Kelly Rowland, a Brit singer, has a hot new video out that features her in all sorts of slavegirl imagery of the barbaric slavegirl variety.
Most slavegirl imagery you see in videos is of the modern variety, which to my mind is not as appealing: the brass bangles, the gold necklace, the leather skirt and especially the big bondage collar with the heavy metal hasp all make her look like an extra from Barbarian Queen. (The song itself is not all that appealing, in my opinion.)
I personally have had a problem with images of black women in slavery because I find them depressing: they remind me of the slavery of black women in the American South, which still has ugly echoes in American society in the form of racism, and racism is nothing but ugliness. And the slavery in the American South was racism to the tenth power. Pure, undiluted ugliness.
And I recognize that real life slavery has been nothing but ugliness wherever it has appeared, but there's very little echo of Greek and Roman life in the society around me, that is, I have never known anyone personally who says "vae victus" to justify slavery, but I've heard many people I know personally use the term "nigger" in a totally evil and non-ironic was. And if you have ever heard a racist southerner say "nigger" in just that way, you will know that the term as used by them is definitely hate speech. It's just curdled with hate.
But you know, watching Kelly and Rihanna in slavegirl gear and various black porn actresses doing the bondage porn thing, I thought, "If they wanna get past that whole pre-Civil War slavery thing and go on to the fun bondage slavery thing, I prolly can and should, too." So I'll do that, consider it past history and move on, and hooray for the black women who like the bondage.
