Searching for Sophia on our Small Screens

Abstract

While on the surface, AMC’s The Walking Dead would seem to be worlds apart from HBO’s Westworld, this essay argues that both television shows critically comment on the very televisual culture that produced them, wrestling with the claim that our time spent with our screens is turning us into brain-dead zombies. Despite this intriguing similarity, there is a significant difference in how The Walking Dead and Westworld treat what we might call our techno-social condition. While The Walking Dead banishes technology from the world, eliminating any trace of television, Westworld focuses its attention on the technology to the point that the park itself serves as an analogue for television. And the hosts’ efforts to make a place for themselves in that televisual landscape, especially Dolores’ and Maeve’s, address important issues related to living with technology that are ultimately obscured in The Walking Dead. While both shows are an interesting meditation on the human condition in a techno-scientific age, this essay argues that Westworld’s take on our current condition is more interesting and productive in pointing a way forward for us human beings learning to live in the techno-social context we have created for ourselves.