| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 107 === As the official website for HBO television series introduces, Westworld (2016-) is a dark American odyssey in which the dawn of artificial consciousness is meant to indulge every imaginable human appetite. Westworld’s creators observe that Hollywood movies and TV depiction tend to characterize the alienated other as a threatening, estranged, and inhumane role. In contrast to this human-centric characterization, the series creators unravel the narrative from the artificial others’ perspective, securing the audience’s sympathy in these colonized. However, as Westworld criticizes capitalism in line with the post-colonialist sf tradition and speculates about the visage of an alternative society, it also problematizes the possibility of transcending the colonial logic of anachronism and progress. With John Rieder’s theoretical context, my thesis examines Westworld the park’s fantasy of time, the fantasy’s colonial significance, and the series’ criticism on and struggle of the park’s fantasy of time. As a part of this (post-)colonial fantasy of time, the props of the theme park are also brought into discussion, such as the uneven distribution of arms/technology and the map/narrative provided for guests. While the former renders the hosts’ archaism by denying their real contemporaneity and alienating them into cultural others, the latter helps us look into the post-colonial version of appropriation. Furthermore, as H. G. Wells applies the technique of double identification in his sf, The War of the Worlds (1897), to criticize British colonialism, I examine Westworld’s approach in using double identification and this technique’s critical effect on colonial relations. While the audience of Westworld sees their cultural self be represented a colonial episteme in a science fictional work, the perspective of the viewers is also aligned with the host’s cognitive position through narrative perspective, techniques of editing, and series’ deconstructive self-criticism. This characterization of identifying both the colonist humans and the colonized hosts allows me to question if the colonial structure remains intact in Westworld’s first season as does in Wells’ novel.
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