49 pages • 1 hour read
George C. WolfeThe Colored Museum
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sketch 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Sketch 5 Summary: “The Gospel According to Miss Roj”
Electronic music opens the scene as a neon sign reading “The Bottomless Pit” clicks on, revealing a lone barstool onstage. From a blast of smoke and haze, Miss Roj appears, dressed in extravagant drag attire. As a waiter arrives with her drink, Miss Roj describes The Bottomless Pit, a predominantly Black and Latino gay bar with a special clientele of Snap Queens, of which she is one. According to Miss Roj, Snap Queens come from a different galaxy and have extraterrestrial powers. Miss Roj asserts she is not “your regular oppressed American Negro” (14). The waiter re-enters. Miss Roj tells him to make her drink stronger next time.
When the waiter exits, Miss Roj proclaims that she has been sent to Earth to study the deterioration of New York as the city does a “slow dance with death” (15). She interrupts herself to ask the audience what they think of her fabulous clothes. Noticing that she is getting drunk, she says she hopes that she can dance her demons out rather than drink them out. She then describes an incident in which she locked her father in a broom closet for three days because he drunkenly began using a gay slur towards her. She snaps at the end of the story. The waiter returns to give Miss Roj another drink; she downs it immediately and orders another.
She tells the audience she can “snap their ass into oblivion” (16). She says she has a special power: Every time she snaps, she steals a heartbeat. Miss Roj then gets the audience to begin snapping along with her as she describes an incident at Jones Beach, where a macho body builder insulted her drag clothing and uttered a gay slur. Miss Roj says that she snapped her fingers multiple times, causing the man to immediately have a heart attack.
The waiter arrives and gives her another drink, which she also downs quickly. Miss Roj is now clearly drunk. She says the only reason she frequents The Bottomless Pit is to communicate with her origins: “The flashing lights and signals from my planet” (16). She says she hates the music that we can hear playing. She calls out for some Aretha Franklin and begins singing the song “Respect.”
She describes the horrors she sees on the streets of New York: high-rises being built while people are jobless or homeless, mothers killing their children, deaths by suicide, and shootings. She calls New York a casket “made out of stone, steel, and glass” with people “racing all over the pavement like maggots on a dead piece of meat” (17). She encourages the audience to dance but points out that there won’t be a beat to hold it together “’cause we traded in our drums for respectability” (17).
Becoming louder, drunker, and more “crazed,” she calls on the audience to dance with her and snap their fingers, saying she is not asking for their acceptance or approval.
The lights flash rapidly, and Miss Roj dances demonically. In a blast of smoke, she disappears. A record player spinning “Respect” by Aretha Franklin replaces her.
Sketch 5 Analysis
This exhibit brings the audience into the 1980s, the contemporary setting of The Colored Museum. Miss Roj presents a different element of the Black collective identity: the LGBTQ experience.
At the time of the opening of The Colored Museum, the AIDS crisis was a full-blown global epidemic. AIDS disproportionately affected Black and Latino populations in large urban centers like New York. Although the virus was at first predominantly associated with the gay community, by the mid-1980s mother-to-child transmission as well as transmission to/via sex workers and intravenous drug users was also coming to light. Nonetheless, due to ignorance and lack of education, in 1985, AIDS was still seen as a problem centered in the gay community, and moral judgments toward those suffering from the illness abounded.
The fact that Miss Roj is already onstage rather than entering symbolizes the fact that she represents a community that exists normally out of sight yet is suddenly thrust into the audience’s consciousness. The setting of the exhibit is also significant, as gay bars were part of a series of establishments that were targeted for closure by the New York State Public Health Council in 1985 in its attempt to curb the spread of HIV and AIDS. Thus, The Bottomless Pit is immediately otherworldly, dark, mysterious.
Miss Roj labels herself as a Snap Queen, one who “when the truth comes piercing through the dark, […] can’t let it pass unnoticed” (14). By associating the snap with truth, Miss Roj can convert the complex into the simple—true and false, right and wrong, all equalized and regulated with the authority of the snap. Her description of the conflict with her father earlier in her life highlights the concept of intracommunal discrimination and her attempts to deal with these events. On top of the discrimination she faces based on the color of her skin, Miss Roj must also face the prejudices of her own family and her marginalization within her own community. Miss Roj is not a product of the perfect recipe for heteronormative, earthy “Negroes” that Aunt Ethel cooked up earlier.
Miss Roj proudly remembers how she kicked her father into the closet for his behavior. Interestingly, however, this violent incarceration is unsatisfying to her. This is not seen as an example of justice; rather, Miss Roj points this event out as one where her “demons” got the better of her. The snapping of the fingers, then, is part of Miss Roj’s elaborate coping mechanism. Lacking agency in the real world, Miss Roj prefers to disappear into the world of fantasy, such as what occurs in her interaction with the Brooklyn “thug”: She simply snaps him away. Her description of the Brooklyn “thug” is also ironic as his attire—“skin-tight bikini […] so the whole world can see that instead of a brain” (16)—is acceptable, while Miss Roj’s “coulotte-sailor ensemble” makes her an acceptable target (16).
Despite the power of the snap, Miss Roj is unable to contain her conflicting desires to both rebuff and belong in the real world. As she grows more intoxicated, she falls into a frenzy as her demons overtake her. The snap serves as a desire for control or agency in a world where queer Black people seem to have none. Thus, The Bottomless Pit is the only place where Miss Roj can have control. So, once again, she disappears into the pit. The choice of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” highlights Wolfe’s assertion that this community needs dignity and respect in their time of need.
