Waleed Qureshi

ENG 1121

Dr. Carrie Hall

03/05/2019

 

Response To Lemonade

I read the review of Bell Hooks. To me this review was motivational as it motivated the oppressed women to stand out and work for themselves. This meant that in order for women to gain equality, they have to work and achieve it. Nothing comes easy but you have to work for it. The author also talked a lot about the visuals of other people when they see a black woman which she explained further and gave us more ideas by saying words like “black women body”. The writer explained all these further by describing to us the scenes of how Beyoncé was dressed describing the situation in which she was in or something that she symbolized like her golden dress. This helped people who have not seen the album get a better idea of what that album represented. Another thing I liked about this review was the layout. At first this confused me as I wasn’t able to understand it but later I realized how the review was organized. At first Bell Hooks explained the songs of the album and then she told us how she felt about the things that the songs were trying to deliver.

Hey everyone! For Thursday, please fill out the worksheet below (thoroughly!) about the cultural artifact (song, book, poem, comic book, whatever) you will be writing about for Unit Two and bring it to class on Thursday. It’s important!!

You can answer on a separate piece of paper if you like! Write thorough answers.

soapstone

Reading bell hook bought up one main question. what do women go through? not just african american women but just women in general. if beyonce has to make song to shine some light on women enpowerment that means we are not doing something right in this world. lemonade was something girls used to sell and often get the saying “get your money straight . Meaning women can earn just like men and take care of themselves. I think beyonce was making a reference to remind everyone that females have power. It says beyonce “wreaks violence”. I don’t agree with that brcaise in the music video I don’t think she wasn’t showing that much violence and wasn’t promoting it either . Bell hooks states that Beyoncé’s “feminism can’t be trusted “. Which throws me off because am I supposed to believe beyonce or the author . It feels confusing about reading a article where the author dosent trust the person she’s writing about.

Amani Nassar

English 1121

Dr. Hall

As I read the article titled “Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Is A Revelation of Spirit” I found myself confused at one point as to why the writer chose to keep relating Beyonce’s work to other artist instead of just focusing on her album giving it more critic and explaining a deeper meaning behind her album. I later realized that he used the explanation of other artist work to add to not only his writing, but to kind of add to the development of how Beyonce has changed over the years. Hilton does point out some really good things like when he brings up “what once mattered can quickly seem depressingly old.” The music industry is constantly changing just like almost everything else, people are having to reintroduce themselves in a new way to keep up with the demands of their fan base to keep up their reputation. Beyonce has always portrayed a message of female empowerment while making a lot of comments towards love or men, like most artist do. These are topics we can all relate to at one point or another in our lives and artist like Beyonce make the music that helps us get through these things. I was able to learn a lot from this article like the meaning of the songs from the album, the symbolism behind things like the drowning of the police car, and the inclusion of other artist in her music.

I read the Hilton Al’s review on “Lemonade” and I could never quite tell their stance on the topic. The review stayed away from Beyonce frequently and compared her work to that of others. I got impressions that Hilton did not enjoy it, especially after saying at the start that their experience of a concert was ass. The whole time reading it I still felt unsure. I was honestly still lost due to the fact I don’t follow pop music, especially artists from before 2000s which were referenced frequently. I wouldn’t be able to stretch a review so much by relying on others people works. The reliance on referencing other people seemed a bit much. Referring how someone can relate to something is fine, by the article writer brought up how another artist set some form of example in the past, and then seemed to criticize Beyonce for following such a brilliant example. It could be that I was tired while reading the article but in the end, after reflecting on it, I still feel lost about a final opinion. If I were to write the article, I would’ve tried to focus more on the present and what factors could’ve contributed to “Lemonade” having an hour long movie to accompany it. As opposed to focusing on Beyonce’s past success and her involvement with men along the way solely.

Michael Vignoles

 

After reading “Moving Beyond Pain” I started to understand who Beyonce fights and represents for. She motivates and helps give people who don’t have a voice, minorities, but more specifically women. While reading the article I didn’t know her whole album was talking about social justices like women inequality. Through out history women have been oppressed and  powerless, but living in 2019 we live in a different world and its time for women to speak up and fight for what they think is right. Things like imbalanced pay between man and women, rape culture, women empowerment, and equality between man and woman. Beyonce is the face of all women in America, and she is leading this empowerment movement.

         The author of Moving Beyond Pain made some great points about multiple things. This article speaks about the black female body and the audience of Lemonade. It also spoke about the interpretations of their point of view and of Beyonces point of view. The author often speaks about how she feels like she’s missing the “point.” I found it interesting when the author stated, “From slavery to the present day, black female bodies, clothed and unclothed, have been bought and sold. What makes this commodification different in Lemonade is intent; its purpose is to seduce, celebrate, and delight—to challenge the ongoing present day devaluation and dehumanization of the black female body.” Which has me thinking of what the author is trying to state. Which lead me to the conclusion that she’s trying to relate it back to today’s era and how that’s still an ongoing process that should be stopped. But, i feel like black women are discriminated everyday. The author took Beyonces footage too critical at a point. I feel like Beyonce was just trying to prove a point when she showed the police cars and hurricanes and so on, she  most definitely did not mean to condone any violence. She was just trying to represent a sense of women empowerment.

 

The author of Moving Beyond Pain made some great points about choosing peace over violence, and the presence of black women’s celebration of unity in Beyonce’s Lemonade. A lot of what the author talked about intrigued me, especially their interpretation of Lemonade and how their’s was different from even Beyonce’s interpretation of her own work.

I find it very interesting that the author feels that there is an ever-present “dehumanization of the black female body” going on today, and that the author took away from Lemonade that it wanted to address and challenge that specific issue. Perhaps there is a big issue there, and maybe the author is right about Beyonce targeting it, but personally, I haven’t seen or heard much about it in the present day in regard to the broad variety of social issues. However, if the author had actually meant the dehumanization and objectification of women’s bodies in general as opposed to strictly the dehumanization of the bodies black women, I would have agreed with their point more extensively. I do agree with the author, however, that black women are discriminated on significantly, just in different ways.

The author also views the violence in Lemonade as contradictory to their interpretation of the album’s central message.  But even though the music video contains physical violence on cars and such, it’s also possible Beyonce didn’t actually mean women should go out and beat up cars, or perform violence of similar means. Perhaps the author was thinking too literally about the violence in the video, and the violence was actually just a representation of the toughness, even if that aspect might be cliche, simplified, or even an uninspired representation of it.