"Contrapasso," as a viewer on their second watch of West World, gives away many forewarnings of the ultimate twist of the show. As Leo asserted, the show is becoming a bit of a jumbled mess to those on their first watch, and I can confirm feeling similarly but still being sucked in by its complexity at that time in my life (Pre-WW1 [Westworld Watch 1]). To me, the fragmented, minimally overlapping story arcs of the show give it a quality that almost all forms of cinematic entertainment lack: Rewatch value. After all, deconstructing the premises of an argument is made much more feasible when the conclusion is understood, and my mind is absolutely running wild during every scene on this 2nd watch. Also as Leo asserted, this makes it still just as exhausting to complete an episode. It also makes it harder to find a topic of discussion without writing in the context of Westworld post "reveal" moment in the finale episode.
So, for the sake of giving nothing away, this essay might just skim the surface. The man in black mentions to Teddy how the park at some point made the switch from using androids as hosts to building the hosts' bodies out of real biological tissue. The following line, "Your humanity is cost effective," explains why. I think if we reach a little, this change from machine to flesh can be trying to say something about our own world, and how big businesses' aim for "cost effectiveness" always has to result in a measure of pain, often at least a middle finger to humanity. For the hosts, a cost effective decision may be what's granting them (what appears to be) consciousness, and therefore a life filled with pain. Something similar can be said about the business world's switch from flesh to machine, a supposedly cost-effective move that has and will put many citizens out of work. Further, it creates an "empty world" where everything is automated, no one can work, and so no one can buy the products that the robots made for us. Much like the way big business grooms itself at the monetary expense of the people it is ultimately gaining a profit from by throwing them into an empty world, the "bad guys" in Westworld have managed to do the opposite and build an empty world with flesh (because in this case, that's cheaper).
Tyler raises some really interesting points in his post on humanity being "cost effective." I too found the Man in Black's comments on the hosts fascinating as much for what it says explicitly as well as what it implies. And like Tyler, I'm watching the series for a second time. One of the questions I keep coming back to is what the world is like outside of West World. We talked briefly in class about how we might apply Ouellette's analysis of neoliberal capitalism to a reading of West World and how the hosts are perhaps standins for workers in the 21st century. If Delos "owns" the technology for constructing hosts, are they using it for more than simply entertainment in theme parks? Are the hosts also employed outside of West World? Wouldn't they represent pretty cheap labor? Or are they so expensive that their use is reserved exclusively for the super-rich to enjoy in private play grounds? I wonder if Westworld will ever give us much of a glimpse into the world outside of West World and what the impact of technology and robotics has been on that world.
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