Exploitation subgenre (1960s–80s): European or North American women in human trafficking narratives—mostly softcore, morally hypocritical. Ethically dubious, largely unwatchable today.
The exploitation cinema of the 1960s to 1980s produced a particularly repulsive subgenre: films that depicted European or North American women in human trafficking scenarios—ostensibly staged as a moral warning system, but in reality, pure voyeuristic exploitation. The cameras linger on suffering and humiliation, while the narrative tone feigns righteous indignation. A scene is shot where a protagonist is dragged into a truck, cut to her distressed face—and it's precisely known that the audience in the cinema is aroused.
What structurally characterizes these films: they function like fake documentaries. Handheld camera, grainy footage, title cards speaking of "real cases"—all tricks to feign authenticity. The budgets were low, the actors often without contractual protection, and the shooting conditions in Southern Europe or North Africa frequently so questionable that one can no longer reconstruct today where feature film ends and abuse begins. The softcore aspect was calculated: sexualized violence just below the hardcore limit, in order to still fit into regular cinemas. Self-censorship through editing, not through abstinence.
As a cinematographer, one sees in retrospectives of such works how the format worked. There was no genuine visual idea underlying the aesthetic—it was pure functionality of voyeurism. Close-ups on fear, wide shots in sparse rooms, poor lighting that emphasizes helplessness. Not because it was artistically necessary, but because it sold. The music—cheap synthesizers, jazzy undertones of misery—supported the perverse mixture of scandal and suspense. Today, these films have largely become unwatchable, not only for ethical reasons but because the deception has been seen through. The pseudo-documentary claim appears ridiculous, the hypocrisy unpalatable. Film historians consider the genre a cautionary example of how cinema ritualized exploitation and sold it as a socio-critical concern.