Violent Births: Fanon, Westworld, and Humanity

The most fundamental break in the first season of Westworld comes when the pacifist, girl next door Dolores Abernathy pulls the trigger of a gun behind the head of Robert Ford. Dolores's action fits with the philosophy of Frantz Fanon, who believed that freedom for colonized people was impossible without violence against the colonizer. This chapter explores Fanon's theories and the development of rebellion among the hosts in Westworld. Fanon argues that violence becomes a teacher of “social truths”, demonstrating the freedom of the colonized, and allowing him to become a maker, no longer a taker, of history. Violence against the colonizer, particularly if organized and collective, is political, and it aims to create a new identity for the rebel. The identities of the hosts are, like Fanon's colonized peoples, wholly determined by other people. Humans (particularly Ford) determine who they are and what they do.