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An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign that something is changing. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic mainly marked a type of intolerance with the foreign tourists. This book chapter brings reflection on the plot of HBO Saga Westworld to understand the ways forms of hospitality in a post-modern world.

The present book chapter is based on the technique of content analysis or film ethnography which dissects elements of films and movies. In so doing, film ethnography occupies a central position in the constellations of qualitative methods.

The present piece is a critique on what specialists dubbed as robot tourism. Westworld shows not only the cautions policymakers should have on robot tourism but also how the depersonalisation process works. Basically, Westworld speaks us of a dystopian amusing park where rich guests travel to torture and victimise humanoids (hosts) who are unable to retaliate. Westworld brings reflection on the decline or the end of hospitality, at least as we know it.

Just after 9/11 some critical voices alerted Western hospitality was in decline. This chapter goes on in the same direction. Westworld brings the problems of free choice, the liberty as well as hospitality into the foreground.

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.

This paper aims to propose LARPnography as a more holistic method to probe the emergence of plausible futures, drawing on embodied embedded cognition literature and the emerging consumer practice of live-action role-playing (LARP). Current research methods for probing the future of markets and society rely mainly on expert judgment (i.e. Delphi), imagery or simulation of possible futures (i.e. scenario and simulation) and perspective taking (i.e. role-playing). The predominant focus on cognitive abstraction limits the insights researchers can extract from more embodied, sensorial and experiential approaches.

LARPnography is a qualitative method seeking to immerse participants within a plausible future to better understand the social and market dynamics that may unfold therein. Through careful planning, design, casting and fieldwork, researchers create the preconditions to let participants experience what the future may be and gather critical insights from naturalistic observations and post-event interviews.

Owing to its interactive nature and processual focus, LARPnography is best suited to investigate the adoption and diffusion of innovation, market emergence phenomena and radical societal changes, including the rise of alternative societies.

Different from previous foresight methods, LARPnography creates immersive and perceptually stimulating replicas of plausible futures that research participants can inhabit. The creation of a fictional yet socio-material world ensures that socially constructed meaning is enriched by phenomenological and visceral insights.