What's better than hearing her? Seeing her. For a whole hour. But not just her, a number of powerful and influential black women feature alongside Beyonce in her visual album masterpiece, Lemonade, and its incredible.
At the gossip/scandal level, the visual album is a story of infidelity (almost definitely, Jay Z's) and reconciliation. However, it didn't take long for commentators to push past the narrative, and explore the underlying themes and issues explored. Black women- their treatment, their struggles and their experience. Lemonade engages with the experiences of black women, from Serena Williams to Zendaya, but perhaps most significantly, with Somali-British poet, Warsan Shire. Rather than enlisting the hottest celebrities to feature, and the number one artists to sing, Beyonce carefully chose women who represented the same political message as her. Shire's work features in between Beyonce's songs, and discusses issues of submission and weakness in relation to men and love. Shire's powerful words resonate with women who feel the need to change for their partner in order to be happy, and to make them happy, however, at a deeper level, it reflects issues of submission and inequality.
The album does not focus on men, black or other, but deliberately excludes them from the visuals and the issues. Instead, we are presented with a recurring image of black women, standing together as one; both a symbol of strength, and a symbol of shared identity, based on their similar experiences, both historical and present. The strength of this identity, and symbol, is demonstrated by the album's visual an creative direction, primarily attributed to Beyonce herself. To tell her story, and those who share the same story in a number of ways, Beyonce took control of the album. This afforded it a level of authenticity and realness often lost in today's era of lip-syncers and generic hipsters, who follow rather than lead.
I think this is important that Beyonce uses this platform both on a more shallow level to gain attention, so as you said the scandal with Jay-Z is prevalent. It gets the attention of people, keeps the album relevant in the mainstream and keeps the general music industry happy. But she's then able to use the media platform to promote this powerful message that in the past was never possible, however, I feel that its in some way disguised by the overarching theme in able to be so widely accepted.
ReplyDeleteIt's important that this message about black women is getting out, but I think it still says something about racism, media and the industry to the fact that this is one of the only ways it can be so widely seen.
I'm with you here, girl. Beyonce's visual album is pure gold, and I am personally guilty to have watched over 5 times over. However, whilst Beyonce is renowned for representing feminist ideals, as well as empowerment of the Black American culture (#blacklivesmatter), I came across something extremely contrary to her supposed political stance. Whilst exposing this racial empowering Lemonade visual album, she is also paying her sweatshop workers £4.30 ($9.00) a day to create her fashion label Ivy Park, suggests a conflict of interests and questioning of true morals. Therefore with strong, independent and positively influential racial themes through this visual album - I feel the undertones of her true authenticity being damaged when discovering the 'behind the scenes' procedures.
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