Are You A Sociopath If You Want To Go To ‘Westworld?’

The more I watch the show Westworld, the more I’m haunted by two questions: Who wants to actually go to Westworld, and does wanting to go there automatically make you a sociopath?

The implication has always been that Westworld is a place the rich and mighty want to go to get away from it all and blow off some steam. For some reason, this particular fantasy world — set in the dusty, tumbleweed-pocked lawlessness of the Wild West — is supposed to be a popular attraction. But again, who is choosing to go to this park? Whom is Westworld for??

I keep asking myself this because I know people who like cheat their own deaths on vacation. They’ll  climb mountains only to careen off them for “practice.” I have met people who have gone on meditation retreats where they are excluded from society and forced to confront their demons alongside the unknown. However, the most common travelers I know are those who crave comfort. They find it in a sunlit resort or a luxurious high rise hotel on the other side of the world.

But I’ve never met anyone who says to themselves, “You know where I would like to go for vacation? A picturesque hellhole where outlaws shoot at me mid-monologue and where I’m expected to hurt as many exorbitantly expensive A.I. people as possible. You know, I want my big spring break to be like living in The Purge movie franchise, but with more dust.”

Westworld the show does its best to promote the idea that Westworld is nothing more than a theme park built for sociopaths who want to let loose. We’ve been told there’s a family section, but where? What is it? Is there a PC storyline where you help out on a cattle drive and learn the meaning of happiness through humble hard labor? The Westworld we’ve seen is a place set up with all sorts of moral temptations: you can kill an outlaw, abuse a sex worker, and even indulge in the big, bad game of war. Because the park is populated with A.I. hosts, the idea is that you’re not really hurting them. You can’t be. Since the hosts aren’t supposed to be sentient, you don’t even have to empathize with them at all.

Except the hosts are designed to seamlessly seem human. They’re programmed to have hopes and dreams and senses of humor and backstories. The trick of Westworld doesn’t work unless you feel a little, tiny, baby bit of something for the hosts. The joy of being cruel to them has to be the point. Just like a roller coaster gives people the rush of falling without smashing upon the ground, Westworld gives its guests the thrill of being bad without moral or legal recompense. It has to be for sociopaths, right?

The question of Westworld’s allure has been on my mind a lot lately, and the question has gotten more complicated with the introduction of two new parks: The Raj and Shogun World. We’ve only gotten our first glimpse at the latter, and judging by Lee Sizemore’s panic, and this cheery park description, this new park may just be a level up in brutality from Westworld. We’ll have to wait and see, but woof.

We did get some quality time in The Raj, an homage to the idealized British-occupied India that never quite was. It’s a colonialist fairy tale, where wealthy (mostly white) guests can breeze from dinner parties to tiger hunts. It’s also the first park I’ve seen on Westworld where I’ve thought, “Oh, yeah, that place looks kind of nice. People are civil and everyone’s well-dressed and there’s a robot tiger. If I ignore the subtext, cool.” I have to hope what appeals to me is the fancy dress and good service; it’s a luxury resort with a robot zoo. But is it? Am I too, a kind of evil person? I would ideally like to go to a woke wonderland with unicorns and wine fountains, but that sadly doesn’t seem to be in Delos’s offerings.

Because that’s the thing: the parks we’ve seen in Westworld don’t seem to be built for rest and relaxation, as much as they’re there to free us from modern society’s moral constraints. Is there a reason someone would go to these parks that didn’t bely some sort of sinister intent? The best one I can come up with is sheer status. If Westworld is a paradise playground for the 1%, just getting off the train in Sweetwater and seeing the place would be fantasy enough for some people.

So does wanting to go to Westworld automatically make you a bad person? It’s a heavy question that the show has done a poor job answering. The only “white hat” we’ve met morphed into “The Man in Black,” so that’s not great. Westworld seems uninterested in presenting its parks as anything other than reflections of our own sins. The critic in me wants to believe that’s because it’s saying something cynical about our own humanity, but the part of me that keeps stressing over this question says that’s not good enough.

Where to Stream Westworld