The Power of Nude Bondage

Total nudity in DiD scenes is very, very effective in ramping up the dramatic power of a scene.

ALSO FROM PAT POWERS

This may seem like an about-face of my support of thongs as an acceptable substitute for nudity in bondage scenes. For the record: thongs are an acceptable substitute for nudity in a medium which does not permit it, but they are not as powerful or effective as total nudity, even though they leave almost all of the woman's body exposed.

That's because total nudity has a symbolic value all its own that is lost when the damsel is permitted to retain the least vestige of clothing, even a skimpy thong. Total nudity symbolizes a captor's total control over his (or her) captive. The captor will make no concession to the feelings of his or her victim in regard to modesty, decency or sexual inhibition. She is his to render naked or to be clothed. Her status is very clear when she is totally naked, bound and gagged -- she is his to control.

This is the one respect in which a thong scene falls short of total nudity, because a thong, however brief, even if it's just a few strings connected to a piece of cloth little larger than a band-aid, still represents a concession to the victim's modesty, and thus is a limitation to the villain's power over her, even if self-imposed.

Thus a totally naked damsel is a totally helpless, totally vulnerable damsel, giving the scene that extra "pop" that scenes which involve clothing of any kind must inevitably lack.

There's a corollary to the principle of total nudity in bondage (hereafter referred to as the Nude Bondage Corollary) which commercial bondage filmmakers have understood and used to their advantage for decades, but which mainstream filmmakers lack either the rocks or the understanding (probably both) to emulate. We cover that in the article "The Nude Bondage Corollary."