Warning: spoiler alert. Queen and Slim rattled me. Talk about art imitating life, this movie, though not a true story, is a true narrative.
I know I’m late. Queen and Slim came out in 2019. I remember mentioning it in my ‘Farewell 2019′ blog post as a movie I had not seen yet but anticipated to love. So here we are, over two years later and I’m just now viewing it. And it shook me. And I can’t shake it. A week later, I still feel it pulsing through me. What began as an unassuming first (Tinder) date in a diner between a lawyer and a Costco worker on a winter night in Cleveland ended as a nightmare. A gut-punch reminder of how life-altering an interaction with a White police officer can be if he does not feel he has received due deference from a Black person.
Or sometimes there is maybe no time for deference—Tamir Rice. Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old Black boy, was throwing snowballs and playing with a toy gun in a Cleveland Park when a police car rolled up, and within seconds of getting out of the squad car, a White police officer shot and killed him. True story.
And that’s just one of many reference points to Queen’s, “well ya’ll like to shoot first and ask questions later” remark to the officer when they are pulled over for a minor traffic violation, announcing every move just as purposefully as the demoralizing flashlight laying light to their faces.
Queen is cynical and quick-witted. Slim is easy-going and good-hearted. Queen, “…pictures aren’t just about vanity; they’re proof of your existence.” Slim, “My family knows I exist. That’s enough.” Queen, “…Do you really like this place, or is it the only spot you can afford?” Slim, “It’s Black-owned.” Touché. They shoot a police officer in self-defense and now are on the run.
And when the snippet of Marvin Sapp singing “The Best In Me” began to play while they drive from city to city trying to think of what to do next, Brian and I chuckled because how many times have we played this same song while driving? And if not this song, still how many times do we do what Slim did, turn on our gospel music, because it’s the only thing that “calm’s us.”
This film was directed by Melina Matsoukas, written by Lena Waithe, and styled in perfection by Shiona Turini—a brilliant trinity of Black women, which is likely why I saw so much of my humanity so lovingly displayed. The styling was iconic. The obvious is the mixing of zebra and snake prints against Queen’s gorgeously melanated skin as her “fugitive” attire, the swaggish velour jogging suit for Slim’s. I have a pair of snake print boots like those. Unfortunately, mine aren’t from Auora James (aka Black-Canadian founder/designer for Brother Vellies). And crazy enough, I literally just purchased a burgundy velour jogging suit a couple of weeks ago from Beyonce’s new IVY heart (Park) collection.
Did I notice the royal blue Sean Jean velour jogging suit her Uncle Earl was wearing mid-film? The white one and the Black one at the end. Yes. Yes, I did–because shout out to late ’90s, early 2000’s cultural fashion staples.
And as soon as Queen first reappeared, walking down that dimly lit hallway and turned into the bedroom with that au natural haircut after taking out her box braids, talk about stunning. That was a moment.
Brian knows that I’m repeatedly griping about Black people making sure we are in the critical positions that will help ourselves—police officer, judge, doctor, nurse, lawyer, governor…President of these United States. The road to those positions is often faced with unfair obstacles, but I’m so grateful for those who persevere to them. Because later in the film, when the young Black officer (Langston), who had just had a small unsavory exchange with his colleague, lifted the garage on Queen and Slim, took a step back, and quietly nodded his head for them to drive away, I looked at Brian and said, “see.” Not to condone inexcusable things but to empathize with sympathizable things.
While on the run, they find themselves a few hours from Georgia, at a juke joint where Queen and Slim have a “second date.” The bartender assures Slim not to worry because “you’re safe here.” There was something symbolic about them dancing and Black folks dancing around them, giving them glances of recognition and admiration, maybe a salute to the feeling of home–when you’re amongst the joy and rhythm of your community, unbothered for a moment in time.
But after, they meet resistance from a Black mechanic who felt they could have done things differently, giving them no slack in helping them fix the busted getaway car. His character was also essential to show the sprinkle of varying opinions and sometimes slippery support of a community.
And as the camera shot hinted at a White lady standing on her porch, looking on as Queen and Slim pulled up in their turquoise Pontiac to the house of an ally and fellow war veteran of Queen’s Uncle Earl (whom Bokeem Woodbine played brilliantly) I said to myself, well there’s “the Karen” that is going to call the police because the Karens of the world are proven to obsessively commission and preoccupy themselves with disturbing the world of a Black person. And who was it in the end that fired the first shot at Queen?
The film even deliberately weaves in our cultural flaws. A young man (ironically the mechanic’s son) eternalizes their “proof of existence” with a photo that would become their mural. He looks to Queen and Slim as heroes. Still, he is not fully mature enough to comprehend how to navigate the war at hand. He shoots a Black police officer in the face during a protest, and subsequently, he is killed. Brian could have very well looked back at me and said, see. Touché.
And let’s not forget that ultimately Queen and Slim was ‘sold-out’ by a Black brother capitalizing on bounty money. Some would make the point that even this is simply a result of a misfortunate Black mentality–feeling the need to be a sell-out because there’s just no other way to survive or come up in these fixed United States. This was probably foreshadowed early in the film when they first ran out of gas somewhere in Kentucky and had to flag a car down for help. Slim, “I hope they’re Black.” Queen, “That ain’t always a good thing.”
It was well into the film’s second half when I noticed nobody had said either of the characters’ names. I thought this was quite genius. It wasn’t until the film’s very end that we learned their names on the news and on a sign that read, “Justice for Angela Johnson and Ernest Hines.” Queen and Slim were played beautifully by Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith. I read that Matsoukas “wanted Queen and Slim to represent all of us. All of us women are Queens, and Slim is obviously a name that Black men are called quite frequently….”
As I watched the final moments of this movie, I thought about a tense scene in Queen Sugar (Season 5, filmed in 2020 for reference) when Nova, a very soulful Black journalist and activist, asked Calvin her lover (a White police officer) a question about feeling personal shame about the George Floyd tragedy. “Do you feel ashamed about what happened to George Floyd?” And him replying no. And then, she explains how “when horrible things happen, and a Black person is responsible, we feel shame.” Black people tend to hope that someone behind a tragic event isn’t Black because we will be grouped. Nova, “every Black person’s actions are seen as a collective endeavor. Every action besides success, of course.” Her love interest sat there looking at her trying to digest her feelings, and her feelings kept swelling, “… Ya’ll have an imbecile in the White House, and you just shrug it off. If it were Obama, all the Black folks would be hanging our heads.”
I know it isn’t very reasonable to think that one person can speak for an entire race, as Calvin somewhat asserted back to Nova, but we certainly can share some collective resounding sentiments, right? This was one of many moments in Queen Sugar I felt in my core. Because I’ve genuinely often wondered how many of the White people I encounter regularly seem so unaffected by the injustices, tragedies, and politics around us when sometimes it takes every exhausted ounce of energy I have to show up. How do they not even seem to shutter? How do they not even bring it up?
But then again, more than 70 million people voted for Trump. And I’m talking about the second time, not the first. Talk about a collective endeavor. That does leave a person to assume the answers to those questions. That still didn’t stop the question from popping up in my head about Queen and Slim. I watched it and felt everything—anger, sadness, truth, pride. And I felt all of this for days after. When Queen and Slim lay side by side in the bed at her uncle’s house, and Slim said, “I’m just used to saying I’m ok even when I’m not.” I felt that too. When a White person sees a film like this, what do they feel, if anything?
Some may argue that Queen and Slim’s ending was a missed opportunity for a more hopeful or revolutionary conclusion. Maybe it did. But I think of Nina Simone’s words, “it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times.” And those sometimes feelings of hopelessness amongst the Black community are accurate. And speaking of hopelessness, I can’t help but think that Queen was pregnant when she was shot. And that Lena Waithe was trying to show us how legacies are often ended at the hand of excessive police force. I draw this conclusion because of a not too much earlier scene where Slim tells Queen a story about the answers he receives as a young boy from his query on where babies come from. His Grandmother tells him, “…babies come from God. They’re his way of making sure no one really dies.” But Slim dismisses all the tales his family rationalizes with him and simplifies it to babies coming from having sex (and there was that scene between the two of them too).
Queen was cold to religion at the beginning of the film, “I don’t believe in God,” she confessed as they road along in the pickup truck. On the other hand, Slim had a license plate on his white Honda Accord that read, “TRUSTGOD.” When Slim and Queen are hungry, and Slim happens to find money in the glove box of that pickup truck to buy food, he attributes this provision to God and says a popular cultural adage to recognize it, “look at God.” But then, towards the end of the film, when sitting around the table for dinner, Queen requests to be the one to pray for the meal and thanks God for the breath in her lungs, a place to sleep for the night, food to put in her belly, and for the journey, “no matter how it ends”—that was a moment too.
Slim, “I just want someone that’s always going to love me, no matter what. Someone that’s going to hold my hand and never let it go. She’s going to be my legacy. …I ain’t going to bend the world. Long as my lady remembers me fondly, that’s all I need.” It was the “I ain’t going to bend the world” part for me. This is the poetic string of the story because in the end, when they stand in front of a mob of police officers, and Queen, with her hands clasped into Slims, turns her head and asks him, “Can I be your legacy?” I felt my heart sinking.
Art is as art does, so Queen and Slim easily go into the archives of classics for me. Maybe it was the pride I felt watching the swag of Black culture. Maybe it was the accuracy in the womanness of Queen, the sway in her walk, the legendary (Black woman) strength that some call anger, some magic. Maybe it was the unbridled Black joy in those fleeting moments of freedom, squeezing a lifetime of love into six days. Maybe because it just felt so doggone real. And for its maybe unrealistic or problematic cinematic flaws, it had twice as many perfected nuances of humanity on display. Queen and Slim beautifully sang a song of Black life and Black love. So beautifully, I can’t let it go.
