The flawed characteristics of Queenie on AHS: Coven

American Horror Story has done a good job including women of color in its cast.  This season called “Coven” has made race a prime theme with storylines that involve slavery and voodoo.  However, the biggest (pun intended) development is the casting of Gabourey Sidibe, who is estimated to weigh as much as 350lbs, in the role of Queenie.  Gabourey is best known for her best actress nominated role as Precious in the film Precious (2009). Queenie and Precious share many similarities such as their love for food and inner strength.  The character of Queenie in American Horror Story: Coven is both enabling and constraining because it demonstrates that there are places for powerful, obese African American women in our society.  The importance of this cannot be understated.  According to Blanton, “Black media play a significant role in determining the content of blacks’ view of themselves.”  However, Coven does so by centering her character around stereotypes relating to food, size, racism, and the phenomenon known as the angry black woman. 

              

               Somehow, the narrative about race in America has shifted. A Rasmussen poll from July has framed Blacks as more racist than Whites.   Historically, Whites have oppressed racial minorities and we don’t forget that watching Coven all the flashbacks and call backs to slavery.  The other black character on Coven, Marie Laveau, tells Queenie, “Their power is built on the sweat of our backs.  The only reason you and I in this country is cause our great-great grandpas couldn’t run fast enough. You’ll never be welcome here and those witches are the worst.”   Marie wants Queenie to leave the Coven and come live with her own people.  Marie comments, “Livin over there in wonder bread land. They probably feed ya Shake N Bake and watermelon for dessert.” Queenie tells Marie, “They don’t care that I’m black.  I just think that they just don’t like me.”  Marie objects, Ohhhhhh. They care plenty.”  This was not the first time Queenie’s race had been brought to her attention. Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie, the show’s resident racist, earlier told her that the girls at the coven were never going to see her as their sister because was black.  This seemed to bother Queenie, although it shouldn’t have, because Blacks are more racist, right?  Let’s look at how this representation of Queenie’s race is both harmful and beneficial.

              

               Queenie attacks the witches in the coven for their whiteness, but the racial attacks are not reciprocated.  This is harmful because it supports the results from the Rasmussen poll that claim that Blacks are more racist than Whites. Queenie didn’t know there were black witches.   She tells the girls, “I grew up on white girl shit, like Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Cracker.”  In one example of Queenie’s attacks, Zoe, a coven member, cites how the number of witches have dwindled and how they need to watch each other’s backs going forward.  Queenie retorts, “Look, I’ve been taking care of myself for a really long time. So I’m not sure I need some white girl sorority sisters to cover my ass.”  Zoe is quick to correct her that it is a coven, not a sorority. Queenie’s drawing attention to race makes it appear as if she is the only coven member that it matters to and is the reason that she does not like them.  Queenie’s framing as a racist is beneficial in the sense that it gives her a sort of agency and she escapes finger pointing of blacks as “eternal racial crybabies who love to scream racism at every slight or failure (Hutchinson).”  She is self-aware. She is equal to the other witches.  She is free to be blunt and speak her mind and is not subservient. 

              

               In our culture, fatness is not synonymous with blackness, but Coven found an easy way to go there using food.  When Queenie and Marie Lavue meet for the first time Queenie asks, “You doing some kind of voodoo with those fish heads?” Marie is making gumbo.  Being from Detroit (go figure) and living in “wonder bread land,” Queenie has never had gumbo.  Marie states, “And I know you didn’t cross the line and break the truce for no bowl of gumbo.” I am sure that line was meant to be cute, but you cannot overlook what it suggests especially after having watched Marie give Queenie a taste from a large wooden spoon.  Gumbo = Soul = Black.

Queenie = fat = will eat anything. However, gumbo talk set up was fodder to introduce the Shake N Bake gem.  “Black people are engaged in an ideological warfare with between race, identity, and food (Williams, p. 170).  Unfortunately, Queenie’s backstory involved her working at a fried chicken joint and fighting over fried chicken with a black man.  According to Sparky,   “Seriously, it could have been anything in the world and American Horror Story chose to have Black people fighting over chicken.”  Aside from being stereotypical, the story created a viewing rupture by linking Queenie to Precious who ran down the street with a bucket of stolen fried chicken.  Queenie’s relationship with food shields her from racial attacks since it is a lot more convenient for people to attack her based on her weight.  Queenie told Madame Delphine, “My problem aint food you dumb bitch.  It’s love.  Dr. Phil says that kids from broken homes use food to replace love. It’s comforting.”  That quote ties things together nicely.  Black =Broke Home = Overeating. 

               Why does being a strong black woman come with drawbacks?  Nichole Perkins writes, “The Strong Black Woman is a supposed to be positive, a counterpoint to the negative representations of black women that permeate American culture.”  She references the role of Queenie being a human voodoo doll who doesn’t feel pain although she can inflict it on others. 
The problem with this power is that Queenie usually it when she is angry.  For example, the girls try to get information from butler and he won’t oblige.  Queenie kicks his chair and then she takes the hot spatula to her face (which burns him) and says that they will wait for him to wake up to kill him so that he can feel the pain.  She threatens to eat one of her sisters, threatens to slap Madame Delphine, threatens to throw a plate at her head, and lifts up her hand to strike her although she does not follow through.  Madame Delphine seemed to be trying to correct her racist ways and she and Queenie were beginning to get along.  However, after meeting with Maria Lavue, Queenie decides to deliver Madame Delphine to her.  Madame Delphine looks so betrayed as she says, “No. You don’t know this woman.  What she’ll do to me.”  Queenie’s response, “Yes, I do.  That’s the reason I brought you here, you dumb bitch.”  Shortly thereafter, Madame Delphine gives Queenie a knife to cut Madam Delphine.  Yes, she literally cut a bitch.

 

               American Horror Story Coven is a very intriguing show that is not afraid to tackle racism and body image.  The casting of Gabourey Sidibe is undermined by the fact that she comes off as an unsympathetic character mainly because she is given many stereotypes to work off such as being angry, loud, racist, and a fat chick that eats too much.  She stands out literally and figuratively.  The thing to remember is that while her representation is constraining, it is also very enabling for the sheer fact that she is allowed into the space with a bunch of tiny white actresses and her character is given agency by being able to stand on its own without having to be someone’s victim. 

              

 

Williams, Psyche A. Sucking the Bone Dry.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tnwhiskeywoman/scandal-sleepy-hollow-destroy-strong-black-woman-stereotype?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=buzzfeed

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/why-so-many-believe-black_b_3557793.html

 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/rasmussen-poll-says-blacks-are-more-racist-than-whites

 

http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2013/11/the-problem-with-queenie-on-american_1.html

 

http://wildhunt.org/2013/11/american-horror-story-coven-witches-television-and-diversity.html