Exposing the Lemons That Made Lemonade
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Exposing the lemons that made Lemonade How the black female experience represented in the visual album ‘Lemonade’ carves a wakeful third space Master thesis in Comparative Cultural Analysis Laura Boog 10615148 Supervisor: Kasia Mika University of Amsterdam June 13th, 2018 Words: 20648 Contents Introduction 5 Situating the project in its fields 9 Feminism and black feminism 9 Black studies 10 Postcolonial trauma theory 11 Chapter one: How the visual album Lemonade creates unity, recognition and resistance 13 History 13 Third space 14 The Female Group 16 Recognition 19 Resistance 22 Chapter two: Suffering and its possibilities in the poetry of Warsan Shire 27 Voices 28 The Female Body 29 Mother’s Lemonade 36 Chapter three: Creating a wakeful third space 41 Revisiting the third space 41 Including a specific group 42 Origin in the past 43 The wake 44 Liberation 49 Conclusion 51 Bibliography 56 Appendix 61 “FOR THOSE WHO HAVE DIED RECENTLY [..] FOR THOSE WHO DIED IN THE PAST THAT IS NOT YET PAST [..] FOR THOSE WHO REMAIN [..] FOR ALL BLACK PEOPLE WHO, STILL, INSIST LIFE AND BEING INTO THE WAKE, [..] FOR MY MOTHER [..] AGAIN. AND ALWAYS.” (Sharpe 2016) Fig. 1. Winnie Harlow in a still from Lemonade. Billboard. Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment. Abstract According to black feminist scholars, the specificity of the realities of the black female group has been neglected and should gain more recognition, considering that their suffering inhabits both the suffering as a woman as well as that of being a black woman. Frantz Fanon argued in Black Skin, White Masks that the under-recognition of the black population has as a result that it hopes to find recognition ‘through the white world’, and that the black population should start to redefine themselves on their own terms. The idea of acknowledgement of the realities of suppressed groups and enabling silenced groups to express their realities on their own terms, rules different academic fields. This project will contain an analysis of the black experience presented in the visual album by Beyoncé, in which the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire plays a significant role as the leading narrative of the album. It is positioned within these discourses as it exposes how a collaboration of black female artists propose their black experience, acknowledging the pain of a bigger group in the population and creating an opportunity of change in the future. Through the tools of quotation and remembrance there is a synergy of personas, voices and perspectives created in the album, of which the effects to the entirety of the album will be exposed and explained. The album’s shift from recognition to resistance will be anchored in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s vision on history as a perspective, Christina Sharpe’s notion of a past that is never past. The close-reading of the visual album is two folded; the visual album will be analyzed with a clear focus on the themes addressed in the visuals as well as the quoted poetry by Warsan Shire will be thematically analyzed, the leading themes of the black experiences represented are brought to light. By putting the concepts of the third space by Homi Bhabha and the wake by Christina Sharpe in conversation with each-other, the effects of this synergy will be demonstrated. Introduction My best friend has a Dutch passport, an Iraqi background and her soul -I would say- lies in a space somewhere in-between. On the nights I went to her house this last year, there was always a moment she would propose to watch the videos of the album Lemonade (2016) together. Although I had never considered myself to be a huge fan of Beyoncé, I enjoyed seeing my friend feel empowered by the videos. I believe that in these videos she found a space she somehow could identify with, and I felt honoured she wanted me to enter that space with her. This project will contain an analysis of the visual album of Beyoncé, an album whose production was kept a secret until a few weeks before its launch in April 2016, when Beyoncé announced the (soon-to-be) release on Twitter. Although the popular press received Lemonade as an autobiographic album in which Beyoncé comments on her marriage with Jay-Z (Vernallis), scholars received and discussed Lemonade as an album that inhabits both a black empowerment message as well as a feminist message (Massie; Caramica). Neither one group or the other is wrong in this case; due to the album’s ambivalence in aesthetic form, it provides a space where multiple storylines work through and along each other. By containing multiple forms of aesthetics including music, film footage (both fictive as well as real footage of Beyoncé’s personal life) and poetry written by Warsan Shire, the visual album provides a multi-layered space for a multi-layered content. Carol Vernallis explains how form can influence the working together of different stories: “Music videos can develop several visual and aural threads, each containing motifs and meanings. Because each thread is connected to distinct musical gestures, timbres, and song sections, none needs to win out or be annihilated” (Vernallis). Lemonade is at once concerned with the pain resulting from betrayal in love whilst at the same time it addresses the reality of being a woman and the history of black racism (Perrott et al.). The engagement between audio and visuals in Lemonade provides a format in which more than one story can be told; what may seem an autobiographic film on a first view, when more closely encountered with, turns out to contain a black experience that speaks of violence and injustice to the black female population. This experience is represented by the quotation of various voices and perspectives, resulting in the album becoming a platform for the personas pictured in the frame, the artists that have collaborated to its production and its viewers (Vernallis). 5 Whilst the lyrics of the songs provide the album with the popular theme of love and betrayal, inhabiting the commercial character of the album and the signature of the individuality of the story of Beyoncé, it is in the images supporting the songs and the poetic passages between the songs where the opportunity is being taken to tell a different story. Holly Rogers states that “Lemonade’s hybrid form moves us affectively and encourages critical reflection. Bell hooks might claim that a viewer would not perceive these moments on first viewings, but music videos are intended to be watched many, many times” (Perrott et al.). Like Rogers points out, it is by closely encountering with the visuals that the album exposes itself as addressing themes that go further than the individual story of Beyoncé and represent a communal black experience (Perrott; Pareles). An important voice addressing the black female experience in the album can be found in the quoted poetry of Warsan Shire. The poetry written by the Somali-British female artist is the backbone of Lemonade that connects the different sections - consisting out of songs and/or other footage- to each other, creating a balanced aesthetics. The poetry, read by Beyoncé’s voice, has a captivating effect and draws the viewers further in the story (Vernallis). The importance of the poetess’ work for the entirety of the album is made clear, when in the credits of the album Warsan Shire is named as one of the first names credited for “Film Adaptation and Poetry”. Until the mentioning of her in the credits, her name remains anonymous. Apart from attributing to Lemonade’s varied form, the poetry is elementary to the album’s focus on oppressive social structures through addressing the psychological and socio-cultural implications of black womanhood. In ““Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” A feminist approach to Warsan Shire’s poetry”, Mayte Cantero Sanchez analyses the original poetry of Warsan Shire and argues that the poetess addresses in her poetry different kinds of violence associated with war, migration, trauma and patriarchal dynamics (57). She proposes the poetry of Warsan Shire to contain feministic views and looks for explanations of the themes addressed in the background of the writer. In the quoted poetry in Lemonade, the overarching theme seems to be ‘betrayal in love’, yet other themes are addressed through this notion of love; the poetry embodies the sorrow of the female body with a clear notion of violence and grief. The poems also address the role of the father as absent and the character of the mother as strengthened despite her pain. Therefore, I 6 will analyse the themes in the poetry and look at what it creates together with the images in the album as the second part of the project. The concepts of Quotation and Remembrance will be used as a red line through my analysis, as it is through these tools that the perspectives attributing to the black female experience are introduced in the album. For this reason, I will analyse the black experience of the album by mostly focusing on the visuals in the album and the poetry where these tools are at work, and put the lyrics of the songs on the background as it solely contains the individual voice of Beyoncé speaking of love. As pointed out earlier, the album is more than a story; it is a synergy of perspectives and threads, in which quotation is used to introduce, connect and sometimes merge multiple personas and voices. I will use the concept of quotation to expose which personas are quoted in the album, how the personas are quoted and what effect is created with their quotation in the album.