Metaphor and Symbol in HBO’s Westworld

Fig 1 - The opening like structure of “The Door” becomes visible only to the humanlike robots for the first time in the desert inside the park. Screen capture from The Passenger (2018), Westworld (2016 -). ©2021 HBO, all rights reserved.

Metaphors and symbols are closely connected in animated films. In his seminal book Understanding Animation, Paul Wells (1998) describes how metaphors extend from symbols, noting that “whilst the symbol invests an object with a specific, if historically flexible meaning, the metaphor offers the possibility of a number of discourses within its over-arching framework” (1998, 84). In other words, and in relation to Wells’ examples of stop-motion animation, the symbol is the graphic depiction of an object that over time across human history has gained a particular meaning. The metaphor is the possibility for this depicted object to relate to several conversations and expressions about what can be conveyed as a whole.

We can certainly understand Wells’ distinction between metaphor and symbol in relation to HBO’s American sci-fi drama series Westworld (Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, 2016-). Westworld tells the story about a near future large-scale theme park of the same name where the human visitors can experience lifelike adventures alongside the park’s humanlike robots. My particular fascination - and the focus of this blog post - is with the use of computer graphic visual effects to create the showing of “The Door” (Fig. 1). “The Door” first appears in the episode The Passenger (2018), and is the name for an entrance into a computer-generated simulated world that was created by one of the founders of Westworld for the humanlike robots to live away from humans. As “The Door” materialises during the episode, there is a strange visual change within the images of sand and rocks in the desert inside Westworld where it appears. For a moment, the visual effects deform parts of the environment as the landscape turns into the opening like structure of “The Door”. The result of this graphic effect is known as digital ‘morphing’. Mark J.P. Wolf (2000) describes morphing as a “fluid and often surreal transformation by combining the cross-dissolving and the warping of images (in which certain areas are stretched or compressed)” (2000, 83) (Figs. 2 and 3). This sequence is, for this reason, a good example of an idea that I have been exploring lately as part of my doctoral research ‘The Living Metaphor in Animation’ at the Royal College of Art, which examines the relationship between metaphors and symbols in animated films. Following Wells’ account, the status of “The Door” as a metaphor in Westworld relies on the possibility for this depicted object to relate to several conversations about what the series conveys as a whole (in particular its broader narrative of ‘freedom’).

Fig. 2 - The deformation of the desert as it turns into the opening like structure of “The Door”. Screen captures from The Passenger (2018), Westworld (2016 -). ©2021 HBO, all rights reserved.

Fig. 3 - The deformation of the desert as it turns into the opening like structure of “The Door”. Screen captures from The Passenger (2018), Westworld (2016 -). ©2021 HBO, all rights reserved.

However, what is more important is that Wells’ distinction between symbol and metaphor also establishes a separation between the symbols that we see on screen, and the broader metaphors that we understand in our mind (and that we attribute to the animation to be fundamentally about). Wells argues that with metaphor “this second order of construction offers a parallel narrative to the specific one which merely deals with the construction of logically determined and contextualised events” (1998, 84). In Westworld this would mean that we first see the opening like structure of “The Door” as a visual object to make something happen in the story. Only thereafter do we understand it as an opening to mean something else. In other words, although metaphor and symbol depend on each other to create their extended meaning they achieve this by running parallel, never intersecting. As this blog post argues, the appearance of “The Door” in Westworld suggests an alternative way to approach the relation between metaphor and symbol based on the spectacle of digital morphing.

In my exploration of the showing of “The Door” in Westworld, the relationship between metaphor and symbols in digital animations appears to work slightly differently from that in Wells’ example of stop-motion. The separation between the metaphor and the symbol in “The Door” sequence is not as clear as we might have come to believe (from Wells’ initial explanation). The visual effects that were used in Westworld to deform the camera footage of the environment during the showing of “The Door” instead shows how there is ultimately a gliding movement between the metaphor and the symbol.

We do not, in this case, have the depiction of a meaningful object, the symbol, and the meaning that is conveyed, the metaphor, as two separate levels running parallel in our minds that we suddenly think match. The meaningful object (the symbol) and the meaning that is conveyed (the metaphor) is, rather, now happening at one and the same time. We, therefore, need a different approach to understand the relationship between metaphor and symbol in the showing of “The Door” in Westworld. Wells provides a hint in the right direction. For him, the symbol in animated films is about the depiction of the historically meaningful object. He described that the depiction of the meaningful object in animated media is not bound by how we usually know the object from our physical world. He notes “the symbol in animation can operate in its purest form, divorced from any relationship to the representation of the real world, finding its proper purchase in the realms of its primal source” (1998, 83). This observation points out that there is some flexibility in animated films in terms of the amount of time that the symbol uses up to take its final visual form. Instead of establishing a separate level for the symbolic by immediately depicting the final form of the opening like structure of the “The Door,” the sequence in Westworld allows us to observe the sliding transition between metaphor and symbol by showing the capacity for animated images to bring to images visual configurations that the depiction of recognisable objects keep us from seeing.

In order to understand how this might work, we need to briefly take a slightly more expansive view on the relationship between metaphor and symbol, from graphic images and into the realm of written language. It is not a novelty to suggest that we cannot get to symbols without going through metaphors, and that, we cannot get to metaphors without going through symbols. Paul Ricoeur (1976) described in his book Interpretation Theory that the metaphor provides the symbol with its linguistic form. The symbol at the same time provides the metaphor with its symbolic two-dimensional infrastructure where form and life coincide: “There is more in the metaphor than in the symbol in the sense that it brings to language the implicit semantics of the symbol”, and to the same extent, “there is more in the symbol than in the metaphor. Metaphor is just the linguistic procedure - that bizarre form of predication - within which the symbolic power is deposited” (1976, 69). What Ricoeur is getting at is that the non-linguistic side of symbols keeps calling on the work of meaning that the metaphor only in part achieves. However, it is only though this limited form of language that metaphors can give evidence to that excess of meaning in the symbol.

The important point that Ricoeur makes for this exploration of Westworld is that we can now understand the relationship between metaphor and symbol in language as one where their linguistic structures intersect with each other in the creation of extended meaning. Metaphors and symbols do not conflate into one another but instead transpose the reader from one to the other, and back again, like an infinite loop. This different approach to the relationship between metaphor and symbol in language (as an infinity loop) highlights the simultaneity of metaphor and symbol, which can be connected to the figurative status of “The Door” in Westworld. The relationship can, perhaps, now be consider as a ‘chicken or egg’ problem.

The problem appears when we start to ask what came first, the chicken or the egg? We can similarly ask in Westworld what came first. Is it that a strange deformation is happening, or, is it the depiction of an opening? Is it the visually strange deformation of the desert images, or, is it the depiction of the opening like structure of “The Door”? The answer may seem obvious in terms of the events that unfold on screen. We see the deformation of the desert before we finally saw the “The Door”. However, it is not that clear what event came first by what is logically implied. The reason for this uncertainty can be understood in this way: as soon as the visual deformation starts, the deformation already reveals the opening like structure being made. And, the opening like structure in turn already reveals the visual transition that has just started.

If a symbol in an animated film, or in science-fiction or fantasy television series with digital visual effects, can contain a two-dimensional infrastructure (similar to written language) wherein form and life coincide, then the non-visual side of symbols in an animation also requires the work of meaning from metaphor for this side of lived experience to be brought into images. The metaphor in animation, can in turn, only offer a restricted form of visual depiction to show the surplus of meaning in the symbol. We can now understand that the visual deformation of the desert images in Westworld simultaneously show this move: from being capable of change, to being already changed. In effect, the idea of the possibility of change is the metaphor. The reality of change by the opening like structure is the symbol. It is, therefore, difficult to tell if the metaphor of being able to change or the symbol of change came first.

Fig. 4 - The main character Neo realises that the mirror is not a normal one of its kind as it starts to restore itself. Screen capture from The Matrix (1999). ©2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., All rights reserved.

The Wachowskis’ well-known science-fiction action film The Matrix (1999) is another example of this relationship between metaphors and symbols as an ‘chicken or egg’ problem from the use of visual effects. The visual deformation of the mirror during the “Slimy Rebirth” scene simultaneously shows the metaphor and the symbol of the main character Neo’s passage from one place to another (Fig. 4). We can also find in this example find the underlying ‘chicken or egg’ dynamic. We do this by asking whether it is the visual deformation of the images of the mirror that reveals an opening like structure, or the presence of an opening like structure of a mirror that suddenly reveals the visual transition that just started?

In conclusion, the relationship between metaphor and symbol in a range of fantasy or science-fiction film and television using visual effects is strongly interconnected. Yet this connection does not always run between two separate levels of perception and thought. The “The Door” sequence in Westworld suggests that the relationship between metaphor and symbol can be thought of as an intertwined and dynamic relation. This means that the separation between metaphor and symbol in the creation of extended meaning in animations is maybe not that sharp, but instead as intersecting productively. I have argued that this approach to the relationship functions as a ‘chicken or egg’ problem, because the visual instance of symbol and metaphor in Westworld’s “The Door” could work as a dynamic infinity loop dynamic of the possibility of change metaphor and the reality of change in the opening like symbol created by the digital morphing of the image sequence.

**Article published: April 30, 2021**

References

Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Interpretation Theory. Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: The Texas Christian University Press.

Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.

Wolf, Mark J.P. 2000. “A Brief History of Morphing”. In Metamorphing: Visual Tranformation and the Culture of Quick-change, edited by Vivian Sobchack, 83-101. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

Biography

Carmen Hannibal is a PhD Candidate in Animation at the Royal College of Art. She is in her PhD project ’The Living Metaphor in Animation’ examining the nature of creative metaphors in contemporary experimental animations. She has previously published in mediaesthetics - Journal of Poetics of Audiovisual Images and Animation Journal, as well as presented her panel paper at Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ 2019 conference. She is currently the convenor for the Society for Animation Studies’ affiliated special interest group Figurative Meaning and Metamorphosis in Animation.

I would like to thank Christopher Holiday and Marion Guerbet for revising comments. Thank you to Suzanne Buchan and Glenda Hannibal for additional commentary.