Queen in Pain
Updated: Dec 1, 2019
I almost skipped watching “Queen and Slim.” I saw the trailer a while back and thought it was on some ride or die type shit. From the trailer, it appeared that Slim shot the cop and subsequently persuaded Queen to go on the run with him. If you shoot a cop while I’m on date with you, I might could make it to the trial every day. I will not play Bonnie and Clyde with you, though. But when my homegirl texted me like “Want to go see Queen and Slim? Got tickets to an advance screening,” you know I said yes. After I saw Queen get out of the car to question the cop’s lawlessness, I just knew it was coming.
Another Black woman muling for a Black man who wouldn’t lift a finger for her. But something else happened. The cop shoots Queen. Slim reacts. Slim reacts. He throws himself at the cop and they wrestle to the ground. Slim makes it to the gun first. My brain didn’t register that Slim shot the cop in the theater. My brain just kept repeating: Slim reacts. To a darker skinned Black woman being shot. A Black woman he barely knows. When Black women and girls speak of our pain, no one bats an eye. We are told that our pain is of our own making. We are too loud. Too aggressive. Too angry. Slim not only notices that Queen has been shot, but he also takes action. Queen’s pain in the film is as conspicuous as the powder blue El Dorado the couple flees to Florida in. Perhaps this is why she insists that they take the antique car, saying, “We’ll be hidden in plain sight.” Like the car, Queen’s bruised and broken body hides in plain sight: she is shot in the leg during the first cop encounter, she jumps from a roof and breaks her arm, and in the penultimate scene she is the first one shot and killed.Another Black woman muling for a Black man who wouldn’t lift a finger for her. But something else happened. The cop shoots Queen. Slim reacts. Slim reacts. He throws himself at the cop and they wrestle to the ground. Slim makes it to the gun first. My brain didn’t register that Slim shot the cop in the theater. My brain just kept repeating: Slim reacts. To a darker skinned Black woman being shot. A Black woman he barely knows. When Black women and girls speak of our pain, no one bats an eye. We are told that our pain is of our own making. Too loud. Too aggressive. Too angry. Slim not only notices that Queen has been shot, but he also takes action. Queen’s pain in the film is as conspicuous as the powder blue El Dorado the couple flees to Florida in. Perhaps this is why she insists that they take the El Dorado, saying, “We’ll be hidden in plain sight.” Like the antique car, Queen’s bruised and broken body hides in plain sight: she is shot in the leg during the first cop encounter, she jumps from a roof and breaks her arm, and in the penultimate scene, she is the first one shot and killed.
Slim mostly escapes this barrage of physical violence until he is fatally wounded at the end. Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas tattoo misogynoir onto Queen’s body in a way that makes plain the miles logged onto on our bodies even if we don’t crack from them. But her external wounds only touch the tips of her pain. Bokeem Woodbine plays Queen’s uncle and is a standout in the film. He is no benevolent figure, however. Uncle Earl is a former vet who physically beats women. It is this same violence that leads him to accidentally kill his sister, Queen’s mother. Despite this, Queen successfully defends her uncle during trial. She lives in that space so many Black women occupy whenever we anesthetize ourselves from our own pain to make room for someone else’s. The world tells us that naming our pain is useless because who will care enough to do something about it? Perhaps this is why some critics describe Jodie Turner-Smith’s portrayal of Queen as stiff. This seems intentional on her part. No one cares to notice Queen’s scars. Let alone ask her what she endured to make the bleeding stop. What becomes of our bodies in spaces like these? Slim too crouches his body as if bracing for a blow. But isn’t this what fugitive living does to us? And, I am not talking about their sudden flight to Florida. Nearly every Black person knows what it means to live as a fugitive. To inhale other Black people’s murder as your own. That glorious scene of the pair dancing in a darkly lit juke joint lingered for such a long time that I was able to think of what our lives could be if we aren’t counted among the hunted. In that juke joint, Queen and Slim moved with all the patience of a backwoods baptism in Georgia. In this moment, I thought about those of us who never signed up to be slogans on tee shirts. Those of us who were just trying to make it home in time for the second half of the All Star game. Those of us who just want to talk shit and hold hands in the parking lot. The power of Queen and Slim is that it is both improbable and possible. Isn’t that our story? We are killed in ways that defy common sense. We run, we get shot. We stand still, we get shot. We say yes sir, we get shot. We play video games with our nephew, we get shot. We are told to accept our assassinations as just one big misunderstanding. An unfortunate accident. Isn’t this what Sal says after the cops choked Radio Raheem to death by in “Do The Right Thing”? This is no doubt the film that Waithe leaned on for inspiration. Radio Raheem decided that if he could not make Sal hear him, he could damn sure make him feel him. Slim too can’t change this rotten world. Yet he chooses to hold space for Queen’s pain. He reacts.
