Free Choice Week 3

As you can probably tell from my wallpaper I am a huge Beyonce fan. My favorite creation of Beyonce is her visual album Lemonade. If you have not seen it I would highly recommend you check it out. I could talk for pages about each song,the lyrics, and the imagery presented in the album but in this post I'm going to talk about the album as a whole as well as aspects that stand out. In  Lemonade I see a compilation of Beyonce's expanding narrative. It shows her growth as an artist all while keeping her messages ( we should have our own voice, be proud of who we are, be real with ourselves and others and that we can bring about a change in society) intact. The visual album shows Afrofuturist imagery in a beautifully haunting way.  Lemonade is  broken into twelve vignettes for the twelve songs on the album. The songs are separated with poetry by Warsen Shire. The poetry used fits in perfectly for the stage or emotion being targeted. The songs stand for Intuition, Denial, Anger, Apathy, Emptiness, Loss, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness, Resurrection, Hope, and Redemption. These represent the stages of grief and in Beyonce's case how to cope with being cheated on. Although the album is about cheating it's so so so much more. It shows police brutality in the scene with Beyonce and Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michel Brown's mothers holding pictures of their sons with morbid looks on their face. It shows social inequality in many ways including her reference to the Malcolm X speech "The most disrespected person in America is the black woman". It shows freedom of love with gay an lesbian couples. It shows self love by having woman who have been shamed for their curves like Serena Williams or for their hair like Zendaya star in it. It shows that woman should embrace their sexuality through the dancers self expression. And most of all that that we can make a change. The album sticks in your head. Each vignette deeper investigates an issue and together the album is brought together flawlessly. This form of media is very interesting because you watch it to see a video by Beyonce but finish it with knowledge of social issues and a sense of hope. Overall I love Lemonade and I think it is a great form of media.

Lemonade: more than a catchy tune