“Let me hear you say Hey Mrs. Carter”

        I really could have gone with just about any song on this album and found some sort of connection to this chapter. Out of all the songs though, I found myself making the most connections in Partition. Partition is probably the most sexual song on this album. Beyonce’s focus in this song is really all about this fantasy she has about her and her husband. She wants to be everything that he wants in a girl. 

In the hook of this song Beyonce is making it clear that she wants to be possessed by Jay. She says “take all of me I just wanna be the girl you like, girl you like The kinda girl you like, girl you like.” She wants to be everything that he could ever want, so that he would never want another girl. Which goes back to what is said in the chapter about the role of women in media being “to satisfy the male gaze and, ultimately, to be possessed.” This entire music video is for the viewing pleasure of men. Especially at 2:01 where she is seen basically naked on a reflective table. There is not one part of this music video that isn’t showing her trying to seduce her husband.  

This song could also represent Beyonce being, what the book calls, a post-feminist: “more independent, assertive versions of femininity - something that can sometimes include a proud and explicit quest for sex.” Beyonce is definitely on a quest for sex in this song. Which could be seen as her just wanting to get Jays attention, or you can look at it as her just being more assertive. She starts the song off by saying “Driver roll up the partition please/Driver roll up the partition please/I don't need you seeing yoncé on her knees/Took 45 minutes to get all dressed up/We ain't even gonna make it to this club.” If you're watching the music video, she makes it clear to her audience that she’s on a quest for sex before the lyrics even begin. At around: 20 seconds she starts making gestures towards what we can assume is her husband. Also towards the end of the song Beyonce adds a part thats spoken in French but when translated to English it says “Do you like sex?/Sex, I mean : physical activity, coitus. You like it?/Are you not interested in sex?/Men think that feminists hate sex but it’s an exciting and natural activity that women love.” She wants to be assertive and sexual but still wants everyone to see her as a feminist. She adds these little reminders at the end of quite a few of her songs to put the idea out there that you can be sexual, you can be open about it, and you can still be considered a feminist or what the books describes as post-feminist. 

Music brings people together

          When something happens in our lives whether it be good or bad, I know, at least for myself, I turn to music to help me either get through the situation or just to make it memorable. I’m not musically talented so I rely on people like Beyonce to put out songs that I can some how relate to. It also makes you feel like you aren’t alone in what you’re going through, which connects back to what is said in the book about the four ways the media encourages public engagement. Music can fit in every one of the four ways, but focusing on the song Heaven, I believe it fits best under the category of nurturing public belonging and community. “For many commentators, the public sphere also implies participation in a broader public culture and the nurturing of a sense of cohesiveness, common identity and belonging.”(176) People love to feel like someone out there has been through what they are going through. It gives them hope. This song is really about death, but also it’s about finally getting closure and accepting that they’re in a better place. In the beginning of the song Beyonce sings “I fought for you/The hardest, it made me the strongest/So tell me your secrets/I just can’t stand to see you leaving/But heaven couldn’t wait for you” this part really speaks on a subject she hasn’t really talked about all that much, her miscarriage. Something tragic that a lot of women go through and struggle to find peace and acceptance after. We all can find comfort in music, Beyonce has created something with this song that not only helps the women going through a miscarriage but anyone that has lost someone. This song is something that all of these people can relate to and feel like they aren’t the only one. This song is creating a sense of “belonging”, for a community of people who are struggling with the loss of a loved one. The way that she ends the song saying “so go on, go home” and the lords prayer, it makes it clear that she is finding closure, something that a lot of people struggle with. When you see that she made it through, it gives you hope that you too can make it through, because you have that one thing in common. So, whether it be a happy moment or a sad time in your life music brings people together.

Flawless

This entire album is all about women, their strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between. Beyonce represents herself as a feminist throughout this album. In the song Flawless we see the feminist in her come out the most. When the song starts out at approximately :22 we see her, all alone and also in a very powerful stance. This is representing how strong she has become on her own. She wants everyone to remember who she was before she had her baby. At around :44 she says “I took some time to live my life but don't think I'm just his little wife don't get it twisted, get it twisted this my shit, bow down bitches” there’s a lot of women who, once they have children they become the stay at home mom. She doesn’t want people to see her as “just his little wife” she wants them to remember it’s her “shit” too, her music career isn’t over just as Jay Z’s career isn’t over just because they had a kid. The most important part of the song to understand that she wants to put off this image of being a feminist is when she goes as far as to put a snippet from a TED Talk that well known French feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave at 1:26. She ends the snippet with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie giving the definition of a feminist “the person who believes in the social political, and economic equality of the sexes.” I believe she choose to add this to her song because she wants people to know that she can do everything Jay does, because they are equal and her being a new mom shouldn’t and wont stop her. 

The title of the song also has a much deeper meaning than what most people associate it with, usually when someone thinks flawless they think of looks, but Beyonce makes it clear that’s not necessarily what she means by it. When she first starts talking about flawless in this song it seems like she is just strictly talking about looks but to her its multiple things. Which she makes clear around 3:03 by saying “momma taught me good home training my daddy taught me how to love my haters my sister taught me I should speak my mind my man made me feel so God damn fine” flawless to her is about being a well rounded person. Which goes back to her showing her feminist side, she wants people to see that she was raised to believe she is just as good as men, and that makes her flawless.

Pretty Hurts

The first time I listened to the song Pretty Hurts on Beyonce’s new visual album I got chills. It is probably the most realistic song relating to how society’s view on how women should look, takes a tool on women. About 2:13 into the music video for this song and the actual beginning of the song itself Beyonce sings “Mama said, you’re a pretty girl. What’s in your head it doesn’t matter. Brush your hair, fix your teeth. What you wear is all that matters. Just another stage. Pageant the pain away. This time I’m gonna take the crown without falling down, down.” Watching the music video you will see the signifiers which are a disappointed and sad looking Beyonce. She is waxing, brushing her hair, and fixing her teeth. The people around her are doing the same thing. It is a very depressing looking environment. This is signifying to me that she just wants to be accepted but she isn’t happy with the way that society wants her to look it isn’t how she looks and it is clearly taking a tool on her. 

Doing a paradigmatic analysis the meaning of that part of the song to me would change completely if some of the signifiers were to change. For example When you just listen to the words “Mama said, you’re a pretty girl. What’s in your head it doesn’t matter. Brush your hair, fix your teeth. What you wear is all that matters. Just another stage. Pageant the pain away. This time I’m gonna take the crown without falling down, down.” it almost seems as if she is being confident and agreeing with what her mother said to her. If instead of a sad Beyonce we were to see her happy and getting ready for a pageant the whole meaning of the song would change for me. Instead of her challenging and not wanting to accept the worlds view on what beauty is, she would instead be going along with it. 

The syntagmatic analysis of this particular part of the song would be how the signifiers: Beyonce’s face’s, waxing, bushing her hair, fixing her teeth and the people around her all play off of each other. In the book it says “ In the context of a traffic light or warning sign, red conveys danger, but when used as the backdrop for footage of a couple gazing at one another, it may connote sexual desire.” This holds true for the signifiers in this music video. If you were to just see the parts of Beyonce getting ready and none of her looking sad you wouldn’t take it as her doing something that makes her unhappy. Especially when she says “This time I’m gonna take the crown” I would just automatically assume her getting ready meant she just wanted to be perfect for the pageant but, when you see how she looks while she is getting ready it shows that she is unhappy that she has to change how she looks to be considered pretty.

After analyzing this song I realize why she wanted everyone to see the music videos for her new songs right when they were released. She has a message to get across and without the music video we may get a different message than she intended. 

Queen Bee

This past December Christmas came about ten days early for me, all because Beyoncé released her newest self-titled album BEYONCE. This album is a lot different from the average album artists put out. I consider this album to be both a hot and cool media. This album doesn’t necessarily fit into what McLuhan would consider a hot media because it is a visual album and it is engaging in more than one sense but, the way he describes television as a cool media forces me to put it into the category of a hot media. In the book it says “television did not spell out every detail, it is argued, leaving audiences more able to fill in the gaps themselves.” In the documentary going behind the scenes of Beyoncé’s new album she says, “I wanted people to hear the songs with the story that’s in my head” therefore she is leaving no gaps to be filled. With the definition of hot media in the book being “high-definition and data intensive with a large amount of information, conveyed usually to a single one of the human senses” it’s hard to not put this visual album in that category. There is so much detail put into the seventeen music videos on this visual album that just pulls every song together and creates one big story.

This new album wasn’t only different in the fact that it was visual album it was different in how it was released. There was no warning, Beyoncé just released it. Nobody knew it was coming out, literally everyone just woke up the next day with twitter and every social media site going crazy about this new album Beyonce released while everyone was sleeping. She relied heavily on technology. If this album was released how it was before technology, she would have never seen the numbers she did in the first few days. Like the book says “as the web was further developed and broadband introduced, it became feasible to upload or download high quantities of dense multimedia content, such as music and video files, as well as text and still images.” This album was only available on iTunes for digital download, you couldn't get it in any store, some won’t ever carry it either. Without the advancement in technology she wouldn't have been able to surprise all of her fans with an album like this and be successful. Part of the reason for that is also because “the internet for the first time introduced the possibility of interactive mass communication.” like I said before this album was all over social media. It had no singles leading up to it, she relied on word of mouth and the internet to get the numbers she did. She has set the bar high for artists living in this world of technology that we live in.