The film’s conflict begins when Diamond’s troublesome younger cousin Ebony (Monica Calhoun) moves in with her just a few weeks before finals and graduation. The quick back and forth switch up is intimidating as both Diamond and viewers know it’s best to not be on Ronnie’s bad side. This sort of pimp/whore dichotomy is alarming, especially as Ronnie was just being gentle with Diamond. She grabs the back of the dancer’s neck violently and questions where her money is. Ronnie then averts her attention to another dancer in the locker room. Ronnie tells Diamond to just pretend she’s dancing in the mirror by herself, however, viewers see Ronnie’s eyes wander lustfully over Diamond’s body. Ronnie’s tone is soothing and comforting. Here, Diamond is led to dance at The Players Club.Īt the club, she helps assuage Diamond’s first night jitters by giving her alcohol and coaching her on how to disassociate. When she lures Diana over to her at the shoe store, instead of stating she needs help with the shoes, she asks “Ain’t you supposed to help me try these on?” Seemingly putting the control in Diamonds’s hands, classic bait and switch. Ronnie wields her power through manipulation. The first few moments viewers have with Ronnie on screen she holds a long intimidating gaze with whatever in her scope: it is an unsuspecting Diamond. In the beginning of the film Diamond narrates how her time at The Players Club taught her that hounds could be male and female. From a modern perspective, Ronnie is the villain because of her queerness. Much of the language surrounding Ronnie’s queerness is pointed. The Players Club ’s villain, Ronnie (Chrystale Wilson) is gay. There wasn’t much exploration into the dynamic between Cleo and girlfriend Ursula, other than lots of physical affection. Years later in 1996, Set It Off featured a groundbreaking performance by Queen Latifah, as Cleo, a gun-toting, ride-or-die stud. In 1989 the sexual relationship between Celie and Suge (Whoopi Goldberg and Margaret Avery) in the 1982 adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was completely watered-down and reduced to an innocent kiss. Prior to The Players Club, the visibility of queer Black women in film was limited-damn near nonexistent. In 2023 it was clear that I was supposed to be more wary of lesbians than men. Having snuck and watched the film more times before I was old enough to fully grasp the nuance concepts, I was shocked to find that the once beloved film with an all-star cast from Bernie Mac, Jamie Foxx, Adele Givens, and Ice Cube didn’t hit the same as an adult. In his 1998 directorial debut, rapper Ice Cube wrote and produced a dramedy following Diana “Diamond” Armstrong (LisaRaye), a teen mother persuaded into stripping in pursuit of fast, easy cash to finance an HBCU education. Well before the mainstream portrayal of the raw underworld of strip clubs in Hustlers, the STARZ series, P-Valley, or the iconic Twitter saga turned film ZOLA there was only one cult-classic that spotlighted stripper culture: The Players Club. This portrayal of the Black femme lesbian ignores the inherent violence within Black masculinity and condemns homosexuality. Her betrayal to the other women is rooted in her proximity to masculinity. With very few representations of queer Black women in film, this early portrayal is damning as Ronnie is solely the villain in the film because of her queerness. Though the character is revered as a sex icon in rap videos and Halloween costumes, for her sexual autonomy and agency, the homophobia surrounding her queerness is often overlooked. I will dissect the problematic portrayal of Ronnie, the Black lesbian femme in The Players Club. Instead of narrating the violence that women face in men-dominated spaces or just how casual rape culture is, the film is engulfed up in Black women’s respectability politics, colorism and desirability, and blatant homophobia when queerness isn’t readily available for cis/heterosexual men’s consumption. As a cishet Black woman, I understand now, that I was supposed to be equally suspicious of queer women as I am straight men. The cautionary tale of Ice Cube’s dark comedy, The Players Club simply doesn’t hold up 23 years later. There is nothing more sobering than rewatching something you once loved in your youth as an adult and feeling drastically different about it. Instead of letting it collect dust on my hard drive, I figured I’d let it live here. I pitched it to a few publications, but to no avail. Authors note : This is a piece I wrote sometime during lockdown.
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