Queen Latifah, Unruly Women, And the Bodies of Romantic Comedy (Critical Essay‪)‬

Bodies, stardom, narratives [1] The questions that compel this essay concern the relationship between bodies and narratives: the narratives available to certain bodies and the disruptive impact of those bodies on narratives. My focus is the embodiment of the spunky heroine of the romantic comedy film--the feisty screwball leading lady whose excessive speech, aspirations, and energy have endeared her to generations of cinema lovers and to feminist film theory as well, which has celebrated her as woman-on-top and fast-talking dame. Earlier versions of this film character were played by the likes of Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, and Katherine Hepburn, the later versions by Meg Ryan, Julie Roberts, Drew Barrymore, and Jennifer Aniston. As this list suggests, the excessiveness of this heroine is proscribed by the cultural ideals of white femininity, which in turn is pictured through very select bodies. While feminist film scholarship has long acknowledged the power of the unruly woman in comedy, this scholarship has glossed over the ways in which race in particular enables the unruliness of this character and intersects with class ideals in the picturing of this heroine. Using the star persona of Queen Latifah as a case study, this essay centers on how the romantic comedy narrative handles the sexuality of the unruly woman who is black, or conversely, the narratives available for racial unruliness when it is female.