The Problem With Queenie on American Horror Story

To be honest much of the time, I hate watch American Horror Story. From season one, it has been filled with racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism. When I learned that Gabourey Sidibe had been cast, a shiver of dread went down my spine. Though Sidibe is an Oscar nominated actress and is extremely talented, the fact that she is fat, dark skinned Black woman meant little chance of  a well rounded character. While I am not surprised with the hot mess that Queenie has become, I am disgusted. Why bother getting an actress who is so talented and then reduce her character to a cheap stereotype?

American Horror Story: Coven has taken Queenie and run down a positive bingo card of racist and fatphobic stereotypes and portrayals.

She is loud, angry and, yes, sassy - the trifecta of a cookie cutter Sapphire character. Snarky, loud and angry, she just needs some finger snaps and to talk about wig snatching.

Her signature power is being a human voodoo doll - which is problematic on many levels. First of all, the “voodoo doll” is not a major factor of Voudoun, or wasn’t before Hollywood got its hands on the religion and decided to transpose one of the most well known aspects of European witchcraft. The use of a poppet to transfer effects onto a person is an ancient tradition in many branches of European magical beliefs - in Voodoo? Not so much. But it remains the most stereotypical “Black people” magic that television and our general culture know of - Voodoo is Black people magic. Voodoo = Voodoo dolls so of course the Black witch will have a Voodoo Doll power.

It has the added bonus of reducing Queenie to an object and forces her to graphically mutilate herself (even if the wounds disappear) to fight her enemies.

This bodily destruction is especially poignant because Queenie is fat and fat people are coded to hate their bodies - which includes Queenie. While Queenie describes her virginity as her “waiting”, she is clearly lonely, unhappy and looking for companionship and a relationship. Relationships that are considered beyond her, even comically, because of her weight. She even overtly talks about her weight and her eating as being because she is unhappy, lonely and abandoned - that food is a comfort to her. Queenie can’t just be a fat character, she can’t be a happy fat character - she has to be miserable in her fatness, her eating is portrayed almost as a form of self-harm and rarely does an episode go by without one character commenting on her weight in a mocking and derogatory fashion.

Lost Girl Season One, Episode Two: Where There's a Will, There's a Fae

In this episode, Bo is approached by Will a wood sprite, after his jewels are stolen.  He promises to tell her about seeing her as a babe in the woods if she will retrieve his treasures. It seems that wood sprites spend their time tracking precious jewels in the forest, that is when they are not busy setting things on fire.  Kenzi tries to negotiate for a percentage of the returned jewels but Bo stops her because she believes that the information is far more valuable than any sort of monetary gain.  Bo leaves her with a backpack and tells that is all he knows about the thief.

Upon opening the backpack, she finds a gun and of course takes it right to Dyson to have him do a search on the weapon because his cover is a cop in the human world.  I don't know about you but I am not really buying Dyson as a cop, perhaps that's because his acting leaves so much to be desired.The writers seem intent on creating some kind of relationship between Dyson and Bo, but for me they have long way to go before the reach anything resembling chemistry.

While they are waiting for the trace to finish on the gun Dyson takes her to the fae bar The Dahl which doubles as a way station.  Inside the bar is considered neutral territory, and it is run by what appears to be elf named Trig. When Bo is asked to sign in and reveal her parentage she names her adoptive parents.  Trig tells her that if she does not know her fae parents that she has to sign in as herself.  He tells her that to have powers, both her mother and her father had to be fae but when she tries to press him for more information, he tells her that asking to many questions can be dangerous -- you see -- the fae have been at the brink of war for nearly one thousand years.  If the war actually did start, this would mean not only the end of all of the fae, but the end of humanity as well.

Dyson gets a call revealing a trace to the owner of the weapon.  When Bo and Kenzi arrive at the address, the door is triggered to cause a shot gun to let lost a round.  Bo pushes Kenzi out the way but still manages to get shot herself.  When a neighbour shows up armed attempting to find out what two women are doing in her neighbour's trailer, Bo kisses her even as she is protesting that she has never kissed a woman before.  So far all of the same sex scenes have occurred as an act of feeding for Bo and are starting to have a very predatory feel to them however, I know that for Bo -- sex cannot occur without a transfer of energy and it is balanced to show that women are equally attracted to her. Kenzi has to break up the feeding to save the woman's life, and Bo thanks her for the "cock block".  I really wish that the authors had chosen another word because it implies a male/female binary to Bo feeding off the trailer park woman.