Is Beyoncé a militant of 'black power'?
Beginning with Beyoncé's much-debated performance at the Super Bowl finale on February 7 and the premiere of her video clip Formation, many progressive commentators have pointed out these days the Houston superstar's commitment to the black community and the black power movement. .
Even journalists on the American left as prominent as Amy Goodman have written unusually passionate odes to the music industry star. She and her partner Denis Moynihan went so far as to establish similarities between the billionaire singer, the Black Lives Matter and the Black Panthers in an article published on Democracy Now. However, what is true in all this?
In their media performance in the intermission of the Super Bowl, Beyoncé and her dancers dressed completely in black (the latter with afro hair and a beret) like the Black Panthers, for a few seconds of the choreography they formed an X in supposed allusion to Malcolm X and at another time they also saluted with raised fists.
Some "subtle" differences with the aforementioned movements were that their dresses ended with the English and that they were not doing activism in the streets but acting in the sporting event most tied to media capitalism in the entire country: the Super Bowl, with the sponsorship of big companies like Pepsi and commercial partners like Chevron, Google, Hewlett Packard, Levi's and a long etcetera.
What does that mean? That she had the green light from all those large corporations or their representatives at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara to perform the performance she presented. Beyoncé's choreography was anything but improvised and everyone there knew the supposed tribute that was going to be made to the black movement (the production team had to know the choreography in detail to, for example, use an overhead shot to show the "X" when the dancers lined up forming such a letter).
On the other hand, in her new video clip Formation (premiered on Tidal and half hidden on YouTube) we find various allusions to the black community and its sufferings. We can observe, to indicate some points, an iconography that alludes to the flood of New Orleans in 2005 or graffiti demanding that they stop shooting at them (in reference to the murders and police abuses suffered by some Afro-descendants) together with the fleeting memory of some historical leader such as Martin Luther King who appears for less than a second on the cover of a newspaper called The Truth.
All these elements of a certain commitment, along with several and more than confusing nods to the pride of blackness, are shown in a video clip where Beyoncé boasts of her status as a star and billionaire
However, all these elements of a certain commitment, along with several and more than confusing nods to the pride of blackness, are shown in a video clip where Beyoncé boasts of her status as a star and multimillionaire, other women are called "bitches" and He has no qualms about advertising luxury clothing brands like Givenchy or doing product placement for other more popular ones like Adidas or Red Lobster. The truth is that despite the fact that Goodman and her partner forcefully compare Beyoncé with Black Lives Matter or the Black Panthers, reality is far from such an exotic hodgepodge.
The Black Panthers were an anti-capitalist and armed political organization for the self-defense and aid of African Americans created in 1966. Its maximum social influence reached it between the late sixties and early seventies with some programs to help communities as popular as Free Breakfast for the most disadvantaged children.
As Goodman and Moynihan point out in their article, they were persecuted by the FBI through a counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO, supervised by Edgar Hoover herself. The movement was destroyed from without and from within through the dirty war of the American State: falsification of evidence, identity theft and correspondence, legal harassment, beatings, psychological warfare, etc.
Furthermore, some of its leaders were jailed or assassinated while others had to flee into exile in Cuba. The Black Panthers were not only a radicalized extension of the black movement led by Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, but they also considered themselves socialists, Marxists, revolutionaries and much of them Maoists (their followers studied The Red Book of Mao Zedong as their main work and Huey P. Newton, its leader, was officially received by the Chinese authorities in 1971, a year before President Nixon himself).
For its part, the current Black Lives Matter is (for now) a grassroots organization with a certain postmodern spirit and ideologically located between the center-left and the left of the political spectrum that, although it focuses its activities on the defense of the black population , also observes a priority sensitivity with the LGTB community (Afro-descendant).
They are not a political party, much less seek the overthrow of the capitalist system. Nor are they armed to prevent police abuses as the Black Panthers did, nor do they practice any kind of revolutionary internationalism. They are an organization of reformist dyes that militate so that the standards of the black population improve. There is no socialist preaching or class struggle. Not a word of criticism of capitalism.
On the other hand, Beyoncé, light years away from the previous ones and oblivious to any of the conditions suffered by the majority of the same phenotype, is a multimillionaire businesswoman and rentier of the body who, together with her husband, the former trafficker, rapper and top executive of the music industry Jay-Z, forms one of the most powerful couples in the business with contacts with the American elite, both political (Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton) and business (Russel Simmons or Warren Buffet), both black and white.
The maximum liberation of the Afro-descendant community for which the former Destiny Child is willing to "fight", while contouring her scantily clad butt, licking her fingers looking at the camera or celebrating her wealth in her elitist music videos, is the one that allow all its members to transform into "black Bill Gates [s]" (as the very lyrics of Formation point out). In other words, "emancipation" through individual enrichment and the economic exploitation of the majority.
It is the classic story of black capitalism that the same American oligarchy has publicized for decades to ideologically integrate the majority of the African-American working class into its regime and incidentally divide it in its collective struggles with the white (just the opposite of what the Communist Party did).
Since, after long struggles, Afro-descendants achieved the same civil rights as the rest (1969), in the following decades black capitalism was called Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey or Will Smith. All those stars were and are the ones that the cultural industry needs to sell the image of the American Dream among a population as punished as the Afro-descendant.
This publicized propaganda claims that blacks who strive to succeed will end up doing so regardless of the material conditions that surround them (lack of job opportunities, poverty, drug trafficking, etc.). That is to say, regardless of the systemic barriers of the past and present, without taking into account the centuries of slavery and discrimination that still today make Afro-descendants in the US suffer poverty similar to that of Iraq with 27.4% of their population. population in poverty, an unemployment that doubles that of the white population or 40% of the population imprisoned despite adding only 12% of the US citizenship.
In this way, with the preaching of black capitalism to which Beyoncé is enthusiastically incorporated, the hegemonic cultural industry will ensure that the new generations of Afro-descendant children and young people have as references to idolize blacks enriched under the rules of American capitalism, assimilated blacks bourgeois or rentier, rather than truly counter-hegemonic African-American leaders. Authentic heroes and heroines who, as in the sixties and early seventies, fought for the rights of the collective and for that of all popular classes regardless of the color of their skin: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, etc.
Beyoncé is key, as a successful black woman under the rules of the system, to conquer tens of millions of indoctrinated by the flow of the cultural mainstream
The preaching of "black capitalism" is a strategy of the ruling class to achieve the hegemony of those dominated by consensus, as Antonio Gramsci would say. And Beyoncé is key, as a successful black woman under the rules of the system, to conquer tens of millions of indoctrinated by the flow of the cultural mainstream.
The problem with his message as an Afro translation of the American Way of Life (the "free yourself by getting rich") is that, by default, there cannot be so many positions of rich capitalists or rentiers of the spectacle that all blacks can live as comfortably as they .
They need many black workers (and white or otherwise) to extract the surplus value through wage exploitation and from there obtain the profits that allow them the profligate lifestyle that Beyoncé boasts in much of her videos.
Those proceeds that allow the singer to give her husband a Bombardier Challenger 850 jet valued at 40 million dollars for his birthday or for him to buy a private island near Florida on his. It is something slightly different than what the Black Panthers were fighting for when they fought not only against racial oppression but also against the capitalist oppression suffered by the working class.
But how is it possible that a woman as prepared as Amy Goodman cannot see something so transparent? How is it possible that the head of one of the most popular radical American radio and television shows (Democracy Now) and the author of several books critical of the most powerful government in the world so easily surrender to the charms of a star of the music industry simply for alluding in the most banal, superficial and contradictory way possible to a movement for which she feels sympathy?
In reality, sadly, it is simpler and more mundane than it sounds. One of the causes lies in what is called in psychology the halo effect for physical attractiveness. It is widely used in advertising to conquer the consumer and it is a cognitive bias that falsely makes the viewer believe that a person, simply because they are attractive, is better than they really are in other aspects of their personality. For example, if a woman is beautiful, we see her as smarter, more generous, bolder and perhaps, in the case of Beyoncé, more "engaged" than she really is, at the slightest gesture in that direction.
Cases of social or political commitment are so infrequent that, when one of these prefabricated celebrities makes a pronouncement about it, even in the most vague, ambiguous and banal way possible, it will find the sympathy of many left-wing intellectuals who are orphaned of referents
Everything that the viewer considers good will be reinforced and hypertrophied by sexual attractiveness and charisma. Another reason for Goodman's enthusiasm lies in the fact that in the Olympus of Gods and Goddesses Manufactured from the hegemonic cultural industries (TV, mass music, press and commercial cinema, etc.), cases of social or commercial commitment are so infrequent. politician who, when one of these prefabricated celebrities makes a statement about it, even in the most vague, ambiguous and banal way possible, will find the sympathy of many left-wing intellectuals orphans of well-known references who support their causes. That is, they will help them feel less alone than they really are.
In other words, with the ambiguity of her "pro black power" message, Beyoncé's production and marketing team managed with Formation and her Super Bowl performance to reach (almost) everyone to the left of the toughest Republicans. (Which does not interest the artist as she had already "scared away" them years ago with her public support for the Democratic Party).
With this premeditated "scandal", they reached simultaneously the majority of people who do not care at all about the course of the black movement and will simply enjoy the choreography of the sensual dancers dancing to the rhythm of the precooked hits of the Beyoncé repertoire and that worried minority by the luck of the Afro-descendant community who will see commitment where there is only opportunistic pose.
Added to this, the controversy in the Republican media will give the singer an extra media presence and a victimization / defense on the progressive side that will certainly be profitable for her. Result: more publicity and benefits for Beyoncé and her sponsors.
That is why the company recently announced that it would donate 1.5 million dollars to various NGOs that focus on helping the Afro-descendant population, a way to attract and retain, at least, the black public. As they do not reach the majority, which was their primary objective when launching the company (neither more nor less than competing with YouTube or Spotify), it is better to be a mouse head than a lion's tail. All within the well-known and publicized "social responsibility" of the corporate world. The charity of always spread by the spotlights and press conferences that serve to improve the perception of the brand among (potential) consumers.
In short, Beyoncé Knowles is part of the cog in the same political and economic oligarchy that profits from the "racial" and economic oppression of America's black (and white) working majority. It helps to divide the American workforce on the "racial" (phenotypic) axis that displaces the scientifically objective and structural "class", thus cheapening their value (their wages), by hindering unitary struggles.
In fact, the singer supports the most right-wing candidate of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, against the left-wing Social Democrat Bernie Sanders, in her fight to be the party's candidate in this year's elections. The same woman who laughed out loud when as Obama's Secretary of State she learned that Gaddafi had been assassinated, the same woman who is an integral part of US imperialism that with its wars crushes the lives and dreams of so many peoples around the world regardless of the color of your complexion.
Beyoncé is like Obama, pure marketing, striking pose and publicized "change" so that nothing changes. The friendly, "liberal" face of atrocious capitalism, compared to the unsympathetic, "conservative" face of the republican hawks
Beyoncé is like Obama, pure marketing, striking pose and publicized "change" so that nothing changes. The friendly, "liberal" face of atrocious capitalism, compared to the unsympathetic, "conservative" face of the republican hawks. But all together within the ranks of the US imperialist oligarchy.
Thus, despite all the supposedly "progressive" gestures that she made in her performance in the Super Bowl, the important thing is that above Beyoncé the capital logo (in this case of the sponsor Pepsi) will continue to shine while singing (without blushing) that "she is a star" and that she has plenty of money.
And despite this, the halo effect is so powerful that courageous activists like Amy Goodman will continue to believe what many of us did not believe with Obama despite the breadth of her smile: that her praxis was truly counter-hege Chipmonic. Of course, we must recognize Beyoncé's commitment on one point and that is that she is indeed a sincere activist for a very special cause: the size of her pocket. So you can be an activist for many to help you gain weight. Today it will be the black population and tomorrow ... who knows? We are sure that it will not be the fight against a capitalism that elevates it to the stratosphere of the social hierarchy and allows it to enjoy a frankly obscene wealth.
One of the left-wing commentators fascinated by Beyoncé's alleged engagement, Dave Zirin, said: "I am frankly in awe that this country, where you can serve gold-flake sausages while people starve in the streets, too it may be a country capable of producing an artist as boldly brilliant as Beyoncé. "
We assume that by "brilliant" he meant the gold and diamond shoes that the diva bought for more than $ 300,000 at an elite UK jeweler. With that amount, the "committed" singer could have saved the life of more than one of her "brothers." But, of course, the shoes were so pretty… almost as irresistible as the sausages. Or the solid gold rocking horse that she gave to her daughter, the diamond rattle, the crown of ...
Moral: this is how we go to a left incapable of building its own cultural industry with its class heroes and heroines. Prey to the limits of dissent prefabricated by the bourgeois cultural industry. Trapped, as we are, by the sellers of precooked dreams and (re) produced by the media oligarchy at the service of capital, we will make mistakes again and again when choosing our references. And in the meantime, some will continue to starve, while others, and still others, feed on gold.
In addition to the above, all this calculated commotion could be (also) a skillful marketing strategy by Jay-Z, the singer's husband, to put his battered streaming video platform, Tidal ( where the video clip was released exclusively), which is being a resounding commercial failure.
