Beyoncé Is the Goddess of Gay Intertext

I'm sorry, here's something I wrote in an academic paper once and also BARBIE

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of amazing womanness: my committed feminist scholar buddy Jackie made sure I saw both the Barbie movie and attended the Beyoncé concert in Atlanta this last week. It was just so much feminism, on a mass scale. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it before… and before the concert, we found a legit Spanish tapas bar (because city) and they had an entire Barbie menu. More to the point, we bonded with the bartenders over women leaving bad relationships and how great it is that Barbie is the catalyst and they made us some kind of pink Barbie Vodka shot before sending us on our way.

We joined the masses at the Marta stop and there was nary a straight white man to be seen. Black women much older than me were dressed much better than me (per usual) and queer folks were rocking some of the most impressive shoes and fishnets I’ve seen in a while. Like these young people can show up for justice in some HIGH heels.

I confess I hadn’t listened to Renaissance as closely as I should have, and I missed all the press last year when it dropped proclaiming it the queerest of her albums to date. The Gay Times has a good explainer here. I’ve taught her visual album Lemonade as the central text in my Introduction to Literature course (I also presented an academic paper on it at the Southeastern American Studies Association conference in 2017), and her incorporation of queer artists on Renaissance is part of a longer trajectory in her work. My favorite Beyoncé song is “Formation” and Big Freedia proclaims “I did not come to play with you hoes, I came to slay, bitch!”

In the paper, I wrote:

We can see a return here to the embodiment of Haitian loa. She is again the rich goddess of the sea, Lasirene on the police car. On the porch flanked by men, she could be a female incarnation of Papa Legba. The song “Formation” is most explicit about celebrating her mixed heritage, literally forming a new state, Texasbama, out of her lineage [a HF reader wrote to clarify this term as one used to describe a Black person from Texas who is/acts like they’re from the country]. While the song is about her family, it’s also a call to carve out a new space in the south that celebrates rural as well as urban life.

While Lemonade as a whole is about celebrating and empowering black women, we can read “Formation” as a call to arms to all those who suffer oppression—the poor, transwomen, women across the board, LGBTQ people, those targeted by the police because of their racial and ethnic identities. As Jim Downs in the Huffington Post notes, the use of the bounce artist Big Freedia’s sample “signals a queer subtext within the song, evoking an often unrepresented black queer presence in the Deep South… Big Freedia’s voice combined with shots of other black male apparently queer bodies twerking illustrate a larger subtext of sexuality, sex and the body that has often been policed—seen but not heard—in the South.”

And while certainly the last line goes out to all the women out there earning less than men, it is also a call to build economic capital in the fight against white power and oppression in America. The last scenes of the film show a little boy in a black hoodie dancing in front of a line of militarized police, cutting to a spray painted wall that implores “Stop shooting us.” While Beyoncé calls on women to “slay” in the metaphorically sense, the video seeks to stop the literal murder of black men, women and children. Slay becomes a call to be the best, and the last line of the film and album commands: “Always stay gracious/best revenge is your paper.”

Beyoncé’s work bringing feminism and the celebration of queer identities to the masses is one of the foundations that makes it possible for the Barbie movie to critique patriarchy and use those terms. During one of the last sets, a message flashed on the stage: “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind” (apparently a Jim Morrison quote). And I’m here for some feminists controlling the media, for a change.

Your homework is to watch the visual album Lemonade and of course listen to Renaissance. I’ve also decided to go full Barbie and teach my ENGL 1001 course on the movie… send me your favorite articles. And if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s time. Let’s get Greta to $2 billion!

P.S. There’s a lot of depressing news about the recent Fifth Circuit ruling on mifepristone. I recommend reading Jessica Valenti’s piece explaining it, and a reminder that it remains legal in the U.S., pending appeal. Also a reminder that it is illegal in South Carolina to self-manage an abortion, including with abortion medication. We’re still waiting on the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling on our recent abortion ban. In the meantime, contributions to abortion funds are way down, across the board and around the country, at a time when women are losing access at an astounding rate, especially in the South. Please support your local fund, and please please consider a recurring donation to our local fund and the only one that works with the Greenville Women’s Clinic: the Palmetto State Abortion Fund.