Slaves of Rome
Quickly, which of these women are slavegirls and which are free women?
Quickly, which of these women are slavegirls and which are free women?
Here we have an image from Slaves of Rome, a commercial bondage film from the 1980s that takes as its theme Roman slave girls.
Being an 80s commercial bondage film, I can report all that there is to the plot in a single paragraph so short that Bulwer-Llyton would scoff at it:
Two naked slavegirls are brought before the Empress by the Empress' personal factotum babe. The slavegirls are put in chains, gagged and tormented. Later, the slavegirls turn the tables on the Empress and her factotum and chain them up and torture them. The End.
What's important about this commercial bondage film is the imagery. While it's not much in terms of plotting and characterization, Slaves of Rome gets it right in visual terms in many respects.
First of all, when the slavegirls are brought before the Empress, they're stark naked, while the Empress and her factotum are both clothed. (This being a porn film, their clothing consists of flimsy see-through robes that fail to conceal their bodies all that well, but the point remains: the slavegirls are naked, the free women are clothed.
This is such a simple and direct method of showing who's a slavegirl and who's not that you have to think a lot of mainstream films would use the free=clothed/slaves=naked technique, but they don't.
In most mainstream flicks, the only time you see slavegirls who are noticeably less clothed than other characters is when they are dancing slaves or harem girls. (And of course, as Arabian Nights demonstrates, sometimes even dancing slaves are dressed from head to toe while dancing. And in some Arabian adventure flicks from the 1950s, harem slaves were the most overdressed female characters of all.)
Think how much better it would be to show slavegirls naked except for a sirik (or to stay safely in R territory, a sirik and a skimpy thong). It would definitely create that "Not in Kansas any more" vibe while cranking up the hottitude.
In a subsequent image from Slaves of Rome, the difference between the slavegirls and their mistresses is ever more powerfully expressed when the slavegirls are seen naked, chained, gagged and being tormented by their somewhat clothed mistresses. This powerfully demonstrates the difference in status between the slavegirls and their owners, but of course it's a very porn-y scene. To work in a mainstream movie, the scene would have to be handled in a considerably less porn-y manner.
But of course, it would be very easy to do that. In HBO's Rome series there is a scene where a household slave is casually being whipped for some minor error, clutching a pillar and wincing in pain with every stroke on his back, while the mistress conducts other business. (Unfortunately, it IS a guy being whipped.) But change it to a woman, tie her to the pillar, have her be as near naked if possible (hell, naked if possible) and handle it exactly the way HBO's Rome handled it -- very casual, the whipping occurring as a side note in the scene, you've got yourself a tasty little BDSM scene going in a mainstream movie or TV show.
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