Help Please

he used it in that context as an insult to the guy's sexuality.

Gold is insulting the guy's sexuality? You mean, it's clear that the man threatening Gold with suspension is actually gay? I didn't make that connection at all.

Maybe you mean he's just using "queen" as a term of abuse, like calling him a "fag" or a "queer".

Unless the original poster of this thread is very naive, I'm sure they understood that a "queen" is slang for a homosexual, and that Gold is deriding his City Hall superior. That's perfectly obvious, and surely wasn't the point of their question. I think they were asking after the particular significance of the expression "How would you like to be queen for a day?" Not everyone, I imagine, would recognise that as a quote.

And it does have significance, in the context of this film. The show Queen For A Day was all about alleviating, for just one day, a life of pain and sorrow for some lucky contestant. In fact, the show did attract criticism for its perceived exploitation of women's misery. From the (unseen) mother who, along with her child, is murdered by her husband, to the Jewish matriarch shot dead in the corner shop, to the mother cajoled into betraying her son to the police, Homicide has a number of wives and mothers whose misfortune is explicitly connected to family matters.

Of course, what actually constitutes a "family" is Homicide's overriding theme. The film is all about Bobby Gold's quest to find out which "family" he belongs to so that he may discover his own identity. Significantly, he has no actual family of his own. We never see where he lives - he appears to have no home life whatsoever. "We're your family" his partner tells him, and his loyalty to the police "family" (he won't hand over the list of names) eventually sees his being blackmailed and cast out of the underground radical Jewish "family" to which he so desperately wants to belong. Like the word "Grofaz", he's been chasing an illusion. The man who murdered his own family promises to do Gold a good favour for his kindness. But in the final shot, as he is led away handcuffed and looks ruefully at Gold, he is powerless to do so.

No family offers Gold comfort. In fact, "family" seems synonymous with betrayal. And the women in the film have seen their "family" allegiances result in death (for themselves, for their children, or for both).

"How would you like to be queen for a day?". Real-life tragedy isn't that easily relieved. I'm quite sure Mamet intended the irony.