Black Venus Literary Elements

Abdellatif Kechiche

Yahima Torres, Andre Jacobs, Olivier Gourmet

Elina Löwensohn, François Marthouret

Drama, History

French, Dutch, English

Equal Opportunity Award, Venice Film Festival, 2010.

October 27th, 2010

Marin Karmitz, Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert

London, 1810; France, 1815. Sideshow attractions are a popular form of entertainment, and interest is growing about peoples from deep in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There is no narrator in the film, and the point of view is distant. Severe close-ups of the protagonist's face force viewers into examining their own role as observer while at the same time witnessing the destructiveness of the audiences gaze on the protagonist.

Dark, isolating, oppressive, unsettling, tragic.

Saartjie is the protagonist who tries to exercise some level of control over her existence. Hendrick and Réaux are the antagonists who demand that she allow herself to be touched, groped and viewed however paying customers want.

Saartjie wants to continue performing as a respectable actress so she can earn enough money to go home and raise a child. Her managers demand that she offer her body up to be touched and analyzed despite her protests.

Réaux makes Saartjie expose her breasts and privates to guests and encourages the guests to fondle her and “give her pleasure.” When the guests see that she is crying, they react with dismay toward Réaux. Réaux ends Saartjie's performance career and she is forced to turn to prostitution.

Saartjie's career as a prostitute is foreshadowed in her first argument with Hendrick when she tells him that she isn't a harlot and doesn't want the audience to touch her.

Jeanne introduces Réaux as a tamer of wild beasts, "who accomplished the extraordinary feat of making this wild Hottentot into an obedient lady." While Saartjie was never a "wild Hottentot" needing to be tamed, Réaux eventually did force her into obedience by leaving her no choice but to turn to prostitution when she refused to let men and women view and touch her genitalia.

Kechiche makes extensive use of close-up shots of Saartjie's face. Her facial expressions are frequently subtle and remarkably impassive. When she does have a strong reaction, she points her face down so the camera is only able to catch a high angle view of her expression, further shielding her responses from the audience's gaze. The focus on her impassive face forces viewers to analyze their own role as observers taking part in the same process that ultimately destroyed Saartjie.

There are a number of allusions to Eve, the Garden of Eden and the knowledge of good and evil, particularly with the use of apples and referring to Saartjie as “forbidden fruit.” Saartjie is shown taking a bite of the apple meant for the “prettiest woman” in the room as she wears a thin red bodysuit which emphasizes every curve of her body. In Abrahamic religions, Eve is often seen as the harbinger of sin for eating fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Saartjie (like other black women throughout much of European history) is treated as the embodiment of sin. Her large buttocks are the “dream” of British audiences, bringing a sort of “wild” beauty into their lives.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, after eating the apple, Eve becomes aware of her nakedness and she feels shame. Similarly, when Saartjie is hired by the scientists at the Natural History Museum, she is very aware of her nakedness and of the men's gaze upon her body. She clings to the loin-cloth covering her privates and refuses to let them rip it off of her.

Saartjie is aware of the nature of good and evil, but she still succumbs to evil and licentiousness, both despite and because of her protests against allowing others to ogle and grope her body. She suffers a tragic end because she has fallen victim to society's view of her as a sinful, sexual creature.

The concept of Saartjie's free will is a paradox because she is forced to play the "brute savage" by society's views of her. She says she has chosen to perform that way, but repeatedly expresses to Hendrick that she wants to perform beauty by singing and dancing. Hendrick refuses to allow her to do so because these performances would defy European expectations of her as a black woman from South Africa.

Hendrick uses parallelism when he introduces Saartjie to the London audience at Piccadilly Square: "She's incredible. She's phenomenal. She's not a bear. She's not an elephant. She's not an acrobat. She doesn't breath fire. She's a human being and yet she's astonishingly different. She is a phenomenon of the African continent."

The director's use of these repeated sentence beginnings builds up a sense of expectation around Saartjie. It also allows the film audience to remember the way that she's described, setting up the nuances of the film and how Saartjie was treated: "She's a human being and yet she's astonishingly different."