Slay Anything: Is Beyonce Beyond Criticism?
As the hugely successful CEO of Parkwood Entertainment, a peerless singer, an extraordinary performer, an inspired video artist and a feminist icon, Beyoncé should be allowed to embody these contradictions. She certainly shouldn’t have to suffer financially for her art. Her participation in the biggest show of the year doesn’t make her any less righteous, so to speak. Yet laying the blame for “Hymn for the Weekend” on “white musicians … who use black and brown people as props,” as NPR did, creates the impression that Beyoncé somehow acquiesced to Coldplay’s vision without any input. Does that sound like the person who exerts so much control over her image that she rarely participates in unscripted press interviews? If one points out that her dancers’ Black Panthers-inspired garb at the Super Bowl corporate theme park straddled the line between inspiring homage and a burlesque of cultural appropriation, is that person simply a “hater” who doesn’t want to join the #BeyHive?
One could argue that Beyoncé shares a similar strategy with her husband Jay Z of mixing capitalist fervor with philanthropy. The two are at different career stages: Jay has largely moved from the studio to the boardroom, while Beyoncé is at the height of her creativity, establishing a new industry paradigm with the unannounced appearance of her 2013 self-titled watermark. She is adept at turning her brand into an engrossing spectacle, while Jay has become a constant target for Internet mockery, not least due to his tumultuous purchase and rollout of the Tidal streaming service. Often referred to as a “trophy husband,” one can imagine Twitter trolls piling scorn on him if he made a similar announcement as Beyoncé: “Is he going to give Flint, Michigan Pepsi to drink instead of water?”
Yet just as Jay jumbles paradoxical symbols into a money-spinning pop stew, from 2013’s art-damaged Magna Carta Holy Grail to famously donning a T-shirt emblazoned with an illustration Communist revolutionary Che Guevera’s for his 2002 VH1 Unplugged, so does Beyoncé. As she proved in “Formation,” she’s better at it than her husband. Commentators have praised the clip’s celebration of blackness, and her astute observations of racial difference in lyrics like, “You mix that Negro with that Creole, make a Texas ‘bama.” Her fans want to ignore how her bold statement also served as an advertisement for the NFL, and that mere days ago, she seemingly trivialized another culture just as easily as she honors her own. By the way, this “cornbread and collard greens” tribute to the impoverished rural South is currently available as an exclusive download on Tidal, the most expensive streaming service out there.
For now, it seems that any criticism of Beyoncé’s art will earn you the tag of an “Illuminati-truthing hater” (On “Formation,” Beyoncé growls, “Y’all haters corny with that Illuminati mess.”) But even if you won’t go as far as the brilliant scholar bell hooks and label Beyoncé a “terrorist,” it’s worth pointing out the incongruities in her brand. Glossing over those contradictions so that we can love our idol better risks turning her into an empty vessel for our ever-changing desires. As a result, we rob her of her full humanity.