Beyonce: Revolutionary or reactionary?

Let’s start here: I am not Beyonce’s target audience. I think we know this.

Yet when an artist sells majillion and twelve copies of everything she produces over the course of more than a decade; is chosen to serenade a freshly elected President and his first lady; shills for non-musical products that range from make-up to electronics; and is celebrated and/or dissected in every media outlet known to humanity — I’m kind of her audience whether I’m the target, or not.

Beyonce’s got a hella voice, that much is for sure and for certain, and I understand she’s got a hella business sense, a fact which I can certainly respect and enjoy in a young woman. I appreciate that she holds on to her curves in an era of rail-thin female performers, and lord knows she puts out music to which the toe simply begs to tap. Beyonce is a force to be reckoned with.

But for all her business sense, for all her cross-market branding, for all her grab-your-sexuality-and-own-it bravado — I don’t think she is now, or ever has been, anything particularly new. On the contrary: Beyonce is, at her most interesting, the epitome of all that has gone before her and/or can be found in pop culture at the moment, and her lyrics are either run-of-the-mill ordinary — or down right reactionary.

Take for instance “Single Ladies” — now there is a song with a hook that can go for miles and miles. And fun to dance to? You betcha. But what’s it about? It’s about how if a man likes you — or, indeed, your body? He should damn well marry you:

Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it

Seriously? Beyonce, what you’re saying here is: “You shouldn’t have tried to keep the cow for free once you’d had the milk.” I kind of thought we’d gotten past that.

Then there’s the most recent single, “The Best Thing I Never Had.”

There was a time
I thought, that you did everything right
No lies, no wrong
Boy I, must’ve been outta my mind
So when I think of the time that I almost loved you
You showed your ass and I saw the real you

Honestly? All these years, all that work with the best and the brightest, and you’re still singing what every single female pop artist has sung throughout the history of popular music? And throwing in the word “ass” for, I don’t know, street cred? Just: Why? Why be Beyonce, of all people, and sing words that a million other people have sung before?

But the song that really got me thinking about Beyonce’s essentially reactionary nature as an artist was “Run the World (Girls),” a song which purports to be about girl power, but is in fact absolutely nothing but a rehash of centuries of “the power behind the throne” thinking.

The music is martial, pounding, a mix of styles that includes accents from all around the world, the official video a kind of a Mad-Max-meets-Victoria’s-Secret aesthetic — and bottom line, before you even get past the title, a nearly-30 year old adult is referring to the world’s women as “girls.”

Who run the world? Girls! [x4]
Who run this motha? Girls! [x4]
Who run the world? Girls! [x4]

… I’m just playing, come here baby
Hope you still like me, If you hate me
My persuasion can build a nation
Endless power, with our love we can devour
You’ll do anything for me

First of all, as any businesswoman who has made her fortune in the entertainment business knows: Women (or, if you insist, “girls”) most certainly do not run the world. To the extent that a woman’s “persuasion can build a nation,” and/or that “endless power, with our love we can devour/ You’ll do anything for me” — you’re not talking about running things. You’re talking about slotting yourself expressly into a male-dominated structure and at the very most, subverting it by using that structure for your own purposes.

That’s not running things. That’s making the best of a bad lot. That’s being — if you happen to be one of the few women anywhere near the throne — the power behind the throne, and singing the praises of being stuck back there.

Normally, I would merely be annoyed by someone selling me old shit in a shiny, new-ish package. I might make a point of turning the particular pop culture experience in question into a teachable moment for my kids, but I wouldn’t go to the trouble of writing an entire post about one artist — but Beyonce is not, in any measurable sense, “one artist.”

Beyonce is a pop culture phenomenon who plays a central role in setting the tone for the America in which my boy and girl are growing up. When people of that stature not only sing what amounts to pablum, but are also selling the twin soul-crushers of “the price of a woman’s body is a wedding ring” and “the power of my coochie runs the world,” I feel a rather powerful need to point it out for what it is: bullshit. And dangerous, damaging bullshit at that.

I am blogger! Hear me squeak!

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Actually, if you want to hear a young woman who is Beyonce’s target audience not only rip through the lyrics of “Run the World,” but tell the entire truth of female disempowerment in one short, extremely witty burst, watch the following video. It is, in a word, AWESOME. I want this young lady to come teach at my kids’ schools.

Posted by emilylhauser on June 1, 2011

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/beyonce-revolutionary-or-reactionary/