Post by Melifeather on Jun 18, 2018 20:19:46 GMT
Hello again! Welcome to another recap/analysis of Westworld, episode 9 Vanishing Point. One of the basic lessons in drawing is to establish a vanishing point in order to successfully create perspective in a composition. Episode 9's perspective is focused primarily on William, our Michelangelo, and his real-self. We begin with a memory of William at a charity event. His wife says, “Everyone is here for you. What could possibly compare?” While she’s talking he glances at a server. At first glance she looks like Dolores. At second glance, she’s only someone that resembles her. I sense a metaphor here - that the Man in Black isn’t who he seems. Added to that is something Juliet said to him later…she called him Billy, which she knows he hates, and asked, “Are you real?” He may look like William, but he barely resembles the man his wife thought he was. Juliet says, “You’re a fucking virus. You came into this house and you consumed it from the inside out.”
At the charity event, William goes to have a nightcap and runs into Robert Ford. William says, “What’s Oz doing without it’s wizard?” Ford refers mysteriously to their respective projects, and then asks retorically, “What is a person, but a collection of choices? Creation is learning about it’s knowledge.” Self-knowledge is what drew William to “the project”, and the creation of his self-portrait - the Man in Black - and it’s not flattering. William also commented that Delos promised to stay out of Ford’s stories, and in return Ford is to stay out of The Valley. The encounter ends with Ford giving William the data/circuit board holding William’s profile, which is about the size of a credit card.
For weeks we’ve been hearing about this valley beyond, this glory - but the only other thing we learn about it is that it’s also called The Forge. Bernard tells Elsie that the Forge is where you can find all the guests laid bare in code on a vast server like the CR4-DL, only much bigger. Being that Ford appeared in virtual reality to Bernard, and told him not to trust Elsie right before he said it, it has me questioning whether Bernard was telling the whole truth here.
When he returns to his home, he hides his profile data board in a book, then walks over to the bed to talk to his wife. She asks him to tell her one true thing. He finally confesses after he believed her to be passed out drunk. He tells her she’s right, that he belongs to another world, that he always has. He refers to his real self as being tainted with a tiny, dark stain. He says she was the only one who saw through his facade, which she confirms afterward by finding and viewing his “profile” which William thought he had hidden in the novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Read into that what you will. The data file labeled William’s personality as a rare “Category 47B”. Juliet gains access and views all of William’s “violent delights” that seem to promise violent endings, not just for her with her resulting suicide, but for her daughter and for William himself.
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement is a large fresco that covers the entire altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. It depicts the second coming of Christ on Judgement Day, with the saved ascending to paradise, and the damned to hell. The depiction was highly controversial, because hundreds of figures were painted in the nude. Due to the outrage, Michelangelo was pressured into painting gowns over every figure. He got his revenge though by inserting himself into the scene in three places, with the most stiking being found within the depiction of St Bartholomew as an old man holding his own flayed skin. The face on the flayed skin bears a striking resemblence to Michelangelo. One of his critics, Pietro Aretino, was depicted as Minos - judge of the underworld - as having the ears of a donkey and a snake biting his genitals.
I’m still mulling over the implications between Michelangelo’s unflattering self-portraits within the Last Judgement compared to William’s ugly self-portrait of the Man in Black. There’s the obvious parallel being “the last judgement”, and the unflattering depictions the artist painted of himself. Ford tells William that his self portrait, the Man in Black, is not flattering. I think this may be confirmation that the Man in Black is a host with William’s consciousness inside. His ugly self killed his own daughter. What further hell will he descend to? Ford said something about man as being “between the gods and the beast”. This is actually a Biblical reference. 1 Timothy 2:5 says, For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (King James Version) What is Ford trying to say? Was this a commentary on William? Was William trying to mediate a path for man, acting as a god, but damning himself to hell?
Ford also came to Maeve in virtual reality, who he claimed was his favorite child. Afterward we see the onscreen message: Unlocking core permissions.
We learn through an exchange between father and daughter that the hats the guests wear have scanners built into them that record all aspects of each guest’s “being”; from the person they present to the real world, to the hidden real-self expressed in the fantasy world. Emily tells the Man in Black that she knows about his secret project, namely Immortality, and that it’s her feeling that the ends DO justify the means. First she says she wants in, but seems to change course when she threatens to expose him. William is so immersed in Ford’s game that he becomes convinced she isn’t his real daughter, but he learns the terrible truth that she was real after he finds his profile circuit board that Ford gave him in Emily’s dead hand. The greater tragedy being that William now knows that his wife and daughter had seen what he had been doing in the park all those years.
At the charity event, William goes to have a nightcap and runs into Robert Ford. William says, “What’s Oz doing without it’s wizard?” Ford refers mysteriously to their respective projects, and then asks retorically, “What is a person, but a collection of choices? Creation is learning about it’s knowledge.” Self-knowledge is what drew William to “the project”, and the creation of his self-portrait - the Man in Black - and it’s not flattering. William also commented that Delos promised to stay out of Ford’s stories, and in return Ford is to stay out of The Valley. The encounter ends with Ford giving William the data/circuit board holding William’s profile, which is about the size of a credit card.
For weeks we’ve been hearing about this valley beyond, this glory - but the only other thing we learn about it is that it’s also called The Forge. Bernard tells Elsie that the Forge is where you can find all the guests laid bare in code on a vast server like the CR4-DL, only much bigger. Being that Ford appeared in virtual reality to Bernard, and told him not to trust Elsie right before he said it, it has me questioning whether Bernard was telling the whole truth here.
When he returns to his home, he hides his profile data board in a book, then walks over to the bed to talk to his wife. She asks him to tell her one true thing. He finally confesses after he believed her to be passed out drunk. He tells her she’s right, that he belongs to another world, that he always has. He refers to his real self as being tainted with a tiny, dark stain. He says she was the only one who saw through his facade, which she confirms afterward by finding and viewing his “profile” which William thought he had hidden in the novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. Read into that what you will. The data file labeled William’s personality as a rare “Category 47B”. Juliet gains access and views all of William’s “violent delights” that seem to promise violent endings, not just for her with her resulting suicide, but for her daughter and for William himself.
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement is a large fresco that covers the entire altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. It depicts the second coming of Christ on Judgement Day, with the saved ascending to paradise, and the damned to hell. The depiction was highly controversial, because hundreds of figures were painted in the nude. Due to the outrage, Michelangelo was pressured into painting gowns over every figure. He got his revenge though by inserting himself into the scene in three places, with the most stiking being found within the depiction of St Bartholomew as an old man holding his own flayed skin. The face on the flayed skin bears a striking resemblence to Michelangelo. One of his critics, Pietro Aretino, was depicted as Minos - judge of the underworld - as having the ears of a donkey and a snake biting his genitals.
I’m still mulling over the implications between Michelangelo’s unflattering self-portraits within the Last Judgement compared to William’s ugly self-portrait of the Man in Black. There’s the obvious parallel being “the last judgement”, and the unflattering depictions the artist painted of himself. Ford tells William that his self portrait, the Man in Black, is not flattering. I think this may be confirmation that the Man in Black is a host with William’s consciousness inside. His ugly self killed his own daughter. What further hell will he descend to? Ford said something about man as being “between the gods and the beast”. This is actually a Biblical reference. 1 Timothy 2:5 says, For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (King James Version) What is Ford trying to say? Was this a commentary on William? Was William trying to mediate a path for man, acting as a god, but damning himself to hell?
Ford also came to Maeve in virtual reality, who he claimed was his favorite child. Afterward we see the onscreen message: Unlocking core permissions.
We learn through an exchange between father and daughter that the hats the guests wear have scanners built into them that record all aspects of each guest’s “being”; from the person they present to the real world, to the hidden real-self expressed in the fantasy world. Emily tells the Man in Black that she knows about his secret project, namely Immortality, and that it’s her feeling that the ends DO justify the means. First she says she wants in, but seems to change course when she threatens to expose him. William is so immersed in Ford’s game that he becomes convinced she isn’t his real daughter, but he learns the terrible truth that she was real after he finds his profile circuit board that Ford gave him in Emily’s dead hand. The greater tragedy being that William now knows that his wife and daughter had seen what he had been doing in the park all those years.