The Obsession With Beyonce: The USA’s Female Superstars, Nannys, and Objects
The essay “Black Feminist Collectivity in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” didn’t resonate with me until I got to the 7th paragraph which begins with:”Black women often provide the supplemental, ghostly, and unappreciated labor necessary to maintain the nation-state as an ideal and lived reality.”
The full impact of that line still didn’t hit me until the author talked about the way Beyonce, in singing the national anthem a cappella after being thrown down by press for lip synching it at the presidential inauguration, “reinforced the notion that the black women must pay a national bevy and therefore owe the populace an explanation for the deployment of their bodies.”
WoW.
I would like to add that it isn’t just the deployment of the black, female body, but its mere existence in society. For a long time I was frustrated with people who expressed their reverence to Beyonce. I didn’t understand those who had every single one of her albums, whose walls were filled with her posters, whose mind were filled with her smile. In my eyes, she was a simple human being who had mastered a way to stretch her voice to many different dimensions. In other’s minds she was Queen Bey: a pop culture icon that transcended above other idols to become their personal favorite. Reading this article, it seems that the love of Beyonce, is perhaps the continuation of the commodification of colored bodies.
They love her because they believe that they can owe her. Those albums, and posters, and t-shirts, and concert tickets, and knowledge of her upbringing is the new-age version of chains. This is not an attempt to dismiss Beyonce for all that she has accomplished (Dreamgirls will forever be in my top 10 list for movies) but to explain the rational behind her fan base.
Robin Berstein explained that “The moment when the object inspires action, it transforms from an object into a thing and blurs the strict hierarchy between humans and objects (Colbert).”
I would like to substitute Beyonce’s iconization for object: “”The moment Beyonce the icon inspires action, it transforms from an iconography into a thing and blurs the strict hierarchy between humans and objects (Colbert).”
Imagine that. The moment her personhood becomes wrapped up in iconization, there is no longer room for her as a colored woman to stand fir, in that identity, but she becomes heralded as this exception that is beyond the black woman and instead America’s most loved superstar.
This is perhaps why, even after attending her concert this fall, I still view her as a show pony: a trained, scalped, and slightly unreal figure whose talent is wrapped up in a destructive post-colonial, post-slavery ethos.
I recently viewed this image.
Baby Capitalism Sucking Mother Africa
As a visual by Houser/Spence Artwork it perfectly captures the Black women not only as America’s labor force, but also the driving source of nourishment in this country. Will we ever be compensated the stolen milk? Will we ever be recognized for our forgiving hearts and the natural labor of love that we still show this country?
Look at that picture and watch these videos while you contemplate.
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