The film Queen and Slim comes during a period where police murders of African (black) people are rampant and many of us are coming to understand the oppressive relationship that we have with the police.
Celebrated for being written and directed by black women, Lena Waithe and Melina Matsoukas respectively, the story revolves around an African man and woman who end up killing a cop in Cleveland, Ohio after a Tinder first date.
Slim, played by Daniel Kaluuya, shoots the cop in response to the police officer shooting Queen, played by Jodie Turner-Smith, in the leg. Instead of facing the legal system, the duo decide to flee by car to New Orleans where Queen hopes her uncle will be able to help them.
A missed message
When asked about the message that she wanted to convey with Queen and Slim Waithe responded, “We deserve to live not only freely, but victoriously.”
But the film’s storyline, plot, character development and ending all revealed limitations in Waithe’s vision of victory for an oppressed people.
Queen & Slim had the potential to paint an inspiring message to its African audience during a time where our community is faced with daily instances of police brutality. The film, instead, turned out to be an attack on the black working class carried along by rich and compelling cinematography and concluded in black trauma pornography.
Opposites
During the opening scene of the film, Queen and Slim are on their first date at a diner. Slim is easy going and compassionate, but Queen comes off as a judgemental and cold.
She’s a defense lawyer who finally responded to a Tinder message that the Costco worker sent her because she didn’t want to be alone after losing a case in which her client will now be executed.
They are polar opposites with no chemistry and the date ends with Slim driving Queen home.
While driving Queen home from their lack luster date, she takes his phone to put in the directions. Slim reaches across to retrieve his phone from her, and while doing so he swerves the car and is swiftly met with the flashing lights of a police vehicle.
Queen: The lawyer
A flaw in the film comes with Queen’s character being written as a lawyer. Queen repeatedly makes poor legal decisions which eventually lead to their demise. The police incident could have been avoided if Queen’s actions reflected that of a knowledgeable lawyer instead of a civilian who knew nothing about the law.
During the traffic stop, Queen fails to make the cop aware that she knows their rights. She then antagonizes the cop — she honks the horn while Slim is outside the car getting his trunk searched. But above all, she also fails to carry out what every civilian would: record the police interaction from the beginning!
It wasn’t until midway through the traffic stop when the cop has ordered Slim out of the vehicle and points a gun at him while he’s on his knees with his hand behind his head that the lawyer exits the vehicle and finally decides to film the incident. At this point the pig shoots her in the leg. Slim acts in defense, tackles the cop, manages to take the gun from the pig, and kills him.
Shaken, Slim wants to alert the authorities, but allows his tinder date who he’s known for only a couple hours to persuade him to flee. It’s baffling that a defense lawyer would advise someone not to defend himself in court in such a case that is clearly self defense, especially if a campaign is made around the case being that a prominent lawyer was shot by the police.
Queen could have alerted the media and rallied the African community of Ohio — who have cases of police brutality like that of Tamir Rice fresh in their minds — around this incident in Slim’s defense.
Later in the film we learn that the cop that Slim killed had murdered a black man. This would have made for an even stronger self defense case. Instead, Queen decides that they should flee to her uncle Earl’s whore house in New Orleans. In this situation, running meant certain death or evidence of further culpability to ensure lengthy imprisonment.
Along the way, we are taken through a journey of questionable decisions — including the kidnapping of a sheriff, grand theft auto, and robbery of a gas station.
The duo arrive at Queen’s uncle’s house where Slim comes up with the idea to flee by plane to Cuba.
It’s at this point where we see the first betrayal of the couple by a member of the black working class when one of the uncle’s prostitutes calls her cop boyfriend to the house because the uncle slapped her over a missing ring even though they are hiding fugitives.
Legacy
The duo embark on the second half of their journey to a getaway plane in Florida. But along the way their car breaks down and the duo end up at a car shop. The African mechanic recognizes the couple but isn’t in support of what they’ve done and decided to overcharge them to fix the car, hampering their journey.
His teenage son, however, is enamored with Queen and Slim enough to retaliate against the police at a protest. The teen shoots an African cop in riot gear who simply asked him to leave a protest and when the kid refused the cop begged him further to just go home but the teen shoots him at point blank range, killing him.
It’s doubtful that a child can have that kind of stance when there are leaders whose answer to police killing black people is more black police officers.
The signficance of this scene as it is juxtaposed with Queen and Slim’s sex scene is to illustrate that even in their europhoric consumation of their “legacy” together their actions have created a harmful “legacy” on youth who may be too young to understand the reality of police oppression.
Black Trauma Pornography
The film concludes with a scene that can’t be described as anything less than black trauma porn. The couple arrives at their rendezvous point at night only to find an empty strip of land they eventually fall asleep. In the morning, Slim is awakened by a shotgun pointed at him by a stereotypical African man from Florida replete with natty cornrows and gold teeth. After a brief questioning of his worthiness to help in their endeavor, they are convinced he will get them to the getaway plane.
The audience is at the edge of our seats, hopeful that Queen and Slim will make it to freedom after all. But this is shattered when a police caravan appear in the distance. Halted a mere few feet from the plane, our couple stands off with about a dozen armed police as they are ordered to get on the ground.
The couple hold hands and profess their union as Queen asks Slim to be his “legacy.” Queen is then shot in the chest by a white female cop and falls to the ground. Slim picks up her lifeless body and slowly walks towards the police when he is riddled with bullets. Their lifeless bodies collapse.
We have seen our people murdered countless times by the police. We’ve also seen these murders replayed over and over with colonial media even making gifs of dying African bodies. Not to mention the myriad of slave movies we’re bombarded with that depict black pain as some kind of fetish which is generally enjoyed by white people.
All these thoughts came rushing to my mind when I saw dozens of bullets exit Slim and Queen’s body on screen.
It was almost infuriating that the film took us on this pointless 2hr and 12 min journey only to give us yet another cruel, demoralizing depiction of black people being murdered by the police.
The film’s message places an attack on the African working class
During the ending of the film, the audience finds out that the man who led Queen and Slim to the plane actually snitched on them to collect the $500K bounty.
This final petty bourgeois message which states that we never know who to trust places an attack on the black poor and working class by telling us that our own people will sell us out while others help us.
“Others” like the white army veteran and his unsavory wife who hid the couple from the police. As well as the black police officer who lets them escape out of the army veteran’s garage which sends a dangerous message that the police can be our friend since a disgruntled black pig was nice enough to let them go.
But the police are never our friends. All cops are tools of the colonial government who are put in place to protect the political and economic interests of the white ruling class at the expense of black people.
This “we can never know who to trust” message is a lie because we know that the police can never be trusted.
There is a contradiction in the background of this film that Queen and Slim have this support from the black working class but each working class character who comes to forefront betrays them in one form or another while the bourgeoisie and their representatives push forward their journey.
The uncle starts a fuss with his prostitute over a pinky ring, the prostitute calling the police to the house, the mechanic fixes the car but takes all their money, and ultimately the man who betrays them in the end.
These contradictions with the messages of the storyline are obscured with rich cinematography filled with prestene images that depict the beauty of African life in the South. The film was so well shot that one could easily ignore that we were being assaulted by this petty bourgeois storyline.
Black films should reflect a vision of resistance for our future
It’s important that we create a vision for the future of Africa and have that vision reflected in the stories we tell. The tragic ending of the film show that the film’s creators lack a vision for our future as African people outside of being victims of white power.
Let’s ask ourselves, do we see our people as victims of the State or do we see ourselves achieving true liberation and real black power? And if our answer is the latter, then why not create films that depict that vision?
