The Sex Slave in Cinema: An Inegalitarian Spectacle

by Aga Skrodzka

Overview

This book examines the visual politics of the cinematic figure of the ‘sex slave’ from its origins in silent film to its iterations in blaxploitation cinema, European art cinema, Nollywood, and, in its most concentrated form, the Hollywood blockbuster thriller.

Through close analysis of several film texts that is informed by feminist theory, visual studies, critical race studies, and the political economy of sex work, this book argues that the sex slave has long functioned as a disciplinary spectacle that simultaneously commodifies and punishes female flesh. The sex slave is used to ‘sell’ a libidinal fantasy of rescue, not of the trafficked woman or child, but of the very economic and social order that exploits them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399508247
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2025
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Aga Skrodzka is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Clemson University. Her research interests include world cinema, feminism, post-socialist cinemas, sexploitation cinema and visual narratives of sex work. Dr. Skrodzka is the author of Magic Realist Cinema in East Central Europe and the lead editor of The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures. She is a member of the peer-review college for the UK-based journals Studies in European Cinema and Studies in Eastern European Cinemas. Her work has been published in Film Quarterly, Poetry Magazine, Studies in World Cinema and MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Early Cinema, Erotic Spectacle and Sex Slavery

2. Sifting through Images: Sex Slave Iconography

3. Converging Slaves: The Case of Blaxploitation

4. White Slave: The Commodification and Securitization of Whiteness

Epilogue: Imagining Away Sex Slavery, toward a Counter-Narrative

Bibliography

Index