Formation Flashcards
Representation
Representation is how media texts deal with and present gender, age, ethnicity , national and regional identity, social issues and events to an audience. Media texts have the power to shape an audience’s knowledge and understanding about these important topics.
Release Date and Director
- Released the day before it was performed live at the Super Bowl final February 2016 - Black History Month
- Melina Matsoukas
Success Online
- 172 Million Views
- Won numerous awards - Clio award for Innovation and Create Excellence in a Music Video
Themes of the video
- set agains the backdrop of the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina
- the associated racial tension in America
- also draws historical parallels with references to racism and slavery.
“I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros / I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils”
The song’s lyrics are characterized by Beyoncé reframing stereotypes traditionally used in a derogatory way towards African-Americans into empowering statements which celebrate Blackness.
What 4 Social and Political struggles for African-Americans are portrayed in the video?
- Antebellum South
- New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
- Allusions to police brutality
- Black Lives Matter movement
How does Beyonce show a narrative of perseverance and success
- Black women dancing pridefully, slaying, and owning the spaces they’ve created.
- focuses on her own heritage as a Black woman from the south and includes her daughter Blue Ivy in a scene of the video.
Critical issues agains Formation
- some labelled formation as anti-police ( young African-American boy in a hoodie dancing in front of police officers in riot gear. The boy stops his celebration in front of them and raises his hands in the air as the police respond with a “hands-up” gesture, and the scene cuts to the words “Stop Shooting Us” written in graffiti on a wall.)
- The video is standing up against police brutality not police
Beyonce on top of police car
- subverts the stereotype of the police being the dominant hegemony - especially Beyonce being a black figure
Flashing Lights and Police fast cut scenes
us vs them binary opposition - black lives matter movement
Establishing Shots
- Rundown areas - class and background to the video
- Beyonce is wealthy so is powerful that she is focusing on New Orleans that is not wealthy - sense of divide/ethnicity
eye contact with camera
‘y’all haters corny with that illuminati mess’
- people focus upon the wrong thing
