PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

L.H. Stallings

“I’m not a dyke… that’s what Cleo is”

-- Queen Latifah (on her role in Set It Off)

Hip-Hop may be homophobic, but currently it is one of the few aesthetic spaces where performers can broach issues of sexuality in Black film. To date, Nia Long and Queen Latifah are the only notable Black actresses to portray Black lesbian or bisexual females in mainstream movies. Long’s performances happened in predominantly white venues, If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) and The Broken Hearts Club (2000), and they were done after Latifah’s “controversial” role in Set It Off. Directed by F. Gary Gray, Set It Off was released to mass audiences in 1996. Written by two little known females, Takesha Bufford and Kate Laniee, it looks at what happens when four females in a Los Angeles housing project are pushed to financial and emotional breaking points. Jada Pinkett (as Stony), Vivaca Fox (as Frankie), Kimbery Elise (as Tete), and Queen Latifah (as Cleo) form a gang of female bank robbers and soon find themselves embroiled in a larger version of the crime and violence that most strove to avoid in their daily lives. To date, Set It Off remains one of the few mainstream black films to depict a lesbian character, and one of the only films to offer a distinct class-based representation. Despite the lack of attention, Set It Off smacks of homosocial action and, yes, homosexual acceptance. Buford and Laniee’s creation of the lesbian, Cleo, is a confirmation of various figures that exist in Black culture. The film clearly recognizes that in lower-class African American communities there exist various divisions and distinctions within that class. Just the mention of the film Set It Off sparks a variety of retorts. The responses range from wild enthusiasm for the film’s effort at dramatizing Black lower-class female life to a dismal shaking of the head in response to its stereotypical depiction of lesbians and poor Blacks.

Arguably, the most visceral reaction from Black males and females has to do with Queen Latifah’s performance as the thugged-out lesbian, Cleo. Viewers were not simply reacting to the character of Cleo, they were also reacting to the person performing Cleo. Fans of Latifah wanted to know if she herself was a lesbian or bisexual. Yet when Queen Latifah vehemently asserts the difference between herself and Cleo, she engages in a discussion about separating herself from the roles she plays. Latifah’s response speaks volumes about tricksterism, performance, and fluidity of character. Her performance as Cleo serves as a major role in the whole canon of Latifah’s work, and it demonstrates the evolution of trickster figures in Hip-Hop culture. Trickster figures possess the ability to transform, change, or alter their society and culture. In some sense, the entire canon of her work serves as a collection of trickery on and deception of traditional discourse on same-sex desire by African American cultural aesthetics.

Throughout her performative career, Dana Owens has managed to be all three facets of the Queen B(?) figure so consistently present in Black popular culture. Queen B(?) is a trickster figure found in Black female culture. Major characteristics of the figure include independence and autonomy. The three intersecting facets of the figure are the Queen B(ee), Queen B(ulldagger), and the Queen B(itch). Each persona’s individual sexuality creates distinctions amongst the figures. Queen B(ee) can be perceived as strictly heterosexual, Queen B(ulldagger) as homosexual, and Queen B(itch) as undefineable or polysexual.[1] Despite Latifah's now typical comments about her Set It Off role, the success of Dana Ownes hinges on her ability to establish Queen Latifah as a Queen B(?) figure of transgressive sexuality. A Queen B (?) by virtue of her independent nature assumes an unfixed sexuality; whether she decides to accept that undefineability is another matter. Notions of whether the figure is “gay” or “straight” do not matter because inevitably her subject position renders those definitions problematic or obsolete. Interestingly enough, it is Dana Owens’s performative name and facade, Queen Latifah, that allows her to utilize all three facets of the Queen B(?) figure, which in return results in a successful performance career.

In “How She Came By Her Name,” Toni Cade Bambara explains her own name change by reminding readers that the process of naming figures greatly into the performance of self, the acknowledgement of self, and the continuous changing and evolving of self. Arguably, no one in hip-hop culture personifies the Queen B(?) figure more than Dana Owens who (un)names herself as Queen Latifah. In “Hail to The Queen,” an article that positively lists and endorses the various moves of Latifah’s career, Edmonton Sun writer Neal Watson lavishes great praise on decisions made by the star. Watson’s only negative comments focuses on Latifah’s name: “Step 3A: Lose the rap handle, use your given name in the credits and the liner notes and appear in blockbusters that gross nine figures and earn you first crack at the top scripts in Hollywood. OK, maybe the Queen is going to need a bit more remedial study.” Watson assumes that the marker “Queen Latifah” is a rap handle, and that its use does not extend beyond the boundaries of Hip-Hop culture. His comment further suggests that (un)naming Queen Latifah back to Dana Owens is necessary in order to be taken seriously and have a shot at better, more lucrative roles and films. Watson compares her to another rap star who successfully crossed over to film: “Maybe Step 3A of the Will Smith program is within reach, after all. Coming soon to a theatre near you, Men and Women in Black starring Will Smith and Dana Owens?” We can only speculate as to why the Fresh Prince didn’t quite make it to the movie credits in the same way that Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J, or Ice-T did. Nevertheless, Owens’s decision to keep Laitifah says volumes about her trickster tactics. Written before Latifah’s Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination for her role in Chicago (2003) and her stint as executive producer of the financially successful, critically and politically panned Bringin’ Down the House (2003), Watson shows no real understanding of why Latifah continues to use the name before and after crossing over. Queen Latifah is more than a “rap handle,” it is a tool that Dana Owens manipulates and uses at her own will. It’s a personae of fluidity that fans and media have tried to pigeon-hole, but like any trickster, in this case the Queen B(?) figure, moves messily outside boundaries.

Throughout her career, Dana Owens’s performance/persona as Queen Latifah has allowed her to manipulate that undefineability of sexuality into a marketable and lucrative commodity, and in the process she militantly asserted her right to have control over her image and identity. As a Queen B(?), Owens utilized a Queen B(ulldagger) and Queen B(itch) philosophy to achieve great success in various fields. Thus far, her one name change from Dana to Queen Latifah has not limited the shape-shifting and changing person. Rather than a literal unnaming, Latifah has allowed her performances in music and film to continue the tricksterisms began by a young Queen B(ee). In doing so, Owens has managed to consistently elude those who would seek to define, label, or limit her based on race, gender, and sexuality.

As a rapper, Latifah begins her career influenced by cultural nationalism, politically engaged and aesthetically defined by Black nationalism and Afrocentricity. As she chose to participate in a genre viewed as typically male, Latifah’s sexuality, or lack thereof, serves as a major factor in how she was received. In lieu of donning b-girl attire, she wore Afrocentric garb and jewelry. At the age of 19, Tommy Boy released her first album All Hail the Queen (1989). Initially, the persona of Queen Latifah connects to images of Mother Africa. Ideologically, Mother Africa exists as a continent and land, feminized as the original birth place for U.S. blacks. Latifah then becomes the perfect personification of an idea. As a female she can exploit the way cultural nationalists hold sacred Mother Africa, and shed images previous female MCs have had to endure—b-girl, gangsta, etc. In doing so, she becomes asexual. Both her allusions to Mother Africa and her title “queen” imply the various ways in which powerful females have been denied the agency of sexuality for the good of a family or nation. As Latifah-the-rapper, Owens takes on only one facet of Queen B(?). Instead of being Queen B(?), Latifah-the-rapper begins as Queen B(ee).

The second single from the first album, “Ladies First,” solidified the place of Latifah in the growing Hip-Hop revolution. With lyrics such as “those who don’t know how to be pros get evicted/A woman can bear you, break you, take you,” feminist empowerment for a new generation found a proud and regal voice. As Queen B(ee), her identity and cultural production is strictly based on reproduction for survival, as opposed to sexual desires. Rather than a total annihilation of the male, this Queen B(ee) employs strategically continued use of the male, rather than benefit from a one-time contribution and eventual murder of the male. Even Latifah’s video ingratiated her into the hearts of many. As Tricia Rose noted, black nationalism greatly influenced the womanist visual:

Without attacking Black men, “Ladies First” is a wonderful rewriting of the contributions of Black women into the history of black struggles. Opening with slides of Black female political activists Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, and Winnie Mandela, the video’s predominant theme features Latifah as Third World military strategist. (246).

As a rapper in a genre dominated by males, Latifah walks the same fine line as those women in her video. As strong and independent females, Truth, Davis, and Mandela all made contributions to the Black freedom struggle often depicted as a male struggle. Dana Owens knowingly places Latifah in that tradition; and in doing so, she sets herself up as a Queen B(ee) figure who must endure harsh criticism, praise and questions that come with it. At some point in history, Davis, Mandela, and Truth elicited responses that heralded them as masculine or emasculators, domineering, and alone; still, each woman intelligently countered such criticism by invoking or making connections to a greater movement, as well as the men in those movements. Latifah also employs the voice of Malcolm X throughout her video to reaffirm the importance of black females in Black liberation movements. The song and her image manage to be hard, militant, and politically empowering without alluding to any connotations of sexuality. The homosocial image of women revolutionaries planning and living together remains safe as long as there exists a male member present. While Rose accepts the usage of Malcolm X’s voice and image as a point of shared historical legacy, that voice and image also maintains the legitimacy and status of heterosexuality in what could easily be read as a pro-woman and, yes, lesbian nation. A female nation founded and sustained by the ideals of a heroic man stabilizes the sexuality of the struggling female nation being portrayed, while at the same time posing little threat to trickster’s autonomous nature since that voice and image are from the past.

Since the early image of Queen Latifah hinders traditional heterosexual objectification, one small change from this role destabilizes the façade of asexuality and moves it into the realm of the unknown. Owen’s charisma as Latifah led to minor movie roles, in which she played characters exactly like her rap persona. Before Set It Off, Dana Owen’s Queen Latifah persona was in danger of being typecast in roles far from Queen B(?) status. In 1991, Spike Lee cast Latifah in her first movie in his classic Jungle Fever. She also had another small part in the 1992 release Juice. In both roles, Latifah was quickly becoming a caricature of the Queen B(itch)—a male-defined, scorned, ball-busting, loud-mouth Black woman—and comic-relief Sista. With each role, the independence and self-sufficiency of Latifah were reduced to markers of angry, lonely, and victimized females to be pitied or laughed at in comparison to the female lead roles. In these movies, the philosophies of “Ladies First” were lost in films dedicated to valuing men first and foremost. Latifah understood this more than anyone else. She once stated in her VH-1 Behind the Music profile: "I didn’t want to be typecast in those screamin, shouting roles." In an attempt to avoid the type, she accepted the role of a hospice nurse to Michael Keaton in the movie My Life (1993). Yet, that role itself still fit the mammy-caregiver role so easily given to women of color, especially full-figured females like Owens. In each role, Owens remained a strong, but sexless female serving the needs or purposes of others. Even Owen’s starring TV role as Kadijah James on FOX’s Living Single (1993-1997) failed to truly capitalize on the Queen B(?) potential of Queen Latifah. While the role as a successful, loving, and sexually aware Kadijah created greater visibility, Owens seemed to be stuck in the rut again of playing Queen Latifah. Kadijah James, owner of Flava magazine was extremely similar to Queen Latifah, the rap-media mogul. Still, Mother Africa was sacred, and the black community revered Queen Latifah as positive force.

Latifah’s second album Nature of a Sista (1991) won her more acclaim but was not a financial success. With the release of her third album, Black Reign (1993), the Afrocentric garb and the connection to Mother Africa were replaced by the now well-known darkness brought by the death of her brother. Without the image of Mother Africa, Queen Latifah shape-shifted herself from an asexual to sexual being. Although she replaced the regal dress and headwear with jean jumpers, loose hair, and motorcycles, she maintained a pro-Black female stance in a song that surpassed the impact of “Ladies First. With “U.N.I.T.Y.” Latifah verbally smacked down gangsta rap’s negated use of “bitch” with a signature line still echoed today: “Who you calling a bitch?” Unlike All Hail the Queen and Nature of A Sista, there was nothing to stop the insistent questions that surround the sexuality of such females. Black Reign dissed some black men, and the entire album had an anger that was unseen in the first two albums. Hence, the double-entendres as to what Queen Latifah really means when she says “Ladies First.” Queen Latifah’s image vacillates between asexual and homosexual. Dana Owens’s initial performance as Queen Latifah gained her much success and led her from music into TV and film. However, it was a militant voice on sexuality that led to roles which left behind the chaste and asexual Mother Africa, allowing her to be a “legitimate” actress who takes on roles such as Khadijah James on Living Single and her critically-acclaimed role as Cleo in Set It Off.

Returning now to Set It Off, despite the negative reaction Latifah receives for taking on all aspects of the role, it is her legitimacy as a rapper and business person in Hip-Hop that leads to the success of the movie and her role in the movie. Owens takes the role of Cleo knowing that Latifah has long been rumored to be a lesbian. Why? As a Queen B(?) figure, the Latifah persona must maintain liminality. To retain control over her image and identity, she must exploit the undefineability of her sexuality for her own purposes. In order to do so, she must preserve her cultural connection to the Black community while also moving away from the asexual African Queen/Mother that began her early career. If she doesn’t, she limits her options to minor roles such as those previously mentioned. Taking on the role of Cleo allows Queen Latifah and the filmmakers to draw on her fan-base, as well as all those who know and question the star’s sexuality. Unlike Queen Latifah, Cleo conflates the female thug-gangsta image of hip-hop in a lesser way than, say, the first phase of Da Brat’s career, where Brat presents an image of a girl-thug with no sexuality or questionable sexuality. Unlike this first phase Da Brat, then, Cleo comes with sexuality, homosexuality at that. As a full-figured woman, Latifah should have traditionally been assigned the role of asexual mammy; as Mother Africa she should have stayed asexual; and in true Spenser (sp./?) fashion, the title of Queen leans toward ethereal influence, rather than sexual. With these elements at work, the only thing that truly allows the Latifah persona to be seen as sexual is the role of Cleo. Despite initially refusing the role and trying to change it, Latifah does accept the part saying, “I thought it was a little too harsh, a little too rough for me to play" (Kirkland, “Queen Latifah Rules”). While Buford and Lainee might have rewritten the script to woo Latifah into taking the role, it becomes clear from critical acclaim that Latifah still managed to keep the character rough and on the edge. Still, Latifah’s take on the role is far from an appreciation of her character’s sexuality, and at times reeks of homophobia: “Hey, that's the role. I'm an actor. I didn't really have a choice in defining the character's sexuality. I didn't write the script, I'm not the director of this movie, I'm not the producer, I'm an actor hired to perform. I'm hired to make Cleo a real person in your minds…Cleo is gay and I can't change her because of people's mindsets in America. It would be a lot easier on me if I could [“It's not like no one tried,” she candidly admits later] because I wouldn't have to deal with questions like this and any controversy that may come” (Kirkland, “Queen Latifah Rules”). Although Latifah did attempt to get filmmakers to revise Cleo’s overt sexuality in the movie, there is no doubt that she recognized the importance of taking the role: “I can't show you the talent that I have and the skills that I have by playing Queen Latifah all over again 80 times in another movie. Khadijah (in Living Single) is part of me, so that's not really showing you I can do this. I wanted to do something completely different." With Latifah revised to include sexuality, Dana Owens as a Queen B(?) profits and keeps on moving.

From there, the trickster Latifah enjoys a broader range of opportunities that won’t limit her to one role. She takes the range and runs with it. Latifah’s next role in Living Out Loud (1998) exploits the sexual range she’s gained as a performer. Its story that too often has Latifah’s jazz singer character, Liz Bailey, serving as an emotional outlet for the repressed white woman, Judith, played by Holly Hunter. Despite the dynamics of the caretaker friendship portrayed between Judith and Liz, Latifah embodies the very Queen B figures that came before her. On being cast as Liz, Latifah asserts: "I sent them an audition tape of me trying to do Bessie Smith," says Latifah. "I wanted to show them I could hold a note" (Thompson, “All Hail Queen Latifah”). Notably, Smith serves as a major Queen B(ulldagger) figure from the classic Blues era. Consistently drawing on what she has assessed to be a major feature of her Latifah persona, Owens conjures up Smith to revamp the asexual rapper Latifah once again. The sultry Liz Bailey covered in red silk with near-bare breast is a far cry from Latifah and Cleo. Regarding her sexuality and character in the movie, Latifah’s response does not seem as serious and as careful as her response to playing Cleo: “Did you see my breasts? Weren't they up there? Did I get up for this part, or what?" (Thompson, “All Hail Queen Latifah”). Latifah’s enthusiastic praise of her breasts demonstrates an appreciation of seeing herself as a sexual being on screen. Although being thought of as sexual never seems to be a problem for Black females in general, we need to remember the historical divisions of Black female corporeal use. As a robust and full-figured woman, sexuality is not a part of her designated use by Western culture or the recent Black nation. In Living Out Loud, Liz Bailey is not specifically defined as homosexual, but her sexual range seems to be as broad as her musical range. In scene after scene, we watch as Liz becomes the uninhibited “darkie” for Judith. She sings jazz, she’s sexy, she’s strong and she loves gay men: ``I've always had this thing for beautiful, sensitive men.'' Right after saying that, the two women visit a lesbian nightclub to unwind. In that particular film, nothing is set and defined. In ways that she never formally did with Cleo, Latifah celebrates the role in her comments. It allows her the fluidity that she’d been searching for. Where many critics admonished Latifah’s commentary about playing Cleo as homophobic, as they very well may have been, perhaps those comments were less about homophobia and more about a predilection towards less fixed identities.

In addition, Latifah’s Oscar nominated performance as Mama Morton in Chicago, serves as an in-progress culmination of her many endeavors. In this role, Owens relied on all three intersecting tropes of the Queen B(?). As Queen B(ee), Queen B(itch), and Queen B(ulldagger), Owens harnesses Latifah’s Afrocentric Mother Africa attributes from her early career to dismiss the mammy implications of the Mama Morton character. The image of Morton as the big-breasted mammy figure, living to cater to white women convicted of murderous crimes, is undermined by the character’s greed, most notably as Owens reverts to her previous depictions as Queen Latifah. When we first encounter Mama Morton on the screen, she regally struts in to take the new prisoners to their wards: “You might think I’m here to make your life a living hell…but I’d like to be your friend if you’d let me. So if there’s something that upsets you, makes you unhappy…. Don’t shoot your fat ass mouth off at me cause I don’t give a shit.” Owen’s depiction of Mama Morton draws from both the militancy and maternal nurturing performance of “Ladies First” Latifah, as well as the hardness exhibited in the Cleo character. Further, Latifah’s versatility also emphasizes the sexual fluidity of the Mama Matron character. In the prison scenes, Mama Morton delivers a number of sapphic undertones without ignoring her need for monetary reciprocity. She caresses a lock of hair away from Roxie as she comments on how attractive she is, she liberally touches the female prisoners, and Velma is seen providing a massage to Mama. The lesbian innuendos of the all female prison are there. However, in the cabaret fantasy scenes, in which Owens showcases her vocal skills with her performance of the double-entendre “When You’re Good to Mama,” Owens replaces Latifah with a performance that conjures up the likes of Bessie Smith. The Mama Morton who vaguely exhibited some of Cleo’s hardness is forgotten and replaced with an entirely new character. She is glamorous in the fantasy scenes and plays up her sexuality to both men and women in the audience. While Mama Morton remained a minor character, Latifah was able to successfully create two distinctly separate personas largely because she has been performing the Queen B(?) role all throughout her career.

The trickery of Dana Owens consistently showcases the ways in which black females present and revise their sexual identities due to racialized sexuality. Latifah’s persona as a rapper, while womanishly inclined, adheres to the nuclear family of the nation. Yet, her most important acting roles reflect pro-homosexual, anti-homophobic, and anti-closeted lesbian politics and suggest how much more powerful the liminal Queen B(?) figure can be. With this trickery, we are able to challenge not only homosexual identities but heterosexual identities of Blacks as well.

Bibliography

Bogus, Diane. “The ‘Queen B’ Figure in Black Literature.” Lesbian Texts and Contexts. Ed. Karla Jay. New York: New York University Press, 1992.

Jones, Gayl. Eva’s Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.

Kirkland, Bruce. "Queen Latifah Rules." Toronto Sun. November 3, 1996:
http://www.torontosun.com/JamMusicArtistsL/latifah.html

Queen Latifah. All Hail the Queen. Tommy Boy, 1989.

-------------. Nature of a Sista. Tommy Boy, 1991.

-------------. Black Reign. Motown, 1993.

Thompson, Bob. "All Hail the Queen." Toronto Sun. November 4, 1998:
http://www.torontosun.com/JamMusicArtistsL/latifah.html

Watson, Neal. "Hail to the Queen." Edmonton Sun. November 5, 1998:
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicArtistsL/latifah.html.

References

[1] See Gayl Jones’s Eva’s Man (1987), Kasi Lemmons Eve’s Bayou (1997), and myriad Black folktales for a discussion of the Queen B(ee); and Sdiane Bogus’s “The ‘Queen B’ Figure in Black Literature” (1992) for a dissection of Blues women and Black female literary characters as Queen B(ulldagger). The most recent Queen B(itch) characterization can be seen in the work of Lil. Kim.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 3, 2004