BUTTERFLY McQUEEN and ME

WHAT BUTTERFLY MCQUEEN’S PRISSY MEANT TO ME

I suppose film actors, the stars of whatever dimension, give us something to project onto, something we long to be. But they may also be for us, up there on the screen, something we find uncomfortable or even unbearable because it is also ourselves. In this way they fascinate us.

Like many others, I was first attracted to Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy in Gone with the Wind because she was someone I could laugh at, someone whose foolishness, vainglory and dizziness was so outrageous that it was hilarious but also someone who touched momentarily the appalling, which gave her interest an unforgettable texture.

Then there was the voice, whining its hysteria and the arms flailing vainly about like useless wings, all the even white teeth and the rolling whites of the eyes. The teeth looked very strong.

Add the names: Prissy played by Butterfly McQueen; Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy.

It was a phenomenon, all too perfectly camp.

And I was a nascent queen.

Up there on the screen, amongst birth, battle and burning was an enactment of my hysteria, my refusal to recognise that I too had the capacity to excite contempt and amusement and appal and betray.

A couple of decades later, during gay lib, I watched Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy again and saw something different, this time I saw the capacity for revenge masqued in a trance of oppression.

Prissy is wandering home having failed to get the doctor to help with the birthing of Melanie’s Wilkes’ baby. She is singing and completely off her face with something. With stupidity, I had thought at my first viewing, now I saw Prissy as off her face with oppression. All unconsciously, entranced, she is taking revenge on those who have enslaved her. She has lied vaingloriously and failed them in order to extract a revenge; she is hysterical with hatred, she will fail them in every way she can and what better cover than what they demand of her – hopeless, useless stupidity. This is what they had forced on her, so let it be. Prissy has grasped her opportunity.

The walk back to Scarlett and the parturient Melanie, in this viewing, seemed to take a long time. I was taken with Prissy’s moment, her being so completely off the air as she sang, winding her way back to the source of her oppression. Why would she hurry? As the doctor later tells Scarlett, there is nothing much to birthing babies. Prissy must have known this. If she had taken a knife and cut its throat, I would, at that point of mine and my country’s history when queens could be locked up for fourteen years for having sex, have understood.

Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy was an objective enough correlative of my own deep unhappiness and masqued rage. Actor and Character gave me an opportunity to look at myself and my situation. And decide on action.

How perfect that McQueen should graduate in Political Studies thirty-five years after filming her great role.

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McQueen is quoted on Google Images as saying

As my ancestors are free from slavery, so I am free from the slavery of religion.


How salutary.

Ian MacNeill