More than 200 years ago, on the streets of London, the carcass of a black woman with a "deformed" body attracted widespread curiosity, and onlookers were surprised to find:
The "woman" was short in height, but her hips were far beyond the proportions of ordinary women, and she looked like a round boulder.
Guided by a "beast trainer", the was dragged and moved like an animal in a circus, and her every move caused the gentlemen and ladies in the audience to burst into laughter.
In what is said to be the most civilized and powerful country in the world, these onlookers do not feel that the black man in front of them is their kind.
Because according to the latest "authoritative research" by anthropologists and biologists, the black man is nothing more than an intermediary between humans and animals.
The london street performance did not last long, and the girl died suddenly and mysteriously at the age of 26.
However, death is not the end of liberation, the woman was not able to settle down and return to the roots after her death, and her body was dissected into a specimen and exhibited in Europe for 200 years.
It wasn't until 2002 that the black woman's body was returned to her homeland.
So why did this black woman appear naked on the streets of London? Why was she treated like an animal? Why did she eventually die at the age of 26?
(Batman figure painting)
Venus of Hottendu The 21-year-old girl was tricked into traveling to Europe
Venus, in the eyes of Westerners, represents a plump and beautiful goddess image, and its half-naked statue is a classic in the history of world sculpture.
The black woman, Saltje Bateman, was a Hottendu from southern Africa who was also known as the "Venus of hottendus" by Europeans at the time.
But this Venus is not a "reverse Venus", but rather a "reverse Venus", because of her peculiar body, Europeans have formed all stereotypes about black African women: sexual desire, exaggerated body proportions, inferior race.
But long before Salterje Bateman was born, the brand of European prejudice was deeply imprinted on her race.
(Black South African)
The name Hottendu, the name itself implies a discriminatory connotation, and its willingness in Dutch is a stuttering disease.
At first, when dutch colonists set foot on South African soil, they found that some of the local indigenous people had a unique pronunciation and a "clucking" sound when speaking, which looked a bit like stuttering, so they were called Hottendo by Europeans.
In fact, the Hotundu people's self-perception is "Koi people (i.e., human meaning)", their average height is more than 1 meter 5, tribal women have more wide hips than other tribes, and they live by hunting, raising cattle and grazing.
With the advent of the Age of Discovery, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British became the rulers of South Africa. At first, the colonists were not familiar with the land of South Africa, but wanted to use the land as a transit supply station.
The hospitable natives of Hotundu treated them with the friendship of landlords, but they did not expect that after the colonists had gained a firm foothold, the natives would be treated as slaves by the greedy colonists, the poorly armed Hotundu people would be defeated in the face of advanced firearms, and the people, cattle, sheep, and land of one tribe after another would fall into the hands of the colonists.
(Black South Africans fighting the colonizers)
At the same time that the British replaced the Dutch, Salterje Batemann was born on a colonial farm in South Africa.
In infancy, the mother died of illness.
As an adult, Batman, like most black women, came to work as a maid in a white household, where she began to be converted into Batman (a savage servant in Dutch), and she was recorded to have fallen in love with a soldier during her time in South Africa.
It wasn't until 1810 that the appearance of a white doctor changed Batman's fate.
By chance, Dunlop, a doctor, happened to meet Batman, was suddenly shocked by her exaggerated figure, and quickly had an evil idea in his mind - to take her to European exhibitions to make money.
(Slave trade)
Shortly after Britain had announced the abolition of the slave trade, it was easy to punish It as an illegal slave trade if it was forcibly brought to Western Europe against Batman's wishes.
Dunlop racked his brains to come up with a trick, and he was ready to legally sign a contract with Batman to work as a domestic worker in London and perform in England, from which Batman could earn a large income.
At first, Batman insisted on going to Europe with his lover, but perhaps life in South Africa was too hard, and under the repeated inducements of doctors, the illiterate Batman finally agreed to go to Europe in the world of flowers, and the two sides signed a five-year contract.
Local officials saw that the contract was not too much of a problem, so they released it, and Bateman embarked on a road of no return.
Pets at the mercy of high society Are the research products of biologists
As soon as he left South Africa, Batman realized that this was a complete hoax, that the so-called domestic workers did not exist, but rather family pets.
As soon as she arrived in London, she lost the freedom to dominate her body. Citizens who have long known about this "monster" on the poster have come to visit her exhibition hall and compete to witness her "fang".
(Batman is watching)
For a time, Batman became a hot topic of discussion throughout the streets of London, and even made the citizens forget the threat of Napoleon's army on the other side of the channel.
Historians have recorded that everywhere from the window to the printed cloth and poster advertisements, information about Batman's exhibition was plastered everywhere, and almost overnight, the whole of London was shrouded in a frenzy of chasing Battman.
Many celebrities also put aside the old gentleman and lady dogma and invited the "female star" to perform in their homes.
Batman could only perform actions that satisfyed his curiosity one by one according to their requirements, and was casually touched by his hands on his naked body.
But Dunlop didn't want to treat the woman like a circus monkey, he wanted to squeeze her even further.
On the side of biologists and anthropologists, one so-called scientific study after another about Batman quickly came out.
(Batman's comic)
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the study of anthropology was already fruitful, and people began to break free from the shackles of the creationism of the past and place human beings within the framework of "science".
Some scientists have hypothesized that there must be a transition between humans and orangutans and humans.
Since Europeans have been considered the most civilized and excellent race in the world, and Africans are regarded as ugly and unenterprising inferior races, in the minds of these moral scientists, black Africans are naturally a reasonable existence as intermediaries.
Batman became the best tool for them to argue, and they started with Batman's body and analyzed his tribe in depth.
(Battman is seen as an intermediary between apes and humans.)
From this preconceived notion, the physical and psychological characteristics of this inferior race are set, a systematic comparison is made, and finally it is not surprising to settle on the point of view that European whites are the best races in the world.
Although not every Hottendo woman was born with the same special stature as Batman, and there were some strange dwarfism patients among white people, racist scientists selectively viewed this, as long as it was in line with the mainstream public opinion at the time and brushed more KPIs for themselves academically.
Of course, the British are not completely indifferent, and there are still some righteous people who can't stand this absurd performance and stand up to defend Batman's human dignity.
In the year Bartman arrived in London, the abolitionists, represented by Hendrick Cesar, filed a complaint against Dunlop and others in the local court, accusing them of treating her as a slave against Herman's personal wishes.
(Film and television scene)
But during the three-hour trial, Batman, perhaps out of fear, did not tell the judge the truth.
Instead, according to Dunlop, all the performances were voluntary, and she had never been abused in London.
At this point, the abolitionists were helplessly defeated, and Dunlop continued to squeeze huge pounds from the black woman.
Batman's performance (film and television scene)
Over the next four years, Batman performed repeatedly between England and Ireland, and the people of the British Isles gradually declined from excitement and curiosity to habituation.
Bateman was sold to the French and spent the last part of her life in Paris.
(3) Died of syphilis at the age of 26 and remains for more than 200 years
There were at least some abolitionists in London who were morally condemning and restraining her, but in Paris her "agent" had no scruples about her any more and tortured her with even more cruel and inhuman means.
During the exhibition in Paris, in order to make Batman look more like an animal, her body was specially feathered. Batman's self-esteem was devastated by her long period of inhuman treatment, and she began to indulge in alcohol and borrow wine to pour out her sorrows.
(Frenchman onlookers batman)
Worst of all, when the Parisian elite were tired of Batman's performances, she had to sell herself to a brothel to be humiliated by prostitutes in order to survive in Paris.
In less than two years, Batman, like most other prostitutes, contracted syphilis, and in that poor medical condition and penniless situation, Batman could only watch his life disappear little by little in the torment of illness.
At the end of December 1815, Batman died at the age of 26.
One doctor, Cuville, felt that the body was of medical value, removed her brain and genitals and placed them in a laboratory to continue research, while the rest was sent to a museum in Paris for public display.
Based on the results of the dissection, the Parisian scientific community released a conclusion: Bateman's ears resemble an orangutan, which reinforced previous beliefs that she was a human and an ape.
In that golden age of European civilization, Batman's body seemed to be placed in a museum like a trophy, and as before she died, her body, even if it had no soul, did not prevent the civilized people watching from pointing at her.
(iv) Fallen leaves return to the roots Batman returns to his homeland
After the end of World War II, the power of colonialism in the world declined sharply, and various national independence and liberation movements surged up.
In South Africa, the epicenter of racism, the evil apartheid system was finally brought to an end in the 1990s, and black South Africans, including the Hottento, finally ushered in their own liberation moment.
Meanwhile, Batman's remains in Paris began to attract the attention of South Africans.
They saw the girl's inhuman experience as a representative suffering of the indigenous black people of that era, and as long as they stayed in France for one day, the humiliation of the indigenous people of South Africa would continue, and they could not ignore the girl.
A "Movement to Welcome back the Venus of Africa" arose in South Africa, and South Africa, from private to official organizations, began to strongly appeal to the French side for the return of the remains to the South Africans.
(In 2002, Batman's body was buried in South Africa)
Perhaps it was a matter of conscience that the French first closed the secret collection of remains to the public in the 1980s, and then formally agreed to the South African's request in 2002.
In May of the same year, Batman finally returned to her long-lost hometown, and in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, locals held a grand funeral for Batman.
Various film and television dramas in honor of Batman also came into being, the most famous of which was the film "Noir Venus" released in 2010, which recreated Batman's life in an almost realistic way, which brought many European audiences to tears, which won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival.
epilogue
Although Batman has been gone for 200 years, the controversy derived from her has been fermenting in the Western feminist circles.
In 2014, the famous sexy model Kim Kardashian unveiled her latest wine glass photo in a magazine, which angered many feminist activists because of the picture of the glass held on her hips in the photo.
They argue that the image is reminiscent of a pitiful encounter about Batman, "a kind of exploitation and gaze at the bodies of black women." ”
(Kim Kardashian)