Should Historical Shame Stifle Artistic Freedom?

The Freak Show That Taunts Artistic Liberty

Until news of a possible film project about Saartjie Baartman’s life emerged recently, the Khoisan people of South Africa seemed content to let the portrayal of the Sans’ hilarious grasp with modernity in the 1980’s comedy hit: “The Gods Must Be Crazy” be the only reminder of their existence.

“Khoisan” is a unifying name for two closely linked Southern African peoples that share physical and putative linguistic characteristics. They are culturally distinguished as Sans or Bushmen (who are hunter-gatherers as portrayed in the above-named film) and the pastoral Khoikhoi (Baartman’s tribe). However, Saartjie Baartman’s life story is nowhere near as hilarious as Nǃxau ǂToma’s comedic folly in “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”

La Belle Hottentot, a 19th century French print of Baartman

Born with extraordinarily large buttocks in 1789 in the Gamtoos Valley of South Africa, she was taken to London when she was barely in her 20s under false pretences. Although the British Empire had abolished the slave trade in 1807, slavery itself continued to thrive. Saartjie Baartman’s promoters, an enterprising Scottish doctor named Alexander Dunlop and a mixed-race entrepreneur, Hendrik Cesars, in whose household she worked, exploited her unusual physique through a series of freak shows. She was stage-named the “Hottentot Venus,” (with “hottentot” - now seen as derogatory - then being used in Dutch to describe the Khoikhoi and San, who together make up the peoples known as the Khoisan).

The Freak Show, a popular pastime in 19th century England, was an exhibition of biological rarities (referred to as “freaks of nature”), featuring physically unusual humans such as giants, dwarves, conjoined twins, and those with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics, etc. In that prevailing climate, Saartjie Baartman, with her steatopygia (an extreme accumulation of fat on the buttocks), was the quintessential freak show material.

A cartoon of Baartman and Lord Grenville

According to a BBCreport, “On stage she wore skin-tight, flesh-colored clothing, as well as beads and feathers, and smoked a pipe. Wealthy customers could pay for private demonstrations in their homes, with their guests allowed to touch her.

Her arrival in England coincided with speculation over whether Lord Grenville and his coalition of Whigs - known as the “broad bottoms” because of Grenville’s own large behind - would try to seize government. This was a gift for cartoonists. One creation, entitled A Pair of Broad Bottoms, shows Grenville and Baartman standing back-to-back, with another figure measuring their respective posterior sizes.”

Sahistory.org noted that she was exhibited at a venue in London’s Piccadilly Circus. “Englishmen and women paid to see her naked body displayed in a cage that was about a meter and a half high.”

The treatment caught the attention of British abolitionists, who tried to rescue her because they considered her performance indecent, insisting that she was performing against her will. However, the case failed when it emerged in 1810 that Saartjie Baartman, although illiterate, had allegedly signed a contract with her promoters agreeing to travel to England to take part in shows, in the hope of gaining something—material or otherwise—from her performance.

In 1814, following Dunlop’s death and Cesars’ return to South Africa, Baartman

A caricature of Baartman drawn in the early 19th century

came under the influence of a French ‘animal exhibitor,’ S. Reaux, who took her to France, where he exhibited her in a cage alongside baby rhinoceros, wearing only a loincloth, and amusing onlookers who frequented the Palais-Royal. She was said to have become a celebrity once again, drinking at the Cafe de Paris and attending society parties. During this period, she reportedly drank and smoked heavily and was believed to have also worked as a prostitute. 

Furthermore, she allegedly agreed to be studied and painted by a group of scientists and artists, particularly Georges Cuvier, a professor of comparative anatomy at the Museum of Natural History, who subjected her to a series of examinations, but she refused to appear fully naked before them, arguing that this was beneath her dignity.

South African and French officials pose next to a plaster cast of Baartman in Paris

Some accounts maintain that freak shows lost their appeal in the post-Napoleonic France, and Baartman spent the last years of her life in poverty. She died in 1815 in Paris at the age of 26 of an undetermined inflammatory disease.

Georges Cuvier, who had danced with her at one of Reaux’s parties, according to a report, obtained her remains from the local police. Dissecting it, he made a plastic cast of her body, pickled her brain and genitals and placed them in a jar, which remained on display at the Museum of Man in Paris for more than a century and a half. But in 2002, following a request by the late South African president, Nelson Mandela, that the French government returned her remains for burial, Saartjie Baartman was finally laid to rest at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province.

Beyoncé Knowles at a concert

Early this year, when it emerged that American singer/actress, Beyoncé Knowles was scripting a film about Saartjie Baartman’s life in which she planned to play the leading character, Chief Jean Burgess of the First Indigenous Peoples of South Africa, was not pleased. “She (Beyoncé) lacks the basic human dignity to be worthy of writing Saartjie’s story, let alone playing the part,” the chief was quoted as saying. 

On Vogue, Italy

It was not immediately clear what lay behind the outrage, especially as there was no indication that the chief had seen a draft of the script or given details of the project, so ‘misrepresentation of facts’ was ruled out as a reason. Also, as there was no indication that Beyoncé’s path and that of the Khoikhoi tribe have ever crossed, the possibility of the tribe having a beef with the singer/actress was equally dismissed as a reason for the outrage. Chief Jean Burgess reportedly said, “Ignoring the fact that the Khoikhoi is alive and that Saartjie’s story would have an impact on how we are portrayed is a mistake of great magnitude.”

Following these comments, some observers noted that historical shame was perhaps the reason behind the outrage. “Why Saartjie Baartman? Why not a story about an Indigenous American woman? I can only see arrogance in her attempt to tell a story that is not hers to tell,” the chief said further, insisting that consultation, respect, and acknowledging the existence of the Peoples were fundamental to the story.

Commenting on the event, Kobus Reichert, a Gamtkwa Khoisan Council member, said the tribe did not have a problem with the movie or Beyoncé Knowles acting in it as long as the community in the Eastern Cape, where Baartman was born, was not sidelined. The film, according to him, has to be done respectfully and with the right ‘cultural understanding’.

Illustrations de Histoire naturelle des mammifères

While Reichert’s position is considered rational, some in the industry insist that it is unfair for historical shame to stifle artistic freedom, explaining that, in any case, no cinematographic portrayal of that event could possibly be more demeaning than the reality of what Saartjie Baartman was subjected to.

Meanwhile, Beyoncé has reportedly denied that she was pursuing a movie project about the life of Saartjie Baartman (seen today by many as the epitome of colonial exploitation and racism, of the ridicule and commodification of black people). Her representative was however quoted as saying, “This is an important story that should be told.” 

The 2002 re-interment of Baartman's remains in South Africa

The chairman of the South African Guild of Actors, Jack Devnarain, responding to a question about the matter, said, “As a producer, you have the right to tell the stories of people you find fascinating and that’s what we must be careful not to object to. For me, the main concern is: are we doing justice to the person. Are we taking a careful and conscious look at what Saartjie Baartman’s story was all about and will that be served?” He added however, “I’m not particularly convinced that Beyoncé is that right actor for that particular role.” 

Tweet

AuthorSuite #NewYear

 “ The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. ”    - Oscar Wilde 

SEX SCANDALS IN HIGH PLACES...

Here's an exposé on the murky world of high-stakes politics, a depiction of the life-and-death struggle of a young female lawyer who goes to great lengths to outwit a diabolical trio in order to save her lover from a murder rap.

  

The conscience of a town steeped in sexism, vanity and hypocrisy is pricked by the brutal murder of a mysterious woman in an LA park. But the shock is transformed into a steamy, seductive scandal when the corpse turns out to be Susan Whitaker, the flamboyant wife of the governor of California. 

A secret lover/blackmailer theory leads to the indictment of Hollywood's most influential black celebrity. It is only the beginning, for Susan Whitaker did not, in fact, exist. Little does anyone realize that this colossal fraud is a mere curtain raiser to a chilling world of ugly skeletons dating back to the assassination of a U.S. senator in a Washington hotel sauna, skeletons connected to riveting sex scandals in high places, skeletons the FBI and political kingmakers will kill for...

THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

______________________________________________

What would you do if you found out that the man you married is not who you thought he was? What would you do if you suddenly discovered that you have indeed had the one thing you had yearned for all your life without realizing it?

Now, imagine a woman transformed from psychiatrist to patient, and lured into a compelling backward journey through her own life on a psychotherapist's couch. Imagine skeletons from the past pulling her back into the vortex of darkness from which she thought she had escaped. Paige Lyman is a woman conned by fate, and plagued by damning memories she must decipher in order to be free.

Trang Tran's visual perception

Take Back the Memory is a psychological exposé on love, betrayal, vengeance, and a heart-wrenching secret.

  

      

A blogger's visual perception of a character: 

Paige Lyman is a gorgeous redhead. She's over fifty and now in semi-retirement. She's still an object of fascination to many including her daughter, Diane. She possesses the loveliest pair of legs on Riverside Drive, and when she wears skirts, which she does often, even young men from the nearby Columbia University turn to stare. What's more, her wonderful head of hair still causes whispers in elevators.

Everything changes as she slowly comes to terms with her troubled childhood...

 ____________________________________________

     

Augustine Sam lives in Venice, Italy - that most romantic of all cities - and offers this collection of his poetry for romantics and those looking for meaning in the many challenges life offers.

His poems glow with musical invention and the manner in which he elects to place his words on the page enhances the meaning and the beauty of these works. Liquid flowing music from a poet who understands passion. His eloquent poems speak to each of us as private as a whispered conversation. Brilliant. 
                                                   - Grady Harp - Hall of Fame | Vine Voice  
                                     

Flashes of Emotion is a book of romantic poetry, a selection that allows the reader to tap into the poet's insights into a wide variety of topics from life and love to death and drudgery - a collection that showcases Augustine Sam's lively, refreshing and innovative style. A 'must have' for anyone who has ever experienced love, pain, defeat, or joy.   
  
   

____________________________________________

            

Tweet

WarOnTerror Sound Bites

  “Iraq War Was A Failure That Helped Create ISIS”

Retired Lt. Gen. Flynn 

- Retired Lt. General Flynn

Senator John McCain

“White House Recommended Arming ISIS”  

- Senator John McCain

General Wesley Clark

“ISIS Was Created By U.S. Allies”

    - General Wesley Clark

Hilary Clinton

    

 “We Created Al Qaeda” 

                                 - Hilary Clinton    

Image from Paris Attack

Nearly a month after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks—consisting of mass shootings, suicide bombings, and hostage taking—occurred in the French capital, Paris and its northern suburb of Saint-Denis, many Americans must have wished that the December 2, 2015 San Bernardino shooting was anything but a terrorist attack. (On that occasion -- a holiday banquet at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, USA, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people and injured 21 others).

Victims of San Bernardino Massacre

As sad as that was, random shootings of that nature, in fact, have become so rampant in the United States that some have begun to think of it as the 'new normal.' The massacre, not surprisingly, reignited the rather familiar gun control debate, a subject seemingly less frightening than any suggestion that the Islamic State (ISIS) had perhaps penetrated the U.S. as it had France. But the gun control debate was a red herring. While such debate might serve the U.S. in its domestic quest for peaceful coexistence, this particular massacre went beyond the purview of gun laws, though the couple were said to have exploited the “bullet button loophole” to legally obtained assault-style rifles in California.

In the Wake of Paris Attacks

The FBI has since acknowledged it as an “Act of Terrorism,” and the Islamic State has claimed, in a radio broadcast, that its followers carried out the attack. What was more, American-born Syed Rizwan Farook was reported to have had contact with at least two militant groups overseas, including the al-Nusra Front, (an Al Qaeda affiliate allegedly supported by the U.S. to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria). His Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik was said to have pledged loyalty to ISIS in a Facebook post hours before the massacre.

  

America-born Syed Farook

Pakistani wife, Malik

As it now sadly appears, ISIS penetrations into the U.S. and western Europe is no longer a mere propaganda but a reality.

If this reality is frightening, then maybe it is time for the West to rethink the strategies, the blatant lies, and hypocrisies that gave impetus to this terror in the first place. 

Bush admits that Iraq Had Nothing To Do With 9/11

“Inequality Breeds Violence, That's Not Communism, It's The Truth” 

- Pope Francis

Pope Francis (Reuters/Dal Zennaro)

Tweet

Sex & Voodoo Saga in Italy

The ordinary story of women without rights | (cc) Cássio Abreu/Flickr

The Ordinary Story of Women Without Rights !!! 

Under the rolling hills of Colli Euganei—a group of volcanic hills that arise almost like an archipelago from the Po-Venetian plain, through which Italy’s longest river, Po, flows—nestles a small, nondescript town called Carbonara di Rovolon, whose parish was, for over a decade, revered, oftentimes disparaged, for offering shelter to immigrant girls rescued from prostitution rings in the Venice region. Over the years, many young women, forced into the sex trade after being brought to Italy on the pretext of landing lucrative jobs, had found shelter in this parish lying a few kilometers south-west of the province of Padua, one of the notable wine producing areas of the country.  

Euganean Hills

The immigrant girls sheltered in the parish were salvaged from the streets by a non-profit organization called Mimosa. Of all these girls, according to the then parish priest, Don Lino, only one was a Nigerian (a country with a large number of sex slaves in Italy), not because the parish was unwilling to shelter them but because Nigerian prostitutes were averse to breaking away from their pimps in order to get help, for fear of repercussions—centering mainly on the threat of harm to families back home.

But Benedetta—the only Nigerian girl sheltered in the parish—was an exception. She didn't

Carbonara di Rovolon Church

look like a commercial sex worker at first sight and that was unusual. Typically, the ‘profession’ of many Nigeria girls in this Mediterranean country is given away by their attire, which was not the case with Benedetta. Dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater, a pair of well-fitting jeans, and matching sneakers, she was the only immigrant girl in the parish who was taken there by the police, not Mimosa. Unlike the other girls, she did not labor under the illusion that the parish priest or Mimosa would help her get a temporary residence permit to avoid being deported. Benedetta, unlike the girls sheltered in the parish, was under house arrest. After spending four years in prison for drug trafficking, a crime she claimed to have committed at the behest of her pimp, her sentence was commuted to house arrest on humanitarian grounds.

Notwithstanding the accompanying drama, her story is a familiar one across Italy, where many Nigerian girls, upon their arrival after a hazardous journey through the North African desert, usually have their passports confiscated before being forced into prostitution. Recently, an online newspaper in Sicily, La Sicilia, documented a covert operation coordinated by the district attorney of Agrigento, tagged “Voodoo”, through which the "San Benedetto del Tronto" branch of the Italian military police, Carabineri, quashed a Nigerian human trafficking ring in the municipality of Ascoli Piceno. The newspaper said that five gang members—three men and two women—Uche & DestinyObuh, Bridget Owanlengba (residents of Ravenna), Endurance Obuh (a resident of Rome), and Famous Erengbo (a resident of "Castel di Lama" in the municipality of Ascoli Piceno), were arrested on the orders of Ottavio Mosti, a magistrate in Agrigento.

Inquiries into the operations of the gang, carried out in the provinces of Ascoli Piceno, Ravenna, Brindisi, and Rome, is said to be ongoing as some of those implicated are on the run. According to the report, the covert police operation began in August 2011 following the kidnap of a Nigerian girl who had sought refuge in a homeless shelter after escaping from her pimp. The police, through electronic surveillance, eventually tracked down the kidnapped girl, who recounted her story, which the investigators said was similar to those of many other Nigerian girls caught up in the prostitution trafficking ring. Working out the pattern of events piece by piece, the investigators detailed the activities of the traffickers and their organizational strategy, from the recruitment of the girls in Nigeria to the stopover in Libya, with acts of violence including rapes during the journey, as well as the illegal ferry crossing to the island of Lampedusa in Sicily.

Usually, after a stint in the holding centers, the girls are granted temporary residence permits and transferred to various cities. Members of the criminal gang, investigators found, recuperate the girls at this point, and send them into the streets as sex workers. In order to exercise absolute control over the girls, the criminal gangs usually avail themselves of the shenanigans of a sorcerer, who would then threaten the girls with the impairment of their families back in Nigeria through various voodoo rituals if they denounced their pimps.

In a magazine interview, one of such girls recounted her ordeal. “I was born into a large

Nigerian Girls in a Catholic Shelter for victims

family in Benin City (in the Niger Delta of Nigeria). Though my father had two wives, he managed to take good care of his family until his death, which brought untold hardship on me and my eight brothers and sisters. When I was 19, I met a certain lady who was a hairdresser by profession at the time. She asked me if I’d like to go to Italy where she could help me get a nice job and I said yes. A few days later, she accompanied me and a few other girls out of Nigeria, but the journey, quite strangely, ended in Abidjan," she said.

"We were stranded in this French-speaking country for weeks. I later met a man who promised to help me get to Italy. We embarked on a strange journey, from Abidjan to Morocco by air, from Morocco to Spain on foot, and from there to Turin (in Italy) by car. It was 1999. My traveling companion, who was also my boyfriend, turned out to be a pimp. In Turin, he took me to the home of a lady he said was his business partner, left me there and traveled to Austria, where he actually lived. I was not alone in Turin. Seven other Nigerian girls lived in the lady’s apartment with me. Every so often, the boyfriend/pimp visited from Austria, mainly to collect my earnings on the streets, deemed as partial refund of the cost of the trip he had financed to Italy." 

A juju ceremony in Cameroon | (cc) rbairdpccam/Flickr

There were occasional police raids, she told the magazine. "Oftentimes, when we were raided by the police, I made no attempt to escape, in the hope that an arrest could mean a rescue for me. But the police constantly let me go. And whenever I returned to the apartment, the lady would beat me up, accusing me of trying to get myself deported to avoid repaying my debt. One day, she told us she had acquired residence permits and asked us to pay for them. Convinced my permit was genuine, I escaped to the province of Pescara, where I hid in a hotel for two weeks. Unfortunately, my savings ran out, and to make ends meet, I had to return to the streets, where I met a man who, aware of the risks associated with being a fugitive in the streets, found me a job in a club. As fate would have it, the club was raided, and at the police station, my residence permit was discovered to be bogus. I was taken to a detention center in the provincial capital of Lecce and held for 31 days. When I was freed, I went back to Pescara, but having no means of livelihood, I couldn't help returning to the streets.

This time my boyfriend/pimp found me and threatened to hurt my mother back in Benin City if I stopped working for him. I was trapped in this vicious circle until 2007 when I finally escaped to Genoa, where a friend of mine lived in a community. I stayed there for nine months but couldn't get any tangible help because the community is only helpful to documented immigrants. So, once again, I had to escape, this time, to Bologna, where the Community of Pope John XXIII sheltered me for a couple of days before taking me to a foster home." It was at this point that her ordeal ended, according to the magazine interview. "Today, I have a residence permit and I share an apartment with two other Nigerian girls and an Italian.” 

Map of the Venice Region of Italy

While this story has a happy ending, not many Nigerian girls in Italy are so fortunate. Elena Perlino, an Italian photographer based in Paris, highlighted the plight of these girls in a thought-provoking photo series entitled Pipeline, to be featured in a new book, excerpts of which was published in the UK-based Mail newspaper. In it, the photographer illustrated how the girls’ dreams of a better life in Europe were transformed into a living hell after being tricked into the sex trade. “When I started to take pictures in 2005, I was interested in showing Nigerian women and their relationship with the environment they were in,” Perlino said. But during her commutes from Turin to Paris, she became aware of an increasing number of young Nigerian women working on the streets. “I decided to start from this surreal vision to tell a story. I have been working on it for several years, focusing mainly on the Italian connection.”

She showcased a phenomenon that traverses several Italian cities, including Turin, Milan, Genoa, Rome, Naples, Padua, and Palermo. Based on reports that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime listed Nigeria as one of the countries with the highest human trafficking rates in the world, Perlino believes that of those trafficked to Italy, eighty percent are from Benin City (the oil-rich but poverty-ridden Niger Delta region of Nigerian.) 

Isoke- Aikpitanyi

“The women are still coming,” Claudio Magnabosco, a journalist and former official of the European Parliament, said. “They are younger than ever and arrive here with massive debts to pay off.” He noted that a large number of the exploited girls are minors, and insisted they should not be called prostitutes, but aptly, slaves. 

Mr. Magnabosco, in a chance encounter in 2000, met a Nigerian prostitute named Isoke Aikpitanyi, who later became his wife, through whom he learnt about the criminal gang. Together, they founded an association called “The Girls of Benin City”—a network of former clients of prostitutes in Italy—to help discourage patronage in order to starve off the criminal gang exploiting them.  

Tweet