Beyoncé: the superstar who brought black power to the Super Bowl
With her spectacular intervention in front of millions of TV viewers, Beyoncé brought radical politics to mainstream pop. What is behind her journey to the heart of the new civil rights movement?
It could be considered deeply ironic that a group plans this week to protest outside the National Football League’s headquarters in New York against Beyoncé’s “racist” half-time performance at the Super Bowl. For the performance was all about the new-style protests against racial discrimination that have been surging through America, in the form of civil rights grassroots movements such as Black Lives Matter.
If it goes ahead, the demonstration will protest about … another protest: a far larger, infinitely more important one, dealing with what it means to be black in America, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly outside the NFL’s HQ.
One consequence of Beyoncé’s performance is a shift in the way she’s being framed in some quarters. One description of the Super Bowl event I keep seeing is “unapologetically black”. This alludes to the dancers in Black Panther berets performing black power salutes, arranging themselves into the letter “X” for Malcolm, and the homemade sign (said to be unscripted), demanding “Justice for Mario Woods”, the victim of a San Francisco police shooting whose case has been a BLM rallying point.
Then there’s the song “Formation” (a surprise release and Beyoncé’s first in 14 months), and the accompanying video (using footage from the New Orleans music documentary That B.E.A.T). In it she references, among other things, Black Lives Matter, civil rights generally, slogans such as “Stop shooting us”, riot police, the shamefully sluggish official response to Hurricane Katrina (where poor, predominantly black lives were clearly deemed not to matter). “I like my baby hair and afros. I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils, ” she states.
Employing words and visuals to gritty and poetic effect – cleverly eschewing blunt aggression, the key accent is languid, dream-like menace – the message of “Formation” pounds through, like an elegant, detailed, modern civil rights seminar. It’sAt this point, even long-time fans of Beyoncé (and I’m one of them) could be forgiven for wondering how she got here? How did one of the globe’s consummate mainstream superstars manage to reposition herself as a lightning rod for radical politicised black America?
The answer: in some ways, yes, arriving here is surprising; in others, not so much. The element of surprise mainly relates to Beyoncé’s carefully plotted and executed long game as an artist – from her beginnings, managed by her father, Mathew, as the blatant main draw in Destiny’s Child, through to her film appearances in the likes of Dream Girls and Cadillac Records, and, most notably, her instant stellar success with early solo albums such as Dangerously in Love, the rather unfortunately named B’Day, and I Am … Sasha Fierce (introducing her alter ego).
In hindsight, there’s always a danger that such achievements could start to look pre-ordained, when of course they were anything but. While Beyoncé’s dance moves (and thighs) had their own wow-factor (as evidenced in the video for “Crazy in Love”), she should be given due credit for becoming a crossover artist in excelsis.
Always a “black” artist, firmly entrenched in high-grade R&B, soul, hip-hop, roots and disco – her Super Bowl costume was said to be an homage to Michael Jackson – Beyoncé was never going to end up as a backing singer. Her undoubted talent was long fuelled by a determination to be placed where she deserved to be, firmly centre-stage, at the heart of the mainstream.
Sometimes, this could lead to artistic stiffness – a live show I saw, while amazing, occasionally exuded the distinctly corporate “on-message” feel peculiar to certain superstars who cannot bear to tear their eyes off the main prize, even when, as artists, they should be immersed in the moment.
Other accusations levelled at Beyoncé include a success/money-obsession (even in “Formation” she says “best revenge is your paper”), although a counter-accusation could be some people’s obsession with portraying uber-consumerism as a black-only trope.
Beyoncé has also been criticised for being a bad feminist, although I’m not so sure about that. “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” had a comically dodgy theme, but, from early on, Beyoncé was thanking feminism for giving her confidence in life and relationships. Similarly, to those complaining that Beyoncé’s scantily clad, hip-thrusting performance at the Super Bowl was “hardly Bob Dylan”, it’s a different genre, sweeties (do try to keep up). Besides, sneering at the mode of protest rather than examining what the protest is about is an old method of silencing and cowing.
Then there were the recurring accusations that she looked as if she might have undergone a process to lighten her skin – no proof was ever offered. Both in person, and in adverts such as those for L’Oréal, she’s been criticised for looking “too white” and contributing to young black girls’ anxiety over their appearance, or at least not helping matters. On the face of it, from there to the “Jackson 5 nostrils” sentiments of “Formation” does seem quite a leap.
Mind you, is it really so surprising, or just more overt? Did Beyoncé seem any less proudly “Black with a capital B” when she was singing “At Last” to the Obamas at their inauguration dance? Or when she (and her husband, Jay Z) endured people moaning ridiculously about their headlining slots not being right for “rock festival” Glastonbury? Was Beyoncé any less politicised when she and Kelly Rowland started a charity to help the Hurricane Katrina survivors? Or when she and Jay Z donated generously to civil rights charities? There also appears to be a multifaceted timing element at play. It’s the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Black Panther party. “Formation” was released on what would have been the 21st birthday of Trayvon Martin(another high profile police-shooting and BLM cause). Barack Obama is an outgoing president, while Donald Trump (and the Donald Trump mindset) is dominating the headlines.
There’s the recent Oscars row and a growing restlessness in the music industry, with Nicki Minaj, for one, being extremely vocal about black under-representation. (Ever savvy to changing trends, Beyoncé’s eponymously titled previous album already heralded an edgier direction in her musical style). Moreover, there’s Beyoncé’s “personal timing” – a mother in her mid-30s, she wouldn’t be the first woman to become more politically aware and active as she became older. Then, of course, there’s the other kind of timing relating to the genius marketing ploy of surprise-releasing a song, causing a huge global rumpus at the Super Bowl (also starring, lest we forget, Bruno Mars and Coldplay), then announcing your 40-date world tour straight afterwards.
It’s possible to admire her business acumen (not so much “I have a dream” as “I have a tour to promote”) and at the same time acknowledging that perhaps only someone such as Beyoncé, with a powerful international reach, could have made such an enormous zeitgeist-ruffling impact.
Beyoncé also risked something very real regarding her mainstream persona. Not only among those prone to panic when confronted by politics, but more generally. After all, with a single performance, she has become as synonymous with black rights as film director, Spike Lee, was in the 1980s. Which, in turn, ties in to the interesting debate about why black success is so often viewed as a tangled fraught compromise between cultures, when white success can just be success?
Why does Beyoncé have to choose to represent or not represent “her” culture, when, say, Madonna isn’t required to bang on about being an Italian Catholic the whole time?
In this instance, Beyoncé chose to represent a cause, and in great style. Should it go ahead, the NFL protest is going to seem a mite underwhelming considering what black activists have been protesting about.
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