Intangibility and Selfhood: Westworld as Allegory for Adaptation in the Digital Age

Abstract Despite the digital becoming ever more ubiquitous, the physical matters more than ever. We see this in interviews with actors who voice animated characters, actors who voice computer generated imagery (CGI) characters, and actors who voice other non-human characters. Many things present a challenge to the ways in which we understand the physical—the structures of meaning in the world primarily, along with the specific filmic ways we understand star bodies. These combine to create barriers to ‘seeing’ the truth of a character we might think, but this is fixated on an approach that privileges a hierarchy of actors over character. Equally, it is one that privileges body over character. The recent series of Westworld begins to challenge this, thinking about the ways in which while the physical may be required, audiences are able to think beyond it. It functions as a way to consider the digital adaptation of the self, and the return to the needs of the physical to express character. Ultimately, this article argues that although we cannot escape the physical, the hierarchies and boundaries we have in place for understanding the truth of the self remain as unfixed as ever, despite the recourse to adapting through non-physical means.