Quoting
Irish (view post)
I don't think you can claim that brushing your lips with your fingers conveys rumination based on one film.
I wasn't linking the gesture with rumination because of one film. The well-known use of the gesture in
Breathless conjures up certain ideas, and I was trying to link those to
Westworld, but that doesn't mean that Godard's film is my basis for thinking that the gesture, as seen in
Westworld, connotes rumination. That claim is partly based on my own socially reinforced reading of that kind of thing (I'm pretty sure I've also seen it function in a similar way elsewhere in film and TV). That doesn't mean I automatically read fingers to lips as rumination every time — context matters — but, for me, it's one of the associations.
At any rate, my claim is also based on the fact that the show explicitly says that the gesture coincides with them accessing residual data that wasn't fully overwritten. It's symptomatic of that process of internal recollection. So, the link between a kind of rumination and the gesture is made by the show itself, and in no uncertain terms. "
The old gestures were just generic movements," Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) explains. "
These are tied to specific memories." What we're seeing is an outward demonstration of remembering — hence the name: "Reverie."
Further, only a single female robot is depicted as making this gesture. (My understanding was that the reveries were specific to individual hosts.) In the real world, brushing your lips can also mean something different depending on the gender of the person performing that action. If you're gonna parse its meaning, you gotta go all the way.
I believe we're told that all updated robots are exhibiting these signs, even if we only see one doing so onscreen. No? In the episode, it's referred to as being part of "
a whole new class of gestures." So, perhaps the specific gesture changes from robot to robot, but the mnemonic link remains. And I don't see why the first instance of this particular ruminative tendency that we're given — the representative example — isn't worthy of the kind of analysis I shared in my post.
Gestures can indeed mean different things. I explained why I leaned toward one interpretation over the other. I also thought there were enough imbrications here to specifically pursue the New Wave connection. So, I tried to trace a link between this instance of rumination and the famous moment in the history of cinema that it recalls.
One more thing, I've since realized that the update and the accompanying gestures were all deliberately engineered by Ford (so my "osmosis" remark was wrong), but he still opened up a can of worms. The outward look of the gestures may have been designed, but the inner process of recollection and identity-formation is where the unpredictability lies. So, the gesture is the first sign of trouble.
I dunno if you can break the fourth wall if all parties involved--character and audience--aren't aware that wall is being broken.
My post could probably be fine-tuned a bit so as to address this. Although, I don't understand why you're assuming the audience wouldn't be aware of something that I observed (and which others might as well?). But we can quibble about the awareness of the characters...
For starters, Bernard does refer to these new gestures as being a part of "
the tiny things that make them seem real." So, you're right — for him, it's initially business as usual. It's new, but it's still designed fiction, and he thinks of it as reinforcing said fiction, rather than breaking it through something like real agency. The import of the transgression — maybe even its status
as a transgression — may be unrecognized by the characters at first. But the gesture is still a potent sign of the whole process of these things becoming more sophisticated and nearing sentience.
Moreover, as audience members interpreting the whole picture, we can recognize that the gesture is actually much more than "business as usual" (and the final moment in the episode, among other things, cinches this reading). Even the characters eventually seem to get closer to this connection. Lee says the following: "
There should never have been an update in the first place. Ford and Bernard keep making the things more lifelike. But does anyone truly want that?" His point there is that people want absorbing fiction that still plays by the rules, not something that violates those rules in some strange way. Initially, Bernard's tendency in the pilot is to diminish some of the fluctuations in robot behaviour, and his downplaying remarks become increasingly unpersuasive. Later on, he admits to Ford that the update has produced some "mistakes," which suggests, at the very least, a burgeoning understanding of the actual implications of those gestures. As the robot behaviour becomes more unruly, Bernard eventually says they are dealing with something "
miles beyond a glitch." This all starts with the reverie update, and the gesture which is its visual emblem.
But, sure, you're correct that the gesture alone is not quite an example of a fourth wall being fully detonated and the characters then immediately experiencing a huge revelation. The show just started and I imagine they want to wait a little while for that. But I don't agree with you that it's unproductive to talk about fourth wall breaking if there's no immediate diegetic awareness of said rupture (I know I emphasized such diegetic awareness in my post, and yeah, my post could be more fine-tuned). The gesture is a sign of an ongoing process of self-actualization that gets amplified later on in the same episode and will surely be further amplified later. So, let's call it a cracking of the fourth wall, if you will. It's significant, but the full-on detonation will come later in the series. The gesture does not constitute the endgame of complete self-actualization, but it's one of the first discernible signs of that eventuality.
Even though it is just a sign of this impending transformation, I think the link I tried to draw in my post still works: the nascent disruption of a fundamentally passive, one-way, playing-by-the-rules kind of illusion in
Westworld recalls, through the connective tissue of a well-chosen gesture, another (extra-textual) project of disruption.
This will probably change, and when it does it still won't be all that meaningful unless the in-show narratives are made to be meaningful.
The journey toward sentience has been conspicuously marked as something this show is very much interested in, so why wouldn't the formative signs of that change matter? And why would an early allusion to fourth-wall breaking in French New Wave cinema be meaningless? It's only one brushstroke in the larger context of this thing, but it's a kind of economical way of engaging with an established cinematic vocabulary, and shading in narrative meaning in a creative way. Whether it was intended or not doesn't particularly matter to me, as texts tend to crackle in ways that exceed authorial intention, and the resonance is there.
This is aside from the fact that the entire idea of characters being aware they are characters is a very, very old--to the point where I'd say it isn't particularly interesting in an of itself.
It may not be a new idea, but the acquisition and negotiation of that awareness seems to be a part of the show's project. I find it compelling. You can summarily disregard it as antiquated in one line, as you just did, or you can realize that the mobilization of this idea across multiple seasons will likely involve more than just the idea "in and of itself."
I don't think movies like 400 Blows or Shoot the Piano Player or Claire's Knee shatter any illusion between the audience and the medium, for instance.
There may be specific exceptions to the self-reflexive tendency (I haven't seen the other two films, but
The 400 Blows' oft-discussed direct address ending — surely one of the most famous examples of fourth wall breaking in cinema — contests the idea that it is one of those exceptions). At any rate, that tendency still seems to be one of the most salient features of a lot of the scholarship and criticism focusing on the French New Wave (and films like
Breathless). Self-reflexivity is a key aspect of the movement.
I also think if you're gonna approach it based on something like Breathless, you gotta nod toward Godard's very impish sense of humor.
Why? I said the contexts were different, and I'm not sure why noting the humour is essential to an analogy that refers to specific aspects of the French New Wave — its narrative and aesthetic disruptions, its self-reflexivity, etc. I mean, Godard's artistic choices amounted to more than amusing larks (by saying that, I'm not trying to diminish the humour as something not worth considering!). Even if we regard some of the disruptions as being motivated by an "impish sense of humour," they're still disruptions. His work is partly why there's this association of novelty and defiance and rule-breaking with the French New Wave. The analogy I was drawing was between the New Wave's propensity for self-reflexivty and its disruption of an established spectatorial mode.
Breathless contains one of the key examples of that sort of thing and this emerges as a kind of intriguing echo in
Westworld…thereby activating certain intersecting ideas.
I read a handful of comments about how Westworld has the potential to be a comment on how we watch movies, or entertainment in general. But I think that's ancillary to the show's purpose. It's more a side effect of the material, not a conscious, driven choice on the part of the showrunners. (I like J Nolan, but I don't believe him capable of that kind of sophistication.)
I've never really liked anything by Nolan until now — it was one of the reasons I expected to dislike the show (there's still time for that) — and I think your point here is dubious. There is indeed potential for that sort of commentary. It's already evident. That may turn out to be one of the show's assets, regardless of whether or not this becomes the purpose of the show (from which, again, we've seen only one episode).