Who Slays? Queer Resonances in Beyoncé’s Lemonade

ABSTRACT

This article examines ways in which Beyoncé’s Lemonade incorporates, exploits, and otherwise engages queer artists and their communities. In addition to the inclusion of Big Freedia on “Formation,” a close reading of Lemonade reveals lyrical and stylistic references to queer cultures. Lines such as “Slay trick, or you get eliminated” draw on the language of Ballroom culture. In the “Formation” video queer performers were featured prominently but went largely uncredited and uncompensated. An examination of the singer’s selective support for LGBTQ rights illuminates the complexities of the singer’s relationship to her queer fans and her indebtedness to queer cultures.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editors of this special issue, especially Christina Baade, for their guidance on this project, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback. Funding for fieldwork in New Orleans in 2016 was provided by the Adrienne Fried Block Fellowship from the Society for American Music and the Glenn Watkins Travelling Fellowship from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, for which the author is grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Here I draw on contemporary critiques of Jennie Livingston’s 1991 film Paris is Burning, which explored the largely underground black and Latinx LGBTQ Ballroom scene in New York City. Following the release of the film and its subsequent commercial success, individuals who were featured in it pursued legal options for monetary compensation, which were denied. Additionally, as Philip Brian Harper notes, the film demonstrated the limits of subjectivity for the black and Latinx LGBTQ subjects of the film, as the medium itself inadvertently reframes their experiences and “serves the promotion of the auteur’s [Livingston’s] subjectivity, rather than, and at the expense of, that of the individual(s) understood to be the ‘subject(s)’ of documentary cinema” (98).

2. In this article, I am concerned with Beyoncé the public figure, or persona, which Hansen (drawing on Frith and Auslander) refers to as “the performer as social being,” rather than Beyoncé the individual (165). As Hansen notes, however, this persona is “partly constituted by the personal narratives that meticulously manage the presentation of particular aspects of identity and biography across platforms” (165–66). I would add that these platforms include audiovisual and print material produced by businesses connected to Beyoncé the performer and individual – that is, this persona also includes aspects of Beyoncé as a brand, with all of the capitalistic and philanthropic aims that designation might imply.

3. Portions of HB 2 were repealed in March 2017, including the bathroom requirement, but the bill prevents local governments from passing anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people until 2020. See Domonoske and Doubek.

4. While the mainstream movement for marriage equality has largely been led by primarily white organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, scholars such as Sean Cahill have demonstrated that antigay policies and legislation disproportionally affect black and Latinx LGBTQ families. However, he also acknowledges that marriage equality alone does not address systemic racial discrimination that these families also face, noting that “Universal health care, expansions of affordable child care and housing, improvements in education and other economic justice strategies may help more LGBT people of color than would marriage equality” (246).

5. “Boy, bye” sounds much like the slang phrase, “Bye, Felicia,” which originated in the 1995 film Friday but was largely used in black and/or queer communities before crossing over into mainstream (largely white and heterosexual) popular culture. Use of this phrase has been much debated, particularly its use by white gay men. See, for example, D’Angelo and Moore and Pipkin.

6. A notable exception to this is the music video for Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s 2013 song, “Same Love.”

7. New Orleans native K. Keon Foley-Griffin, also known as Keon the Connect, performs the hook and chorus on the track.

8. It is worth noting that some of the black women featured in the Lemonade film, specifically actress Amandla Stenberg, do identify as queer. Stenberg came out as bisexual just a month before the video’s premier in a snapchat for Teen Vogue. Responses to the film that focused on its queer aspects and actors largely noted the inclusion of Big Freedia, Messy Mya, and the queer dancers, however, which suggests that Stenberg was not read as queer in the context of this work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauron Kehrer

Lauron Kehrer is an Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music at the College of William & Mary, where she teaches courses on American popular music and Western art music. Her work has appeared in American Music and on the website Inside Higher Ed. She completed her PhD in musicology and MA in ethnomusicology from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Her current book project explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary American hip hop.