Statement by Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of NCOSE
Washington, DC – The latest episode of HBO’s Westworld portrayed graphic sex scenes and nudity. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) calls on Westworld creators to stop mainstreaming pornography as entertainment.
“I think all of us have a modicum of taste that keeps us from taking it too far into the pornographic world,” co-executive producer and supervising director Richard J. Lewis told The Hollywood Reporter, while also adding that they “wanted to create the best sex orgy you can imagine.”
“By Richard Lewis’ own admission, Westworld is injecting pornography into mainstream entertainment,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, “The latest episode was replete with gratuitous depictions of female nudity, and included an orgy depicting several explicit sex acts, as well as a scene focusing on exposed male genitalia. I would love to hear Richard Lewis explain to me how these scenes reflect a ‘modicum of taste.’ No plot necessitates this level of explicit depictions of sex acts and nudity. In fact, one wonders if HBO producers are capable of creating plots that don’t depend on pornography for shock value.”
“What the creators of Westworld don’t understand, is that graphic sexual scenes are not artful or compelling. Instead they are toxic fodder for our societal crisis of using people—especially women—as sexual objects, and minimizing the sexual trauma or violence that can result,” Hawkins continued. “The creators of Westworld and executives at HBO need to start focusing on plotlines instead of prurient and pornographic scenes that objectify women and men.”
Due to its history of producing and distributing sexually exploitative programming, including Westworld and Game of Thrones, HBO is a member of the 2016 Dirty Dozen List. You can learn more here: https://endsexualexploitation.org/hbo/
