Lemonade Symbolism

One of the most prominent visuals in Lemonade is the setting of New Orleans, Louisiana. In current times, New Orleans is most closely associated with the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2004, in which a strong hurricane devastated the city and left many killed, injured, or homeless. There was national criticism of the government’s handling of Katrina, stating that the government took too long to respond to the crisis due to the city being mostly populated by blacks. However, this is not the only aspect of New Orleans that is central to Lemonade’s narrative. The video also shows staples of the old American South during the time of slavery, such as plantation homes and slave quarters. In this setting, Beyoncé indulges a fantasy of an all-black utopia dominated by women, who dress up, take photographs, and

In Lemonade, Beyonce’s latest visual album, Beyonce addresses “urgent themes” including: black identity, Black Lives Matter, marriage infidelity, motherhood, faith, reconciliation, and the lives of black women who are in dire need of respect. In the powerful music video “Freedom,” black women join together to form a formidable visual community. Their unity and strong stances make it known these black women will not tolerate negative stereotypes, police brutality, attacks on a woman’s appearance, or assaults against a woman’s character. Gwen Carr, Sybrina Fulton and Lezley McSpadden, the mothers of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown appear alongside Sierra Leone ballerina Michaela DePrince and model Winnie Harlow, both of whom

Beyoncé Knowles is a Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum R&B musician who is commended for her exhilarating voice, music, and performance. The unsuspected release of her latest visual album, Lemonade, nurtured her public persona as one of the many influential celebrities of today. In addition to fornication and reconciliation, Lemonade tells a story that focuses on African American oppression and women hood. Taking both a political and spiritual approach with the use of literary elements and techniques, “Freedom”, featuring Kendrick Lamar, displays a central message: the racial and social injustices on the African American minority involving police brutality will be addressed and terminated through perseverance, cohesion, empowerment and women.

At 9:00 pm on April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released her visual album “Lemonade”. As I was sitting there, watching and listening to the emotional display of love and betrayal, I noticed that the album also has a lot to do with women’s rights and black rights. Throughout the album, Beyoncé uses a wide range of references to other art, music, and history to illustrate the struggles of women and African Americans today.

Lemonade is presented as the creation of one woman, but why is this so important? This is a ruling class ideal of being a “self-made man”. The ideals that go with a self-made person is that all of the arrangements in society are natural. You have to accept the social order and not seeing the background she came up from and presenting herself as a representative of the working class is a false image. She travels in a private jet now and is one of the most successful African American women and not acknowledging any sort of struggle with making the American dream during the video makes her image seem natural and easy. Media according to Marxists is supposed to act as an “apologist for the ruling class in an effort to avert class conflict and to prevent changes to political order”. Her anger in the video is against the men in her life which also happen to be black. Rather than the white society that put herself in a position that made her accession society so difficult. Blaming African American males is something that white culture has done for years. Spouting hateful ideas like thinking it was a choice for the African American male to go to jail and not be supportive to their families. In this video the African American males are stereotypes of racist ideals that the white racists would agree with. The African American women is safer so she is allowed a role in society. Not

Black women are told again and again by society that their sexuality and their bodies are not acceptable by societal standards, but by creating “Rocket” Beyoncé twists that narrative. Throughout the video the focus is on her body. It is sensual and sexy, but never grotesque. She lets you know she has sex and that it is far better than you are ever going to have.

In her 2016 VMA performance Beyoncé ended her song formation with a giant neon sign behind her reading ‘feminist.’ Her live performances have often been a way for her to portray political views and catch global attention. Feminist is a word for some that has a negative connotation associated with it. Beyoncé is aware of her influence and by standing next to the notorious word she is using her brand to help create change in society. Global praise has also been given to her for her “****Flawless” music video. The video begins with a 9 year old Beyoncé auditioning for star search the music proceeds. At the end of the video it shows the girl group losing the competition. Though she often preaches the perfection of women this shows that we all have our imperfections and sometimes you lose. Beyoncé is empowering women by showing that no one's too good to lose, its part of life. The songs also contains an excerpt from (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’) speech:

Symbolism: The video “Blurred lines” by Robin Thicke, women are used as glorified shields to elevate his womanizer macho role. They are labeled as “animals”, implying their worth as props. The lyrics indicate derogatory and misogynist metaphors. The woman exposes about 90 percent of her body, while the singer is covered and dignified; this demonstrates the struggle women face to be recognized as valuable individuals. While other videos display women in revealing outfits, this video devalues her worth publically, where the stigma brands the rest of her career. In this social environment, she is ranked a high status sexual partner where men will desire her, and women would either envy or want to be like her. Although some women find this modern exposure empowering and confident, in the male perspective, they are embracing sexuality not women choice.

To begin, “Beyoncé’s Lemonade: When Life Gave Us Lemons, We Saved the World” illustrated the central claim that Beyoncé performed her album to articulate black solidarity as well as forgiveness and hope (Miles). As the author, Corey Miles, stated, “Beyoncé’s visual musical album Lemonade (2016) is… important because… the vocal and visual narrative speaks to the historical marginalized experience of black women by both society and hip-hop.” Miles discussed how black women disregarded black men and connected that to the thematic concepts in the first half of the album, such as denial and anger (Genius). Moreover, Miles connected the second half of the album which included “All Night,” to the concepts of hope and forgiveness. Beyoncé wrote her lyrics to forgive the black man, in reference to her cheating husband, to turn back into the independent women she once lived as before the relationship. Miles described how the structure of the work connected to bell hooks’ piece, “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism,” since that women of color felt as if only white women took part in the feminist movement.

The first aspect is costume. Beyonce wears multiple costumes in this music video and all of them may look different and have different styles but the purpose of them is the same, which is showing off her figure. An example of one of the costumes in the music video is a blue sparkly maxi dress that has a low v-neck. It has slits at the bottom of the dress that comes up to her knees. She is wearing blue open toe heels the same colour as the dress. Her hair is down and has been styled in curls. Her only accessories were dangling diamond earrings and she had a ribbon around the dress that said “Miss 3rd Ward” because she was in a beauty pageant and when she was wearing this dress she was being asked questions. When she was wearing this dress we

Bell Hooks’ criticism of Beyonce’s Lemonade focuses on the album’s reiteration of the notion that the “black woman is always a victim.” The track “Hold Up” on the album along with its music video initially provide a superficial context in which “the black woman” is both empowered and strong—two qualities that go strongly against that of what a victim possesses.

Set on the aphorism of "when life serves you lemons, make lemonade," (as you will hear delivered by Jay-Z's grandmother), Beyoncé presents her first narrative, bringing back warm memories of Destiny's Child's Destiny Fulfilled. Lemonade's trajectory, however, isn't as victorious and joyous. It's an acutely desolate voyage through the experience of infidelity, each song exploring various emotional stages, like unease, paranoia, inferiority, fury and longing. These stages are broken down and expounded on in the partnering mini-film of the same title (aired on HBO on 4/23), where her main character's micro dilemma is used to discuss interrelated, macro gender and familial issues, like generational abuse, unfaithfulness and paternal abandonment. Touched on are the sacrifices and

Throughout this visual album Beyoncé has included personal images and videos of her family as a way of tying together her message of perseverance, hope, and love. One of the most significant of these personal videos is one the makes reference to the the title of her visual album. It is one in which Jay-Z’s grandmother, Hattie White, states "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade" as she is surrounded by the love of her family. The significance is not in the words but rather in the inclusion of these different generations of strong, Black women that all look different from one another. This strongly relates to the spoken word used for the interlude between

In this music video Beyonce sings about the issues of brutality that the black community faces. The video was released during Black History Month, which made it perfect timing in contributing support for the issue at hand. Beyonce sets the seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck. The entire video is shot with very de-saturated lighting to express the darkness and brutality of the message. The video begins with the establishing shot of Beyonce on top of a police car submerged in the flooded NOLA waters. This shot guides viewers to Beyonce’s first issue regarding police brutality that the black community faces. Throughout the video Beyonce also employs

In regards to the video, the scenes primarily focus on black females and children, groups that do not receive a lot of media attention, performing empowering tasks. These individuals are expressing themselves, strictly for themselves, in the way they want to and not how society expects them to act. Through these visual representations she retells history, this time giving a positive account for black women. She portrays black women sitting in white dresses - a fashion that many would consider a dress of privilege and meant for white women in the upper class in history. In doing this she shows that black women are just as capable as a white woman. Another visual Beyoncé gives us is of a child dancing in front of police officers. When the video was produced the #BlackLivesMatter movement was becoming a widely discussed subject, particularly in regards to police brutality towards black citizens. In this particular scene a child is dancing while the officers stand idly by, when he finishes the dance the officers put their hands up and the camera pans to a wall tagged with “Stop shooting us” (Beyoncé 2016), which is both a reference to the pleading for the end of police brutality, however, it could also be taken to mean that the child is the one control and the