Hmm. I disagree with several of these points; let's see if I can articulate why. Note that I've only seen the first two eps so far, so I'm slightly behind you. Suffice it to say, I think the show is brilliant, if *remarkably* dark and critical of society.
Personal I'd say most of the worst of us manifests not as sadism
Possibly I'm just more cynical, but it looks to me like there is an *awful* lot of evidence that goes the other way. But there's an important nuance to that: the sadism presented in Westworld has everything to do with Othering, and I think that's horribly realistic.
I mean, looking at the way that tribal warfare throughout history *usually* degenerates into horror, there's a lot of evidence for this. I agree that the motivation tends to lie in selfish ego gratification, but the frequency of unnecessary rape and carnage says that it's really common. We like to believe that we Educated Elite Westerners wouldn't do things like that; I believe the show is calling BS on that, and saying that, given the *opportunity* to engage in ego gratification of that sort, a lot of people would avail themselves of it.
Even more, though, I think there's a really interesting commentary here: that this sort of maliciousness is usually associated with defining the Other. You wouldn't do that sort of thing to "people" -- you do it to Others. And once you've done it once, you're committed. You've invested some *serious* ego in the notion that the Others aren't really people -- that's essential to being able to look at yourself in the mirror afterward. And having done so, you're now invested in convincing everybody *else* to think the same way, because if they don't, they are implicitly saying that you're an evil person for having done so. In that light, I found episode 2 (specifically the "friend" relentlessly trying to convince William that he not only can but *should* be abusive) *chillingly* realistic, a really good illustration of how the meme of slavery propagates.
I can't figure out if it's intentional or not. Is it as a statement of how prevalent such fantasies are in people, or even how hypermasculinity encourages it? Or is it because the SHOW can't imagine dark impulses under any other encoding?
Hard to say for sure, but based on Jonathan Nolan's work on Person of Interest (my pick for best SF series of recent years), it's hard to imagine it being accidental.
Rather, I think that, as is usual for science fiction, it's largely talking about modern-day society. I mean, consider how much of *big-budget* media -- whether we're talking about TV, movies, games, whatever -- is similarly hyper-masculinized and over-simplified. That's not accidental: simplistically playing to humanity's darker side is one of the more reliable ways to make money, so the Money tends to force things in that direction. I am *really* curious to meet Management in this world (I'm sure it's coming), but we've already gotten some commentary on this in Episode 2. (Where Dr. Ford critiques Sizemore's proposed new storyline.)
The only female guests tend to be either wives supporting the adventures of their husbands, or else having identical dark urges to straight men.
I mentioned this point to Kate, who pointed out that we're only seeing Westworld itself, so this is automatically a self-selected slice of humanity -- basically, we're only going to see the women who *like* this particular masculine fantasy, or have been dragged their by their spouses. As she points out, given this future world's premise, she'd personally go to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1985019/>Austenland</a> instead.
Overall, I'm assuming that we're only seeing a tiny bit of this world so far, and that it's going to get a lot more nuanced as the picture widens. (If, possibly, even darker -- I wouldn't be surprised if this world is pretty dystopian.) I could be wrong, but given that they say they have five years planned, and based on the execution of PoI (which got steadily deeper into its premise over its run), I think it's likely.
Anyway, I'm hooked -- it's one of my two Best New Series of the year. (Along with the silly but surprisingly funny and clever The Good Place.)
no subject
Personal I'd say most of the worst of us manifests not as sadism
Possibly I'm just more cynical, but it looks to me like there is an *awful* lot of evidence that goes the other way. But there's an important nuance to that: the sadism presented in Westworld has everything to do with Othering, and I think that's horribly realistic.
I mean, looking at the way that tribal warfare throughout history *usually* degenerates into horror, there's a lot of evidence for this. I agree that the motivation tends to lie in selfish ego gratification, but the frequency of unnecessary rape and carnage says that it's really common. We like to believe that we Educated Elite Westerners wouldn't do things like that; I believe the show is calling BS on that, and saying that, given the *opportunity* to engage in ego gratification of that sort, a lot of people would avail themselves of it.
Even more, though, I think there's a really interesting commentary here: that this sort of maliciousness is usually associated with defining the Other. You wouldn't do that sort of thing to "people" -- you do it to Others. And once you've done it once, you're committed. You've invested some *serious* ego in the notion that the Others aren't really people -- that's essential to being able to look at yourself in the mirror afterward. And having done so, you're now invested in convincing everybody *else* to think the same way, because if they don't, they are implicitly saying that you're an evil person for having done so. In that light, I found episode 2 (specifically the "friend" relentlessly trying to convince William that he not only can but *should* be abusive) *chillingly* realistic, a really good illustration of how the meme of slavery propagates.
I can't figure out if it's intentional or not. Is it as a statement of how prevalent such fantasies are in people, or even how hypermasculinity encourages it? Or is it because the SHOW can't imagine dark impulses under any other encoding?
Hard to say for sure, but based on Jonathan Nolan's work on Person of Interest (my pick for best SF series of recent years), it's hard to imagine it being accidental.
Rather, I think that, as is usual for science fiction, it's largely talking about modern-day society. I mean, consider how much of *big-budget* media -- whether we're talking about TV, movies, games, whatever -- is similarly hyper-masculinized and over-simplified. That's not accidental: simplistically playing to humanity's darker side is one of the more reliable ways to make money, so the Money tends to force things in that direction. I am *really* curious to meet Management in this world (I'm sure it's coming), but we've already gotten some commentary on this in Episode 2. (Where Dr. Ford critiques Sizemore's proposed new storyline.)
The only female guests tend to be either wives supporting the adventures of their husbands, or else having identical dark urges to straight men.
I mentioned this point to Kate, who pointed out that we're only seeing Westworld itself, so this is automatically a self-selected slice of humanity -- basically, we're only going to see the women who *like* this particular masculine fantasy, or have been dragged their by their spouses. As she points out, given this future world's premise, she'd personally go to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1985019/>Austenland</a> instead. Overall, I'm assuming that we're only seeing a tiny bit of this world so far, and that it's going to get a lot more nuanced as the picture widens. (If, possibly, even darker -- I wouldn't be surprised if this world is pretty dystopian.) I could be wrong, but given that they say they have five years planned, and based on the execution of PoI (which got steadily deeper into its premise over its run), I think it's likely. Anyway, I'm hooked -- it's one of my two Best New Series of the year. (Along with the silly but surprisingly funny and clever The Good Place.)