By Skylar Paxton
(Harpers Bazaar)
On April 23, 2016, Beyonce gave the world her most momentous and riveting creation yet – Lemonade. She had released her sixth studio album containing 12 songs and a 65 minute film that visually and musically details her story of healing after her husband’s infidelity. Combined with this personal story are messages and themes of Black women empowerment, Black power and resilience, political statements and more. Lemonade took a hold on the world as it became the world’s best selling album in 2016. It took a hold on me as I opened my laptop and watched her beautiful creation come to life.
This visual album has been deeply analyzed and loved for how it artistically tells a vulnerable story while uplifting an entire community of people. Its impact is immeasurable even to this day. However, there are very specific and unique elements of the album that were used to tell Beyonce’s story while empowering Black American women everywhere. These elements are history itself. In the visual film, Beyonce transports her audience back in time to artistically show how she heals from both years of historical racial discrimination and her husband’s infidelity.
Lemonade is organized into eleven chapters all named after the eleven stages of grief. While the entire visual film carries a multitude of historical symbolisms to carry out its story, the chapter “Resurrection” will be the focus. The chapter first places its audience at Destrehan plantation. Already, the setting establishes historical grounds for where the story will take its place and it's done for a specific reason.
Destrehan is located in Louisiana and the majority of the enslaved people there were Creole Americans. Creole people are an ethnic group beginning from the colonial era where racial mixing between West Africans and French peoples from the colonies occurred. Creole people from Louisiana are specifically mixed with French, African American and Native American ancestry
Beyonce herself is part Creole and her mother is from Louisiana as well. Destrehan plantation holds familial connections to Beyonce in terms of location and ethnicity. What also makes the plantation unique is its history where the 1811 German Coast uprising occurred. This was one of the largest slave revolts that took place in the US. It was also incredibly violent as agents of the revolt were killed and mutilated to have their heads placed on display to warn other enslaved people.
A historical setting with a significant event like that laid the groundwork for the “Resurrection” chapter. It begins with a group of Black women wearing individualized dresses that resemble styles of fashion from the Southern antebellum era as they prepare to take a group photo. The outfits are white and frilly with Victorian embellishments and corsets.
Through the established fashion shown, the women are creating a juxtaposition with their clothes and themselves. The fashion is highly elevated and antebellum styles were specifically frivolous and highly decorated because the women of these plantations had the money to afford such styles. To see Black women wearing them now at the plantation elevates them to that high status. The women have taken charge as the owners of the plantation themselves when, historically, Black women and men were the enslaved workers for it. Through the fashion of the women themselves, the chapter establishes a new ownership over not just the plantation itself but its history as well.
Image from Vogue
When the song “Forward” begins, the audience sees clips of three women holding framed photographs of their sons. These women are the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner who were all Black American men that died in the hands of police. The mothers were all sitting inside the plantation surrounded by embellished furniture and home decor. Their faces were solemn and Brown’s mother was crying while holding the photo of her son.
The song “Forward” itself is quite haunting as it plays in the background. As the title suggests, the song is about moving forward and taking the first step towards resolving a relationship. This idea of this song is transformed into a different form of motivation to move forward, however, when it plays while the mothers are shown holding the photos of their sons. Moving forward for these women means to move forward from the pain they suffered from losing their sons unjustly and brutally.
Image from Vogue
What’s interesting about this scene is how these women are presented in an elevated status within the plantation where, historically, they would have been devalued to nothing but enslaved people. Having the women holding the photos of their sons in this setting connects the events of police brutality and the suffering Black women endure today to slavery. This connection emphasizes the decades of struggle that Black women have gone through that the audience, whether they understand the struggle or not, can clearly see. This also reveals that Beyonce is going beyond her story of pain from her husband’s infidelity but the pain of being a Black woman in America as well.
Lemonade does so much in just one chapter to visually empower Black women, go back in time to recognize history, open discussion for current events in the Black community and still tell her own story of healing from her husband’s infidelity. The rest of the visual film and the album’s songs carry those ideas in the same masterful and artistic way.
Have any questions? Reach out to the author at paxtons@uci.edu!
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