Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which Westworld functions as a set of loops on a textual and metatextual level. The series, following in the wake of a number of pre-existing representations of Artificial Intelligence, not least of which is the original film and Jonathan Nolan’s Person of Interest, relies upon and re-inflects a number of pre-existing tropes within such representations. These include challenges to human exceptionalism, the nature of consciousness, the problem of agency, and freedom versus control. This chapter explores the extent to which the “AI narrative” of Westworld itself functions as an ideological mask, and asks whether the questions its asks include the one we should be asking: can we ever truly “escape” the systems its overt narrative elides?