Blade Runner Parallels in Westworld

July 25, 2022

Hi folks —

Not sure if you’ve noted this before, but there is a growing overlap or parallel between what’s going on in Westworld and Blade Runner. At the very least, some of the language referring to non-human entities seems to be very similar if not identical.

Christina’s overbearing boss hints that those who don’t follow their prescribed paths (a la the Judas Steer) should be “retired” — which is the exact term used in Blade Runner for killing rogue “replicants” like Rutger Hauer and Darryl Hannah. The twist here, of course, is that the hosts (aka replicants) are “retiring” outlier humans. The blood-spattered daisy (h/t to the “dying” HAL singing “Bicycle Built for Two”) would have been a great prop for Rutger Hauer’s famous “tears in the rain” speech at the end of Blade Runner.

But the episode title… at first I thought it was a place name (a transliteration of “guang zho” which is a famous industrial/cultural/transportation hub in modern China), indicating that this NYC is not the original, but is a manufactured park environment (which might explain why the rebel humans show up on a boat, as they did when approaching the park in S1 and S2 — bodies of water also acted as barriers between different “worlds” within a particular park structure).

But it turns out that Zhuangzi was the philosopher very focused on Tao (the way, i.e. path) but in a kind of looser interpretation (maybe a Sufi Taoism). He is most notable for the story of his dreaming of being a butterfly, and upon waking wondered if possibly he was actually a butterfly dreaming of being a philosopher named Zhuangzi. (Wait, did someone say “butterfly”? Did we mention that in ancient Greek (per Aristotle), the word for butterfly is also the word for “soul” — psyche?)

In this case, it seems that Christina is being awoken from the dream she was a video game designer when she is in fact a god, or perhaps that Charlores has been dreaming she’s a god but is really just a robot….

Whether real or not, it appears that NYC is serving as a testing ground for controlled humans and for hosts to prove themselves by hunting outlier humans. Charlores laments that this world was meant to be a stepping stone, a stop gap between this world and another — perhaps the Sublime or some version thereof. But apparently the hosts are enjoying the hunt a little too much? Or maybe they are so accurately programmed to be like humans that they can’t control their own impulses. How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, once they get a taste for hunting humans?

A lot to throw out, just thought you might pick up on one of those threads…. Best,
Brendan in NYC

Subscribe Now