Conversation 2

After watching the music video for Beyoncé’s, “Formation”, reading the lyrics and reading the article about the director of the music video, I can confidently say the theme of this song is about black culture. I had a good background of knowledge about Beyoncé and have watched and listened to this song before casually, but never sat down to analyze it. It is definitely very similar to my initial reaction of the song regardless, which was that this song was made to talk about black culture and all of her accomplishments as a black woman in a white male dominated industry, especially during the time she was coming up on fame. Throughout the song, she mentions different features of her black culture, including “baby hair and Afros” and “Jackson 5 noses”. Jackson 5 being the all black male band with the King of Pop Michael Jackson who all shared the same broad nose, a feature many African Americans share. Beyoncé uses her platform to show appreciation to her black beauty. Matsoukas, the director of the music video, used her creativity to help Beyoncé convey different aspects of her culture. An example being the outfits Beyoncé wears that are meant to represent the rural south, made by GUCCI. Matsoukas also came up with the idea of the police car sinking with Beyoncé laying on top of it as a symbol of the police not showing up for black people during Hurricane Katrina. The body of water the car is sinking in being the aftermath of a flood caused by the Hurricane. These are subtle details I wouldn’t have figured out if I hadn’t read the article but now play a huge impact when going back to watch the video again, especially since the sinking car scene is the second to last scene shown in the music video. I want to point out that the whole concept of the “Lemonade” album, which features ‘Formation’ is the historical impact of slavery on black love and how black men and women were almost not socialized to be together as found in the article “The Provocateur Behind Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Issa Rae” by Alexis Okeowo. Also found in the article is the meaning of the song, ‘Formation’ which is the anthem of female and black empowerment set in Louisiana. As we know, Slavery was very heavily found in Louisiana, even the first ships from Africa were sent to Louisiana, so the setting of the music video was strategically picked. An example of Emotive Language I found in the song is the lyric, “I dream it, I work hard, I grind ’til I own it” which I believe is meant to invoke other women to get that motivation and grind and work hard every day until they own it. A use of sarcasm can be seen in the lyric,” Paparazzi, catch my fly and my cocky fresh” where she taunts the paparazzi’s who most likely constantly follow her around and catch her looking fly and stylish, implying she always looks good and sticking it to the Paparazzi who might try to catch her looking a certain way. I think this song might get backlash for the sole reason being it centers on black people and their struggles, there are a lot of people out there who defend the U.S.’s history and tell black people to get over it. There are a lot of people who think police brutality isn’t a thing towards black people. The themes in this song and album can get a rise out of people who think a certain way about the police, history, black Americans etc. so it was no surprise that there was backlash and controversy surrounding it.