Black Venus is an intriguing biopic that depicts the story of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikoi woman brought from Cape Town to London in 1810 by Hendrick Caezar. In the year 1810, a Khoikoi woman by the name of Saartjie Baartman, portrayed by Yahima Torres, was taken from Cape Town to London by someone named Hendrick Caezar. Now, Andre Jacobs plays the role of Hendrick. The retreat displays “The Hottentot Venus” in a loincloth along with a skin tight collar and garment. The showman, who carries a whip, threatens patrons with it while shaking her leash and taunting them to stroke her excessively large backside. Part of her performance includes her violent roars.
The Morning Post of September 20, 1810 published an advertisement that read “most correct and perfect Specimen” with statements saying, “She has been seen by the principal Literati in this Metropolis, who were all greatly astonished, as well as highly gratified, with the sight of so wonderful a specimen of the human race.” A sideshow costing two shillings drew the attention of three African Institution abolitionists who gave an affidavit on October 17th claiming she had an “unhappy and dejected countenance” and that she was “deprived of her liberty” by her “Exhibitor.” Caezar’s assertion that “the Hottentot… is as free as the English,” led to a letter published in The Examiner, on the 28th of October, claiming to be from “Humanitas.” They stated, “Yes, she has a right to exhibit herself, but there is no right in her being exhibited.” Along with an Irish Giant and a Polish Dwarf, the Hottentot Venus is described as “all masters and directors of their own movements,” although “Humanitas” no longer believed Baartman received her earnings after the performance.
Writer-director Abedallatif Kechiche’s film, “The Secret of the Grain,” is now based in France, but the talented artist was born in Tunisia. In using modern forms of exploitative entertainment as his references, he used historical records to turn “Black Venus” into a modern problem child. Kechiche also happens to mention the court appearance of Baartman, where she was fighting for her status as a free artist. (The writer Suzan-Lori Parks also framed the historical figure in a similar fashion in her play “Venus” which was directed by Richard Foreman in 1996, the same time when Spike Lee made “Girl 6,” which featured an African American woman performing phone sex and wielded a screenplay written by Parks.)
The real Baartman was four and a half feet tall and is rumored to have performed in Capetain taverns and shebeens. At least, according to this film, her artistry, as seen in England, is considered bizarre.
Supposedly a former servant but never a slave, Baartman has a contract with Caezar, who in effect sells her to a showman called Réaux, who travels with a bear show. Réaux begins to showcase Baartman in Paris. (Apparently she was sharing the bill with a stuffed rhinoceros at 188 rue Saint-Honore.) Now she wears a red body suit with a gold chain serving as a leash. She performs in high society. She is even scheduled to make a cameo at a posh wedding. A modern day cartoon showed a gentleman in astonishment admired her exposed bottom and yelled, “Oh goddam, what roast beef.” An Anti-French Women Operetta that lasted 13 Months exposed The Hottentot Venus having Ex-hate.
No matter the composition, Cuvier is guaranteed discovery in whatever era he chooses to focus on. In one of the unnaturally famous works titled The Natural History of Mammals, the author takes special focus on the suburban neurosurgeon stricken astonished by the size of Baartman’s labia as she was touched by the libertine handler. Cuvier even went to the extent of dissecting the subject while she was still alive, tossing her brain into jars alongside her genitals only to display them to onlookers claiming to his patients to ‘feast their eyes on her groin’. It was at that point he decided to take note of her Camper facial angle being an astounding 71 degrees.
Baartman was even said to be a famous painter, which like many mortals chose to immortalize her work by placing herself into a state of alcohol-induced stupor. Following her morbid well of self desctructive choices, she turned to frequent sales of her own flesh to satiate her desires, resulting in the acquisition of a debilitating case of syphilis. One would hope that the conclusion would be better, but just like the entire story, Baartman’s tale is tragic. After years of being a middle age display doll in the Parisian museum, she could finally return home in the year 2002. Zola Masenko perfectly captures the melancholy when he describes the life and times of Sara Baartman while claiming that she was a unwilling victim to the contrived perception of society.
The newer therapeutic ultrasound system using high Vycor lenses and traditional video capture, also known as the ruler of 3rd dimension aid in providing help with patients with severe burns or any other torture are often wrote out by Cuvier in his acute determination of Baartman’s physique.
Kechiche observes, “Her face touched me in profound ways. It tells me more about her than anything I have read.” Perhaps he expects too much from Yahima Torres’ face for what she does not say aloud on film. However, she is heard much more via the expressions of the English and French viewers. These close shots form a cabinet of wonder. However, what Kechiche displays is more of a European reverse angle reading of an African body: shock, repulsion, laughter, anger, and the sickening delight of it all.
One of the elements of the design by Kechiche that seemed to trouble Nigel Andrews, the critic from Financial Times at the Venice Film Festival last September, was ‘Black Venus’/’Black Venus’ is definitely overlong at which which was set at 160 minutes. ‘We get it, we get it!’ seems far too much telling. You feel as if one is being harangued.”
Some two scenes capture the viewers attention owing to their length: a raucous show that possibly Baartman’s original performance in London did and which was a bit more over the top primary and a later more erotic segment in a Parisian salon. His presentation of Baartman in posthumous cavier to his peers is not very long when the scenes at either extreme of the timeline when he examines the living Baartman over a period of three days are joined. We get a long exposure to fleeting scientific gaze.
“Black Venus” conceptualizes the encounter in colonial times which is rather lively. During the times when there was no photography or cinema, there existed rampant pornography. Kechiche purposefully risks making one specific type of filmic obscenity, as the goal is to bring the spectators from the early twenty-first century to the original turn of the nineteenth century.
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