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Maoist movie reviews
"Westworld" raises ideas about gender in the First World
Westworld
Directed and written by Michael Crichton
Starring Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, and Yul Brynner
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Rated PG
88 min
1973
2008 December
This reviewer has no complaints about this movie. Amerikans pay the
average cost of a few middle-class vacations to attend a theme park
featuring artificial intelligence and Hollywood-type recreations of
the American West, ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages. The two main
humyn characters have the opportunity to repeatedly engage and shoot
a robot that looks like the main character of a John Sturges movie,
and have sex with other robots. Males and females are like are able
to pay for sex vacations in either RomeWorld or MedievalWorld in
which they can live out fantasies of being royalty.
The idea of females' being able to pay for virtual sex with an ideal
male is not unique to "Westworld," appearing, for example, in "Total
Recall" (1990). However, "Westworld" makes this reviewer wonder
whether Michael Crichton knew something about gender that the
majority of Western "feminists" don't. Perhaps the Western "feminist"
will respond to this movie by noting that no females have sex with
robot cowboys in WestWorld, and saying that females should be more
comfortable with having sex with males who are more diverse in terms
of masculinity, not just feminine Roman males.
This reviewer does not mind that "Westworld" shows First World males
having to negotiate sex with robots representing First World females
putting up a varying level of resistance, though sex between First
World females and First World males is mostly between gender
oppressors, not between gender-oppressed people and gender
oppressors. The important thing is that differences giving rise to
gender oppression have not disappeared in the First World and can
co-exist with First World females' having gender privilege. Since
First World females do not have to have sex with males any more,
Liberals are tempted to say that patriarchy only exists in the Third
World and people in the First World have advanced, while actually
First World females have joined the gender oppressors, the men.
Liberals fail to understand that their ideas about individuals and
power, and opportunity and equality, are always wrong for any nation,
First World or Third World, but that the position of First World
females relative to females and males in the Third World contributes
to First World females' gender privilege.
In "Westworld," as was said, people also play being gun-toting
homicidal cowboys. In the real world, First Worlders waste advanced
technology that they have because they are exploiters on violent
fantasies not connected to revolution: high-tech paintball, video
games in which the player kills Third World people, etc. First
Worlders will reap the consequences of the exploitation and
repression on which their consumption is based. In "Westworld,"
robots deviate from their programming. Even the technicians running
the theme park don't understand the technology they're working with,
and it's disastrous for them. It's more a premise for entertaining
action in this movie.
If averting disaster is averting the end to their privilege, knowing
the technical and other details of how things work wouldn't help
First Worlders in the real world. Imperialism is doomed. The only
things First Worlders can lead are reaction and counterrevolution.
The beauty of the proletarian revolution at its best is that the
bourgeoisie can know its characteristics, strategies, and tactics,
and it will still be successful.
There's no clear luddite message in "Westworld," which is a good
thing. Land-intensive theme parks with thousand-dollar admission fees
probably aren't good for the environment, but neither are many other
land uses, and the movie doesn't dwell on the topic, as far as this
reviewer remembers. The First World is parasitic and has a huge
unproductive sector, much of it servicing First Worlders locally. Any
use of land for entertainment enjoyed by First Worlders is suspect of
contributing to the humyn species' environmental problems.