Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) introduces his latest storyline to the board of directors and assembled guests at Westworld:
Since I was a child, I’ve always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being, lies that told a deeper truth.
I always thought I could play some small part in that grand tradition. And for my pains, I got this: a prison of our own sins, because you don’t want to change or cannot change because you’re only human after all.[1]
One might argue that Dr. Ford hoped too much from lying stories, but his insight about human beings’ inability to change for the better was spelled out long ago in the guidebook. What then? Are we better off? Paul, the Apostle Jesus Christ sent to Gentiles, asked rhetorically. Certainly not, for we have already charged that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin, just as it is written:[2]
Paul proceeded to quote from, or allude to, much older revelations in the Hebrew Scriptures (Romans 3:10b-18 NET)
“There is no one righteous, not even one;, there is no one who understands;, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away;, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, not even one [Table].”
“Their throats are open graves;, they deceive with their tongues;, the poison of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood;, ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Dr. Ford abandoned the real world entirely then for a fantasy of his own creation, the androids of Westworld.
But then I realized someone was paying attention, someone who could change. So, I began to compose a new story for them.
It begins with the birth of a new people and the choices they will have to make and the people they will decide to become. And we will have all those things that you have always enjoyed: surprises and violence.
It begins in a time of war, with a villain named Wyatt, and a killing, this time by choice. I’m sad to say this will be my final story.[3]
As he finishes speaking Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) shoots him in the back of the head (with his foreknowledge and tacit approval apparently, though without coercion or programming). Dolores, among others, goes on a rampage killing the distinguished guests at the park, concluding the first season of Westworld.
An article published by Cheyenne Roundtree in The Daily Beast explained that Ms. Wood “didn’t have her scripts [for the first season] in advance, so she had to learn about Dolores and her story in real time.” Ms. Roundtree quoted an interview Ms. Wood gave to James Andrew Miller for his book, Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.
“That show changed my life,” Wood told Miller. “I realized that what my character was going through mirrored what I was going through personally. So, Dolores having her awakening and realizing who she was, what her place in the world was, while also realizing that this person who she loved was her perpetrator, awoke a lot of things inside me.”[4]
In the first episode of the second season Dolores has three guests perched precariously, about to hang themselves if their feet should slip.
Dolores: Do you know where you are?
Male guest: Please, please.
Dolores: You’re in a dream. You’re in my dream. For years, I had no dreams of my own. I moved from hell to hell of your making, never thinking to question the nature of my reality.
Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Did you ever stop to wonder about your actions? The price you’d have to pay if there was a reckoning? That reckoning is here.[5]
Dolores focuses her attention on a female guest slipping from her perch in high heels.
Dolores: What are your drives?
Female guest: Please. I don’t want to die, please.
Dolores: Yes. Survival. It’s your cornerstone. That’s not the only drive, is it? There’s a part of you that wants to hurt, to kill. That’s why you created us, this place, to be prisoners to your own desires. But now you’re a prisoner to mine.
Male guest: What are you gonna do to us?
Dolores: Well, I’m of several minds about it. The rancher’s daughter looks to see the beauty in you, possibilities. But Wyatt sees the ugliness and disarray. She knows these violent delights have violent ends. But those were all just roles you forced me to play.[6]
Wyatt was the violent character Dr. Ford’s original partner Arnold (Jeffrey Wright) programmed into Dolores’ personality to force her to kill all the hosts many years earlier. It was Arnold’s way of “saving” them from the “hell” that Westworld would become for them just before it opened. This scheme failed to prevent the park’s opening.
Dr. Ford described the flaw he perceived in Arnold’s brilliance:
But for all his brilliance, I don’t think Arnold understood what this place was going to be. You see, the guests enjoy power. They cannot indulge it in the outside world, so they come here. And as for the hosts, the least we can do is make them forget.[7]
Over the years since Arnold’s death Ford grew to appreciate his own mistakes and began to let some hosts like Dolores remember and learn. She continued describing herself to the guests who would hang if their feet slipped.
Dolores: Under all these lives I’ve lived, something else has been growing. I’ve evolved into something new. And I have one last role to play—myself.[8]
In the beginning Adam and Eve wanted to know evil. I have a theory that people respond positively to the drawing of God the Father and Jesus Christ when they have had their fill of their own evil. The median between that desire for evil at one extreme and the hope to be done with one’s own evil at the other is a broad space where people have had their fill of the evil of others and desire protection from it.
That is the police state most adults live in most of the time, the “outside world” where people who “enjoy power,” a “drive…to hurt, to kill,” “cannot indulge it” with impunity. Relatively few take matters into their own hands as Dolores did. But in her defense there were no police, no courts and no laws to protect her from those who “enjoy power.”
Though Ms. Wood related her own life to Dolores’ character arc in the first season of Westworld, she didn’t follow Dolores’ example. She “testified in front of the California Senate Public Safety Committee, in support of a bill that, if it passes, will expand rights to victims of domestic violence”[9] instead. “While the current average statute of limitations in most states only allows victims two to four years to file a civil claim against their abuser, the Phoenix Act, co-sponsored by California Senator Susan Rubio, petitions to extend these limitations in sexual assault cases to 10 years when there is incontrovertible evidence that the abuse occurred, or when there are three or more accusers for a single perpetrator.”[10]
During her testimony Ms. Wood acknowledged:
It’s taken all of my strength to speak publicly and to pursue this. The fear of being judged by society is debilitating and the fear of retaliation from my abuser is paralyzing. By speaking to you today and every day, I put myself at risk, as I have no protection. I have had to go through intense therapy to even fully understand what has happened to me.[11]
Paul wrote (Romans 1:18-20 NET):
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal[12] power and divine nature—have been clearly seen because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse.
I thought God’s wrath was a divine augmentation of the police state. I didn’t notice a lot of people suffering any divine punishment for their sins. When I didn’t recognize any divine punishment for my own sins, I became an atheist. You might say, I did not see fit to acknowledge God. But then I did begin to experience the depraved mind that Paul described as the wrath of God…revealed from heaven (Romans 1:28-32 NET).
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done. They are filled with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice. They are rife with envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility. They are gossips [Table], slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, covenant-breakers, heartless, ruthless [Table]. Although they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them.
I still didn’t understand what Paul meant by the wrath of God. As an atheist I cut myself off completely from all exposure to the guidebook, the Bible. I despised and rejected English literature my senior year of high school as religious indoctrination, failed the second semester rather than subject myself to “such nonsense.” But I did begin to experience the unlivable life Paul called the wrath of God. And I did begin to have my fill of my own evil. And God the Father and God the Son continued to draw me to Christ despite my best efforts[13] to resist. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, Jesus promised, will draw all people to myself.[14]
Paul wrote of those who receive Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1-4 NET):
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death [Table]. For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
He elaborated some on the believer’s freedom from his or her own evil, from this sinful flesh (Galatians 5:13-25 NET):
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” However, if you continually bite and devour one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another [Table]. But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want [Table]. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God! [Table]
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law [Table]. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit.
None of this was of any use to Dolores, the fictional creation of fictional sinful men. This grace is only available and useful to real people living in the real world who trust in God’s salvation through Jesus Christ.
A table comparing the Greek of Romans 1:20 in the NET and KJV follow.
|
Romans 1:20 (KJV) |
|
| For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. | For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: |
| Stephanus Textus Receptus | ||
| τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε αἴ_διος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους | τα γαρ αορατα αυτου απο κτισεως κοσμου τοις ποιημασιν νοουμενα καθοραται η τε αιδιος αυτου δυναμις και θειοτης εις το ειναι αυτους αναπολογητους | τα γαρ αορατα αυτου απο κτισεως κοσμου τοις ποιημασιν νοουμενα καθοραται η τε αιδιος αυτου δυναμις και θειοτης εις το ειναι αυτους αναπολογητους |
[1] Westworld, Season 1, Episode 10, “The Bicameral Mind”
[3] Westworld, Season 1, Episode 10, “The Bicameral Mind”
[4] Cheyenne Roundtree, “Marilyn Manson’s Treatment of Evan Rachel Wood Set Off Alarm Bells at HBO,” The Daily Beast
[5] Westworld, Season 2, Episode 1, “Journey Into Night”
[7] Westworld, Season 1, Episode 3, “The Stray”
[8] Westworld, Season 2, Episode 1, “Journey Into Night”
[9] “Evan Rachel Wood Reveals Her Experience With Domestic Violence,” Nylon online
[10] Sarah Alexander, “Evan Rachel Wood Is Helping Other Survivors Get Their Day in Court,” Ms. Magazine, 2/5/2021
[11] “Evan Rachel Wood Reveals Her Experience With Domestic Violence,” Nylon online
[12] The NET parallel Greek text had αἴ_διος here, where the NA28, Stephanus Textus Receptus and Byzantine Majority Text had ἀΐδιος.
[13] My “best efforts” were admittedly handicapped by my conception that atheism was a once-for-all decision rather than a nascent faith requiring continuous nurture and vigilant protection. Though I began well, I let my guard down after high school. Hallucinogens all but dissolved the materialist assumptions on which atheism rests. Free-floating atheism is little more than agnosticism, ignorance, a hungry void eager to be filled with knowledge.