Artikkel - Matei Norbert Balan

Westworld is maybe one of the most beloved science fiction TV shows of the last decade. It tells a lot of stories well, and its themes are so laired and intricate that one would need more than a careless binge-watch to get a proper taste of them. In its first season, through the character of the Man in Black, the show touched on how gamers behave within a game and why. This provides us with a new reading of one of the best villains in the history of westerns.

Ed Harris and Evan Rachel Wood in “Westworld”/ Foto: IMDb

Here’s the thing about gamers and characters in traditional westerns. We like to think that we know what makes them tick.

Hard men in wide-brimmed hats have been made harder by sand, gunpowder, and blood for as long as westerns have existed. The worlds these widely popular characters see can not be unseen. Their experiences stay with them and haunt them for as long as directors choose to keep them on screen. They are usually hermit-like men - women are rarely cast in such traditionally masculine roles - who have too much of a past and not much of a future. Regardless of the story, we always know what these men want, which is either to be left alone or deliver justice, sometimes even before they make this clear on screen. We also know how they’re going to end, which is either dead or riding off into the sunset, leaving behind a world that has left them behind already.

When it comes to gamers, the consensus seems to be that they derive pleasure from the simulated acts of violence in which they engage. Furthermore, these virtual acts will build up inside their unaware minds until they will eventually light that short fuse we assume some gamers have, causing them to enact violent acts in real life. It’s an assumption promoted by a lot of mainstream media channels, and it’s nothing more than that, an assumption based on intuition. There is in fact little empirical evidence to back this. In his 2016 book, “Resolving the Gamer’s Dilemma:”, while looking at different motivations gamers have for engaging in virtual acts of violence, Garry Young states that, in fact, empirically, there is support for the claim that those who engage in virtual acts such as murder, do so for strategic reasons.

Thandie Newton and Jasmyn Rae in “Westworld” / Foto: IMDb

In its first season (2016), the acclaimed HBO TV series “Westworld” touches on this subject through its main antagonist, known only as Man in Black (Ed Harris). Set in a future where cyborgs resemble human beings in nearly the smallest biological details, those rich enough to afford it are invited to blow off steam in a western themed park, Westworld. In this live re-enactment of the 1800s American west, the already mentioned cyborgs are the hosts who act according to a series of carefully tailored scenarios - one could call them quests or adventures. At the same time, the rich and thrill-thirsty guests are free to do pretty much whatever they want with them, including but not limited to cold blooded murder, torture, and rape. To the unconscious hosts, all of this is just time spent as mere parts in a bigger and never stopping entertainment machine. For the guests, it’s basically a video game, but more real.

In this twisted fictional world, a veteran gamer, the Man in Black, pursues his goal to find the deeper levels of the game.

What is the Gamer’s Dilemma

To understand why virtual murder is both socially and legally accepted, the abominable act of murder is analyzed alongside paedophilia, another act just as abominable, which is not socially nor legally permitted. Young states that even if this is in accord with our moral intuition, a more in depth look at the arguments that support the permissibility of virtual murder, in fact, appear to support the permissibility of virtual paedophilia. This, of course, goes both ways, and if we argue for the impermissibility of one, then the other one falls as well. From this perspective, the gamer is faced with a dilemma: either they must accept virtual paedophilia alongside virtual murder or reject both. However, one of the main discords that pop up when trying to solve this dilemma, is centered around whether gamers who engage in virtual acts automatically derive any pleasure from them or not, which might eventually lead to their enactment in real life.

Young argues that the reason a person is willing to engage in such virtual acts should be considered of greater moral interest than simply looking at the fact that they do. He then presents three motivations for engaging in a virtual act within a game:

The strategic motive: the gamer engages in the virtual act because it benefits their original strategy, which is to win the game.
The enjoyment motive: the gamer engages in the virtual act because they anticipate it will be thrilling. In this case, the gamer wishes to engage in the virtual act because of the symbolic violation of a real-world taboo.
The substitution motive: the gamer wishes engage in a particular real-world activity which happens to be taboo. This activity is represented by the virtual act.

The Gamer’s Dilemma is not a central theme of “Westworld”, but rather one of the many complex ideas that the show touches upon, making the final sum of its parts all the greater. All of these three motivations converge in the case of the Man in Black, making him one of the most nuanced TV characters to ever represent what we could call the gamer archetype.

The bar scene in “Contrapasso”, the fifth episode of the first season, where the Man in Black and his hostage-companion, Teddy Flood (James Marsden), one of the park’s hosts, encounter Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins), one of the park’s founders and current director, illustrates how the three motivations work within the Man in Black’s character.

“I always felt this place was missing a real villain.”

The scene begins with the Man in Black taking a wounded Teddy into a saloon, where a few men mind their own business while a soft piano plays in the background. The matron of the house offers to rouse a girl to keep them company, but the Man makes it clear they are not interested in company, just whiskey. He slaps a coin on the bar and picks a table.

As Teddy looks weak, the Man coldly urges him to get stronger. As he talks, the piano stops. Another man arrives at the table with three shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey. He is revealed to be Dr. Ford. The Man in Black looks both surprised and intrigued to meet the park’s director there.

The conversation that ensues goes as follows: the Man points, almost annoyed, at Dr. Ford’s god-like status in the park, while Dr. Ford hints at the cruelty with which the Man conducts himself inside his park. Teddy is spoken to and spoken about, but in turn he doesn’t really speak to any of his companions. In this scene, Teddy remains a host with no agency. The entire point the Man makes here is that he is after something, he has been chasing that something for a long time, and he suggests he’s willing to go to great lengths to get it. Dr. Ford makes it clear that he, as game creator and master, will not stop him.

The Man in Black’s main goal is concealed - even though he is not exactly trying to hide it - by the goal of the scripted quest he is engaged in alongside Teddy. This surface quest consists of tracking an outlaw known as Wyatt, which seems to have escaped the Man’s six-shooter so far. This intrigues our antagonist who also suggests that the game is too easy, made for empty people who come to the park to find the meaning their lives lack in the outside world.

In this game that’s easy to play, he takes matters into his own hands and becomes a proper villain. Dr. For admits that he lacks the imagination to conceive a character who would match him in cruelty. But when the Man opens the subject of deeper meaning and deeper levels hidden in the game, Dr. Ford offers to simply tell him what is the moral of the story. The Man in Black will not have this, as he believes Ford’s ex-partner, Arnold, who died and in doing so almost ruined the park, if it weren’t for his goodwill, took the secret of the deeper levels with him.

The search for the meaning of the whole game supports the strategic motive. The Man in Black seems to engage in all the acts of cruelty he commits because he believes they are the means to his end.

Ed Harris and James Marsden in “Westworld” / Foto: IMDb

Then, when he hints at the fact that he saved the park after Arnold’s death, and in doing so also preserving Arnold’s legacy, the substitution motive is revealed. As we will learn in season two, the Man, who is in fact the owner of Westworld, seeks to unlock the secret of immortality in a separate and secret project, by preserving the human mind and transferring it to a host’s body. His pursuit to unlock what we could call Arnold’s riddle is a direct substitute for the act of achieving immortality and therefore changing the very way human beings function, which is a taboo act in the real world.

However, the enjoyment motive surfaces in a different way. The Man judges those who find what happens in the park as thrilling, and therefore wish to visit and engage with its attractions, as being nothing more than pleasure seekers with no real purpose in life. But the Man is intrigued by Ford’s new villain, Wyatt, and he wonders if he has finally found a worthy adversary. This moment betrays the Man’s enjoyment motive. The idea of an opponent who would match his abilities obviously thrills him. Not only that, but if we judge this moment against what we learn about the Man throughout the rest of the two seasons - as it turns out, he is not the biggest shark in the ocean - it becomes obvious that the wish to measure his strength is a symbolic violation of a real world taboo - to eliminate all adversaries indefinitely.

The climax of the scene consists of the Man taking out his hunting knife while voicing a curiosity in regard to what he might find upon opening up Dr. Ford. This technique of cutting others up is something that actually defines the Man’s character and it reveals both the hidden nature of his goal and the cruelty with which he’s willing to achieve it. Teddy, a royal host to his creator, Dr. Ford, snaps out of the weakness he’s been exhibiting throughout the scene and stops the conflict. This moment is crucial because it’s a counterpoint to something the Man in Black did in the beginning of the scene. He paid for his whiskey. By the fifth episode, we learn that the guests don’t really have to submit to all of the simulated social rules, as the hosts have no real agency.

You don’t have to pay for a drink in Westworld. You can just unholster your revolver, shoot the saloon keeper point blank between the eyes, and have all the whiskey in the bar you want. But the Man in Black understands that if he is to uncover whatever secrets Arnold may have hidden in the park, then he must immerse himself in the story. However, opening Dr. Ford up like some game that needs to be processed before it goes bad does not count as following the rules of the game. It can be argued that the Man in Black does nothing wrong throughout the first season, as no real human beings are harmed in the game. Yet in this scene, he attempts to kill one.

“Contrapasso” does a great job out of both exploring the gamer’s motivation and asking the question again: does repeated engagement in virtual acts of violence betray pleasure or can it lead to that? Going back to Young’s conclusions and propositions, there is no empirical data to support this. But if “Westworld” teaches us something, it’s that there’s always more than meets the eye.

The deeper levels are always there, even if not in the exact way we would imagine or want them to be.

"Westworld" & The Gamer's Dilemma: why the Man in Black pays for his whisky