Le sexe sans le sexe : convergence de la nudité frontale et de l’empowerment féminin dans Westworld

Abstract

Due to its intensive depiction of full (or partial) frontal nudity and its filiation with a patriarchal genre as codified as the western, one might have expected from HBO’s TV series Westworld (2016-) to embrace its broadcaster’s sultry reputation and take advantage of American premium cable’s freedom to mimic, if not duplicate, the formal conventions of soft porn. Yet, studying the fate of its two female protagonists Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay, brings to light a far more conscious relation to the freedom allowed by HBO regarding sexual representation. Tying as it does frontal nudity and female empowerment, both narratively and, above all, aesthetically, Westworld disrupts traditional ways of displaying sex on screen, without falling into either prudishness or outrageous provocation. On the contrary, the series allows HBO to pursue its fictional experimentations by developing a form of televisual hardcore art that considers sex as a natural component of its weekly production.

Keywords

• Sex
• full frontal nudity
• pornography
• adult television
• hardcore art
• female empowerment