Self Reflection on Teamwork, Feminism and Beyonce
Our initial goal for this project was to explore and explain whether or not Beyonce was a feminist through her lyrics alone. As our project evolved, we soon realized we needed the images Beyonce provides us through music video add to the context of her words to complement her feminist messages. Our initial creative component involved erasure to highlight her feminist lyric, but we realized we needed the entire song, as well as her music video to offer context. In the end, we had more we wanted to say about her, and women’s history that erasure didn’t allow for. We decided our creative component would be a multi-media website embedding images, gifs, and an annotated music video into our essay.
Working with Luke definitely added depth to the conversation. One of the first steps of our process was to highlight all of Beyonce’s feminist lyrics. We did this separately and compared our findings, and the debated about what lyrics were feminist and struggled with explaining why one of us had highlighted certain lyrics or not. I think having a female and male partnership helped emphasize the equality message rooted in feminism. This process helped us realize the importance of researching and defining feminism. The next steps we took in reading books and articles about different waves of feminism, black womanism, intersectionality, and “Anaconda Feminism” gave me so much more appreciation for women who fought and continue to fight for equality on all levels.
One of my favorite parts of this project was annotating the Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) music video. We thought this was a cool way to link words and moving images but sometimes had more questions than answers. For example, Jenna, in one of her comments asked why the video was black and white: we do not have an answer for that. Other than that, we received positive feedback on the comments on this music video.
Luke and I made our final edits last Saturday evening, before Beyonce dropped her surprise visual album Lemonade. I remember being frustrated about not having as much opportunity to go in depth about the intersectionality of race with feminism with many of her older songs, but Lemonade offered a lot of material that matched what womanism scholars wrote. It was as if we were rewarded for our case study analysis on this artist, and she provided us with material reinforcing our findings on modern and intersectional feminism. If I had the time, I would definitely have analyzed Lemonade, and all of Beyonce’s songs in depth to show how her feminist message has strengthened over time.