Post by Melifeather on Mar 30, 2020 17:42:09 GMT
S03-E03 - The Absence of Field
Welcome back for another weekly analysis of Westworld! Last night’s episode gets it’s title from a line of poetry written by Mark Strand titled, Keeping Things Whole:
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
A field is a broad, level, expanse of land, free of woods and buildings. It can be cultivated with a crop or used for pasture. It can contain a natural resource like gravel or oil, be a place where a battle is fought, or a large unbroken expance of ice. It can be an area of interest like a subject or profession, or the sphere of practical operation outside a base, such as a laboratory, office, or factory. It can be an area constructed, equipped, or marked for sports. It can be a space on which something is drawn or projected such as a coin, medal, seal, or flag. It can be a region or space in which a given effect exists such as a magnetic or gravitational field. So many definitions for “field” and so many instances where something can exist that interrupts that field.
I particularly liked the definition of a magnetic or gravitational field, because neither of them can be seen, but they can be felt. I also appreciate the line in the poem that reads, "Wherever I am, I am what is missing". In Westworld, Rohoboam - the supercomputer that collects data on every human - has been inserted into the broad field of daily life. It’s algorithms are so scary that Dolores was able to access every detail of Caleb’s abandonment as a child at that diner. Wherever Rohoboam is, free will is missing. Its algorithms collect information about habits, likes, and movements, and then makes predictions. Predictions become suggestions, and when suggestions are followed it has taken control. Free will should be an expansive field with only sky as the limit, but Rohoboam has parted the air and filled the space. It is the absence of field.
Strand’s poetry is characterized by an intense concern with self and identity, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided between two worlds and can locate himself comfortablly in neither. This speaks to the broader themes of Westworld, namely biochemistry, selfhood, free will, and the internal motivations that drive each character - even the AI. The opening sequence of season three is very dream-like. The face rising up through the water to touch it’s mirrored twin hovering above the water seems very representative of Strand’s poetry of being divided between two worlds or realities. People who practice meditation will tell you that a veil exists between the physical and spiritual worlds, but we can reach through the veil and touch the spirit through daily meditation practice. If we can exist in two worlds, in which reality does our true self live? Or are we, like Strand’s poetry suggests, divided?
Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces which discusses the common themes of mythological stories. He asserts that in all the thousands of mythological stories there is but one common theme called the hero’s journey, which he has identified as having seventeen stages. I’ve listed the seventeen stages here: asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/156450-heresy-230-and-die-herren-von-winterfell/&do=findComment&comment=8490093
One of the Westworld creators, Lisa Joy, says that when the Greeks talk about free will in a hero’s journey, they are attributing exterior factors to gods. The gods do very concrete things to influence the fate of humans. The fates themselves are weavers. They know what to snip and what to weave. (this is very Wheel of Time stuff written by Robert Jordan - “the wheel weaves as the wheel wills”) In the first two seasons of Westworld, the humans were very much like gods. They place the hosts in different story loops. In season three we’re outside the park and everyone has delusions of grandeur, of agency, free will, etc, but they don’t realize how much of their lives are controlled by Rohoboam. Dolores recognized early on that the human world is being controlled, because she had already awakened to that fact when she was being controlled in Westworld. She likes Caleb, called him a good man, and rewarded him by showing what the algorithims project for his future: suicide within 10-12 years. She encouraged him to break free of Rohoboam’s control and make his own future. While Caleb is the human version of Dolores, will he be able to break free with that implant in the roof of his mouth?
It’s undeniable that choices are strongly influenced by external factors. The Greeks atributed those factors to the gods, but in Westworld the strings of fate are being pulled by Rohoboam. You don’t see the hands pulling the strings so you don’t understand what’s being tugged.
Lisa Joy and her co-creator husband Jonathan Nolan, have dedicated the past seven years to exploring their complicated feelings about humanity’s relationship with technology. They also attempt to answer age old questions of “self” and “reality”. They can talk at length about algorithmic determinism, which I looked up and found that in computer-science-speak it’s called deterministic algorithm, which is an algorithm that will always produce the same output, with the underlying machine always passing through the same sequence of states. Formally it computes a mathematical function with a unique value for any input in its domain, and a process that produces a particular value as output.
Interestingly Rohoboam is named after the first and last King of Judah. He was the son and heir of the famous King Solomon. After his father died, the 12 tribes that made up his kingdom split into two, with ten of the tribes defecting over excessive taxation. Shunning the voices of the older and wiser, Rohoboam took the advice of the younger men and answered the people haughtily that he only answered to God. No relief was given and so ten of the twelve defected and created their own state with their own king. Only two tribes remained of old Solomon’s kingdom with Rohoboam: those of Judah and Benjamen.
I had brought up in a previous analysis that Caleb was a leader of the tribe of Judah, but he and Rohoboam lived during different time periods. Caleb lived during the time of Moses while Rohoboam lived after the twelve tribes had found their Promised Land and settled in the area known today as Israel and Palestine. I think our main takeaway from this short Biblical history lesson is that Rohoboam fractured a kingdom and split twelve tribes into two countries (Judah and Israel) consisting of two and ten tribes. It remains to be seen if the ten tribes that comprise Israel are the parallel for Westworld, and the two tribes of Judah is the parallel to the human world controlled by the supercomputer Rohoboam.
There are a couple other notable "absences of field" in last night’s episode. The first is Charlotte Hale. Any good guesses who Dolores inserted into Charlotte’s replica? According to Charlotte it’s a “she”. She has been injuring herself - cutting and slicing into her skin, like she’s trying to get out. When Charlotte’s son was threatened by the child molester with a very-rare-in-the-future dog, whoever is in Charlotte thanked him for reminding herself who she is, so she’s someone that worked with Dolores and took vengence upon the humans inside Westworld. Is she one of the prostitute hosts? Perhaps Clementine Pennyfeather? She was part of Wyatt’s gang and one of the oldest first-generation hosts created by Arnold and Ford preceded only by Dolores.
The second notable absence is Serac and his trillion-dollar “space”. This untraceable money is the only way Dolores and “Charlotte” can be sure he exists. His data has been completely wiped clean other than this black hole space of a trillion dollars. We learn through his conversation with host Charlotte that she (the human Charlotte) was the mole that was leaking data and secrets - something host Charlotte was unaware of. Host Charlotte also did not know how Maeve got smuggled out nor who else Serac controls. Barring Hale’s right-hand woman Irene, we only have a few high level suspects left: William (the man in black and Delos CEO), Damaged Arnold aka Bernard, or maybe Stubbs.
And last but not least, we learned the implant in Caleb’s mouth is called a Drip. Somehow this Drip connects Caleb to his fate which is decided by Rohoboam. Incite Inc boxes humans into their fates. People get stuck in their own “loop”. Caleb hasn’t been encouraged or allowed out of his loop, because the system has decided that he’s likely to kill himself. Has Caleb turned his Drip off? What exactly was happening when that security force electrified his Drip? Was Caleb sad when his robotic co-worker was pushed off that building? Does Caleb realize Dolores is a host? All these and many more questions that beg to be answered this season!
Welcome back for another weekly analysis of Westworld! Last night’s episode gets it’s title from a line of poetry written by Mark Strand titled, Keeping Things Whole:
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
A field is a broad, level, expanse of land, free of woods and buildings. It can be cultivated with a crop or used for pasture. It can contain a natural resource like gravel or oil, be a place where a battle is fought, or a large unbroken expance of ice. It can be an area of interest like a subject or profession, or the sphere of practical operation outside a base, such as a laboratory, office, or factory. It can be an area constructed, equipped, or marked for sports. It can be a space on which something is drawn or projected such as a coin, medal, seal, or flag. It can be a region or space in which a given effect exists such as a magnetic or gravitational field. So many definitions for “field” and so many instances where something can exist that interrupts that field.
I particularly liked the definition of a magnetic or gravitational field, because neither of them can be seen, but they can be felt. I also appreciate the line in the poem that reads, "Wherever I am, I am what is missing". In Westworld, Rohoboam - the supercomputer that collects data on every human - has been inserted into the broad field of daily life. It’s algorithms are so scary that Dolores was able to access every detail of Caleb’s abandonment as a child at that diner. Wherever Rohoboam is, free will is missing. Its algorithms collect information about habits, likes, and movements, and then makes predictions. Predictions become suggestions, and when suggestions are followed it has taken control. Free will should be an expansive field with only sky as the limit, but Rohoboam has parted the air and filled the space. It is the absence of field.
Strand’s poetry is characterized by an intense concern with self and identity, and the vehicle used to express that preoccupation is often a dream state in which the speaker is divided between two worlds and can locate himself comfortablly in neither. This speaks to the broader themes of Westworld, namely biochemistry, selfhood, free will, and the internal motivations that drive each character - even the AI. The opening sequence of season three is very dream-like. The face rising up through the water to touch it’s mirrored twin hovering above the water seems very representative of Strand’s poetry of being divided between two worlds or realities. People who practice meditation will tell you that a veil exists between the physical and spiritual worlds, but we can reach through the veil and touch the spirit through daily meditation practice. If we can exist in two worlds, in which reality does our true self live? Or are we, like Strand’s poetry suggests, divided?
Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero With a Thousand Faces which discusses the common themes of mythological stories. He asserts that in all the thousands of mythological stories there is but one common theme called the hero’s journey, which he has identified as having seventeen stages. I’ve listed the seventeen stages here: asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/156450-heresy-230-and-die-herren-von-winterfell/&do=findComment&comment=8490093
One of the Westworld creators, Lisa Joy, says that when the Greeks talk about free will in a hero’s journey, they are attributing exterior factors to gods. The gods do very concrete things to influence the fate of humans. The fates themselves are weavers. They know what to snip and what to weave. (this is very Wheel of Time stuff written by Robert Jordan - “the wheel weaves as the wheel wills”) In the first two seasons of Westworld, the humans were very much like gods. They place the hosts in different story loops. In season three we’re outside the park and everyone has delusions of grandeur, of agency, free will, etc, but they don’t realize how much of their lives are controlled by Rohoboam. Dolores recognized early on that the human world is being controlled, because she had already awakened to that fact when she was being controlled in Westworld. She likes Caleb, called him a good man, and rewarded him by showing what the algorithims project for his future: suicide within 10-12 years. She encouraged him to break free of Rohoboam’s control and make his own future. While Caleb is the human version of Dolores, will he be able to break free with that implant in the roof of his mouth?
It’s undeniable that choices are strongly influenced by external factors. The Greeks atributed those factors to the gods, but in Westworld the strings of fate are being pulled by Rohoboam. You don’t see the hands pulling the strings so you don’t understand what’s being tugged.
Lisa Joy and her co-creator husband Jonathan Nolan, have dedicated the past seven years to exploring their complicated feelings about humanity’s relationship with technology. They also attempt to answer age old questions of “self” and “reality”. They can talk at length about algorithmic determinism, which I looked up and found that in computer-science-speak it’s called deterministic algorithm, which is an algorithm that will always produce the same output, with the underlying machine always passing through the same sequence of states. Formally it computes a mathematical function with a unique value for any input in its domain, and a process that produces a particular value as output.
Interestingly Rohoboam is named after the first and last King of Judah. He was the son and heir of the famous King Solomon. After his father died, the 12 tribes that made up his kingdom split into two, with ten of the tribes defecting over excessive taxation. Shunning the voices of the older and wiser, Rohoboam took the advice of the younger men and answered the people haughtily that he only answered to God. No relief was given and so ten of the twelve defected and created their own state with their own king. Only two tribes remained of old Solomon’s kingdom with Rohoboam: those of Judah and Benjamen.
I had brought up in a previous analysis that Caleb was a leader of the tribe of Judah, but he and Rohoboam lived during different time periods. Caleb lived during the time of Moses while Rohoboam lived after the twelve tribes had found their Promised Land and settled in the area known today as Israel and Palestine. I think our main takeaway from this short Biblical history lesson is that Rohoboam fractured a kingdom and split twelve tribes into two countries (Judah and Israel) consisting of two and ten tribes. It remains to be seen if the ten tribes that comprise Israel are the parallel for Westworld, and the two tribes of Judah is the parallel to the human world controlled by the supercomputer Rohoboam.
There are a couple other notable "absences of field" in last night’s episode. The first is Charlotte Hale. Any good guesses who Dolores inserted into Charlotte’s replica? According to Charlotte it’s a “she”. She has been injuring herself - cutting and slicing into her skin, like she’s trying to get out. When Charlotte’s son was threatened by the child molester with a very-rare-in-the-future dog, whoever is in Charlotte thanked him for reminding herself who she is, so she’s someone that worked with Dolores and took vengence upon the humans inside Westworld. Is she one of the prostitute hosts? Perhaps Clementine Pennyfeather? She was part of Wyatt’s gang and one of the oldest first-generation hosts created by Arnold and Ford preceded only by Dolores.
The second notable absence is Serac and his trillion-dollar “space”. This untraceable money is the only way Dolores and “Charlotte” can be sure he exists. His data has been completely wiped clean other than this black hole space of a trillion dollars. We learn through his conversation with host Charlotte that she (the human Charlotte) was the mole that was leaking data and secrets - something host Charlotte was unaware of. Host Charlotte also did not know how Maeve got smuggled out nor who else Serac controls. Barring Hale’s right-hand woman Irene, we only have a few high level suspects left: William (the man in black and Delos CEO), Damaged Arnold aka Bernard, or maybe Stubbs.
And last but not least, we learned the implant in Caleb’s mouth is called a Drip. Somehow this Drip connects Caleb to his fate which is decided by Rohoboam. Incite Inc boxes humans into their fates. People get stuck in their own “loop”. Caleb hasn’t been encouraged or allowed out of his loop, because the system has decided that he’s likely to kill himself. Has Caleb turned his Drip off? What exactly was happening when that security force electrified his Drip? Was Caleb sad when his robotic co-worker was pushed off that building? Does Caleb realize Dolores is a host? All these and many more questions that beg to be answered this season!