Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

The Woman King: film review

Take a slice of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, together with a large dollop of Black Panther, add to that the stunning physicality of 57-year-old Viola Davis and her young, emotional co-star Thuso Mbedu, and you get a sense of the power, speed, and martial beauty of The Woman King.

With women in the roles of writer, director, producer, and many more behind-the-camera positions, it is an action film like no other, based on a vision that is absent any male or white gaze. There is violence, but not the kind that makes you look away cringing – other than some flashbacks to abuse. There is love, but it is forged in sisterhood and solidarity. And there are massive fight scenes with a cast of multitudes, brilliantly choreographed and impressively executed.

Underlying it all is the story of a struggle against slavers in Africa and their collaborators. I know there is a debate about the veracity of the historical interpretation, but I’m not in any position to judge. What I do know is that this is a glorious, cinematic spectacle.

Nanisca (Viola Davis) leads the King’s guard of muscular, fierce women warriors. He chooses her as his Chief Advisor over his vain, beautiful, over-adorned wife. Other men aren’t even in the running. Through a mixture of discipline, training, and loyalty, her corps seems to become unstoppable, despite the harrowing challenges they face.

The 99% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes hints at how exciting, meaningful, and luscious this film is. I was left breathless and electrified at the end.

The trailer

The Queen’s Funeral and the Lesbian Avengers

I woke up shortly after 5:00am and stumbled to my computer, turning on the TV for the news, as is my wont. And kazam, it’s the Queen’s funeral. I’m afraid I got completely captured and continued to keep it in the background for six hours as I did my morning ablutions and various tasks. I ended up writing a blog about fascinators, of which there were a plethora among the dignitaries in the churches, and other memories from my decade in England.

However, I cannot for one second allow anyone to mistake me for a Monarchist. To the contrary. The splendor of this imposing day sparkled with jewels and gold ravished from colonized countries. Clearly no cost was spared in marking the moment, despite the disintegration of Britain’s economy and especially of its health system. It was truly a Royal affair, that is, a let-them-eat-cake moment, full of quite excessive pomp to shore up a family who INHERIT their roles and their lands and their bank accounts. Some say princes; some say parasites.

This long day was soaked in two British colonial bulwarks: Christianity and military. These have been among the main tools in imperial British rampages and they were on proud display today. And who does military drag better than them? Feathers and gold braiding and dazzling regimental colors and drums and more drums. The choreography was mind-boggling – not a mis-step among the participants despite it being such an excruciatingly complex set of endeavors.

The guys whose specialized task was to carry the coffin around, put it in/out of the hearse, in/out of churches, up/down steps, no less, had their steps impressively coordinated, like a refined martial arts kata or a well-rehearsed line dance. And then the coffin was towed by ropes by 142 members of the Royal Navy in fancy outfits through the streets of central London as it sat on a gun carriage.

And yes, I appear to hold a minority view. So many hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets and the miles-long driveways to the castles, for a glimpse of a coffin on which sits a crown that embodies everything stinky about colonizers. And many people spent the night on the street to hold their places, and no one minded at all.

Things that stood out to me:
1) While the crowd had all the feels, none of the participants – from the King down to the drummers – showed even a drizzle of emotion – no tears, no sobs, no celebration, no amusing anecdotes. For myself, if I might paraphrase the anarchist Emma Goldman, If you can’t dance at the funeral, it must not be mine.
2) I did not see a single person in a wheelchair, not among the thousands with a role in the day or the throngs along the way.
3) The new Prime Minister fit right in with her dry monotone.
4) If it had rained, nothing would have been different.
5) I thought curtseying was no longer in vogue, that neck bowing like the boys was the done thing. Apparently everyone is watching too much historical costume drama.

My favorite part was when they circled the Queen Victoria monument at the end of London’s Mall (not the retail kind). It reminded me of the time we had the first London Lesbian Avengers demo there in September, 1994. You’ll find me right under the E in Lesbian.

The Fascinators and the Rip-Off

As I watch the Queen’s funeral in the background and the women in their particular head-gear, I am reminded of my neighbor in the Holloway neighborhood of London. I was quite new in town and needed to escape a nasty living situation. I was offered a sublet in a converted church on Chillingworth Street. The former church had been painted black in contrast to its white columns, and two stories of flats were built on its top. The main church area was divided into artist studios. My apartment was two rooms on two stories – one up and one down. I lived there alone, except for large chunks of one year when I shared it with my chosen niece Oona who came over as she turned 21 from Vermont.

Down the hall was a brilliant Black gay milliner who designed fascinators and hats, one-of-a-kind confections that were worn by women at formal events, most famously the Royal Ascot, a British racecourse which has high-falutin’ events. My neighbor was a freelancer, struggling for customers, and all the time turning out magnificent hats to order. For a visual of this genre, I have featured some examples of such items that Meghan Markel has worn since her marriage, as she frames them so well.

Before I found this apartment, I had lived on my arrival to London for several months in a moldy, smelly bedsit – that is, a poor person’s version of a studio apartment, a bed, a dresser, and a hot plate. The bathroom was down the hall. It was in the Hackney home of a “friend” and her dreadful partner, a coarse man who persisted in opening the bathroom door whenever I was sitting on the toilet. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. They refused to put a lock on the door, her the pathetic enabler and him the sleaze-ball.

So when someone introduced me to the Canadian woman who wanted to sublet her flat in the Holloway converted church while she returned to Canada, I was hugely relieved. I lived there for a couple of years until my milliner neighbor, who had become my friend, warned me that an inspection was coming. Inspection? Yes, all this time I had been staying in a Housing Association apartment, low-income housing that my “landlady” had managed to qualify for despite her actually being a professional of some wealth. Of course I have seen parasites who have the resources to get themselves benefits intended for people without resources. Governmental institutions often make the process of obtaining these benefits so laborious and convoluted that it is the folks who hire lawyers and experts who score them. Ask any American who has applied for disability benefits.

And to top it all off, my “landlady” was charging me market rent, about twice what she herself was paying to the Housing Association, not only ripping them off, but ripping me off in the process. And now, back to the ornate, dour, and regimented spectacle of the Queen’s funeral, as the procession heads from London to Windsor Castle, where I was once, by the way, a keynote speaker at a European Union conference on volunteerism.