This week I had a few movie nights with my friends, as I am often wont to do. On the header was a double bill: Teen Beach Movie and Teen Beach 2. We frequently revisit DCOMs for nostalgia and familiarity, but this time around I found myself recognizing some intricately woven lore and patterns that surpassed expectations for the teen flick box such films have been locked into. Like, this is theory! Read on to learn what I have discovered, which is that the Teen Beach Verse is literally just like Westworld, for real.
First, to establish some core terminology:
Narrative loop: a definitive storyline that must be fulfilled and repeated indefinitely, unbound to time and bound to specific circumstances and settings. Not to be confused with:
Time loop: As aptly detailed here (go read Katy’s substack and subscribe if you aren’t already but why would you not because I’m already recommending it on here), time loops are similar to narrative loops but renew at a designated time (for example, the end of a 24 hour day) as opposed to the fulfilled completion of a designated narrative path. Time loops cyclically present the same circumstances, setting and surroundings, but those trapped in one typically have the capability to try to change the circumstances of the loop in order to escape.
Given these two definitions, one can assume that certain events or actions must happen to and by certain individuals in a narrative loop. This then means that some degree of autonomy and free will is removed from the equation for those participating or trapped in such loops. This raises the question of who is “supposed” to be in a narrative loop versus who intrudes upon it, and in these two groups, who bears the privilege or burden of consciousness of their reality.
The Teen Beach Multiverse
To summarize for those who are not well studied in the discipline of this perennial classic, I’ll give you the plot of Teen Beach Movie: Teen surfers Mack and Brady are accidentally transported into the world of Brady’s favorite movie, “Wet Side Story,” a surf-and-turf battle over a nondescript beach town that also presents a convincing case against gentrification. Upon inserting themselves into the movie’s plot and preventing the Shakespearean leads from falling in love with one another and uniting the two people groups, the two must right their wrongs and set the movie back on its course before heading home.
The “correct” narrative of “Wet Side Story” consists of a conflict between two groups that is solved by the star-crossed romance between two of the leads from each representative gang. The 60s concept of Lela, the female biker lead, hopelessly waiting and falling for Tanner, the male prince of the surfers, is notably antiquated, and raises many complaints from Mack. Her headstrong ambition also causes problems between herself and Brady, but more on that later.
The factors that actually stop the WSS narrative and drive it off course are Mack’s insistence on radicalizing the biker girls with first wave feminism and calculus, and Brady’s general stupidity and affinity for the film that overshadows his urgency to get back home and out of the movie itself. Oddly enough, the leads find their way back to one another coincidentally, as Mack and Brady’s plan crashes and burns (meaning Brady gets tased and they both get kidnapped by the persistent villains). As the leads connect with one another, so do their posses, and all is right by the end as Mack and Brady sail into the sunset and back to Windy Bluffs.
In the sequel, Teen Beach 2, the roles are reversed as the WSSverse morphs with reality. Once Lela decides she doesn’t want to live in a monotonous bubble, she and Tanner travel to the real world (by just diving into the ocean and the assistance of a magical lotus symbol) and encounter Mack and Brady (who are currently in a lover’s quarrel over Mack having an actual life outside of Brady and Brady, idk, living in a treehouse). Meanwhile in movieland, the extras are straight up disappearing because with no leads and no plot, the film is ceasing to exist.
One of the most interesting aspects of the second movie is that it implies that the characters in WSS, primarily Lela, are able to remember their encounters with Mack and Brady, think critically and independently about those interactions, and act upon them. Lela physically stops the plot of the movie to object to being left behind as a damsel in distress once more, and acts against that assigned role. In her absence, her friends literally fill her shoes in performing her musical numbers. One wonders if Lela is the only one capable of acting in a manner that is antithetical to her path, or if Mack and Brady’s interjection so deeply disjointed the narrative of the movie that characters are now free to do as they please, even if it seems absurd at first to them.
Even so, by the end of both movies Lela is the only character from Wet Side Story that is both conscious of her own reality as a fiction and dissents to it. Tanner finds out at the same time she does, but doesn’t really care (or have enough brain cells to make himself care). Lela’s awakening begins a bit of a Dolores Abernathy moment, which I’ll explain right now.
Westworld
For those of you who have seen Westworld on HBO Max, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, that’s fine because probably nobody else does (including the show itself and barely myself and the former group of readers), so just follow along. Also the information/lore I relay here is specific to the first season of the show only, and chock full of spoilers for those 10 episodes. Heads up.
The quick and dirty: in a futuristic dystopian Earth, insanely rich people pay 40k a day to enter a theme park of Wild West attractions, the primary billed of which are the super realistic “hosts”, androids modeled after humans to simulate interactions inside the park. One such host is Dolores Abernathy, an innocent rancher’s daughter who doesn’t do much but go to town, drop a can of condensed milk for an interested suitor to pick up, and go home to find that her family has been murdered. Usually either a guest or fellow host will rape and kill her upon her return home, at which point she is repaired, her memory wiped and her narrative begins again the next morning. When (spoiler alert), she begins a journey towards consciousness and autonomy, she begins to remember past versions of herself and the conditions she has endured for years. Much like Lela, she discovers the nature of her own reality and acts in a way that is antithetical to it.
There are obvious similarities between the narrative loops the hosts find themselves in and that of Wet Side Story, but the contextualization of them varies. In the park, the intention is for guests to interact with hosts and know that they are not sentient beings. The hosts are (initially) incapable of comprehending this fact, and don’t know otherwise - similar to the WSS characters, they believe that their narrative loops are their reality. In WSS, the intention is for characters to perform for audiences, without knowing that they are doing so or being watched, thus inherently without interaction at all. Both loops allow for brief and minor deviations and improvisation, but only when prompted.
My final interest lies in the implications of the concept of “core drives”. As defined in the Westworld pilot, core drives are the inner impulses, priorities and desires coded into each host to direct them along their narrative path. These drives direct where a host should be, what they should do and say there, and the extent and nature of their interactions with guests and other hosts. A core drive dictates a given host’s narrative loop and vice versa - it is what makes them who they are.
One can observe that the WSS characters behave in accordance with a similar concept, an innate sense of what is right and assigned to them. Their drives interact with their narrative loop pretty directly, but it remains unclear if there is one outstanding primary drive for any given character as opposed to a preloaded worldview and personality due to their affinity. It is the 60s after all, and the culture of both the surfers and the bikers appear very hegemonic.
These core drives, when paired with the tools of memory and deviation from a scripted narrative, allow both hosts and WSS characters to access a past version of themselves — much like hosts who reach the maze of consciousness through being able to access previous builds and loops they have inhabited. Armed with the memories of past loops and knowledge of how their narrative (and those who crafted it) has mistreated them, these individuals are able to defend themselves, know themselves, and free themselves.
Lela rewrites the movie. Dolores meets both of her makers, and delivers justice. Mack and Brady return to paradise, with a fresh start and memory wipe of their own, set off spinning into new loops and new narratives. And Garrett Clayton still has really shiny teeth. That’s the beauty of it all! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.