Mars is Dead? 

In 2006 Hotep's Independent, Doing Major Things made the rounds. Part documentary about the entertainment-primarily music-industry in Atlanta, part promotional tool for Hotep and his Skinnymen productions, Independent works. Watching Hotep hustle is just as instructional as tossing off facts about percentage points and how the distribution game works.

Hotep now has Venus Lives, a documentary that chronicles Hotep's multimedia exhibition The Venus Revolution.

Distressed by the images of women in the media who don't resemble the full figured ladies he knows, Hotep set out to pay homage to women who don't fit the advertised norm. At the core of this Hotep utilizes the story of the Hottentot Venus also known as Saartjie Baartman.

Brought to England in 1810, Baartman was a Khoisan from what is now known as South Africa. Upon arrival Baartman traveled Europe where her large buttocks where exhibited, fascinating crowds. Some audience members even paid to touch it. After her death in 1815, her skeleton, brain and preserved genitals were put on display in a Paris museum until 1974. Her remains wouldn't be returned to South Africa until 2002.

Some historians have credited Baartman's visit for possibly inspiring the bustle. While the books written about Baartman's sexual features have aslo been credited with playing a role in popularizing the myth that Black women were more sexual than other women. A myth that was taken as scientific fact. 

That European society both admired and degraded Baartman makes for a natural parallel to today. Between the new clothing lines that have sprung up over the last few years such as Applebottom jeans to videos like Nelly's "Tip Drill". Our current society in many levels isn't much different than European society in the 19th century.

With Baartmans story as his guide, Hotep planned a series of events that he wanted to be, in his words, sexy, controversial and historical. The most important event would be the unveiling of nude photos of plus sized women, each one associated with a planet in the Solar System.

As with Independent, Venus Lives features a lot of Hotep. Too much of Hotep. As a consequence we're never giving the opportunity to know much about the women who participated in The Venus Revolution.

One woman mentions she felt more comfortable at the second photo shoot, yet we never see her at the first one.

And there's a series of scenes after a handful of photo shoots and each woman is shown squeezing into a pair of very tight jeans. The logical question to ask as the camera is rolling is if these women didn't feel comfortable with their shape, why wear clothes that only highlight that shape?

From the looks of the footage, The Venus Revolution itself appeared to be successful. A few of the women express a new found confidence and others, initially skeptical that Hotep could pull it off, praise the projects outcome. And those in attendance, as well as others Hotep reached out to, appeared to gain a deeper understanding of where some of our views about women's bodies and sex come from.

However, Venus Lives as a documentary is all surface when it needs to dig deeper. There are no arcs or journeys for us to follow other than Hotep's and The Venus Revolution.

As a result, Hotep has done just as much to fetishize full figured women as the people and society he's trying to denounce.

Charles Judson is a local screen & comic book writer and a regular contributor and film critic for CinemATL.