Matthew Meyer
Westworld features a lot of nudity. The irony, of course, is that the nudity the viewer sees is not of humans, but of “hosts.” Actually, they are human‐like androids who were created primarily to be sexually dominated (read, violated) or killed. That point acknowledged, I want to tackle the question of what all that nudity in Westworld could mean from the standpoint of the meaning of the nude in art. In a good film or TV show, nothing is meaningless, and, as I will argue, very little of the nudity in Westworld is gratuitous. On the contrary, instances of nudity in Westworld can be put into three categories: Nudity as a beautiful art form, nudity as a sign of (male) dominance, and nudity as a sign of humanity or more to the point, nudity as a sign of becoming human.
The series begins, in the episode “The Original,” with Dolores sitting, seemingly alone, naked on a chair. The pose is reminiscent of a nude model in a drawing class. Dolores is naked in that she is without clothes, but she is also nude. Kenneth Clark, in “The naked and the nude,” makes a key distinction between being naked , “being without clothes,” and the nude as a form of art. For Clark, the term nude always refers to a work of art that attempts to perfect the naked human body. Nakedness, thinks Clark, suggests all the faults of the human body. In terms of its flesh, the naked body is imperfect. With respect to civility, the naked body evokes the “savage.” In terms of strength, the naked body exposes the frailty of humankind. And lastly, with regard to a biblical interpretation of human being, the naked body usually evokes sin and shame (more on that later).
In contrast to these associations with nakedness, Clark argues that the nude captures the “ideal” beauty of the human body. Indeed, he says, “The vague image [the word nude] projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re‐formed.” 1 The nude is the idealized human form as captured in painting and sculpture. As Clark points out with the (artistic) nude, “We do not wish to imitate; we wish to perfect.” 2 In other words, the nude always refers to a work of art, a work of human creation, not a work of nature. According to such a logic of the nude, there are two features of the nude we should see in Westworld. First, they must be idealized; second, they must be created.
We see the first of these hallmarks in the bodies shown to us without clothes in Westworld : They are perfected. 3 Indeed, all the hosts presented as nudes in Westworld are idealized – svelte, buxom women and “cut,” handsome, rugged men. The hosts are always more idealized in their form than either the human guests or the human directors of the park. It is worth noting that in Westworld we rarely, if ever, even see humans naked (meaning simply without their clothes on).
As with the created work of nude art, it’s important to keep in mind that the “hosts” are indeed made creatures. We see this process in the “The Original” when we see the “line” where newly‐minted hosts are being dipped in the white fleshy plastic. In a strange way, these hosts are moving sculptures. Arguably, even the more gruff and ugly host characters, are gruff and ugly in a perfected way. Consider the perfect dirty band of thieves who keep terrorizing Teddy and Dolores in the first few episodes for instance. And they are idealized because they can be – they are not real (at first) but products of Dr. Robert Ford’s mind.
But the idealization of the human body and the createdness of the hosts come together in the main human theme of both the park’s creators and its visitors: Control. We can see this in the building and re‐building of the hosts that we catch glimpses of in the laboratory scenes. In the physical building and training of the hosts we have the joining of form and function. Clark imagines that the idealized beauty of the nude is analogous to the architecture of a building: It is a “balance between an ideal scheme and functional necessities.” 4 Dr. Ford certainly did build the hosts to combine form with function, namely to be used as visually attractive and passably real sources of entertainment for the guests. As we’ll see, the “objectification” aspect of using the hosts complicates matters.
The hosts routinely become sexually objectified objects of use. The should not surprise us. As the philosopher John Berger argues in Ways of Seeing , historically, nude artwork was primarily a result of the male (artist’s) gaze dominating the female body. 5 In Westworld , the primary frame of nudity occurs when the hosts are operating either in the context of male dominance of women, even brutality toward women, or female seduction. (How many times does Clem say: “Not much of a rind on you…”?). While we see some evidence of the association between nudity and dominance in the brothel scenes in the first three episodes, this display really comes to a head in “Dissonance Theory” and “Contrapasso.” It’s worth repeating that for Berger the female nude “is not naked as she is,” rather she is “naked as the spectator sees her. ” 6 In a particularly snarky articulation of his main point Berger writes:
You [the painter] painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity , thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. 7
Berger points out that throughout the Renaissance (and later), stories from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as Bible stories, were used as a pretext to paint female nudes. Regardless of the purported biblical or mythical “story” behind the painting of female nudes, the common thread is always a spectator looking at a naked woman. This can happen as with the woman looking at herself in a mirror or by having someone look at her with desire or judgment. For example, a popular subject to depict was “The Judgment of Paris,” the story in which Paris of Troy selects the most beautiful woman merely by looking at the women nude.
Perhaps one of the best examples of this voyeurism is in the oft‐painted Bible story of “Susannah and the Elders.” In the story, Susannah is innocently bathing in the river when some old men come up and spy on her. In these paintings “we join the Elders to spy on Susannah taking her bath.” 8 Like a child who quotes a swear word from a movie in front of her parents just to say, “But I am just quoting a movie!” the artist can say, “I am just depicting a Bible Story about the sin of voyeurism!” and the viewer can say, “I am just taking in a beautiful work of art about the sin of voyeurism!” Of course, the artist and the viewer are no less blameworthy for turning Susannah, and painted Susannah, into an object of their desire than the old men in the story are.
For a complicated version of the looker (audience)‐looking‐at‐the‐looker (character in the art medium), consider the nude bathing woman in the episode “Dissonance Theory.” The Man in Black and Lawrence happen upon Armistice (the snake‐tattooed outlaw) bathing in a river. Of course, she knows on some level that is she is being looked at, or will be looked at, because she has her men hiding in the bushes guarding her. After the Man in Black gets caught looking – mind you, he made virtually no attempt to hide the fact that he was looking – he justifies his ogling by saying that he was interested in Armistice’s tattoo. And perhaps, given his maze obsession, it was this simple. But still, the similarity to poor Susannah is unmistakable.
Encountering Armistice bathing at the river is one of the more innocent scenes in which the male gaze dominates and sexually objectifies the female hosts. 9 By contrast, Logan is one character who appears to only see female hosts as toys for visual consumption and sexual objectification. Logan’s ideal world emerges when they follow Lawrence, also knownas El Lazo, to his hideout where the Confederados are treated to an orgy with the women painted in gold. While the innocent (young) William refuses to dishonor Dolores, Logan presumably is having a field day amongst all the available flesh and sex. Here the gold paint becomes especially interesting as vellum of desire. Berger argues that in the case of the standard European female nude of the Renaissance, “The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.” 10 Of course, such an observation seems counter‐intuitive. But the argument goes like this: The women at El Lazo’s are not walking around without clothing for their own comfort or benefit. Rather, they knowingly present themselves as objects of desire for men. In other words, they are putting on the costume of being‐for‐male‐desire (similar to, say, wearing lingerie. What other purpose could it possibly serve?). To some extent the gold paint is a reminder of this costume. It’s almost as if in being completely uncovered, the women wouldn’t be desirable enough. Still, for all intents and purposes the women are works of art, albeit works of art that exist solely for the gaze and desire of the male. In short, the women at El Lazo’s party are not there for their own pleasure. Arguably they are there for the gaze of two “people”: The fictional men who are taking them in and using them for their own pleasure, and the viewers of the show. Indeed, like the women of the Renaissance nude, these “women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.” 11
For the most part, provoker‐of‐desire is the role of the female hosts in the entirety of the Westworld park. Even the ones who are not prostitutes are seen as eminently rapeable. Consider all the terrible sequences that Dolores has to go through, first with the gangs, and then with the Man in Black (although we are not certain that he sexually assaults her). The nude women, at the brothel and at El Lazo’s, are just at the extreme end of a continuum in which all women in the park are seen as instruments to fulfill men’s desire.
Not surprisingly, this attitude toward the female hosts – as well as some male hosts 12 – bleeds into the “real” world as well at the main park headquarters. Here we see that sometimes even the techs take advantage, as in “The Bicameral Mind” when a lab tech is about to take advantage of Hector. This is alluded to in earlier episodes as well, such as in “Contrapasso” when Sylvester alludes to a “nubile redhead in the VR tank awaiting instruction.” Also in “Contrapasso,” we see Sylvester refer to Maeve derogatorily as a “fuck puppet.” This is echoed by Maeve herself at several points as she is “waking up” over the episodes of “Contrapasso” and “The Adversary” in which she says the main purposes of the hosts are for the guests to “fuck us or kill us.” In other words, the relationship between the guests and the techs on the one hand, and the hosts on the other is very clearly one of domination. This domination almost always involves an enforced nudity where the desire of the guest or tech is mapped onto the body of the host. In other words, the gaze of male domination always holds sway. 13
Perhaps the most disturbing and forward‐looking symbolism of the nude in Westworld comes in the form of imagining Maeve and the other hosts as becoming human. In his treatment of nakedness, Berger mentions in passing that: “Their nakedness acts as a confirmation and provokes a strong sense of relief. She is a woman like any other: or he is a man like any other: we are overwhelmed by the marvelous simplicity of the familiar sexual mechanism.” 14 In addition, one could point out that procreation is only necessary for people who can die. Therefore, on some level, to have a sex is to be mortal. To be without clothes is not only to be disclosed as a sexed being, it is also to be disclosed as a human being.
This is where the argument gets a little complicated. Leo Steinberg’s analysis of the meaning of nudity in the depictions of Jesus during the Renaissance gives us an account of nudity as symbolically attached to being human. 15 In Renaissance paintings, the meaning of Christ’s nakedness was neither ideal (like Clark says), nor a symbol of dominance (as Berger argued), but rather a symbol of incarnation. We will see that the hosts have an incarnation of a different sort.
The disclosure of Christ’s genitals in Renaissance paintings is, to Steinberg, the painter’s attempt to emphasize His being human. Some argue that depicting the infant Jesus naked was simply an attempt at naturalism. Naturalism is that style of artistic depiction in painting that “merely” attempts to depict the real world. The logic of naturalism in nude depictions of Christ might be something like: “Babies are often found nude, so here Christ is nude.” There are two problems with this. One problem is that even if the point – as we will see – of depicting Christ in this way was to show that “Christ is just one of us,” then there would be evidence of other babies being depicted naked. Second, if we were aiming to depict Christ as “just another baby,” why not show him crawling or crying? No, as a matter of fact, we must recognize that this tendency of depicting Christ nude – often with additional emphasis on his genitals 16 – was an intentional symbolic move to emphasize something special about Christ – namely that he is God incarnate. 17
But how can depicting someone as a naked human show that they are special? Here is where Christ’s depiction and the depiction of the hosts come together: Their humanness is special because of what they used to be . In other words, Christ used to be God, a purely spiritual being. The hosts used to be non‐human machines. Now they are both human, and their naked humanness reminds us of this fact. What we see in each case is a transformation .
Let’s explore this point more deeply. One point of comparison between Christ’s incarnation and the hosts’ waking up is that their nudity, which on occasion includes their genitals, is an intentional artistic depiction to get the viewer to think about their “likeness” to us. With this point recognized, we can begin to make sense of some of the strange fixations on Christ’s genitals. In Bernard van Orley’s Virgin and Child with Angels, Mary’s hand is strangely close to the naked infant’s genitals. All others in the painting – including the angels in the background – are heavily clothed, which makes us believe that the weather outside is not mild. In Hans Baldung Grien’s The Holy Family, Christ’s grandmother, St. Anne, is holding her open hand directly over the infant’s genitals. In the Veronese’s Sacra Conversatione at the Uffizi Gallery, we see the infant Christ fondling his own genitals. As Steinberg points out it is the pattern between many such depictions that cannot be explained away by such pat rationalizations as “that is what babies do” or that is “what mothers or grandmothers do” or even as one Grien expert attempts to argue, that St. Anne is just casting a good spell. 18 Rather, what we see in each of these depictions is the Renaissance appreciation of God’s second biggest miracle: The incarnation. In other words, we see the theology of the time – the celebration of Christ’s humanation – depicted in the emphasis on his manhood, a tendency called ostentatio genitalium .
The second similarity between Christ and the hosts is the that the presence of nudity is symbolic of mortality – a human problem. In becoming human, Jesus is made mortal. Those who are mortal must reproduce to propagate the species. While according to most biblical historians it is likely that Christ never had sex, the same biological requirement and potential is incumbent upon him if he is to be human . In other words, as a mortal He would need to have the capacity to reproduce regardless of whether or not he uses it. It goes without saying that Maeve, Hector, and Armistice do not have a capacity to reproduce. But even if Maeve cannot reproduce, her human awakening on the train at the end of “The Bicameral Mind” appears to coincide with the birth of her maternal instinct. Maeve appears to override her programming to return to her “daughter” from her first narrative. Even if she did not “give birth” to the little girl, she certainly – and with full clarity and conscious choice – seems to claim the girl as her own.
Frequently (in Westernized Christian societies), even as Clark noted, nakedness is associated with shame and sin. The other connection between the shared origin of Christ and the hosts is that they are free of original sin, albeit in very different manners. In the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve first become aware of their own sexuality – and each other’s – after the Fall, in which Eve has denied God’s warning and gives in to the temptation of the serpent and eats the apple. Before this, presumably, both Adam and Eve were still naked, but not ashamed of their nakedness because of their pure creation from God. (Or more precisely, God’s pure creation of Adam, followed later by creating Eve from a supernumerary rib of Adam’s.) Once they have a realization of their sin – the original sin of disobeying God – they become ashamed of their genitals, and cover them with fig leaves. It is then said that each of us, being descendants of Adam and Eve, have original sin. We should thus be ashamed of our “dirty” sexuality, and cover up whenever possible.
Like Christ, Maeve, Hector, and Armistice are free of original sin. They do not share the lineage of the rest of us alleged descendants of Adam and Eve. In other words, Maeve, Hector, and Armistice, born free of sin can be naked without shame, and their nakedness in the lab at the very end of “The Bicameral Mind” is both a sign of their humanity and a sign of a different lineage from ours. 19
So, the hosts have no shame. One telling confirmation of this is a kerfuffle when Dr. Ford sees Lutz covering his host, Maeve, while working on her in an early episode. But the same nudity Lutz that covers is a sign of things to come: The birth of the human‐host. As we have just seen, the hosts’ unabashed nudity is not an accident of their being “off‐line,” nor is it a mere embodiment of sexual fantasy. Rather it is a symbol of the hosts becoming human.
In Christ, we have the miracle of God becoming Man, signified by the Renaissance painters’ focus on Christ’s manhood. God comes down to Earth. In Westworld , the opposite side of incarnation becomes the miracle: The fleshy‐material hosts become “ensouled” by gaining self‐consciousness. In other words, it is not the miracle of God becoming human, but of machines becoming human, and this is signified through being “born” into humanity nude.
There are moments where Dr. Ford, the God‐like creator of the hosts, seems to suggest that hosts are better than the humans – especially better than the guests who seem to be only interested in discharging their most violent and perverted fantasies on the hosts. As we’ve seen, this tendency is not limited to the hosts but the techs as well. The most telling moment about the failures of humans can be seen in an exchange between Dr. Ford and Bernard in “The Well‐Tempered Clavier.” After Dr. Ford forces Bernard to turn the gun on himself, but before he pulls the trigger, Dr. Ford says: “I’ve told you Bernard: Never place your trust in us. We will disappoint you. After all, we are only human.” Maybe, in the end, it is not our nakedness, but our duplicity and hypocrisy that we humans ought to be ashamed of.