Historically Speaking: Hottentot Venus

I found the bit shown in class on the “Hottentot Venus” really disturbing and outrageous, but I guess it was the way exotic cultures were interpreted back then, which of course does not make it right.

I think that if Ethnology was born out of these “Ethnological Zoos” where public exhibits of human beings was in their “natural” or “primitive” state were common it’s a sad reflection on the anthropological field of study. These human exhibits were a form of visual documentary and they were common until the 20th century. In the article The Other History of Intercultural Performance, Coco Fusco writes that though human zoos as they were back then no longer exist “the desire to look upon unpredictable forms of Otherness from a safe distance persists” (154).

The short clips of the history of Saartjie Baartman, who was a member of the Namagua tribe, better known as the “Hottentot Venus” were just so sad and vile it’s hard to imagine what her life must have been. She was on display in London until her death in 1815. The people that were exhibiting her allowed spectators to touch her especially touch her buttocks in exchange for payment.

Coco Fusco performed inside a cage with a friend of hers and she says that “after the ritual surprise of encountering caged beings, audiences invariably revealed their familiarity with the scenario to which we alluded” (154) which is a very sad statement because I would want to think that we have come a long way since the times of the human zoos, but for people to see familiarity in such a vile spectacle is not encouraging.

Couple in the Cage

I didn’t really enjoy watching “Couple in the Cage” with Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña who were posing as undiscovered “Amerindians” - even though they did have a purpose in mind before doing what they did. I think that putting themselves in a cage and playing with orientalism and all the prejudices and stereotypes, and notions that go with it, and exposing people is quite brilliant, but doesn’t necessarily make it a good read or something fun to watch.

The portion in the article that Fusco wrote on “Intercultural Performance” is something that I really found disturbing:

“Those people from other parts of the world were forced first to take the place that Europeans had already created for the savages of their own Medieval mythology; later with the mergence of scientific rationalism, the ‘aborigines’ on display served as proof of the natural superiority of European civilization, of its ability to exert control and extract knowledge from the ‘primitive’ world, and ultimately of the genetic inferiority of non-European races” (146).

I liked how their performance forced people to come into contact with the unexpected, and in Fusco’s words “people’s defense mechanisms are less likely to operate with their normal efficiency, caught off guard, their beliefs are more likely to rise to the surface” (148). This whole idea of catching someone off guard, in order to bring out their inner prejudices and fears, especially when they encounter something unfamiliar, an exotic “other” - is really interesting BUT it’s also a bit unfair isn’t it? Everyone has their own prejudices and being tricked into exposing them in a very public manner, is questionable at the very least.

Regardless, I think some of the aspects of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s performance were hilarious like them lifting weights, watching television, Fusco’s wild unabashed dancing. These activities seemed so far from what the stereotypical “native” activities, I loved how the audience was just taken aback by watching them engage in “normal” Western culture.

Another good point that Fusco makes is about the feeling of objectification from being in the cage and being watched by strangers. She said that in Spain many men made highly charged sexual comments about her body, and some even went as far as “coaxing others to add more money to the donation box to se my breasts move as I danced” (162). Furthermore, I didn’t find it too surprising when she said that Guillermo Gomez-Peña “found the experience of being objectified continuously more difficult to tolerate” (162) I guess because he was now the subject of that voyeuristic “gaze.”

Overall though, I think that this film could have been a lot shorter, it felt a bit like it dragged on. I feel like it could be condensed into much shorter footage.

Cannibal Tours

Watching Cannibal Tours created a sense of discomfort in me that I definitely did not expect to feel when I watched the film. The tourists seemed typical and ignorant of the tribal culture in Papua New Guinea. What struck me the most was the part with the native man saying he wants the tourists to stop asking him for a second price because he can’t do that when he goes to a market in town, or a mall. He is absolutely right!.

The black and white photography that pops up periodically throughout the film shows the natives (back then) looking extremely miserable as if they were specimens, next to the caucasian explorers. The documentary photography in the film is similar to the photography in the National Geographic, because it is exhibiting an exotic culture. The readings from the book Reading National Geographic, by Catherine Lutz and Jane L. Collins paint a different picture of the National Geographic than what is traditionally thought. The natives are a an exotic “other” and according to Lutz and Collins the magazine “is continually drawn to people in brightly colored, ‘different’ dress, engaged in initially strange-seeming rituals or inexplicable behavior” (89). The magazine definitely focusses on exotic aspects like what the natives wear partly perhaps because “exotic dress can stand for a pre-modern attitude, Western dress for a forward-looking Western orientation” which is essentially what is conveyed in many of these images.


The scenes in the film, with the tourists going around with their cameras photographic everything, asking the natives to “smile” for them and pose, made them (the tourists) appear almost cannibalistic. It’s the tourists who are insatiable, completely consuming any exoticness that they perceive. But I think that what made the scenes even more disturbing for me was that I remember my mom doing the same thing when I went to Panama last summer - asking a tribe of native girls to smile while I went and posed with them. I just felt really guilty after watching those scenes. But I think that the absolutely most vile aspect of the film was that it seemed the natives were selling their culture, or at least the Western world’s consumerism was essentially consuming their culture. The act of paying for a photograph of their most sacred building, and then paying them to pose was uncomfortable watch.

Professional Viewing

The Rodney King video that we screened was footage that would’ve outraged just about anyone that watched it. The court footage from the trial showed the defense and the prosecution each making their case to the jury. While watching the footage, I didn’t feel prosecutor Terry White did such a bad job at drawing attention to the officers at fault. However after sitting through the testimony and the cross-examining of each of the 3 officers (Koon, Powell, Briseno) at the trial (Wind did not get cross examined) I had to almost laugh at how it was possible that the jury bought into what the officers said.

In the article “Professional Vision” by Charles Goodwin he shows how the defense was able to use its own “coding scheme” when examining a piece of evidence as incriminating as the infamous video tape of the Rodney King beating. It is absolutely fascinating how the defense for the 4 Los Angeles Police Department officers was able to breakdown the tape in such a way that the jury viewed it according to their “coding scheme,” and to the point where they no longer saw events in the tape the way an average person did. Goodwin defines coding schemes as “one systematic practice used to transform the world into the categories and events that are relevant to the work of the profession” (608). Therefore what in reality was a massive beating by the officers, was now transformed into ten separate events each with its own sequence of stages, and the aggression displayed by the officers was “coded” as professional practice.

The defense also made use of “expert testimony” which according to Goodwin “had the effect of filtering the events visible on the tape through a police coding scheme, as articulated by an expert who instructed the jury how to see the body movements of the victim in terms of that system” (616).

By way the defense broke down the events in the tape, the expert called incidents of police brutality - periods of “escalating and de-escalating” force used to apprehend a suspect, the batons that the officers were beating King with were now referred to as “tools” used by the officers, and minor movements in King’s body were interpreted as aggression on his part. A part of me considers this brilliant use of rhetoric but I can’t help wonder that behind all this coding, behind all the “professional police talk” how could the jury just not look at everything like an average citizen would putting aside all the police babble.? Even the fact that one of the officers accused, Briseno, defended himself by actually admitting that the other officers were going too far. There was even a break in the defense! Not all 4 officers could agree on a single defense, and how could the jury NOT pick up on this?