Description
Pop cultural texts have long included social and political commentary and thus make significant sites for rhetorical analysis. Luke Winslow argues that pop cultural artifacts are “sites of struggle that determine who has power and who does not. And it is for this reason that we need to be aware of the power in popular culture” (89). Beyoncé’s “Formation” music video is one such artifact that focuses on social and political struggle and oppression—it comments on the violence against Black lives in the United States and seeks to empower Black men and women in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. While much has been written about Beyoncé and her activism in the past, there is very little scholarly material that examines her recent work with the Black Lives Matter movement. Beyoncé’s “Formation” music video is an example of a social artifact composed by a rhetor participating in a larger political movement hoping to encourage collective action and direct social and institutional change. In her video, Beyoncé speaks to a large audience comprised of all Black Americans, regardless of sex, gender, and sexuality, interested in promoting change in the social and political treatment of Black people in the United States. This project examines this music video and analyzes the ways in which Beyoncé uses images of Black history and the current Black experience in the United States to hail the audience she seeks to attract and mobilize. My analysis shows that the imagery in Beyoncé’s video accomplishes two constitutive tasks: first, it creates a cohesive Black identity based on the common culture and shared practices and experiences of the Black community; then, it builds a historical and transhistorical narrative that recounts major events and time periods in Black American history. These two processes work together to hail, or call into being, Beyoncé’s target audience, calling them into existence so that they can next be persuaded to act collectively.
