THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY AS HELL
BLACK FEMINIST CRITIQUE DEMANDS POWER BE CONfronted at intersections and dismantled at the root, or else it reemerges transformed, more resilient than before. The crooked room that relies on beauty standards, binaries, and intersecting stereotypes of race, gender, and sexuality to demand that some inhabitants bend, while others are free to stand tall, is itself built on the firm foundation of capitalism. Obviously, Beyoncé works within a capitalist industry and system; she maintains a brand, and her music itself is a product, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t also included layers in the music that critique the same system that makes her massive success possible. They could, of course, be stronger or more explicit, but they’re there. Notably, on “Ghost,” she asks why everyone on the planet has to keep working “nine to five just to stay alive”—one of her more direct indictments of capitalism (by way of the music industry). Overt critique or not, her music can be used to create conversations about the toxicity inherent to capitalism and its insidious organization of society. To approach the various crooked rooms and individual stereotypes piecemeal is to pluck the weeds at the stem, rather than grasp them at their root.
bell hooks has centered capitalism in the web of all other oppressions, inseparable from racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., by insisting on using the overarching descriptor “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Challenging capitalism is nothing new in Black women’s work or theorizing, either. Claudia Jones tied the exploitation of Black women directly to capitalism, and was eventually deported in 1955 for voicing communist principles. Both Angela Davis and Assata Shakur were targeted and jailed by the US government in the 1970s because of their work and affiliation with revolutionary movements opposed to capitalism. Davis was eventually acquitted; Shakur was convicted of the murder of a New Jersey police officer (even though forensic evidence proved it impossible for her to have been the shooter) after being profiled, targeted, and acquitted on other charges (some of them dismissed), but was broken out of jail by the Black Liberation Army and ultimately fled to Cuba, where she still resides. She remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Both Davis and Shakur wrote indispensible autobiographies detailing their experiences.
The Combahee River Collective also forcefully denounced capitalism’s overarching domination, especially for those experiencing multiple, interlocking oppressions—which spawned the theorization of identity politics—in their famous 1977 Black Feminist Statement. The statement itself, authored for the collective by Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier, was a response to both the whiteness of the feminist movement and the maleness of civil rights and the Black Power movements, not a wholesale denunciation of either. Composed by a strategic coalition positioned at the intersections, the statement formed a cornerstone of what came to be known formally as Black feminism. The CRC insisted that it was “difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.” From this position, they posited that “the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.” While some of these radical, paradigm-shifting assertions are more commonplace today, bringing the CRC’s statement into the classroom, alongside some of Beyoncé’s allusions and references to capitalism, helps students trace various inequalities already discussed even further back to their origins in a capitalist system. By zeroing in on individual weeds in previous chapters and lessons, it’s then easier to hone in on the root.
Throughout her catalog, Beyoncé has seemed to mark commentary about capitalism through fire. In “Diva,” which was discussed earlier, Beyoncé redefines work, while expectations and assumptions around race, gender, and sexuality stemming from capitalism are blown up in a fiery explosion before she calmly sashays away. “Ring the Alarm,” a song about retaining material possessions—and in the context of Hurricane Katrina, Black women exerting ownership over things can be situated as a critique of captialism rather than its simple unfettered embrace—warns, “You ain’t never seen a fire like the one I’m-a cause.” When it comes to looking for other unlikely critique of and commentary on capitalism in Beyoncé’s work, I ask students to keep following the flames.
Burn, Baby, Burn
“Mine” from BEYONCÉ begins and ends in fire, with additional explosions between. The title appears in two bookended scenes, the only track on the album where it appears visually more than once. Fade in, fade out. But what exactly is Beyoncé torching? Lyrically, “Mine” is about the work involved in a relationship, but the word “mine” itself denotes ownership, property—the devious, driving force of capitalism. In contrast to owning things bought with money, the ownership in “Mine” refers to ways ownership is implied or outright claimed interpersonally. The dynamics between two people, and the ways they relate to one another, have typically also exhibited a core element of ownership or possession. It’s the same element of unequal power that builds stereotypes, binaries, crooked rooms, but injected into all the other seemingly more innocuous relationship dynamics between people and internalized: my boyfriend, my girlfriend. Your father, your sister. Though ownership of other people has been and remains an actual reality in some places, more diffuse echoes of ownership underwrite almost all relationships. All language and thinking is tied back to toxic impulses expressed elsewhere.
In “Mine,” Beyoncé challenges all the ways people interact transactionally with one another, the covert ways the system has been internalized to varying degrees. The song opens with a vulnerable, extended stream-of-consciousness verse. It’s visually accompanied by whorls of silk, seamless movement, and a re-creation of Michelangelo’s Pieta with Beyoncé as Mary. Lyrics during that intro conjure internal struggle; Beyoncé confesses shameful thoughts and doubts that women, mothers, and romantic partners aren’t supposed to voice openly because they upset the so-called natural order. At the same time, she tentatively holds an alabaster ceramic mask to one side. The juxtaposition of hard and soft as the song begins to transition—angelic melody fading into explosive musicality—represents a split or partition capitalism has constructed, keeping her from her own humanity as a Black woman, private person, and highly visible celebrity/artist all at once. Speaking and expressing doubt as a new mother, she’s revealing herself in ways she isn’t supposed to, and those revealing moments question the very ways the system expects or even demands that people interact with one another.
Beyoncé also marks the transition in “Mine” by placing that mask on her face, signaling a move out of the personal and individual realm. She sings, “We’re taking this a little too far,” over and over, invoking a collective “we” as all of society, and indicating that society has been overpowered by the system itself. Read politically, what’s being taken too far is not just personal feelings in a relationship, but the very cultural assumptions and expectations around race, gender, sexuality, even motherhood, that stem from capitalism to obscure its root. Things are spiraling out of control. Beyoncé uses the mother-child relationship as a foundational or universal bond to ground her critique and then work outward. The parent-child relationship isn’t devoid of capitalist traces, as children have been historically used as free labor even outside of institutionalized slavery. Beyoncé’s critique extends to the dynamics of every relationship, the ways people interact on a larger scale, as evidenced through the other actors in the video who are paired off in couples. To unsettle viewers for this substantial critique, she pulls the rug out from underneath them completely, upending herself as well. In the frame, she falls backward into darkness, desperately reaching out as her hand slips from another unidentified hand—positioned as the audience’s own. She’s falling away from the viewer as the viewer falls further away from her, because the bonds between individuals are being called into question as capitalist fabrications. The bonds are unraveling. As she slips further back, the video takes an abrasive turn—explosions, percussive choreography, and masked dancers litter the shots.
The next section of “Mine” performs additional ownership. The chorus finds Beyoncé reiterating, “You’re mine, you’re mine.” Less obvious, though, is the fact that another line divides the chorus and is in opposition to that claim: “All I’m really asking for is you.” The repeated claim of ownership, however, overrides the plea that another person give of themselves willingly. It outnumbers the more benevolent request: six claims of “You’re mine” to a single alternative. Beyoncé’s marking an intrinsic competitive grasp for power at the heart of many relationships through the construction of the chorus. What’s more, despite all the uncontested claims of ownership, it’s not enough. It’s never enough. She wants more. Everyone is constantly conditioned to want more. As the chorus repeats, the earlier plea is swapped out for the more forceful, “As long as you know who you belong to.” No room for debate. She’s dictating conditions already in place, whether or not the “you” recognizes the claim of ownership—and, in the process, demonstrating how power gets exerted over others, even unwittingly.
Every dancer in the video is shown with heads covered by hoods inscribed with either YOURS or MINE. It becomes evident, given heteronormative gender cues, that everyone labeled YOURS is a man and those labeled MINE are women. They dance and perform as heterosexual couples too. Though the labels can be stereotypically seen as completing one whole equally, there’s a significant power differential in the words, expressed in the video along gender lines. Think of the two statements: You’re mine; I’m yours. One is claiming; the other acquiescing. They can be uttered by the same person, but they don’t exist with equal power. Another deceptive binary. The first claims; the latter gives away. And despite the inequality, the very means by which “yours” and “mine” are applied in the video further exposes that both sides subtly lose through an internalized ownership model. The hoods depersonalize everyone across the board—blind them, suffocate them, even possibly torture them when dancers appear underwater. One person can utter both “You are mine” and “I am yours” to another without contradiction, but the kernel of ownership isn’t being subverted, just reconfigured, and the power differential passed back and forth. This goes for platonic, familial, and romantic relationships—all relationships.
The video begs a number of questions that arise in class, some from students and some from myself: Is there a way to have a relationship without implying ownership? Is ownership at the heart of the way people fundamentally function, and will it always be? What does engaging with others in the most human, least harmful ways look like? Am I challenging concepts of ownership as they appear in my daily life? Is there a way of speaking about those closest to me without claiming them as my own? Who would they be to me without the label “mine”? Conversely, who would I be? These are nearly impossible questions to grapple with. It’s easiest to think about possible solutions through the concept of friendship, but neither students nor myself have ever come up with any surefire solution. Attempting to shift something so foundational and internalized is painstakingly difficult. At the same time, students always approach the questions and contemplation with hope and enthusiasm. I think even opening up the questions feels like a win, because doing so points to at least the potential of moving beyond the constraints of the system—begins to identify cracks through which roots become visible and within reach. The questions further open up Audre Lorde’s directive, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” too, because often the master’s tools are all that can be identified; other tools seem impossible to imagine, making the search even more imperative.
I always want my classroom to be a space to weigh options, no matter how far-fetched and seemingly impossible or implausible; a place where different scenarios get played through to their logical conclusions without judgments. A place to simply practice thinking. Sure, there are alternatives to heteronormative coupling, but different romantic and/or sexual configurations like polyamory or nonmonogamy—whether queer, heterosexual, or something else entirely—can fall into similar ownership traps. There are also examples of thinking and/or alternative social and political organization that don’t understand or have any use for the concepts of private property or ownership, but early US ideology labeled them as primitive in order to devalue and discredit them. This is what capitalism has wrought, and it’s obscured the ability to see anything else from within, just like the hoods in “Mine.”
Part of the problem also returns to an economy of scarcity rather than one of abundance, and the notion of jealousy that Beyoncé used to investigate stereotypes earlier. Here, jealousy is tied up in the competition of capitalism and an American sense of rugged individualism. Always wanting more, desiring the things someone else has. But if the “I” in any situation is decentered, and possession not prized, society might be able to leave behind the “I” at the heart of ownership and scarcity in exchange for an “us”—always keeping in mind that the “us” must also be formed at the intersection of multiple issues and identities. Socialism as a de facto alternative to capitalism isn’t adequate without qualification. As the Combahee River Collective warned, “We are not convinced … that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation.” The CRC echoed some of the same sentiments as Claudia Jones nearly thirty years prior and for which she was deported, additionally stating, “Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.” Understanding that situation is the key to answering the above questions and creating alternative possibilities that don’t default to toxic, internalized capitalist impulses.
Beyoncé’s not wearing a hood on her head, but she is still labeled MINE in the video just like every other woman. Her label is painted directly on the center of her bare back. At various times she appears to be trying to wipe it off, but it’s just out of reach. As a Black woman facing multiple interlocking oppressions, her mark is more shrewdly unreachable and hidden, more difficult to identify at first glance or from certain angles. Her mark is harder to redress; she can’t simply uncover her face. The letters of MINE on her back never fade, but they do smear while counterintuitively remaining distinct and pronounced. Like poison spreading through the bloodstream. In a poem from her 1993 collection The Book of Light, Lucille Clifton wrote, “come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed.” The paint on Beyoncé’s back represents those murder attempts—from capitalism and all its subsequent systems of control, a toxic, overarching institution—even while she may collude with the same system in order to survive, and even though some individual Black women make the system work for them. Like Clifton, she invites celebration for each time something has tried to kill her and failed, but also alludes to the fact that true, lasting celebration won’t be possible until the mark finally comes off, evidenced through her continued attempts to wipe her back clean.
Beyoncé’s back in “Mine” also connects back to the opening moments of B’Day and the feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back. There, she was exposing the work Black women are expected to do in order to bridge differences; here, capitalism possesses Beyoncé, her back effectively branded with MINE. The placement forcefully speaks to capitalism as built on the backs of women of color and particularly contingent on subjugating Black women, as noted by the Combahee River Collective. Some of the earlier questions “Mine” poses also find the beginnings of answers in a popular essay from the Bridge anthology by prominent Black lesbian feminist poet and scholar Cheryl Clarke. In “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,” Clarke suggests looking to the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality and a kind of ideological lesbian feminism to mine relationship dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that have the potential to exist outside of capitalist impulses. She says this reorganization in thinking “purports an anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-woman-hating vision of bonding as mutual, reciprocal, as infinitely negotiable, as freedom from antiquated gender prescriptions and proscriptions.” Because of this, Clarke asserts, “all people struggling to transform the character of relationships in this culture have something to learn from lesbians.” Beyoncé obviously isn’t portraying identity-based lesbianism in “Mine,” and Clarke’s “lesbian resistance,” too, moves beyond strict identity in its full praxis. June Jordan metaphorically uses the notion of “bisexuality” similarly in her essay, “A New Politics of Sexuality”—political praxis that begins as an identity but opens wider through investigation of the ways that particular identity is positioned to challenge, or escape, toxic power dynamics. Aligning with those politics and ideologies doesn’t necessarily require claiming the identity itself, just learning from it.
In Clarke’s formulation, mutuality, reciprocity, open dialogue, and negotiation take the place of ownership and possession. Those ideals are theoretically rendered visible through her focus on lesbian relationships as they potentially resist or rewrite patriarchal norms, particularly interracial lesbian relationships that are also working to deconstruct power along racial lines. Not by their existence alone, of course—there is still much necessary work involved. And the work begins by first naming the ways capitalism has infiltrated even the most intimate relationships in order to push back against those dynamics. As all of this analysis swirls over “Mine,” explosions erupt across the landscape and the hooded dancers themselves perform convulsive, violent choreography—a battleground shown in long shot. The explosion from the final scene of “Diva” returned and reenacted many times over. The last moment mirrors the beginning: the word “mine” engulfed in flames. It’s being burned down, destroyed, fire lapping the edges of the frame, before the scene ultimately fades out, with no discernible attempt to extinguish the blaze. It’s been necessarily burning the entire length of the video, given the opening shot, and will continue to do so. Suggesting, perhaps, that society would do well to let the motherfucker burn.
Emptiness
And that’s exactly what happens in “6 Inch” on Lemonade, the next place where flames blaze in Beyoncé’s catalog. A focus on money and work, more immediately referential of capitalism than “Mine,” returns as well. In “6 Inch,” Beyoncé’s no longer celebrating all the times the system has tried to kill her and failed, she’s punching back. Kill or be killed, and fire functions as fulcrum. It redirects the narrative in Lemonade from description to prescription, explanation to solution, as Beyoncé writes that new social contract. In “6 Inch,” more than anywhere else in Lemonade, viewers see the gears turning, the mechanisms of capitalism rotating, to keep Beyoncé entangled so deeply in work—stacking money, grinding to achieve power, to find some elusive self-determination through the American dream—that, though it’s a nonsensical contradiction, she’s “already made enough but she’ll never leave.” An addiction to capitalism. Even though money is power and Beyoncé has achieved it all, “6 Inch” is Lemonade’s nadir, fused to emptiness. Not a moment to be celebrated. Because capitalism ultimately empties everyone.
Red light illuminates all the action. The stylistic choice invokes the illicit economy of red-light districts and women’s bodies as commodities. Of course, sex work need not necessarily be exploitative, but Beyoncé uses the metaphor to reference capitalism’s dehumanization of workers in all ways here, as well as her character’s own internalization of that impulse. She appears intermittently on a stage at points throughout “6 Inch,” a smaller stage than those featured at any other time in Lemonade. One that completely contains her physically. She’s trapped behind a glass wall, on display specifically and expressly for the pleasure of others—another possible allusion to Sarah Baartman—in a first-floor corner of the larger plantation house. At times, she references, “She don’t gotta give it up ’cause she professional,” which speaks to the differentiation of work, and differential judgments about or flat-out erasure of some kinds of work deemed less worthwhile, necessary for the few to continue profiting off the many. The line also speaks to the heightened divide between exploited and exploiter, though it’s definitely possible to occupy both positions simultaneously.
A red light also signals the withdrawal of consent, a refusal to participate any longer or at least the realization that she needs to extricate herself from capitalist clutches. Red references a simple no. She played with similar themes earlier in B’Day’s “Green Light”—referencing “green means go” in the lyrics, all the while cloaking strategic areas of her body in the color red in the video, creating conversations around consent and sexual stereotypes. The lyrics of “6 Inch” are largely in third person, but the juxtaposition of visuals and lyrics indicate Beyoncé is playing both characters. She’s both the one giving it up and the professional. She’s been divided within herself again, kept from true self determination by American capitalism. Alongside red’s associations with refusal, Beyoncé drops additional hints for the audience to insinuate that something more subversive has been going on. She’s been working, grinding, yet all the while “too smart to crave material things.” For what reason is Beyoncé stacking paper, if not to fulfill a craving of material things? Remember the analysis of money and power she began in Life Is But a Dream—perhaps she’s about to use that money and power against the system that has tried to kill her and failed. Aim her own kill shot.
References to material things, money, and wealth appear throughout Beyoncé’s catalog, and often appear to run counter to any claims of her work as critical of capitalism. From the purple labels she stresses as necessary to improve her partner in “Upgrade U,” to the chinchilla coats and VVS stones she claims ownership of in “Ring the Alarm.” From the “Black Bill Gates in the making” named in “Formation,” to the countless references to the Carters’ lavish lifestyle sprinkled throughout the tracks of Everything Is Love. Even renting out the Louvre to film the “Apeshit” video, flaunting power and wealth throughout, seems to rub viewers’ noses in the enormous kind of wealth disparity between Beyoncé and the vast majority of her audience that only a complete embrace of capitalism can provide. And it’s true. But the very flaunting creates conversations around that money and wealth. Alternately, it could be read as making a mockery of the fact that capitalism creates such disparity. Bill Gates might be disgustingly wealthy, but he’s also known as a philanthropist, and that gives the “Formation” line additional meaning too. Beyoncé herself gives back generously, much more than is even shared with the public. So discussing and analyzing her music in relation to capitalism is always a balancing act: one in which critique of the system becomes just one layer—still a productive one to focus on—in the overall narrative of the course.
Tension ratchets up continuously in “6 Inch,” to the point where Beyoncé is pushed to commit and witness murder simultaneously—the only way to move the action of Lemonade forward. Beyoncé, referencing herself doubly, sings, “She murdered everybody and I was her witness.” She turns her murderous rage against an internalized capitalism, the very pieces of herself that crave money and material things and tie her to a toxic system despite her own protestations and acknowledgments. The performance also indicates that the system is internalized in most everyone, not just in interpersonal relationships like in “Mine,” but internalized at the very core of one’s being. To live is to compete and work oneself to the bone, and often, that’s still not enough when compounded by race, gender, sexuality, etc. Beyoncé couldn’t wipe that paint off her back in “Mine” because it had spread through the bloodstream, but in “6 Inch,” she’s ready to stop her own heart from pumping poisoned blood, no matter what it takes. Over the course of the song, she slows and stops the heart of capitalism, even as it kills a part of her. Capitalism takes root and sucks the life out of a person from the shadows. Beyoncé’s left no choice but to travel deeper into the emptiness “6 Inch” represents in order to commit her own restorative act of violence.
The song begins and ends with a syncopated, modulated bass drum, reverberating in and out, slowly but regularly. A pulse. An apathetic heartbeat on the verge of flatlining, but still pumping just enough. It’s both Beyoncé’s own heartbeat and that of the system she’s challenging, because they’ve merged. She has to kill that thing inside herself that makes her crave the validation of the system. That thing that convinces her “she loves the grind,” every day and night with no respite. She must sever her own heartbeat from that of the system, in an act of destruction that doubles as one of creation. “She gon’ slay,” and slay she does. She takes the fire of “Mine” to the walls of the plantation house in Lemonade and slowly, casually walks down the hallway and out the door, as she walked away from the exploding car in “Diva,” and as Sojourner Truth walked away from slavery. Then she stands outside, flanked by others, not to put out the fire or ease the destruction but to ensure it burns. A hoarse cry of “Come back” in Beyoncé’s possessed voice repeats into nothingness as the pulse flatlines at the end of “6 Inch,” the system begging to be spared though Beyoncé’s own mouth. The line gets raspier and less alive with each repetition. She resists and stares into the camera as the crackle of burning wood fades into the background.
In a symbolic transubstantiation, Beyoncé turns the stiletto heel of “6 Inch” into another metaphor for capitalism: one that foregrounds its vulnerabilities with all its attendant byproducts—racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.—balanced precariously on top like a body’s weight. The heel is constantly in danger of snapping. But whether heel or root, Beyoncé scorches the earth, feet planted in the dirt, to make sure it all burns to ash. Fire isn’t simply destructive, it also signifies rebirth and cleansing. Controlled or prescribed burning is often used in farming and forestry to prevent or contain anticipated forest fires, or to better prepare soil for coming crops. Destruction tied specifically to growth or preservation. Octavia E. Butler wrote of the necessity of fire for transformation in Parable of the Talents: “In order to rise / From its own ashes / A phoenix / First / Must / Burn.” Burn the motherfucker down, indeed. Then, from the ashes, build something new. From the ashes, coax a phoenix.