New Starz Channel Series Stars Harem Slave Girl

Gina Gershon, no stranger to onscreen bondage and nudity (seen here in the lesbian bondage romance Mafia caper movie "Bound") is helming a Harem series project on the Starz network.
According to a report in the New York Magazine website, Gina Gershon is helming a new series set in a Turkish (Ottoman Empire era) harem and starring a slave girl to be show on the Starz Channel.

Potentially, this is GREAT news. Starz is the channel that is currently showing the Spartacus series, which I believe has done absolutely the best job of handling slavegirl nudity and sex of any movie, TV series, etc., in existence. If any network is capable of developing a show that can fully flesh out the superheated sex fantasies that harems have engendered in people since the 1800s, it's Starz.

However, the series also has a feminist theme, as it covers a period when the harem became so influential over the sultan that it was called "The Reign of Women." Now, the last movie that dealt with this theme in a feminist fashion was the blood-curdlingly awful movie Harem starring Natassia Kinski. Harem was notable for lacking sexiness, nudity, plot, drama, or interesting characterizations.

I have no idea what we'll get from the Starz Harem, the fact that it's from Starz gives me hope, the feminist theme reminds me of the Kinski Harem and dashes cold water on those hopes. Ideally, I don't really think there's a conflict between sexy, naked slavegirls and feminist themes, but things tends to work out otherwise in the real world.

I'm sure of one thing: if Starz foregoes the naked slave girl sexiness, the series will be a ratings flop. People have come to expect edgy themes, nudity and sex from premium channel TV series, and a harem theme promises a lot of that. Break that promise, and they are doomed to low ratings.

Great-Great-Great-Grandaddy Hiram Powers

Nice butt on that statue!
I'm not one to brag on my long and proud lineage as a bondage artiste, but there it is: I have one. One of my most famous ancestors that no one has ever heard of is Hiram Powers, a sculptor. And the sculpture that earned him his place in the art world was a little piece called "The Greek Slave," an image of a naked, chained woman looking a uncertain and defensive, being naked and chained and all.

Here's how one of my favorite authors, James Burke (best known for his "Connections" TV series on the history of technology)
describes the work in his book American Connections in the chapter on Declaration of Independence signer John Morton:

Frances Trollope (author Anthony's mother) ... wrote "Domestic Manners of the Americans" (Brits loved it, Americans didn't) and set up a money-making wax-museum project entitled "Infernal Regions" featuring dummies, mechanical figures and electric shocks. Most of the show's figure-modeling work was done by young sculptor Hiram Powers. Who eventually made it to D.C., where he sculpted the president and other luminaries, then headed for Florence, Italy. In 1843 he produced his blockbuster (possibly the most influential American statue ever) Greek Slave. The statue of a nude, shackled slave girl, her pose evoking the thought of terrible Turkish perversions, toured the United States for two years to standing-room-only prurience.

Heady company, you betcha! The most inflential American statue ever! A naked slavegirl in chains! In short, the most influential American statue ever was SEXUAL BONDAGE PORN! The more you learn about history, the weirder it gets! And I'm part of it! You, too ... probably.