Formation Beyonce Analysis
PASSAGE
There is an unflinching and relentless quality to Beyoncé’s performance of herself in “Formation.” She called women bitches and told us to bow down in 2013. This time she tells women to “get in formation,” prove they’ve “got some coordination,” and “Slay trick, or you get eliminated.” Black American feminists of the 1970s and 80s asserted that women needed to work together in order to survive heterosexism, racism, patriarchy and misogyny. What’s fascinating about the lyrics in “Formation” is that the black feminist capitalist coordination that Beyoncé endorses isn’t about survival, it’s about complete domination—the instruction is to ‘Slay’ and in fact, a woman's ability to ‘slay’ is a basic requirement. And while this stance certainly has the potential to alienate an array of women, it also can serve as a clarion call to raise the bar in terms of black women’s expectations of what we can make of our lives—even in the face of the very real forms of violence and oppression that we face.
EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE
Keleta-Mae describes Beyonce’s performance as “unflinching” and “relentless” (p. 6), which reflects her keen interest in the song to become very …show more content…
In that opinion piece, she laments that “none of today’s athletes who dominate their sport the way Mr. Ali did have taken the degree of principled professional and personal risks that he did.” In a way, in Formation Keleta-Mae seems to have discovered an unlikely champion in Beyonce. For Keleta-Mae, Beyonce’s words are a “clarion call” (p. 6) and can help to raise the standards for feminism to counter “violence and oppression” against them (p. 6). In her commentary on the play The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, Keleta-Mae makes clear her desire for a “high functioning” black woman (p.
There is an unflinching and relentless quality to Beyoncé’s performance of herself in “Formation.” She called women bitches and told us to bow down in 2013. This time she tells women to “get in formation,” prove they’ve “got some coordination,” and “Slay trick, or you get eliminated.” Black American feminists of the 1970s and 80s asserted that women needed to work together in order to survive heterosexism, racism, patriarchy and misogyny. What’s fascinating about the lyrics in “Formation” is that the black feminist capitalist coordination that Beyoncé endorses isn’t about survival, it’s about complete domination—the instruction is to ‘Slay’ and in fact, a woman's ability to ‘slay’ is a basic requirement. And while this stance certainly has the potential to alienate an array of women, it also can serve as a clarion call to raise the bar in terms of black women’s expectations of what we can make of our lives—even in the face of the very real forms of violence and oppression that we face.
EXPLANATION OF THE PASSAGE
Keleta-Mae describes Beyonce’s performance as “unflinching” and “relentless” (p. 6), which reflects her keen interest in the song to become very …show more content…
In that opinion piece, she laments that “none of today’s athletes who dominate their sport the way Mr. Ali did have taken the degree of principled professional and personal risks that he did.” In a way, in Formation Keleta-Mae seems to have discovered an unlikely champion in Beyonce. For Keleta-Mae, Beyonce’s words are a “clarion call” (p. 6) and can help to raise the standards for feminism to counter “violence and oppression” against them (p. 6). In her commentary on the play The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, Keleta-Mae makes clear her desire for a “high functioning” black woman (p.