Hyperreality (1975) writes about the western town simulated for the public at Knott's Berry Farm, giving them the ability to observe what they expect the wild west to be like:

For example, the village school, reconstructed with hyperrealistic detail, has behind the desk a schoolmarm wearing a bonnet and an ample checked skirt, but the children on the benches are little passing visitors, and I heard one tourist ask his wife if the children were real or "fake"...

Eco assumes that the visitors would easily fall into the role that would be most appropriate to them:

And if the dry-goods store is fake nineteen-century and the shopgirl is dressed like a John Ford heroine, the candies, the peanuts, the pseudo-Indian handicrafts are real and are sold for real dollars, just as the soft drinks, advertised with antique posters, are real, and the customer finds himself participating in the fantasy because of his own authenticity as a consumer; in other words, he is in the role of the cowboy or the gold-prospector who comes into town to be fleeced of all he has accumulated while out in the wilds.

But that seems a stretch to me, that someone would recognize themselves in a role that would be a negative sterotype to them, instead of just continuing in expected behavior to a tourist location.

Similarly, the movie Westworld (1973), inspired in part by Michael Crichton's visit to Disneyland, takes this to its reasonable conclusion, for a price you can play the role in the Delos' resort simulation WestWorld, with all the benefits and none of the risks, and still be yourself:

Gardner: When you played cowboys and Indians as a kid, you'd point go "bang, bang" and the other kid would lie down and play dead. Well, Westworld is the same thing, only it's for real! I shot 6 people! Well, they weren't real people!

Ed: What Mr. Lewis means is he shot 6 robots scientifically programmed to look, act, talk and even bleed just like humans do. Isn't that right?
Gardner: Well, they may have been robots. I mean, I think they were robots. I mean, I know they were robots!

Without the risk, however, the visitors to Delos have a harder time taking it seriously -

Woman: They're robbin' the bank!

Peter: Robbin' the bank? Hey, maybe we oughta go help out.