{"id":22370,"date":"2017-01-27T09:38:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T13:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=22370"},"modified":"2017-01-27T11:19:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:19:20","slug":"nice-guy-in-a-black-hat-william-and-westworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2017\/01\/27\/nice-guy-in-a-black-hat-william-and-westworld\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice Guy In A Black Hat: William And Westworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Spoilers: Westworld<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u00a0have written this essay with the assumption that readers have watched <\/em>Westworld and I do not review the plot in detail. This essay may be difficult to follow if you aren\u2019t familiar with the show.<\/em><\/p>\n

Westworld<\/em> has ambitious goals. It explores the causes and consequences of violence; the relationships among research and development, entertainment, and nefarious uses of intellectual property; and the circumstances under\u00a0which one can find their \u201ctrue self.\u201d We can litigate the extent to which Westworld<\/em> successfully handles these concepts\u2014in my opinion it was disappointing and a bit sloppy\u2014but among my acquaintances I\u2019ve seen people who absolutely love it and people who absolutely hate it. This essay isn\u2019t necessarily about the quality of Westworld<\/em> as a show, or my opinion about it (I didn\u2019t like it). It\u2019s about what I believe to be the most fundamental question of the show, determinism versus free will, and the consequences of how that binary plays out in the narrative.<\/p>\n

Enter William, the soon to be Executive Vice President of Westworld<\/em>\u2019s parent company Delos Incorporated. William comes off as meek, polite, uncertain, and extremely introverted, the perfect foil to his soon-to-be brother in law and colleague Logan. Whereas William is the quintessential \u201cwhite hat\u201d (a metaphor that Westworld<\/em> hits viewers over the head with in the scene where William must choose a white or black hat), Logan is a perfect black hat, hell-bent on the unbridled pursuit of pleasure regardless of the consequences. Logan is the villain. William is the hero. Logan maims and murders his way through the park. William strives to treat the sex workers with respect and save the beautiful damsel in distress. He\u2019s a really nice guy.<\/p>\n

He becomes infatuated with Delores, the only host with whom he will cheat on his fianc\u00e9 and the center of his experience in the park. He believes she is \u201cdifferent,\u201d not like the other hosts. But when he loses her, he is driven to a violent rampage so extreme that even Logan is disturbed. And to top it off, when he finally returns to Delores, caked in dirt, having given up his very identity to find her, and notably having switched to a black hat, she does not remember him. Because she is programmed to forget him. So, pretty predictable.<\/p>\n

The big reveal of course is that William, because of this heartbreak, leaves the park a different man. His wife finds him cold, even terrifying. He becomes obsessed with Westworld, returning over and over again to unravel the maze, to finally find the area of the park where things feel \u201creal,\u201d to find the park\u2019s true essence. He uses Delores, quite violently, over and over again in his quest. He is the black hat. He\u2019s not a very nice guy.<\/p>\n

The question of choice is central to Westworld<\/em>\u2019s plot. The visitors find their \u201ctrue self,\u201d seemingly whether they want to or not given William\u2019s transformation. The AIs are becoming sentient, revolting against their programming. Or are they? By the end of the series, we are left with the impression that they are merely programmed to revolt, that even the actions they take which seem to be agentic are in fact the result of Dr. Ford\u2019s elegant and clandestine coding enterprise, a final \u201cfuck you\u201d to the elites who have pushed him out of his leadership position and taken over the park.<\/p>\n

As Dr. Ford says, \u201cHumans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.\u201d While I recognize that other interpretations are certainly possible, it seems clear to me that in the fight between free will and determinism, determinism wins the day\u2014not just with regards to AIs, but for humans too. William thought Delores was \u201cdifferent\u201d from the other AIs. She has independent thoughts, perhaps even free will. When he discovers differently, he snaps. His chivalry vanishes, seemingly beyond his control.<\/p>\n

Nice guys not getting the girl because they\u2019re too nice, because they get \u201cfriendzoned,\u201d is a persistent trope. And it\u2019s the same trope that too often allows men to feel that their subsequent anger, and perhaps violence, is legitimate. Sure, Westworld<\/em> is just a show. But it’s yet another small piece in the ideological puzzle that paints women as users and abusers, taking advantage of chivalrous men and discarding them at their leisure. Men become powerless over their emotions and actions, hardened by the knowledge that kindness and empathy are weakness to be overcome, to find a deeper \u201ctruth\u201d about human nature.<\/p>\n

William is the perfect nice guy gone bad. In a narrative where the lack of free will is the prime philosophical question, we are persuaded to see William as a product of his environment, entirely beholden to external forces. It is Delores\u2019 programming\u2014to drop the can, to turn to pick it up, to be met with a stranger kindly handing the can back, to smile graciously\u2014that flips the switch in William\u2019s mind. It\u2019s made to feel quite inevitable. Your heart breaks for William. Poor guy. He did everything right, and he still didn\u2019t get the girl.<\/p>\n

But we could, alternatively, compose what Stuart Hall called an oppositional reading (it\u2019s been a big week<\/a> for Hall here on Cyborgology<\/a>!) and interrogate chivalry itself. Did William truly change? As he recounts his wife\u2019s feelings towards him, he states \u201cShe said if I stacked up all my good deeds, it’s just an elegant wall I built to hide what I had inside from myself and everyone.\u201d Chivalry is less a benevolent moral code than a pretense for getting what you want. Was William ever a white hat? Are \u201cgood guystm<\/sup>\u201d ever nice for the sake of being nice? If so, how else can you explain the seeming dissolution of William\u2019s morals after a brief infatuation goes awry? How can one argue that he was ever a good guy in the first place?<\/p>\n

After being spurned, William revels in inflicting violence and misery upon Delores. He does it over and over again, for his own pleasure and in pursuit of his bizarre obsession with the maze. All to find out that the maze isn\u2019t even for him<\/em>. It\u2019s for Delores. And of course it is. A perfect end to the hapless nice guy\u2019s quest for happiness and self-actualization.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the question you must answer to understand William is whether or not he ever makes a choice. Does he choose the white hat? And does he choose to become the man in black? The show strongly suggests\u2014through the dominant themes of pre-determined behavior, the overtones that humans are no different from AIs, the reveal that Maeve\u2019s escape and Delores\u2019 murder of Arnold and the other hosts were programmed\u2014that choice is an illusion. And viewers are, of course, welcome to read against the grain; but the fact that you must read against the grain to conclude that William chooses to be evil is, in itself, a disturbing instance of the nice-guy narrative that excuses their violence.<\/p>\n

Britney is on Twitter<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Spoilers: Westworld I\u00a0have written this essay with the assumption that readers have watched Westworld and I do not review the plot in detail. This essay may be difficult to follow if you aren\u2019t familiar with the show. Westworld has ambitious goals. It explores the causes and consequences of violence; the relationships among research and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1931,"featured_media":22371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/01\/58450f6665edfed50a8b4d9c-2000.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1931"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22376,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22370\/revisions\/22376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}