Buying Beyoncé

The image of old racial order has been vitiated by the rise of a new variety of African American celebrities: acquisitive, ambitious, flamboyantly successful and individualistic; the kind of people who are interested in channelling their energies into their own careers, rather into indeterminate causes such as racism. In Beyoncé, the United States – and perhaps the world – has a symbol of glamour and unrestrained consumption that offers, if not a solution, then an apparent salve to the enduring effects of racism. The argument advanced here is that Beyoncé, singer, actor, entrepreneur, serial endorser and all-purpose celebrity, has risen in a post-9/11 era when race and racism were unwanted shibboleths and a new racial order was in construction. Early symbols of the new order were Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey. Beyoncé, like Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and other African American A-list members, are its current representatives. Beyoncé embodies a narrative, a living description of a culture in which race is a remnant of history and limitless consumer choice has become a substitute for equality. The analysis moves to an examination of how Beyoncé emerged and developed into a recognisable brand, her principal marketing alter ego being ‘Sasha Fierce’. The multiple products bearing her imprimatur and the revenue they generate suggest comparisons with a medium-size industry. Yet the most valuable product Beyoncé sells is a particular conception of America – as a nation where history has been, if not banished, rendered insignificant. Her ability to do so is predicated on her ethnic ambiguity: she claims to be ‘universal’, yet slides comfortably into a familiar discourse of exoticism essayed by earlier black female performers. A refusal to conform to existing categories combined with an insistence on the primacy of the market makes Beyoncé an exquisite commodity in a celebrity-fixated consumer culture although an unreliable indicator of black America. The evidence contrasts the image portrayed by Beyoncé with that of other black Americans and concludes with the proposition that the ‘dream’ she purveys has a potent didactic message.

Keywords:

• African American
• Beyoncé
• Black culture
• Obama era
• race
• racism
• popular music

Notes

1. By ‘driver’, I presume Odhiambo refers to whatever supplies force

2. Whites’ fascination with black women's bodies has a history dating back to the early 19th century when Saartjie Baartman, known popularly as the ‘Hottentot Venus’, was taken from South Africa to London and, later, Paris where she was exhibited on stage, at times in a cage. In 1810, Baartman's body was the object of sexual curiosity and perhaps desire as well as scientific inquiry (see Wills, 2010)

3. Compare in ‘The Beyoncé ad and skin bleaching’, Los Angeles Times, 12 August 2008 (available from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage/2008/08/black-women-and.html/ accessed 5 February 2010). For an expansion of the discourse on black women's hair, see Banks, 2000; Rooks, 1996