Westworld...

I’ve just watched the first four episodes of “Westworld” and I’m guessing that I feel like most of you after doing so. That I need a hot shower with steel wool.

I saw this film when I was very young; at the time of its first release to television. Even then I was disconcerted by the approach that it took. In the set-up we’re made to feel sympathy for the robots, as the manipulated sex-toys of the very rich. Then we’re made to feel sympathy for the humans as they scurry to escape the retribution that the robots enact. It’s a two-edged sword and frankly, you can’t have it both ways.

The TV series does nothing to ameliorate any of this, beyond obfuscating the playing field with a bunch of lesser narratives that do nothing apart from confusing the issue. Perceptive viewers will see past this to the core of the material – it’s a tawdry rape fantasy, nothing more.

We live in a world where the most debased, primal instincts are condoned if there is any money or fame to be gained from it. Just look at the current state of the US presidency. We’re told that, if it’s on television, it must be okay, and if it’s on the Internet via Netflix, it must be better. This is a fallacy: wrong is just wrong, no matter how pretty it looks when it gets dressed up.

The entire premise of this show – whether it contains the black-hatted, villainous Yul Brynner or not – is that somewhere on the planet there is a place where you have the licence to kill, rape and despoil anyone and anything without the possibility of retribution, as an ideal of entertainment. Those with access are the elite, those with cash. Is there anything of value to be taken away from this premise? Even when the robots go on a killing spree, they are quickly taken down and “normalcy” is restored. Is this a status quo which we need to see put back in place?

Every woman in this show is a piece of ass. None of them have any empowerment whatsoever. Even the gunslinging women are viewed as sex-objects before being shot up by leering cowboys. The women in this show are required to be demure and doomed – only worthwhile if they play nice and play victim. Any “cool” moments they have are coloured by this background. The patriarchy has them right where they want them to be.

Even on the meta-level of the controllers who oversee the park and its activities, if you’re not male, you have no power. There are two main players, both male, who run rings around the woman who’s nominally in charge while patronising their female inferiors. Only those players who wield guns in the service of maintaining the fantasy have any (limited) power, and they are not the ones who question the basic premise of what’s going on.

My main issue with this series is that it’s a tacit nod to a culture of porn that has been burgeoning in the background and which is now being recognised as a legitimate earner of cash reserves. Pornography, it might surprise you to learn, is not simply a wanton display of carnal activity, but also a normalising of the mistreatment of the few by the many. Porn is not just people fucking each other, but also people disabling and killing each other. For money. Every time you say “okay” to Westworld, you say “okay” to people enslaving each other for the purposes of non-consensual sex in a basement for two decades in Ohio.

And it doesn’t stop with this show. “Game of Thrones”? There’s your license to rape and pillage and reduce the value of human life to zero. Frankly, I’m surprised that more people aren’t crying out for an end to this bastardized, poorly-written travesty of English history. I guess that most viewers are willing to put aside poor scripting in favour of tits and gratuitous violence.

And there it is – the word “tits”. It’s a ratings catchpenny, a surety of financial reward. If only the women who were flashing theirs were getting the character development, the equal time and the pay-packet they deserve, we might well be getting some interesting television.

Instead we’re getting this dross.

Don’t be a fucking loser. Watch something with integrity.