Let me set this straight: Beyoncé’s music videos do not exist as stand alone pieces of art. They exist as part of a conceptual cinematic experience that illuminate aspects of black and female experience.
We as consumers of media can watch another music video that objectifies and visualizes the male gaze, or we can watch a Beyoncé video- content that plays with stereotypes, expectations, and imagery (yes, I’m talking Lemonade and yes, I know I’m horrendously late to this party).
The female experience isn’t one that’s free of nuance and internalized objectification and the Grammy award winner totally gets that. Racism (which Beyoncé experiences) and classism (which she for sure doesn’t experience) play into the truths of individualized female experience.
Beyoncé’s video for ‘Hold Up,’ a song off her album “Lemonade,” exists as a gendered representation of the stage of denial. Wedged in between the stages of intuition and anger, the video for denial’s “Hold Up” opens with the words of black poet, Warsan Shire.
Shire’s words touch upon the tragedy of woman’s existence and the expectation that women must be pure, beautiful, and fragile. The poet relays to those watching that women must be everything, but that this journey to perfection will not stop men from cheating.
Beyoncé, acting as Shire’s narrator, voices the verse whilst a video plays showing the grammy winner, submerged in water, perishing until she gains consciousness. With this newfound strength, she exits the water filled house she was once submerged in and the poem “Denial” turns into the song “Hold Up,” a reggae inspired track that reveals how men look at the women they cheat on and abuse: as either jealous or crazy ( What’s worse/ looking jealous or crazy/ I rather be crazy). Beyoncé decides she rather be “crazy” than a perpetual victim of misogyny. The video then follows her as she smashes cars using a baseball bat whilst draped in a yellow Roberto Cavalli masterpiece.
Beyoncé’s video cannot be dissected without a description of the videos words, lyrics, contributors and images. To do so would be foolish and would also deprive the public of a comprehensive analysis of pop culture’s changing visuals.
The video for “Hold Up” garners polarized reactions from audiences. Millennials see the video as an empowering video that depicts a woman scorned. This demographic, ranging in age from teens to young adults in their thirties, think little of the violence the singer inflicts upon her neighborhood with her acquired baseball bat because we were raised on a steady diet of violence, bombings, blasts, and shootings. We listened to Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” as elementary school students and saw the progression of Rihanna and Chris Brown’s relationship. Millennials aren not the first generation to endure such levels of violence at such young ages, but they’re the first to watch this violence over and over again, replayed and rewinded on screens of all sizes.
Older audiences view this video through lenses marred with misogyny; as they weren’t fed violence for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Older audiences see Beyonce as a one dimensional character- one whose unladylike, promiscuous and crazy.
Beyonce can’t catch a break, she’s a polarizing figure due to her music, her identities and the current rocky social landscape inhabiting the global north and south alike.
Millennial women see Beyoncé in “Hold Up” as a woman with agency who refuses betrayal. Men see her as a “crazy ex-girlfriend,” an “angry black woman,” or a “sapphire.” Beyoncé directly plays into these stereotypes by smashing car windows whilst singing “Hold up they don’t love you like I love you” and “What a wicked way to treat the girl who loves you,” however she provides cultural and social context throughout the entirety of Lemonade, letting consumers view and understand the icon’s pent up female and black rage.
Beyoncé, in “Hold Up” acts as if she truly enjoys acting out violence and seeking revenge on her, presumably, cheating ex. While she parades through town damaging cars, the singer smiles and skips, seemingly detached from her actions. In the video, the star destroys her ex-lover’s car, a symbol of his manhood, emasculating him. However, Beyonce, clad in a cheery yellow dress, also smashes the video camera recording her, effectively disturbing the consumer’s exploitative gaze. The way the singer holds herself in the video plays directly into the crazy and violent “angry black woman” and “sapphire” stereotypes.
However, the singer and creator provides context for her “stereotypical” actions. Beyoncé, in “Hold Up,” exists as a full fledged character. The weight of western beauty standards, a cheating ex and imposed notions of an ideal state of womanhood weigh upon her (“I tried to change. Closed my mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less awake. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained from mirrors, abstained from sex, slowly did not speak another word”).
Before watching this video, one should warn children of the negative repercussions of violence and the complexities of black female anger and female forms of rebellion. Although millennials exist within a curated world of violence, the next generation should not exist within such a culture. Beyoncé’s rebellion and anger makes sense in our world, but it should not stay applicable. Shunning future violence stands as one of the most important rules for raising our future.
The singer and mogul is the face of this generation- a generation laced with violence, injustice and hurt. Her reactions are necessary, they’re integral for survival in a society that seeks to eliminate the oppressed through state sponsored violence, government imposed body warfare and class warfare.
Beyoncé diligently controls her image and her artistic endeavors, allowing her characters and art important humanizing characteristics that reflect the current socioeconomic and cultural climate that we live in. I don’t know many other artists that do the same. Touché Bey.
The Rogue Runway 