Anthony Petros Spanakos
Westworld depicts life‐like human creations, called hosts, who rebel against their creators. The hosts are given roles to play as characters in narratives, big and small, in which they perform various forms of work to provide entertainment for visiting human guests, profitability for Delos, and joy and company for Robert Ford, their creator. The roles that Ford has given them, and that are expected by Delos and guests, determine their identity. The hosts have no control over who they are and what sort of world they live in. Over the course of the first season, however, some of them come to consciousness, leading to various sorts of rebellion.
The most fundamental break in the first season comes when the pacifist, girl next door Dolores Abernathy pulls the trigger of a gun behind the head of Ford. Dolores’s action fits with the philosophy of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), who believed that freedom for colonized people was impossible without violence against the colonizer. It doesn’t stop with Dolores, though. So let’s explore Fanon’s theories and the development of rebellion among the hosts in Westworld.
Robert Ford and Delos created a world that consists of material (saloons, horses, guns) and narrative resources. The hosts are material but are also unconscious partners in those narratives which bind them in ways that are unique. Unlike humans, they have no ability to alter their names, behavior, or personality. They may not harm humans, and they must welcome guests into a land and storylines over which they have no control.
Fanon thought something similar happened in the colonization process in the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa. He wrote “the white man … creates the Negro” 1 and “it is the settler [colonizer] who has brought the native [colonized] into existence and who perpetuates his existence.” 2 This creation is socio‐political since the colonizer creates social expectations, economic proscriptions, and political limitations. Fanon argues that those conditions rob the colonized person of freedom and humanity. Violence, as the only way to become liberated, is therefore both ethical and transformative for the colonized person.
The visitors to the Sweetwater theme park enter a simulated Wild West in which they act upon hosts who are programmed to comply with their wishes. Most of the violence is committed by humans against the hosts. It is a form of entertainment for guests but it is troubling for viewers. Hosts are programmed not to remember – either the violence or kindness shown to them, giving them the innocence of babies. The more humans are exposed to Westworld, the more depraved their violence becomes. So when hosts finally become aware of the trauma they face, it is hard for us not to sympathize.
As the first season develops we see the acts of violence perpetrated by the hosts on the humans as both justifiable and ethical. Bernard cannot be blamed for strangling his love interest, Theresa Cullen. He did not intend to harm her; he killed her because he was forced to do so by Ford. But Maeve chooses violence. She threatens Frank and Sylvester, gets them to accelerate her path toward “consciousness,” and eventually leads a violent “jailbreak.” Dolores, the most gentle and peaceful character, blows off the head of her creator, not the character who has tormented her most (the Man in Black). The viewer is led to believe that such violence is necessary (for the freedom of the hosts), ethical (in response to the treatment hosts have received), and transformative (a doorway into a new role in which hosts act from free will not programming). Indeed, Fanon would approve.
The Martinique‐born Frantz Fanon was a psychologist, who was influenced by negritude 3 and became a participant in the Algerian War of Independence. He is normally cited as a theorist of violence, but a better interpretation is to consider him a revolutionary reader of G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831).
Hegel, one of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century, introduced the concept of the master‐slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit where he posits that human self‐consciousness is only possible in “being acknowledged or ‘recognized’” by another. 4 Because my identity is dependent on the other, I try to demonstrate my power over the other, and therefore seek dominion. This struggle between self and other is different when the two are unequal. The master lives for himself alone while the essence of the slave is tied to another (the master). But the slave’s recognition of the master is compromised because it is not freely given. If the master wants to be recognized, the slave must gain liberty.
Fanon saw something powerful in this relationship as a tool of interpreting colonization, though there are important differences. Hegel’s master and slave differed in terms of legal status, whereas the colonizer was racially and visibly different from the colonized. A slave can be set free, and his consciousness was necessary to freely recognize the master. By contrast, the skin of a black or brown person could not change, rendering him inevitably and irretrievably inferior. Fanon writes “For Hegel there is reciprocity; [but] here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.’” 5
The Hegelian slave’s emancipation allows him to participate in a shared world and, over time, the master‐slave dialectic moves toward equality via mutual recognition. Fanon’s colonized person seeks freedom rather than equality because there is no place for him in the colonizer’s world. Ironically, the colonizer also cannot be human because his domination of the colonized dehumanizes him as well. Freedom requires the creation of a new world, which Fanon believes is not possible without violence. 6
History, for Fanon, was a collection of acts by white colonizers upon blacks and Arabs. White people were protagonists of these stories and the colonized were background characters with no stories of their own, much like the unfree hosts who are forced to play supporting roles in the narratives of others. Fanon argues that violence becomes a teacher of “social truths,” 7 demonstrating the freedom of the colonized, and allowing him to become a maker, no longer a taker, of history.
Violence against the colonizer, particularly if organized and collective, is political, and it aims to create a new identity for the rebel. Previously, the colonized person’s identity was determined by white colonizers; laws restricted assembly and speech; and the normalization of economic and social inferiority made the colonized anxious before the colonizer.
Violence against the colonizer pierces his white skin, the visible mark of difference, of superiority. The wound produces blood no different from that of the colonized. When the colonizer and colonized see blood exit the newly‐inflicted wound, the relationship of superiority established through prose and poetry, law and policing, and trade and investment is challenged. A new social truth emerges: The colonizer is also susceptible to death and the colonized is also capable of violence.
Thus the native discovers that his life, his breath, his beating heart are the same as those of the settler. He finds out that the settler’s skin is not of any more value than a native’s skin; and it must be said that this discovery shakes the world in a very necessary manner… For if… my life is worth as much as the settler’s, his glance no longer shrivels me up nor freezes me, and his voice no longer turns me into stone. 8
The “social truths” of the colonial system are shaken. Given how profoundly unjust these established “truths” are, Fanon’s violence is presented as an ethical form of “therapy.” 9
This violence is not only ethically justified (by challenging the racist system) but is also transformative. Killing the colonizer (like beheading the monarch) is an act, something to be done. But Fanon’s concern is how this act serves as an entryway to a new mode of being. 10 Fanon expects violence to end the colonial situation and to open the possibility for a new form of humanism in which the colonizer and colonized can recognize each other as free beings.
Portrayed as tender and authentic, the relationship between Bernard Lowe and Theresa Cullen is a rare case in Westworld . Bernard loves Theresa, suffers from the death of his son, and struggles with that death in his phone calls with his former wife. Theresa is pushed by Delos to fire Bernard, and their interactions demonstrate the complexity of a mature relationship. This situation both gives evidence of the characters’ free will and shows how that free will is constrained by corporate responsibilities and personal obligations. But the equality of the two is undermined when Ford reveals to Bernard that the he is a host (“Trace Decay”). This is shocking in light of the complexity of his emotions and apparent free will.
But Ford demonstrates his ability to control Bernard, and it becomes clear that Bernard strangled Theresa. Her death is a more convincing proof of his lack of consciousness than his love for her was of his consciousness. Ford created Bernard and his personality, fostered his relationship with Theresa, implanted the memories of his son, created a character who played the part of his ex‐wife, and gave him the skills and disposition to carry out a complex job. When Ford’s partner Arnold dies, Ford makes a likeness of Arnold, but Bernard is not Arnold, only like him. And, importantly, he is like him in the ways that Ford has decided, in the world that Ford has created.
Bernard struggles to understand the “social truths” of his lack of liberty, and violence does not liberate him. Those social truths are readily available. One programmer, who is far lower in the corporate hierarchy than Bernard, explains to a host, “you and everyone you know were built to gratify the desires of the people who pay to visit your world” (“The Original”). Bernard knew this but somehow thought that he was not a host. The tragedy of his position is reminiscent of Fanon’s criticism of the African bourgeoisie who try to perfect their French, take on white lovers, and absorb French culture. Fanon compares the folly of these Africans with Russians and Germans, who may speak “French badly” but who each nonetheless “has a language of his own, a country.” By contrast, “the Negro … has no culture, no civilization, no ‘long historical past.’” 11 Similarly, Bernard may speak English perfectly and perform remarkably sophisticated tasks, but he uses the language of his creator; he is a “host” with no country. His culture is a representation of his creator’s past, and he has no historical past of his own. Even his memories are from his creator.
In differentiating the colonial condition from that of occupation, Fanon writes “Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the French occupation, the Germans remained men.” But the European occupation of Algeria dominated everything, “The Algerians, the veiled women, the palm trees and the camels make up the landscape, and the natural background to the human presence of the French.” 12 The social truth of Westworld is that the humans dominate everything – the hosts, the costumed women, the biosphere, and the animals.
The guests seek to live out fantasies in the form of narratives that involve acting upon the hosts. One guest explains that his first visit was tame, but during his second visit he “went straight evil. The best two weeks of my life” (“The Original”). The viewers see this development in William‐the Man in Black. Young William reluctantly visits Westworld for the first time with his unscrupulous future brother‐in‐law Logan, who engages in the theme park’s basest attractions of wanton sex and violence. Logan tries to convince William that the hosts are not real – and therefore it is not ethically wrong to harm them. As the first season progresses, William first protects, then falls in love with Dolores, and eventually uses violence against Logan to protect Dolores. He becomes increasingly caught up in the created world, delving deeper and deeper into the changing storylines, gradually losing himself and his connection with the outside world. In one of the season’s biggest twists, viewers learn that young William becomes the cynical Man in Black. The man who once loved Dolores becomes her most vicious tormentor. Indeed, the Man in Black, like other visitors, becomes less human over time as the unreality of the theme park allows for the fulfillment of desires that ultimately dehumanize him.
In a Hegelian framework, young William can only fall for Dolores when she recognizes him as her protector and he sees her as a being capable of giving herself to him freely. Indeed, his transformation begins when he returns to Sweetwater and finds Dolores in her old loop: She does not recognize him (“Bicameral Mind”). The Man in Black is thus the product of a system, a prisoner in a maze of which, ironically, he is the owner. 13 His obsession with finding the truth buried in the park has led him to surrender to Westworld – seeking in it a deep truth and returning to it as slavishly as an addict. He demonstrates his capitulation to Westworld’s social rules – that humans can do anything to hosts – in a most inhuman way.
Fanon would note that the systems (racist colonialism or the theme park) wind up dehumanizing even the master. Ultimately the master, too, needs revolution to become human. But the colonizer cannot free himself. This is evident in the transformation of young William who was initially shocked by the theme park but eventually was conquered by it. The Man in Black goes mad because Dolores did not recognize him as William until years later. Now, as she begins to recognize him, rather than wait for love, “the one true thing,” she goes off to kill Ford (“Bicameral Mind”). She leaves the Man in Black an old, obsessed, broken mess. He is a human who is the simultaneous owner and slave of a world that he cannot change.
As Maeve Millay begins to remember her daughter, she becomes more conscious. The first memory of her daughter interferes with playing her role properly with a guest and she is immediately sent for “analysis.” While Felix Lutz and Sylvester are repairing her, she becomes aware that each time she dies she goes back to the lab (“Contrapasso”). Repeated death leads to her self‐awareness. Felix explains how hosts are built; he tells her that her daughter was not real and that she has only been in the Mariposa saloon for one year (not ten as Maeve thinks). Maeve shocks the techies by calling Sylvester by name, threatening to report Felix for inappropriate activity, and drawing a scalpel on Sylvester. The threat of violence gets them to adjust her programming and facilitates her awakening.
Maeve gets the techies to disable the explosive device preventing her from escaping the park and explains that it is “time to write my own … story” (“Trompe L’Oeil”). This is possible because she begins to understand the humans. “At first, I thought you were gods. But you’re just men, and I know men” (“Trompe L’Oeil”). Men can have no power over her and cannot keep her bound to Westworld. But when she enters the train to leave Westworld, she begins to miss her daughter and decides to abandon her plan of escape. The daughter is, of course, not real but a product of programming by the very “men” she claims to know.
Maeve returns to Westworld in response to the thought that she failed to care for her daughter – an act of love or contrition – but she returns with a vengeful violence. She dies again and again, makes sexual and rebellious compacts with other hosts, and leads a jailbreak as wanton as human‐on‐host violence from earlier episodes. This violence has a sense of retribution and settling scores, though, making it less horrifying, more justifiable. Though Maeve had always known men, she still wound up getting patched up or being brought back to life. The change in her circumstances comes from knowing men are “only men” and, as such, things could be otherwise. She comes to this realization as a result of her threat and use of violence – first the threat of it against Felix and Sylvester, and then the fairly indiscriminate use of it against her oppressors.
At first Dolores looks very different from Maeve. Dolores is the symbol of purity, a white girl next door. She pines for a true love, whose return is imminent, and she longs to get away from this Wild Western town. Maeve, of mixed race, is a madam who profits from sexual encounters using her own body and the bodies of others. There is no surprise when she pulls a blade or gun, but there is when Dolores becomes capable of violence. For most of the first season, Dolores repeats anodyne lines about longing to leave, finding her fella and moving away where things are peaceful and different. She seeks this with Teddy and then with young William. But Teddy cannot give this to her – he is also a prisoner to narrative loops – and William shifts from wanting to give this to her (she is different, he wants to let her go) to punishing her for her persistence in the same fantasies.
The irony is that Dolores’s violence bookends the story of Westworld . Viewers learn that Dolores, one of the first hosts, went on a massive shooting spree, which led to her being reprogrammed into the innocent Dolores we know throughout the first season (“The Bicameral Mind”). And, in the end, she defends herself against the Man in Black – harming, but not killing him. Instead, she walks calmly to Ford and blows a hole through his head. She thus kills not her tormentor but her creator. Why?
A preliminary answer might be the following: Dolores has been harmed by the Man in Black and probably by many other guests in Westworld. In the same way, certain Johns and Janes have clearly harmed Maeve and the prostitutes in her stable. But Dolores seems aware that the Man in Black is not so much a villain as a victim. The same manufactured world that turned him from a young, handsome, and romantic man into a wrinkled, cynical, misanthrope led to her parents being killed, regular acts of violence against her, and so on. The violence that she suffered is less personal than political, the result of a system that assigns roles into which even the most seemingly moral people get trapped and ruined. Dolores knows that neither traversing a river (even a ford) nor finding some new place can bring her peace. There is no escape from the circle of violence as long as the system remains. Killing a guest might scare other guests and be bad for business, but it would only lead to a new series of adjustments in the hosts, a more “dangerous” set of host fantasy trips. This is true even if that guest is Westworld’s owner. Instead, liberation requires the destruction of the fountainhead (literally) of the system, the brain behind the creation of the hosts and the narrative structures.
The identities of the hosts are, like Fanon’s colonized peoples, wholly determined by other people. 14 Humans (particularly Ford) determine who they are and what they do. The theme park world dehumanizes the humans because of their domination over the hosts, and this dehumanization makes the hosts seem more human. Host violence against humans appears more ethical, justifiable, and transformative as the first season develops. For the hosts to be free, they must use violence against their oppressors. At the same time, the recovery of the humanity of the humans requires such violence: The humans cannot free themselves.
The therapeutic and transformative violence of Westworld echoes Fanon’s view that decolonization “…is always a violent phenomenon.” 15 Fanon saw no way, except violence, to usher in an era in which a new humanism was possible, one in which the colonizer and colonized could both be free. He may well be correct that a radical disturbance of the present world is necessary for a new, more just world to emerge, but there are more effective means than violence. These are not entirely apparent, however, in the first season of Westworld , which suggests a path to liberation strikingly similar to that of Fanon. 16