he film Proteus is about two men who enjoy each other's bodily pleasures on Robben Island, South Africa, so the title may at first seem inappropriate. According to a title at the beginning of the film, the proteus was proposed as South Africa's national flower in 1964; a title at the end informs us that in the same year Nelson Mandela was sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island. But the significance of the flower requires further viewing. After a few scenes that snapshot the ending of a true story, which actually covers the years 1718-1735, the film's beginning is set at 1725. During a raid near Capetown by Boer farmers to steal cattle from a Hottentot village, seventeen Hottentots have died in an act of ethnic cleansing, thereby suggesting that the roots of apartheid, which lasted from 1948-1994, can be traced to economic and genocidal motivations. Class Blank (played by Rouxnet Brown), the sole Hottentot survivor of the raid, is discovered while hiding in a cart containing proteus flowers that were being collected by botanist Virgil Niven (played by Shaun Smyth). At first charged with cattlerustling, in-the-closet Niven speaks in his defense, whereupon the charge is reduced to assaulting and insulting a Boer officer, for which he is sentenced to ten years of hard labor on Robben Island. After Blank arrives on the island, he is cruised by Rijkhaart Jacobsz (played by Neil Sandilands), who was convicted of sodomy in Amsterdam while a Dutch sailor (along with about seventy others). Both, in short, have been imprisoned in acts of persecution. Blank, who in the film is initially aware of bisexuality but not about those who exclusively prefer to love persons of the same gender, in time has sex with Jacobsz. Later, Jacobsz fantasizes about the two living together in a Hottentot village after they have served their terms of imprisonment, though Blank is more knowledgeable and realistic about South African realities. Since Blank is trilingual (in Africaans, English, and the native Hottentot language), Niven (then coincidentally on the same island) exploits Blank's knowledge to identify local names for flowers. But Blank amuses himself by providing nasty words (such as "cunt" and "fart") instead of the local names. Soon, Niven assigns Blank and Jacobsz to a group of prisoners who are to cultivate a garden that will produce proteus and other exotic flowers for the Amsterdam flowermarkets. Rumors abound on the island about sexual acts between men, but nothing is done until the commandant is replaced one day. After a trap is set, a fellow prisoner discovers the two lovers in an act of sodomy, the penalty for which could be death by drowning. Before the trial back on the South African mainland, they are both tortured in order to obtain confessions. Under Dutch law, confessions are given greater weight than the testimony of prisoners, but the prosecution brings false witnesses before the court anyway. The outcome of the case, in which Niven attempts to intervene on their behalf, thus depends on whether one or the other confesses in response to torture. The cinematography begins with the time-elapsed opening of many proteus flowers and ends with the time-elapsed closing of proteus flowers, thereby serving as a paradigm for the way in which prejudice against sex between males has entailed a shortening of too many lives. The film ends in 1735, the year when Carolus Linnaeus went to the Netherlands, finished medical studies at University of Harderwijk, enrolled at the University of Leiden for further studies, and published his System of Nature. There are several references to Linnaeus's book in the film, including his attempt to classify humans by racial categories. Thus, codirectors and cowriters John Grewson and Jack Lewis appear to endorse the postmodernist view that racism was inescapable as soon as the concept of race was socially constructed, though clearly the prejudice against sex between males antedates the coinage of such words as "homosexual" and "gay." In any case, the screenplay has constructed the story of Proteus, with some anachronisms, from the transcript of the 1735 trial. MH
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