The 2010 film Venus Noire by director Abdellatif Kechiche gives an interpretation of a historical account of the life of Saartjie Baartman
and employs different gazes that are related not just to race and gender, but
also to an emotional dimension, which is more universal than race or gender, to
capture the feelings of the historical female figure and in doing so attempts
in my opinion to open up this limited view of black women.
Throughout the film the facial
expressions of the actress reveal little of the feelings and the emotions as
she is going through circumstances of humiliation and abuse. At times she seems
almost stoic under unbearably degrading circumstances, but still traces of restrained
pain remain present under the surface. Through
multiple close-ups of Saartjie’s face, the viewer becomes witness of this behavior
of self-containment.
In the second more pornographically part of the movie the
viewer moves from being a witness to being a voyeur, in a key scene, where
Saartjie, after she has refused to reveal her genitalia for scientific research,
now again is being pressured to expose her genitalia to a sexually aroused
crowd of French society’s elite. The editing and the close-up shots of the
group who moves closer to touch her genitalia in this particular scene, mark
the sexualization and objectification of Saartjie’s body while we as viewers
become, besides voyeurs, not so innocent bystanders. This is also the same scene
where Saartjie eventually breaks down and starts crying, although almost
unnoticeably.
This questioning of the viewer’s position could be an argument directed at the viewer, on the part of the director, against how the black female is
still being treated and portrayed, far too often, as exotic and as a sex object in
nowadays society, and our part in this.
link part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-7bKi5MFWI
link part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj4x-6UMg9M
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