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Beyonce Run The World (Girls): Video Review

Article first published as (HOLD - DG) On Beyonce's Music Video of "Run The World (Girls)" on Blogcritics.

I was just thinking of my beautiful, hysteric-in-love, workaholic Beyonce, wondering when she was going to wow me with another awesome video when I stumbled on Run The World (Girls), and by the time I sat down to write this I have the tune in my head (in the voice of my four-year-old daughter) and the dance sequences stamped permanently over everything I see (in my daughter’s one-hand-in-the-air-another-on-the-hip interpretation).

The Setting

For someone who has been writing on dystopia since 2003, a barren landscape with burned cars, abandoned tires and bike carcasses is a dream come true. And even though we have seen this pseudo post-apocalyptic landscape in Rihanna’s Hard and (hints of it) in Britney’s Till The World Ends, Francis Lawrence is filming an epic of his own, with horses, bulls, lions and hyenas for company. Smoke is in the air, the sand hits the face, the cars go up on fire. The visuals are stunning but there is a question of balance here; too many images make the eye and the mind scatter whereas in Diva one or two arresting shots lingered like footprints on my brain. But maybe it’s just my thing for black and white.

The Fashion

Beyonce has always been good at picking outfits that are odd enough to be forward without being unappealing; there are no unintentional laughs or Project Runway arts-and-crafts-slash-hardware-store tortured concoctions; she knows what she looks good in and she knows how to rock it. I love the Alexander McQueen red dress with her newly blonde locks. The pointy satin bra against the bearskin shoulders, the insanely smooth golden belt and mini bearskin fringe on the Alexander Wang stilettos make the most remarkable visual in recent pop video fashion. The white Givenchy tulle gown works well with a futuristic take on a retro updo. The Gareth Pugh Agold dress reflects the exploding car behind. The black coat collars up menacingly. The Emilio Pucci yellow dress with an embroidered front and sky high slits up Beyonce’s thighs is jaw-dropping (other bodyparts will move upwards). The black unitard with strategically placed cut-outs is stunning and the sequined green number is a show stopper. Should I mention the gold headpiece? I think this is Beyonce at her best dressed.

The Choreography

Some critics have been disappointed by the ‘simplistic’ choreography; they are welcome to do the short sequence the singer performs with the two ‘male’ dancers. Say what now? Out of breath? Those little stunts require great strength and full command of one’s body. They are wonderfully subdued, with perfect concentration on particular body parts, the rest remaining peacefully immobile. The moves are arresting, the native references fresh and the long shots invigorating – Beyonce doesn’t need to lean on frenetic cuts and heavy editing where there is no way of telling whether the person can dance (they can’t, Beyonce can). I love the big third act dance sequence with the flags in the background (just wish they weren’t so red, I am from Minsk , you know) and I have to confess chills. It’s Remember The Time all over again, only after the world ended.

The F Word

Pop divas deal with profanity differently, and we have earlier seen Keri Hilson paraphrasing herself on the clean track (very lame) and Mariah Carey euphemizing gracefully (classy). In Telephone Beyonce wasn’t as shy as here; then she could blame everything on that Gaga person. My position is this: if you can’t say it, don’t say it at all. But that’s just me.

The Politics

Beyonce plays her H.B.I.C. card again. Survivor. Independent Woman. Single Lady. I have nothing against that, but:

Money? Not a problem. But I still get paid less than men for all the wrong reasons (obviously I can find something hard to land on, and after that, the slot that spits out rustling reward notes, so why pay me more?).

Babies? I won’t argue that pushing a new human being down my birth canal is probably the most empowering thing I have done, and both Christina and Kelis have noted that with their super power chick albums, but the reality is not so haute couture: the only badges of honor I’ve got are my stretchmarks and the only warzone I strategize in is my messy home plus there is a nine to five to sit through (and thank God for that). But then again I can comfort myself thinking that fishing for a seat for my child in the metro is a noble battle. I am prepared to lose.

Endless power? Not where I come from. I was at the oncologist once, and the guy asked me to slide my t-shirt lower, then lower, then… (I came in thinking ‘I don’t wanna die’; I came out thinking completely the opposite). Where is this endless power exactly and why does a powerful woman need a pair of garters to feel that way? The men in the video are dressed (typical), the women – not so much. Is Beyonce creating another stereotype while fighting the old one? Stilettos are a great case in point: they are good for kicking crotches or pushing eyes out of sockets; they are even good for running the world. But isn’t there some serious running to be done in a dystopian setting? And isn’t there sand, Beyonce?

‘You’d do anything for me’! I hate to break it to Beyonce, but this rhetoric is bull. What this ‘new’ woman has to offer, her man can get anywhere else. 242 dancers just in Run The World (Girls) (real women with real bodies, thumbs up); I think he’d like at least two or three of them (with the pill, we can go five, baby)? I have a feeling someone needs to sit through Tigerwoodsology 101 all over again.

Last but not least: What is a girl exactly? What is a boy exactly? Can a concept of man vs. woman warfare be taken seriously by anybody but a preschooler these days? Why are there two male dancers on Beyonce’s side? Do they indentify as girls who run the world despite their protruding genitalia? I will say no more.

The Alter Egos

Beyonce has a few. I have seen the survivor, the kitty cat, the psycho stepford wife and there was Sasha Fierce, of course. They are different, they have different tastes (Beyonce looks up to Coldplay and Adele, Sasha obsesses over Michel Jackson and Prince). But all these women had a great neurotic streak to them, a beautiful vulnerability; they were cracked in the middle, sometimes triumphant, sometimes defeated. Why Don’t You Love Me was a nervous breakdown of a song. Ring The Alarm had dimension and depth. I have a feeling with Run The World (Girls) Beyonce is introducing a new type of woman. Visually she is a warrior woman, strong, tireless, powerful. There is no weakness in sight, no humour, no healthy self-reflection. I don’t know if that woman has lost all grasp with reality; the one-dimensionality and flatness are disheartening. There is a sense of triumph closer to the end of the video, a sense of unity. Both are bull shit.

The woman I want to see – and I feel no one represents – is strong and powerful and tireless, but only because she has lost everything she was afraid to lose. I want a female hero who resents the hero label, who is crushed under its weight. She runs the world, but she is perpetually bored. She has endless power but is tired of needing to execute it. She is tired of being strong, of pretending to be strong. She can do what men do, but does she really want to? she looks great in stilettos and a tight dress; she is forced to wear runners and jeans. Beyonce is not delivering that, steering clear of problematizing her agenda in any way. Instead, she goes for the obligatory shock factor with a bunch of shallow symbols that stand for nothing but themselves.

The Shock

Lady Gaga said once that whether the response to her music is negative or positive, it’s good to have response; she is afraid to produce a song that causes no reaction. In a sense, this is a short summary of modern culture. Such a philosophy cancels the importance of a core idea behind a work of art. Because when you do have an idea, a clear vision, negative response crushes you; your vision equals your world. Those who agree are your soul mates; those who don’t are your enemies. And if you don’t want to fight them till your last breath, you are whore. Beyonce definitely struggles to take a risk in Run The World (Girls) while playing it relatively safe, since all of the risks with licking fingers and leg spreading are as ancient as sex itself. Like Gaga, she is desperate for a reaction. But where is the vision? With a vision, everything is a symbol. What about the saliva dripping hyenas? What do they represent? Exactly nothing. They are just an edgy image.

When my daughter wants a new toy, I tell her to concentre not on what she doesn’t have, but on what she does. So that’s exactly what I will do: Run The World (Girls) has style, catchy lines, flashy visuals, urgency and edge. It has breathtaking choreography sequences. It’s perfect entertainment.

The New Woman

Besides that, I have a feeling Beyonce is introducing another alter ego of hers. (Whether it is fashioned to further disguise who she is as a person, or reveal that, on the contrary, is unclear. Some complain no one knows who the real Beyonce is. There is no need for that. She is an artist. She should be judged as an artist; for dirt, there is reality TV and the neighbours. If anything, I think it’s a smart move, and I love me another doll to play with.) The best glimpse of that woman is in the shot with her vein popping, her mouth askew, her eyes hard. It looks like she is ready to puke Sartre’s nausea of the world Danny Boyle Infected style. This woman is something different, and maybe Beyonce hasn’t noticed her yet, but she is already out there. This woman is about to snap, transform, mutate; she has the blackness of Joanna Eberhart’s doll double in her eyes. Beyonce hinted at her before (the mannequins in Diva?) and her face is a glimpse into the darkness to come in the midst of this colorful female (chauvinist) jingoism fest.

The Verdict

This is a perfect video to watch when I am feeling down; when there is a strange man in the lift and I have to take the stairs; when there is a phone call that takes me instantly back to a place I never want to go to again. The new woman is the woman who can give me confidence, however false. The catch is to remember that where I to wake up in a post apocalyptic dystopia I would not be making money writing opinionated reviews on pop songs and horror movies; I would be doing something much more ancient and basic. And believe me, my child wouldn’t go hungry. As long as I know that, Run The World (Girls) works just fine for me.

The Present

 

Just when you think you are over the past, there it is, bringing you down to your knees.
There is no past.
There is no future.
There is only the present.

The New Beyonce

The Good Doll

My daughter had a nice doll, her first good doll, a doll for which I had to take quite a few shushing banknotes out of my battered red wallet, on which the clasp didn’t work and I had to carry around a pen to push it out every time I had to open it. But I carried a pen around all the time anyway, and a notebook, I was a writer after all, so it wasn’t a big deal. The day before the events in this story I looked at a cute set of toys for my daughter’s nice doll: a pink baby bath, a bar of pink soap, blue and green bottles of talc and baby cream, a tiny snow white towel to wrap the baby up snugly after the bath is done. I told her we would get it when my next check came in. I imagined a quiet time with my daughter when I finally got to play with toys I never had.

Before we went to that dreadful movie, that I am destined to hate forever, my daughter demanded to take the doll and her neat pink pram with her. I was firm: we were going to the movies. She demanded to take the doll then, without the pram. I tried to fight but she was stronger. She got her naps, she got her night’s sleep. I got neither. It was only a doll. What could happen?

I had a bad feeling all along. But we did see, well, The Princess And The Frog, some German flick about the little brother becoming a dog, Babies (an almost silent French documentary about, err, babies), Ponyo, Belka And Strelka, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story Three (twice), Cats And Dogs, Step Up 3D, The Karate Kid, etc – all in the theatre, all without any problems at all. And then again my friends took their one-month old to Avatar, he did well and was shut up by his mother’s tit every time his little mouth opened. So I wasn’t particularly worried. I finally began gaining my life back. I tried to blame random waves of nausea on my erratic eating habits, which weren’t exactly a matter of choice either.

Now some ladies at the Belarus movie theatre I just have to admire. They smile at me and the kid, they praise her curly hair and her bubbly personality. But that day it wasn’t one of them. The lady at the door snapped: ‘Where have you brought her? She’ll be bored stiff. Bring her to Karate Kid’ (been there, done that). It wasn’t quite as nasty as ‘I recommend to make sure you child doesn’t talk during the show. I will not stand any complaints’ icy shower we got before Step Up 3D, at which we brazenly danced and sang along in our seats – on purpose – to Empire State Of Mind – my daughter’s favourite song (it goes like yooooou yaaaaa, kunli junl wa dleems aa made aaaav) but it gave me a little tremor that only got worse as the evening slid downwards.

The trailers were always a menace. I brought her to see one movie, but instead she had to endure four. And three of those horror, and all Russian. Werewolves, bare breasts, women getting raped – does that shock anyone anymore? Yep, my child. I covered her eyes and ears and tried not to look at the people horrified she had to go through this. When the main feature started I relaxed a bit and my daughter was quiet for a while. Pretty soon it became apparent that The Switch wasn’t exactly a kid’s movie. A single New Yorker deciding to get pregnant on her own, her best friend not good for insemination because, yawn, he is just a ‘Best friend’… you know the rest even if you haven’t seen it. Jennifer’s looks impressed me, the semen jokes – not so much.

The dialogue they are having in the café was something I have heard so many times. ‘What are you doing? A kid needs a father.’ On the screen I saw a woman who was desperate to bring a child into this world just like I was desperate to bring some normality into the life of my daughter. I saw a woman who was tired of hearing how things were supposed to turn out because they weren’t turning that way out for her. The dating scene with the pretty dark haired girl where the jokes are wearing thin and the whole shebang of romance is in desperate need of a botox lift was a bitter sneer at the institute of the traditional relationship. The dialogue they are having about the boy coming one day from school, taunts and nasty nicknames on his mind, about wanting to bring children into this world and then trying desperately to protect them from it – oh, boy, did I really need the recount of my own fears on a Sunday evening?

I felt so smug when I said ‘we’ll see’ to the ticket lady trying to warn me. I felt so smug in front of the sandpit ladies who turned on the satellite channel cartoons for their kids. As smug as when a younger and stupider myself told anyone who wanted to hear how obnoxious and irresponsible it was for women to have children without any tangible father figures in sight, and how I, if ever I was going to have children, which I doubted very much, would have one only as part of an old-fashioned unit of society, the traditional family. My ass.

But the atmosphere in the movie theatre was sobering. I felt like I was so different from the people surrounding me my skin was purple or green. I felt like everyone was staring at me. I never knew such hatred in my life. My skin itched from the inside.

Poker-faced, we peacefully chewed potato chips through semen jokes and particles of pure hatred bounced off our munching cheeks and entwined legs. The movie was boring. I made a bad move into the first ten minutes, when my daughter was good and happy in my arms; I offered crisps – something that had to come much much later when all patience was lost on boring grown-up talk and the rare but treasured shots of penguins and dolphins. So out came far too loud requests for crisps, and biscuits, and water, the eager cries ‘Where is the boy?’ and ‘What happened to the dolphins?’ I was uncomfortable, people were turning round to stare at me hard, and there were some sighs and reproaching tut-tuts. Finally somebody yelled: ‘Well, that’s quite enough, I can’t hear anything’. I sprang to my feet and dragged my daughter out of the theatre while she cried her heart out.

On our way back home I thought that the women sneered more than men, the men didn’t have the guts. How many of these women would have babies on their own? How many of them would have babies not by insemination, but with somebody who seems human, which is worse, since in the case of insemination at least one knows there isn’t the somebody to lean on? The truth is that half of the women in that theatre would be fat and stretch marked one day, unloved and unwanted, sitting on the bench in front of a sandpit where the cats piss, looking at their fatherless offspring eating sand, without a single idea in their head that it was actually possible to shake life off their shoulders, get on both two, go out and live like humans before children do. Yes, I was smug again.

I thought about many things on our way back (it’s 11 metro stops, with one change, then 6 stops by bus), holding to the icy cold handle. And then I realized something was missing. I searched frantically in the bag, but sure enough, there wasn’t anything in it except for the books I got just in case, the empty bag of crisps and the drained water bottle. No, a good doll like that wouldn’t fit in.

I told my daughter she would never get a doll like this, British and overpriced, with accessories that cost as much as the dresses she got at summer sales.

In the metro when I realized we left the doll, I was overcome with that feeling, that dreadful angst, that horror, that the character in the movie felt right before inseminating herself with someone’s alien seed, the feeling that overwhelmed me when the father of my daughter was out of our lives in cold blood, leaving me to revert to my primal instincts and survive on adrenaline and fear. Funny thing: turns out human beings thrive on those two.

I don’t know what it was, the irony that I couldn’t watch a movie about single motherhood because I was a single mother; or the fact that I had read all of the reviews of the latest premiers and had chosen the only one that was remotely interesting to my daughter, and it turned out to be exactly the opposite; or the fact that I boasted so profusely about our movie-going habits to the women in the playground, the desperate housewives, the Stepford wives, who didn’t brush their teeth and hair for two weeks, and talked about sauces, dance classes and washing powder; or the reason why I read all the reviews – a place in a UK MA in Film program, starting a month from that fateful night – to which I would not be going because I was selling my good coats to get groceries; but I wanted to cry so bad, I let my daughter cry for me. She bawled. I didn’t console her.

I am a single mother. I am here to stay. I am many, and I am reproducing all the time. I am growing armies of me around my shoulders. Society, I refuse to adjust to you. You will have to adjust to me.

Double Personality Won't Save You, Girl!

After my daughter hit me today (after I took her to the park with a friend, and to Pizza Tempo, and ordered pancakes with soft cheese, strawberry jam AND vanilla ice cream) in front of a line of shoppers because she was not allowed to stroll away from me to look at cartoon posters I told her she was going to be punished. Having swallowed silently my lengthy explanations that children were not supposed to hit their parents, because parents toiled for them day and night, sacrificed lots of things (being able to take a two-minute shower without having to get out naked, lathered in soap to get water, or bisquites, or that thingie I found yesterday), not to mention giving them life, etc. with a portentous ‘listen, and pay attention’ my daughter announced her name was no longer Sophia but in fact it was Kali. She also told me Kali was a boy, five years of age, and he never hit his mother. This turn of events caught me completely off guard. To add insult to injury, this newborn Kali demanded to know what on Earth we were supposed to do with Sophia. I said I think Sophia had to stand in the quiet corner (the corner of shame, really, but since the emphasis is on positive aspects of punishment these days, it got promoted to 'quiet' which is lame, if you ask me) for five minutes. Kali agreed and said it was an appropriate punishment for a girl hitting her own mother. (I thought this was a brilliant settlement, no egos hurt, evil conquered, the UN should take notice, and was smiling to myself).

When we got home Kali announced he always did everything by himself – took off his coat and boots, and put them exactly where they belonged. And, miracle of miracles, he did! (Even without the abused mother having to repeat her pleads over and over – five times usually does the trick.) After doing that, Kali even put on his home shoes and proceeded to the corner. I was speechless. Then, with loud proclamations of how bold and naughty So-phi-a had been in the shop, Kali pushed her into the corner and stepped back. (She literally pushed an imaginary someone there; she shoved her in; there would be a bruise; or bruises.) 'Look at Sophia standing in the corner', laughed Kali, pointing his hand at the punished girl in complete triumph.

My daughter bawled for five minutes on end (those with children can tell you how that translates into normal time measurement units) after her devious plot was uncovered and she was faced with the gruesome reality of being Sophia, and nobody else but Sophia.

Did I mention my daughter is four?

Lady Gaga, Please Don't Call Me 'Monster'

Article first published as Lady Gaga, Please Don't Call Me 'Monster' on Blogcritics.

When I was growing up I thought ‘monster’ was my name. I don’t know how long it will take me to get over the effects of these unfortunate quasi-nomination games by my unfortunate parents, but the fact remains: I don’t really want anyone calling me monster ever again, even if it is the self-proclaimed messiah, the omnipresent and omnipotent Lady Gaga, who is so eager to protect the Other. I haven’t asked her to delegate for me, the freak, and the outsider. But hold on. I didn’t get to the best part yet. I am also ‘little’.

So Lady Gaga has upset her gay fans? Really? Finally, I mean? I thought I was the slow one but hey, it takes perspective, and wisdom, to see what you have in front of you. And in the case of Lady Gaga, there is nothing but cold-blooded calculation, which is heartbreaking. She was such a visionary in those days of 'Poker Face' yore.

The trouble is, you see, the people you are 'speaking' for may start resenting you someday. After all, they have a voice of their own. I, for that matter, don’t need anyone to tell me what I should be labeled just because my sexuality is what it is (I won’t tell, keep guessing). And, frankly speaking, uplifting words about how everyone is beautiful coming from a person strategically and systematically covering up her face, sounds not only false and laughable but insulting. Not everyone is beautiful, period.

But the difference between Gaga and the other Others is that they can’t cover their faces up with paint, a Phillip Tracey hat or a smoking swarm of cigarette butts. They have to deal with that reflection in the mirror every day, because ‘little monsters’ or not, going to the office in an eggshell is a no-no, and Gaga isn’t helping anyone in any way by screaming that she was 'born this way' because she wasn’t. She was born some other way. The rest was manufactured.

Everything that Lady Gaga is saying lately is not just calculated, cold and manipulative; it’s boring. She takes herself so seriously, that everything about her routine, from sleeping in her clothes to waking up to do yoga is so serious it should be put into some sort of scientific manual, or framed upon a wall; the air coming from her mouth should be frozen for preservation.

It’s hard to understand what this woman thinks she is. She is clearly a talented singer and composer. But what else?

Lady Gaga teaches her fans their main religion is pop culture and their main goal in life is to be true to who they are. The me-me-me philosophy works fine with the creative bunch, the rags to riches, the from nothing to something, and the nice industrious types, so to say. How about the folks whose aspirations aren’t all that pretty? Should they also embrace who they are, even what they really strive for is, say, hurt a child? Do they also get up to do five-minute affirmations about how wonderful they are? Where does this rhetoric stop exactly? Does Lady Gaga provide any small print in that lifestyle manual of hers for the unbelievers like me, who tend to doubt and question rather than proclaim and affirm?

When Lady Gaga wakes up in the morning, before doing the hard-hard yoga, she tells herself how wonderful she is. When I wake up in the morning I tell God how wonderful he/she/it is and how thankful I am for everything I have. And that, I guess, is the biggest difference between us. Who exactly is the monster here is neither for me, nor for her, to decide.
 

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