“If you can’t tell, does it matter?” : race, gender, sex and the cybergaze of Westworld’s gynoids

Abstract

HBO’s <i>Westworld</i> is a widely viewed and critically acclaimed network television program centered on robotic characters in a science fiction setting. <i>Westworld’s</i> success has been attributed in part to HBO’s trademark use of onscreen violence, sex, and brutality, as well as the show’s supposed engagement with themes of personhood, gender, and emancipation. However, <i>Westworld</i> has also been critiqued as problematic in its depictions of race, gender and sexuality in particular its characterization of robotic women (also called ‘gynoids’). This thesis interrogates these portrayals of women further with the research question ‘what androcentric and colonialist parameters inform the portrayal of filmic gynoids, as seen in HBO's <i>Westworld</i>?’ In answering this question, this thesis draws upon critical race theory, feminist theory, objectification theory and gaze theory, and asserts that <i>Westworld</i> relies on hyper-sexualized, racist, colonial and hegemonically gendered conceptions of femininity and humanity in its representation of gynoids.