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.