In 2016, we were both researching the role of technology within very different academic contexts. Alex was working on gendered forms of technology specific to modernism such as those in radio, cinema and advertising, whilst Antonia was working on a new surveillance studies series, researching biodata and the role of the lens. How we both came to be interested in HBOâs Westworld is perhaps less surprising than these disparate research areas may first suggest. Despite our various academic specialisms, we have often found that our interests in culture frequently collide. We both possessed a fascination with all things X Files, an affection for Supernatural and a weakness for Stranger Things. Gradually, our mutual obsession with Westworld began to surface at informal gatheringsâat birthdays, drinks, celebrationsâand then more formally, at meetings, in staff offices and over coffee. Whilst we both work within the discipline of English Literature, we share a (not-so-secret) fascination with the interaction between literature and its broader culture. What began as a weekly conversation about the showâs references to American culture and history, literary intertextuality and posthumanism, quickly turned into a passion project, culminating in this collectionâs creation. To use the words of the Man in Black (played by Ed Harris) âthereâs a deeper level to this gameâ (âThe Originalâ, Season 1, Episode 1), and it is our intention that the chapters collected in this volume disclose these buried levels.
Robots, Androids and Cyborgs
We write this introduction at a point in human history when the robotic and the human are frequently entangled and even intimate. Recent television documentaries such as Sex Robots and Us (BBC Three, 2018), My Sex Robot (Netflix, 2010) and The Sex Robots Are Coming (Channel 4, 2017) speak of our increasing gadgetisation and normalisation of the robotic. Yet, there is nothing new in our reliance upon the robotic, as the Turing Test (1950), Manfred Clynesâ cyborg (or cybernetic organism) (1956) and Ted Nelsonâs coining of the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 (Nelson 1965), indicate. The robotic, certainly from a western context, extends much further back than our recent technological advances would suggest, as far, perhaps, as the mythical automata of Ancient Greece and Rome, or the Golem of Jewish folklore. The Tin Woodman of L. Frank Baumâs The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and Nikola Teslaâs radio controlled electric boat (dubbed the âtelautomatonâ) further suggest the presence of the robotic in the early part of the twentieth century, whilst the term ârobotâ was first used in a play by Karel Äapek in 1920. Robots, it would appear, are part of our much wider conception of culture, and are not only present in our history, but actively appear to have shaped it. Certainly todayâs incarnation of the âsex robotâ bears little resemblance to the robotic arms and industrial robots of the mid-century, and yet, there has always been, as Kate Devlin argues, a gendered element in our creation and use of the robotic. Devlinâs Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots (2018) charts the ârise of the machineâ and focuses on the role that technology (specifically, robotic technology) plays in our contemporary moment. For our purposes here, it is useful to adopt her definition of ârobotâ and âautomataâ where ârobot has its roots in an eastern European term for servitude. It comes from the Czech robotnik meaning âforced workerâ and from robata, which describes drudgeryâ (51). A distinction between ârobotâ and the more general terms of technology is an important one to make before reading the following chapters, for much of what Westworld does is question our comprehension of the distinction between the robotic and the human. When considered under Devlinâs terms, there appears to be little separating the human worker from the robotic. Further, Devlinâs definition of automata is worth bearing in mind, where âautomata are machines that give the appearance of being self-powered and self-driven working independently⊠in fact, they are mechanistic, performing repetitive pre-set actions that might seem self-selected but are merely automatedâ (46). What becomes clear here is the manner in which Westworldâs robotics are distinct from automataâthey are embodied and capable of performing in ways which exceed pre-set actions.
It is also worth considering the difference between ârobotâ and âandroidâ, where the OED definition of android is âa robot with human appearanceâ. Given the human-like appearance of many of the key figures discussed here (such as Dolores Abernathy played by Evan Rachel Wood and Maeve Millay, played by Thandie Newton), this collection standardises the use of âandroidâ rather than ârobotâ when referring to the Hosts of the park. It is also worth considering a final term that is used in this collectionâthe cyborg. According to Donna Harawayâs âA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Centuryâ (1991) the cyborg is distinct from android and robot in as much as it rejects the boundaries between human/animal and human/machine; rather âthe cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family⊠the cyborg would not recognise the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dustâ (1991, 151). For Haraway then, the cyborg cannot easily be defined as either organic or mechanical, but rather represents a âhybrid of machine and organismâ (1991, 149)âpart robotic and part organic. Whilst many of the chapters contained in this collection speak of the Hosts as android, some make reference to possible cyborgisation of human visitors at the hands of technology, and hence, to Harawayâs definition and its explicitly political inflection. For Haraway, crucially, the cyborg deconstructs not only the distinction between human and machine but also those related dualisms that are central to the construction of the white, male humanist subject as the norm. Thus, a figuration such as the cyborg undoes those dualisms âsystematic to the logics of and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals â in short, domination of all constituted as othersâ (177). In showing a way out of âthe maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselvesâ (181) Harawayâs cyborg chimes with the android narratives of Westworld that evince a consistent interest in challenging, not only the stereotypes of gender in its women Hosts, but with its ethnically diverse HostsâMaeve, Hector Escaton (played by Rodrigo Santoro), Akecheta (played by Zahn McClarnon), Miyamoto Musashi (played by Hiroyuki Sanada), Akane (played by Rinko Kiuchi), and so onâconfronting the reductive racialisation of othered bodies.
Returning to Devlinâs sex robots (or ârobosexologyâ as she terms it), she refers to the normalisation of the robotic in our contemporary moment as producing robots who are âsituatedâ (45) where âthey are part of the everyday environment that rapidly changes around them, and they can respond to, and detect and act on those changes. Their presence in that physical environment means they have a body, through which they experience new informationâ (45). Such integration of the robotic, has, according to her, resulted in an embodiment which unsurprisingly leads to the production of sex robots. Ridley Scottâs film version of Philip K. Dickâs Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Blade Runner (1982) features imagined embodiments of the female robotic form for pleasure. Pris (played by Darryl Hannah) is a Nexus 6 replicant whose operational function is that of a âbasic pleasure model,â whilst the other renegade female Nexus-6 Zhora (played by Joanna Cassidy) works as an exotic dancer. As replicants or organic androids, they are embodied in an attractive female form whose role is to entertain and play the part of object/slave for paying customers. Alicia Vikanderâs...