Abstract
In the opening of Westworld’s pilot, the viewer is introduced to Dolores, seen with a black fly crawling on her face. Her non-response to the fly is one of the first indicators that Dolores is not-quite- human and initiates the role of the fly as a being with the ability to discern the boundary between the living and non-living. As the series progresses, the fly continues to act as a harbinger, signaling moments of slippage between the organic and the technological. Animal life (albeit almost entirely synthetic) figures consistently in Westworld. The role of the fly, however, is unique, serving as an interface between life, death, and liminal spaces. This chapter considers how the fly, a non-human being deeply and historically associated with the passage from life to death and with technological construction, assists other non-humans, the Hosts, in becoming-living.
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Tregar, K. (2019). Flies in the Face: Entomology and the Mechanics of Becoming-Living in Westworld. In: Goody, A., Mackay, A. (eds) Reading Westworld. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14515-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14515-6_9
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