![]() Her sternum is rigid beneath a thick, open-shouldered fur coat. Beyoncé hails imagined others off screen: “Pray I catch you whispering, I pray you catch me listening.” Beyoncé’s carefully rendered, wide ranging personas begin to suggest not only a self-portrait, but also feelings and modes of comportment we may share.īad-ass in the style of 1970s funk singers like Betty Davis, “Don’t Hurt Yourself” telegraphs Beyoncé’s sentiments through highly marked physical gestures. But it’s Lemonade’s spoken-word poetry that directs us to listen carefully. Summoning CommunityĪll of Lemonade’s parameters-from sound effects to cinematography-work to incorporate an ever-widening community. Lemonade embodies opposites: love and hate, engagement and alienation, forgiveness and revenge. Besides the narrative of Beyoncé’s marriage (expressing anger, fear, grief, reconciliation and reintegration), Lemonade develops historical strands about Africa, the Middle Passage, slavery, reconstruction, lynching, neo-liberalism and the disinvestment of black neighborhoods at the beginning of the 1970s, Hurricane Katrina, and the police murders of African-Americans. Two overlapping genres-music video and experimental film-provide Lemonade with a means to hold the past, present, and future together. Finally, by drawing on music-video and avant-garde aesthetics, Lemonade showcases multiple story lines and strands simultaneously. Its elaborate structure demands we discover sonic and visual connections across sections. ![]() Second, Lemonade encourages the listener-viewer to make sense of a complex whole. ![]() Instead it incorporates its viewers as well as the performers depicted in the frame and heard on the soundtrack. While Beyoncé appears in every music video and many of the interludes, the film never devolves into autobiography. But it is equally about African American history. Lemonade focuses on difficulties with marriage and monogamy the popular press has described it as a commentary on Beyoncé’s marriage to Jay-Z. Beyoncé’s Lemonade is a 56-minute film composed of twelve music videos with interludes comprised of spoken-word poetry, concrete sound, and visual tableaux. ![]()
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