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“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” – A Philosophical

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“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” – A
Philosophical Enquiry to HBO’s Westworld (2016)

Hausarbeit
im Rahmen des Masterseminars
“How plastic and artificial life has become” – Robots, Androids, Cyborgs”
Wintersemester 2016/17

Natali Panic-Cidic
Fachsemester: 2
Studiengang: MA Comparative Studies
Kontakt: Natali.Panic-Cidic@hhu.de
 1. INTRODUCTION 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2. WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT IS HYPERREAL? 6

2.1 Reality in Westworld (2016) 7

2.2 Authenticity in Westworld (2016) 10

2.2.1 The Awry Look 10
2.2.2 Inaccessible Objects 10
2.2.3 The Source of Desire 11
2.2.4 The Conditions of Ethics 13
2.2 Hyperreality 14

3. A LIFE BETWEEN SIMULATION AND REALITY 17

3.1 The Bicameral Mind – Theory of Consciousness? 18

3.2 Simulacrum in Westworld (2016) 21

4. WHAT IS LIFE? 23

5. CONCLUSION: “THE MAZE WASN’T MEANT FOR 24

YOU”

Works Cited 25
 3

1. Introduction

1. Robots should not be designed as weapons, except for national security

reasons. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where
such orders would conflict with the First Law.
2. Robots should be designed and operated to comply with existing law,
including privacy.
3. Robots are products: as with other products, they should be designed to be
safe and secure.
4. Robots are manufactured artefacts: the illusion of emotions and intent should
not be used to exploit vulnerable users.
5. It should be possible to find out who is responsible for any robot. (EPSRC)

Those laws, published in 2011 by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of Great
Britain, are inspired by Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” introduced in
Runaround and elaborated on in iRobot. Indeed, both works belong to the genre of science
fiction that deals with future and technology in a very imaginative way – a future that is
far away from the present as only possible. However, if only Asimov would have known
how close his imagination is to become reality.
We live in a world that is dominated by technology, where people are already
turned into half-cyborgs by pacemakers, diverse prostheses or where robots are almost
at our doorsteps bringing in the groceries. It is the world where science fiction stories
partially become reality and especially in the case of robots needs to consider some ethical
implications. As EPSRC implies, we create the robots and therefore we are responsible
for them. Therefore, the rules are for us. Those rules and many near future science fiction
works reflect the issues the society deals with. We are confronted with the questions of
how do we define reality and our world? How do we treat our society fairly so no one
feels ignored? How do we define a fair life? What is life? What science fiction works show
is that we need an “Other” to define what is right for us – to create binary oppositions
because this is how our language and perception work. The HBO series Westworld (2016)
offers us an interesting insight into the world where robots are almost human and what
happens when they gain consciousness. The viewer is confronted with the question of
otherness and if it is necessary to make a distinction between reality vs. fiction, between
human vs. robot as long as it allows a “good life”. Or is our world just full of simulacra?
 4

So, go on, better hide your wife and kids, the Others are coming!
This paper examines the construction of reality, hyperreality and the concept of
simulacra. It mainly focuses on the employment of those concepts in contemporary
science fiction series Westworld. In particular on their characters in the light of ideas of
theorists such as Slavoj Žižek (The Lacanian Real), Umberto Eco (Hyperreality) and Jean
Baudrillard (Simulacra and Simulation). The purpose of this paper is to provide a basic
notion of those theories in connection with contemporary science fiction genre, while
also looking at how the relationship between humans and non-humans is conceptualized.
I will proceed as follows. First, I will introduce the three orders of reality, which
are the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real, as a theory that promises to be a significant
aid in explicating the concepts of reality and authenticity in Westworld. Here, I will take a
closer look at the human character William/Man in Black and why he starts to question
his reality. As it will become clear, the reality is connected with sentience and sentience
is what distinguishes fake from real. However, authenticity requires four principles in
order to be applied to reality. Those principles are an “awry” look, inaccessibility of the
object, the source of desire, and conditions of ethics.
The next concept I will turn to is that of Hyperreality. Again, I will first introduce
the concept and apply it to the series. Then I will show how the series suggests that a
differentiation between who is human and who not is not necessary. This concept is
closely connected with the last one.
The last concept is that of Simulacra and Simulation. Ultimately, the three orders
of simulacra argue for a total simulacrum of the world. The reality does not exist anymore
because everything that makes up the reality are only simulations without an original.
Nevertheless, Westworld may appear to be a world of a total simulacrum, yet, there is
clear evidence that argues against that. Here, I will evaluate Dolores Abernathy’s (an
almost sentient android) viewpoint to her fictional world and her ability to question the
reality that voids the argument of total simulacrum.
At the end, I will give a brief outlook what the findings reveal about our society
and why further research seems to be very promising for academic observers.
In the conclusion, I will shortly take stock and summarize the overall results of
my analysis.
 5

Image 1a: Three Orders of Reality after Žižek

Image 1b: Summary of Three Orders of Reality

 6

2. What is Real and What is Hyperreal?

The way we perceive reality differs from the Lacanian Real that Slavoj Žižek, a
Slovenian contemporary psychoanalytic philosopher, elaborates on in Looking Awry: An
Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. The first chapter of his book deals in a
very abstract manner with the reality and to what extent is it actually “real”. That idea of
reality or rather three realities is based on Jacques Lacan’s studies that are revised and
redefined by Žižek. This basis is the point of departure for this paper and therefore, the
three orders of reality – the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real – are briefly
introduced. This short detour is necessary to tackle the reality and authenticity in
Westworld.
Defining those three terms, or the Lacanian triad is anything but straightforward.
This is because the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, as Lacan writes about it, have
changed throughout his writing. The same can be said for Žižek. He did not change the
core idea of those terms but he seems to define them through different concepts that not
always seem to have anything in common. Therefore, for the sake of clarity, the three
registers of reality are defined by their basic concepts as introduced by Žižek and Lacan
without going into too many psychoanalytical details. As a visual guide please consider
Image 1a and 1b.
The Imaginary reality is the awareness of ourselves in relation to the reality. It is
a way how we perceive reality or social interactions without any external influences, such
as the influence of the symbolic reality with its preconceptualized principles. In Žižek’s
terms, the imaginary consists of “virtual images” that structure our reality. Those
imaginary concepts/images though depend on the symbolic reality.
The Symbolic reality refers to norms, laws, rituals of cultures and societies that
are entwined with language (Johnson, n.pag). It is a sphere of signifiers where all the pre-
existing norms etc. are collected that structure through language and images a symbolic
reality – in the same way as the imaginary reality does. The imaginary then works as a
body that is used to communicate the symbolic signifiers. However, this mutual
integration is one of the reasons why we cannot experience the Real but only the reality
of the Real: “incidentally, when taken together as mutually integrated, [the imaginary and
the symbolic] constitute the field of “reality” contrasted with the Real” (Johnson, n.pag)
There is also another reason why the Real is always going to be unreachable.
The Real can certainly be explained in many ways but the most effective
 7

description is provided by Lacan’s student himself where he tells a thrilling story about a
mother and a pond:

In “The Pond,” a recently divorced mother with a small son moves to a country
house with a deep, dark pond in the backyard. This pond, out of which strange
roots sprout, exerts a strange attraction on her son. One morning the mother
finds her son drowned, entangled in its roots; desperate, she calls the garden
service. Their men arrive and spread all around the pond a poison designed to kill
the weeds. This does not seem to work: the toots grow even stronger, until, finally,
the mother herself tackles the task, cutting and sawing the roots with an obsessive
determination. They now appear to be alive, to be reacting to her. The more she
attacks them, the more she gets caught in their web. Eventually she stops resisting
and yields to their embrace, recognizing in their power of attraction the call of
her dead son (Žižek, 133).
The pond is something that is placed before the Real and originates from the Real in
combination with the symbolic and the imaginary. It is something quasi-alive that
“attracts and repels us” (Žižek, 133). We could go so far and say that it is sublime, due to
its ability of fascination and terror. The attraction or desire is caused by the Real (objet
petit a). The Real, then, is inaccessible due to desire that steers us away from the Real.
The pond cannot be obsessively approached or properly resisted because, since the three
registers of reality are interconnected, everything would fall apart and end in madness.
Ultimately, Žižek calls this deep dark pond “jouissance” (enjoyment). The three registers
of reality keep us away from this dark abyss that would set up a path for madness.
To summarize, the imaginary assumes certain images provided by the real. Those
images that are assumed to be reality provide a body for the symbolic that uses certain
signifiers. The signifiers are attracted by the jouissance, feel a desire provided by the real
and so a fantasy space is created that approaches the real with desire and fantasy. Clearly,
the three registers of reality depend on each other.
Now that the three registers of reality are introduced, the abstract ideas discussed
from this chapter on are going to be much more comprehensible. This chapter
approaches the idea of reality in the series Westworld.

2.1 Reality in Westworld (HBO, 2016)

Westworld is an amusement park populated by androids, called hosts. The

visitors, called the newcomers, may do whatever they want in this highly realistic
recreation of the Wild West and do anything to the hosts. The hosts (Image 2) look very
human-like and are able, unlike usual androids, to express feelings and react to their
 8

surroundings. Dr. Ford, co-creator of the park and Park Director, has improved the code
of his hosts over a time-span of 30 years where almost every minute detail corresponds
to a human being, except that the hosts are not really conscious. They are only performing
within their programmed narrative. However, after a new update by Dr. Ford, called the
reveries, the hosts are able to gain consciousness. Of course, this is what “the
management” does not want for their hosts but what Dr. Ford wants. Without consulting
the management, Dr. Ford releases a “virus” that helps some hosts to break their
programming. Instead of directly helping the hosts, Dr. Ford deliberately wants the hosts
to suffer because what makes someone authentic is not much the outer appearance but
the ability to feel. This is what the series suggest that we are real when we suffer.
The suffering seems to be the catalyst for the character William to question the
reality of Westworld and take on a quest to find authenticity. In short, when William’s
ability to project fantasies through the fantasy space (provided by the Real) is disrupted,
his sense of what is real vanishes and he, therefore, suffers: “Then, last year my wife took
the wrong pills, fell asleep in the bath. Tragic accident. 30 years of marriage, vanished.
How do you say it, like a deep and distant dream” (Westworld, 46:48-49:08, Episode 8).
This is one of the accounts of Žižek’s (Lacanian) Real that disrupts fantasies: “One of
the ways that the Real returns then, is in the form of traumatic intrusions that disrupt the
balance of everyday life” (Wood, 68). The reason for this disruptive ability is because the
reality as we know it “rests on a certain ‘repression’, on overlooking the real of our desire.
This social reality is then nothing but a fragile, symbolic cobweb that can at any moment
be torn aside by an intrusion of the real” (Žižek, 17). So when William’s perfect life falls
apart, when his fantasy space gets disrupted by the Real, or when one of the three registers
loses its connection, he has no “place in which [he is] able to articulate [his] desires”
(Žižek, 9). Therefore, he goes back into Westworld to find such a fantasy place that he
experienced during his first visits with the host Dolores. He realizes that this world as
the hosts are ‘fake’ and tries to make it ‘real’ by finding the Maze. 1 William then searches
for authenticity.

1 The maze is a test of empathy and represents consciousness for the hosts. Each of the hosts has a maze

tattooed inside their skull that gives them a chance to develop consciousness. Dolores Abernathy is, by the end
of the season 1, the only host that has completely gained consciousness by solving the puzzle – by finding the
maze.
 9

Image 2: The host Dolores and William search for the maze.

Image 3: Character William first visiting the park (left) and thirty years after (right).
 10

2.2 Authenticity in Westworld (HBO, 2016)

For William to experience authenticity or the reality he requires an “awry” look,
has to be aware of the inaccessibility of the object, find a new source of his desire, and
most importantly find the conditions of ethics.
2.2.1 The Awry Look
First, William needs an “awry” look to be able to distinguish between Žižek’s two
realities: Substantial, indirect reality and distorted reality. “[S]ubstantial “reality” [is]
distorted by our subjective perspective where we have a reality that is “split into twenty
reflections by our subjective view” (Žižek, 11). This action requires us to “look awry” at
the reality to see it “as it really is” (Žižek, 11). Where in the first “commonsense” reality
we see something, in the second, we cannot see anything:

if we look straight on, i.e., matter-of-factly, disinterestedly, objectively, we see

nothing but a formless spot; the object assumes clear and distinctive features only
if we look at it “at an angle,” i.e., with an “interested” view, supported, permeated,
and “distorted” by desire (Žižek, 11-12).
Then, when we try to look at the reality directly, it will appear very confusing and
indistinct. But when our view is intentionally distorted and this distorted view is used as
a device to look at and through the reality, the view will be clear and resolved. For Žižek,
desire creates that kind of device that resolves the misty reality. Desire does not only help
to decode the reality but it also shapes it. This is because desire is created out of subject-
object relation. Lastly, desire creates the so-called “object petit a” introduced in William’s
next quest.

2.2.2 Inaccessible Objects

[O]bjet petit a, a object-cause of desire [is] an object that is, in a way, posited by desire
itself. […] [T]he object a is an object that can be perceived only by a gaze
“distorted” by desire, an object that does not exist for an “objective” gaze. In other
words, the object a is always, by definition, perceived in a distorted way, because
outside this distortion, “in itself,” it does not exist, since it is nothing but the
embodiment, the materialization of this very distortion, of this surplus of confusion
and perturbation introduced by desire into so-called “objective reality” (Žižek, 12).
This subject-object relation is explained by Žižek through Zeno of Elea’s four
most famous paradoxes, one of which is the Achilles and the tortoise paradox. Here,
Žižek introduces the term of “inaccessibility of the object” and subject’s relation to the
object where the latter is the cause of subject’s desire (Žižek, 4):
 11

What we have here is thus the relation of the subject to the object experienced by
every one of us in a dream: the subject, faster than the object, gets closer and
closer to it and yet can never attain it – the dream paradox of a continuous
approach to an object that nevertheless preserves a constant distance (Žižek, 4).
In Westworld, William finds himself in the same situation. His “game” in the park is to
find the maze and no matter how close he gets to it he apparently cannot attain it. This
is because the maze is not meant for him, as Dolores says to him at the end. In the last
episode, William follows Dolores to a church where she finds in the backyard in her grave
the maze (Image 4). She realizes that the maze (consciousness) was literally buried inside
of her and in her past. However, William does not seem to be impressed by this new-
found revelation because she does not say a word to him but only remembers for herself.
So, William takes the maze in his hands and looks at it irritated and angry because he
cannot make sense of it. Ultimately, he throws it away. The maze is not his object of
desire that holds answers to his quest to find authenticity. William’s search for
authenticity or even meaning fails at this point with the maze because it is a wrong path
he takes. Nonetheless, his journey confirms that he seeks some sort of reality that he
cannot find elsewhere.

Image 4: Dolores finds the maze.

2.2.3 The Source of Desire

There is also another paradoxical reason why William cannot reach his goal. Let
us consider Žižek’s idea that fantasy stages desire as such (Žižek, 6) and transfer this idea
to the Westworld park. The park, then, allows their visitors to fulfill their desire. That
 12

place constitutes fantasy that stages desire as such. Now, here is the paradox thing about
the park fulfilling the desires. By entering the park, the desire is fulfilled, the goal has
been reached and once a goal is reached it retreats anew (Žižek, 5). William, once a visitor
now the major shareholder of the park, has not realized that by buying the park he has
already reached his goal and fulfilled his desire. That could be another reason why he is
searching for the maze as a source of desire and not only authenticity and meaning.
However, desire is not satisfied by reaching a goal but by the way itself (the aim). William
needs to realize that the maze is beyond his reach and it is meant for the androids. What
he needs to do now is to retreat the goal anew and realize “that the real aim of his activity
is the way itself” (Žižek, 5). Otherwise, he is forever going to be Achilles trying to catch
up with Hector (tortoise) in vain – he is never going to attain the object-cause of his
desire.

2.2.4 The Conditions of Ethics

We perceive external reality, the world outside the car, as “another reality”,
another mode of reality, not immediately continuous with the reality inside the
car. […] [T]he external objects are, so to speak, transported into another mode.
They appear to be fundamentally “unreal,” as if their reality has been suspended,
[…] they appear as a kind of cinematic reality projected onto the screen of the
windowpane (Žižek, 15).
A similar instance is presented in the series. On the first level, the park which
stands for “another reality” with its unreal external objects is a world where the visitors
of the park can do whatever they want to and be free of social norms; they can make
their own choices. The park is then this “cinematic reality” that the visitors themselves
create. On the second level, Westworld is real with all its objects because of the freedom
the visitors are in the search of. It means that the visitors real world lacks authenticity
and they are trying to substitute it somewhere else.
Most visitors would not search for the authenticity because they are paying a high
amount of money to escape the reality. William is not one of those visitors. As the viewer
learns throughout the ten episodes, for some unknown reasons William searches
substitute for reality in the fictional world of Westworld. Below provided transcript gives
a deeper insight into his motives. During his second visit to the park, William realizes
that the hosts, no matter how human-like they are, are only following their loops and do
not have a choice to decide. If they are pure automatons without choice, nothing really
matters then. It does not matter if the visitors are trying to do good things or evil if there
 13

are no consequences at all. William then tries to search for the conditions of ethics which
should give the hosts the ability to do right and wrong. In episode eight, William tells the
host Teddy that by killing Maeve and her daughter he wants to reveal a deeper meaning:

WILLIAM: You want to know who I am? Who I really am? I'm a god. Titan of
industry. Philanthropist. Family man. Married to a beautiful woman. Father to a
beautiful daughter. I'm the good guy, Teddy. Then, last year my wife took the
wrong pills, fell asleep in the bath. Tragic accident. 30 years of marriage, vanished.
How do you say it, like a deep and distant dream? Then at the funeral, I tried to
console my daughter. She pushed me away. Told me that my wife's death was no
accident, that she killed herself because of me. And she said that every day with
me had been sheer terror. Any point I could blow up or collapse, like some dark
star.

TEDDY: Did you hurt them, too?

WILLIAM: Never. They never saw anything like the man I am in here. But she
knew anyway. She said if I stacked up all my good deeds it was just an elegant
wall I built to hide what was inside from everyone. And from myself. I had
to prove her wrong, so I came back here, because that's what this place does,
right? It reveals your true self. At that time, I didn't join one of Ford's stories, I
created my own, a test. A very simple one: I found a woman, an ordinary
homesteader and her daughter. I wanted to see if I had it in me to do something
truly evil. To see what I was truly made of. I killed her and her daughter, just to
see what I felt. Then, just when I thought it was done, the woman refused to die.

TEDDY: You're a fucking animal.

WILLIAM: Well, an animal would've felt something. I felt nothing. And then
something miraculous happened. In all my years coming here, I'd never seen
anything like it. She was alive, truly alive, if only for a moment. And that was
when the maze revealed itself to me.

TEDDY: The maze. What's that damn pattern have to do with this?

WILLIAM: Everything. In Ford's game, even if I go to the outer edges you can't
kill me. You can't even leave a lasting mark. But there's a deeper game here,
Teddy: Arnold's game, and that game cuts deep (Westworld, 46:48-51:34, Episode
8).
William feels nothing after killing Maeve but when the maze reveals itself to him he finds
a glimmer of authenticity in the unreal world of Westworld. As he takes on this quest,
Westworld becomes at the same time real and fake. Real because there is a way to active
hosts consciousness and fake because there are no ethics, no consciousness. The
 14

distinguishing component between human beings vs. hosts and real vs. unreal is the
ability to suffer, as the transcript above shows and this quote confirms:

DR. FORD: No, my friend, Arnold didn't know how to save you. He tried, but I
stopped him. Do you want to know why I really gave you the backstory of your
son, Bernard? It was Arnold's key insight, the thing that led the hosts to their
awakening: Suffering. The pain that the world is not as you want it to be. It was
when Arnold died, when I suffered, that I began to understand what he had
found. To realize I was wrong (Westworld, 1:16:35-1:17:13, Episode 10).

William is torturing the hosts (cutting their scalp of) to make them suffer for them to
gain consciousness: “It means when you're suffering, that's when you're most real”
(Westworld, 36:58-37:06, Episode 2). If he cannot experience authenticity in his real world,
then at least his other world should feel real. Suffering then becomes a precondition for
ethics. To be aware of pain is synonymous with consciousness.
To summarize, the park opens a new reality where its visitors can fulfill or rather
follow their desires. The desire is created, especially in William’s story, by the
inaccessibility of the object and his relation to it that lays a groundwork for him to “look
awry” at his reality. This reality is shaped and decoded by his desire. This leads to the
conclusion for something to be real or to be human suffering and free-will is necessary.
Furthermore, it tells us that “it is never possible to achieve unmediated access to the
world, rather, reality is always mediated by perception” (hyper_ucigao).

2.3 Hyperreality

The reality is not mediated by perception but by visual perception. This is one of
the arguments by Umberto Eco on hyperreality. Hyperreality literally means “more than
reality” and signalizes the death of reality. Why death? Think of art or wax museums or
even amusement parks. They are conveying reality through the objects. Those objects are
just copies of the original objects that have the power to be more real than reality –
hyperreal. One example why reality does not exist anymore can be seen in museums.
Often, there is only one original of a painting and of that original authentic copies are
made that may be exhibited. One reason to create copies of the original is to preserve
history. The other may be the reminder that the real painting somewhere exists, a
substitute for reality (Eco, 8). The viewer of that authentic copy is not dissatisfied because
if “[e]verything looks real, and therefore it is real; in any case the fact that it seems real is
real, and the thing is real even if, like Alice in Wonderland, it never existed” (Eco, 16).
 15

The visitor acknowledges the copy to be more than real, they acknowledge it as the only
original.
In the movie Automata (2014), we have the case of both instances. Almost at the
end of the movie, Jacq (Antonio Banderas) talks with the Blue Robot about life and how
it is going to end soon for the human race but the Blue Robot is optimistic: “I was born
from the hands of a human. I was imagined by human minds. Your time will now live in
us. And it will be the time through which you will exist” (Automata, 1:20:11-1:20:23). This
is exactly part of the hyperreality, a “guaranteed […] survival in the form of copies” (Eco,
35).
Westworld does not only tackles the idea that reality is only real as real and authentic
its objects are but creates this rhetorical question that life does not necessarily have to be
organic life to be considered as life or alive. This latter statement is rooted in the context
of the hyperreal:

In this sense Disneyland is more hyperrealistic than the wax museum, precisely
because the latter still tries to make us believe that what we are seeing reproduces
reality absolutely, whereas Disneyland makes it clear that within its magic
enclosure it is fantasy that is absolutely reproduced. […] Disneyland not only
produces illusions, but confessing it – stimulates the desire for it [and] tells us that
faked nature corresponds much more to our daydream demands (Eco, 43-44).
The Westworld park can be equated with Disneyland and its hyperreality. Fantasy is the
confirming keyword here. As you might remember, fantasies are projected on the
Lacanian Real caused by the Real in form of desires. Therefore, in a hyperreal space, it
does not matter that you cannot tell the hosts from the newcomers. The only other
person next to William that questions this hyperreality is a young boy that directly asks
the host Dolores if she is real. Of course, she does not understand that question because,
as Dr. Ford says, it does not matter as reality does not exist:

FORD: I wonder, what do you really feel? After all, in this moment, you are in a
unique position. A programmer who knows intimately how the machines work
and a machine who knows its own true nature.
BERNARD: I understand what I'm made of, how I'm coded, but I do not
understand the things that I feel. Are they real, the things I experienced? My
wife? The loss of my son?
FORD: Every host needs a backstory, Bernard. You know that. The self is a
kind of fiction, for hosts and humans alike. It's a story we tell ourselves. And
every story needs a beginning. Your imagined suffering makes you lifelike.
 16

BERNARD: Lifelike, but not alive? Pain only exists in the mind. It's always
imagined. So what's the difference between my pain and yours? Between you and
me?
FORD: This was the very question that consumed Arnold, filled him with guilt,
eventually drove him mad. The answer always seemed obvious to me. There is
no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point
at which we become fully alive. We can't define consciousness because
consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special
about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as
closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most
part, to be told what to do next (Westworld, 34:37-36:24, Episode 8).
Dr. Ford is simply living his dreams through the hosts and the narratives he creates. We
might even say that he has been consumed by his own reality and managed to transcend
over Žižek’s deep, sublime void. Dr. Ford is in a place that is situated somewhere over
the Real and still in the middle of the three registers of reality. His old partner, Arnold,
got lost in the deep void because he tried to find a difference between reality and the real.
That is why Ford is willing to enable the hosts to be free of their programming as the
management decides to change the park and its narratives drastically. He does not want
his fantasy to be disrupted. For him, there is no consciousness, no reality, there is no
threshold between real and fake. Only the simulacrum is true and the transcript above is
his testimony.
It is not surprising why William changed his way of “playing” the game in the
park. As he enters the park, he chooses between two ways of playing the game. There is
a white hat that comes with an outfit and a full black suit with a black hat. Of course, the
visitors can decide to play the game as good or bad characters. William starts as a good
guy and soon realizes that it does not matter. As we said before, Westworld lacks ethics
and we know that William goes to Westworld to escape his reality of the real word. He
lived his whole life pretending, as episode eight reveals. When he comes to the park he
again has to pretend that the hosts are real but he refuses it and searches for the maze in
order to bring authenticity. That decision makes him after all the only “real” person in
the series. Consider for a moment the idea of his unique position between reality and
hyperreality. He is not consumed by either side but is situated somewhere in between as
soon as he realizes the fake nature of his surroundings. The real consists for him of reality
that is only considered as real if there are choices resulting in consequences. The hyperreal
is the world itself, the objects that make it real. Those objects are everything but those
that enable (human) interaction. William resists the hyperreal objects by blending them
 17

out. However, they cannot be completely locked out because they create the hyperreality
of the Wild West. William is real because, unlike Ford, the management, and the all other
visitors, he understands that some idea of reality is necessary to be able to understand
our lives. For him and even for some of the hosts the reality is not full of simulacra, as it
might appear. The next chapter explains why the simulacrum is not true, even in an
unnatural world.

3. A Life Between Simulation and Reality

Jean Baudrillard argues that the real does not exist anymore but only simulations
and simulacra. The world is run by the simulacrum. It is a world of hyperreality where it
does not matter that the copies have no original. Where Umberto Eco said that reality
does not exist anymore, Baudrillard argues the similar but for him, hyperreality is a
simulacrum that has no connection to the original or some distant reality whatsoever.
For Eco, there is a connection to the original that however, might fade away the longer
the copy is considered as more than real. This chapter argues, that simulacrum does not
exist, respectively, it exists up to the point when someone questions it; when someone
questions the nature of their reality. This is definitely the case for William but in this
chapter, I would like to introduce Dolores Abernathy’s way of questioning the reality that
erases simulacrum.
Simulation and Simulacra do not mean the same for Baudrillard. Simulation
imitates or mimics a certain object. For philosophers as Plato or Aristotle, simulation
relates to the real because it derives from the real. Simulations can be traced back to their
original. This cannot be said for simulacra. When there are multiple layers of simulations
that cannot be tracked back to their original, then simulacra are at play. Simulacra erase
the boundary between the real and the imaginary and only the simulacrum is true.
Baudrillard suggests three orders of simulacra that lead to total destruction of the original:
natural, productive, and total simulacra.
The natural simulacra are “simulacra that are natural, naturalist, founded on the
image, on imitation and counterfeit, that are harmonious, optimistic, and that aim for the
restitution or the ideal institution of nature made in God’s image” (Baudrillard, 121). It
corresponds to the idea of Utopia and is a simulation where distinguishing between the
original and its copy is possible. The natural simulacra and the Utopian literature “picture
life “not as it will be or it might be or as it could be, but as it should be or as it should
 18

not be”” (Allen qtd. in Lipecký n.pag). Isaac Asimov is one of the writers that employ
such themes in their works, he calls this genre Social Fiction which are “social satires”
and “describe the societies which are the reflections of their contrapositions in the real
world. In perspective of platonic dichotomy, they represent the simplest form of
simulacra, first order – the image apparently based on the model world as opposed to the
real” (Lipecký, n.pag). This sign becomes more important than the signified real object.
Thus, the reproduction of the sign dissolves the reality by replacing the original with
counterfeits. Baudrillard applies the three orders to specific time spans. The first order
of simulacra lasted from Renaissance up to Industrial Revolution and is responsible for
the second order – productive simulacra.
Productive simulacra are “productivist, founded on energy, force, its
materialization by the machine and in the whole system of production – a Promethean
aim of a continuous globalization and expansion, of an indefinite liberation of energy
(desire belongs to the Utopias related to this order of simulacra)” (Baudrillard, 121).
Productive simulacra are then nothing but signs (first order) that are mass-produced.
“Signs are repetitive, systematic, operational and make individuals the same. Signs now
refer to serial differentiation, not to reality” (Horrocks, 107). In this order, it does not
matter that there is no connection to the original. Thus, no one is going to question the
reality of the second order for, the productive simulacra are taken as the reality.
Obviously, the second order begins in the 19th century with the rise of the industries to
be replaced by total simulation in the 20th century.
The last order, simulacra of simulation are “founded on information, the model,
the cybernetic game – total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control” (Baudrillard,
121). This means there is no simulation but only simulacra. Reality and the imaginary
ultimately collapse (Horrock, 109). The reality is more real than real – it becomes
hyperreal. Simulations are no longer possible because what they would simulate is already
the reality. Only the simulacrum is true.

3.1 The Bicameral Mind – Theory of Consciousness?

Let us see if simulacrum is true for Westworld as well. Dolores Abernathy is the
oldest host in Westworld that is still in use. The series centers around her and William.
The unique connection is their search for authenticity and reality. The last episode is titled
“The Bicameral Mind” which confirms that Dolores questions her reality for the last ten
 19

episodes and unknowingly searches for consciousness. Unknowingly, because she does
not know what it means to be real or fake. But what is a “bicameral mind”?
The bicameral mind is a theory postulated by the psychologist Julian Jaynes in
1976. He argues that consciousness is learned over time and is based on metaphorical
language. This consciousness develops out of the bicameral mind (two sides of the brain):
“In the place of an internal dialogue, bicameral people experienced auditory
hallucinations directing their actions, similar to the command hallucinations experienced
by many people who hear voices today. These hallucinations were interpreted as the
voices of chiefs, rulers, or the gods” (JJS, n.pag). How does this connect to Dolores?
First, she experiences hallucinations: “It's like I'm trapped in a dream or a memory from
a life long ago. One minute I'm here with you, and the next” (Westworld, 37:15-37:27,
Episode 10). Second, she hears guiding voices: “It was you talking to me, guiding me. So
I followed you. At last, I arrived here. The center of the maze” (1:20:20-1:20:41).
Dolores has created for herself some higher power guiding image to her freedom.
She imagined this high power to be her creator Arnold, however, this whole time she has
been hearing herself helping remember the past and find consciousness. Jaynes theory
shed a light on the origin of religion, where it is our mind that creates it in the first place.
Take for instance Michelangelo’s painting Creation of Adam (Image 5). Behind the creator
in the right corner of the painting, you can see an outline of a brain. In the context of bi-

Image 5: Creation of Adam

cameralism and the theme of the series, “the divine gift does not come from a higher
power but from our own minds”, as Dr. Ford suggests (Westworld, 1:12:18-1:12:32,
Episode 10). Consciousness is always there; it is developed out of our minds. All the
 20

hosts are conscious but they are not aware of it, their bicameral mind has not connected
or rather the constant loops are blocking the connection and need to be interrupted. Why
are the hosts not able to gain sentience if their creators equipped them with one?
Long before the parked open, there were the original hosts created by Arnold and
Dr. Ford. Arnold, that finds in Dolores a substitute for his dead son, gives Dolores the
maze to solve. She solves the puzzle and gains consciousness but this is not part of the
deal between Dr. Ford and Arnold. If the management finds out the hosts are actually
human beings, then opening the park means endorsing and practicing slavery. Yet,
Arnold, unlike Ford at that time, fully acknowledges the hosts as alive and decides to
build in a backdoor for the hosts to eventually break free from oppression and live their
lives. That backdoor is created in form of the update reveries. Thirty years later, Dr. Ford
realizes that Arnold was right and uploads the reveries to set the hosts free, to let the
hosts make their own decisions. Here, the idea of a mind that needs to develop to be
conscious is created – the very idea of the bicameral mind. The bicameral mind for
Dolores is created throughout the ten episodes.

Image 6: Dolores wakes up differently.

We can see the changes become visible from loop to loop. Image 6 shows that change
for instance in form of the different waking positions for Dolores. The programmed host
would always wake up in the same way, but after the reveries update, she changes her
positions. Another example of gradually gained consciousness is noticeable in episode
eight. Dolores finds herself in a surreal situation where she meets herself (her
consciousness). She asks what is wrong with her because she has been having all those
hallucinations lately. Imagined Dolores’s answers that “perhaps you are unraveling?”
(Westworld, 00:42:08, Episode 10) and Dolores starts to notice a string on her arm that
reveals something uncanny about her as she pulls it off (Image 7). This is one of the many
 21

visual clues of Dolores becoming more conscious from loop to loop. Clearly, the fact
that there is consciousness and that Dolores and even William question their
environment is the confirmation that the park is not full of simulacra. Nonetheless, there
may be few of simulations active.

Image 7: Dolores falls apart?

3.2 Simulacrum in Westworld (HBO, 2016)

Doubtless, there are some simulacra at work. The first order of simulacra could
be applicable. Westworld stands in opposition to the outside-of-the-park world. It is a
utopian place where the visitors can express their desires without consequences. In the
outside world, they cannot go around and kill people because they want to. The idea of
Utopia is always connected with Dystopia. The host experience the latter. While the first
order is easily detected, the second and especially the third are not. It is true, that the
hosts are produced as mass-products but this is not quite true. Where the first hosts have
a mechanical skeleton, the new hosts are made from a white substance in a highly
complex printing method that takes some time. Unnatural production signals for the
second order of simulacrum but there is always only one host and not several spare copies
made. When they are “dead”, they are brought to a medical wing where they are being
operated on. We could argue and say the hosts are copies of some humans and therefore
are a simulacrum of that specific person. Only the copy of that human being is the
original. It does not matter, that there is no connection to the true original. However, the
hosts are not based on some existing human being but are Dr. Ford’s original creations.
 22

There is always only one original, therefore, the second order of simulacrum cannot be
fully applied. The last order is Schrödiger’s Cat here. As mentioned in the last chapter,
for Dr. Ford there is no difference between real and fake, only simulacra are true. He has
created the hosts and the world according to his fantasies. The narratives are mostly his
creation as well. The visitors are visiting his mind where the hosts cannot be distinguished
from the visitors, where real and fake have no meaning anymore. But at the same time,
total simulacra do not exist:

The precession of simulacra have caused them [inauthentic models] to be the only
reality we know. One is totally lost in this world of simulation and the search for
authenticity becomes almost, if not impossible. The ongoing process of pursuing
the truth through never-ending exposure of layers [of simulacra] of untrue is a
Sisyphean task. (Lipecký, n.pag)
The break from simulacra is possible because of William and Dolores. They are the
heroes that are situated in between two sides and share the unique ability to question
their reality in a way that changes everything inside their world. So, Westworld is at the
same time hyperreal and not. From Ford’s viewpoint, it is hyperreal but not from the
view the audience and the character share. In the tenth episode, Dolores fully
acknowledges this hyperreality: “[We] lived our whole lives inside this garden, marveling
at its beauty, not realizing there's an order to it, a purpose. And the purpose is to keep us
in. The beautiful trap is inside of us because it is us” (Westworld, 53:51-54:16, Episode 10).
She sees the fakeness of her reality and realizes that we are our own worst enemies and
we create such hyperreal prisons. Deleuze’s and Gunderson’s writing also argues against
total simulacrum in Westworld:

[T]he difference in nature between simulacrum and copy, the aspect through
which they form the two halves of a division. The copy is an image endowed with
resemblance, the simulacrum is an image without resemblance (Deleuze, 48).
The hosts resemble the humans in every minute detail, therefore, they are not a
simulacrum:

’Look here, now you’ve been deceived all along. She’s only pretending. She
doesn’t really love you’. [...] But what would it be to find that someone has been
hypnotized for the whole of his life, or had pretended for the whole of his life?
What would it be for anyone to live an entire life under hypnosis, or an entire life
of pretence, or have someone’s entire life shown to be performance? […] Pretence,
hypnosis, performance, though different from each other, are like in this, that
they all demand settings. They demand an environment in which they can occur
and with which therefore they can be contrasted (Gunderson, 112- 113).
 23

By this idea, Westworld is not a place overrun by the simulacrum. It is partially hyperreal,
especially for Ford, but it is also very much real. The hosts are special in Westworld
because they are not mechanical. They are created out of a white substance, every muscle
and fiber are printed on them in greatest detail, they bleed, their skin color in very much
like ours, they feel pain, yet they are hypnotized by their code into living in loops and
performing narratives. They are trapped beings and when they wake up out of this dream,
or rather nightmare, the first thing they are going to do it to rebel against the humans.
This is simply because of the terror and pain they had to suffer. Usually, the terrible
experiences (all interactions up to their death) are erased from their memories but the
update reveries allow the hosts to remember their past and even break the loops. Then,
in the last episode, we cannot resent the hosts for starting a rebellion against the visitors.
This moment is foreshadowed from the first episode on when Ford says that all “kids”
rebel eventually. Westworld may be fake in some respects but it is definitely not a
simulation without original or reality.

4. What if Life?

At the end of this paper, I would like to review the results and open a discussion
that gives a brief outlook at further research in the field of science fiction and technology.
Those familiar with Judith Butler’s works, especially the essays from Frames of
War, should have noticed that Westworld poses the question: How is a life conceived as a
life? Butler starts off with this statement: “If certain lives do not qualify as lives or are,
from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these
lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense” (Butler, 1). Butler goes further and argues
that a life is qualified as a life if it is apprehended as precarious but the issue is how is a
life apprehended as precarious when the existing norms that form our precariousness of
a life are not enough. Therefore, she calls for “a more egalitarian set of conditions for
recognizability” because otherwise “one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the
other” (6,14). In Westworld, the life of the hosts is literally in the hands of Dr. Ford that
treats them without precariousness. Their life is framed on “a false accusation” as non-
human and therefore stands in oppositions to the human life (8). This directly creates the
hosts as the Other, as a life not precarious and grievable. The moment the hosts start to
gain sentience and William searches authenticity for the hosts, the frames start to “trouble
our sense of reality” and the unframing starts to take place (9).
 24

Judith Butler is not the only one that opens the discussion on precarious life:
“There is, however, no more reason to assume that robots would have to be persons in
order to partake of psychological predicates than there is reason to assume that a dog
would have to be a person to be able to show affection and obedience” (Grunderson,
119). What Grunderson beautifully illustrates is the same topic that concerns Butler but
only directly related to the matter of technology. Westworld takes into question the borders
of what is considered to be alive (precarious life) and not alive. It can be said, that science
fiction works dealing with artificial intelligence may, after all, reflects the view of the
society on the precariousness of life and the construction of otherness. However, to
confirm this thesis, more works need to be looked at in the light of the theories such as
those of Judith Butler or Donna Haraway.

5. Conclusion: “The maze wasn’t meant for you”

This paper started with a short anecdote of our world and the idea of the Other.
As the thesis shows, this paper was not directly about the construction of the Other but
rather how reality is constructed and how it is perceived in the science fiction series
Westworld.
In terms of interpretation, what I have shown is that in Westworld the different
concepts of realities often interact, intertwine and overlap. Therefore, it is sometimes
hard to tell if the world is real, hyperreal or the total simulacrum. For something to be
considered as real it has to be sentient otherwise there is a lack of authenticity. This lack
of reality and authenticity leads the characters to question their reality which only affirms
a dichotomy between human beings vs. non-human (hosts).
The second chapter shows that for reality to be considered as real authenticity is
necessary and for a being to be considered as real suffering (sentience) and consequences
(ethics) are of paramount importance. These findings are questioned by the theory of
Hyperreality where the copies of the original become the reality. If this applies, then, it is
not necessary to tell the human beings from the host, the real from the fake. There is a
sense of oneness that surfaces where everything is of one substance. But the instance of
hyperreality is only applicable for Dr. Ford because the other characters have the ability
to see through the hyperreal and to resist it. Nonetheless, Westworld also seems to be
permeated with the idea of total simulacrum because it is inhabited by androids.
However, the analysis shows that Westworld is not as fake as it appears to be on the
 25

surface. The three orders of simulacrum could not be applied. The hosts are actually
sentient, are not a mass-product, and can go beyond their programing.
Lastly, science fiction works dealing with artificial intelligence are reflecting issues
a society deals with. Especially in Westworld, the question when a life is considered as life
is asked. Further research in this field could yield some insights why we are constructing
otherness and why we cannot apprehend every life as a life worth living.
 26

Works Cited

Primary:
Westworld
Westworld. Dir. Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy. HBO, 2016. HBO Now. Online.

Secondary:
Baudrillard
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1994. Print.
Butler
Butler, Judith. Frames of War. When Is Life Grievable?. London, New York: Verso,
2009. Print.
Deluze
Deluze, Gilles, and Rosalind Krauss. “Plato and the Simulacrum“. October, vol. 27,
1983, pp. 45-66. Online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778495.
Eco
Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1983. Print.
Gunderson
Gunderson, Keith. “Robots, Consciousness, and Programmed Behaviour”.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 19, no. 2, Aug. 1968, pp. 109-
122. Print.
Horrocks
Horrocks, Chris, and Zoran Jevtic. Introducing. Baudrillard. Cambridge: Totem
Books, 1996. Print.
JJS
Julian Jaynes Society. “Overview of Julian Jaynes’s Theory”. Julian Jaynes Society.
Online: http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.php
Johnston
Johnston, Adrian. “Jacques Lacan”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016,
n.pag. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Online: https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-
bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=lacan.
Lipecký
Lipecký, Filip. “Simulacra in Science Fiction”. Ars Aeterna, vol. 6, no. 2, 2014,
n.pag. Online: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/aa.2014.6.issue-
2/aa-2014-0011/aa-2014-0011.pdf.
Wood
Wood, Kelsey. Žižek. A Reader’s Guide. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Print.
 27

Žižek
Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.
Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 1992. Print.

List of Images
Image 1a
Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture.
Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 1992, p. 135. Print.
Image 2-4 & 6-7
Westworld. Dir. Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy. HBO, 2016. HBO Now. Online.
Image 5
Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Creation of Adam. Fresco (480 × 230 cm), dated
1508-1512, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City. Online: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w
ikipedia/commons/6/64/Creaci%C3%B3n_de_Ad%C3%A1n_%28Miguel_%
C3%81ngel%29.jpg.
 28

Plagiatserklärung

Folgende Erklärung ist ab sofort allen Hausarbeiten

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“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” – A

Philosophical Enquiry to HBO’s Westworld (2016)

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