‘These Violent Delights’: Remodelling the Fembot Archetype in Ex Machina and Westworld

Abstract

This chapter explores the development of the dangerous, sexualized fembot archetype in science-fiction film and television, drawing a line from the robot Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) to contemporary versions of the archetype.

Primarily, this chapter outlines how this historically villainous trope has been augmented and redefined in twenty-first Century posthuman science-fiction texts Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014) and Westworld (Joy et al., 2016 –). Both feature fembot characters who are central to the narrative, and can be defined as both villainous at times, but who also occupy the position of arguable sympathetic protagonists. In part, this redefinition can be argued as more a reflection of a Western hegemonic shift towards feminist values. Nevertheless, there have been criticisms of the male gaze present in both and of the emphasis on female suffering.

As oblique texts for an 18–35 audience, both Ex Machina and Westworld ask more questions than they answer. Through textual analysis and with reference to relevant scholarship, this chapter considers the impact of audience and institution on representation, the interplay between genre conventions and the presentation of the archetype as well as a considering how both offer different treatment of intersectional androids.

Citation

Worrow, K. (2022), "‘These Violent Delights’: Remodelling the Fembot Archetype in Ex Machina and Westworld ", Le Clue, N. and Vermaak-Griessel, J. (Ed.) Gender and Female Villains in 21st Century Fairy Tale Narratives (Emerald Studies in Popular Culture and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 129-142. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-564-720221010