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only coverage it's been getting here is in regards to the superbowl. Which I almost typed as superbowel.

I mean you could read the first post.

I'm talking about my own perspective on things as is my RIGHT AND PRIVILEGE AS A WHITE MALE AGED 18 TO 45

when dase shaves 20 years off his age to fit into the CIS DEMOGRAPHIC of choice.

I'll have you know I'm a sprightly 34. Which in our day we called 41.

D.o.S. wrote:I'm sure Ms. Lewis is just exercising her right to standard issue dick swinging about subversion cred, too.

You're taking the piss here, I get it, but...yeah, pretty much. This is a soapbox, for sure, and this article has as much to do with the author's trigger warnings (and those of others) as it does with the images themselves. I won't say again what I've said earlier, but this is good thinking done in a weird direction. "She goes too far/She doesn't go far enough."

Though it's odd to sympathize with Beyonce (and I don't), I guess I'm still thinking about what I'd do if I were her. The question, in other words, doesn't seem to me to be about how much credit to dole out to her or her collaborators, but about how genuine this is, or how authentic it is. We'll never know for sure. If she can lay claim to any of the things depicted in this video/song, then it slays (okay). Otherwise, it is pretty slimy, and deserves whatever criticism it gets. My understanding is that it's somewhere in the middle. But it's really satisfying to think that someone can emerge from the stench cloud of what she's been a part of in the past and still produce something worthwhile. Maybe I'm just ascribing meaning to this, but it gives me some hope that others can push harder. Coldplay and their squishy, nonspecific politics aside.

Let me further muddy the waters with a false analogy, as I re-read the first article D.o.S. posted more carefully. 'Performing against a backdrop of black tragedy..." Check. But the worst thing I can accuse her of here is bad taste, not of making people into props. Does Bey get closer to a spearhead with this, or closer to an opportunistic performer? Maybe I'm naive about this, but it seems beyond horrific to use these images and ideas only to sell a single.

A klezmer band of Jewish guys and gals (who were never in concentration camps themselves) stands up in 1943 and project slides of scenes from Auschwitz and Mauthausen behind their performance. Instrumentalizing the pain of others? Using their platform to make a point that others can't? Something else?

It's interesting to remove the most volatile ingredient from the Bey equation (race and blackness), as it's kinda stuck behind all of these points. As in: I'm pretty sure that most of what's been said about this is tantamount to gaslighting Beyonce's ability to talk about race--people are just undercutting her credentials with their own subversion cred, which is not hard to do, she's a bajillionaire--and pushing her closer and closer to the position you'd expect her to be in if a white woman did this. She's light-skinned (and some critics note that she gets lighter, and her hair more blond) with every album. There's definitely some of that at play, too, and it seems like people are uncomfortable with having Beyonce speak for them more than they're disagreeing with her use of these images. The first article is a good example--it's mostly about one individual's gripes. "I could talk about X, but I don't." Well, you did, though. Just now. Right there.

You are falling back into the trope of saying that Beyonce is acting as a singular entity, and I will continue to point it out both because this shit is annoying and also because this shit is inaccurate, even if it represents a small portion of your point. (Also all of the articles do this, which causes me no short amounts of irritation because it's obvious that everyone assumes Beyonce's auteurship is a given. To which I reply, as the internet says: LOL.)

https://imvdb.com/video/beyonce/formation

There. By my count there are 6 or 7 people that collectively own the credit to the video, not the song (which is, Salon comments or not, safe as milk).

If it makes it any easier to deal with, just substitute 'Beyonce' for 'her collective creative team.' We could argue about this, but I don't see why it matters. Death of the Author and all that. She's the figure at the forefront, so it seems safe to talk about this as a 'product' that comes from her. Brand liability, in other words.

Are we debating now if Bey is genuinely behind/trying to help a movement or exploiting it for personal gain? Or if there is some middle ground she is treading?

If you want, yeah. I'm curious about that, and don't have answers. 99% of the everything is middle ground, though.

The effectiveness of any messages which the Beyonce Brand Brain Trust™ are delivering via Beyonce (the human delivery system) relies entirely upon people's equivocation of the two, doesn't it?
If we're talking about 'social merit' here then surely the fact that a creative team has to use a person as a brand to achieve any of this is relevant. I think it's also worth considering whether it's even possible for a singular entity to achieve any of these things at all within popular culture now, as well as whether the creative directors here are sculpting these ideas to fit the inherent image and background of Bey herself (in which case aren't they using a message to sell a person, not the other way around? that seems to be relevant to whether anybody here should be applauded for anything). I think it's a little too sad to ignore if these kinds of messages are conceived within that mindset, obviously it comes down to money but they are in a position where they'd make money regardless even if they had very pure intentions.

To the above, I'm sure that announcing her world tour on Tuesday morning was just a casual coincidence.

Can I go back to a few older points without being a jerkass? Beyoncé donated bugely the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a group with a nice name that in the US has mostly accomplished putting street level prostitutes into prisons... So, like cool that they helped pay BLM activists' bail, buuuut also bodies are still in prison? Also she does dinner at the White House and is pretty clearly not advocating the destruction of the government/authority, so CRASS comparisons are a little off, but CRASS should not be a sacred cow either.

I don't know, this is a huge thread to respond to, and it is pretty loaded. I have, at points in my life, been surrounded by queer folks who bend over backwards forgiving the behaviors of Beyoncé, and so I end up talking about her more than I would other shit. But also my tablet autocorrects beyoncé to have that accent on the e, so this is the world I inhabit? Maybe she and her creative team are slipping subversive shit under the radar, I don't think so, and I don't think I am that impressed by recuperation these days.