Critics would have you believe that DC’s bombastic superhero movie Suicide Squad had no cultural value at all, and could leave no legacy. Au contraire: Over the past few weeks, a wonderful new meme has been bubbling under the surface on Tumblr and Twitter — a wonderfully stupid and beautifully bad new meme. And its source is none other than 2016’s most reviled blockbuster: Suicide Squad.
The meme is simple. Pair an image of a couple (or dual images of people or things you’d like to be a couple) with (a version of) this dramatic caption: “She was crazier than him, and more fearless. She was his queen, and God help anyone who disrespected the queen.”
Now, if you saw these tweets, and if you — like certain tech and meme bloggers — had never seen Suicide Squad, you might believe that the problematic caption about a crazy woman and protecting the queen at all costs came from a chapter of some terrible fanfiction deep in the recesses of LiveJournal. But if you saw Suicide Squad, the line might sound familiar, especially if you read them in your head with Viola Davis narrating, something I highly recommend no matter what you’re reading. The lines — in the movie, “They became the King and Queen of Gotham City, and God help anyone who disrespected the Queen. She was crazier than him, and more fearless” — come from Davis, as government agent Amanda Waller, introducing the entirely screwy and Stockholm syndrome–afflicted relationship between Harley Quinn and the Joker in the film. Yes: That is a real line in the movie.
[Screaming.]
