Trafficking in film and television

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For other uses, see Human trafficking (disambiguation)

Trafficking in human beings is the commercial trade ("smuggling") of human beings, who are subjected to involuntary acts such as begging, sexual exploitation (eg. prostitution and forced marriage), or unfree labour (eg. involuntary servitude or working in sweatshops). Trafficking is often portrayed onscreen as involving a process of using physical force, fraud, deception, or other forms or coercion or intimidation to obtain, recruit, harbour, and transport people. Human Trafficking has been an increasingly popular subject for filmmakers in recent years, as demonstrated by recent box-office successes Amistad and Ride with the Devil. Filmmakers primarily use movies as a method of educating the public about the injustices of slavery, with entertainment temporarily taking the back-seat. Hollywood often treats the trafficking of humans much as it does other "touchy" subjects, however, by simply avoiding the issue in favor of more lucrative and commercially viable topics.