“You should wear your hair down.”
“Your father likes it up.”
Pariah, a film lauded for its representation of the black lesbian community, follows protagonist Alike as she struggles to find an authentic queer identity in a conservative, black, middle-class family. Alike is alienated by her ultra-normative parents and feminine younger sister, yet even the family itself chafes at its own normativity – the desperate attempts of the mother to seduce her own husband, his only constant the beers he swills as he becomes forever more and more absent. They all recognize their individual and collective failures at (hetero)normativity. Frantically, they attempt to retain that normativity, that perfectly organized (colonized?) family unit – the mother buys Alike pink blouses, the father asserts his patriarchal authority and supposed “untouchability”. “Why you asking so many goddamn questions, girl?” He demands of Alike. “What’s wrong with you? You don’t question me.”
“Tell him! Tell him that you’re a nasty-ass dyke!”
To escape the crushing (hetero)normativity of her home life, Alike depends on Laura, her older, butcher, working-class friend. Laura attempts to help Alike navigate queer life, taking her to the lesbian club nearby, lending her clothing and even buying her a strap-on dildo at one point. The club represents a queer “safe space” for queer black women, an opportunity to defy heteropatriarchal impositions. Yet even within this safe queer haven, they are unable to escape the colonizing forces of normativity. The lesbian club Laura and Alike frequent is strictly butch-femme, allowing only for the coupling of an AG (aggressive) like Laura and the submissive femmes she picks up. Alike feels this pressure to adhere to this binary within the queer community, overhearing one feminine-presenting straight girl at school say that she might be attracted to her if “… maybe if she was a little bit harder…” Despite Alike’s valiant attempts at an AG presentation, it seems that she is still not quite masculine enough to be acceptable in this dichotomous world. She hates the strap-on Laura buys her, claiming it chafes, and throws it away. She feels uncomfortable at the club, seemingly uninterested in or unwilling to play the butch-femme game to pick up women. Even Laura, the model AG, appears to recognize the limits of this so-called “freedom”. When talking Alike about her (Alike’s) new love interest, she says in a melancholy tone, “I really am happy for you… Because I love you.” After uttering those words, Laura turns away, taking the acceptably femme partner she had picked up at the club with her, leaving Alike open-mouthed with her femme counterpart. Did Laura desire Alike all along, unwilling to take action because of the forbidden nature of a butch-butch coupling? Regardless of the nature of her desire, one cannot argue that Laura is not one of the most (if not the most, in my mind!) faithful, most loving characters in Alike’s life. She cares for Alike when she leaves home after her mother beats her when she is forced to come out despite the fact that she and her sister are struggling to make ends meet, stroking her arm softly to comfort her in one touching scene. Laura undoubtedly loves Alike – could it be that in another context she would express that love differently?
“I am not broken, I am free.”
After a violent and emotional confrontation with her parents, Alike leaves home, claiming that she is “not running, I’m choosing”. She knows that she can no longer bear the yoke of “acceptable” black womanhood, and that she must, as Thompson suggests, de-colonize her own queer self in order to find true freedom – outside of her oppressive household, outside of the false freedoms of the club. It must be brought to attention that Alike’s wardrobe changes towards the end of the film – something that is not at all insignificant. She is perhaps still more masculine-of-center, but no longer attempts the hyper-masculinity of Laura or other AGs. She wears hoodies and jeans, but she occasionally wears pink, she keeps her earrings in – she is no longer forced to choose between the hyper-femininity of her mother or the extreme AG masculinity of Laura. Alike introduces herself to the outskirts, a truly queer world, where she does not have to fit norms of any origin. Through extreme pain, she is able to graduate early with her perseverance, talent, and intelligence and go into an early college writing program. She forgives her mother, telling her that she loves her, though her mother is not able to repeat those words back to her. Ultimately, on the bus ride to college, despite the incredible loss she has experienced, Alike appears happy. She knows that she is not broken, she is free.