The Meta-Politics of "Westworld"

"This story line will make Hieronymus Bosch look like he was doodling kittens," Lee Sizemore brags. He's the head of the "narrative department" at Westworld, a frontier-themed vacation park where customers act out their darkest fantasies. A special little something I call the ourobouros." Self-cannibalism and the snake that eats its own tail: that's a fair description of "Westworld," a come-hither drama that introduces itself as a science-fiction thriller about cyborgs who become self-aware, then reveals its true identity as what happens when an HBO drama struggles to do the same. Created by the husband-and-wife team of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, "Westworld" is explicitly, and often wittily, an exploitation series about exploitation, full of naked bodies that are meant to make us think about nudity and violence that comments on violence.