「據說，巨獸也曾在此地悠遊漫步」：《西部極樂世界》第一季中的時間設定與其後殖民探討 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授: 柯瑞強 Adviser: Dr. John Michael Corrigan. 治政「據說，巨獸也曾在此悠遊漫步」：大立. 《西部極樂世界》第一季中的時間設定與其後殖民探討. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. “They Say That Great Beasts Once Roamed This World”:. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Temporality and Its Post-Colonial Significance in Westworld Season One. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 研究生: 吳楚茵 Name: Corinne Chu-Yin Wu 中華民國一Ｏ八年三月 March 2019. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(2) “THEY SAY THAT GREAT BEASTS ONCE ROAMED THIS WORLD”: TEMPORALITY AND ITS POST-COLONIAL SIGNIFICANCE IN WESTWORLD SEASON ONE. 立. 治政 A Master Thesis 大學. ‧ 國. Presented to Department of English, National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Corinne Chu-Yin Wu March 2019. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(3) To my beloved family and friends.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. iii. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(5) Acknowledgement This has not been easy. The path of researching, writing, and battling through the bureaucracy is oftentimes a one-man quest, but I am glad it has not been a path too lonely. I thank my family, especially my dad for supporting me in pursuing a master degree in the first place. I thank Mom for giving me her best support she can gather. I thank Eva for cheering me up with jokes and memes. She is a natural in making me laugh and loosening my nerves. Academically, I always know what I am drawn to. But I would not become what I am were it not for Professor Amie Parry. She is a real. 治政 inspiration. And a very loving one, too. My discussion 大 with her contributed greatly to 立 ‧ 國. 學. the very early development of this thesis. I will miss her voice talking about difficult concepts in her careful but tender way. I would also like to thank Professor John. ‧. Corrigan. I could not thank him enough. Thank you for taking me in as your advisee. sit. y. Nat. when emergency occurred. Thank you for your meticulous examination of and helpful. n. al. er. io. suggestions for my thesis. Thank you for all your thoughtful and warm. i n U. v. encouragements. The thesis could not have done it without you, though you refused to. Ch. engchi. take any credit. I also thank my friends, Karie, Bryan, Kevin, Sophie, and Tank. I am lucky to have you guys as classmates and friends. Life is less hard when you have friends and also when you know your friends are suffering too. When we look back, pain and scars are what make a good story. I would also like to thank H. You were my closest partner when I steeped my head deep in books and writing back then. It was not until later did I know that it was a simple but hard-to-come-by happiness to have someone to share dinner with every day. Lastly, thank you, R. You always take good care of me when I have serious doubt of myself. You relieve me of myself. iv. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(6) Table of Contents. Acknowledgement.......................................................................................................iv Chinese Abstract..........................................................................................................vi English Abstract........................................................................................................viii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................1 Theoretical Formulation...................................................................................1. 政治大 Methodology....................................................................................................5 立 2. B SF B SF......................................................................................8. Reviews on Westworld.....................................................................................2 ECOMES. 學. ‧ 國. EFORE. From Copernicus to Wells...............................................................................8 Early Science Fiction and Colonial Discourses.............................................14. ‧. 3. ANACHRONISM IN WESTWORLD .......................................................................20 Anachronistic Settings...................................................................................20. Nat. sit. y. Technology and Maps: Distribution and Ownership of Life and Death..….24. er. io. 4. DOUBLE IDENTIFICATION AND THE (POST-)COLONIAL STRUCTURE IN WESTWORLD...................................................................................................33. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. The Ideological Pitfall of Progress and Double Identification.....................33. engchi. Double Identification....................................................................................34 The Threat of Becoming the Archaic Other.................................................41 5. THE LOOP........................................................................................................46 The Social Order in Social Bonds…..............................................................46 El Lazo………..............................................................................................47 Parallel Editing.............................................................................................50 Flashback: The Insertion, the Match Cut, and the Invisible Cut..................53 The Colonial Structure Remains Intact........................................................61 CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................63 Works Cited...............................................................................................................69. v. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(7) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要. 論文名稱：「據說，巨獸也曾在此悠遊漫步」：《西部極樂世界》第一季中的時間設定與其後殖民探討指導教授：柯瑞強先生研究生：吳楚茵論文提要內容：. 治政大 2016-）是一部講述根據 HBO 官方網站，《西部極樂世界》（Westworld, 立. 人工智慧淪為滿足人類慾望工具的美國暗黑奧德賽式的科幻影集。影集創作人. ‧ 國. 學. 認為好萊塢往往為了滿足主流影視視角，而把他者異化為具威脅性、醜怪或不. ‧. 具人性的角色。《西部極樂世界》則反其道而行地以被異化他者 (alienated. sit. y. Nat. others) 作為敘事出發點，讓觀眾不僅同情也認同這些角色。儘管《西部極樂世. n. al. er. io. 界》批判資本主義及其推想另類理想社會的科幻手法具有後殖民科幻小說色. i n U. v. 彩，卻也難以逃脫殖民意識形態的窠臼。此論文在約翰•瑞德爾 (John Rieder). Ch. engchi. 討論早期科幻小說及殖民主義的理論架構下探討《西部極樂世界》中該主題樂園的時間背景設定、此設定的殖民意識形態，以及該影集對此設定的批判與掙扎。舉例來說，槍枝與解密地圖是成就早期（後）殖民主義科幻小說的時間背景設定的重要道具，而在樂園中，不平等分配的科技與武力操作能力迫使人造人接待員 (hosts) “飾演”處於科技弱勢的美國舊西部時代拓荒者，這使樂園的客人們於認知上否認人造人真正活於當下的時間性，並異化為文化他者；而早期（後）殖民主義科幻小說解密地圖的定位與樂園提供給客人的冒險敘事的差異，則給予觀者一個機會來檢視此影集中文化主體將他者的生命財產據為己 vi. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(8) 有的後殖民敘事。英國小說家赫伯特•喬治•威爾斯 (H. G. Wells) 於《世界大戰》 (The War of the Worlds, 1897) 使用雙重認同 (double identification) 的敘事手法來批判英國殖民主義。以此為前提，此論文亦探討《西部極樂世界》操作雙重認同的敘事手法，及手法其是否達到批判殖民主從關係的作用。透過敘事角度、剪接技巧與影集自我解構的思辨，當影集觀者在文化強者中看見自我投影，其認同感與認知卻被置於被異化的接待者上，從而同時認同於文化強者與弱者。但如同《世界大戰》有其批判限制，採用此手法的《西部極樂世界》亦有可能落入殖民意識形態之窠臼。. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. vii. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(9) Abstract As the official website for HBO television series introduces, Westworld (2016-) is a dark American odyssey in which the dawn of artificial consciousness is meant to indulge every imaginable human appetite. Westworld’s creators observe that Hollywood movies and TV depiction tend to characterize the alienated other as a threatening, estranged, and inhumane role. In contrast to this human-centric characterization, the series creators unravel the narrative from the artificial others’ perspective, securing the audience’s sympathy and identification in these colonized.. 治政大post-colonialist sf However, as Westworld criticizes capitalism in line with the 立 ‧ 國. 學. tradition and speculates about the visage of an alternative society, it also. problematizes the possibility of transcending the colonial logic of anachronism and. ‧. progress. With John Rieder’s theoretical context, my thesis examines Westworld the. sit. y. Nat. park’s fantasy of time, the fantasy’s colonial significance, and the series’ criticism on. n. al. er. io. and struggle of the park’s fantasy of time. As a part of this (post-)colonial fantasy of. i n U. v. time, the props of the theme park are also brought into discussion, such as the uneven. Ch. engchi. distribution of arms/technology and the map/narrative provided for guests. While the former renders the hosts’ archaism by denying their real contemporaneity and alienating them into cultural others, the latter helps us look into the post-colonial version of appropriation. Furthermore, as H. G. Wells applies the technique of double identification in his sf, The War of the Worlds (1897), to criticize British colonialism, I examine Westworld’s approach in using double identification and this technique’s critical effect on colonial relations. While the audience of Westworld sees their cultural self be represented a colonial episteme in a science fictional work, the viii. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(10) perspective of the viewers is also aligned with the host’s cognitive position through narrative perspective, techniques of editing, and series’ deconstructive self-criticism. This characterization of identifying both the colonist humans and the colonized hosts allows me to question if the colonial structure remains intact in Westworld’s first season as does in Wells’ novel.. Keywords: Westworld, anachronism, John Rieder, post-colonialism, early science fiction, double identification. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. ix. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(11) CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION. Theoretical Formulation Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the HBO original television series Westworld (2016-) takes place in a futuristic Wild-West theme park where artificial beings called “hosts” entertain customers who seek immersive Old West adventures. Since its premiere, Westworld has been a major hit worldwide, as Entertainment. 政治大 viewers across its first two 立 airings and streaming.” According to a critic at the Los Weekly states that its “Sunday’s premiere episode delivered a strong 3.3 million. ‧ 國. 學. Angeles Times, “[Westworld] isn’t just great television, it’s vivid, thought-provoking television that entertains even as it examines the darker side of entertainment.” Marti. ‧. Noxon, a well-established television executive, states that Westworld “hit the. y. Nat. io. sit. zeitgeist,” further anchoring Westworld’s status in contemporary popular culture. As. er. for awards, according to IMDB, Westworld earned the most nominations for the 2017. al. n. v i n Emmy Awards and won theC Best Science Fiction Television Series from the Academy hengchi U of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA 2017.. Based loosely on Michael Crichton’s 1973 film, HBO’s Westworld is a sophisticated exploration of the hard problem of consciousness and stages this question within a larger dystopian critique of consumerism. As it is suggested in the title, “They Say That Great Beasts Once Roamed This World,” this thesis offers a postcolonial exploration of temporality in HBO’s Westworld. The great beasts are the analogies of the ones in power whom could be read as an imperial-colonial power, industrial empire, or human managers in Westworld’s context; beasts’ extinction 1. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(12) suggested in the past tense further indicates the falling of this great power. The first season of Westworld is a story of the fall of humans’ control and the rise of the artificial others. And the plot design encourages the audience to take sides with the exploited artificial beings. While the creators of Westworld sympathize with the colonized rather than the colonizer, I question the series’ fantasy of time and explore a deep-seated colonial layer of signification in the series’ dystopian exploration of capitalism. I argue that, while Westworld achieves a subversive sympathy by aligning the perceptive of the audience with that of the artificial humans through plot. 治政大fully transcend the deployment and subtle editing techniques, the series does not 立 ‧ 國. 學. colonial paradigm of anachronism which is securely embedded in early science. fiction. Instead, in the hosts’ rise against the human colonists at the end of the first. ‧. season, the fantasy of time along with the accompanying anxiety to occupy the. sit. n. al. er. io Reviews on Westworld. y. Nat. present remains strikingly and problematically secure.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Due to Westworld’s recency, scholarship is just beginning to emerge on the new series. While there is a lot of online commentary for the general audience, scholarly publication has sought to locate the series in the broader history of science fiction. Westworld and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), edited by James B. South, is the first book dedicated to the HBO’s series. Raising philosophical questions about consciousness and the division between human and artificial beings, Westworld and Philosophy also explores a range of other motifs in science fiction: those of the zombie, dystopia, cowboys, freedom and freewill, etc. 2. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(13) Besides this first work of scholarship, academic writing on Westworld is in its infancy and exists largely online in blogs or in magazines. A number of online academic writers, for instance, have explored the series in terms of American politics and history. In his article “Trump, Westworld & Us,” Sam Chaltain argues that, like Europeans during WWII, Americans are more willing to submit to a great man who does the thinking for them, which makes them “more like the android hosts of Westworld than we may want to admit.” Chaltain contextualizes this relationship in racial terms by contending that, due to the anxiety of freedom from social convention. 治政 as well as the immersion in “the constant barrage of大 messaging” (or in Lisa Joy’s 立 ‧ 國. 學. term, “technology ignorance”), America is challenged by the nation’s deep-seated contradiction toward the so-called “non-white” communities.. ‧. On their academic blog, Borderlands History, Lina-Maria Murillo and Michael. sit. y. Nat. K. Bess contextualize Westworld in a larger discussion about “the history of the U.S.-. n. al. er. io. Mexico borderlands as well as other borderlands regions.” They claim that Westworld. i n U. v. and Disneyland are implicitly connected by American frontier expansion. As. Ch. engchi. historians, Murillo and Bess identify the theoretical defect of Frederick Jackson Turner’s classic “Frontier Thesis” to contend that US continental conquest involves not “democracy and republicanism, but rather empire and capital exploitation.” In this sense, they argue that Westworld the park not only continues the American exceptionalism of the post-war Disneyland, but also serves as a psychological frontier where wealthy consumers are socially reborn and the hosts are acquiring their consciousness. Westworld has struck a chord with many American viewers especially when the 3. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(14) series also taps into the dystopian trope in which gendered and racialized bodies are dealt out by the frigid rhetoric of capitalism and capitalized politics. As Kathleen Richardson, a leading feminist roboticist, points out on her interview with Broadly, Westworld has a masculinity-upholding, male-gaze-satisfying Western setting: it is “a place where [a rich] man could write his subjectivity on the landscape” as well as on the bodies of subaltern peoples who live in a system with high entrance fees. Westworld the park is constructed as a patriarchal institution; however, it is gradually subverted by the female hosts, Dolores and Maeve, who awaken and develop their. 治政 own narratives. While Westworld endows its female hosts 大 with agency 立. 1. by. ‧ 國. 學. reaffirming the currently trendy female empowering narrative, some also voice a question, “What world will they build,” 2 one that the series also tries to explore.. ‧. Westworld lays bare the overlapping power regime of capital management and. sit. y. Nat. settler colonialism. In both regimes, rich white males are “programmed” to win, but. n. al. er. io. the subaltern hosts are also rising above that programming. Richardson reminds us:. i n U. v. the “Western in US film history has acted traditionally as a way to work through. Ch. engchi. political problems in American society,” such as the problematic Manichaean opposition of good cowboy and savage Indians in early Westerns. Westworld too acts as a barometer of American politics, technology, and labor culture. Employing postcolonial theory and science fiction studies, this thesis delves deeper into Westworld’s stance on rethinking the naïve opposition between good and evil, the haves and the have-nots, and the self and the other.. 1 2. See Carly Lane’s “In Westworld, the Future is Female.” See Eliana Dockterman’s “Women Now Rule Westworld. But Was It Worth It?” 4. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(15) Methodology While media commentators and scholars approach Westworld in light of philosophy, American politics, history, and feminism, I focus on the series’ temporality in light of its (post-)colonial significance. In the second chapter, I contextualize Westworld, first, with early sf history and, then, with John Rieder’s post-colonial interpretation of early sf. In Adam Roberts, Arthur Evans, and John Rieder’s account of sf history, we learn the subversive force of a mishmash of fantastic works identified as early sf that shape the science fiction genre. In “The. 治政大 further identifies the Colonial Gaze and the Frame of Science Fiction,” Rieder 立 ‧ 國. 學. colonial episteme both in early sf’s ideology of progress and in its means to. overthrow it. His argument provides this thesis a theoretical foundation to analyze. ‧. Westworld’s setting and the effect of the audience’s identification in light of. sit. y. Nat. (post-)colonialism.. n. al. er. io. In the third chapter, I continue to employ Rieder’s theoretical framework to. i n U. v. explore whether Westworld’s temporal setting is limited to, grappling with, and/or. Ch. engchi. struggling against the colonial framework of early science fiction. Since the park is Wild-West themed, the experience of the park entails a kind of time travel. As timetravel is a literary trope that is securely nestled within traditional science fiction, I mainly focus on Westworld’s setting of time which casts the hosts as the archaic other, instead of simply its landscapes and topographies. Besides the setting, I also discuss this (post-)colonial fantasy of time in terms of the hosts’ given artifacts which serve as the props indispensable to this immersive experience, such as the lag technology embodied in revolvers and the narrative/map provided for guests to 5. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(16) explore this land. While the uneven distribution of technology intensifies the class confrontation between the ideological past and future, the map shows how Westworld rethinks the early sf device of lost-race, navigating from colonial acquisition to a postcolonial constitution of capital power. Rieder points out that the limitation of H. G. Wells’ criticism of the colonial relations in his novel The War of the Worlds (1898) lies in the fantasy of time. Wells’ satirical reversal of colonial hierarchy and the technique of double identification initially aim to criticize British colonialism, but the fantasy of time that comes along. 治政 with both techniques is one of the pitfalls of colonialism. In大 Chapter Four, I examine 立 ‧ 國. 學. Westworld’s approach to criticizing the colonial relations in terms of the audience’s identification and the ideology of progress. While the audience of Westworld is. ‧. witness to the fantastical re-presentation of the colonial self, they are also put into the. sit. y. Nat. host’s cognitive position so as to identify with these archaic others. Furthermore,. n. al. er. io. when the power relation loosens and totters in the last scene of the last episode, the. i n U. v. colonial structure in Westworld still remains intact. In addition to reading Westworld. Ch. engchi. within Rieder’s framework, I examine the hosts’ cognitive experience of time, namely the “loop,” in the fifth chapter. After delving into the meaning and function of “el lazo” (which means “the loop” in Spanish), I analyze the loop of Dolores to show how the audience is led to identify with her psychology through the unconventional use of several editing techniques. I structure this thesis with five chapters: I introduce the series and my theoretical formulation in the first chapter. In the second chapter, I begin my investigation with a version of early science fiction history before delving into John Rieder’s discussion of 6. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(17) nascent English science fiction and its ideological context. In the third chapter, with Rieder’s text as a theoretical springboard, I analyze Westworld’s temporality within the colonial framework of early science fiction. I examine Westworld’s anachronism in terms of its settings, technology, and maps. In the fourth chapter, I investigate the audience’ double identification in the series to observe if the colonial structure remains intact. In the fifth chapter, I lay out and go beyond Rieder’s framework, exploring three editing techniques that help locate the audience’s identification with the hosts. To conclude, I establish a general paradigm shift with a brief recount of. 治政大 based upon a metaphysics of artificial-human featured text that brings out a paradigm 立 ‧ 國. 學. essence and mimesis. My purpose is to show how Westworld engages, while also. moving beyond and struggling with, the colonial paradigm of early science fiction.. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 7. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(18) CHAPTER TWO BEFORE SF BECOMES SF. From Copernicus to Wells Before commenting on Westworld the main text, let us first establish a contextual history of science fiction to ground our discussion. This is an easy matter, since the history of science fiction (sf) is a contested territory. While Adam Roberts and John Rieder argue for the “long history” of sf, some critics are more comfortable with a. 政治大 Jules Verne’s 立 voyage extraordinaries and H. G. Wells’. shorter one which begins either with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818),3. ‧ 國. 學. scientific romances,45 or even later with works of Hugo Gernsback who is termed as “The Father of Science Fiction,” 6 just to name a few. While Darko Suvin welcomes. ‧. sf into the canon of literature, 7 Samuel R. Delaney maintains that sf and literature are. y. Nat. io. sit. distinct discourses.8 Each critic of science fiction selects some works that satisfy a. er. partial expectation of the sf genre and constitute a version of sf history according to. al. n. v i n C hIn order to contextualize the significance they see in this genre. the ways in which engchi U. Westworld might unwittingly preserve a colonial structure through its use of setting, I begin my investigation with an introduction to a version of early sf history, one that. 3. See Aldiss, Brian and David Wingrove’s Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986). See Roger Luckhurst’s Science Fiction: A Literary History (2017). 5 According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the term “scientific romance” is not coined by H. G. Wells, but it is “widely applied by reviewers and essayists to the early novels of H. G. Wells, which became the key exemplars of the genre.” In selecting the general titles for his works, Wells “eventually chose to label the collection of his best-known sf novels The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells (omni 1933), thus securing the term’s definitive status.” 6 See Mark Richard Siegel’s Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science Fiction: With Essays on Frank Herbert and Bram Stoker (1988). 7 See Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (1979). 8 See Samuel R. Delany’s “Science Fiction and ‘Literature’—or, The Conscience of the King,” Starboard Wine (2012). 4. 8. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(19) begins with the Copernican revolution. One of the reasons why the history of sf is avidly debated is that “science” denotes different values and meanings in different periods. As Adam Roberts puts it, while sf defines our relationship with science, the boundary between science and its excess (such as myths, magic, fantasy, folktale, religion, pseudoscience, or “mumbo jumbo,” etc.) is constantly migrating (“The Copernican Revolution” 4). Sf is more about “exploring [… and] transgressing” that boundary and less about communicating hard science. Roberts proceeds to identify the Copernican revolution as the catalyst. 治政 for the early sf writer to imagine other world views大 in Copernicus’ light: “It was 立 ‧ 國. 學. Copernicus’s theory that became the locus of opposition to the Church’s domination of knowledge. The Copernican revolution is bound up with the ways in which science. ‧. supplanted religion and myth in the imaginative economy of European thought; and sf. sit. y. Nat. emerges from, and is shaped by, precisely that struggle” (5). Copernicus’ celestial. n. al. er. io. theory is both entrenched in and resisting Christian orthodoxy. This self-questioning. i n U. v. makes Copernicus’ theory the best representation of sf’s struggling and migrating. Ch. engchi. frontiers between scientific territory and the other epistemologies. Furthermore, as the Copernican revolution subverts the then recognized doctrines of the Church, this subversive force and the will to challenge social reality are also the kernel in science fiction’s criticism of colonialism. In “The Colonial Gaze and the Frame of Science Fiction,” John Rieder uses Copernican theory to examine the connection between nascent English science fiction and colonial discourses. Like Roberts, he also recounts the history of sf from the Copernican revolution onward. Rieder establishes the Copernican understanding of 9. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(20) the solar system, which radically dislocates the Earth from the center, as the pivot from whence emerges the marvelous plot of journeying into imaginary places. Especially during the European Age of Discovery, marvelous works such as Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun (1656), and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) often favored the theme of the contact and conflict between European travelers and non-European peoples (2). The significance of this “pre-history” of science fiction lies in that these works propose cultural or civilizational decentering by means. 治政 of satire, parody, and estrangement. However, some of the大 literary techniques applied 立 ‧. ‧ 國. colonialism.. 學. in these early science fictions ironically weaken the narrative’s criticism of. In the nineteenth century, science fiction emerged as a distinct popular genre of. sit. y. Nat. literature that the sf narratives written then are now termed as “sf-type narratives” or. n. al. er. io. “early sf.” The classification of genre named “sf” has not been given until the early. i n U. v. twentieth century by the American pulp magazine. John Rieder clarifies this emerging. Ch. engchi. classification in his introduction of sf history: “What we now call early sf was perhaps nothing more than the loose aggregation of such commonplace devices. No one was consciously writing, publishing, or reading “sf” around 1900” (“Fiction, 1865-1926” 25). However, these early “sf” narratives do make way for science fiction as we now know it, and they can be understood within their historical context. The nineteenth century was the age of the industrial revolution. Arthur B. Evans points out that, for European society, it is an age of economic growth and political changes so rapid and various that this age gave the people a very different picture of their future 10. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(21) (“Nineteen-Century SF” 14). Besides fictions that question the nature of technology, most typically Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), several thematic branches emerge during this period: futuristic fiction and future-catastrophe fictions, utopias of the future, and feminist speculative fiction, etc. The nineteenth century was also the age of the most fervid imperialist competition, and thus another branch of early sf narrative developed as an implicit commentary: the lost world/race fiction. This subgenre of imaginary exploration and appropriation often utilizes or reflects evolutionary theory mainly brought forth by Charles Darwin and formulated into. 治政 social Darwinism by Herbert Spencer. Many of the大 narratives in this lost race fiction 立 ‧ 國. 學. take place in some actual land or in a fantasized world. The most typical settings. include contemporary South America and Africa, such as in Thomas Javier’s The. ‧. Aztec Treasure House (1890), Frank Aubrey’s The Devil-Tree of El Dorado (1897),. sit. y. Nat. and H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain’s series. Making up more than 2,500 items. n. al. er. io. in Everett F. Bleiler’s bibliographical survey, Science-fiction, the Early Years (1990),. i n U. v. this lost-race/world genre also laid the foundation for “the later development of. Ch. engchi. adventure-oriented sf” (Rieder 28) as most of the early sf in the nineteenth century paved way for the later generation of Wells and Verne in the early twentieth century. In the first issue of Amazing Stories, the first American magazine fully devoted to science fiction, Hugo Gernsback identified Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells as the three founders of the genre he called “scientification” (Evans 16), the term Gernsback coined before substituting it with “science fiction” in 1929. Despite Verne and Wells’ distinct stylistic difference in approaching “sf” (Rieder 29), they were both influenced by Poe’s literary technique that achieves verisimilitude in 11. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(22) fantastic writings. Evans quotes Poe’s notes in the story “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal” (1835) and considers it Poe’s manifesto in writing his fantastic stories: “‘the application of scientific principles’ to increase ‘the plausibility of the details of the voyage itself’” (16). Poe’s scientific verisimilitude that tends to accumulation and consistency of story details has quite a similar effect to Mark J. P. Wolf’s world building theory that draws readers to believe momentarily in an author’s imaginary worlds. Verne then inherits Poe’s literary technique of scientific verisimilitude in Verne’ series that we now know as the voyage extraordinaries in. 治政大science the subject which Verne “teach[es] science through fiction,” making hard 立 ‧ 國. 學. instead of his narrative’s context (17). Because most of Verne’s novels are more. “realistic” and “didactic” than fantastic, and also because they fall short of French sf’s. ‧. genre expectation by not setting the narrative in the future,9 Verne’s works are. sit. y. Nat. sometimes not considered to be science fiction. However, as Marc Angenot remarks,. n. al. er. io. Verne establishes “a successful “institutional ‘landing point’ and ideological model’. i n U. v. for the genre”” (17). And no doubt his classic references, like the hot-air balloon or. Ch. engchi. the Nautilus, leave a lasting impression on the audience and movie-goers after more than a century of publication. In contrast to Verne who puts technological details in his stories’ foreground, Wells used Poe’s literary device of scientific verisimilitude as a context or a background for his fantastic stories. Wells transformed the early sf models of narrative provided by Verne and many other pioneers into “a powerful instrument of. 9. According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Verne’s novels were not considered science fiction by French critics since “a significant portion of French sf or the roman scientifique was set in the future.” 12. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(23) speculation and social critique” (22). Evans exemplifies Wells’ use of that literary device as a tool to “facilitate plot progression” and to “help create special effects and reader estrangement” (17). Wells himself explains his writing strategy quite straightforwardly: “So soon as the hypothesis is launched, the whole interest becomes the interest of looking at human feelings and human ways, from the new angle that has been acquired” (21). In other words, Wells’ imaginary worlds serve as a container to explore human emotions and to question social reality. To do this, Wells needs to convince his readers by creating an imaginary world with consistent scientific. 治政大the ingenious themes and rationality. Still, Wells did not single-handedly invent 立 ‧ 國. 學. devices in his fictions by himself. Instead, he took on myriad of tropes and themes that were already popularized by many early sf writers in the nineteenth century. His. ‧. forerunners familiarized a mass readership with stories featuring time travel, mad. sit. y. Nat. scientists, future war, first contact with a lost race or alien lifeform, lunar adventure,. n. al. er. io. and so on. This allowed the public to embrace Well’s work, while also allowing Wells. i n U. v. to adapt previous tropes and topoi so as to draw out a greater aesthetic and sociopolitical depth.. Ch. engchi. To illustrate how Wells inherits and transforms the cliché of sf tropes, John Rieder takes Wells’ first novel The Time Machine (1895) as an example (24). In the preceding decade of Wells’ publication, several fictions use the time-travel device to satirize either contemporary politics or economics. Among many other sf narratives of time-travel are socialist utopias like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 20001887 (1888) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), and Mark Twain’s burlesque of knight and modern politics A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Count 13. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(24) (1889). Rieder contends that not only did Wells invent the marvelous time machine for his protagonist, forsaking the Rip-Van-Winkle stupor that other works too often borrow; Wells also gives a shocking twist to “notions of progress, evolution, and modernity,” ideology prevalent in early science fiction (25). While Grant Allen’s The British Barbarians (1895), published the same year as The Time Machine, exploits this progressionist assumption of social Darwinism, Wells ironizes and attacks this Euro-centric identification of industrialized progress. He pictures a futuristic but subhuman society consisting of human-like Eloi and ape-like Morlocks. Here, the. 治政大 of capitalism. The class struggle between the two species provides an ironic allegory 立 ‧ 國. 學. scientist protagonist observes and theorizes that Eloi, who was once the dominating. upper-class, degenerated into the livestock of Morlocks, who were used to be Eloi’s. ‧. “machine tending former servants” (25). In other words, in the long run of capitalism,. sit. y. Nat. as the working class grows stronger, they take revenge and overthrow the hierarchical. n. al. er. io. structure that oppresses them, literally preying on their former masters as the upper. i n U. v. class once preyed on the labor and productivity of the workers. Wells’ fantastic. Ch. engchi. criticism of ethnocentrism and capitalist class division made him a leading practitioner of early science fiction. However, as science fiction had become a genre which sought to provide social and political commentary on contemporary capitalism, John Rieder also finds the colonial structure persists even in sf’s speculative space of criticism.. Early Science Fiction and Colonial Discourses Before delving into the ideological context of early science fiction, it is crucial to 14. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(25) introduce the ideology of progress and the temporal class confrontation that is nestled in this ideology. According to John Rieder’s “The Colonial Gaze and the Frame of Science Fiction,” one of the defining features of the intersection of early science fiction and colonialism is the anachronism of anthropological difference (6), “an incongruous co-habitation of the same moment by people and artifacts from different times” (5). It is crucial to recognize first this ideology’s nature of fantasy before further explanation. This colonial ideology of temporality conforms to what Slavoj Žižek terms “ideological fantasies,” a set of belief system whom its subjects rationally. 治政大 is Law’” 36). It does not recognize as fallacious but practice it nonetheless (“’Law 立 ‧ 國. 學. pass the test of truth, yet it stems from and shapes the social reality dialectically. This idea of anachronism rests on the ideology of progress in time. To explain science. ‧. fiction and colonialism in terms of a capitalistic narrative of time, Rieder interprets. sit. y. Nat. Fredric Jameson’s theory of progress proposed in The Political Unconscious.. n. al. er. io. “Progress,” Rieder explains, “is the form of social memory demanded by capitalism,. i n U. v. an awareness of qualitative social change that links the past to the present under the. Ch. engchi. narrative logic of growth or development” (29; emphasis added). To function fully in a capital society, its subjects are demanded collectively to imagine the sense of time linearly while the development of the substantial object, namely technology, is taken as the certificate of that linear imagination of time. When the encounter with the other culture happens, this capitalistic logic of time and cultural accumulation aligns the self and the other on the linear timeline in order to decide which side the self belongs to: the past or the future. The binary time zone of past and future is assigned to a different class of people and culture, opposed to each other but existing contradictorily at the 15. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(26) same time. Naoki Sakai also confirms that social relationships, especially the social distinction between two subjects in contrast, are represented not only in the guise of spatial mapping (such as the mapping of the West and the Rest) but also, more importantly, in the guise of temporal direction whose dichotomist nature of future and past is actually ambiguous and aporetic (“The West—A Dialogic Prescription or Proscription?”). Therefore, the cultural topography of the globe is demarcated not only by geography, but also by a fantasy of time. Moreover, in science fiction, class confrontation is often reified as the uneven. 治政大in opposition (29), often distribution of technology and knowledge among two classes 立 ‧ 國. 學. resulting in the technologically superior threatening to subjugate the inferior. Rieder contends that the “key element linking colonial ideology to science fiction’s. ‧. fascination with new technology is the new technology’s scarcity” (32). This scarcity. sit. y. Nat. and thus uneven distribution of technology often decides the social relations in. n. al. er. io. science fiction, as its redistribution also threatens to destabilize and re-deploy. i n U. v. political, economic, and military power (32). The competition over scarce technology,. Ch. engchi. like the arms race, develops a class struggle that differentiates technologically superior from the inferior. It is worth noting that this class struggle is imagined in terms not only of technology, but also of time, so that science fiction often pits two temporal vectors of past and future against each other. This fantasy of time also often involves a colonial paradigm in which “the indigenous, primitive other’s present is the colonizer’s own past” (32). This ideology of progress has pervaded European colonial culture since it justifies imperial invasions, conquering, and even elimination of socalled savage cultures. To explain, Rieder quotes George W. Stocking Jr., an historian 16. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(27) of anthropology, who wrote that Victorian anthropologists took the Tasmanians as “living representatives of the early Stone Age” whose “extinction was simply a matter of … placing the Tasmanians back into the dead prehistoric world where they belonged” (5). When social prejudice is at work, scientific rationalism is enlisted to uphold national racism. And by the same logic of this fantasy of time, what lies at the core of the fervid arms race is the identical anxiety of being reduced to “an archaism and anomaly” to the present (33) by the opponent’s progress in technology. Early science fiction often adopts a satirical reversal of narrative viewpoint, a. 治政 common literary technique that turns the hierarchy 大 upside down or inside out (4). 立 ‧ 國. 學. Similar to Washington Irving’s burlesques historiography in his A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), this technique is meant to satirize political. ‧. institution, cultural norms, and religious practice. H. G. Wells also applies this. sit. y. Nat. satirical reversal of narrative viewpoint to question and unsettle the colonial episteme. n. al. er. io. in his novel The War of the Worlds (1898). However, Rieder observes that the. i n U. v. colonial structure “remains intact” (7) despite the satirical reversal, especially when. Ch. engchi. the ideology of anachronism is in the picture. In The War of the Worlds, Wells reverses the perspective of the colonized and the colonizer by consciously constructing a parallel between the now cliché plot of Martian invasion of Earth with the British genocide of the Tasmanians to show the absurd rationality and cruelty of the British colonizer. While his English readers are led to identify with the colonized British Earthians, readers are also asked to reflect upon the imperial history of the British. The historical colonizer becomes the fictional colonized. Nevertheless, by establishing the Earthians as the primitives and the Martians as the future and thus 17. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(28) supreme human without criticizing such setting, Wells repeats a colonial paradigm in this fictional structure of power and knowledge. As the Martian colonizer projects its gaze upon their object of domination, the Earthians are not only redistributed as the exotic other via the satirical reversal of viewpoint; from the viewpoint of colonizer’s cognitive temporality, they are also perceived as the archaic other. The satirical reversal may invert the subject and object of colonization to arouse English readers’ self-sympathy, but it does not demolish the overall power structure or the fantasy of anachronism.. 治政大 structure of class Although such a satirical reversal may preserve the colonial 立 ‧ 國. 學. confrontation, Rieder points out this reversal also brings about the reader’s double. identification. While the “colonizers imagine themselves as the colonized” (5), the. ‧. English readers could also see their historically invading self in the ethnocentric. sit. y. Nat. Martians armed “with their hypertrophied brains and prosthetic machines” (5). This. n. al. er. io. technique creates a double identification or, in Rieder’s words, “[a swing] between the. i n U. v. poles of subject and object […] potentially questioning and recoding the discursive. Ch. engchi. framework of scientific truth, moral certitude, and cultural hegemony” (10). The narrative function of double identification is therefore a “re-reading of oneself,” a critical self-consciousness that emerges after the Self projects its gaze upon the other to find its own doppelgänger looking back and becoming an uncanny version of this self. Besides the double identification, I would add that the process of satirical reversal also resembles the kind of cognitive estrangement that Darko Suvin theorizes in “Estrangement and Cognition.” Suvin contends that science fiction (SF) “takes off 18. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(29) from a fictional (literary) hypothesis and develops it with totalizing (scientific) rigor [....in order to confront] a set normative system [...] with a point of view or look implying a new set of norms” (25). In other words, cognitive estrangement “implies not only a reflecting of but also on reality. It implies a creative approach tending toward a dynamic transformation rather than toward a static mirroring of the author’s environment” (29). “[Combining] a belief in the potentialities of reason with methodical doubt in the most significant cases” (29), this critical SF methodology arouses the reader’s or audience’s question and doubt toward their social reality. To. 治政 summarize the technique of cognitive estrangement,大 it can be understood as “[lies] 立 ‧ 國. 學. that [tell] a deeper truth,” as Dr. Ford notes metafictionally in “The Bicameral Mind” of Westworld.. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 19. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(30) CHAPTER THREE ANACHRONISM IN WESTWORLD. Anachronistic Settings In this chapter, I work within John Rieder’s framework to examine Westworld’s construction of the relationship of power between human and hosts. As the second chapter shows, Rieder points out how Wells’ criticism of colonialism is ineffectual since Wells retains the ideology of progress. The technique of the satirical reversal of narrative viewpoint is meant to satirize colonialism. However, this technique still. 治政大constituent of depends upon the ideology of progress which is itself a vital 立 ‧ 國. 學. colonialism. With this limitation of Wells’ The War of the Worlds in mind, I question if Westworld, the series that sides with the colonized hosts, exhibits a similar. ‧. ideological limitation. This chapter examines Westworld’s setting and props that are. sit. y. Nat. key constituents of the series’ world-building of the colonizer’s fantasy of time.. n. al. er. io. According to HBO’s website, Westworld takes place “at the intersection of the. i n U. v. near future and the reimagined past.” In other words, the park reifies the fantasy of the. Ch. engchi. anachronistic contact zone10 where the frontier hosts and the futuristic humans meet and clash. Although the immersive experience of the guest in Westworld is less an authentic paradigm of “time travel” than a live action role-playing game (LARP), the series situates the robot hosts within an anachronistic setting and thus indicates that they belong to a primitive stage of human civilization. As Rieder makes clear, “‘absorption in overseas wilderness represented a form of time travel’ for the British. 10 “Contact zone” is a phrase coined by Mary Louise Pratt. Pratt introduced this concept in her “Arts of the Contact Zone” (1991) as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (2). 20. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(31) explorer and, more to the point, for the reading public who seized upon the primitive, abundant, unzoned spaces described in the narratives of exploration as a veritable fiefdom, calling new worlds into being to redress balance of the old” (6). 11 In other words, the crux of the colonial significance lies not in a literal transport through time as in The Time Machine (1895). Instead, as Johannes Fabian also confirms, the crux of that fantasy is in the colonizers’ denial of the real contemporaneity of the so-called “savages” and their culture (Time and the Other). A colonial paradigm thereby imagines the counterpart to the colonizer as existing in a relatively primitive and thus. 治政 inferior stage of human civilization. In this respect,大 the theme park in Westworld 立 ‧ 國. 學. entails the fantasized anachronistic contact zone where, according to Rieder’s. definition of the anachronism of anthropological difference, the “incongruous co-. ‧. habitation of the same moment by people and artifacts from different times” (5). The. sit. y. Nat. human overseers and the hosts may be contemporaries in actual fact, but the humans. n. al. er. io. fundamentally reject the hosts’ intrinsic contemporaneity as equals by placing them. i n U. v. within a past setting and programming them to function only within the limitations –. Ch. engchi. spatial and cognitive – of that period.. Certainly, Westworld involves an imaginary voyage into otherworldliness similar to the narratives of Wells and Jules Verne, 12 but it is important to emphasize that the Wild West theme park is an adventurous world that recreates the frontier culture of a colonial United States. The difference between Westworld and the colonial fantasy of. 11. This is a quote John Rieder takes from Robert Stafford’s essay on “Scientific Exploration and Empire” in the Oxford History of the British Empire. The page number indicates the page Rieder quotes Stafford’s words. 12 About the location of Westworld that is still mysterious in season one, fan theories are developed that the theme park could be on particular celestial objects or deep under the water; while some are highly persuasive, some are without valid argument. 21. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(32) time in Victorian society and early science fiction is that, by singling out the hosts as the archaic other instead of the exotic other, Westworld reifies “the common assumption that the relation of the colonizing societies to the colonized ones is that of the developed, modern present to its own undeveloped, primitive past” (30; emphasis added). In short, as the park fantastically embodies the early history of the American Old West, the hosts are coded to personify people from the nineteenth century. Indeed, this colonial paradigm in which the hosts are cast as the primitive, archaic other is quickly reinforced by the “Man in Black” played by Ed Harris. While. 治政大he nonetheless his ulterior motive is to find the deeper meaning of the game, 立 ‧ 國. 學. articulates the reality of why consumers pay for this immersive experience. They “just come here to get their rocks off, shoot a couple Indians” (“The Original”; emphasis. ‧. added), he clarifies. Although some hosts are made to be stereotypically. sit. y. Nat. “bloodthirsty” Indians, they are what their name, “the Ghost Nation,” suggests: so far,. n. al. er. io. they barely have any significance for the plot besides serving simply as a device for. i n U. v. the protagonists to feel gravely threatened. While the historical Indians in Westworld. Ch. engchi. are the “ghosted” band, the hosts are all generally taken as the aboriginals on this land. This temporal generalization exemplified in the Man in Black’s words reveals that the guests (or at least himself) from that futuristic world deny the hosts’ contemporaneity and see them anachronistically as the primitive stage of American civilization, just another kind of “Indian.” Another example of Westworld casting the hosts as the archaic other parallels the British reading public’s view of the American frontier in the late nineteenth century. In the second episode “Chestnut,” Maeve the brothel madam in Sweetwater 22. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(33) tries to convince an uptight guest that this world is built for new-comers like him: Whenever I wanted something, I could hear that voice telling me to stop, to be careful, to leave most of my life unlived. You know the only place that voice left me alone? In my dreams. I was free. I could be as good or as bad as I felt like being. And if I wanted something, I could just reach out and take it. But then I would wake up and the voice would start all over again. So I ran away. Crossed the shining sea. And when I finally set foot back on solid ground, the first thing I heard was that goddamn voice. […] It said [….] this is the new. 治政大the fuck you want. (“Chestnut”) world. And in this world, you can be whoever 立 ‧ 國. 學. The original function of Maeve’s dialogue is to convince the guest to take a prostitute upstairs, but she also articulates her programmed role as a (European) immigrant. ‧. coming to America, the new, unexplored world. While the Sweetwater townsmen. sit. y. Nat. consider the people of the Ghost Nation “savage,” “bloodthirsty,” and “superstitious,”. n. al. er. io. which are the stereotypical embodiments of the past, the humans from “the near. i n U. v. future” also see the hosts as the archaic other from the nineteenth century when. Ch. engchi. America is a frontier full of what are for us the archetypes of the West: cowboys, outlaws, rancher’s daughters, and sassy prostitutes. Like the Victorian reading public who experienced a cognitive form of time travel in reading of far-off places, the human guest experiences immersively the colonial fantasy of legitimate (sexual, in this case) exploration and acquisition in the park.. 23. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(34) Technology and Maps: Distribution and Ownership of Life and Death Westworld casts the hosts as the archaic other from the Wild West period. In this fantasy of time, props like guns and maps constitute an important part of this worldbuilding. While guns and maps are established elements in a colonial setting, such as in lost race fiction, Westworld’s use of these elements in a capitalist dystopian context shows the text’s rethinking and criticism of these colonial relations. As the advanced technology enables the corporate body to deal out hosts’ life and death, from the Westworld guest’s reaction to the maps and its adventure narratives, one can also see. 治政 the company’s total ownership of the life cycle of the hosts.大 In this sub-section, I first 立 ‧ 國. 學. analyze how the scarcity of the advanced technology casts the hosts as the archaic. other, and then I show how in Westworld’s capitalist dystopia the life and death of the. ‧. subaltern bodies are always already owned.. sit. y. Nat. The uneven distribution of technology is a vital condition to maintain the fantasy. n. al. er. io. of time. The party that loses the technological contest also loses the power to. i n U. v. distribute life and death both to others and to themselves. In this subsection featuring. Ch. engchi. technology, I introduce briefly the Westworld props of guns which are the main repressive apparatus that maintains the hosts’ archaism whether they are humans’ rivals or their overthrowers. As this uneven distribution of technology often leads to an uneven distribution of life and death, I then show how in Westworld the death of the class registered as the ideological past is often neutralized or euphemized in the grand narrative authored by the class of the ideological future. As Rieder argues, the uneven distribution of technology and knowledge more often than not results in the class confrontation between two temporalities, the past 24. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(35) and the future. The corporate body stabilizes the social order of the park by enforcing the hosts’ disadvantage in lag weapons and keeping their technological knowledge at a minimum. Rieder contends that the logic of colonizer is to reduce the other party to a helpless “archaism and anomaly […] unable to inhabit the present fully” with knowledge of the latest technology (32-33). Hosts’ weapon, such as revolvers, carbines, shotguns, and the Gatling gun, are props to create an immersive historical ambiance that replicates a Wild West setting, while also maintaining the hosts’ technological helplessness. According to Aeden from the official Westworld website,13. 治政大no serious risk of injury or death. “[h]umans can be shot, but you are under 立 ‧ 國. 學. [.…] The park only has one rule: You cannot hurt another human, but the hosts are fair game.” By guaranteeing that guests cannot be shot or harmed in the park,. ‧. Westworld conforms to the technology’s scarcity. Deadly and powerful weapons, like. sit. y. Nat. Beretta Px4 Storm Sub-Compact, Beretta U22 Neos, and the FN P90TR submachine. n. al. er. io. guns,14 are exclusively doled out to the human characters. As the Man in Black says. i n U. v. to his prey, the hosts “are here to be the loser” (“The Original”) in this elaborately. Ch. engchi. planned game. Some hosts are even coded without the permission to touch or use weapons according to the possible need of guests, such as the rancher’s daughter Dolores who is said to be “something easy” (The Stray) for the guests. Therefore, hosts’ guns are props that have the look of authentic weapons of that period, but they. 13. As W Magazine’s well-put introduction, the official Westworld website is a simulation of “a travel. bookings website” to Westworld and “a treasure trove of information” while Aeden is “an extremely helpful Siri-esque bot” for visitors to ask questions until the inquisitor triggers its existential crisis. 14. For further details, please see Internet Movie Firearms Database - Guns in Movies, TV and Video Games, especially the item “Westworld - Season 1.” The website: www.imfdb.org/wiki/Westworld__Season_1. 25. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(36) simultaneously ensure the hosts’ helplessness to change their social reality and to determine their life and death. The cost of this uneven distribution of technology is also an uneven distribution of life and death. As the party with the better weapon wins, they gain the ideological title of “future,” the power over the bodies turned subaltern, and also the authorship of the grand historical narrative. And in this grand narrative authored by the powerful, the death of the class registered as the ideological past is often neutralized or euphemized into less critical terms. Like the British genocide of the Tasmanians, as. 治政 those aboriginals were ruled as the embodiment of the past大 due to their primitive tools 立 ‧ 國. 學. and artifacts, the Tasmanians had no choice but to be placed into a colonial narrative. in which they belonged to “the dead prehistoric world” (5).15 In Westworld, the hosts. ‧. who are rendered archaic and anomalous suffer repetitive death and the predicament. sit. y. Nat. of social death in the science fictional context of Westworld. Dr. Ford’s remark. n. al. er. io. suggests the dynamism between this science fictional work and the audience’s. i n U. v. environment, one that is not only full of Shakespeare quotations but also filled with. Ch. engchi. the powerlessness of ones’ own body and life. Ford thereby says: “‘The coward dies a thousand deaths. The valiant taste of death but once.’ Of course, Shakespeare never met a man quite like you, Teddy. You’ve died at least a thousand times. And yet, it doesn’t dull your courage” (“The Stray”). If the subaltern others could die for an imperial empire, the free market rationality of this capitalist dystopia kills the hosts a thousand times just for mere amusement. Moreover, in the grand narrative authored by the powerful, the death of these 15. Rieder quotes George W. Stocking Jr’s Victorian Anthropology (1991), the tenth chapter “The Extinction of Paleolithic Man.” The original page number in Stocking’s book are p. 282-83. 26. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(37) subaltern bodies is euphemized and turned into a phenomenon or an event less harsh and less morally reproaching to those in power. As the mass slaughter of the Tasmanians is justified by their archaic social time determined by a Western-centric notion of civilizational development, the “death” of the hosts is also translated into the language of labor market economics. There are two forms of hosts’ “death” in the first season: the first form of death happens when a host is shot, injured, or killed before being sent to the Livestock Management for surgical repair. This host is then flagged as “inactive” in the staff log before sending it back to the field again. The example of. 治政大of death. The second form of Teddy’s “a thousand deaths” belongs to this first form 立 ‧ 國. 學. death is when a host undergoes a lobotomy16 before being sent to Cold Storage. Once a host is detected to have highly aberrant behavior or irreversibly corrupted code, the. ‧. protocol is to “decommission” or “retire” this labor force into Cold Storage after the. sit. y. Nat. surgery, such as the examples of old Peter Abernathy and old Walter in the episode. n. al. er. io. “The Original.” For the hosts, every death experience leaves tremendous horror and. i n U. v. symptoms of trauma, such as the nightmares that are said to be “real bad”. Ch. engchi. (“Chestnut”). After their bodies are overused or beyond repair, they have no choice over their bodies but to be shut down in incarceration. While the “inactive” status simply denotes that a worker is temporarily “not working” from the capital perspective, the status of “decommission” and “retirement” implies the capital’s cost of losing a unit of its workforce. During the process of translating the exploitation of. 16. A lobotomy is a neurosurgical treatment popularized in the first half of the twentieth century among Western countries. The purpose of lobotomy is to reduce mental disorder. In this sense, the Delos Inc. seems to take the hosts with aberrant behavior pattern as patients of mental illness. The Cold Storage the hosts are sent to after a lobotomy also in a way reflects the patients’ predicament of incarceration and social death when they fall ill. 27. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(38) subaltern bodies’ life and death into euphemism, the cost of the emotional and physical labor afforded only by the hosts themselves is largely unseen or taken as the economic burden of the corporate body in the grand narrative of capitalism. With the uneven distribution of technology, Westworld brings to the table the political and ethical issue of the subaltern’ life and death legitimized in terms of marketing. However, at the epilogue of Westworld’s first season, we see how the classic narrative of robot rebellion plays out. The re-distribution of technology is also a re-distribution of life and death.. 治政大constitute a subtler part Besides technology, maps and encrypted documents also 立 ‧ 國. 學. of the setting. As the advanced guns deal out life and death, maps and adventure. narratives offered by Westworld also imply the company’s total ownership of its. ‧. commodities, including the hosts’ subaltern bodies, the stories of their life, and their. sit. y. Nat. recurrent death(s). It is in this post-colonial fantasy of capitalism that Westworld. n. al. er. io. modifies the genre of lost-race fiction, a subgenre that constitutes a fair share of. i n U. v. science fictional works. In his Chapter Two “Fantasies of Appropriation: Lost Races. Ch. engchi. and Discovered Wealth,” Rieder points out that, according to Everett F. Bleiler’s bibliographic survey of early sf, Early Years: Science Fiction (1990), early science fiction consists of a large body of lost-race fiction, a subgenre that once had its “transient efflorescence” (34). In the lost-race fiction model, modes of acquisition and imperial-colonial relations are the defining themes in this subgenre of adventure fiction. For instance, a male modern scientist discovers an anachronistic lost race along with his opportunities to acquire sex, wealth, power, and knowledge often through settling a local civil war in order to become a hero who deserves reward (36). 28. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(39) Not only is the map or document that leads to the hidden treasure the key that legitimates “the means and the right to claim the hidden treasure as [his] own” (23); sometimes, the scientist’s acquisition of knowledge is accessible only to him, leaving the lost people not only “savage” but also ignorant of their own history and surroundings, such as in Thomas A. Janvier’s The Aztec Treasure House (1890). The prop of the map and the act of decoding then become an apparatus that further legitimizes a cognitive appropriation “by which the scientist takes ownership of the [cultural other’s] narrative and of history itself” (53). In other words, the maps and its. 治政 adventure narratives are intimately intertwined with大 the ownership of the land, the 立 ‧ 國. 學. hidden treasure, history itself, and the cultural others.. Westworld modifies this concept of ownership and acquisition in a capitalist. ‧. dystopia that produces and sells lives and stories. In the second episode, not long after. sit. y. Nat. their arrival by a train, Logan a regular guest tells William a rookie that every host is. n. al. er. io. “all a come on” who “got some big adventure that they want to sell you on.” An old. i n U. v. man (a host) proposes a treasure hunt to William, saying: “As a sign of my humble. Ch. engchi. appreciation, I’d like to offer you an opportunity of a lifetime. Across the river and beyond the savage lands there is a treasure. I have in my possession a map” (“Chestnut”). Logan turns down “this opportunity of a lifetime” with a brief, cruel gesture and leaves the Treasure-Island-like adventure for a night in the brothel. What prompts this swift decision? Why does he forsake “the means and the right to claim the hidden treasure” that is so common in lost-race fiction? Is this minor plot-twist perhaps a cynical turning down of the adventure formula? Logan’s refusal to the map and the adventurous story signals Westworld’s 29. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(40) rethinking of acquisition and appropriation in early science fiction, shifting the colonial framework into a post-colonial constitution of capital power. There is a simple logic to his refusal. His refusal is simply because hosts who promote adventure narratives are always just within a few steps. Instead of “an opportunity of a lifetime” as claimed, adventurers are actually “not going anywhere” (“Chestnut”). Logan knows that they do not need to “buy it” since they already own all of them. Instead of “earning” it by investing physical labor or settling a local disorder with superior intelligence as in the paradigm of the lost race fiction, they simply buy a ticket to this. 治政 land, the narratives, and the life and death of these archaic 大 others. 立 ‧ 國. 學. Besides frustrating the adventure formula, Westworld’s shift of framework also. cancels the romanticist element in the adventure narrative of the lost race fiction and. ‧. discards the justifying plot to acquire perhaps military power, tribal knowledge, or. sit. y. Nat. sexual experience with a tribal princess in the colonial framework of the early science. n. al. er. io. fiction. Since Westworld’s guests already own the world they buy, the romanticism in. i n U. v. the lost race fiction is replaced by a free market rationality. The hardship to enter the. Ch. engchi. lost land designates the exceptionalness of the entry and the modern scientist’s return to Nature and origins. However, since to enter the park requires only an expensive fee, there is no need for the guests to suffer “torturous passages [….] by which the explorers enter the lost land [that] resemble[s] the trauma of birth and rejuvenation projected by the romance revival” (51). Moreover, Westworld also casts off the plots that justify the scientist hero’s modes of “reward.” Instead of playing the heroic savior to receive modes of acquisition as reward, the Westworld guests are free to “[go] straight evil” (“The Original”) without any justification. Contrary to what Rieder 30. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(41) identifies as the principal motives of lost-race fiction, in Westworld there is no need to “[separate] the adventurers themselves from the project of colonialism” (46) by replacing colonial penetration with pure friendship between the white and the lost world which becomes a private attraction reserved for the white VIP. And there is certainly no need to “establish an alliance with a good native, who looks and thinks the way they [the white adventurers] do, against her local enemies” (42), a manipulative act in lost race fiction that turns “invasion and conquest into alliance” (41). Instead, the rich guests conveniently take an exquisitely retro train to the park. If. 治政大 land” in the sense of lost-race the land is translated into a feminine body as the “virgin 立 ‧ 國. 學. fiction, one could imagine the kind of sexual violence the train filled with “rich assholes” (“The Original”) represents.. ‧. Westworld and the adventure narrative in the traditional lost race motif both. sit. y. Nat. manifest the interest of the Western self. The difference between Westworld and the. n. al. er. io. lost race fiction is that, while the latter makes allowance for the exploiters, the former. i n U. v. lays their vice out very straightforwardly. Despite that the fact that the maps and the. Ch. engchi. adventure narratives are closely related in both lost race fiction and Westworld, it has to be stated clearly that the maps and the narratives are valued differently in the two texts. And the reason of this difference is the justification of this appropriation. While the lost race fiction sugarcoats the appropriation with justification, Westworld’s guests already buy everything before they enter the land. In the lost race fiction, maps or encrypted documents play an important role. They help the scientist to locate the tribe which seems to be leading a way of life that belongs to the past. Maps guide the colonizers to engage in various modes of acquisition, and the scientist’s decrypting 31. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.

(42) process also justifies the scientist’s ownership of the cultural other’s narrative and history. Westworld, on the other hand, produces and sells the hosts’ narratives, the stories of their lives and deaths. Like the wanted posters for bandits, the maps in Westworld are props that provide guests with a choice of adventurous narratives. Unlike the colonizers in lost race fiction, the Westworld guests do not need direction or justification to rape and plunder. A ticket in hand is their access to the resources of this world. In Westworld’s dystopian fantasy of capitalism, the rich-white male, who is. 治政 similarly the subject in the lost-race fiction, rises above the大 colonial narrative and 立 ‧ 國. 學. secures justification for imperial-colonial appropriations. In this capitalist dystopian context, this subject acquires the agency to refuse this colonial narrative of adventure,. ‧. and even the agency to create his own narratives, such as the Man in Black’s. sit. y. Nat. indomitable pursuit of the Maze. This cancellation of the justification denotes that. n. al. er. io. Westworld, despite its anachronistic settings of colonialism, shifts from the early. i n U. v. science fictional framework to a radical post-colonial framework that capital. Ch. engchi. constitutes power. It is in this dystopian world of capitalism that Westworld exposes and criticizes post-colonial relationships of power.. 32. DOI:10.6814/THE.NCCU.ENG.005.2019.A09.