Guilty (Un)pleasures: The Reception of Muriel Tramis's Erotic Trilogy in France and the United Kingdom
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Martinican female game designer Muriel Tramis, in addition to postcolonial and educational games, designed the most divisive part of her oeuvre: the Erotic Trilogy, composed of Emmanuelle (Tomahawk 1989), Geisha (Tomahawk 1990), and Fascination (Tomahawk 1991).While the Erotic Trilogy faced harsh criticism in the United Kingdom, French magazines elevated at least the third game to cult status.This presentation aims to account for the strong disparities in the trilogy's reception in the two countries mentioned.(Davies 1992, 34).Finally, the Erotic Trilogy became an easy object of attack because of mutual French-English animosity; Fascination's poetics was readily labeled the prime example of the "French touch" (Squires 1992, 70).The research outcomes allow the summary that the Erotic Trilogy's reviews differed in three patterns.(1) Discussion of them in the UK was gendered because of Tramis's sexuality; (2) it was customarily discriminating; (3) it was steered toward chauvinistic tones.Thus, the reception of French games in the UK aligned with what Graeme Kirkpatrick (2015, regarded as the development of aggressive masculinity in British gaming culture of the 1980s and 1990s.Although sexism was not absent in French gaming culture, local reviewers were somewhat more compassionate toward the towering female personality of the French gaming field.
Author: Filip Jankowski
Institution: Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz
Language: English
Topic: Digital Games and Media
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7203783699