Over the weekend, Beyoncé debuted her sixth studio album, “Lemonade,” setting ablaze the internet, our earbuds and our Tidal and HBO Go subscriptions. It’s a fantastic work not only as an album but as a “visual album,” boasting compelling Terrence Malick-indebted cinematography. However, two middle-aged white men who you’d expect to have a bad opinion about Beyoncé, do.
If last night you were reading the Drudge Report, a site recently known for erroneously and inexplicably reporting that the bear in “The Revenant” raped Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, you could come across an all-caps headline that breathlessly read: “Beyoncé ‘urban terrorist’ in new video; baseball bat rampage.” Once you click on the headline, Matt Drudge, reclusive wearer of bad hats and founder of worse aggregation sites, links to a blog post from ornery former Fox News critic Roger Friedman implying that Beyoncé isn’t a good role model argle-bargle.
Without even getting into the gross racially-coded language of “urban terrorist,” sure, during the hour-and-five-minutes-long visual album “Lemonade,” Beyoncé does take a baseball bat to several vintage cars for a couple of minutes while soundtracked to album highlight “Hold Up.” Considering the very easy observation that her appetite for vehicular destruction (it goes so comically far that she later drives over the wreckage with a monster truck) is a metaphor for her emotional state after realizing a partner is cheating (i.e., “What’s worse: looking jealous or crazy? Or like being walked all over lately? I’d rather be crazy.”), is this really something grown adults should be outraged over? Are Drudge and Friedman so cynical to assume that kids are going to start renting monster cars and wreaking havoc because Jay Z is cheating on them? (Don’t answer that).
Granted, getting upset at the Drudge Report for a misleading, ridiculously off-base headline is like being upset at “The Big Bang Theory” for not being funny—it never was good so why waste your energy on something so silly? However, it is worth noting how bottom-of-the-barrel Drudge has to go for fuel for his click-driven engine of white outrage.
During every Beyoncé album cycle, it seems like there’s this increasingly dumb discussion about whether or not world-class singer, mother, businesswoman and human Beyoncé is a good “role-model” for kids. While her obvious talent, business acumen and public grace and poise throughout her career should be enough to say, “Yes, of course she’s a role model,” her outfits, her personal life and politics are still overly scrutinized.
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This has got to stop. Instead of wondering whether or not Beyoncé is a good role model for your kids, ask your kids why they aren’t more like Beyoncé.
@joshhterry | [email protected]
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