REVIEW:"THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN" - ON SAARTJIE - HOW ARE WE KEPT BY OUR BROTHERS?
Viewing music videos is supposed to be a recreational act. It is rarely that for me. I love music. So, I do watch them. But, I watch them with my third eye. And, I rarely like what I see.
What I hate most is the rabid, repulsive, physical exploitation of the black female anatomy. When gay photographer Robert Maplethorpe exploited the black male anatomy in renown still photos, protests abounded globally. But, when the subjects of such exploitation are black females, and they are lewdly animated and gyrating on film, I hear only silences. Silence is consent.
I rarely see any faces. These faces are cropped off by the cameras that exclusively prefer shots of buttocks and breasts. These video dancers are scantily clad in tight clothing. They are almost always bouncing and writhing. Increasingly, the song lyrics focus on these bouncing buttocks also: “BACK DAT THANG UP...BOUNCE DAT THANG...BRENDA’S GOT A BIG OL BUTT...MS. FAT BOOTY...” etc....
Lyrically, this is intended as flattery. Yet, it feels like syncopated rape. It is supposed to be sexy. It is lewd. It is offered as fun. It evokes sadness. It is voluntary casting. It is visual slavery.
Maybe it is all my own fault. Perhaps this sadness is a peril of my own perception. I am 36. Maybe I am too old to understand. I am a womanist. Maybe I am too jaded to be juvenile. Actually, I think my real problem is that the vision in my third eye is too flawless. It is connected to a muscle in my brain where memory is stored.
It is the memory of a sister named Sara Baartman. She is a sister who never voluntarily put her buttocks on display. She was a captive star of elder audiences. She is known as “The Hottentot Venus”. Her white male captors charged admission to racist voyeurs who wanted to gawk at African female buttocks and breasts.
Sara was a native of the Khoi San tribe of South Africa. In 1810, she was a 20 year old slave in Cape Town. A friend of her master took her to London and exhibited her as a freak across Britain. She was usually locked inside of a cage and treated like a dancing bear. In 1814, she was taken to France to be used as a guinea pig for racist scientific research. In 1815, she died from these abuses. Her corpse was dissected so that her sexual organs and brains could be placed in jars for display in the Musée de L’homme in Paris, France. These morbid remains were on display until 1985. Legal battles over the repatriation of her remains are ongoing....
Cut off these lewd music videos for a spell and check out a great new documentary. See www.frif.com for more information on a film called “The Life & Times of Sara Baartman”. It is expertly directed by Zola Maseko.
It is hauntingly narrated by a sister who vocally channels Sara’s pain and humiliation. Many superior scholars are interviewed who expertly relate the historical and ongoing racism and sexism that made the abuses of Sara possible. Clay molds from her skeletal remains recreate the physique that cursed her to a life of torturous display.
Much like the film Sankofa, this documentary is more than a film. Viewing it is a spiritual experience. It features camera shots of the waters that Sara sailed to her demise. Watching them flow is akin to sailing along beside her, to her doom. It also features many editorial cartoons which ruthlessly degraded Sara and her plight. They remind me of today’s political cartoons, penned by neocons, that similarly make jokes about the misery of the masses.
So when I see these lewd music videos, I see new captors who look like
“brothers”. Admission is
no longer purchased via tickets. Cable bills suffice now. I see droves
of Saras who look like
video “dancers”...And, I see that we are still on display. And like
Sara’s, my soul is still
crying...