I’m glad that I had the chance to re-watch the music videos of both “Formation” and “This is America.” Now that I am more critical of the things I watch, I saw a few arguments or references to events in history that each video makes. For instance, in “Formation,” one argument that Beyoncé makes is that women can be the “breadwinners” of their household and treat their significant other with luxuries- i.e., taking them out to pricey restaurants or allowing them to shop for name-brand clothing items. This argument is in response to how – at least, in America – our gender norms and roles of masculinity and femininity condition us to think that men are generally the “breadwinners” in the relationship who are then expected and responsible for keeping their women happy by giving them money to spend on things they desire. Similarly, in “This is America,” when he shoots the church members singing in the choir, my mind immediately leaped to the 2015 shooting that took place at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In the article that analyzed this specific scene of the music video, I believe that the purpose of that scene was to argue that historically, churches were a sacred and safe place for Black Americans to find shelter in. Now, they have been desecrated and can no longer offer the last veil of protection Black Americans had against the ills of racism and discrimination, especially when the two are present in police brutality.

On another note, I do feel that if both videos were marketed to the larger American society, then some messages will get lost in translation. If not for the articles we had to help unpack what went on in these music videos and my lived experiences of being Black in America, I do not think that I would have gained the insights I mentioned earlier. With this in mind, how can works of pop culture communicate complex messages without most audiences missing the point and just viewing the work as mere entertainment? Even while thinking that most Black Americans will understand the messages in both videos, I recognize that despite my low-income background, I am privileged – to an extent – because I attend an elite university, which has afforded me substantial academic opportunities than my peers back home who attend less elite and underfunded educational institutions. In other words, while I may be in a position to understand the complexities of what happens in both music videos, my peers may not have the academic tools, such as being literate or evaluating complex arguments and their inferences, to deduce their own conclusion of things rather than accepting works of pop culture at face value.