In 1810 amid public sensation.

In 1810 amid public sensation, scandal, and debate, Saartjie (pronounced, in Afrikaans, Sar-key) Baartman, a member of the Khoi-San (Khoikhoi and San) commonaltys of South Africa, was bring on near-nude public display in London and Paris. Ironically and perversely dubbed "The Hottentot Venus," she became the main attraction and a thriving business for the London showmen who exhibited her. Baartman's genitalia and the "abnormal" protuberance of her buttocks, or what was terminused steatopygia, served as the central archetype for Black female "otherness" in the nineteenth hundred years To this day, Baartman's preserv buttocks and genitalia are in a jar at the Musee de l'homme in Paris.(1)

Based forward the nineteenth-century exhibition of Saartjie Baartman, the Obie Award-winning stage production Venus, written at Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by means of Richard Foreman, opened at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in May of 1996 to mixed reviews. Critics simultaneously described the work as "a protracted exercise in the obvious,"(2) a "formidable experience: a gnarly unless brilliant meditation,"(3) and a production that, nevertheless it played to "small audiences, many of whom decamped before the final curtain," was nevertheless "remarkable."(4) Suzan-Lori Parks's authorship includes as it was noted works as The American Play, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and the screenplay for the film Girl 6 produc and directed through Spike Lee. Darius Casey's description of Parks's work as a "non-naturalistic meditation forward history, identity and culture," a deconstruction of "both the mythic experience of Black America and the history of America" fits Venus well. unless while presenting a "non-naturalistic meditation forward history," Parks's historical deconstruction currents a fictitious melodrama that frames Saartjie Baartman as a body complicit in her own horrific exploitation; Parks depicts her as a sovereign, consenting individual with the freedom and agency to trade in her human dignity for the promise of material gain.

This essay focuses forward Parks's representation of Saartjie Baartman as an accomplice in her confess exploitation, presenting a contextualized reading of Parks's play based forward the historical documentation. My historicized reading furthers the discourse that considers the issues of power, choice, and agency. I will argue that a shut up examination of the circumstances cohereed with Baartman's removal from the Cape and later exhibition raises serious questions regarding what Parks has described as Baartman's complicity in her acknowledge exploitation. Further, Parks's portrayal of Saartjie Baartman draws forward cultural images and stereotypes commonly used to exhibit Black woman in demeaning and sexually debased parts the objectified oppositional "Other" measured against a white male "norm."(5) I will argue that Baartman was a victim, not an accomplice, not a mutual participant in this demeaning objectification, and Parks's stage representation of her complicity diminishes the tragedy of her life as a nineteenth-century Black woman striped of her humanity at the hands of a hostile, racist society that held her and those like her in mockery In other words, Parks's Venus reifies the waspish imperialist mind set, and her mythic historical reconstruction corrupts the voice of Saartjie Baartman.

In an interview, Parks explains her decision to frame Baartman as an accomplice and by what means this perspective relates to her hold experiences:

I could have written a two-hour saga

with Venus being the victim. still she's

multi-faceted. She's vain, beautiful,

intelligent and, ye complicit. I write

about the world of my experience, and

it's more complicated than "that white

man down the road is giving me a hard

time." That's just united aspect of our

reality. As Black tribe we're

encouraged to be narrow and simply

address the race issue. We be worthy of so

abundant more. (Williams C1)

In the cite Parks describes Baartman as "multi-faceted," then goe upon to characterize her as "complicit," as well as "vain, beautiful, [and] intelligent." Parks also gives a reductionist argument that readys the struggle of Black the community in America as a matter of the "white man down the way ... giving [us] a hard time," and she describes the attention that Blacks are frequently forced to pay to the "race issue" as "narrow." Later in the interview, she characterizes Baartman as a "troubl woman, a sex object"--and states that the play Venus is about Baartman's trials and tribulations as she incites through the world. But Baartman was a victim and not an accomplice, and the portrayal of her as complicit recapitulates the travesty of objectification or "Otherness" perpetrated through the nineteenth-century exhibition of Saartjie Baartman.

Racial and sexed "Otherness" is a significant part of what mainstream Western popular tillage in stories of domination, presents(6) violation, and the exploitation of women At the same time these stories are readyed illusions are created that sexually objectified women are really liberated women who have sexual delight with their status as sex motives making them complicit in their be in possession of exploitation. Parks frames the scenario around Baartman (The Girl) in this regard: She is a liberated and sovereign individual, capable, willing, and with the authority to hinder her circumstances and make choices, as exemplified in the following example from the play: