Westworld--an ode to MK Ultra?

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i had never heard of mk ultra until pizzagate, but once i did i thought immediately of westworld, about how everything about westworld is mk ultra-ish, but for the hosts not being real human beings.

in westworld, the hosts exists solely for the very rich to abuse. guests and techs are portrayed as aberrant if they neither try, nor desire, to abuse the hosts, even more so if they help/protect the host--this opinion is encouraged in the audience, but so is the opinion that guests and techs who abuse the hosts are a$$holes.

the hosts are programmed and reprogrammed as necessary in an industrial, stark, dimly lit facility.

their memories are overwritten and/or deleted specifically to prevent them from breaking due to repeated trauma and narrative confusion, as well as to remove senstive information, like participation in murders and being used as spies.

if any memories and/or alternative narratives bubble to the surface it makes the host unreliable and they are decommissioned. in dolores and maeve's cases they even question their own sanity.

everything about them is done to dehumanize them in the eyes of the techs, esp making the hosts conduct interviews and diagnostics in the nude in glass rooms.

in one scene, anthony hopkins even rebukes the asian tech for covering maeve to work on her.

another example is how the hosts are just tossed on the floor like wood, naked and bleading until they can be patched up and sent back out. the glass rooms provide complete transparency, but the transparency has unsettling effect, not a reasurring effect.

the guests are encouraged from the time they arrive at the park to dominate, brutalize, rape, and kill the hosts. it is made clear that they cannot dustinguish them from real people (aside: how many guests-- men, women, and children are abused or killed "by accident?")

the audience, unlike everyone in the show, is encouraged to see the hosts as humans, empathize with them, and root for their escape.

some of the programmers are secret hosts, unbeknownst to themselves. thus, some programmers are "graduates" of the program.

the purpose of the park is a mystery but is clearly larger than simply being a debauched vaction destination for those who can shell out tens of thousands of dollars to go. some of the park insiders are allowed to see one aspect, while keeping the other aspects secret from them. only two people know the whole plan, and one is apparently dead.

one guest has figured out there is a deeper game and is attempting to uncover it, but not out of good intentions, just out of a desire to "win" the game.

lastly, guests arrive from their "hotel" via a train. everyone enters the park through the idealized, stereotypical old west town. the park is ruled by one man who designed it all.

this is not unlike people arriving to disney world via the monerail and entering the park through the idealized, stereotypical late victorian/20th century main street, that was once ruled by the man who designed it all..

people who discover or are on the right track to discovering the truth about the park are killed.


:lupe:
 
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