We’re Not Talking Enough About Dissent Within the Beyhive
By stacy lee kong
Image: instagram.com/beyonce
Content warning: This newsletter contains references to, and graphic descriptions of, physical injuries, war and death.
Before we begin, a disclaimer: I love Beyoncé. She was my second most-streamed artist on Spotify, and I spent significant sums of money to see her in concert this year—twice! I think she’s both a genius and an icon. But, (and please, Beyhive, don’t come for me 😬) I don’t think she’s above critique.
Neither does New York magazine critic Angelica Jade Bastién, who recently published a viral review of Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé that made a sizable contingent of Bey’s stans super mad, and sparked an entire discourse around art criticism (again). There were two threads in Bastién’s review. First, critique of the movie itself—the costuming, the editing, the songs and how the movie transitions between them, the approach to dancing and likely reasons why it was less dynamic here than in previous projects, and the themes Beyoncé focuses on (motherhood, family, authenticity, joy, liberation). The other layer of critique is about the overarching narrative Beyoncé crafts through her art, the places where it feels most strained, and the way her real-life actions (including her decision to stay silent about Israel’s ongoing oppression and genocide of Palestinians) might undermine her artistic intentions.
Like some of the best art criticism, Bastién’s review is not really about whether the film was ‘good’—or even whether she liked it. Instead, she attempts to situate both the artist and the work in a wider context, picking at the threads of the story Beyoncé is trying to weave about herself, and in the process exploring bigger questions about what art is for, and how much it matters when an artist’s brand and actions do not match up.
And while not all members of the Beyhive hated it, many did.
But while we could have a conversation we’ve had many times before about the nature of fandom (or more accurately, stan-dom) and the value of critique, I think it might be more illuminating to focus on the varying opinions within Bey’s fandom, what that says about our current social, political and cultural moment—and what we might glean about the potential future of pop superstardom.
Contextualizing the Beyhive’s pushback against criticism of their fave
In fairness, I do feel compelled to point out that there has never not been tension between artists and critics, and people have been wondering what art criticism is even for for ages. So pushback to a harsh review isn’t actually weird.
That’s especially true in Beyoncé’s case, because she has objectively been treated unfairly by critics and the music industry at large. In 2015, when Beck won Album of the Year for Morning Phase over Beyoncé, Kanye West once again criticized the organization and called for the musician to “respect artistry” by giving his award to Beyoncé. In response, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter Vincent argued that actually, her artistry didn’t even approach Beck’s. (That Vincent did so using a meme about the number of writers and producers on Beyoncé versus Morning Phase was especially irritating, because it betrayed a lack of familiarity with R&B as a genre and sampling as a phenomenon. I also did not love how he positioned collaboration as inherently un-artistic.) Of course, she has widely, and uncontroversially, been considered an auteur since 2019’s Lemonade, but that doesn’t eliminate the sting of earlier disrespect—especially when it hasn’t completely gone away.
I mean, as recently as this past February, Bey became the artist with the most Grammy awards ever (32) after picking up four new awards for Renaissance (the album). But she has still consistently been snubbed for the ‘big four’ awards: Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year. She’s only won one of those awards once—Song of the Year in 2010 for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On it)”—and she’s never won Album of the Year, despite being nominated four times. As Time’s Moises Mendez II pointed out at the time, “each of the four times she has been nominated for Album of the Year, she has lost to a white artist whose album many argued was less culturally significant than hers. (Even Adele famously tried to reject her own win over Beyoncé’s Lemonade in 2017.) [And] the Recording Academy’s repeated awarding of other artists over Beyoncé has not taken place in a vacuum. Only three Black women have won Album of the Year in the ceremony’s 65-year history, the last time being when Lauryn Hill won for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999.”
All of that being said, stans do add a sometimes scary new angle to this conversation. Unhappy with Bastién’s opinion, some issued threats online and even attempted to doxx her, which is objectively messed up—and not actually good for art, artist or audiences. As culture critic, writer and self-proclaimed Beyoncé historian Gloria Alamrew perfectly put it on X/Twitter, “We can’t live in a world that muzzles critique, y’all. I don’t want that for any of us. We have to be able to interrogate and dissect the art of our time. If you consider yourself a culture worker in any way, shape or form, this is your literal and most fundamental job. Ask yourself who you think you are protecting or defending in your wrath. What systems do we actually uphold if we can’t critique the artists we say we love? What tyrannies are you aligning yourselves with when you demand unquestionable allegiance?”
Beyoncé absolutely deserves critique
Those tyrannies are evident in both strains of Bastién’s critique. Of the film itself, she points out that Beyoncé crafts narratives of relatability that do not quite match up with reality. Specifically, she calls out scenes about disagreements (“The documentary touches on the disagreements and minor conflicts she’s had along the way while bringing Renaissance to life after having ‘no days off’ for over a month. Crucially, the nature of these disagreements—who within her team actually disagrees with her and any concrete tensions Beyoncé faces professionally because of being a Black woman—are never illuminated. We have to take her word for it.”) and motherhood (“But the warmth of her gaze is freighted by the ways she positions herself as relatable even though her wealth and power makes her anything but. Later, Beyoncé remarks that she is just like any other working mother who ‘brings her children to school and takes them shopping for their first day.’ The next scene shows her calmly tucking her children in to sleep on a private jet.”)
Contrary to some stans’ enraged opinion about why Bastién highlights these examples, this isn’t about branding Beyoncé a liar or a bad mother. Instead, it’s about illuminating how narratives are constructed and asking us to question their purpose. These points tell us something important, or at least interesting, about what Beyoncé prioritizes, what she wants us to believe and the themes she wants us to focus on, which in turn helps us understand her intentions for this project, and her art as a whole. But what I think is most compelling about Bastién’s review is that she links the threads of the movie’s narrative to the one Beyoncé projects about herself, a.k.a. her brand, and critiques her for adopting the aesthetics of liberation without backing them up with true action. And this is not just about Bey’s silence on Israel and Palestine, though that’s what received the most attention. The piece also questions how genuinely invested she is in queer liberation, and whether she’s even actually interested in true Black liberation, or whether her primary goal is expressing palatable and largely uncontroversial ideas about ‘joy’ and ‘safety’ as a means of securing the bag/celebrating her own greatness.
I’d add that Bey seems to be quite masterfully undermining past critique about her famously ironclad control over her image, which had often been perceived as inauthenticity. This could imply growth from girlboss feminism to something more contemporary and intersectional, a journey I’ve made myself… but it’s also a savvy marketing move that reflects our current political moment. Despite being famously private, she’s consciously building a brand for Blue Ivy, which is probably about both legacy and succession planning. And, she’s deliberately drawing connections between her own personal liberation as a Black woman in her 40s and collective liberation, which is powerful and appealing, but starts to feel a little too convenient if you think hard enough about her economic, social and political power—and what she’s not using it for.
All of which is to say, you can be a huge fan of Beyoncé (👋🏽) and still acknowledge that there is something kind of gross about leaning so heavily on the language and imagery of freedom and liberation, but declining to take any real, potentially contentious, action toward that goal. And that’s particularly true of her refusal to make any kind of statement on Israel and Palestine, especially since there’s a strong argument to be made that she, like Taylor Swift, is functionally uncancellable. I don’t really think we need (or should want) political leadership from these stars, but I would take a statement calling for a permanent ceasefire from someone with a massive platform and dedicated fanbase, who can better withstand censure than the largely marginalized folks who have been speaking out the most thus far, and consequently bearing the brunt of the social and professional consequences for doing so. That’s not to say there’s no risk involved for the Beyoncés and Taylors of the world, but the repercussions they’re most likely to face for speaking out are monetary, something they already have a lot of. That makes me think their silence is largely about self-interest and class solidarity, which… yuck.
But, I want to push back a bit on the stan narrative
You might have noticed I have been careful to say ‘some stans’ throughout this newsletter. Whenever the topic of art criticism comes up, especially about Beyoncé, Swift and other stars with similarly passionate fanbases, we hear about how stans refuse to entertain any critique of their faves. This has absolutely been true in the past, and remains so for some members of the Beyhive and Swifties. But, I don’t think that’s the full story this time. There are lots of self-proclaimed Beyoncé fans who are disappointed by her decision not only to screen Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé in Israel, but to stay silent about this ongoing genocide, even after some Israeli Zionists adopted “Break My Soul” as an anthem, which was clearly because they saw her silence as support. And, for the record, we’re seeing something similar among Swift’s fans, who have called out Time’s decision to make the singer its Person of the Year over Palestinians, and especially the independent journalists who have been risking their lives to tell the world what is happening to Gazans right now.
I think this is super interesting because it could have real consequences for both Beyoncé and Swift’s usual strategies of addressing criticism. Though there are distinct differences between their respective approaches—Beyoncé rarely addresses anything, though she might post something shady to the delight of her fans, while Taylor is more responsive, though she’ll ignore what she can’t reframe as an example of misogyny—they both depend on the knowledge that eventually, both ardent fans and not-so-adoring members of the wider public will become distracted and any undesirable discourse will fizzle without doing too much damage to their overall brands.
Over at NPR, Brittany Luse and Code Switch co-host B.A. Parker also delve into this idea in an (excellent) episode of It’s Been A Minute. In addition to pointing out the cognitive dissonance of inviting Kendrick Lamar, a rapper with a… um, complicated relationship to LGBTQS+ communities, to appear on Renaissance, which is themed around and dedicated to queer liberation, they grapple with what Beyoncé’s silence says, and how her fanbase might engage with it going forward.
“To me, even though I have some qualms about the politics, the accuracy and the framing of some aspects of the film, I can see that there's enough value there that I want to critically engage with it,” Luse says. “And I think, when you kind of cut people off from being able to actually critically engage with your work—which, technically, I think that's what she's doing by refusing interviews—and also, not saying that she weaponizes the Hive, necessarily, but the Hive is activated to also push back on critique of her in a way that I think is unhealthy. I think, ultimately, it is going to harm her legacy and kind of keep her in this place where she's merely a pop artist, when, actually, I think, creatively, she's much more than that.”
But, I don’t think this is just about her refusal to engage with critique; I think fans are disillusioned about her silence in general. Too many people have been killed, too many illusions about Western ‘goodness’ have been shattered and we’ve made too many connections between various types of oppression. The death toll in Gaza has reached more than 17,000 people, plus an additional 46,000 injured. Most (70%) of the dead are women and children. And, it’s likely these numbers have been under-reported, since they don’t account for people whose bodies remain under the rubble that was once homes, schools and hospitals. (Also, the Israeli government agrees with those numbers and says the IDF has killed two civilians for every Hamas militant.)
We are seeing, in real time and graphic detail, the consequences of Western imperialism and colonialism, and frankly, it’s horrifying. On Thursday, the Independent published a dispatch from inside the European Hospital in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis, and I’m not sure how you can read it and come away thinking any of this is justified. It starts: “A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn’t know is dead—and screaming because doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year-old boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl, her eye surgically removed, because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee, whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him. And in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots ‘creep out of untreated wounds.’” And yes, it gets worse from there.
While I acknowledge that the general public often chooses their own comfort over difficult or inconvenient action, I do think there’s a tipping point, and we may be there. (At least, I hope we are.) The things we have learned over the past two months aren’t things we can ‘un-know,’ and I won’t be surprised if that contributes to a shift in what stans will overlook for, or about, their favourite celebrities, whether that’s Bey or Swift or someone else entirely.
Feeling Thirsty?
Just a reminder for all those interested in unpacking who we think is hot and why: On Dec. 12, I’ll be back with my favourite Thirst Experts, Katherine Singh, Sadaf Ahsan and Meaghan Wray, to break down why so many women are lusting after Timothée Chalamet, a.k.a. Timmy C, a.k.a. Stormi’s stepdad, right now.
The details:
When: Tuesday, Dec. 12 at 7pm
Where: Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, 506 Bloor St. W., Toronto
How Much: $15 (But Friday Things readers can get 50% off the ticket price with the code THIRST50)
Get your tickets at HotDocs.ca!
And Did You Hear About…
The latest allegations against P. Diddy—and this excellent Rolling Stone op-ed about the men in his circle who enabled him for years.
Erica Lenti’s powerful feature about LGBTQ2S+ seniors who are re-entering the closet as they age over “fear of discrimination from caregivers, a distrust of workers in long-term care facilities or, in some cases, memory loss that returns them to a time before they were even out.”
This fascinating take on May December and our ongoing obsession with true crime/tabloid culture.
Your annual ‘I visited the set of a Hallmark Christmas movie and this is what it was like’ article. (Fair warning: this one is a little bit melancholy.)
Aymann Ismail’s heartbreaking article about Wadee Alfayoumi’s parents, and how they are coping (or rather, not coping) after the six-year-old was fatally stabbed by his family’s landlord for being Palestinian.
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