Today we have a review of one of Beyoncé's biggest masterpieces: The meaning behind Formation In 2016, Beyoncé dropped one of the most critically acclaimed music videos of her career. The song/video caused a lot of controversy, and it is the firts single from her album: Lemonade. Which is the album that she embraces her black ancestry, talks about a bunch of important things.
And the song was pretty well acclaimed by the critics, received a lot of awards and it was a success. But, untill this day, not everyone can understand everything she was trying to say because it has a lot of meanings and references behind the song, and the video. So, to help everyone out, I made a research on the internet.
And I'm gonna share with you guys, everything I found! We're gonna review the music video together, and I'm gonna explain everything to you guys. Right in the beggining, we see Beyoncé on top of a police car on a flooded area.
You can see flooded houses in the back. This is a reference to Hurricane Katrina. Over 10 years ago, Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, it made the city's system to prevent flood, to collapse, flooded the city.
Caused a big damage to it black community. New Orleans is a city located in the south region of the US. And the south of the US has, historically, the biggest concentration of black population.
Slavery was stronger there, it had strong politics of racial segregation and Jim Crow laws. All this opression made black people be not only the most vulnerable population of this region, but it also made that, untill this day, some of them weren't able to recover from this catastrophe, from the hurricane. And Beyoncé here is on top of a police car right!
? Which is not just anything! We're gonna understand this critic later on.
Now we see a bunch of shots of black people. We see some black men, dancing. Also LGBT's black men.
And in the background, we hear again the same voice, saying: This voice is from Messy Mya, a black and gay youtuber that was killed in 2010 when leaving the baby shower of a friend. So here Beyoncé is talking about black genocide. How high are the numbers of innocent black people in the US, and in the whole word, being killed just by being mistaken as criminals.
Now we see Beyoncé all in black, with other men in the back. With very traditional clothes. And this can be read as a lot of ways.
One of them, is that she is making reference to funerals held by black people in New Orleans. There's a shot later on the music video that shows a bit of these funerals. That generally they have some jazz.
So we have police, a young black innocent man that was killed, funerals. . .
Beyoncé here is, clearly, talking about police brutality. About innocent black people being killed by systemic oppression. About racism.
We also see images of north american churches. Churches are very important on their culture and they were very important especially to the north american civil rights movement. It's good to remember that Martin Luther King was a pastor.
Then Beyoncé appears in a collonial house, wearing collonial clothes. Saying she is rocking an expensive dress. Here Beyoncé is changing traditional societal norms.
On the collonial period, black women weren't wearing those expensive dresses. Black women were on the senzalas. On plantations.
Being enslaved. But time has changed. Now, Bey is the owner of the big house.
The powerful one. And now Beyoncé is on the corridors of this big house sayind: my daddy Alabama, momma Louisiana. You mix that negro, with that creole, make a Texas bama.
She is saying that she's black. That she is proud of it. She's shadin everyone that says she whitewashed herself to get on the top.
If you stop to watch Beyoncé previous albums, you're gonnna see that in a bunch of music videos, she is blonde, with straight hair. And this has caused a lot of critics from the black community saying that she was whitewashing herslef to reach the top. Here she is saying no!
She is black and proud of this. Not only saying she is black, but that she is a black woman with financial power. Now she owns the big house.
She rocks expensive clothes, she is the boss there. She does whatever she wants. She says: I like my baby hair with babyhair and afros.
And then Blue Ivy comes in, Beyoncé's oldest daughter. This is a comeback to racists that were attacking her daugther People made a petition online asking Beyoncé to comb her hair. Because peolpe get bothered by an afro hair And then Beyoncé answers it saying she loves her daughter's the way it is and she values hairstyles traditionally black.
The baby hair and the afro, known as black power here in Brazil. She says she likes her negro nose. Her Jackson Five nostrils.
Making a reference to Michael Jackson's band. I don't know if you guys remember but Michael Jackson before het got white and had all the plastic surgeries. He was a black kid, was part of a band called Jackson Five.
He had an afro and a negro nose. And here Beyoncé not only pays homage to Michael Jackson, one of the biggest names in worldwide black music. But she is also saying that she is proud of hers and her daughter's black features.
She says that she earned all this money but they never going to take the country out of her. Which means, she may be rich but she's still black. That she still have all this baggage of history.
Then we see Beyoncé in braids, a traditional black hairstyle. And more shots of the streets of New Orleans. Music starts again and this time Beyoncé is in an empty pool, full of black women.
And this is not just any place. US swimming pools were a place of big racial tensions. As I said, the USA had racial segregation.
They used to have "only white" bathrooms, drinking fountais. . .
Everything used to be separated and segregated. Racial segregation there, was really strong. And this also used to happen on public swimming pools.
There were public swimming pools in the United States, where poor people could go to swim and enjoy it. And also as a matter of public health, so everyone could swim. But white people started to complain about sharing it with black people.
Especially because black men used to be stigmatized rapists, sexual predators. And people showed a concern of white women being raped. This stigma that all black men are rapists it's also what we see on the Netflix series "When They See Us".
It goes hard! ! !
But that's why they got to also separate the pools to white and black people. And then with the civil rights movement to end this segregation in the United States of America, a lot of black people started going to white people pools, in protest, and were arrested! There's pictures of policemen jumping into the pool to arrest these black people, pictures of hotel owners pouring acid into the pool to try to kick out black people from there.
There's a paramount case that happened with Dorothy Dandrige. Dorothy Dandrige was a black actress and singer. She was the first black woman in history to be nominated as Best Actress for the Oscars.
In the 50s she already was a successful black entertainer, a bad as powerful woman, that used to do concerts in Vegas. But there's a story that in one of the hotels she had a concert, she swam in the pool and they had it completely drained so the others guests wouldn't be infected by the water she swam. There's also another version that says that even before she got to the pool, they had already drained it so she wouldn't infect it.
So, yes, we're talking about a successful black entertainer and an empty pool. This scene is clearly a reference Beyoncé is making to this episode. We also see some basketball players scenes.
Many black people managed to socially rise through sports in the US. And then in the chrorus she says: I dream it. When she is talking about a dream,it's not for nothing.
You can even see that when she snigs the chorus again we see a a black man holding a newspaper with the face of Martin Luther with a headline saying "More Than A Dramer". As you may know, MLK is well known by his famous speech "I Have a Dram" Where he says that he dreams with a society that would live together, in peace. So here, on the lyrics and on the music video she is paying homage to one of the biggest black leaders of history MLK was a leader of the civil rights movement in the US and was responsible for the end of racial segregation there.
What made he be on the cover of Times Magazine as person of the year and win the Nobel Peace Prize. There's a video here on this channel telling all of his story and the link is here in the description below. Then she says: I dream it, I work hard, I grind till I own it So here Beyoncé is saying that it is possible to ascend, to bounce back and to gain power through hard work and by deserving it.
This part really reflects north american mentality that if a black person work 10 times harder, it's possible for him to get on higher places. Even though it's not fair, even tho he has to work harder than a white person. For her, through hard work, you can get there.
And then we see a bunch of well dressed black women. And, for me, this is a metaphor to say that empowerment can't be individual. Only one black woman on top doesn't change that much the structural racism of society.
To change this structure we have to bring along more of us. So yes here she is showing that she doesn't want to be the owner of the big house while other black women are still in senzalas. She want's all black women to have the right to have a comfortable life, to live in a decent place, to dress well Because empowerment is only real when it's a collective movement.
And the she says: "sometimes I go off" Which is basically she saying what she does in her career. She goes missing, than she works hard to do something flawless, with a bad ass concept and a big production! And then she comes without warning and throw in our face how much of a star she is and how much of a bad bitch she is.
Then we see severous black women in a parking lot, shot from above, making it look like it's from a security camera Again, to show how society keeps monitoring black people as if we were always a type of threat to the laws. And these black women positions are forming an X, paying homage Malcom X. Another important leader of north american black movement.
Then Beyconé starts to dance with these women, saying: I Slay And this "I slay" mantra starts to change to "we slay" and for me, this is Beyoncé evoking black women self esteem. It's like she's saying "I slay and I represent all of you. I am because we are, we all are.
Trust in yourselves. " Even in the choreography they make gestures of strength to really show that these women are stronger and amazing. Also in this shot where Beyoncé and her dancers say they slay they also show a normal black girl, not a dancer, not famous dancing and showing that she is amazing too, that she also slays And now she says the most iconic part of the music: And this phrase has two meanings, the firts one is: Ladies, get in formation.
Which can be like a call to black women to get together and collectively fight against racism and sexism. But this phrase can also means: Ok ladies, get information. As Silvio Almeida, an amazing black intelectual, said before, racism came from a racist theory.
Some racist philosophers and theorists wrote some theories saying that black people had no soul, that were intellectually inferior, were like animals. . .
To justify the exploitation of african labor during the colonial period. And these racist theories written years ago are still the foundation of our society. So the only way to fight these racist theories it's writing antiracists theories.
Reading black intelectual writers. Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Chimamanda. .
. Here in Brazil we have Djamila Ribeiro. So in this phrase Beyoncé not only call black women to get politically and collectively together against racism, but also intelectually, Now she says: If he hit it right, I might take he on a flight on my chopper.
Drp him off at the mall, let him buy some J's, let him shop up. Here Beyoncé is letting it be clear that she doesn't need no man financially. On the contrary, she got the power, she got the money and she's the one buying him things.
Not a sugar daddy, this picture of the man that provide for his wife or husband. Here Beyoncé puts herself as a sugar mama and she says that she can get your song playing on the radio. Meaning that now she's saying that she owns the music industry that she is influential.
She's reaffirming her power as a black woman that managed to build her career in this industry. And now she can, not only be sucsessful but pave the way for other artists. And she says: I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making For a long time Bill Gates was known as the richest man alive, he is the owner of Microsoft.
And he's a white man. And here Beyoncé is saying that she, a black woman, can also be in this place. Then we see some shots of New Orleans' carnival and Beyoncé with some typical carnival clothes.
And now we see one of the most powerful shots of this music vid It has also caused a lot of controversy. A line of white policemen in front of a black boy dancing. The boy is wearing a black hoodie just like Trayvon Martin, a black teenager that was shot by a neighborhood watch person that was acquitted of all charges.
Yes, he killed an innocent teen and is acquitted of all charges, because the teen was black. And that's usually what happens. And a white teen is killed, the whole country stops.
People get terrified because a innocent little kid was killed by bad criminals. But when is a black teen, they see as normal. Here in Brazil we have Agatha Felix' case, an eight years old kid that was killed by cops here in Rio.
Black innocent teens being killed by cops is seeing as a normal thing in our current society. The death of Trayvon Martin sparked Black Lives Matter, a movement against police brutality and black genocide. And here Beyoncé pays homage to this movement, especially when she shows a graffiti on a wall that says: Stop shooting us.
At the end of the music video, Beyoncé sinks into water with the police car. And this scene has a lot of different interpretations. Mine is that, the way we are living now, we're all sinking, the police and black community.
We can't take it anymore, everyone is dying. We gotta change this structure. Beyoncé was highly criticized by north american police after this and also after her Super Bowl perfomance.
Where she had all her dancers dressed as the Black Panthers. A revolutionary socialist black movement from USA that figthed agains police brutality. The police got offended and started to boycott Beyoncé, saying that she was attacking them in this music video.
But Beyoncé has already said that she wasn't attacking them, but injustice and racism. And we know that the police often have improper methods. Many times police officers approach black people with violence, treating them as criminals and shooting.
And that's what Beyoncé is criticizing, the injustice. The racial discrimination on police methods. So to finish the music video, she says: "You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation.
Always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.
