Broadhurst_Podcast (2)

The podcast discusses the documentary "The Life and Times of Sarah Bartman, The Hot and Hot Venus," which tells the story of Sarah Bartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa who was exhibited and sexualized in Europe during the 19th century. The analysis focuses on the absence of Bartman's own voice and the limitations of perspective in historical media. The introduction of the documentary is criticized for framing Bartman's story from the colonizers' perspective. The use of the word "symbol" to describe her is questioned, as it implies a representation that she may not have identified with. An alternative representation of Bartman is presented through a poem that dismisses European discourses. The podcast concludes with the question of how to tell a voiceless story. Hello my name is Hope and this is my podcast. You may know me from when I sit in class but here I am in podcast form. I'm glad you could join me. So the documentary I'm going to be discussing today is of course The Life and Times of Sarah Bartman, The Hot and Hot Venus. It tells the story of Sarah Bartman who was a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa born in 1789. It tracks as best it can given limited documentation how Sarah was taken to England and then France to be an exhibition. There was an obsession throughout Europe with Khoikhoi people and their bodies. So she was sexualized and degraded constantly until her early death in 1815. To begin my analysis I'll give a quote from Dr. Natasha Maria Gordon Chippenberry who is a professor of African diasporic literature. She says, quote, with copious documented volumes speaking of the European fascination with the so-called hot and top Venus, there's a noticeable absence of Bartman's own voice. This is a foundational idea for the discussion that I want to have. There's evidence of Sarah's life, of what she went through and the places she'd been. But there isn't really evidence of who she was. There's no evidence of her voice. And so the ideas of voice and perspective and storytelling are what underscore my analysis. The lens that I'm going to use to try and understand this scene in historical context is mostly about the language and the word choice. I will say I have more questions than answers. Sarah Bartman's story is full of assumptions and I don't want to make any more. The scene that I have chosen to work with is actually just the introduction. It's the first 11 sentences. The introduction is how a documentary chooses to frame the story that they're about to tell and I think that's worth investigating. She's been both a servant and a great attraction. She's been both a Venus and an exotic freak. A cartoon in the song, a vaudeville in the book. She's been a woman and she's been an ape. When the narrator says things like she has been an exotic freak and she has been a Venus and she has been an ape, it sets up the documentary to be from the perspective of the colonizers. Sarah Bartman wasn't inherently any of those things. Those were all perceptions created by complex European social norms. This documentary introduces her essentially by describing her the way her oppressors would have described her. I'm not making a moral judgment but it's important to think about the limitations of perspective in historical media. We don't have the language that she would have used to describe herself because we don't have her voice and that's certainly a limitation. The other word that I want to pull out of this section is the word symbol. Why is she considered a symbol, the narrator asks rhetorically. I'm going to use a quote here from Dr. Yvette Abrams who is a South African historian and Bartman expert. She says, quote, in writing of Sarah Bartman without writing about her, academics, most of who are white, have succeeded in lining her up for symbolic display without making any sense of her life and times. I interpret this as a condemnation of what a lack of context can do to our perspective. We are attempting to understand and put meaning to her life without knowing what her experiences were like. What meaning do we have a right to imbue on her and her story when we don't know who she was? And might we end up giving her symbolic meaning that she wouldn't have felt any connection to? As an example of how this could be problematic, Professor Dini Magubane makes the argument that Bartman's story is used to make broad generalizations about the experience of African people in the 19th century and she says that that doesn't withstand historical scrutiny. Seeing Sarah as a symbol implies that we see her as representative of something, but her experiences were not only incredibly unique but are actually not that well documented or understood from her perspective. I mean, the intro doesn't even say what she's supposed to be a symbol of. That's left up for interpretation. I do want to note that the documentary said why she's considered a symbol. They didn't even explicitly say that she was a symbol. But word choice is important. It matters. And leading the viewer into Sarah's story with the idea that she is symbolic is impactful. And I want to end the discussion by presenting an alternative representation of Sarah, which is a poem entitled A Tribute to Sarah Bartman. It was written in 1998 by Diana Ferris, a South African writer and storyteller with Khoisan ancestry. It starts, I've come to take you home, home. Remember the veld, the lush green grass beneath the big oak trees. The air is cool there and the sun does not burn. An analysis by Ayo Akoli, a professor of African studies at Dartmouth College, reveals why this poem tells such a different story than the introduction to the documentary. It's not something I think I can speak on in any capacity, so I'm going to quote her directly here. She says, by refusing to name or even allude to Europe, colonialism, and racism in the opening stanza, the poet performs a discursive dismissal of Europe. I've come to take you home, as opposed to I've come to take you away from Europe, is a dismissal of Europe that shows the detachment of the poet from the discourses that have framed Sarah Bartman as the hot and top Venus. This is not to say the documentary is wrong in the language it uses to introduce Sarah. Certainly it had a different purpose, and it couldn't have refused to name Europe and still been a historical documentary about Sarah Bartman. But this poem is a different voice, and maybe it's a more honest voice. And that's all I had to say about that. I think we're really left with one big question, which is how do you tell a voiceless story? And I don't know the answer, but I hope you enjoyed my podcast anyway, and thank you for listening.