“parental advisory. explicit lyrics.”
The first shot of Beyonce’s “Formation” music video opens up with a computer screen reading these sentences above. The next shot is Beyonce sitting on top of a sinking police car, nonchalant, staring into the camera. The opening scene, with “parental advisory” on it, is a nod to how Black people and culture have been censored in America, how things like hip-hop and rap have become synonymous with words like “thug” and “gang,” meant to fear-monger the population into thinking that Black culture is something to be afraid of. This is a contributing factor to the presence of police brutality in our country; it seems every week there is a new senseless death of a Black person at the hands of a white cop. Just recently, Daunte Wright lost his life when twenty-six-year veteran police officer Kim Potter shot him with a gun “thinking it was a taser.”
The “parental advisory” warning is also a jab at the ever present “Oh, let’s not talk about race,” “Let’s not bring race into this,” “Can we not talk about politics?” (politics, in this case, being a word substituted for human rights, which is not politics and should never be treated as such). People, especially white people who have never experienced systemic racism, are sensitive to talking about topics like a race because they don’t want to admit wrongdoing, they don’t want to admit something is wrong with the American system. They want to preserve their country as the “best country in the world” without acknowledging how many people are suffering from what this country was built on: slavery, sexism, classism, exclusivity, and hate. Beyonce’s song “Formation” interrupts this rhetoric. She isn’t afraid to show the dark corners of society while simultaneously expressing Black Joy in her music video, because oftentimes too many pop culture films, songs, and other forms of media focus on the suffering of Black people. Beyonce takes care to show how Black Joy is still present even when facing police brutality and systemic racism, how Black culture isn’t something to villainize.
I agree with everything you mentioned, and also found the clips of her on top of the police car to be an incredibly interesting way to condemn police brutality. By placing herself on the roof of the car, she assumes the power over it and subverts the normal power imbalance between the police and black women.
Your last sentence is super powerful to me. I think with everything that you discussed in your post, it is really easy for white society to just villainize everything that black people do. They no longer separate black culture with the violence that tries to destroy it. Beyonce’s ability to bring that joy back is a message that goes overlooked in this song I think and I really like that you pointed it out.
This is a great catch. I saw the “parental advisory” message at the beginning of the video, but didn’t think much of it. You’re totally right, the message is a dig at people who are predisposed to write the video off as too political or as making too much of a statement outside the realm of entertainment.
I think this is a really interesting point to bring up the idea of a parental advisory for videos that concern race. I believe there is a cultural belief that children and young people do not have the ability to understand issues such as race, and even that these issues should not be discussed with children. I think this way of thinking needs to be re-evaluated, for it is important for children to understand race, racism, and other social issues in order to develop a greater, more empathetic view of the world.