Historical accuracy of Venus and Venus
Venus is based on some of the life events that have been recorded about a Khoekhoe woman, born in modern-day South Africa, who was known as Saartjie Baartman.[17] What is known about the life of Baartman/ Venus Hottentot does not originate from primary sources in Baartman's perspective, rather, Baartman's life is known through secondary sources such as descriptions from spectators who saw her in Europe, owners of the freak show she was a part of, and autopsy notes from a team of French scientists led by Georges Cuvier.[17] The voice of Baartman is seldom known, as is how her personality reacted to European colonial dehumanization and objectification of Khoisan women.[2] Cuvier's notes and detailed autopsy report provides among the most detail of Baartman, but none of which provides insight of her first-hand encounters as a part of a freak show in Europe, or during her final years spent in Paris under the observation of Cuvier and his research team.[2] Baartman's story has been repeated through other people's historical accounts on her, and Parks responds to their secondary accounts and pseudo-scientific research when she writes Venus in a style that is "...questioning the history of history.".[15] A description from a French scientist named Henri de Blainville, who studied Baartman when she was alive, provides the only account on Baartman's resistance when he highlight the "great difficulty convincing Sarah... to let herself be seen nude.",[18] and how, despite their efforts to bribe her with money, no scientist ever saw Baartman's genitalia in detail until after her demise in 1815.[17] Without any known primary sources from Baartman's narrative of her experiences in the years before her death, few certainties can be confirmed on the historical accuracy of the life events of Saartjie Baartman.[17][16] Parks also toys with Baartman's character by creating a diva within Venus.[19] While living with the Baron Docteur in Paris, Venus enters a monologue which reveals internalized fantasies of directing her servants, and of mingling in with upper-class members while be waited upon.[19] Venus enjoys lifestyles of high-society, and gains pleasure in situating herself on the privileged side of a servant-master power dynamic,[19] but unknown is whether the real Saartjie Baartman could, or wanted to participate in this lifestyle. Parks' retelling of Baartman's story and personality–as a woman with agency, and the taste of a diva–could be as far fabricated or as realistic as "the unrecorded truth"[15] on Baartman's history.
Dynamic structure: Love
Historical relations
Love is the foremost represented genre in Parks' Venus. The Hottentot Venus' name takes after Venus, the goddess of love, beauty, sex and fertility in ancient Roman mythology, and prior to that, Aphrodite in ancient Greek mythology. Both goddesses represent a Western-European profile of erotic beauty, and procreation, however, an assignation of goddess-like attributes to Black women in the early-19th century treads on historically racist and oppressive grounds. On several occasions in Venus, the Negro Resurrectionist announces that "The year was 1810, three years after the Bill for the Abolition of Slave-Trade had been passed in Parliament, and among the protests and denials, the horror and fascination, The Venus show went on."[20] The transatlantic slave trade occurred during the same period as the rise of racialist ideas in Europe,[21] which Parks' personifies in the Baron Docteur. Enslaved Black women in the Americas were frequently called "Venus" by their enslavers, which directly influenced the decision to term Baartman the "Hottentot Venus".[22] Moments after Parks' Girl transforms into The Hottentot Venus, after being sold by the Brother to the Mother-Showman, the Negro Resurrectionist alludes to an illegal and historically inhumane reality attached to Venus's character. Elements of slave-ownership enmeshed with lustful desire towards Black women appear in Venus between the Venus and the Baron Docteur. This "Black Venus master narrative"[21] is replayed by Parks in the Baron Docteurs' characterization as a lover of Venus–whom he impregnates twice–and as an owner of Venus from the time he bought her from the Mother-Showman.
Personification
Love is a repeated theme in nearly every scene in Venus, and in every characters' interaction with Venus. Parks accomplishes this repetition by personifying love in three forms; the "love-object"[14] is Venus, the unloved is the Bride-To-Be, and the lover emerges in both the Baron Docteur as the dis-rememberer, and the Negro Resurrectionist as the rememberer.[14] Venus is an object of love from the moment the Overture begins. As characters announce her death and the cancellation of the show, Venus' body–once a performative object–is now absent, causing outrage among the Chorus of Spectators who 'love' her. When time rewinds to the Girl's early life in South Africa, the Brother promises the Girl (in an effort to persuade her to move to London) that people will love her if she dances for them–another use of Parks' love-objectification of Venus' body. When the Girl later emerges from the Mother-Showman's forcible bathing attempts, the Negro Resurrectionist discloses his admiration of the Girl, saying, "Yr lovely.",[23] shortly before she transforms into the Venus Hottentot. The Negro Resurrectionist sees and loves Venus' as Saartjie Baartman from South Africa, much unlike the Spectators, the Anatomists, the Brother, and the Mother-Showman who love the spectacle, research, and wealth which has been produced through her racialized and sexualized body.[1][16] The Baron Docteur is another lover of Venus, whose affection intertwines with scientific fame that he aspires to achieve after Venus' autopsy.
"For the Love of the Venus."
Parks maintains the plays' original plot from The Hottentot Venus/ The Hatred of French Women, while repeating the dominant narrative of a white, Eurocentric, and supremacist hierarchy over non-whites.[2] Parks' play-within-a-play parallels with themes in Venus in the way fetishization of The Hottentot Venus (and other black women of her time) is a "literal fabric-ation"[24] made by people from Western Europe to help them attain other goals for themselves. In Venus, the Baron Docteur engages in a love affair with Venus–sweet-talking and feeding her chocolates–until her death allows him to complete her autopsy, and justify his purpose for admiring her. In "For the Love of the Venus.", the Young Man decides that before he agrees to marry the Bride-to-Be, he must experience love with The Hottentot Venus. His goal is fulfilled, and so is the Bride-to-Be's goal (to marry the Young Man) when the Bride-to-Be disguises herself as The Hottentot Venus through a no-longer socially acceptable form of performative make-up called blackface. In every instance where Parks' white character's achieve their goals, The Hottentot Venus becomes an object of love for each of their grand schemes. Through Parks' retelling of blackface history, past and present misrepresentations and mockeries of black female performers by non-black persons are made vulnerable for critique.[2]
Feminism
Venus has been examined by a number of scholars, including Lisa Anderson who analyzed it as a commentary on the femininity and sexuality of women of African descent.[25] Theatre and cinema scholar Jean Young states that the ahistorical portrayal "reifies the perverse imperialist mind set, and [Parks'] mythic historical reconstruction subverts the voice of Saartjie Baartman;" she further points out the ironic re-objectification of Baartman in its attempt to portray her story.
However, other critiques argue that the portrayal actually objectifies the colonizers instead of the heroine.[3][26] New York Times critic Ben Brantley stated that Parks "doesn't present Baartman as just an uncomprehending victim", implying that Parks had written Baartman in way that suggested that Baartman prolonged her own imprisonment for the sake of fame.[27] Conversely, Jennifer Larson writes that Baartman's character "certainly engages the imperial/hegemonic/white power with innovative and creative tactics, but these tactics are not historically unique.".[28]
