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Dec. 5th, 2016 01:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionWestworld
Julie said after the twist was revealed that she'd read that online weeks ago. Was expecting her jaw to drop! Ah, well...
Hector's clearly Ford's parody of Harris: black hat, thinks he knows it all, will never find what he seeks. Not surprising that Ford shows up in person to savor Harris' equivalent of Hector's empty safe moment. Clearly Harris had come to represent to Ford everything wrong with people. Given who he's a mockup of, Charlotte's tying Hector to a bed for violent sex indicates mucho daddy issues. Though I don't think the finale actually confirmed she was his daughter, did it?
Not sure if we could quite say Ford broke his staff, there, so maybe The Tempest wasn't much of a template after all. William's certainly no Ferdinand. And they reversed the season ending I'd been expecting, where Dolores refuses to kill a person (though they teased this with the William scene) and Maeve does not - others killed for her, but her hands are technically clean. Re. the latter, I think we were all pretty worried about Felix throughout the episode. But Felix is probably what made the difference, just like William proved to for Dolores; Dolores now assumes people are all like that, Maeve now knows they aren't. Returning for her child is probably not part of Ford's program for her, either (Maeve's the real Nature Gnostic, it turns out, Dolores the Dark - and I wonder if the scene where Hector can't follow her intentionally underlines that switch? And is even echoed by Teddy's inability to join Dolores' revolt?). And since the photograph turned out to be an accident, Abernathy's awakening may prove that something other than suffering can lead to consciousness. It triggered a lot of Arnold-derived info, like the violent ends quote, but was not itself grief of the sort that woke Maeve. And I think Elsie mentioned at some point that his glitching wasn't like those of other hosts, as though something inside him was already ready to assess this disturbing news. Bernard mentions that a handful of hosts had awakened over the years, so maybe he'd been one of them.
Was wondering if we were to think of The Coward Robert Ford at one point, but he was at last absolved of having killed Arnold, and even Bernard, really, since he'd programmed Maeve's whole escape attempt, the route of which led her to Bernard's body with Felix in tow.
Curious that they didn't clarify a) what put Harris onto the maze quest to start with, which may be identical with b) whatever happened between him and Dolores in the barn, nor c) what Abernathy whispered to her. They also didn't resolve d) what happened with the security guy or e) Elsie's fate. Did we ever see what made Arnold interested in Dolores originally? What her first sign of awakening had been? I assume we're to think Dolores and Ford mistaken that the park awakens humans to their true nature as killers, the hosts to their existence as sufferers, or at least that that's invariably the case.
Dolores' speech about how beauty is a lure, how we're our own prisoners ... I assume it was entirely scripted by Ford, given the elaborate staging of its delivery, thus announces his own thoughts. He's talking about people, not hosts. He feels we're given over entirely to violence and betrayal because of our genetic programming, and temporarily kills Bernard to prove that to both of them, but if you think about it he is in fact free of his programming by this point and does not truly betray Bernard (which Bernard has probably picked up on, meaning he'll likely oppose Dolores' movement next season). He disproves his own position (though I suppose you could argue that he admits human beings to be capable of good but thinks that faculty is too weak to matter). He's tricky enough that one wonders whether he intended to disprove it ... though it's likelier he does believe human beings can be awakened to morality, as compared to consciousness, by suffering such as Charlie had caused in Arnold and Arnold in himself. Given some of the things he said earlier in the season, maybe he just assumes that human beings had entered a post-suffering phase of historical existence, thus an immoral one (which sounds like yet another contamination of the Nolanverse by No Country for Old Men).
I hadn't heard the argument that Michelangelo basically beat Descartes to the cogito. Certainly a stirring possibility.
Still wondering how much of consciousness-as-inwardness and consciousness-as-talking-oneself-into-change is based on Bloom. Bringing in Michelangelo (isn't the original Invention of the Human cover another detail from the Sistine?), who died in Shakespeare's birth year, does strengthen the sense that this is a Renaissance matter, and that that second birth was our first worth the name - which is pretty much Crowley's core myth, too. That consciousness of consciousness has brought about terrible violence and unhappiness as well as artistic and psychological depth, another contention of Bloom's/Van den berg's, seems to be something the show agrees with (Arnold taught Dolores to love painting, Ford stresses in the Michelangelo scene).
If they really are commenting on Western civilization perhaps they can do something Eastworld-y with Samurai World as a counterpoint.
Julie said after the twist was revealed that she'd read that online weeks ago. Was expecting her jaw to drop! Ah, well...
Hector's clearly Ford's parody of Harris: black hat, thinks he knows it all, will never find what he seeks. Not surprising that Ford shows up in person to savor Harris' equivalent of Hector's empty safe moment. Clearly Harris had come to represent to Ford everything wrong with people. Given who he's a mockup of, Charlotte's tying Hector to a bed for violent sex indicates mucho daddy issues. Though I don't think the finale actually confirmed she was his daughter, did it?
Not sure if we could quite say Ford broke his staff, there, so maybe The Tempest wasn't much of a template after all. William's certainly no Ferdinand. And they reversed the season ending I'd been expecting, where Dolores refuses to kill a person (though they teased this with the William scene) and Maeve does not - others killed for her, but her hands are technically clean. Re. the latter, I think we were all pretty worried about Felix throughout the episode. But Felix is probably what made the difference, just like William proved to for Dolores; Dolores now assumes people are all like that, Maeve now knows they aren't. Returning for her child is probably not part of Ford's program for her, either (Maeve's the real Nature Gnostic, it turns out, Dolores the Dark - and I wonder if the scene where Hector can't follow her intentionally underlines that switch? And is even echoed by Teddy's inability to join Dolores' revolt?). And since the photograph turned out to be an accident, Abernathy's awakening may prove that something other than suffering can lead to consciousness. It triggered a lot of Arnold-derived info, like the violent ends quote, but was not itself grief of the sort that woke Maeve. And I think Elsie mentioned at some point that his glitching wasn't like those of other hosts, as though something inside him was already ready to assess this disturbing news. Bernard mentions that a handful of hosts had awakened over the years, so maybe he'd been one of them.
Was wondering if we were to think of The Coward Robert Ford at one point, but he was at last absolved of having killed Arnold, and even Bernard, really, since he'd programmed Maeve's whole escape attempt, the route of which led her to Bernard's body with Felix in tow.
Curious that they didn't clarify a) what put Harris onto the maze quest to start with, which may be identical with b) whatever happened between him and Dolores in the barn, nor c) what Abernathy whispered to her. They also didn't resolve d) what happened with the security guy or e) Elsie's fate. Did we ever see what made Arnold interested in Dolores originally? What her first sign of awakening had been? I assume we're to think Dolores and Ford mistaken that the park awakens humans to their true nature as killers, the hosts to their existence as sufferers, or at least that that's invariably the case.
Dolores' speech about how beauty is a lure, how we're our own prisoners ... I assume it was entirely scripted by Ford, given the elaborate staging of its delivery, thus announces his own thoughts. He's talking about people, not hosts. He feels we're given over entirely to violence and betrayal because of our genetic programming, and temporarily kills Bernard to prove that to both of them, but if you think about it he is in fact free of his programming by this point and does not truly betray Bernard (which Bernard has probably picked up on, meaning he'll likely oppose Dolores' movement next season). He disproves his own position (though I suppose you could argue that he admits human beings to be capable of good but thinks that faculty is too weak to matter). He's tricky enough that one wonders whether he intended to disprove it ... though it's likelier he does believe human beings can be awakened to morality, as compared to consciousness, by suffering such as Charlie had caused in Arnold and Arnold in himself. Given some of the things he said earlier in the season, maybe he just assumes that human beings had entered a post-suffering phase of historical existence, thus an immoral one (which sounds like yet another contamination of the Nolanverse by No Country for Old Men).
I hadn't heard the argument that Michelangelo basically beat Descartes to the cogito. Certainly a stirring possibility.
Still wondering how much of consciousness-as-inwardness and consciousness-as-talking-oneself-into-change is based on Bloom. Bringing in Michelangelo (isn't the original Invention of the Human cover another detail from the Sistine?), who died in Shakespeare's birth year, does strengthen the sense that this is a Renaissance matter, and that that second birth was our first worth the name - which is pretty much Crowley's core myth, too. That consciousness of consciousness has brought about terrible violence and unhappiness as well as artistic and psychological depth, another contention of Bloom's/Van den berg's, seems to be something the show agrees with (Arnold taught Dolores to love painting, Ford stresses in the Michelangelo scene).
If they really are commenting on Western civilization perhaps they can do something Eastworld-y with Samurai World as a counterpoint.
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Date: 2016-12-07 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-07 02:22 pm (UTC)