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| Saartjie Baartman, 19e-eeuwse karikatuur |
by Claire Breukel
Miami — Historically, the
relationship of the black identity to sex is loaded and remains a deeply
complex conversation. Africa’s black identity history is marred by images of
the “African Hottentot Venus” Saartjie Baartman who was put on display and sent
across the world like a circus animal before being dismembered for study
purposes following her death.
This sexualized commodification of
the human body underpinned the slave trade, which greatly impacted the entire
Caribbean region. Now, the sensationalized, sexualized and dis-empowered
depictions of male sports figures in global advertising campaigns seems to be
an acceptable norm. How does one even begin to address such a historically
laden topic in an area that is as geographically and culturally complex?
Two weeks ago editor Faith Smith
spoke about her book Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean at a
launch of publications from the New World series at Books and Books in Coral
Gables, Miami. Smith’s approach to addressing this sizeable topic was to
incorporate a multitude of voices by compiling a volume of essays by some of
the Caribbean most influential writers.
Published in April last year, the
book starts from the premise that “citizen” is a constructed identity and the
influence and impact of applied socially normative categories such as race,
gender, class, heterosexuality and other such predilections, add to its
construction. The essays address hard topics including HIV/AIDS, queerness,
travel, sexual politics, as well as the creative fields and their negotiation
of black identity.
This got me thinking about the work
of visual artist Hank Willis Thomas that highlights the re-entrenchment of
black identity stereotypes by appropriating advertisements from the past that
transformed, used, dictated, undermined and stereotyped black identity. But has
anything really changed?
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| PUMA's advert for "Jam" fragrance depicts Jamaican runner and model dancing "Island-style." Image © www.eloisedreyer.com |
I recently came across the Puma
sports brand’s advert for a new fragrance called “Jam” featuring topless world
champion runner Usain Bolt “jamming island style” with Jamaica-born model
Trishauna Clarke. Aside from being horribly trite, the ad relies on numerous
cultural and social stereotypes the subtext of which might as well read:
“Jamaica is a carefree island
paradise where you can go and party ‘island style’ with non-threatening,
sexually available locals.”
Joane Nagel, in her book Race,
Ethnicity, and Sexuality, brilliantly talks about the topic of sex and tourism,
specifically in the chapter “Travel and Romance in Ethnosexual Destinations”
and highlights the trend for tourists to seek out “ethnosexual
adventures.”Nagel describes how race is historically, politically and socially
intertwined with sexuality. Stereotypes of black Caribbean men as being
hypersexual and strongly masculine play into the fantasy/fallacy of black men
being well-endowed and good lovers. Whereas this may at first appear
flattering, these men are also depicted as available for the taking,
dis-empowering them as nothing more than sexual objects as part of a holiday fling
abroad. A naughty secret so to speak. Dr. Evangelia Tastsoglou describes the
political component of Nagel’s argument explaining how national and sexual
boundaries intersect stating,
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| Sex-tourism. Courtesy © Caribbean Events |
Implicit in the idea of the nation
are certain prescriptions and proscriptions for sexual crossings — what good
citizens should and should not do sexually, and with whom.
This stirs a significant and
unromantic “nature vs. nurture” question, “Is our sexuality a product of our
environment and indicative of our economic needs/desires?” In her introduction
to Sex and the Citizen, Smith approaches this question within the Caribbean:
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| Image © Leandro Ponce |
… the present day package deals or
trade-offs, associated more recently with the specific implications of the sex
tourism associated with globalization, can help us to frame what it means for
the territories in the region to claim, refute, or accept their place at the
global table as the provider of particular services that cater to “foreign”
tastes. It is these trade-offs — what many deem to be Faustian bargains with
apocalyptic consequences — that are being discussed s heatedly in the region
and it’s many Diaspora’s today.
And this is only the surface.
[from Hyperallergic, February 7, 2012]
