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The Life and Times of Sara Baartman: The Hottentot Venus. 1998. 52 minutes, color. A film directed by Zola Maseko. For more information, contact First Run/Icarus Films, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014.
The 1999 World Archaeology Conference held in Cape Town passed a unanimous resolution requesting the French government to repatriate the female genitalia of one Sara Baartman, a Khoi (Hottentot) lady who, with her exuberant steatopygia, had been the object of great fascination for the emergent French and British bourgeoisie.
Baartman continues to fascinate and represent on a variety of levels. She has been the subject of much learned commentary, most famously perhaps by Sander Gilman, who saw her as emblematic of black female sexuality. Stephen Jay Gould, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Linda Schiebinger, and Denean Sharpley-Whiting are among the more recent scholars who have intellectually dissected her as a cultural and scientific phenomenon. Her impact on a variety of fronts has been profound. She has influenced the way we interpret prehistoric figurines and rock art, and, on a more mundane level, some believe that she was inspirational in the European fashion of ladies' bustles.
Sara Baartman, a.k.a. "the Hottentot Venus," was more than a well-known European icon for black female sexuality. Her life and career have meaning for diverse constituencies. She has been, for example, a major inspiration for African American artistes, poets, and playwrights like Suzi Parks-Davis and photographers like Lyle Ashton Harris. The request made in 1995 for her...