"...the force from somewhere which commands you to write in the first place gives you no other choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."
Zora Neale Hurston



Tuesday, November 12, 2013

All You Can Eat: AHS's Coven and Fat Shame


Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe)

The third installation of American Horror Story: Coven presents itself as a treat of all things allegedly pro-woman. The Coven is a matriarchal space that presupposes that women would wield power in the same ways as men. The witches in the coven ogle men. There are man servants that are seen and not heard. Two teenage witches literally piece together disparate body parts to Frankenstein themselves the perfect man. Everything gets spun on its head. Slave owner becomes slave. The character (played by an actress with Down's Syndrome) is more attractive than the blond bombshell movie star. There is even a female pedophile in episode three. That isn't to say that they don't exist in our world, just that things that we associate with the status quo (most pedophiles are men), get the old switcheroo. Except...
Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) is fat, black, and still lonely. Nothing is spun differently for a characterization that Hollywood in all of its imaginings still casts in the same mold as it has done since the days that Hattie McDaniel played Mammy in Gone With the Wind. While Jamie Brewer's Down's Syndrome doesn't appear to be written into the script as we typically have seen in the few examples of actresses with Down's Syndrome cast in roles (Life Goes On, Glee) Sidibe's race and girth burdens her every line and scene. It isn't enough that we see that she is a black woman of size, but attention is constantly directed to it through her actions and speech. Because her lines are limited to being a reiteration of what we can already see, she is written to be no more than her physicality – the sassy, token (she is the only black in the coven) black woman who overindulges in food because she is so undesirable. Because she is so big. Because she eats all the time. And Coven makes sure to hammer in this particular correlation: she is big because she eats. Nearly every scene involves Queenie eating or talking about food or in close proximity to food. Heaven forbid she have a thyroid problem, or a slow metabolism, or any of the other myriad of reasons for weight retention.
Personally, I think the smart writing would be (if one MUST write her stature into it all, again it wasn't necessary to write in Brewer's disability), to make it a symptom of her witchcraft: Queenie is, after all, a human voodoo doll. As a writer, I could work with that but why do their job for them here? That is out of my scope. To understand why they haven't or won't is to think in this way: as a human voodoo doll who can inflict damage to her body and it result in pain for another would mean that the opposite could be true. Could Queenie not pleasure herself and choose to pleasure others? But this would make her an agent of desire and Coven (at least as far as episode three) cannot conceive of it.
In episode three, Queenie is so lonely that she decides to give her virginity to a man-beast that had been made into a minotaur 200 years prior. That's right, he has the head of a beast (and that is not a euphemism). Dude has hooves. I won't boggle with explanation. It's WITCHCRAFT. But yes, Queenie resorts to begging a being with the head of a wilder-beast (actually a bull, but is that really better?) and the body of (ok, the body of an African deity or at least a well toned pre-emancipated slave) for sex because she is just that undesirable.
Sidibe's career is a perfect example of Hollywood's myopic perception of big, black women not being beautiful and desirable. Sidibe's breakout role was as Precious, the title character in the film adaptation of Sapphire's novel Push. I won't say too much about that here since it was an adaptation, but Sidibe's roles didn't stray far from that with regard to focusing on her size and race as undesirable.
We next see her in the movie Tower Heist. The trailer shows her in a maid's uniform, knocking someone unconscious by pushing a service cart into them and then shoving an ENTIRE cupcake into her mouth (because those two actions beg to go together). She is a master safecracker who has been recruited by Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller's characters to assist in their heist. Yet the majority of her dialogue is aimed at seducing Murphy'scharacter.
Next we move to a starring role in Showtime's The Big C. Sidibe plays a high school senior who's teacher (Laura Linney) takes an interest in helping losing weight, even though Linney's own character has been diagnosed with stage four melanoma and is dying. Even though Linney's Cathy is willing to pay a hefty $100 per pound that Sidibe's Andrea loses, weight isn't really dropping as we witness Andrea walking (as promised) but also slurping down a Big Gulp slushy while doing so. It is presented as as a comedic moment. More thorough analysis here.
Later, when Andrea befriends Cathy's son Adam (also in high school), at some awkward inexplicable moment she claims that he is looking at her breasts and wants to touch them. She then grabs his hands and places them on her breasts. Eventually, because Andrea's parents move to Africa to do missionary work and it's her last year of high school and she wants to stay and graduate, of course Cathy and her family allow her to whatchootalkinboutWillis and move in Different Strokes style. During this time, Andrea is courted by some young European dude who claims to find her and especially her size as desirable. And I bought it, hook line and sinker (will tell you why shortly). Even though Cathy advises Andrea to wait or at least plan some romance before giving up her virginity, Andrea is so thrilled to finally have someone willingly sniffing around that she gets her cherry popped in an uneventful bout of vehicular sex. As written, it was anti-climatic for the viewer and I still believe it to be unintentionally so. Although the narrative falls back on the guy being no good and just trying to get a Visa, it was presented still in the courtship phase where he was doing everything so perfectly. I felt that the writers denied Andrea a romantic first time sexual experience, even if it was under false pretense. It was almost like they were commenting, “Just how romantic does it need to be for a fat black girl? She got flowers and dates. We got a budget.”
I fell for the romance just like Andrea. But that is because I am well accustomed to seeing big beautiful black women as desirable. Growing up steeped in the diverse aspects of African American culture, having extra curves and weight was extremely desirable. I had neither. My adolescence was filled with examples of being passed over for curvier, shapelier, heavier women. Overweight was more desirable than underweight. I think of Gimme A Break with Nell Carter and how many seasons it took for Hollywood to show her as more than a caretaker for a white family, but we had always known. We knew her in 1978's Ain't Misbehavin' on Broadway and Nell was sexy as hell. It took Gimme a Break a while to pair her with Ray Parker, Jr. in New Orleans but it was well worth it as she sings T'Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do.”
I find that beauty comes in different shapes. Hollywood is slow to catch on, but I hope that Gabourey Sidibe's next role allows her to explore being desirable. As for Coven, she offers herself to the minotaur but it's possible he may even refuse her. Sad. I hope at least he takes her to his mistress (Angela <gasp> Bassett as MarieLaveau) in the 'hood (where else?) and she hooks Queenie up with some serious knowledge. It would also be the first time that Queenie has been off the “plantation” alone. [UPDATE: Not only did he refuse her, he gorged her.]
I'm not advocating that weight be ignored on screen. Like race, we understand it to be essential to a character's experiences and identity. But Hollywood seems to think that a black character's race and or size are the only mediums of experience available to them. In Coven, we know that Queenie says that people consider her to be a beast like the minotaur because of her size. We know that she doesn't have a food problem, rather her problem is love...because of her size. She eats to fill a void that is created because of her size. Her every experience, thought, and deed are packaged to us through her weight. We are left to wonder if Queenie can be something...heavier.

*Will update post as I watch. American Horror Story: Coven airs on FX network, Wednesdays.

After note: Sidibe also starred in 2012's Seven Psychopaths which I was not interested in seeing, but by all means share your thoughts if she isn't shoving food in her mouth in a way no one eats or talking about kissing her black ass.