Black Venus (titled Vénus Noire in French) is an mk2 Films production that was released in France in 2010. It was the fourth feature film by Abdellatif Kechiche, a Tunisian-born director and writer. Kechiche's first three films focused on the experiences of Arab communities in modern-day France, but for Black Venus, he shifted his focus to the experiences of a real-life South African woman in France and England in the 19th century, the Hottentot Venus, Saartjie “Sara” Baartman.
Hottentot is an archaic term that was used for the nomadic Khoi-San people of South Africa, sometimes called Bushmen. In the 1800s, Europeans and Americans were fascinated by Africa, often referred to as the Dark Continent. Most whites of the time viewed the peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa as less than fully human, and many thought they represented a link to a savage part of humanity's evolutionary past. The term Hottentot might be related to the word for stammerer in Old Dutch and is thought to refer to the language spoken by the Khoi people which includes distinctive click consonants. Today, Hottentot is considered a disparaging and offensive term.
Black Venus won the 2010 Equal Opportunity Award at the Venice Film Festival and received four other nominations for various awards between 2010 and 2011. While critics lauded the film, its release caused public controversy with the small international audiences who viewed it at the time, thanks to the difficult and frequently obscene subject matter documented in the film.
In that respect, the film was just as controversial as Saartjie Baartman's life was during the years she lived in London and Paris. But rather than opening on her life at the beginning of her years as the infamous Hottentot Venus, Kechiche chose to open on her death, her continued exploitation, and the way that the scientific racism—prevalent through much of the 19th and 20th centuries—chose to dehumanize her.
The film shows Saartjie Baartman's life in Europe from 1810 to 1815, the year of her death. Saartjie Baartman, played by Cuban actress Yahima Torres, performs as a wild, caged savage captured in the jungles of South Africa for working-class and elite audiences in London and Paris. Much of the focus is on portraying her as animalistic and not-quite-human, with a large part of the show dedicated to presenting her large buttocks to the crowd to stare at and touch. Her managers promise her fame and fortune, which she achieves but at a great cost.
Behind the scenes, Saartjie sinks into depression, consuming large quantities of alcohol just to get through her days. When she asks her managers to stop allowing the crowds to touch her, her managers always respond saying that the only reason the crowds come is to touch her buttocks. Eventually, Saartjie draws the interest of the scientific crowds as well, who pay her managers to have full access to her naked body. They meticulously and callously measure and analyze her body as if she were a lifeless object. When she resists their attempts to look at and analyze her genitalia, her managers become enraged with her. They then force her to expose her private parts at elite parties where the manager invites the guests to touch her. Saartjie begins to visibly cry, alarming the guests. She spends her final days as a prostitute where she contracts a sexually transmitted infection and dies alone.
Even after her death, she is not granted peace. Black Venus shows her former manager delivering her body to the scientists for payment. The scientists then make a cast of her naked body and dissect her brain and vulva, placing them in formaldehyde for long term study. The film ends where it began, where Georges Cuvier, a preeminent zoologist, is shown presenting a dissertation about Saartjie's sexual and physical anatomy, comparing her to mandrills and baboons.
The film takes a few artistic liberties, presenting her general complicity in the shows along with an imagined dismay over the crowds touching her. The truth is that we don't have very much evidence to definitively say just what Miss Baartman thought of her performances. But, for the most part, the film is true to what we know of Saartjie Baartman's life. Within five years of moving to Europe, she died from the path she had set upon while performing as a stereotyped savage.
Film critics lauded Black Venus for its unflinching portrayal of these realities at the same time that film audiences were dismayed by them. Director Abdellatif Kechiche, himself a post-colonial subject, put the white, European and male gazes on display in a way that is deeply disturbing to audiences in nations with a colonizing past. Even though the violence committed upon Miss Baartman was technically legal—she did choose to take part in the performances—it was grossly immoral and acts as a stark, ugly mirror of the cultural undercurrents of racism and sexism that exist even today.
The film pulls no punches, showing the brutality of Saartjie's existence as well as the nuances of her “freedom” which the characters in the film speak of frequently. Does Saartjie Baartman have freedom of will? Is she free to say no? Is she free to go home? Saartjie claims in her testimony that she has freely made her own choices. And yet, she also clarifies that she would like to return to South Africa where she can raise a child “in freedom.”
Kechiche provides insight into his take on Baartman's story and on her freedom of will when he writes in the press notes that Saartjie was a “prisoner of other people's beliefs.” Black Venus dissects the idea of freedom and the limits of legality. How much freedom can a person have when the world sees them as being less than a person? In the case of Saartjie Baartman, that was very little freedom, indeed.
