bow down

On the occasion of her documentary film about her tour about her album Renaissance Beyoncé has gotten some flak for not taking a stand on Gaza and for allowing the film to be screened in Israel

In an acerbic Vulture piece, Angelica Jade Bastién  says "there is no star of such magnitude who more cunningly positions themselves as apolitical than Beyoncé. Her performance as an icon is meant to connect with the broadest number of people possible. To do that, her refusal to stand for anything specific beyond the watered-down treatises on Black excellence must be maintained."

She examine how Beyoncé traffics, in this film and earlier ones, in "fake intimacy":  

"Every time you think you’ve seen behind the curtain, you realize there’s another curtain upon another stage. This isn’t new for her. Consider previous projects like the labored 2013 film Life Is But a Dream and the more successfully realized Homecoming in 2019. From this vantage point, fake intimacy is a currency she utilizes to give the appearance of revelation even if she actually remains as closed as a fist. Beyoncé positions herself not as a goddess bestowing a peek of humanity to her loyal subjects but as a relatable figure we can and should connect with. But if you have cameras on you all the time, even when you’re supposed to be “off,” when do you take down the performative mask? It isn’t even when she has knee surgery, a moment carefully documented on camera. For Beyoncé, a woman known to film her every move and house it in a temperature-controlled archive, everything is performance and each performance is merely a means of brand extension."

There are some jaw-dropping facts about the expense and labour (and carbon footprint) of the tour: 

"There were around 160 trucks used merely to transfer the stage from stadium to stadium, and the crowd sometimes numbered up to 70,000. These are not intimate shows but a demonstration of excessive spectacle"

Despite a dedicated moment of spotlighting of all the drones involved in making it happen - "stage hands and builders decked in shining chrome, backup singers and crucial musicians that share the live stage, seamstresses and designers, makeup artists and hair stylists, and dance captains like Amari Marshall" - Bastién says the doc is "still closer to an archival monument for the greatness of its performer, writer, and director.....   More than anything, Renaissance is a testament that Beyoncé is a brand that stands for absolutely nothing beyond its own greatness."

Bastién's casual use of phrases like "loyal subjects" and "aesthetic might" in her otherwise caustic piece reminded me of how baked into Beyoncé discourse are ideas of a/ regality and b/ entertainment as subjugation.  

The regality might partially explain the apolitics - if she's anything like the British monarchy, her reign would be dependent on not taking a stand or speaking out, but being a queen for everybody - a figurehead transcending ideology.

Another recent piece about the Renaissance concert movie is also limned with tropes to do with regality and masochistic evocations of overwhelming entertainment. 

Spencer Kornhaber recalls watching her 2016 tour:  "Even from the nosebleeds, she seemed huge, and impossibly important. I felt like I was watching the Statue of Liberty come alive, declare herself empress of Earth, and twerk." 

By comparison the Renaissance tour felt more collective - about the audience as much as the performer -  and Kornhaber did not "leave the show with the classic Beyoncé feeling of having one’s skull crushed by a higher power."

The film has "plenty of moments" that" will make the viewer feel, to use the lingo of the ballroom subculture that inspired Renaissance, her latest album, gagged by opulence" but he argues that at this point  "Beyoncé... wants her brand to be less about … herself."

Yet, the text still feels the pull of hierarchic imagery: there's a description of her Coachella performance doc Homecoming, which "essentially created a human pyramid with one woman at the apex."

The final paragraphs note sagely that while "great pop stars always gesture to a communal ideal—fans as family, dancing as democracy.. At base, though, they sell dominance and submission: a fantasy of the world’s problems pacified by a noble tyrant." 

While Beyoncé makes these gestures towards sharing the limelight, ultimately the Queen is "hardly surrendering her claim to power and control. As the movie’s credits play, so does a tremendous new song in which she raps, with boxerly aggressiveness, about house—the musical style, the material achievement, the place to host guests and raise families. Implicitly, she’s inviting us all inside her walls. And yet, she very amusingly keeps shouting, “Get the fuck up out my house!” She knows we still want to be commanded—and that not everything she’s got can be shared."

House becomes a palace. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here's my own Beyoncé take from S+ A

2013 February 

Beyoncé’s half-time performance at the Superbowl is the victory lap capping off her global superstardom. Planned for months, costing millions, involving 500 local volunteers to erect the stage in addition to Beyoncé’s own crew, the fifteen-minute mini-concert is a celebration of Queen Bey’s remorseless flawlessness. 

It starts with a taped speech of football manager Vince Lombardi gravely exhorting the pursuit of excellence “with all of one’s might”.  The glamour and clamour, Lombard intones, are just the exterior testament to what really matters: an implacable inner drive to dominate, “the spirit, the will to excel, the will to win.”  Beyoncé literally erupts onto the stage, to the sound of her hit “Run the World.”   For the next fourteen minutes she flexes her vocal training and rehearsed flair amid what seems like hundreds of lights blaring thousands of watts.  It’s a fiesta of feminine incandescence - jets of fire, guitars with roman candles ejaculating sparks from either end of the instrument - with special FX mirroring that “clones” a mini-army of Beyoncés.

Beyoncé at the Superbowl is like the Panopticon in reverse: surveillance turned inside out, “all eyes on me.”  110 million watch it in real-time; many more world-wide catch it later on the Internet.  “All minds on me” too: the performance generates 300 thousand tweets per minute. Critics prostrate themselves like obsequious courtiers. Rolling Stone’s reviewer gushes that the set’s supposed absence of crowd-pleasing favorites indicates that “she’s Beyoncé and Beyoncé can get away with doing whatever Beyoncé feels like doing”  -  less a critical assessment than a curtsey.

The Beyoncé spectacular is nominated in multiple technical categories at the Emmys. But it wins for just one:  “Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction.”   Deservedly: it’s the overkill climax of an illumination-escalation that has seen awards ceremonies and arena shows get more audience-stunning and retina-bruising with each year.  Light and power have always been linked historically, from the candle power that only lords and kings could afford, to the splendor of bright dyes and glittering gems that shone out in a world of murk and squalor.  Beyoncé at the ‘Bowl is where bling and blitz converge: a tour de force of shock and awe.