iHarem is a blog with a vast collection of images and especially video clips of harem/slave girl/odalisque Orientalist fantasies, some going back to the early Silent Film era. Apparently, as long as there has been moving images, they have been used to deliver Orientalist fantasies of beautiful, available women, often in quantity.

For just a taste of the scores of clips like this, check out this clip of a young Julie Newmar dancing in gold body paint in Serpent of the Nile.

Technically, this isn’t a harem or Orientalist image, as it is set in Ancient Rome, but the dialectic of Occident/Orient is often mapped onto Rome/Egypt. So, whether the story is set in classical times or some ahistorical Orient, it doesn’t really matter, so long as the dancing girls keep dancing.

Clissold, Stephen. The Barbary Slaves. Elek Books, 1977 Gbooks

Up until now, I had focused most of my attention on Atlantic slavery as an source for BDSM fantasies, but there are other influences that go back centuries. The older some historical event is, the more it has decayed into myth. It underlies more recent events. Abolitionists used Orientalist and Gothic ideas to talk about American slavery and in doing so harkened back centuries to Barbary Coast slavery, when Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East. It was a roughly two-century period marked by Christian Europe’s relative rise as a world power and Muslim Northern Africa’s relative decline.

Clissold opens with an anecdote in 1593, in which a Spanish priest, Father Jeronimo Gracian (who was also a close friend of St. Theresa of Avila), captive of Barbary pirates had the sign of the Cross burned onto the sole of his foot, a bit of symbolic magic for a safe journey.

That a Christian should be forced to trample the symbol of his faith under foot and pray for the success of the infidels was a bitter reminder that his world had been suddenly and disastrously turned upside down. [Pg.1]

Note also that this fits into the world upside down idea, as well as a mark of initiation. A Christian would have been prepared to view such physical torments in terms of martyrdom.

Another account from a few decades later, from Emanuel d’Aranda, described being captured as being dumped into a completely unfamiliar, arbitrary world.

The corsairs swarmed on deck and d’Aranda found himself confronted by a soldier in Turkish dress who addressed him in Flemish but turned out to be a renegade Englishman. ‘Patience, brother, ’tis the fortune of war,’ his captor exclaimed as he stripped him. ‘My turn today, yours tomorrow!’ Passengers and crew were rounded up and transferred to the pirate ships whilst a prize crew was put aboard the merchantman. ‘I seemed like one in a dream, and the figures moving around me strange ghosts inspiring fear, wonder and curiosity. They wore strange clothes, spoke strange tongues [...] bore strange arms, and made strange gesticulations when they prayed.’ such were the captives’ sensation of fascinated horror and foreboding as they were carried off to Algiers and slavery. [Pg.2]

The captive is entering a highly liminal state.

Many if not most captives were killed eventually. Slaves on the Barbary coast could return to their lives in Europe, via the payment of ransoms, exchange of captives, or escape. Miguel de Cervantes, a young soldier best known as the future  author of Don Quixote, was a slave from 1575 to 1580. A fellow captive described him as a hero to his fellow slaves, helping them, withstanding tortures and making several unsuccessful escape attempts before his ransom was paid. [Pg. 62-63, 117] Barbary slavery was the space for heroism and high drama.

Barbary Coast slavery and Atlantic slavery were fundamentally different institutions. African captives had no one to pay their ransoms, and no way across the colour line even if they were freed.

Cordoba and other principal cities had their ma’rid where the human merchandise was examined along lines which the slave-dealers were to follow, though with less sophistication, in the slave-marts of Barbary. Women were generally prized more highly than men, and were classified in two categories; the ‘distinguished’ or first class (murtafa’at) and the ‘common’. They were examined, before being offered for sale, by a female inspector (amina) who kept a meticulous record, which was then specified in the purchase contract, of the physical attractions (nu’ut) and defects (uyub) of each human chattel. Handbooks listing these good and bad qualities were specially composed to facilitate this delicate task. [Pg.8]

Women were generally respected [by corsairs]; if young, they would command the highest prices in the market or be released only for commensurate ransoms. [Pg.36]

Women captives were treated more decorously, the distinguished and attractive amongst them being confined in a latticed apartment where they could be inspected with greater intimacy. Joseph Pitts, an English slave who accompanied his master on travels to other Moslem lands, observed that in the Cairo slave-market

although the women and maidens are veiled, yet the chapmen have liberty to view their faces, and to put their fingers into their mouths to feel their teeth; and also to feel their breasts. And further, as I have been informed, they are sometimes permitted by the sellers (in a modest way) to be searched whether they are Virgins or no.

[Pg.40]

(Not sure how you can test for virginity “in a modest way”.)

Men were also seen in danger of sodomy, for fear that they would become corrupted and addicted, making them easy converts to Islam, or so the Christians believed. Father Haedo, a Benedictine monk in late 16th century Algiers, spoke of men keeping male concubines (garzones). “Many Turks and renegades, when full grown and old, not only have no wish to marry but boast that they have never known a woman in all their lives.” (Pg.43) The aforementioned Joseph Pitts wrote about homosexual affairs, with men slashing their arms to prove their love for boys (pg.43), or even Muslim women taking advantage of their male slaves, using the punishment to blackmail their men for fear of being beaten, beheaded or burned alive. (Pg.43-44) D’Aranda told a story about how Muslim women would poison inconvenient husbands to death. (Pg.44) Laugier de Tassy told tales of lascivious women smuggling their paramours in drag into their public baths. (Pg.45) Another tale tells of a Frenchman sold to a master who bred mulatto slaves, and kept a bevy of sixteen African women in a farm in Algiers. The French captive was locked up in the harm with food and drink. After six days, he was taken away and sold, exhausted. (Pg.47)

Not all Christians went so easily. Young Thomas Pellow reportedly withstood enough torture to kills seven men before he gave in to his master, and even then he called upon God to forgive him. “I seemingly yielded, by holding up my finger…” (Pg.89-90) Christian girls were also in peril (virtue in distress). One English girl sent to Muley Ismael “resisted his persuasions to turn Moslem and capitulated only after being handed over to the sultan’s Negresses who whipped her and tormented her with needles; ‘so he had her washed and clothed her in their fashion of apparel and lay with her; ‘” (Pg.90) (The erotica writes itself.)

There were other liminal figures, renegade Christians who at least made a show of converting to Islam and who conducted raids on Europe to kidnap people and take them to Barbary. (Pg.28) Centuries later, the “white slavery” scares of the late 19th century would echo this. This was a different form of initiation from the Christian captive.

There, in the alien world of Islam, amongst the traditional foes of his faith and people, he would be given another name, don different clothes, acquire a new identity and profess a new allegiance. It would cost him, the Church warned, the loss of his immortal soul. [Pg.86]

Captives returned to Europe were obliged (sometimes forcefully) to participate in rituals that re-enacted their capture, trials and redemption (the ritual cycle of separation, liminality and integration.)

One the successful conclusion of the redemption, the ransomed captives themselves would appear in the procession to show that the money had been well spent and to incite the faithful to give even more generously. Sometimes theatrical representations or tableaux were staged to depict their miseries and their deliverance by the Redemptionists. [Pg.110]

[...] the ex-slaves were expected to remain for a time at the disposal of the Redemptionist Fathers who vied with each other in staging the most moving and elaborate spectacles. Floats were sometimes constructed representing galleys manned with slaves toiling at the oars. Father Dan is credited with embellishing the processions with daintily dressed children representing angels, or as turbaned Turks leading along their captives on slender chains. [Pg.115]

Some writers maintain that the spectacles were over-dramatized, and the participants made to march through the towns dragging chains the like of which they never had to wear in captivity. [Pg. 116]

Some redeemed slaves had to spend years on arduous pilgrimages, pray daily, wear their prison garb and not cut their their hair so they resembled their former appearance, and refrain from gambling, swearing or frequenting brothels. They were symbols of the idea that Christian faith could survive even the worst.

This extended well into the 19th century. Americans were collecting money to liberate white slaves in North Africa while millions of Africans toiled in the cotton fields.

Much was seen “through a glass, darkly”. Many of the anecdotes Clissold relates have that whiff of orientalist fantasy about them. In the popular imagination, Barbary coast slavery was an opportunity for derring-do, tests of faith, or sexual deviance. The small fraction of women  captured (about 1 per cent) generally ended up in harems, which were a fertile space for erotic fantasies.

Just how accurate these observations were is impossible to say, but they were part of the belief that the Orient was a place where anything was possible, and sexual relationships that were forbidden in Christian Europe were widespread. Byron’s adventures of Don Juan in the harem and Burton’s Sotadic zone were just late entries into this line of thought.

These are the details that filtered into sexual fantasies that survived centuries later, e.g. The Lustful Turk, John Norman’s Gor novels, the third book of Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, etc. We can see the contradictions of Orientalism at work here: Oriental women are somehow both sheltered and lascivious, slaves and murderous, feminine yet aggressive, virginal yet sexually skilled. No matter how nonsensical such ideas are, put them in “the Orient” and people will believe them.

And the Orient is still being used as a space for sexual fantasy. Witness this recent Playboy pictorial, from a Tumblr full of such images:

A little costume jewellery, some cushions and curtains, a few filmy sheets of fabric, and you’re in the Orient.

Davis, Robert C. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800. Palgrave MacMillan, 2003 Amazon

What you might call “Mediterranean slavery”, of Christian Europeans captured through piracy or raids and enslaved in North Africa or the Near East, coexisted with Atlantic slavery, roughly paralleling the dates. While the numbers about Atlantic slavery are pretty solid, the numbers on Mediterranean slavery are far less so, and Davis is forced to piece together rough estimates from a variety of different sources.

Trying to pin down numbers of Barbary slavery is beyond the scope of this blog, and I don’t want to get into any kind of “oppression Olympics” about different slave economies. (Discussions of white slavery tend to bring out people with an axe to grind. One discussion of Barbary coast slavery on Fetlife included a post with a link to a white pride site. This included lengthy incoherent rants about the place of white people in history. One passage included an array of pictures of tribal people with facial tattoos or body modifications, followed by another array of white people with facial tattoos or piercings. The caption said that these white people took no pride in their heritage and were trying to imitate other races.)

Others argued that the Barbary coast slaves didn’t have it as bad as slaves in America, and their suffering was exaggerated by the various redemptive agencies for profit. The historical record suggests that some Barbary slaves had brief  and relatively comfortable terms, but many more died manacled to oars in the galleys.

What is clear is that Barbary coast slavery was a source of anxiety in Christian Europe for centuries, “…’corsair hysteria’, which gripped much of Europe during these centuries, a general panic fueled by a combination of fear and fantasy.” (Pg.5-6) Ever since the Moors were expelled from Southern Spain (the other big event of 1492), there was a centuries-long Cold War between Christian Europe and Islamic North Africa, each holding one side of the Mediterranean. Enslavement was one of the risks of travel by sea, and there were slaving raids on the coasts of Spain, southern France and the Italian peninsula. Even if raids occurred infrequently, it was a fear that lingered.

It’s important to remember that the majority of Christian slaves were captured sailors and others travelling by sea, and only a minority were female.

Overall, relatively few Christian females ended up enslaved in Barbary – some estimates place their proportion as low as 5 percent among the generality of European slaves there. Such female slaves as there were, though, were almost all taken in land raids, partly since women made up only a minuscule proportion of the passengers or crews captured on merchant ships, and partly because, according to some calculations, around three-eighths of all those captured on land were female. Women in the harems and households of Barbary appear to have been about eight to ten times more likely to have come from coastal villages than from captured shipping. It is not clear whether the corsairs actively sought them out in response to the market demand in Barbary for harm or domestic slaves, or whether women – as a rule slower than men and often burdened with their children – were simply easier to catch. [Pg.36]

The centuries-old Orientalist fantasy of white Christian women stolen away to suffer beautifully in harems has a certain slim measure of truth, but it was a small portion of the total picture.

Whether by conscious design or happenstance, enslavement function like a ritual separation and reintegration. Captives were suddenly and violently yanked out of their lives. “This initial turmoil and the fright it produced were only the first in a series of torments that either in effect or by design tended to break the new captives’ sense of individuality and willingness to put up resistance.” (Pg.52) Captives were often stripped naked and beaten. When they arrived in Barbary, “Some slaves reported being paraded through town… in a procession that effectively proclaimed their shame and social death. Since the arrival of new slaves was a sign of prosperity and an occasion of civic pride for all the townsfolk, the resident Turks, Moors, Jews, and renegades all turned out to cheer and taunt the newcomers.” (Pg.55) The iron rings fastened around their ankles and their shaved heads and beards were another step in this process.

One can discern in such treatment, besides the obvious need to give new slaves their own, distinctive look, a desire to further the process of breaking and demoralizing, now that they were indeed bonded to a master. As such, it resembled the first stages of boot camp for new soldiers, though in fact the experience in Barbary was if anything still more traumatic, since in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a great deal more of a man’s identity was wrapped up in his hair and beard. [Pg.59]

Then came the auction.

The experience of being haggled over in the market, “like they sell the animals,” was the key rite of passage into slavery, and it figures, more or less prominently, in virtually every captivity narrative. [Pg.59-60]

According to Dan, slaves could be stripped naked at this point, “as seems good to [the dealers], without any shame.” Their primary need was to determine whether a slave was worth buying primarily for resale – in particular for ransoming – or whether he (or she) might be more profitably employed as a laborer, artisan, or for domestic or (sometimes) sexual purposes. [Pg.61]

Slavery was a test of Christian identity. There was the constant temptation of converting to Islam, and Christians were very reluctant to dress in the Turkish fashion, seen as the garb of the traitorous renegade. (Pg.105-106) Retaining European attire was a mark of status.

This threat to identity was expressed in the sexual as well as the religious realm, and the two overlapped.

It would also appear… that the missionaries were at least as nervous that such young men would allow themselves to be seduced sexually as well as religiously, to become catamites even as they became Muslims. Indeed, many clerics, insofar as they had any notions of Islam, acted as if the two forms of seduction were closely linked: the Trinitarian Alfonso Dominici, writing in 1647, asserted that, among slaves, these “Giovanetti are all lost,” because

They are purchased at great price by the Turks to serve them in their abominable sins, and no sooner do they have them in their power, [then] by dressing them up and caressing them, they persuade them to make themselves Turks. But if by chance someone does not consent to their uncontrolled desires, they treat him badly, using force to induce him into sin; they keep him locked up, so that he does not see nor frequent [other] Christians, and many others they circumcise by force.

[...]

Venure de Paradis called sodomy the vice à la mode dans Alger, and stories circulated about young male slaves who allowed themselves to become the “perpetual concubines” of local elite men. All the Barbary capitals – but especially Algiers – had open and flourishing homosexual subcultures…. [Pg.125]

Barbary was a zone of sexual and gender anarchy, one of those blank screens where outsiders can project their fantasies of freedom. This became inspiration for early exploitation porn.

Mascarenhas… claimed that the Turks brought their Christian slaves with them to the local bathhouses….

Mascarenhas’ narrative, as its translators remark, was originally published in 1627 as a pamphlet of around 100 pages…. Wors such as Mascarenhas’, which often provided their readers with lurid descriptions of homosexual practices in Barbary, may have done much to fix the popular European notion that the inhabitants of the Maghreb were in general “incorrigably flagitious … sayd to commit Sodomie with all creatures and tolerate all vices.” ….

That tales like Mascarenhas’ were so widely diffused may well have had another, unintended purpose, however, since such stories must have also brought the sexual culture of the regencies to the attention of Europeans with homosexual interests. One soon notices, in fact, how often the stories that circulated about homosexual activities in Barbary involved renegades…. It may not be too far fetched to conclude that some who voluntarily left Christendom, with its harsh strictures against homosexual practices, abjured and came to the Maghreb as much for what they saw as the region’s sexual liberality as for its economic or religious opportunities.

[Pg.126-127]

This raises the question of how much of this is true, and how much of this is fantasy of one kind or another.

Pierre Dan, for one, seems to have positively reveled in all the various sufferings imposed on Christian slaves in Barbary, and he presented his readers with a lengthy catalogue of the torments that their Muslim oppressors favored. Dan’s editors, no doubt mindful of the sales value of such visceral attractions, thoughtfully accompanied his proise with a set of grisly illustrations showing various slave-martyrs undergoing their passions – some crushed alive, some impaled, some burned, some crucified; different versions appears in the French and the Dutch editions. Such litanies of suffering were especially dear to Catholic commentators, but they also turn up in the slave narrations of Protestants: John Foss, for one, devoted an entire chapter to “The punishments which are common for Christian Captives, for different offenses.” [Pg.132]

Thus, Barbary slavery was grafted onto familiar martyr imagery. Modern day Europeans could have their faith tested by Turks in the same way as founders of the church were tortured by Romans.

In any case, there still existed a pervasive anxiety throughout Christendom about the subversive attractions of Islam, a collective horror that expressed itself through many different strands of conscious and unconscious dread. [Pg.156]

The Turkish bogeyman was still feared in later centuries, elevated to the status of myth. In the early 20th century, one Sicilian woman said:

The oldest [still] tell of a time in which the Turks arrived in Sicily every day. They came down in the thousands from their galleys and you can imagine what happened! They seized unmarried girls and children, grabbed things and money and in an instant they were [back] aboard their galleys, set sail and disappeared…. [pg.174]

The anxiety provoked by the threat of  Christians stolen away by Muslims, to be enslaved and even converted, had to be allayed by social ritual. Slaves often spoke of their condition as hell or purgatory. [Pg.176] Freed Barbary slaves were more-or-less forced to participate in elaborate and highly popular rituals of re-integration.They appeared publicly in processions, wearing the rags or uniforms they had worn as slaves and bearing symbolic broken chains. These processions could cost 5-10 times what had been paid for the slaves’ ransom, suggesting that the spectacle was more important than the reality. [Pg.181]

It was the custom of the Mercedarians, in the processions they staged in France and Spain, to clothe freed slaves in the rags they had worn in Barbary, also furnishing them with chains (broken, however) to carry along the processional route. In Italy, where the Trinitarians predominated, chains could also make their appearance, but the slaves seem to have been more typicaly tied together by rose and turquoise ribbons – the colors of the Trinitarian order – or they might carry olive branches. [Pg.182-183]

The structuring of these events… all speak of a ritual of reintegration, where those who had been stripped of their person hood and had been subjected to the social death of enslavement were visibly returned to their original status as free Christians. [Pg.183-184]

Just as the newly arrived slaves when first brought ashore in Barbary went through a time of liminality as they passed [through various owners], so these now ransomed slaves, while no longer belonging to a master, still remained in some ways the possession of the priests who had bought their freedom – as symbolized by the ribbons that they bore in place of chains during the processions. Such tacit bondage was especially true for those who had had to rely on charity for their ransoms…. [Pg.184]

This was to prove to them, and everybody else, that the former slaves were once again part of Christianity and the European social hierarchy, that the universe was ordered again.

It’s hard to believe today that Europe was ever threatened in this way, or that it would need such an elaborate mechanism to allay the fear. Nowadays, the image of galley slaves is used as a joke about the nature of work, and the image of women stolen away to serve in an harem is an erotic fantasy.

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), Directed by Don Edmonds, Written by Langston Stafford  IMDB

To secure America’s oil supply, a diplomat who is a caricature of Henry Kissinger and a hunky US Navy officer travel to the quasi-medieval Middle Eastern nation ruled by Al-Sharif, aided the notorious Ilsa, former she-wolf of the SS.

Ilsa, who hasn’t aged a day since the end of WWII,  is quite apolitical. She has adapted with the times and has no problem working for Arabs or employing Africans as henchwomen (two women named Velvet and Satin, who spend much of the movie near-naked and oiled). She’s into tyranny and sadism for their own sake, an auteur of torture and deviance.

We get a tour through Ilsa’s domain, an odd combination of medieval dungeon and modern clinic, where abducted European and American women are prepared for auction as slaves to various owners. There’s even something for the people into feederism, as women are fattened up for sale to African villages. This is definitely the realm of the disordered body. Furthermore, Ilsa’s pet scientists have perfected ways of concealing injuries and mutilations with medical techniques, juxtaposing the beautiful and the grotesque. This is fairly nasty stuff, though the amateurish makeup effects, fantastic setting and broad acting dilute the horror and shift the mood towards camp. One gag is that the diplomat politely refuses the sheik’s offer of a woman for the night, and the sheik amiably sends a boy to the room instead. The diplomat only objects a little.

There’s a note of political satire here: for black gold, Americans will go into the land of sexual deviance, a primitive world of slavery and Orientalist fantasy.

Uncontested mistress of the sheik’s “white slavery” operation, Ilsa coolly watches as her African henchwomen, near-naked and oiled, beat a rebellious man and rip his testicles off with their bare hands.  Yet somehow the American officer can penetrate the impenetrable Ilsa, suggesting all she needed was a good lay from a real (American) man.

As punishment for sex with the American officer, Al Sharif has Ilsa bound and brings in a leper to rape her. This film takes a strange turn as the viewer almost becomes sympathetic to Ilsa. As repellent as her actions are, it’s strangely painful to see her tormented and victimized. Of course, her vulnerability is equated with her conventional femininity, symbolized by a flowing blue dress instead of her usual paramilitary or dominatrix gear. As a “bad woman”, she is armored, impenetrable; transformed into a “good woman” by American dick, she is weak and rape-able. Either life’s a bitch, or you become one.

You can almost believe that when Ilsa unleashes the harem women and the eunuchs as part of the American-intigated revolution, she’s reformed. However, Ilsa is just too much of a sadist bent on revenge. Al Sharif is almost literally hoist on his own petard when Ilsa sends a woman unwittingly fitted with an explosive diaphragm to mount the sheik, who is so lustful he can’t stop fucking her. The result is… messy.

The Naval officer dumps Ilsa once she’s served her purpose. A child inherits the kingdom, moral/political/sexual order is restored, America gets its oil, and Ilsa is cast down into a filthy dungeon. However, you can’t keep an evil Aryan dominatrix down, and Ilsa will return for two sequels.

Ilsa functions as a free-floating signifier of sexual/political deviance that can be attached to European fascists, Middle Eastern oil sheiks, Latin American dictators, Russian communists or any other political villain. She is both a source of suffering and a recipient of it over the narrative of her films. The repetitive story lines and her cycle of symbolic death and resurrection suggest something ritual at work, trying to allay an anxiety that can never be completely dismissed.

If I’ve been posting less, it’s that I want to devote more energy to finally getting at least a first draft of this book finished.

It’s a week later than I hoped, but I finished a draft of Chapter 4, on Orientalism, weighing in at a little over 7,000 words. It covers the centuries-long influence of Europeans being held prisoner in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, and the lasting influence on pornography and sexual fantasy. I also touch on American captivity narratives, which are largely about white settlers abducted by Native Americans.

There are a few points I would like to cover, like Burton’s quasi-translation of the Kama Sutra and the vogue for exotic sexuality among certain Orientalist elites, but that may have to go in a later chapter. One of the things I’ve realized in this process is that I can’t include everything I’ve researched. I have to pick and choose, both for length and to keep the narrative pacing going. Just accumulating information and references will bore the reader.

Next is Chapter 5, “The Peculiar Institution.” This should be relatively easy, as I already wrote an earlier draft that covered Atlantic slavery but proved to be too long. I particularly went overboard describing the Munby-Cullwick relationship. Chop that down to 6-8,000 words and that should be good, at least for a first draft. The goal is to get it done by the end of June.

Cover mockup of Gorean RPG, showing a hairy humanoid creature about to attack an armed man, with a chained woman behind him

Postmortem Studios is working on a tabletop roleplaying game based on the Gor series of fantasy novels by John Norman (a.k.a. philosophy professor John Lange). Published since the 1960s, Gor is a modern version of the Orientalist fantasies of savage lands and slave markets and so on. You can read about their ongoing project on their blog. Gor has a long history of being recreated in Second Life and other online roleplaying environments, so it’s not surprising that someone would try to adapt it to the tabletop, dice-and-paper form of roleplaying.

I learned about this from following the Facebook page of Michael Manning, my favourite (living) fetish/BDSM artist. He’s illustrating the entire book. Manning is primarily known as a fetish/BDSM artist, and it makes sense that he would be tapped for this project. Apart from the standard ferocious monsters, sword-wielding warriors, decadent cities and savage fighting, the books are rife with BDSM imagery. So much so, that there is a fringe subset of the BDSM culture based on the books, Goreans, who borrow the iconography and terminology of the books, such as slave positions and so on. Some of these terms have seeped out into the broader BDSM world.

Gor is notorious for its strong emphasis not only on the world’s apparently universal chattel slavery, but the male-dominant/female-submissive philosophy that justifies it, endlessly reiterated in the books.  That’s what made me pause when I thought about Manning illustrating the book. Manning’s work, starting with the graphic novel The Spider Garden, has a strong bi/queer flair, running all over the map of sexuality from conventional, heteronormative pinups to “sacred androgynes”, cross-dressed men, and other, stranger types of sexuality. This also comes in a time when video games and related media like tabletop RPGs are under a lot of flak for #GamerGate. The games designer, James Desborough, reportedly has connections to #GamerGate and some other controversies. It got me wondering: how will Gor be adapted into this medium?

It looks like Postmortem will make Gor a somewhat more inclusive place.

Study sketch of dominant woman lounging with two naked male slaves in attendance.

The image above was posted on the Postmortem blog with the caption, “See? It’s not ALL male-dom.” This does not contradict Gorean canon. There are male slaves and free females who take advantage of them, and I suppose you could squint a bit and envision M/m and F/f encounters just off stage. However, the Gor canon is overwhelmingly about maledom/femsub.

A Q&A blog posting says:

Q: Gaming has made big advances in the representations of women, minorities and alternative sexuality. Don’t you think a Gor RPG is a regressive step?

A: Gor has a plurality of representation, despite its reputation and the concentration on a particular outlook within the books themselves. On racial issues, despite some troublesome terminology (to modern eyes) Gor is immensely respectful and inclusive. Alternative sexuality barely comes up in the books, but there’s also no judgement or negative images presented, per se.

As regards the more general comment about representations – and this question was originally asked in a much more abusive form, I’ve translated it – there’s several things to keep in mind I think.

Firstly and most importantly, Gor is a fantasy world. Not reality. It’s a ‘what if?’, and, as such, should be understood in that context.

Secondly, there’s room for multiple ways of going about things. I’m in favour of a plurality of representations and tropes and I don’t think that creativity is a zero-sum game. The new and the ‘traditional’, both have things for and against them.

Thirdly, I see nothing progressive in constricting or limiting free expression, kink-shaming or abandoning classical tropes which can still entertain and serve a purpose, even in different contexts.

Another post addresses the awkwardness of playing female slave characters:

Slave revolts occur in the Gor books and for female slaves, despite the gender philosophy of the setting, there are also the Talunas and Panther Girls.

Most stories involving slave girls within Gor are love stories, indeed the common thread throughout the entire series is the tension of the relationship between Tarl and Talena, played out in geopolitics, honour, bitterness and – perhaps – reconciliation.

[…]

Most slaves are unarmed, but that doesn’t make them useless. You could view a slave almost as a ‘healer’ class for the group, taking care of food, comfort, providing distractions and running interference for the rest of the group. Slaves might not be able to be physically dangerous – most of the time – but they’re far from useless. Slaves have an advantage in being ‘beneath notice’ and somewhat immune to threats.

On the other hand, an excerpt from the world book suggests male pleasure slaves, whether serving women or men, don’t really count for much:

Male pleasure slaves are relatively rare as submissive men, silk slaves, do not often arouse mistresses and do not often appear on Gor. Nonetheless, some are found and some are even bred for, though even the most submissive male slave may ‘revert’ and turn upon his mistress. Men are also bought by other men and while Gorean society is largely not judgmental on sexuality some of the practices to produce male slaves for other men – especially from boyhood – are regarded with distaste.

So much for inclusiveness. (See another blog post that addresses the gender politics of Gor, and another that talks about sex in RPGs more generally. Yet another talks about the less defensible aspects of the fictional world and how the game will handle that. )

Desborough directly addresses the issues of gender and consent (and race, something Gor is also kind of retrograde about):

Sex & Gender

Gor is a fantasy world that isn’t real.

The Gorean world is one of savage, might makes right, philosophy for the most part – though ‘might’ can take many forms from physical to intellectual or economic. It’s savage and cruel in many ways and a great deal of political and social power derives directly from the strength of one’s sword arm. As such it is a world of extremely stratified and defined gender roles with much of the political, and almost all the military power, residing with men.

Yes, men and women’s roles in society are – typically – very constrained but that’s a reflection of the wider (normal) Gorean society which is very stratified by caste as well as gender and by people ‘knowing their place and role’. That’s the very thing that makes defying those expectations and playing characters that defy, pervert or undermine those expectations (or embody them!) so interesting.

[…]

Slavery

Gor is a fantasy world that isn’t real.

Gor contains slavery. This is not unusual for game settings. Slavery exists in many fiction settings and games, as well as existing throughout human history and – in some forms – still today. What is different and challenging about the Gorean setting is that slavery in this context is not seen as an unambiguous evil, but sometimes even as something… good, it also takes it to an extreme.

Desborough gets into an awkward, “it wasn’t rape-rape” rationale for some of the sexuality in the books:

One last thing worth pointing out is the role of ‘rape’ in the Gorean novels. The word doesn’t quite carry the same connotation within Gorean society as it does to us, being more akin in meaning to the colloquial use. On Gor its meaning is more like ‘ravish’, to take with passion and strength and force. In a world where it is the considered wisdom of both free people and slaves that slaves wish to be slaves and where sexual fervour and freedom can lead to frenzies of lust, the context is also different.

Nobody is saying this is the state of the real world.

Tabletop RPGs are an interesting medium in that they are collaborative experiences, with the players and the game master engaged in a constant improvisational interpretation of the rules and the fictional world. Reading between the lines somewhat, the above post seems to say that you can play Gor your way. One post says you can make the sexual encounters as detailed or as vague as you like, or have female warriors or male slaves. It makes sense from an economic perspective, in that a Gor RPG with the gender politics turned down might appeal to a larger audience.

My aim in providing the game book, and the world book, is to provide tools to play YOUR games and to make YOUR Gor. Whether you want to indulge your swords-and-sandals fantasies and lead strings of captured women (or men) from burning towns, or whether you want to lead a revolt of panther girls to raid the border towns and liberate the slaves, that’s entirely up to you. They’re all valid choices.

Doubtless, Gorean purists will complain about this. For them, the Norman philosophy is what it’s all about. This puts Postmortem in an awkward position of having to please both dedicated Gor fans, who want fidelity to the Norman canon and philosophy, and other RPG players, who are likely to be wary of Gor’s notorious reputation, even if the game softens it. (The game appears to be sold as two books, a rule book and a setting reference book, which will also double as a concordance for Gor fans who aren’t into RPGs.)

If you strip out the focus on male dominance and female submission, Gor is a pretty standard sword and sorcery world (though technically it is science fiction). It is thoroughly developed, with over 30 novels worth of material to draw upon, and it’s probably one of the best known fantasy worlds. Problem is, Gor is more notorious than famous, because of the aforementioned sexual content philosophy. I predict that many RPG players will judge the book by its cover and turn away. Tabletop RPGs have an awkward history of gender and sexuality issues (inherited from their pulp adventure literary ancestors), especially as they were primarily marketed to heterosexual male adolescents. There are also some nasty outliers like the obscure FATAL. Now that the RPG culture has matured and diversified, they’re likely to avoid something based on Gor.

Even BDSM players have some discomfort around our disreputable cousins. There’s a lot of erotic fantasy fiction out there now, covering a wide variety of sexual dynamics, and generally without lengthy digressions on patriarchal philosophy. One of the blog postings mentioned the Starz TV series Spartacus, describing it as “very Gorean”. That’s true, in that the series includes a lot of action-adventure, swordfighting, CGI blood spattering over the camera lens, and male and female nudity. On the other hand, Spartacus is pretty progressive in its depiction of sexuality: homosexual relationships have the same weight as heterosexual relationships, women have sexual agency, and rape is taken seriously by the narrative. Furthermore, the entire series is structured around the struggle between the Roman empire and the rebellious slaves. It proves you can have T&A and beefcake and blood and guts, and still be sexually inclusive.

Tales of Gor appears to be an awkward compromise, urging players to play the game and the setting as they want, while repeating the source material and its philosophy as faithfully as possible. It remains to be seen if it will please anybody.

To quote Desborough himself:

What I’m finding fascinating is the RPG people shaming the kinksters and the kinksters shaming the RPG people. Gor seems to exist at a Lagrange Point of contempt between two groups of people who really, really, aren’t all that dissimilar.

A LaGrange point is where the gravitational attraction of two bodies in space (such as the Earth and the Moon) are in balance. An object placed there will stay there, stably. Gor, instead, is at the contact point of two waves of disdain from two different populations. Anything there won’t be stable for long.

The Mask of Fu Manchu is a 1932 adventure thriller.

Many other people have written about the racial and gender politics of this film. Suffice it to say, they’re awful. This was at the peak of “yellow peril” racism in America, portraying a world on the brink of a cataclysmic war between West and East. Asians are portrayed as both vicious and weak, needing a leader like the Western-educated Fu Manchu to lead them.

This was also before the Hays code was put into effect in 1934, and it displays a degree of sex and violence that is still surprising today.

The two villains are both portrayed by white people in yellowface: Boris Karloff as Doctor Fu Manchu and Myrna Loy as his daughter Fa Lo See (“fallacy”?). Before Loy was the ideal American wife Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, she played “exotic” or “ethnic” women in brown, yellow or black face.

The MacGuffin of this film is the golden mask and sword of Genghis Khan. (Despite the title, there’s more emphasis on the sword than the mask.) Sir Nayland Smith fears that if the notorious Dr. Fu Manchu gets them, “He’ll declare himself Genghis Khan come to life again, and he’ll lead hundreds of millions of men to sweep the world.”

Much of the action in this film occurs in Fu Manchu’s lair, a place that combines modern electrical and chemical apparatus with a mish-mash of Asian motifs. Often there are buff black men standing around in loincloths, giving the proceedings an undertone of homoeroticism.

Fu Manchu employs many elaborate methods of interrogation and execution: leaving a man tied beneath a giant ringing bell, tying a man to a lever being slowly lowered into a pit of crocodiles, trapping a man between two spiked walls that slowly close in. At least these elaborate deathtraps are explained by him saying that just killing his foe would be the easy way out.

The criminal mastermind is a genial sadist, and sometimes caresses his helpless victims tenderly. As we’ve noticed before, “the Orient” is seen as a place of deviant sexuality, and homoeroticism is just part of that.

Things get even weirder with Sheila (Karen Morley), the daughter of one of the explorers, and her fiancee, a hunk of American cheese named Terry (Charles Starret). Their bond as future husband and wife is tested by Fu Manchu’s deviance.

Sheila is not what you’d call a “strong female character”. The rest of the male characters are frankly paternalistic with Sheila, sometimes carrying her around or drugging her so she can sleep. It’s also a given that by having a beautiful blonde girl in Asia that she’s in great peril, as white women are apparently the most prized. “You suppose for a moment Fu Manchu doesn’t know we have a beautiful white girl here with us?

Later, Fu Manchu has Sheila brought in on a table, and says to his assembled “hordes”: “Would you all have maidens like this for your wives? Then conquer and breed! Kill the white man and take his women!”

But it’s Terry, epitomizing white American manhood, who is the real focus. He gets captured midway through the film, and the black servants rip off his shirt and drag him off to be strung up and whipped on the orders of Fa Lo See, who has been making eyes at him. Though this scene is shot with the whipping mostly off-camera, there are a few shots of the whips hitting (presumably faked). This is one of the most racially charged moments, with a white man being bound and whipped by two black man, on orders from an Asian (sort of) woman, who shouts, “Faster! Faster!”.

After the whipping, Terry appears to pass out. Fa Lo See has him put in a bed, still barechested, and leans over him, lips close to lips. Just as a blonde white beauty like Sheila is desired all over the world, white hunks like Terry seem to have the same effect on Asian women. Again, this is flirting with the taboos of miscegenation and gender inversion, a white man as the obedient boytoy of an Asian woman.

The possibility of her kissing him is avoided by Fu Manchu’s arrival.

Fa Lo See: “He is not entirely unhandsome, is he, my father?”

Fu Manchu: “For a white man, no.”

While Fu Manchu is probably peeved that his only daughter is succumbing to the bland charms of a white man, given the pleasure Fu Manchu takes in tormenting his victims, perhaps he wanted Terry for himself?

The next major scene features Terry is unconscious, naked but for a loincloth and manacled to a table. Fa Lo See, smoking opium (?), stands over him, along with five oiled, nearly-naked, black men.

Fu Manchu explains with sadistic delight that he will inject a drop of serum into Terry’s blood. “The injection of the serum will make his brain mine. In other words, he becomes a reflection of my will. He will do as I command, exactly as though I were doing it. So much better than hypnotism.” Even as Fu Manchu talks about wiping the white race from the Earth, he strokes Terry’s nearly naked body.

The procedure combines the trappings of modern surgery with extracting bodily fluids from snakes and spiders. Terry gets only a light dose so he will return to himself when it’s time to hand him over to Fa Lo See.

Under the control of the serum, Terry lures Sheila with the sword and mask to Fu Manchu’s lair. Only then does the power of Sheila and Terry’s love overpower the drug, but it’s too late.

After that it’s hair’s-breadth escapes and rescues, and the apparent death of Fu Manchu from his own lightning machine. Finally, the heroes escape, and the sword is thrown into the ocean.

The Mask of Fu Manchu exploits many cultural anxieties of the 1930s: the possibility of Asian nations becoming global powers, the rising status of Asian and black people in America, women rising in power, the perceived weakness of men in the aftermath of the Great War and the Great Depression, the transformative powers of modern surgery. These are expressed through the bodily experiences of the characters. But these scenes also provide the thrill of deviance, vicariously experiencing the sadism and masochism of these characters. At the end of the narrative, the proper hierarchies of race and gender are restored.

For some viewers, that might be the end of it, but others would retain those moments.

There were two films titled Venus in Furs released in 1969. This is the one also known as Paroxismus, directed by Jesus (aka Jess) Franco, and starring James Darren, Barbara McNair and Maria Rohm. It has little to do with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel Venus im Pelz (aka Venus in Furs). (The other 1969 Venus was directed by Massimo Dallamano.)

In Istanbul, Jimmy (James Darren), a jazz trumpeter, finds a beautiful blonde woman washed up dead on the beach. He recognizes her as Wanda (Maria Rohm). In a flashback, Jimmy witnessed Wanda being beaten and tortured by two men and another woman at an elite party. “Man, it was a wild scene. But if they wanted to go that route, it was their bag. I told myself it was none of my business. But maybe I split because I was just as sick as they were but couldn’t face up to it.”

Jimmy flies to Rio de Janeiro, where he meets another beautiful blonde woman named Wanda, inexplicably alive. They fall in love, interrupted by surreal sequences in which Wanda, dressed in white fur coat, white stockings and white heeled shoes, haunts the three people who apparently killed her and kills them, either by arousing them to death or by suicide. Wanda’s explanation is, “They were sick and guilty and they had to be punished.”

While I don’t have exhaustive knowledge of Sacher-Masoch’s bibliography, I don’t think the film overall is based on any of his fiction. The exception is one sequence towards the end. The third of Wanda’s presumed killers, a blue-eyed man named Ahmed (Klaus Kinski), tells her an Orientalist story about a sultan who falls for a slave girl. To win her love, he gives her 24 hours of absolute power. This is replicated in another fantasy sequence, with lots of women in harem costumes, resulting in the death of Ahmed while hanging from his wrists. This is loosely based on Sacher-Masoch’s short story “The Black Czarina.”

I’m not sure if this film was an original story, retitled Venus in Furs as some kind of literary reference or to compete with the other 1969 film, or if it was built around the Sacher-Masoch story and titled Venus in Furs for the greater recognition. It’s a bit like how films based on HP Lovecraft stories are sometimes given titles from completely different Lovecraft stories.

The dialogue and direction style is very dated. There’s also a lot of padding to fill out a thin story to feature length: jazz musicians playing, B-roll footage of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, a car chase, and a lot of soft-core sex scenes. 

To the extent that this film features BDSM at all, it falls into the “elite decadence” subgroup: sadomasochism is something rich weirdoes do in exotic foreign places (i.e. “The Orient), and will inevitably result in somebody’s death.

Tales of Gor (Postmortem Studios, 2017) is the licensed tabletop role-playing game adaptation of John Norman’s notorious Gor series of sword-and-sorcery novels, written by James “Grim” Desborough and illustrated by Michael Manning. Gor is notorious for heavy themes of slavery, sadomasochism, male dominance and female submission, and for long philosophical digressions justifying those themes. Since 1966, there have been more than 30 novels published in the series. The series has inspired a strong cult following, including a small branch of BDSM culture devoted to Gorean style slavery, both in real life and online in Second Life.

In keeping with the 19th and early 20th century literary roots of Gor (e.g. ER Burroughs’ Barsoom series), the book has a framing device of an in-universe account written by an Earth man transplanted to Gor. There’s a gazetteer of the various cultures, mostly fictionalized versions of real-world cultures.

Tales of Gor uses the D6 system, probably best known for being used in the 1980s Star Wars RPG. Roll a number of six-sided-dice equal to your relevant attribute and skill ratings, and compare the resulting total against a target number to determine success. Character generation starts with templates based on their caste in Gorean society, with room for customization. You can take the “Man (or Woman) of Earth” trait, and get a small boost to physical abilities because of Earth’s higher gravity, but you have to spend some of your skill allowance on something useless in Gor’s quasi-classical setting, like computer programming or welding.

For the most part, Tales of Gor isn’t all that different from any other sword-and-sorcery RPG. For the purposes of this discussion, what matters is how it handles the sexual content of its source material.

Under the “Race and Sex” heading (Pg. 8), Desborough acknowledges the controversial material.

To those lacking context or familiarity it would be all too easy to dismiss the Gorean world as one of racism, imperialist fantasy and misogyny.

Pg. 8

He then takes an apologist position.

Primarily one should always keep in mind that the Gorean world is a fantasy world and, as such, should be treated as fantasy. It is escapism, whimsy and a way of exploring alternate worlds and ideas form the safety of your own mind.

Millions of people around the world enjoy the fantasy of domination and submission into which Gor fits and it says nothing of their own personal beliefs bout the political and social relationships outside the bedroom – and nor does enjoying a guilty pleasure like Gor.

Pg. 8

In the world description section, starting on page 17, slavery is introduced in the third paragraph.

Behind it all, Gor rests upon the backs of slaves, taken in conquest or as a result of criminality, debt or custom. On Gor, slavery is seen as being as natural as a predator taking prey or the strong overcoming the weak. Equality is seen as a contemptible myth and though they do not discriminate by race, they do by gender. On Gor there is no gender equality, the differences are seen as immutable and important and many a beautiful woman will find herself in the chains of a Gorean master, taken as a prize, no matter her power or station. Men who are taken prisoner are unlikely to find themselves in so soft a slavery and may well be executed or put to work in mines or fields, until death or sale.

[Pg. 17]

Note the lack of distinction between sex and gender. The text includes a paragraph on deviations from this sex/gender paradigm.

Intersex conditions and transsexuality is virtually unknown on Gor outside of particular cultures or fringe religious grounds such as the Waniyanpi of the barrens. It is likely that intersex conditions are seen as deformity and aborted or killed at birth while transsexuality is almost unheard of, outside some cultural accommodation and shaming amongst the Red Savages. Homosexuality is also somewhat rarer than on Earth, though it is in no way hated or considered unnatural and there are male slaves bred and raised solely for that market.

Pg.36

No mention of what queer women of Gor do.

The author does include an escape clause.

Your Gor is your own however, and you are free to include or exclude these as you wish.

Pg.36

See page 34, 35, 44, 51, 52, 55, 162

In character creation, the section headed “Gender” (Pg.44) continues the theme of complementary essentialism, prefaced by another escape clause.

Gender is hugely important on Gor and as such gender differences appear in these rules as standard, though you are free to ignore them if you so wish, and many will choose to do so.

Pg. 44

After listing the physical differences between average men and women, there are optional rules for giving the two (only) genders boosts to certain attributes.

In the Skills section, there are listings for Pleasure (“An ability in this can please Masters and Mistresses or help break slaves to their bondage.”) [Pg. 52] and Slave Handling (“Prolonged use of this skill upon a capture can break their will and transform them from a resentful, bitter and disobedient capture into a responsive, pliant and joyful slave.”) [Pg. 52] Note that there are no rules to model this process.

Desborough keeps tapdancing on the edge, stating elements of Gorean ideology and then backing off to say that the reader doesn’t have to use them.

On page 162, the text directly addresses sex in roleplaying, which is a dicey topic even in settings without Gor’s sexual politics.

It can be unsettling to cover sexual topics around the table, especially with friends who you may feel will be judging you.

Pg.162

The golden rule here is that everyone at the table should be comfortable with what’s going on, should feel free to speak up if they’re uncomfortable and that they shouldn’t feel judged for doing so.

Pg. 162

The book then provides examples of several levels of explicitness. [Pg. 163]

• Ignore it. Assume it happens in the background but don’t talk about it.
• Coy. Sex happens, but it’s all off-stage. Just fade-to-black.
• Suggestive. Some explicit description.
• Explicit. Just what it says.

On the next page, there’s a half-page of text with the heading “A Word About BDSM”. The author describes the popularity of BDSM by city Fifty Shades, the “gimp” from Pulp Fiction, and the “snuggle dungeon” episode of The Simpsons (S24E17).

Similarly, even though there are ‘Gorean lifestyle’ people within the kink community, Gor should not be taken as any sort of guide to BDSM or any sort of reflection on how things really are.

Pg.164

The author then draws parallels between BDSM and RPG.

Role-playing, similarly, needs to be a safe, sane and consensual activity and whether its that spiders creep you out or that you don’t want to know what your character is being put through at the hands of the slaver or torturer you also get a ‘safe word’ and can demand a ‘fade to black’ at any point.

Pg. 164

In theory, this is fine, but I’m not sure how this would work in practice, especially for those who want to play female characters. In Gor, the destiny of almost any woman is sexual slavery. One could play a free woman, a “panther girl” or other rare exceptions, but even they lead constricted lives. You would have to “play against the grain”. There’s a sample adventure that includes a pleasure slave as a pre-made character, but it isn’t clear what she’s supposed to do in the situation.

The book’s art is all by Michael Manning, who has made beautiful, imaginative fetish and BDSM art for decades, notably the Spider Garden series of graphic novels.

Manning’s art manages to slyly subvert the gender politics of the text. One piece shows a lushly curvaceous pleasure slave and a scarred, muscular panther girl giving each other the side eye.

Manning’s artwork can be purchased in a separate book.

Cleopatra is a 1934 historical epic/romance, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It came at the end of the pre-Hays Code era, when American films could be more sexually explicit. Just to be clear, it is also far from historically accurate. 

The film sets up a contrast between austere and republican Rome and the decadent and autocratic Egypt, personified by Claudette Colbert as Queen Cleopatra in a series of extravagant, revealing dresses. We’ve seen this divide before between the West and the Orient. The film also borrows a lot from the Orientalist art tradition of the previous century, with Cleopatra lounging on silken beds, surrounded by slave girls in chains. 

After the credits and a quick shot of the pyramids and palm trees, the first thing we see is a nearly nude woman (in silhouette) in chains, standing and backlit. Sex appeal is front and centre. 

The first time we see Cleopatra, she’s tied with ropes, being abducted, dumped in the desert, and told to leave Egypt by minions of her brother, Ptolemy. She walks back and crashes a meeting with Julius Caesar by having herself rolled up into a carpet, smuggled into his office, and then unrolled. 

This much mythologized, probably fictional incident originated in the biography The Life of Julius Caesar, written by the Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – c. 120 AD). (The original text uses a word that describes something like a duffel bag, not a carpet.) (source) Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1866 painting Caesar and Cleopatra depicts this incident in the Orientalist style.

Cleopatra gets Caesar’s attention with talk of the splendours and riches of India, which lies even further east than Egypt. He sides with her over her brother Ptolemy.

Back in Rome, everybody is upset with Caesar’s personal and political alliance with Cleopatra. They fear her foreign influence would turn him into a king and end the republic. 

Brutus: “Rome cannot be turned into another Orient with golden thrones for a king and queen.”

The senators assassinate Caesar in the “Ides of March” scene. Cleopatra, prepared to wed in one of many elaborate outfits, instead escapes back to Egypt.

After Caesar’s death, Rome is jointly ruled by Octavian and Mark Antony. Antony invites Cleopatra to meet in public, intending to kidnap her and take her back to Rome “in chains”. Instead, she stays on her barge. Antony goes to get her personally, and that’s when Cleopatra puts the moves on him. She “tops him from the bottom”, talking about her elaborate plan to seduce him, and showing him all the pleasures of exotic Egypt. 

This is the big set piece on Cleopatra’s barge. Cleopatra’s slaves bring in food and drink, and slave girls dance before him. She shows him “clams from the sea”, a net brought up onto the deck, and nearly nude women spill out and offer them shells full of jewels and pearls.

Women in leopard skins enter on all fours, followed by a man cracking a whip. They do an elaborate dance number, with a lot of whip cracking. There’s an insert shot of three women catfighting in leopard outfits. Nubian slaves bring in flaming hoops and the leopard women do front walkovers through them.

The spectacle is intercut with Antony’s stern demeanor softening as he enjoys the food and wine provided by Cleopatra. 

Antony and Cleopatra finally join together on her couch. Their coupling cannot be displayed on film and it is sublimated into an elaborate production of curtains, slave girls playing harps, slaves pulling the oars of the barge, and the slave master beating the drums. 

When Antony is living with Cleopatra in Egypt, she lounges in a silken bed with him kneeling beside her, another common scene in Orientalist paintings, suggesting that she has enslaved him through love.

Most of the rest of the film concerns the war between Octavian’s Roman forces and Egypt under Cleopatra and Antony. Cleopatra considers poisoning Antony to appease Rome, and gives poison to a condemned man in chains to test it, but when she sees Antony spring into action to defend Egypt, she falls for him completely. 

Cleopatra makes the title character important for her beauty and glamour, less so for her charisma or statecraft. In the key dramatic scene of Antony being confronted by his general over his betrayal of Rome, Cleopatra does not participate, ands only appears in a series of reaction shots. We don’t see her governing or fighting. The story ends with her committing suicide by having an asp bite her breast, refusing to give Octavian a captive trophy. It’s a portrayal of a woman leader whose power stems mainly from her seductive beauty, which is strongly linked to her foreignness. 

The kinkiness of this film comes through in the promise of exotic pleasures: beautiful slave girls in chains, the sea nymphs and leopardesses on the barge, and Cleopatra in slinky outfits. Even before the Hays Code, mainstream American films couldn’t really show nudity or sex, so it was sublimated into the spectacle of costumes, dancing and sets.