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Imagining Beyoncé

A Case Study in Female Superstardom

Annelot Prins (10203192)

Master thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis

Supervisor: Dr. J.W. Kooijman

10-02-2016, Words: 20.826 Prins 2

Contents

Acknowledgements 3

Introduction 4

1 Race And The Post-racial 19

2 Performing Feminisms 30

3 Family As Value 46

Conclusion 65

Bibliography 73

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank Dr. Gaston Franssen, who was willing to teach the tutorial "Introduction to

Celebrity Studies and Fan Studies", even when I turned out to be the only participant. Many thanks for his guidance during my first research project about Beyoncé, and his stimulating mentorship that subsequently led to my debut as presenter during an academic conference with this article.

My deepest gratitude goes out to Dr. Jaap Kooijman, who was kind enough to supervise my thesis, even though I was stationed in a different department. I thank him for teaching the tutorial "Star Studies Revisited", which he carried through although I again turned out to be the only participant. Many thanks for his support in preparing my research presentation for my first academic conference, his constructive feedback on my thesis and the inspiration he gave me through his own research.

Thanks to all participants of FTM13 and Sibéal15 for all their critical opinions, insightful remarks and encouraging words. Thank you for adopting me into your networks, they inspire me and give me a deeper understanding of feminist research.

I need to thank Lotte Hordijk and Britt Brons for their biased views on Beyoncé, and

Thirsa van Dam en Sophie Rutenfrans for all their unbiased and critical views on Beyoncé. I thank all four women for their support and the interest they take in everything I do. I am lucky to call you my friends.

Last but not least, I thank Bram van Dijk for his patience with my stringent work ethics. Thank you for all the critical readings. Thank you for the endless affirmations of your belief in me and my work. Prins 4

Introduction

It was around 2001, when I was thirteen years old, that I started spending my after school hours in my bedroom instead of downstairs with my parents. I was a young White girl, growing up in a middle-class household in a small village in the Netherlands. A lot of the time spent in my room was used to listen to popular music and to practice poorly executed dance routines that I imitated from video clips. Often, these video clips were from Destiny's Child, who were at the height of their career at the time. Beyoncé Knowles was clearly the most important member of the group. Apart from always singing solos and dancing in the middle and front positions, she also wrote songs for them and quickly became the sole producer of most tracks on their albums (O'Brien 2012: 248).

In 2003, Beyoncé pulled what Lucy O'Brien calls "a Diana Ross," and started pursuing a solo career. This went very well: she won numerous Grammy's and other awards, and had dozens of hits. Her career has been expanding for over two decades, and the demise of her popularity is nowhere in sight yet. Forbes editor Zack O'Malley Greenberg notes that Beyoncé had one of her best years in 2013, earning $53 million. "How did she follow that feat? By more than doubling that total in 2014" (O'Malley Greenberg 2014: par. 1).

Last year I went to Antwerp to see "The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour." For a research project I later interviewed my friends about this experience and asked them what

Beyoncé means to them. Their answers were passionate. "She makes me want to be the best possible version of myself, she empowers me", my friend Lotte said (Prins 2015: 1). She continued that Beyoncé is the ideal woman to her: "She comes across as a good mother, a good wife, and a talented artist – what more can you wish for! She is sexy and works Prins 5 incredibly hard" (Prins 2015: 3). Beyoncé clearly functions as a role model to her, and the ways in which she does so are based on ideological gender assumptions that resonate in society. My friends' feelings about Beyoncé are not exceptional. Cornell Sandvoss argues that fans often appropriate icons like Beyoncé "as meaningful resources in their everyday lives"

(Sandvoss as in Cashmore 2010: 138).

Phillips et al. argue “Popular music, as the folk music of the modern and postmodern eras, articulates the stories, philosophies, and yearnings of the masses” (2005: 259). Alicia

Durham adds to this that “Beyoncé is a key figure for contemporary feminist media studies because she represents the production of celebrity, gender politics presently defined by hip hop, and the complex negotiations of self image and sexuality for young women coming of age during postfeminism” (2012: 36) In her book She Bop, The Definitive History of Women in Popular

Music (2012), O'Brien mentions that almost all female artists she spoke with expressed an awareness of their responsibility as role models to their (female) fans (12). Beyoncé herself mentions her responsibility as female artist towards her fans in the documentary Beyoncé: Life Is

But A Dream (HBO, 2013). She explains she remembers being a little girl herself and looking up to other artists, and adds that she hopes to be an example to young girls around the world.

Nevertheless, while Beyoncé is known as a role model for young girls and can probably call herself the most well-known celebrity feminist on earth, she does not involve herself with political stances. Ellis Cashmore argues “Her considered silence on social and political issues ensures that she avoids controversy and endears herself both to advertisers and a mainstream audience. It also assures her a reputation as a ‘safe’ figure: unlike some other African

American celebrities in recent years, Beyoncé is prudent, unadventurous and not prone to commenting on issues other than her own products or endorsements” (Cashmore 2010: 137).

With these mild stances towards the political side of identity politics, she ensures her global success. Yet, while she claims herself to be universal and calls herself a feminist, she does slide

“comfortably into a familiar discourse of exoticism essayed by earlier Black female Prins 6 performers” (Cashmore 2010: 135). In the following thesis, I will critically analyse the complex narratives in Beyoncé's star text that have such an effect on my friend, and possibly other fans. What does Beyoncé tell us about the world today?

Researching celebrities

When Beyoncé is discussed in this thesis I never refer to the actual person Beyoncé, but always to the star text, the persona, of Beyoncé as pop star. In order to research this persona, I made a selection of all sorts of publicly available material. This means that I look at music, images, videos, written work and critical opinions. As Dyer notes: "Star images are always extensive, multimedia, intertextual" (Dyer 2004: 3). I am not concerned with the true person behind the musician -- I am interested in what Beyoncé as a commodity signifies. Her main goal as commodity is, of course, to make profit. But in order to do this the manufactured nature of her star text needs to be disguised (Dyer 1998: 20). The fans need to believe that they see

Beyoncé as she “really” is, there has to be a certain trust in the truthfulness and authenticity of the star. According to Goodwin, this shows us that the aesthetics of pop music are tied to a

"Romantic discourse of self-expression" (Goodwin 1992: 104). Pop stars need to appear "real" about their intentions and feelings, they need to come across as sincere (Goodwin 1992: 104).

Whether or not they are sincere is not important here. Andrew Goodwin explains:

The content of any given persona may or may not be 'true' (i.e. actually built on the real-life

circumstances of the performer); the point is that it involves a massive degree of manipulation

on the part of the culture industries (not just the music business, but also the media

commentators and critics who collude in these constructions). This suggests less a parallel with

drama (self-evident fictions) or documentary (mimetic reflections) than with the only area of

contemporary culture that is thoroughly legitimated (for reasons having to do with economic Prins 7

power) in its deliberate confusion of the two – advertising (that is, fictions presented as if they

were mimetic reflection) (Goodwin 1992: 106).

We are thus not looking at persons, but at media phenomena. What is important to keep in mind when researching musical celebrities is that there is an economic investment at play; their main goal is to make more money. There is thus a tension between the star as a person and the star as persona, as commodity. The star as commodity always needs to make more money, but at the same time needs to disguise her or himself as an authentic person who just wants to transmit her or his talent, whatever it may be. Of course, we all know that stars are products that are being sold to us, and that this happens through manipulation, insincerity and inauthenticity. Nevertheless, stars still need to disguise this the best they can in order to give us the impression that they are "real", they have to make it possible for us to choose to believe in them and look beyond, or even temporarily forget, the production and manipulation involved in their persona.

As Dyer argues: "The general image of stardom can be seen as a version of the

American Dream, organised around the themes of consumption, success and ordinariness"

(1998: 35). We need to believe that stars are just like us, and that success is possible when one works hard enough, regardless of class, gender, sexuality and so on. Stardom is thus connected to the ideological values of the United States, and especially to the importance they lay on the

American Dream. A star can be seen as the quintessential American citizen, and indirectly becomes a symbol of the nation through stardom. The ordinariness of a star, however, always needs to be combined with extraordinariness (Dyer 2004: 22). Stars need to be special in a way, they need to have a surplus value that separates them from non-famous people, while at the same time remaining "one of us" with whom we can identify as spectator or fan. The contradiction between these two opposing poles of "stars-as-ordinary" and "stars-as-special" is irresolvable and very important for the success of a star (Dyer 1998 43). Prins 8

Record companies know that the creation of a persona for a musician can create career longevity. This is significant, since they are invested in the human body in which the pop star resides and need to make as much money as possible of this specific body (Goodwin

1992: 105). Through the creation of an image for a pop star, additional meanings are attached to musical pieces. It enables audiences to go beyond singular artefacts and provide a point of identification. It gives the audience a persona to relate to. As aforementioned, this increases the use-values for consumers: it allows spectators to create a personal connection to the image of a musician that can grow and evolve over time (Goodwin 1992: 105). When one becomes aware of this, it becomes a bit redundant to analyse narratives or motifs in videos individually without looking at the bigger picture. Together and individually they are part of a metanarrative about the persona, about the crafted identity of the pop star. This is exemplified through the discrepancies that appear between the visuals and lyrics in video clips: the imagery often shows something unrelated to what is actually sung by the artist. "The explanation here is of course that the essential narrative component of the music video lies not in the song lyrics, but in the star-text that frames it" (Goodwin 1992: 108). The star text thus exists outside of individual songs and utterances; everything comes together in the persona of the pop star (Goodwin 1992: 103).

The star-as-ordinary is important when we look at the relation between stars and society. As Dyer notes, "Many writers see the stars, in general and in specific instances, as giving expression to variously conceptualised inner wants on the part of the mass of the people" (Dyer 1998: 18). Stars relate to ideas about personhood, about what it is like (or should be like) to exist in contemporary society: "They express the particular notion we hold of the person, of the 'individual'" (Dyer 2004: 7). There is thus a relation between stars and societies: stars live out -- and expose the tension in -- the accepted ideologies that reside in a specific society (Dyer 1998: 31). As Dyer puts it: "Work, sexuality, ethnicity and sexual identity themselves depend on more general ideas in society about what a person is, and stars are Prins 9 major definers of these ideas" (Dyer 2004: 7). Therefore, being interested in stars is thus similar to being interested in society, similar to being interested in what it means to be human today. Dyer elaborates:

We're fascinated by stars because they enact ways of making sense of the experience of being a

person in a particular kind of social production (capitalism), with its particular organisation of

life into public and private spheres. We love them because they represent how we think that

experience is or how it would be lovely to feel that it is. Stars represent typical ways of

behaving, feeling and thinking in contemporary society, ways that have been socially,

culturally, historically constructed (Dyer 2004: 16).

Stars thus reveal the constructed nature of (ideological) convictions in society through their star texts. They make the social categories in society visible since they embody them in one way or another, and in this way they present us with issues of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and so on (Dyer 2004: 16).

This does not mean that they present us with a coherent set of ideas that can be unilaterally interpreted. John Ellis explains:

Star images are paradoxical. They are composed, like narrative images, of elements which do

not cohere, of contradictory tendencies. They are composed, like narrative images, of clues

rather than complete meanings, of representations that are less complete, less stunning, than

those offered by cinema. The star image is an incoherent image. (Ellis 1982: 2-3)

This ties in with David Marshall's notion of celebrities as discursive battlegrounds. He, like

Ellis, notes that the celebrity sign can never be fully determined. They are constantly being

(re)negotiated and (re)signified (Marshall 1997: 57). Stars have no final point of arrival; there is Prins 10 no definitive meaning or interpretation that can be assigned to them since they are inherently unstable. The star phenomenon "constantly jogs these questions of the individual and society, the natural and artificial, precisely because it is promoting ideas of the individual and the natural in media that are mass, technologically elaborated, aesthetically sophisticated. That central paradox means that the whole phenomenon is unstable, never at a point of rest or equilibrium, constantly lurching from one formulation of what being human is to another"

(Dyer 2004: 16). When one researches star texts, one thus researches the paradoxical ideological ideas that reside in society today.

Intersectionality

The focus in this thesis lies in critical analysis of the discourses around social categories I see as the most important aspects of Beyoncé's star text, namely 'race', nationality, gender and sexuality, and the way these aspects interact. This focus on social categories and the power relations and discourse formations within them, is intersectional. Kimberlé Williams

Crenshaw stressed the importance of intersectionality in her famous essay "Mapping the

Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color" in 1989.

Crenshaw eloquently called for new ways of thinking about social categorizations, with consideration for "the mutual co-construction and simultaneous operation of gender,

'race'/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and other axes of signification, such as age, nationality and religion" (Wekker 2007: 63). The term intersectionality itself is a metaphor that alludes to a crossing point within identity where different categories intersect. These categories interact and determine either the marginalization or privilege one endures or holds as a person. "The intersectional approach, in other words, entails that gender is always furnished with ethnic and class significance and that 'race'/ethnicity always already has a gendered and class content" (Wekker 2007: 63). Hence, intersectionality not only attracts attention to groups that Prins 11 are marginalized on multiple axes (like African American women) but also points out that people in minority groups (like for example women) can be privileged on different axes (for example when they are White) (Hochreiter 2011: 50). These crossings and their meanings are of course contingent: different contexts assign different meanings to them. Whenever intersectionality is used, it is thus "necessarily particularized and therefore provisional and incomplete" (Carbado et al. 2013: 304). Intersectionality thus problematizes the idea of a universal feminist "we".

Intersectionality has no a priori place in the academy (Carbado et al. 2013: 204). It travels through disciplines and countries, and it is hard to pin the constantly transforming concept down into a solid definition. Because of this, Susanne Hochreiter questions the workability of intersectionality. She points out that "the problem of how to 'handle' all these aspects, categories, disciplines and levels in one survey or article has not been solved yet"

(Hochreiter 2011: 52). Sirma Bilge on the other hand argues that this is what makes it a useful concept: "The strength of intersectionality lies precisely in being sufficiently vague as to bring together two of the most important strands of contemporary feminist thought that have been, in different ways, concerned with the issue of difference: Black feminist theory and postmodern/post-structuralist feminist thought" (Bilge 2010: 60). The aspect that "makes an analysis intersectional – whatever term it deploys, whatever its iteration, whatever its field or discipline – is its adoption of an intersectional way of thinking about the problem of sameness and difference and its relation to power. This framing – conceiving of categories not as distinct but always permeated by other categories, fluid and changing, always in the process of creating and being created by dynamics of power – emphasizes what intersectionality does rather than what intersectionality is" (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013: 795).

I will use an intersectional framework to analyse the relation between the social categories Beyoncé embodies in her star text. I will focus mostly on gender, sexuality, race and nationality. Intersectionality is of use here, since it "adds the specificity of sex and gender to Prins 12 race and ethnicity, and racial and ethnic specificity to sex and gender" (MacKinnon 2013:

1020). Moreover, Beyoncé's star text is clearly posited in American culture. The significance of this will return throughout this thesis. I am not trying to make universal claims or singular interpretations. Rather, I am taking a very specific star text to show the many meanings attached to social categories and the mediations of these categories in American culture today.

The meanings of these categories in Beyoncé's star text will be "separately" discussed in the following chapters. Of course, they are not easily separable at all: they intertwine and overlap.

For the sake of both clarity and workability, I nevertheless tried to break them down into more or less separable aspects of her star text. They will be brought back together in the conclusion, to crystalize the complex interactions between them.

Imagining Beyoncé

In 2013, Beyoncé released her documentary Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream (HBO). This documentary is the starting point of my thesis, and will be used to exemplify how discourses of

'race', nationality, gender, and sexuality are entwined in her star text. The documentary uses multiple visual tools and techniques: an elaborate interview with Beyoncé on a couch, intimate webcam confessions, nostalgic home videos of both Beyoncé's youth and her life with

Jay-Z, and observations filmed by an external camera that resemble a reality-TV technique.

We get the impression that we get a multi-faceted view of Beyoncé's life. I especially focus on the webcam confessions in my analysis. Sean Redmond notes that the confessional text “the celebrity attempts to speak openly and honestly about where they have come from – their humble beginnings; … who they really are underneath their fame gown; and how alike they are to everyday people who watch their films, buy their records [and so on]” (2006: 37). These confessions thus help to mark the star as ordinary. Prins 13

Beyoncé confesses that she always battles with how much she reveals of herself in the media, which can be seen as one of the grand narratives of her star text: the simultaneous separation and amalgamation of her private and public life. Beyoncé is known for rarely giving interviews, something that became very obvious when she was on the cover of the

September issue of Vogue in 2015, but did not give an interview. The New York Times' journalist

Schneier notes: "she is the only celebrity cover star not to submit some type of interview"

(Schneier 2015: par. 6). He continues that somewhere between 2013 and 2014 Beyoncé stopped giving face to face interviews all together: "A member of her team told a reporter in

May that despite numerous appearances, she had not answered a direct question in more than a year. … (When Beyoncé does answer questions, it tends to be in writing or, for TV, taped.)"

(Schneier 2015: par. 7). In the documentary, Beyoncé speaks openly about her relation with the media:

When I first started out there was no Internet – people taking pictures of you and putting your

personal life, or exploiting your personal life, as entertainment. I think people are so

brainwashed. You get up in the morning, you click on the computer, you see all these pictures

and it's all you think of – the picture and the image you see all day every day. You don't see

the human form. And I think when Nina Simone put out music, you loved her voice. That's

what she wanted you to love, that was her instrument. But you didn't get brainwashed by her

day to day life and what her child is wearing and who she's dating and all the things that is

really… It's not your business you know. And it shouldn't influence the way you listen to the

voice and the art. But it does (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013).

On the one hand she thus opposes to the immense media circus that is built around contemporary musicians, since it takes attention away from the art. On the other hand, she admits that life narratives do matter: the creation of a persona that mimics a human form is Prins 14 necessary to maintain a career nowadays. It seems like she fixed this troublesome impasse through the micromanaged crafting of her star text. Her documentary for example, revolves around her life as artist, daughter, wife, mother and woman, but is also directed, produced and distributed by herself. Her image is controlled as much as possible.

Several social categories are embodied and discussed in the documentary. The first I want to discuss is race. The fact that Beyoncé refers to Nina Simone in the aforementioned quote is significant since Nina Simone was strongly aligned with the civil rights movement and intertwined her racial identity with her star text. In other words: Beyoncé consciously places herself in a line of African American female performers. The racial discourse in her star text is made very visible through the different hairstyles Beyoncé wears. Her hair varies from racialized cornrows to long blonde straightened wisps. There is also a focus on her dance routines in the documentary. Beyoncé is known for the incorporation of a lot of African dance in her choreographies. In Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream we meet two dancers from Mozambique who were flown in by Beyoncé solely to teach her dancers their techniques. Their moves are described as highly authentic and hard to copy. Through focusing on the nationality and authenticity of both the dancers and their moves the choreographies appear to gain a kind of

Black authenticity that is added to Beyoncé's star text.

The second and third social categories that play important roles in the documentary and Beyoncé's star text alike are gender and sexuality. Although these themes are distinct and different, Beyoncé often connects them in her star text and they will therefore be discussed jointly. Her femininity is emphasized through sexualized imagery. She seldom wears pants and directs most attention to her breast, bottom and legs – body parts often connected to signify Black female sexuality (Durham 2012: 38). Her dance routines are sensual, sexual and militaristic but interestingly enough never include physical contact with others. Sexuality is often equated with female power in her star text. Prins 15

Beyoncé has made feminism part of her star texts through performances, songs and interviews, and emphasizes the importance of gender issues in the documentary. She explains:

"I'm always thinking about women and what we need to hear. It's difficult being a woman – it's so much pressure" (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013). She later adds that although she has travelled the world and is happily married, nothing compares to "a conversation with a woman that understands you" (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013). It is significant that we do not see Beyoncé interacting with female comrades at all in documentary.

Later on, she discusses the gendered experience of performing while pregnant:

It absolutely proofed to me that women have to work much harder to make it in this world. It

really pisses me off that women don't get the same opportunities as men do. Or money for that

matter. Because let's face it: money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the

power to define our values, and to define what's sexy and what's feminine. And that's bullshit.

At the end of the day it's not about equal rights. It's about how we think. We have to reshape

our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead,

and reach as high as humanly possible. That's what I'm going to do, that's my philosophy

(Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013).

Here we see a neoliberal kind of feminism that will be further discussed in the second chapter.

Beyoncé often emphasizes the importance of financial liberation for gender equality. As we have seen Beyoncé posits gender and feminism as important parts of her star text in the documentary.

The final theme in her star text I want to discuss is the notion of family as American value. Beyoncé's star text reveals the difficulty of the public/private dichotomy. Through the incorporation of her parents, husband and daughter into her public image she blurs the line between public and private, between "real" relationships she has as a human being to other Prins 16 human beings and the micromanaged construction of her "fake" star text. The importance of this part of her star text is clearly detectable in the documentary. The documentary opens with the enormous mansion Beyoncé grew up in, that Beyoncé calls "her foundation" (Beyoncé:

Life Is But A Dream 2013). The house returns throughout the documentary, it is the setting for various home videos and the documentary ends with shots of the garden that surrounds it.

Family members like her nephew and her parents are both shown and discussed in the narrative. Beyoncé talks about the difficulties she had with her father whom always had a special place in her star text (listen for example to the song "Daddy" on her debut album

Dangerously In Love (2003)) but whom she recently fired as her manager. In the documentary she tells us he says she had to let him go as her manager because she needed him to be her dad. According to Beyoncé, they had different ideas about her career path. This is a great example of the complex relation between the public/private dichotomy in her star text: she here tells us she needed her father to be less present in her public narrative and retreat into her private life, but at the same time tells us these private affairs in her very public documentary. Unfortunately, she tells us, she did not get her dad back. "I had to sacrifice my relationship with my dad", she concludes. The conversation about the troubles she had with him is deepened in a scene right after the discussion, in when we see Beyoncé singing the song

"Listen" from the movie Dreamgirls (2006). This song is used in the movie when Beyoncé's character Deena Jones tells her controlling husband to let her go in order for her to further her career. The reference is clear – Beyoncé uses the song to strengthen the idea that she had to let her father go in order for her career to keep flourishing. She had to sacrifice her private life with her father him for her public life as an artist. Her bond with her mother is nevertheless still shown as strong and loving. During the documentary we see her mother visiting sets before performances and handing out the Billboard Millennium Award to her daughter. When Beyoncé receives this award she responds with again a confirmation of the importance of her family: "I would like to start off by thanking my foundation which is my Prins 17 family" (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013). She subsequently thanks another important part of her star text: Jay Z.

In the documentary, we see Beyoncé and her husband in 'intimate' home videos on holidays, laughing and singing together. Beyoncé says Jay-Z taught her how to be a woman, and she explains their love as so intense they almost feel like one person. "It's every woman's dream to feel this way about someone", she concludes (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013). A central part to the narrative of their relationship is the difficulty they had when they tried to get pregnant. Beyoncé talks about her miscarriage, and also speaks about her successful pregnancy afterwards. Throughout the documentary, Beyoncé is shown as a hard-working sensual wife, caring mother and strong woman. She is portrayed as mature, responsible, stable, and loving.

I have taken several aspects from Beyoncé's star text to analyse in the chapters to come. In order to do this I have selected a series of objects from Beyoncé's oeuvre that are, as aforementioned, of various natures. I have chosen the objects because of the diverse and unmistakable ways they have characterized Beyoncé's star text. Each of the chosen objects has put Beyoncé on the map in significant ways; they have effected the foundations of her star text in complex manners. Moreover, many of the objects have caused strong responses and societal debates. In the first chapter, I discuss the role of (post-)racial discourses in her narrative. The second chapter will elaborate on Beyoncé's (post-)feminist identity. The third and last chapter will examine the American family as highly valued discourse in her narrative, with most attention for the imagery around the relationships with her husband Jay-Z and her daughter Blue Ivy.

As aforementioned, star studies taught us that there is always a relation between stars and society: stars show us how to be a humanbeing today. Therefore, stars, and in this case

Beyoncé, may serve as a focal point for researching the complex discourses within naturalized social categories that circulate in society. I use an intersectional lens to analyse how Beyoncé Prins 18 embodies different social categories and critically dissect the complex discourses surrounding them. I will use Beyoncé to show the fragility and complexities of these social categories in contemporary American culture.

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1. Race And The Post-racial

Race, like gender, is a concept without intrinsic meaning. Race is no biological given but should be understood as a contingent social position tied to time and place (Haslanger 2005:

162). When questions of race are asked we have to consider the context in which these questions exist. In the United States of America, race functions in complex manners, which I cannot fully determine within this thesis. What I can do, however, is elaborate on the ways in which race functions within the star text of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Beyoncé is light-skinned, identifies as African American and is known for using her

Creole heritage for marketing goals (Griffin 2011: 137). Moreover, she makes use of various racial discourses in her star text. Griffin explains: “The mixed race or ethnically ambiguous woman is considered at once beautiful because of her proximity to whiteness and sexual because of her black ‘blood’” (Griffin 2011: 139). In other words: the use of various racial discourses enables Beyoncé to be a crossover symbol appealing to diverse audiences. This chapter will discuss the racial discourses in Beyoncé's narrative. I first shortly introduce the functioning of the (post-)raciality of American culture today. Afterwards I discuss the use of race as a commodity in Beyoncé's star text. Lastly, I analyze the use the artist makes of racial stereotypes.

(Post)-raciality in American culture

On 20 January 2009, Beyoncé performed Etta James' famous song "At Last" at the inaugural

Neighborhood Ball. Freshly elected President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama Prins 20 opened the ball with their first dance on the song. Jaap Kooijman comments on this performance in his book Fabricating The Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture:

Originally from the musical film Orchestra Wives (Archie Mayo, 1942) starring Glenn Miller and

his orchestra, "At Last" is best known in its 1961 R&B version by soul singer Etta James and as

such has become part of the soundtrack of the 1960s civil rights movement. The song's title

evokes a connection to the spiritual words quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1963 "I

Have a Dream" speech: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

(Kooijman 2013: 147).

In this line of thinking, the song may be interpreted as celebrating the election of an African

American President, and even as celebrating the dawn of an era of post-raciality.

Because of her iconic status Beyoncé is the perfect artist to deliver this message. As aforementioned, she is a crossover symbol that speaks to large audiences that cannot be defined within racial parameters. In an interview with Vogue magazine, the singer herself claims to be universal: "No one's paying attention to what race I am. I've kind of proven myself. I'm past that" (Knowles-Carter as in Cashmore 2010: 144). Ellis Cashmore argues that

Beyoncé is "The actualisation of the American Dream so long denied black people", and argues that the artist embodies America's new racial order (Cashmore 2010: 136). Kooijman takes Cashmore's argument a step further when he argues that Beyoncé not so much represents a post-racial reality but rather signifies "its possibility in the shape of reality, as a hyperreality" (Kooijman 2014: 148). He continues: "Beyoncé and Obama function as a

'utopia achieved,' as Jean Baudrillard would say, in which the fictional character of the

American Dream enables a seemingly paradoxal moment of 'post-raciality' that can be pursued through the visualization of its achievement" (Kooijman 2014: 148). The performance by Beyoncé did ultimately not show us a post-racial reality but rather presents Prins 21 both Beyoncé and Obama as epitomizations of the possibility of Black success, no longer held back by racial inequality.

While Obama got re-elected for his second term, America's racial issues reached an apex in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. With the murders of unarmed Black men like Eric

Garner, Ezell Ford, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and Walter Scott, all shot by police officers, several cities revolted. While the murders of these men can be seen as the immediate cause for these revolts Louis Hyman, assistant professor of history at Cornell University, reminds us the riots are above all "an expression of anger at another aspect of a system that has exploited the black community in subtler, more insidious, but similarly tragic ways" then fifty years ago during the riots in the 1960s (Hyman 2015: par. 8). While race functions different than it used to, we are by no means living in a post-racial era (Griffin 2011: 132). Racial issues are omnipresent in America: institutionalized racism and racial inequality remain a persistent feature of American society.

Although Beyoncé celebrates the possibility of post-raciality in her performance of "At

Last", she at the same time uses her Instagram to express her solidarity towards specific Black experiences of inequality. In figure 1 we read a statement made by the family of earlier mentioned Michael Brown, in figure 2 we read a quote by Martin Luther King. Prins 22

Figure 1 and 2: Images from Beyoncé’s Instagram

While figure 1 calls for peaceful protest, the quote of Dr. King Jr. demands justice. Beyoncé thus aligns herself with the protestors, but her protest remains abstract and distant. It is not discussed in interviews or anywhere else in her oeuvre. There is no reference to Beyoncé's personal experiences as a Black woman in America. Instead, we are provided with quotes of authorities: the parents of a victim of racial violence and the most famous civil rights activist that ever lived. Moreover, both images are grounded in a legal understanding of racism, with references to moderation and justice. Although Beyoncé thus acknowledges the racial problems in American society, she does so in abstract manner terms that remain separated from the rest of her star text. The narrative of the post-racial utopian possibility of Black success remains the most important part of her star text.

Race as commodity

In late capitalism race is often reduced to a commodity in the entertainment industry.

Although the media includes non-White narratives in its landscape, they often market these as Prins 23

"cool", "authentic", and "urban" (Banet-Weiser 2007: 204). The message that America is post- racial, that race is nothing more than an interesting feature of the successful multicultural melting pot society that makes the United States of America both unique and diverse, is mediated through these representations. “Despite the material realities of poverty, unemployment, and general institutionalized racism in the United States, a contemporary ideology about race casts it as a style, an aesthetic, a hip way of being” (Banet-Weiser 2007:

205). The issue thus becomes depoliticized through this vision of race as commodity.

In 2011, Beyoncé participated in a photo shoot for L’Officiel Paris with an “African

Queen” theme, in which she paid tribute to Nigerian human rights activist and musician Fela

Kuti. One of the pictures taken can be seen in figure 3.

Figure 3: Beyoncé for L’Officiel Paris

As one can see, Beyoncé's face is covered in dark paint in the image. The magazine released the following statement about the photos: “[It is] A return to her African roots, as you can see on the picture, on which her face was voluntarily darkened” (Stewart 2011: par. 1). Many conceived the pictures as offensive. Then Jezebel editor Dodai Stewart argues that “It’s fun to Prins 24 play with fashion and makeup, and fashion has a history of provocation and pushing boundaries. But when you paint your face darker in order to look more ‘African,’ aren’t you reducing an entire continent, full of different nations, tribes, cultures and histories, into one brown color?” (Stewart 2011: par. 2). She continues: “It’s one thing to feel moved by Fela

Kuti, and quite another to treat blackness as a fashion accessory, like a pair of glittery heels you put on because it looks cool” (Stewart 2011: par. 2). The issue of race is reduced to a mere accessory in the shoot.

A similar controversy arose in 2008, when Beyoncé was criticized for the L’Oreal advertisement in which she promoted hair color products, which can be seen in figure 4.

Some of the pictures were clearly “whitewashed”: “Beyoncé’s skin color was significantly lighter in the advertisement printed in Elle magazine then the very same one in Essence, a glossy targeted at African American woman” (Kooijman 2015: 2).

Figure 4: Beyoncé’s L’Oreal advertisement in Essence (left) and Elle (right)

These situations in which skin color becomes a matter of “artistic choice” create the Prins 25 impression that race can be used as “merely expressions of fashion, free from politics”

(Kooijman 2015: 10). In these instances skin color becomes a neoliberal marketing tool: it is used to speak to certain publics and enforce or repress racial associations. This use of race as commodity can either enforce or weaken racial associations and strengthens Beyoncé's position as crossover symbol, as iconic artist free from a specific background.

Racial stereotypes

In the final part of this chapter I will discuss two music videos: "Diva" (2008) and "Grown

Woman" (2014) to exemplify how commodified racial stereotypes are used in Beyoncé's star text. Both videos emphasize Beyoncé's “Blackness” in clichéd manners. The first video relies on racialized hip hop tropes like the backwards gaze, bling and braggadocio. The second video seems to show us the "authentic Africanness" of Beyoncé's star text through mixing home videos of Beyoncé's youth with contemporary displays of the star performing a song that has an African feel to it. Her Black roots and history are naturalized in the video. That a feeling of authenticity is transmitted does, however, by no means mean that we get a real look into Beyoncé's history: it has been revealed that all home videos of Beyoncé as a teen were filmed in the present day, with help from hair, costume and art direction to make it look convincing. I will now discuss the use of three specific stereotypes that are present in Beyoncé's star text and that appear in both these videos: the Diva as Angry Black Woman, the Black

Superwoman and the Hypersexual Black Woman.

The title of the song "Diva" immediately links Beyoncé to the racial image of a Diva.

Kimberly Springer defines Divas as "Black women with attitude" (Springer 2007: 254). They are "immensely talented but selfishly driven and difficult to deal with … Today's divas are unreasonable, unpredictable and likely unhinged" (Springer 2007: 256-7). The Diva is thus closely related to the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman. This notion is omnipresent in the Prins 26 video, in both the dancing and clothing of not only Beyoncé but her dancers as well. The

Black female body is presented as a weapon with movements that are abrupt, grotesque, aggressive and powerful. This attitude in choreography is present in most of Beyoncé's work.

Her star text conveys that she is in control and will not be messed with. In her metanarrative she presents herself as the Black Superwoman that has it all: the career, the husband, the child and the looks. I will elaborate on this in my final chapter but for now I want to quote bell hooks who is highly critical of this stereotypical image of the Black Superwoman. She asserts that these images "are operative myths in the minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization” (hooks

2005: 67).

Her clothing emphasizes both the aggressiveness and strength of the Black woman through accentuating her broad shoulders. Aside from this, her sexuality and desirability are confirmed through the emphasis that lies on her buttocks. The attention to her "hip hop booty" can be seen as an indication of her heightened sexuality. "The buttocks of African women have come to represent exotic beauty and primitive sexuality in the Western imaginary since slavery" (Durham 2012: 38). While this is a racist stereotype, bell hooks analyzed the symbolic value of Black buttocks in the film School Daze (Spike Lee 1988) and argues that these butts are not merely a form of sexist and racist imagery but also display resistance to these interpretations:

The black "butts" on display are unruly and outrageous. They are not the still bodies of the

female slave made to appear as mannequin. They are not a silenced body. Displayed as playful

cultural nationalist resistance, they challenge assumptions that the black body, its skin color and

shape, is a mark of shame (hooks 2015: 63).

Prins 27

The same could be said about Beyoncé's use of her "Black butt": the dance routines do not look submissive. Beyoncé and her dancers rather come across as aggressive, determined and in control. Although the imagery can be interpreted as stereotypical, bell hooks rightfully notes that a lot of Black female stars have appropriated and exploited these stereotypes and in this way both gained control over the imagery and reaped the benefits of it (hooks 2015: 65).

These stereotypical images could thus also be interpreted as subversive. Alicia Durham argues that through performance, “Beyoncé calls attention to intersecting discourses of racialized sexuality and gender, and she highlights the particular constraints that exist for

Black girls and women who also want to express their sexuality in a society where Black bodies are always already marked as deviant” (Durham 2012: 37). Durham continues that

Beyoncé’s celebration of her “bootylicous” body has transformed the beauty industry that is mostly focused on skinny White bodies (Durham 2012: 36). This is significant, since “[i]n this moment, a particular brand of whiteness is disrupted. Both ideal beauty and sexual desirability are mapped onto the curvaceous, ethnically marked female body" (Durham 2012: 36-7).

Black sensuality and sexuality are thus in tension with at the one hand enforced racism and on the other hand they present us an anti-racist and subversive movement at the same time.

A third interpretation of the stereotypical imagery in Beyoncé's star text is to see them as a post-modern, post-feminist, post-racial form of pastiche. Because of the overtly clear use of the different racial stereotypes like the Hypersexual Black Woman and Black Superwoman, one could argue that these notions are neutralized through their humorless repetition. Fredric

Jameson introduced the notion of "Pastiche" in his article "Postmodernism and Consumer

Society." Pastiche is connected to the idea of parody, both concepts "Involve the imitation, or better still, the mimicry of other styles and particularly of the mannerisms and stylistic twitches of other styles" (Jameson 1983: 1962). The stereotypes displayed can be seen as a style of representing Black women that is often used in the media. It seems unlikely that the stereotypes present in Beyoncé's star text are parody. Parody always seems to mock the Prins 28 original; it ridicules the style that is imitated (Jameson 1983: 1963). The goal of parody is to cause laughter, but there is nothing funny about the racial stereotypes in Beyoncé's star text.

Pastiche, however, is

[…] like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique stylistic mask, speech in a dead language:

but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody' ulterior motive, without the satirical

impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal

compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic. Pastiche is blank parody, parody that

has lost its sense of humor […] (Jameson 1983: 1963).

Through the humorless reproduction of these racial stereotypes, Beyoncé's use of them in her videos seem to fit the idea of pastiche as explained by Jameson. I concur that while the meaning within pastiche is deferred, through its undeterminable motives, this does not make the display of these stereotypes meaningless or innocent. Their meanings simply become mystified: it is unclear if they are meant to subvert or enforce racist convictions. Pastiche opens up the possibility to interpret the images in multiple manners, since it abandons the idea of a norm or center from which true meaning derives. The use of stereotypes in Beyoncé's star text then seems to present us with a blank parody that does not show the audience a particular normality, nor does it try to humor or criticize a possible reality. Rather, it is the ultimate commodification of racial tropes.

Aside from this, it is highly problematic that Blackness is linked to nature iconography in the clip for "Grown Woman". The video is filled with images of trees, plants and animals, and Beyoncé even gets down on her hands and knees to twerk while a zebra print is projected over her body. The body of the artist is visually made animalistic. This enforces the stereotype of the African woman as closer to nature, wild like an animal with a disproportionate and distinct sexuality. This racist stereotype stems from the times of slavery and colonialism, in Prins 29 which the exotic was often merged with the erotic and should be critiqued whenever it appears.

Stereotypical images of Blackness are used to lay claim on "authentic" Black popular culture, while the artist also calls herself universal and claims a status as crossover symbol.

This shows that, as Griffin concludes, "Beyoncé's enormous success heralds an America where race no longer necessarily bars achievement but where old mythologies continue to resonate and sell" (Griffin 2011: 140). Most problematic is probably that Blackness here is often equated with authenticity, while Whiteness is seen as artificial (Kooijman 2015: 14). With this, race is given a specific meaning as additional value that can be added and taken away when necessary, depending on the message that needs to be transmitted. As we will find out in the next chapter, a similar neoliberal commodification is visible when we look at gender and feminism in Beyoncé's narrative.

Prins 30

2. Performing Feminisms

Beyoncé's star text has a problematic relation with feminism. Her narrative displays the tension between the personal and the political, and between female desire and sexual objectification. In the words of Alicia Durham, Beyoncé "represents the production of celebrity, gender politics presently defined by hip hop and the complex negotiations of self image and sexuality for young women coming of age during postfeminism" (Durham 2012:

36). When gender and feminism are discussed, we get stuck with two important theoretical problems. First of all, gender itself is a problematic concept when one tries to define it. It is questionable "whether there is anything social that females have in common that could count as their 'gender'" (Haslanger 2005: 158). Sally Haslanger, in her article "Gender and Race:

(What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?", names this problem the commonality problem. She argues: "If we consider all females – females of different times, places, and cultures – there are reasons to doubt that there is anything beyond body type (if even that) that they all share" (Haslanger 2005: 158). The second problem we come across is that every time we do name something an aspect of the female gender, these statements always bear a normative component: they include some women and exclude others. In the words of

Haslanger: "The normativity problem raises the concern that any definition of 'what women is' is valueladen, and will marginalize certain females, privilege others, and reinforce current gender norms" (Haslanger 2005: 158).

In what follows, I will analyse the gendered discourses present in Beyoncé's narrative and especially the artist's relation with feminism. Just like in the previous chapter, I will not try to determine the meaning of these discourses, but rather reveal the complexities and Prins 31 inconsistencies of them in Beyoncé's star text and by extension in society. I will do this through three different but overlapping angles: the neoliberal feminist focus on financial liberation as gender equality; the post-feminist discourse in her narrative; and the concept of feminism as a commodity.

Neoliberal feminism: the power to buy stuff

In January 2014, Beyoncé wrote an essay in the Shriver report: "A Woman's Nation Pushes

Back from the Brink". On its website, the Shriver report is explained as a report that

"examines the rates of financial insecurity among American women and the children who depend on them, investigates the impact of it on our nation's institutions and economic future and promotes modern solutions to help women strengthen their financial status"

(shriverreport.org). Beyoncé wrote an essay called "Gender Equality Is a Myth!" and in it asks for equal pay:

Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns

only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say

this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters,

mothers, and sisters earn more – commensurate with their qualifications and not their genders

(Knowles-Carter 2014: par. 1).

The first thing that needs to be said here is that Beyoncé is not really a financial insecure woman. Nevertheless, it is clear that Beyoncé thinks men and women should earn the same amount of money for the same amount of work. However, she mostly asks men to stand up for their women, instead of relying on women's capabilities. This could be said to steer us away from "the women asking questions" towards a male solution to The Woman's Question.

Again, she presents us with a universal female subject, and even though this issue of the Prins 32

Shriver report is about classicist problems, Beyoncé's essay remains void of considerations of class and race.

Oppression can take various forms, of which economical oppression, described here by

Beyoncé, is one form. It is clear that Beyoncé is most concerned with gender inequality related to both sexual freedom and financial liberation. However, the idea that merely the power to buy things would produce gender equality is of course a simplification. Nevertheless, it returns over and over again in the feminist discourses in Beyoncé's star text. Another good example of this is one of the first feminist anthems Beyoncé helped creating when she was still a member of Destiny's Child: "Independent Women Part I" (2000).

Throughout the clip that accompanies the song, women are dressed in sexualized attire while performing masculine activities like fighting, riding a motorcycle and skydiving.

There is on the one hand a disruption of gender norms, and on the other hand a celebration of girl power present. Men in the clip are shown to be evil crooks that are defeated by the women of Destiny's Child. The clip shows us a fantasy world in which Charlie, the male boss who calls in with the girls near the end of the video, has ultimate control. This is in line with

Mulvey's conclusion in a different research project that men are often portrayed as controlling the fantasy world of the music video (Mulvey 1975: 384).

The girl group sings:

Question, tell me how you feel about this?

Try to control me boy you get dismissed

Pay my fun, oh and I pay my own bills

Always 50/50 in relationships

The shoes on my feet: I've bought it

The clothes I'm wearing: I've bought it

The rock I'm rocking: I've bought it Prins 33

Cause I depend on me ("Independent Women Part I" 2000)

This is again a very neoliberal view of feminism. The message we receive here is that women can gain independence through buying stuff, through paying for their own things: through financial liberation. However, the things mentioned here that they can buy with their earned money are superficial, and mostly things that make women physically more appealing. It is noteworthy that most of Beyoncé's oeuvre discusses the appealing to and pleasing of men. It seems like the male gaze is never contested.

Post-feminism: Do girls truly run the world?

In 2014 Beyoncé was featured on the cover of Time magazine's "100 most influential people" issue (see figure 5). Beyoncé herself was thrilled with her presence on the cover: "because it is not about fashion or beauty or music; it's about the influence I've had on culture" (Beyoncé as in Driscoll 2014). However, the cover sparked quite the controversy. Beyoncé looks into the camera with a glary look in her eyes, wearing a bathing suit with a see-through top over it.

Beyoncé is dressed in a way that is part of her star text: not wearing pants and showing of her legs has become part of her persona. Her body is often emphasized through similar apparel on stage and in videos. Nevertheless, this was not her stage nor video: this was Time's "100 most influential people" issue. The mixture of influence and objectification is complex and continues to dazzle feminists. Can self-objectification be used as a tool to voice other issues or does it always render women into voiceless, passive objects that can be consumed by all?

Should women cover up to be taken seriously?

Prins 34

Figure 5: Beyoncé on Time's "100 most influential people" issue

Beyoncé self-objectifies throughout her narrative -- part of her star text relies on the display of her body in sexualized manners. This is nothing out of the ordinary for a female pop star.

Lucy O'Brien argues:

Throughout history, the female body has been objectified as a source of sexual arousal or

suggestion. Women have always felt the pressure to look decorative or pleasing, but within pop

and rock, when the star is the focus of a mass gaze, this expectation is increased tenfold. In the

face of the pop orthodoxy that a woman is there first and foremost to look attractive, female

artists have consistently had to negotiate the Image issue (O'Brien 2012: 168).

Laura Mulvey uses the concept of the male gaze to theorize female objection in the media.

She argues:

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male Prins 35

and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure,

which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously

looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that

they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of

erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkely, she holds the look,

and plays to and signifies male desire (1975: 383).

The idea that Beyoncé merely tries to please the male gaze however becomes troubled when we turn to the important presence of female spectators. It has been said before that Beyoncé's main fan base consists of women and gay men (Berlatsky 2014: par. 1, Lamere 2014: par. 6).

Evans et al. argue that the female gaze might even have supplanted the male gaze on some level in society as a whole. “In a culture where women now increasingly gaze at both other women and at themselves, the male-gaze has sometimes apparently been removed all together. In terms of reinstating women as the objects of sex, therefore, sexualized culture has been of concern for both reproducing the male-gaze and, simultaneously, producing a narcissistic neo-liberal self-policing gaze, in which the contemporary woman does not seek male approval for her apparently ‘freely chosen look’” (2010: 116).

Beyoncé nevertheless visually conforms to the portrayal of women as spectacle. Beyoncé seems to follow in Madonna’s footsteps, and equates “pleasure with power, sexuality with control” (Mandziuk 1993: 168). Just like Madonna, Beyoncé claims individual ownership of her sexuality, and just like Madonna she conflates sexual pleasure and political freedom

(Mandziuk 1993: 170). The question here is how a liberatory sexuality would look. Treva B.

Lindsey remarks that African-American politics of respectability continue to influence how

Black feminists, and more broadly, how African-American communities, delineate what constitutes hypersexuality and objectification (Lindsey 2013: 55). In a different article she explains how this "often results in the identification of sexually explicit videos as reifying Prins 36 racial-gender-sexual stereotypes and controlling images and myths about black women"

(2015: 63). This mode of interpretation "continues to predominate analysis of contemporary, popular culture images of African-American female sexuality" (Lindsey 2015: 63). Lindsey calls for a more positive view of Black female sexuality: "Foregrounding a sex-positive, black feminist analysis, while acknowledging the importance of historical legacies and stultifying stigmas makes available a dynamic lens with which to examine the sexualized performances of contemporary African-American women popular entertainers. This cadre of entertainers obliges feminist scholars to theorize sex-positivism among Black women in popular culture and to question the concept of hypersexuality as it pertains to Black women-authored narratives and performers (2015: 63). To call Beyoncé’s performance hypersexual instead of sexual may just as well in itself perpetuate a racist view of Black female sexuality. Weidhase, in line with Lindsey, contends that: “Beyoncé’s body does not contest her feminist status, but instead her body contests the whiteness of mainstream feminism” (2015: 130). This interpretation makes the display of her Black body in sexualized manners a politically subversive and feminist action in and of itself. It means that the singer defies notions of hypersexuality and creates a space for Black female sexuality on its own terms.

At the same time, this discussion can also be linked to post-feminism. Angela

McRobbie explains post-feminism as "an active process by which feminist gains of the 1970s and 80s come to be undermined" (McRobbie 2004: 255). Post-feminism, like the post-racial, sees feminism as taken into account, it presents feminism as something "decisively aged and made to seem redundant" (McRobbie 2004: 255). It suggests that equality is already achieved and we therefore no longer need feminism: "women, according to post-feminists, are able to make their choices out of free will" (McRobbie 2004: 259). Post-feminism is highly individualized, it is "all about how the individual feels right here, right now, rather than the bigger picture (Viner as in Gillis and Munford 2004: 174). Prins 37

Post-feminism can be positioned next to other "new feminisms", like third wave feminism, lifestyle feminism, commodity feminism, victim feminism and power feminism.

These "new feminisms" “ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics were slowly removed from feminism”

(hooks 2000: 5). Feminism became something personal, and the success of some women became the ruler against which the state of gender equality was measured. These women came to signify a gender “utopia achieved”. Liberation here became synonymous with social equality with the ruling class of White men. This liberation, as bell hooks points out, is a false one: it is built on the continued exploitation and oppression of others (hooks 2005: 67). Audre

Lorde’s famous critique “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” rings true once again (Lorde 1984: 110-3).

The post-feminist discourse is present throughout Beyoncé's star text. A great example is the 2011 Billboard Awards performance of "Who Run The World (Girls)". This particular performance was preceded by words of affection by amongst others Stevie Wonder, Bono,

Barbra Streisand and Michelle Obama. These authorities called Beyoncé an iconic musician, someone who made history. At the end of the clip, first lady Michelle Obama says: "I'm very proud of her, very proud of the woman that she is, the role model that she provides to so many women, and I truly congratulate her tonight on all her success. Thank you so much."

The entire clip is a celebration of Beyoncé's success, which here serves as proof that Black women are no longer held back by society and can achieve anything they want as long as they work hard enough. With this message, both racism and sexism are depoliticized and we are once again left with a post-racial, post-feminist utopia that does not align with reality.

In the beginning of the actual performance we hear Beyoncé's voice: "Men have been given the chance to rule the world, but ladies – our revolution has begun. Let's build a nation.

Women everywhere – rule the world!" Her dancing is, as always, aggressive and fierce. She is wearing a kind of bathing suit made of silver strings, with a large fur collar on top. This is the Prins 38 same look as we have seen before: bare legs in high heels, and an emphasis on both her broad shoulders and buttocks. At the climax of the song, the stage is overrun by dozens of female dancers that perform a synchronized dance with Beyoncé. The dance looks like a revolution: all the dancers wear quasi-militaristic – but highly sexualized – outfits, firework surrounds the stage and the dancers wave with enormous red flags.

Figure 6: The climax of Beyoncé's performance of "Who Run The World (Girls)"

during the Billboard Awards 2011

Although this performance comes across as very empowering, it is quite deceptive in its message. In the song Beyoncé's personal success gets again conflated with a socio-political reality that does not exist. Girls do not run the world. The revolution that is shown in the performance is therefore confusing. It seems unlikely that Beyoncé calls for a feminist revolution since the lyrics enforce the idea that the revolution already took place by repeating that girls run the world. Nevertheless, she does state that a revolution has just begun at the same time in the aforementioned quote. The song thus reinforces a post-feminist 90s notion of Prins 39 girl power that celebrates female success but depoliticizes gender issues. In other words: the performance creates a utopian fantasy world in which feminism is completed and no longer necessary -- girls run the world. Apart from the falsehood of this image, it gives the wrong idea about feminism. Feminism is not about "girls" ruling the world but about ending sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression (hooks 2000: 1).

It must be said that sexism never fully determines the destiny of all women in society.

As bell hooks argues, oppression is a term that often confuses people because of this notion of totality and absolution, the idea of the complete absence of choice that is connected to it.

"Many women in this society do have choices … therefore exploitation and discrimination are words that more accurately describe the lot of women in the United States" (hooks 2005: 62).

According to hooks this is the reason that many women do not join feminist organization – they do not recognize discrimination on the basis of sex as oppression because these issues often make way for celebrations of specific female success. Beyoncé is an embodied example of the possibilities for (Black) female success. Nevertheless, this does not mean that she proofs that sexism and racism do no longer matter. To conflate her personal success with the chances for women throughout the United States (or even globally) is a sophism. This individualistic view of society does not only make it hard to fight sexism, it also makes the female individual responsible for her own status in society. Critiquing sexism then becomes a subterfuge for not using one's potential to the fullest, for not working hard enough, and ultimately: for personal failure. McRobbie argues:

[T]he new female subject is, despite her freedom, called upon to be silent, to withhold critique,

to count as a modern sophisticated girl, or indeed this withholding of critique is a condition of

her freedom. There is quietude and complicity in the manners of generationally specific

notions of cool, and more precisely an uncritical relation to dominant commercially produced

sexual representations which actively invoke hostility to assumed feminist positions form the Prins 40

past in order to endorse a new regime of sexual meanings based on female consent, equality,

participation and pleasure, free of politics (McRobbie 2004: 260).

Emancipation, in a post-feminist world, is thus one’s own responsibility. Beyoncé's star text pertains the notion that women can reach high if they are ambitious and willing to work for it.

She conflates totalities with individuals, freedom with objectification, and sexuality with power. Beyoncé here presents herself as the ultimate free woman, the personification of the

American Dream. This conflation between personal success and feminism as taken into account is nothing new. Andrew Goodwin found a similar discourse within Madonna's star text, namely "the notion that extraordinary individual economic success by one woman, achieved within the terms of a competitive capitalist marketplace, represents a victory for all women" (Goodwin 1992: 101). Madonna herself was quite open about this reading. Goodwin mentions the famous ABC Nightline interview in which "she happily boasted about her material success – a topic that rock stars are usually quite coy about – and then turned on host

Forrest Sawyer to ask rhetorically, 'Isn't that what feminism is about?'" (Goodwin 1992: 208).

Just like in Madonna's case, feminist issues are depoliticized in Beyoncé's star text through the neoliberal individualized celebration of her personal success as a woman.

Feminism as a commodity: appropriation and universalization

While the aforementioned performances can be interpreted as post-feminist in their message,

Beyoncé did claim the label of feminist multiple times during her career. An example of the appropriation of feminism into her image can be found in the Rosie the Riveter imitation she posted on Instagram (Figure 7). Rosie the Riveter, created by J. Howard Miller in 1942, is a cultural icon in the United States. Rosie represents the American women working in factories during the Second World War. The quote in the image, "We Can Do It!", was originally not meant as a necessarily feminist message, but instead served a patriotic function of heightening Prins 41 national morale. The "it" referred both to winning the war and keeping the country running – a task that mostly fell on the shoulders of the women in America. Beyoncé reconstructed the picture with herself as Rosie the Riveter, and it did not take long for the image to go viral. It immediately reframed Rosie as a feminist icon, and for many media served as proof that

Beyoncé self-identifies as a feminist.

Figure 7: Beyoncé as Rosie the Riveter

Nevertheless, some critics rightfully opposed to this interpretation of the picture. Since it originally referred to working class women who had to struggle to earn a living, some found it very inappropriate that Beyoncé, as a million dollar brand, absorbed the image and used it to market herself as a feminist. This could be seen as emptying out the image, as a renouncement of its original value. It renders the working class women once again invisible, and replaces her image with that of a glamorous and wealthy woman. At the same time, the image again resonates the notion of pastiche: a blank parody of the original that does not refer to a certain norm or centre anymore.

Beyoncé often puts herself forward as iconic woman, she presents us with a star text that turns her into an iconic and unproblematized feminist "we, the women". As intersectionality has taught us, these universalizations are highly problematic. Through focussing just on gender and denying racial and classicist issues, the image reinforces a post- feminist 90s idea of girl power and does not do justice to the layerdness of gender issues. As Prins 42

Gloria Wekker argues: "gender is always furnished with ethnic and class significance and …

'race'/ethnicity always already has a gendered and class content" (Wekker 2007: 63).

Moreover, there is a undeniable significance to the fact that she takes this position as iconic woman while being Black and thus disrupts the White norm in the media. This not used nor made clear in Beyoncé's star text; she posits herself as the universal female subject, void of particularities.

Another example of appropriation of the feminist label can be found in Beyoncé's latest feminist anthem: "Flawless***". In August 2014, she performed this song during the

MTV Video Music Awards (VMA's). Near the end of the performance, Beyoncé's silhouette was shown in front of big white letters stating "FEMINIST" (Figure 8). The fact that the singer's silhouette was made visible through the use of backlight evokes a discourse of stardom- as-otherness: Beyoncé here is portrayed as a glamorous and mysterious star, while at the same time claiming a political label. As Andi Zeisler, co-founder and creative/editorial director of

Bitch Media, notes, Beyoncé's VMA performance was different from her previous encounters with feminism. It was "showier, more definitive. It functioned as a specific kind of statement.

Put simply, it positioned feminism as Beyoncé's official brand" (Zeisler 2014: par. 5). This was a risky enterprise for Beyoncé at the time, since female celebrities like Taylor Swift and Kaley

Cuoco were distancing themselves explicitly from feminism in the media. Zeisler reminds us that even Madonna, who is often discussed from a feminist point of view, never claimed the label and always called herself a humanist (Zeisler 2014: par. 7). Prins 43

Figure 8: Beyoncé at the MTV VMA's

In her song "Flawless***". Beyoncé not only claims the feminist label but she also provides us with a feminist manifesto. This manifesto is borrowed from Nigerian author Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie and it frames feminism "as a concept so basic and common sense that viewers might rightly feel a wee bit foolish for denouncing it" (Zeisler 2014: par. 9). It reads as follows:

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings

In the ways that boys are

We teach girls to shrink themselves

To make themselves smaller

We say to girls

"You can have ambition

But not too much

You should aim to be successful

But not too successful

Otherwise you will threaten the man"

Feminist: a person who believes in the social,

Political, and economic equality of the sexes ("Flawless***" 2013)

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Her neoliberal feminism is mostly focused on equal sexual freedom and career opportunities for women, which are two themes that, as we have seen in the analyses throughout this thesis, fit well with Beyoncé's star text. For now, let us take a closer look at the idea of sex as power before we discuss the definition of feminism given at the end of the quote.

Lucy O'Brien argues: "While women may describe it as control, [there] is usually a degree of acquiescence to the sexual norm, if only because it's good for business” (O'Brien

2012: 187). O'Brien, in other words, calls out the commodification of female bodies as an accepted marketing tool and questions the reality of individual female agency in these matters.

Meredith Levande, musician and feminist, agrees with this cynical vision of female artists and self-objectification as a feminist act. She argues that feminism has been hijacked, and that the hijackers use female artists to sell the idea that sexualisation equals control (Levande 2008:

301). This brings us back to post-feminism. Surely, if feminism is already taken into account, women can ironically objectify themselves to "play the system," to be in control of their own exploitation, which seems to defy the idea that exploitation is happening at all. Nevertheless, research has shown there is little variation in the ways in which female pop stars choose to portray themselves in music videos: almost all chose to portray themselves in sexualized and objectified manners (see for example Stevens Aubrey and Frisby 2011). As we see again and again in Beyoncé's narrative, there is a discrepancy between what is said, which often contains emancipatory statements, and what is shown, which often comes back to the sexualized and objectified female body. Her message thus gets diffused.

The dictionary definition of feminism at the end of the aforementioned quote is in my view problematic. It makes feminism into an abstract thought, something we can all agree on mentally but do not need to act upon, since it is just common sense. It is a post-feminist definition of feminism: a feminism so basic and logical that it can be considered as taken into account, because who would dare to disagree? Feminism should, however, always be more than a belief; it is an active movement that seeks to end sexism and oppression. Prins 45

Nevertheless, the usurpation of the feminist label by Beyoncé had quite the effect.

Zeisler notes that the enormous amount of tweets discussing feminism after Beyoncé's VMA performance suggest "that feminism's legendary bad PR has the potential to undergo a

Beyonceified sea change" (Zeisler 2014: par. 10). She continues: "What if, instead of young women […] learning about feminism through negative media and social stereotypes, the young women of the new generations learn about feminism from a – dare to dream – positive perspective" (Zeisler 2014: par: 10)? Beyoncé might influence the feminist debate and change the meanings we give to feminism. An affective investment is clearly present. As Rebecca

Hains argues: “Although commodity feminism operates in regressive ways — undercutting feminist principles by reducing them to selling tactics — commodity feminism can sometimes be productive as well" (Hains 2014: 44). Moreover, the fact that feminism is discussed emphasizes its dynamic nature. A renewed feminist discussion might help it evolve along the times we're living in. bell hooks warns us to resist hegemonic feminist thought. She contends we should insist feminism is a theory in the making. This theory continuously needs to be critiqued, questioned and re-examined, and new possibilities need to be explored rather than feared (hooks 2005: 65).

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3. Family As Value

In Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream (2013) Beyoncé again and again confirms the importance of family. As aforementioned, the house she grew up in plays an important role in the documentary; the artist refers to the home as "her foundation." The house returns throughout the documentary. It is the setting for various home videos and the documentary ends with shots of the garden that surrounds it. Family members like her nephew and her parents also play important parts in the narrative. Beyoncé's career took off when she was a mere nine years old and her family played important roles in the managing of her star text from the start.

Her father Matthew Knowles became the manager of Destiny's Child and her mother Tina

Knowles was the group's stylist. Together with her mother Beyoncé later launched a clothing line, House of Deréon, named after her grandmother. Aside the importance of her parents in her narrative, her husband Jay-Z plays a paramount role in her star text.

Beyoncé has continuously been vague about her relationship with Jay-Z in interviews.

First she did not officially confirm their relationship, and after their wedding in 2008 she

"avoided discussing their lives together even when asked directly in interviews" (Chatman

2015: 1). Nevertheless, she named her 2013 tour after her union with the hip hop mogul. The

Mrs. Carter Show World Tour stirred up a lot of critics who questioned whether or not

Beyoncé could both be a feminist and name her tour after her husband. Moreover, Beyoncé is

— and has always been — known as Beyoncé and now all of the sudden pointed attention to her last name. An explanation for this choice is, as will become clear in the rest of this chapter, that family life is one of the defining features of her star image. Rosie Swash sees the choice of the tour name as a mere marketing strategy:

Prins 47

Ultimately, of course, Beyoncé’s name-change (albeit for one tour only) is a marketing ploy. To

promote the Mrs Carter tour, she has chosen to pose in a regal looking outfit that references

Queen Elizabeth I, only a bit more leggy. It’s a visual stamp of authority; I, she is saying, am the

alma mater of pop’s new dynasty, a point her husband also made on the 2012 album Watch the

Throne. But it’s also an unwitting (I suspect) reference to one woman who famously never had

to take a husband’s name (Swash 2013, par. 8).

In Swash's line of thought, it is filled with irony and maybe even could be called pastiche.

Other feminists, like Tamara Winfrey Harris, argue: “Surely a woman can be powerful and simultaneously admit that her marriage is profound and life altering” (Winfrey Harris 2013: par. 19). The fact that we take heed from Beyoncé naming her husband as one of the greatest influences of her life may just as well in itself be a sexist interpretation. As Winfrey Harris continues: “Being a feminist in the public eye should not require remaining aloof about relationships, including those with men who have helped shape who you are” (2013: par. 20).

If a woman loses feminist bona fides by becoming Mrs. So-and-So, someone best tell the 86

percent of American women who take their husbands’ names at marriage. If there is any woman

not in danger of being subsumed by a man’s identity — no matter her last name — it is

Beyoncé. In fact, the singer’s married name is not “Mrs. Carter.” She and her husband

combined their names to create the hyphenate “Knowles-Carter” (Winfrey Harris 2013: par.

24).

Beyoncé and Jay-Z are often portrayed as an American power couple. Their displayed intimacy in performances and videos is significant because we rarely see intimacy between

Black wives and husbands in mainstream culture (Johnson and Loscocco 2015: 160). In fact, most representations of Black love mostly focus on unhappiness and the myth of the Black family collapse (Johnson and Loscocco 2015: 149). This image is supported by statistics of Prins 48

Black love in society: "Marital happiness and satisfaction tend to be lower among Blacks than among Whites" (Johnson and Loscocco 2015: 149). Moreover, finding 'Mr Right' is often seen as something problematic for Black women (Chatman 2015: 7, Collins 2000: 174). This is problematic, since "marriage continues to be a major life goal in the United States" (Johnson and Loscocco 2015: 142). The marriage between Beyoncé and Jay-Z functions as a counter- narrative: it is presented to us as a picture perfect love story. This is not per se presented as something out of the ordinary. As aforementioned, romantic love and marriage are of great importance in the United States and Jay-Z and Beyoncé merely correspond to societal expectations when they present us with images of their successful marriage. This message upsets the private/public dichotomy but also plays into the fact that the couple needs to be ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

In what follows I will explain how Beyoncé's explicit relation with Jay-Z strengthens her image on two levels: firstly, it grounds her in a hip hop tradition that enables her to speak to hip hop fans and popular music fans simultaneously (groups that are sometimes intersecting but come from different genres) and secondly, it strengthens her popularity in American culture where marriage and family life are still highly valued. I will do so through a discussion of two aspects of Beyoncé's relationship with the hip hop mogul: the image of the couple as a modern version of American icons Bonnie and Clyde and the couple as (extra)ordinary

American family with special attention to the role motherhood plays in her star text.

Bonnie and Clyde

Jay-Z and Beyoncé are probably most known for their collaboration on Beyoncé's first single:

"Crazy in Love" (2003). "Crazy in Love" was the first song they worked on together and when they got married in 2008 the newlyweds shared their first dance to it. The song covers how

"good girl" Beyoncé falls in love with "bad boy" Jay-Z, former drugs dealer and immensely Prins 49 successful rap artist. Jay-Z is introduced to us, Beyoncé's audience, as a typical hip hop

"gangsta". Throughout the video that accompanies the song we see him living a "thug life," glamorizing a dangerous lifestyle that is often identified with poverty. When we first lay eyes on him, he wears a baseball cap that makes it difficult to see his face hence hard to establish his identity. Jay-Z acts as though he does not want to be recognized, as if his criminal endeavours force him to live a life outside the public eye. This stands in stark contrast to

Beyoncé's star text thus far: she is then known as a classy and slightly conservative young woman who grew up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. The song talks about the ways in which her love for Jay-Z changes her, and has an atmosphere of action and danger around it.

There is a clear power dynamic visible: Jay-Z is in control and Beyoncé is swept of her feet. This is not only visible in the lyrics of the song, but also through the difference in clothing: while Jay-Z is fully dressed, Beyoncé's body is increasingly on display throughout the video. These power dynamics, with Jay-Z as active and powerful and Beyoncé as passive and idle, can be interpreted as a racial trope. Johnson and Loscocco describe the importance of masculinity in Black culture, and conclude: "if Black men need to be stronger, then Black women need to be weaker" (2015: 154). In the song Beyoncé sings how Jay-Z makes her lose her mind:

Got me looking, so crazy, my baby

I'm not myself, lately I'm foolish, I don't do this ("Crazy in Love" 2003).

During the song Jay-Z affects her narrative significantly: while she enters the video as a "fly girl" with an innocent feel to it her alter ego Sasha Fierce comes into existence near the end of the video. This happens when Beyoncé is stuck in car that is subsequently lid on fire by Jay-Z.

After a huge explosion we see Beyoncé raised from the ashes like a phoenix but in a completely different look. The new Beyoncé is all grown up: we see a sensual woman, draped Prins 50 in a luxurious coat from Chinchilla fur and barely dressed underneath it. She no longer accepts the rules she used to abide: we see her rebelliously kicking against a fire hydrant in the street and when it breaks she dances in the water that rains down on her and sensually touches upon her own wet body. Her innocence is gone – Beyoncé became a sex symbol through the course of the song and now embraces her sexuality (although under a different name then her own, namely Sasha Fierce).

"Crazy in Love" is a perpetuation of the Bonnie and Clyde narrative they started when they collaborated on "03 Bonnie and Clyde" (2003). Jay-Z and Beyoncé popularized this subgenre within hip hop, which "depicts women as loyal partners to their men, sticking with them through adversity and acting as partners in crime (literally and metaphorically)" (Hunter and Soto 2009: 182). The girlfriends in these videos are often contrasted with "bad girls", whom Hunter and Soto describe as hoes, bitches, hoodrats, gold-diggers and chickenheads

"who only want money from men or are only useful for sex" (2009: 182). "Good women" in the Bonnie and Clyde narrative are willing to "sacrifice and potentially even give up their lives for their men" (Hunter and Soto 2009: 183). They thus subdue their personal needs to those of their male counterparts. Standing by your men is an important tradition in Black American culture. As Johnson and Loscocco explain: "Part of the responsibility of Black men was to 'act like a man' and part of the responsibility of Black women was 'to encourage and support the manhood of our men … never intimidate him with her knowledge or common sense, let him feel stable and dominant'" (2015: 154). Within the Bonnie and Clyde narrative these gender relations are continued through a hypermasculine portrayal of men as active, violent and tough, and a view of women as loyal followers that sacrifice personal needs for their loved one.

In "03 Bonnie and Clyde" Jay-Z raps how Beyoncé is his "thoroughest girl", which implies that he has more girls though none are as thorough as Beyoncé. He tells us they are the new Bobby and Whitney, and with this reference he places their relationship in a racial line of romantic love: Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston used to be seen as the ultimate Prins 51 power couple and Jay-Z and Beyoncé here present themselves as their heirs. Jay-Z explains he and Beyoncé are unstoppable when they are together: "Whatever she lacks, I'm right over her shoulder / Whenever I'm off track mami is keepin' me focused" ("03 Bonnie and Clyde"

2003). In the chorus Jay sings: "All I need in this life of sin, is me and my girlfriend" and

Beyoncé adds: "Down to ride 'til the very end, it's me and my boyfriend" ("03 Bonnie and

Clyde" 2003). Jay-Z thus reinforces the notion of a dangerous life of sin in which Beyoncé stands by him as loyal sidekick, while Beyoncé confirms she will stand by her man until death.

Jay-Z raps:

And no, I ain't perfect – nobody walkin this earth's surface is

But girlfriend, work with the kid

I keep you workin that Hermes Birkin bag,

Manolo Blahnik, Timbs, aviator lens

600 drops, Hercedes Benz

The only time you wear Burberry to swim

And I don't have to worry, only worry is him

She do anything necessary for him

And I do anything necessary for her

So don't let the necessary occur, yep! ("03 Bonnie and Clyde" 2003).

In this verse, Jay-Z tells us he is not perfect but will provide Beyoncé with a life of luxury if she stays loyal to him. This seems to contrast with Beyoncé's aforementioned emphasis on the importance of financial independence. Moreover, we know that she by no means needs him to pay for anything because of her wealth. Jay-Z also alludes to their willingness to kill for each other, and warns a potential outsider to not tempt him. Romantic love is connected to a narrative of danger and violence. After a repetition of the chorus Jay-Z explicitly gives Prins 52

Beyoncé permission to talk ("Talk to 'em B") and Beyoncé conveys her commitment to her boyfriend:

If I was your girlfriend

I'll be there for you, if somebody hurts you

Even if that somebody is me

Yeah-hee

Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be

And so I put this on my life

Nobody or nothing will ever come between us

And I promise I'll give my life

And all of my trust if you was my boyfriend

Put this on my life

The air that I breathe in, all that I believe in

I promise I'll give my life

My love and my trust if you was my boyfriend ("03 Bonnie and Clyde" 2003).

If Jay-Z would thus accept her as his girlfriend (something he already seemed to have done when we look at his lyrics in this song) she will give all of herself to him. The love they apparently share is nevertheless not visible in the video that accompanies the song. We do not see them touching each other much let alone share a kiss. Although the lyrical content of the song present us with unequal gender relations, the video conveys a more equal image. They often stand next to each other as equal partners in crime. Both Jay-Z's dangerous lifestyle and

Beyoncé's loyalty are visually confirmed in the video. We see Beyoncé and Jay-Z fleeing the police (with Beyoncé behind the wheel) making their way to Mexico. The video is filled with connotations of both wealth and danger. While the police are looking for them we see

Beyoncé dancing in a red dress while Jay smokes a cigar. Again, wealth, eroticism, and danger Prins 53 are merged. The availability of Beyoncé's body conveys a certain tension between her body presented for our consumption as audience, exhibited to the male gaze, but at the same time controlled through the presence of her boyfriend Jay-Z who warns us to not "let the necessary occur" – if someone would cross a line he would make sure they will not live do that again.

Beyoncé also plays into the hip hop aesthetic of danger and violence, and ever so often pulls her cap down so we cannot see her eyes. The placement of the couple in hip hop history is strengthened through the references the video makes to one of the genres greatest legends:

Tupac. We see Beyoncé and Jay in front of a wall that has "Tupac rifa siempre" written on it and the chorus lyrically references Tupac's song "me and my girlfriend". This song, and her affiliation with Jay-Z, thus anchors Beyoncé in the hip hop genre.

The Bonnie and Clyde narrative remains an important aspect of their star text in their later work: in 2014 they co-headlined a concert tour named "On The Run". The poster for the tour shows us Beyoncé and Jay-Z both wearing balaclavas. Jay-Z is visually unidentifiable; we can only determine his identity because his name is written on his image. We see Beyoncé's arm protectively shielding Jay-Z from us, the audience, while she defiantly looks into the camera.

Figure 9: The poster for the "On The Run" concert tour

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The tour's name is based on another collaboration of the pair called "Part II (On The Run)"

(2013), which is a sequel to "03 Bonnie and Clyde". This song, featured on Jay'z album Magna

Carta … Holy Grail (2013) starts with Beyoncé singing:

Who wants that perfect love story anyway, anyway?

Cliché, cliché, cliché, cliché

Who wants that hero love that saves the day, anyway?

Cliché, cliché, cliché, cliché ("Part II (On The Run)" 2013).

Her love with Jay apparently differs from other love stories. What makes their love imperfect seems to be the continuous danger that keeps lurking around the corner because of Jay-Z's dangerous life style. Beyoncé sings that she hears sirens when they make love, and confirms that she will stand by her man until the cops take her away from him. She sings: "And if loving you had a price / I would pay my life for you" ("Part II (On The Run)"). Jay-Z subsequently raps: "I been wilding since a juvi, she was a good girl / 'Til she knew me, now she is in the drop bustin' Uey's screaming" and " She fell in love with the bay guy, bad guy /

What you doing with them rap guys, them rap guys? / They ain't see potential in me girl, but you see it / If it's me and you against the world, then so be it" ("Part II (On The Run)"). Ten years after their collaboration on "03 Bonnie and Clyde" the couple reiterates the same tropes: an image of Beyoncé as loyal woman that will stand by her man until she dies, and of Jay-Z as

"bad boy" that corrupted the "good girl". Strong "us against the world" sentiments are omnipresent.

The tour's narrative is shaped through a cinematic Bonnie and Clyde story with Jay-Z and Beyoncé as lead roles. The filmic atmosphere was strengthened through the release of a trailer beforehand, in which we once more witness the couple running from the police. Again,

Beyoncé's narrative of "good girl" and loyal girlfriend lured into a life of danger through her Prins 55 love for "bad boy" Jay-Z takes centre stage. When the audience entered the stadiums in which the couple performed their tour the words "THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE" could be read from giant screens. This creates a distance between the couple's Bonnie and Clyde narrative and their "real" love life. With both these words and the filmic atmosphere around the tour they explicitly frame their Bonnie and Clyde narrative as play. Their performances were interspersed with projected videos in which the couple violently robs a bank and afterwards runs from the police. Symbols that return throughout the concert are the American flag and the merging of wealth, romance, eroticism, criminality and danger. The narrative is broken near the end of the concert, when the couple performs "Forever Young/Halo."

This is real life

Before they start singing "Forever Young/Halo" Jay-Z asks the audience to put their phones in the air, which makes them akin to a sea of stars. Jay-Z and Beyoncé stand on a stage in the middle of the stadium and are lit by spotlights and the phones of their fans. Beyoncé wears a black-and-white dress with a 17 feet long skirt with the American flag on it, which turns the icon into a symbol of the American nation. She slowly sings the first verse of the song, and we hear Jay-Z shout "sing!" towards the audience before the chorus starts. Right as he does so, we see the screens that earlier told us "THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE". At this moment it tells us otherwise: "THIS IS REAL LIFE". While Beyoncé sings she wants to be forever young, we see intimate home videos of the couple. The Bonnie and Clyde narrative is thus explicitly broken and the focus shifts to their "real life". In this life they mostly have fun while living a life filled with love and glamour. The audience is presented with images that have never been shown in public before. It looks like we see Jay-Z proposing to Beyoncé, we see them getting their famous wedding tattoos and even catch a glimpse of the wedding itself. The videos also show us Beyoncé and Jay-Z while traveling the world, smoking cigars and drinking expensive Prins 56 alcohol. What happens when we look at home videos and Instagram pictures (which I will discuss a little later on) is that we switch from a "representational regime" to a "presentational regime" (Marshall as in Sastre 2014: 133). As Roland Barthes argues about photographic messages, these types of messages appear to be “messages without a code”. “According to

Barthes, the appearance of the photographic image as ‘a mechanical analogue of reality,’ without art or artifice, obscures the fact that that image is heavily constructed, or ‘coded’; it is grounded in a context of historical and cultural meanings” (Barthes as explained by Pollack

Petchesky 1987: 269). We get the illusion that we have unfiltered access to a celebrity via these images – that we see the celebrity as s/he really is.

Halfway through the performance of "Forever Young" the music changes. The couple subsequently walks towards each other and stands side by side in a loving embrace while they look at the screen. On the screen we now see the next narrative of their love story. After witnessing Beyoncé and Jay-Z dating, their engagement and their wedding, we now see Jay-Z with his arms wrapped around Beyoncé's pregnant belly. Beyoncé sings the chorus of "Halo"

(2008):

Everywhere I'm looking now I'm surrounded by your embrace

Baby I can see your halo, you know you're my saving grace

You're everything I need and more, It's written all over your face

Baby I can feel your halo, pray it won't fade away

This chorus is used to emphasize the important place their daughter Blue Ivy takes in their lives. In a clip that seems to be filmed right after the baby was born we see Beyoncé holding her tiny new-born in a hospital bed and afterwards we see Jay-Z carrying his daughter out of the hospital. This is again a confirmation of the "ordinariness" of the two stars: their daughter serves as proof for their everyday American family life. Prins 57

It is interesting to note that the clips that feature Blue Ivy show us Beyoncé as mother as much as they show us Jay-Z as father. Black women are often portrayed as nurturing and strong, and the care of children often falls disproportionately on their shoulders (Johnson and

Loscocco 2015: 151). Although Beyoncé clearly comes across as a loving mother, Jay-Z is also clearly posited as an involved father. This stands in contrast to his "thug" image as a rap star.

Aside from his masculine and tough image his star text is here expanded to include his identity as loving husband and caring father.

While we see the home videos we also see the couple on stage, embracing each other and beaming at the images of their child. The fans get a clear message: the act is over right now, their family life and their identities as parents of Blue Ivy are presented as the true essence of their star texts. This is also strengthened through the pictures we find on Beyoncé's

Instagram:

Figure 10: Instagram Pictures

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Here we see the importance of the family, and moreover the importance of Jay-Z as both husband and father. In the first picture he is presented as pillar of the family: he is both supportive and loving as a father and a fun and caring husband as well. He is clearly involved in the family life. The first picture has a strong patriarchal discourse as well, wherein Beyoncé is almost childlike and Jay-Z the grand patriarch of the family who is in charge. In the second picture we see the family in more equal manners, with both parents involved and having fun with Blue. As Chatman concludes: "This celebration of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's union is noteworthy because images of a happily married, heterosexual black couple embarking on parenthood together are situated as counter to prevailing discourses that the 'typical' black family is composed of an absentee father, and an unwed, poor, welfare-dependent, black mother" (Chatman 2015: 10).

"I was made for this"

The Documentary Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream (2013) partly revolves around Beyoncé's road to motherhood. While Jay-Z already spoke about her miscarriage in his song "Glory" (2012),

Beyoncé herself never spoke about this event before this documentary. She shares her experience in front of her webcam, directly addressing the audience:

About two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time, and I heard the heartbeat, which was the

most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life. And there’s something that happens when you

hear the heartbeat. It makes you truly know that there’s life inside you. I picked out names. I

envisioned what my child looked like. I was feeling very maternal. My first child, with the man

that I love. My family was so excited. I flew back to New York to get my check-up and… No

heartbeat. Literally the week before I went to the doctor… Everything was fine… But there was

no heartbeat. I went into the studio and wrote the saddest song I have ever written in my life.

And it was actually the first song I wrote for my album. And it was the best form of therapy for Prins 59

me, because it was the saddest thing I have ever been through (Beyoncé: Life is but a dream 2013).

The viewers of the documentary are thus let in on a very personal and difficult experience.

Through her display of vulnerability that is normally not part of her star text we get the feeling we see a glimpse of the "real" Beyoncé. A miscarriage is a gendered experience that is covered in notions of secrecy and taboo – it is not often publicly discussed. Pregnant women generally wait three months until they share the news of their pregnancy in order to make sure

"everything is safe". That Beyoncé nevertheless decides to share her miscarriage with us is thus significant: it breaks a silence that is often kept.

The song she wrote, "Heartbeat", was never released but can be heard in the documentary. It is a song of a mere 7 lines:

I guess love just wasn't enough for us to survive

I swear, I swear, I swear I tried

You took the life right out of me

I'm so unlucky I can't breath

You took the life right out of me

I'm longing for your heartbeat

Heartbeat, heartbeat (Beyoncé: Life is but a dream 2013).

Beyoncé conveys a feeling of responsibility for the miscarriage. The song is heart wrenching, and we hear a very emotional and depressed side of the artist whose self-representation mostly centers on strength, control and ambition. Moreover, when we close read the lyrics we see that Beyoncé not just mourns the loss of an unborn child but also laments a loss of self. With lines like "I guess love just wasn't enough for us to survive" and "You took the life right out of me" we get the impression she lost part of her own life during her miscarriage. These lines also Prins 60 remind us of the unstable boundaries between self and other during pregnancy: the difference between self and other becomes troubled through sharing a body. This makes it harder to define what and who were los when a miscarriage occurs, something that makes the mourning process very complex.

Not long after this confession, the singer tells the webcam: “I think I need to go listen to

‘make love to me’ and make love to my husband” (Beyoncé: Life is but a dream 2013). The viewers here are to believe they witnessed moment Beyoncé became pregnant with Blue Ivy, since Beyoncé short after announces her pregnancy to the webcam. A sequence of home videos in which we see images of her relationship with Jay-Z follows this announcement. The focus of these fragments clearly lies on gendered experiences lots of heterosexual women will recognize in some way. Her pregnancy is ultimately authenticated through the display of her ultrasound with the fetus of Blue. In this image the boundary between in- and outside is completely destroyed: we have direct access to her womb. Through this representational regime we gain the impression that we have unfiltered access to her pregnancy. The choice to show the ultrasound might have to do with the rumors about the use of a surrogate mother by the couple – a rumor Beyoncé experienced as very hurtful and discusses in the documentary.

As Alexandra Sastre wrote about Kim Kardashian's butt X-ray, showing the body in this extremely transparent way proofs that it is a body that "has nothing to hide, is fully accessible and exemplifies a collapsing of the private self with the public self" (Sastre 2014: 133).

Her miscarriage is adopted into the narrative as hurdle that had to be taken to become her ultimate self, as something she needed to go through in order to grow. Her opinions on the value of her miscarriage show us a crude teleological worldview. “Conclusions about the positive results of personal hardship are often, although not always, based on an underlying assumption about lives being guided by some master plan. The Judeo-Christian religious traditions certainly provide numerous models for being tested by God and triumphing over hardships by placing one’s faith in God” (Layne 1997: 301). In this view loss is something that Prins 61 is spiritually enriching (Layne 1997: 301). The birth of Blue Ivy seems to help Beyoncé to come to terms with her miscarriage – it legitimizes her as a mother, and enables her to speak about both her lost child and her healthy baby and embed both experiences in her star text.

Her love for Blue is further expressed in "Blue", the final song on her album Beyoncé.

While father Jay-Z already wrote two songs about their daughter ("Glory" and "Jay Z Blue"), this is Beyoncé's first and only ode to her daughter so far. The video for "Blue" was shot in

Brazil and in it we see Beyoncé and Blue while on vacation, mostly enjoying beautiful beaches and interacting with the local community in some parts. The images of mother and child are intimate: we see Beyoncé tickling, hugging and kissing Blue. Beyoncé sings about the deep-felt love for her child:

Every day I feel so blessed to be looking at you

Cause when you open your eyes, I feel alive

My heart beats so damn quick when you say my name

When I'm holding you tight, I'm so alive ("Blue" 2013).

Her child stands in a direct relation with her sense of self and causes her great feelings of happiness. In most of the beach scenes in the videos both of them wear white dresses, which adds to the image of dreamy perfection, innocence and union. Jay-Z is only visible for a few seconds while walking down the beach with a beer in his hand, but is referred to near the end of the song by Blue herself when she asks "Can we see daddy?" ("Blue" 2013). Although the song is a love song about the motherly love Beyoncé feels for her child, the involvement of

Jay-Z as father is again confirmed with both the glimpse we get from him in the video and the fact that Blue asks for him.

The visual album Beyoncé (2013) takes the viewer on a journey through womanhood with a focus on bodily experiences of beauty, desire, passion, and love. This journey ends with the Prins 62 final shots of "Blue", where we see Beyoncé walking away from us with her daughter in her arms. Motherhood is thus portrayed as the ultimate goal of womanhood, as the final aspect

Beyoncé adds to her star text that makes her the quintessential female subject. Gayle Letherby argues that “motherhood is seen as a privilege and a duty — the ‘natural’ consequence of marriage and proof of female adulthood” (1993: 173). Letherby and Williams discuss how women without children are often perceived as "childlike". "[W]omen who have no children are considered to have no responsibilities and thus to be like children themselves" (Letherby and Williams 1999: 723). Apart from this, motherhood is also a racial experience that is highly valued in African American traditions (Phillips et al. 2005: 259). When Beyoncé discusses her anxieties about giving birth she reaffirms the necessity of becoming a mother: "I just kept thinking: I was made for this, God made me for this" (Beyoncé: Life Is But A Dream 2013). She later explicitly calls giving birth the most beautiful experience of her life. She calls herself the luckiest person alive due to the birth of her daughter. Although the documentary discusses more than miscarriage, pregnancy and motherhood, it is obvious that this is the grand narrative – the most important thing to Beyoncé. Not her art nor her husband, but her identity as a mother.

Nevertheless, Beyoncé does not plan to become a stay-at-home mom. She accentuated her desire to go back to work after the birth of her daughter in many interviews and made the desire to "maintain career success alongside a happy home life" an important part of her star text (Allen et al. 2014: 13). However, as Jermyn notes, "for many women, being a working mother is first and foremost an economic necessity" (2012: 252). However, Beyoncé has a net worth of $350 million and thus no financial incentive to return to work. Chatman argues "her desire to return to work so quickly is representative of a post-feminist sensibility that stresses that women maintain their independence and sense of self through paid labor" (2015: 11).

The focus on work as choice is problematic because it depoliticizes the issue of combining care work and paid labor. In this way, as explained before, post-feminism "focuses on women's Prins 63 behaviors as barriers to success, thereby deflecting attention from economic, social, and cultural forces producing gender (and intersecting) inequality (particularly that experienced by working-class women). In this individualized and internalized revolution, women must take ultimate responsibility for their success through practices of self-care across all realms including motherhood" (Allen et al. 2015: 13-4). Dayna Chatman elaborates:

The rhetoric about Beyoncé’s pregnancy and return to work evoke an occasionally problematic

discourse about the lives of women today: women are empowered, autonomous, self-governing

citizens whose ability to multi-task — by bearing and rearing children, in addition to working

outside the home — are valued assets in a global-capitalist society concerned with maintaining

an active population of producers (and consumers). Although discourse about women’s

empowerment are valuable, when opportunities are framed as limitless and without impediment

there is an erasure of the inherent social context in which those opportunities are made available

or closed off (2015: 2).

Apart from repeatedly voicing her desire to keep working, Beyoncé also continued to sexualize herself after the birth of her daughter. Patricia Hill Collins argues that some women feel "they must choose between being seen as asexual mothers or hypersexual whores" (2000:

169). In this discourse "sexual desirability or allure is incompatible with motherhood" (Jermyn

2008: 165). While Beyoncé refuses to make a choice between these two identities, her narrative of sexual mother plays into the notion of "Yummy Mummy", a concept by Jo

Littler. "Littler documents a shift from Western Christian history of maternal asexuality to the overt sexualisation of motherhood, where mother must avoid dowdiness at all costs. As

Beyoncé's mediation is testament, this is a very carefully managed and circumscribed sexuality" (Allen et al. 2015:12). In other words: Beyoncé gets to be a sexual being and a mother, but only because of her adherence to a very powerful cultural norm: the institution of Prins 64 heterosexual marriage. Allen et al. eloquently conclude: "Through celebrating the domestic heterosexual unit of marriage, and the 'appropriate' fertility it stands for, accusations of being the wrong kind of sexual subject are diffused and the desirability of the family is affirmed"

(Allen et al. 2015:13). Throughout this chapter we have seen that Beyoncé continues to play different roles both in explicitly fictional and supposedly "real life" narratives. She shows us the stereotypically tough yet submissive woman in hip hop culture, the loving wife, caring mother and at the same time maintains an image that rests on a view of the artist as financially independent quintessential "independent woman" and feminist. Whenever her domestic life is mentioned her narrative as independent woman and feminist become temporarily subsumed and vice versa.

Prins 65

Conclusion

In 2012, in honor of World Humanitarian Day August 19th, Beyoncé performed her song “I

Was Here” at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. In it she sings:

“When I leave this world, I’ll leave no regrets / Leave something to remember, so they won’t forget” ("I Was Here" 2012). The song continues:

I did everything I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here ("I Was Here" 2012).

While Beyoncé sung her heart out in a dramatic white gown, images of humanitarian workers in crisis areas filled the enormous screen behind her. The video illustrates the simultaneous performance of the star-as-ordinary and star-as-extraordinary. On the one hand it emphasizes

Beyoncé’s ordinariness in her wish to be remembered, with an emphasis on her sincerity and ambition — two important parts of her star text. On the other hand Beyoncé’s extraordinariness is accentuated through the fact that the song is dedicated to all humanitarian workers around the world and performed in the Headquarters of the United

Nations in New York. Through the first person narrative of the song, the fact that she sings “I was here” rather than “you were here”, Beyoncé is transformed in a spokesperson for not just all humanitarian workers on earth, but a symbol for human-beings everywhere.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper Beyoncé explains how she and the United

Nations are similar in their goals: “…[F]or the U.N. to want to include the whole world was Prins 66 something important, and I feel like that’s what I represent” (Beyoncé as in Chick 2012, par.

5). As I have shown throughout this thesis, this insistence on her universal value is an important part of her star text. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and

Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos added to Beyoncé’s comment: “I told Beyoncé:

It’s great that we have her, because she can reach millions of people. I could spend the rest of my life doing what I do, and I wouldn’t reach a 10th of that number” (Chick 2012, par. 6).

Aside from this blunt insight in the marketing value of celebrities for political organizations, the universal outreach of Beyoncé as brand is again reinstated. The insistence on the universal value of Beyoncé’s persona suggests a world wherein racism and sexism are eradicated. When a successful Black woman functions as the voice for humanity a utopian worldview is advocated. The performance is a perfect fit with Beyoncé’s star text: there is attention for her ambition and sincerity, her universal value is reinstated and, as seen before, tools and strategies to truly change the world are absent. In the end, the performance is nothing more than a great marketing opportunity for both the product and role model Beyoncé, and the

United Nations.

Aside from the polarity of Beyoncé as ordinary and Beyoncé as extraordinary, there is a second schism between conservative and progressive aspects in her star text. This dualism is also visible in the white dress the star wears during her U.N. performance. On the one hand the whiteness of the dress suggests a conservative symbolization of Beyoncé’s “purity,”

Beyoncé as “free of sin”. On the other hand the tight fit of the dress accentuates her curvaceous body, and in this way disrupts a certain White aesthetic. As became clear throughout this thesis, this investment in both conservative and progressive discourses is continually present in her star text. Her performance of “At Last” during the inaugural

Neighborhood Ball presents a progressive post-racial version of America and maybe even the world, while the white-washing of her photos for L’Oriel show this utopian image of the world to be unrealistic. Moreover, videos like “Diva” (2008) and “Grown Woman” (2014) make Prins 67 explicit use of her Blackness to signify an active female sexuality. A similar dualism can be found in Beyoncé’s feminist identity. Beyoncé delivered a short activist essay in the Shriver report about gender inequality, but at the same time perpetuates a post-feminist worldview with songs like “Who Run The World (Girls)” (2011). Her feminism is built on a foundation of boundless ambition and sovereign sexiness. This sexiness is in turn explicitly framed in her marriage to hip hop mogul Jay-Z: her meta narrative reminds us that Beyoncé is only sexual in accepted, heterosexual and monogamous ways within the institution of marriage. While she even named her tour after her husband, she also used The Mrs Carter Show World Tour to sing how she is “not just his little wife” in her song “Flawless***” (2013). Again, a reiteration of conservative as well as progressive discourses can be found. The importance Beyoncé as brand lays on traditional narratives of motherhood works in authenticating manners: while she performs in sexualized and stereotypical manners, she in the end is first and foremost Blue

Ivy’s mother. Beyoncé’s star text thus emphasizes conservative as well as progressive discourses of race, gender, class, sexuality and nationality. The multi-faceted intersections that become visible in her star text together form the foundation for her metanarrative as a star.

The commercial purpose of stardom is disguised through the inclusion of strategies of authenticity and sincerity in her star text. The illusion that the “real” Beyoncé is knowable to her audience is strengthened through for example the inclusion of home videos with her husband and child in her documentary, performances and video clips. Notwithstanding,

Beyoncé mentions the elusiveness of her identity in the short documentary Yours and Mine

(2014) which was released to celebrate the one-year anniversary of her self-titled album Beyoncé

(2013). She comments:

When you’re famous no one looks at you as a human anymore. You become the

property of the public. There’s nothing real about it. … You can’t put your finger on

who I am. I can’t put my finger on who I am (Yours and Mine 2014). Prins 68

Beyoncé here voices a clear awareness of the commodified nature of her brand. While the brand Beyoncé merely exists by the grace of the physical existence of her body, she confirms it has nothing to do with Beyoncé as human being: all aspects of her life that are visible to the public are commodified.

However contradicting the complex intersections in Beyoncé’s star text may seem, they all exist simultaneously. Moreover, as aforementioned, they are synchronously drenched in notions of commodification and authenticity. This mixture of several discourses lies at the heart of stardom in itself. As I pointed out in the introduction of this thesis, star images are necessarily paradoxical: “the star image is an incoherent image” (Ellis 1982: 2-3). This thesis supports Marshall’s theorization of celebrities as discursive battlegrounds that are inherently unstable. Dyer describes how the star phenomenon always navigates between the individual and society, the natural and artificial. This means that the star phenomenon is necessarily unstable, since it constantly sways from one formation of what it means to be human to another (Dyer 2004: 16). The investment in both these progressive and conservative discourses thus illustrates the complex intersections of identity in the world today.

The emphasis on the possibility of being everything at once — the attractive and sexually savvy woman and the heterosexual married mother, the universal symbol and Black activist, the independent career woman and loving homemaker — is not just present in

Beyoncé’s star text but resonates in contemporary society. As the media keeps showing inspirational women that are able to control all these aspects of their life, the pressure on women around the globe to live up to these infeasible images increases. Moreover, the fact that these images are consumerist by nature, that Beyoncé is never visible as a human being but is only knowable as a brand that needs to be sold, is disguised and often forgotten. While the brand Beyoncé might function as a role model due to her visibility and the adoption of a discourse of empowerment in her star text, the first and foremost goal of her star text is to Prins 69 make as much money of this micro-managed meta narrative of her persona as possible.

However, the embodiment of these different notions and intersections also shows an insistence on complex personhood and the fragility of social categories to begin with. As

Beyoncé’s star text shows, identities may reside on various intersections at once, which illustrates the inherent contingency of identity in the first place. If one sees the persona

Beyoncé as a meta-example of what it means to be a humanbeing today, her star text illustrates how all boundaries that constitute accepted positions within social categories are fragile and artificial. To put it even stronger: if one takes the discursive battleground within this star text as an inherently unstable phenomenon that reflects certain aspects of society today, one might say that the brand Beyoncé symbolizes how identities are inherently unstable, and function as strategies rather than essential dispositions.

Beyoncé as star often represents a post-racial post-feminist utopian world in which one no longer needs to choose between self-objectifying practices and being a feminist, between being the best in the business and being a mother, between being Black and universal. While some of these complexities might be interpreted as liberating and subversive, some of them work in oppressing and depoliticizing manners that render (Black) women responsible for either their own success or failure. Beyoncé’s star text, and stardom in general, is built on the American Dream of success, the notion one can achieve anything no matter who one is or where one comes from as long as one is willing to work hard enough. This conception of the possibility of success depoliticizes many disadvantaged groups in favor of a celebratory and commodified, though not necessarily inauthentic, version of neoliberal individualism in late-capitalist America.

In conclusion, Beyoncé as phenomenon reiterates an intricate demand of complex personhood. In Beyoncé's star text, several societal concerns in which issues of race, gender, sexuality, nationality and class intersect become visible. The fact that the superstar embodies both conservative and progressive notions reflects these contemporary societal struggles.

Beyoncé refuses to identify as a singularly interpretable star and through this insistence on Prins 70 multiplicity her star text might serve as an illustration of the limits of everyday “either/or”- thinking. Her star text shows how social categories are unable to delineate the complexities of a socio-political reality that always requires an intersectional and dynamic vision of identity, not as a way of being but as a way of strategizing.

Just when I thought I finished my thesis the Super Bowl happened. On February 7th 2016

Beyoncé performed alongside Chris Martin and Bruno Mars during the halftime show of one of the biggest sport events in the United States of America. Although her performance lasted a mere two minutes it quickly became the most discussed part of the night. Beyoncé performed her new song "Formation" (2016) – a song she released only a day before the Super Bowl.

"Formation" (2016) is unapologetically Black and politically charged. The song and accompanying music video call attention to Black suffering while it simultaneously celebrates

Black culture with imagery of wigs, gospel and twerking. The video starts out with Beyoncé on top of a slowly sinking police car in Katrina-struck New Orleans while we hear Messy Mya asking "What happened after New Orleans?". From there on it consists a continuous stream of

Black images, of which a young Black boy defiantly dancing in front of a line of police officers in riot gear especially stands out. After the shot in which the boy is featured we see a wall with

"stop shooting us" written on it ("Formation" 2016). The song clearly demands attention for the contemporary racial struggles in America and aligns with the Black Lives Matter movement.

The performance seems to imply a more definite incorporation of activism in

Beyoncé's star text. While her performance of "I Was Here" (2012) featured Beyoncé as universal symbol for humanity, "Formation" (2016) on the contrary calls attention to

Beyoncé's Blackness as essential feature of her star text. Beyoncé confirms this most explicitly when she sings about her Black roots through mentioning her genealogy: "My daddy

Alabama, Momma Louisiana, you mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama" Prins 71

("Formation" 2016). This lineage is used to emphasize the ordinariness of her stardom – her

Blackness is in a way used to validate her "realness". The line "Earned all this money but they never took the country out me" functions not just as an emphasis of star-as-ordinary, but also as a declaration of her allegiance to the Black community ("Formation" 2016). With sentences like these Beyoncé claims her Southern Black heritage as the core of her star text. She reminds us that however universal her outreach or success might be, she first and foremost remains a

Black woman from the South.

While, as I have shown throughout this thesis, Beyoncé's star text is always invested in a post-racial utopian discourse that is passed race and politics and a racial Black discourse simultaneously, Beyoncé during the Super Bowl clearly chose to emphasize the latter. The performance will without a doubt be remembered as one of the most explicitly political performances in recent memory. This does however not immediately dismiss the post-racial aspects of her star text, nor does it debunk the commodified nature of her persona. The performance is inevitably as much an example of Black pride and activism, as it is another example of the commodification of both Blackness and activism by Beyoncé as brand. What is more, the neoliberal focus of her activism that has been discussed in this thesis is not disrupted. "Formation" (2016) features lines like "You might be a Black Bill Gates in the making" and "Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper". These lines perpetuate a vision of financial power as the ultimate way to equality, and ignore institutionalized racism that makes it far less likely for a Black person to become as rich as Bill Gates, or as wealthy as

Beyoncé for that matter. As we have seen many times before in this thesis, Beyoncé's activism remains void of tools and strategies to truly change the world, and her personal success gets conflated with the possibility of Black success in general. Nevertheless, "Formation" (2016) is a powerful Black feminist and anti-racist protest song that calls upon Black women to get in formation. The forthcoming album, which will be released any day now, shall have to help Prins 72 determine whether or not this more radically political and activist angle will be perpetuated and have a lasting effect on Beyoncé's continuously evolving and unstable star text.

Prins 73

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