Do you agree:
How far does Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade promote the views and values of Black feminism?
Black feminism or Womanism was made in opposition of mainstream Feminism which wasn't accommodating to all women (Women of Colour) but 'Womanisim' was coined by black feminism who saw 'white feminism' as not being inclusive towards them. I do agree to the extent of the question that Beyonce's visual album Lemonade promote the views and values of Black feminism. The reson for this is beacuse Lemonade transcends genres a variety of genres, it reveals truths and spots a light on issues we must face and fix.
Lemonade was FULL of cultural references: the igbo landing, African goddesses (oshun, goddess of love and beauty), Malcomn X’s words about the the treatment of black women. The album wasn’t just another album but Beyoncé made lemonade to reassure black people of their worth and beauty and to tell a story of the black struggle and how we always overcome. Also, managing to make a film that consisted of incredible detail, music that covered all genres, and beautiful visuals.
Firstly, the visual album of 'Lemonade' was directed towards a larger demongraphic of young Black women, more so than, all women as the imagery placed had a majority of black women in it including Beyonce herself. The inclusion of young women like Quvenzhané Wallis, Amandla Stenberg, and Zendaya Coleman is a visual metaphor that you can be hit by the struggle at any point in your life, even during your youth. We will never forget the horror of The Onion jokingly calling a 9-year-old Quvenzhané the c-word in a tweet or Giuliana Rancic’s offensive comments about a 17-year-old Zendaya wearing her hair in dreadlocks or fans of The Hunger Games making racist remarks about casting a 12-year-old Amandla as Rue because she is black. The presence of Blue Ivy is a constant reminder that these are children being taunted—they are babies while the people that cause them pain are grown adults. It’s the notion that if you are black and female in this country, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Nobody will hesitate to take you down, even if you are still but a child. The cameos of the mothers of sons that fell victim at the hands of police (Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown) could not make this message more clear, though some have stated it may have not been the appropriate place for them to be placed.
As in the song 'Sorry' Beyoncé states 'He better call Becky with the good hair' as some saw this as a jab to her significant other Jay-Z, there is a larger picture to the analogy. The terk 'Good hair' represents the bigger picture of black women being viewed as not beautiful, undesirable, and unlovable. We are viewed as sexual objects; nothing more than exotic things that can be used. That line about her “good hair” is a micro aggression that still exists today. Beyoncé briefly nodded to this issue with “Pretty Hurts,” but she really goes into it on “Sorry.” The texture of black hair has never been a desired trait; it doesn’t fit into the socially constructed Eurocentric beauty standards that we are still expected to follow. It’s about black women constantly being made to feel less attractive than white women in all aspects. That’s why the line hits deep. Which is Beyoncé is truly trying to set herself apart from mainstream feminism and making it more inclusion to that of a Black women.
Within 12 songs, Beyoncé embodies a narrative about the complex struggles of black women. She presents these issues in the form of 11 parts that operate like the stages of a vicious cycle: intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation, forgiveness, resurrection, hope, and redemption. All woven together by the the poetry of Warren Shire. There are so many tributes to the black arts. The exploration of a variety of music genres also parallels the diversity of the black woman’s experience: reggae, rock, hip-hop, country, pop, and R&B.
Of the few criticisms that trickled through my Twitter feed throughout the weekend, the one that bothered me the most was a claim that Beyoncé is at the point in her career where she can get away with making mediocre music and everyone will applaud her as a creative genius anyway.
However, I think, it challenges listeners and viewers to tap into the mindset of what it means to be a black woman in America, which has never been the norm for mainstream media. For a long time black performers in the U.S. have had to create work that operated on at least two registers if they wanted mainstream success—the primary one was the white mainstream and the secondary one was the black mainstream. Not only has Beyoncé explicitly made the black mainstream her primary audience, post-"Formation," but she’s also spliced that audience and focused on even more specific registers of blackness.
