HBO’s new hit show riffs on one of Second Wave feminism’s signature tactics
At the start of the pilot it was Dolores. At the start of this weekend’s episode, Maeve.
These shots of two of Westworld’s central characters waking up help visually underscore the narrative parallels of these two characters. As stereotypes of women they represent the Westworld poles of the madonna/whore dichotomy. Both are attractive to a number of the park’s visitors, though one for her romantic innocence as much as the other for her worldly knowing.
The similar shots of waking also provide us reminders that Westworld is a story in no small part about androids waking up to their circumstances as objects designed for entertainment that are also frequently objects of desire, sex, and violence.
The theme of awakening to the true structure of their reality is also echoed in the script followed by employees performing diagnostic interviews with “hosts” in the corporate laboratory. In this set-piece, the host in question (often Dolores) answers the question, “Do you know where you are?” with, “Yes, I am in a dream.”
Thus the movement between the real world as dream and the “awake” world of the Westworld theme park takes on irony and existential weight for main characters Dolores and Maeve.
Viewers can expect that as these women awaken to their circumstances, something in the narrative world will change.
And that expectation feels like a pop cultural legacy of Second Wave feminism to me. Continue reading Westworld Stages a Consciousness Raising
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