Oedipal Anxieties in HBO’s Westworld

Abstract

In recent decades, scholars have recognized close connections between Western film and Greek and Roman antiquity, a relationship HBO’s Westworld brings into sharp relief through classical themes, characterizations, and allusions. Two episodes from season 2 in particular have a heavy classical bent. Episode 4 (“Riddle of the Sphinx”) casts park owner James Delos as an Oedipus figure who, in attempting to avoid his fate, runs right into it, as he is confronted with the truth about his nature and identity. In episode 9, William too is identified with Oedipus, when his wife commits suicide after recognizing her husband’s true nature, and William murders his own kin through a failure of recognition, while quotations from Plutarch and Plotinus highlight the issues of identity, fate, and self-knowledge that resound throughout the episode. While the series more broadly is concerned with patriarchal overreach and issues of free will and identity, these two episodes, when examined through a classical lens, offer a concentrated view. In the end, much like its Sophoclean predecessor, Westworld works as an implicit criticism of unbridled ambition, patriarchal narcissism, and lack of self-awareness.

Keywords:

• free will
• Oedipus
• patriarchal narcissism
• Westworld

Notes

1. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Westworld.

2. Recent years have seen sustained scholarly interest in the intersection between Greek and Roman myth and narratives of the Old West, particularly as they are manifested in film; see Day 2022, pp. 31–2, note 1 for a comprehensive list.

3. Baldini (208–10) relates Dolores, as “the one who suffers,” to the Aeschylean notion of pathei mathos (through pain, knowledge).

4. See Bakewell 2002 and Day 2016, pp.185–91. Dinello (246–7) notes that Westworld draws heavily on Ford’s legacy, with the referential name, visual allusions to the Monument Valley locations Ford’s Westerns made famous, and the inclusion of a line (“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”) from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in season 1.

5. Noted by episode director Lisa Joy in “Inside the Episode.”

6. See Price, who notes that this book is concerned with living a predetermined life with an immutable, predestined ending, which goes to Delos’s predicament in this episode.

7. Baldini looks at succession anxieties in season 1 of Westworld in relation to Hesiod’s Theogony (212–3).

8. Baldini notes that Bernard asks the same question in the Season 1 finale, relating it to a larger trend among the hosts, who are “unaware of time and becoming” (210–1).

9. Ford continues to exert influence on Bernard for some time, as is evident in episode 9, where an anguished Bernard begs, “Get out of my fucking head!”

10. Season 2, episode 10: 44:20–30.

11. See “Inside the Episode.”

12. This reference also recalls The Human Stain, a 2003 film based on a Philip Roth novel, which starred both Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris, and which Bakewell, among others, has analyzed for its Oedipal connections.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirsten Day

Kirsten Day is professor and chair of Classics at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, where she also contributes to the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Augustana Prison Education programs. In addition to her 2016 monograph Cowboy Classics: The Roots of the American Western in the Epic Tradition (Edinburgh UP), she has published numerous articles on classics in television and film in edited volumes and has served as guest editor of two journal issues dedicated to classical receptions.