“Bee on say, Bee-on-SAY! Sha kee ra, Sha-ki-RA!”
You might be familiar with these opening words to the catchy song Beautiful Liar, which helpfully
introduce the listener to the artists performing it. This song, a marriage of
musical styles like R&B and flamenco, was released in 2007 and became quite
popular. It can be studied in many ways, but our focus will be on a feminist
reading of the song itself and the music video made to accompany it, and on the
oriental influences present in both. The latter has been a trend in the last years,
loosening itself of a‘world music’ label and becoming part of a transnational
remix culture (McGee 2012: 220).
The song Beautiful
Liar by Beyoncé, featuring Shakira, opens with Arabic sounding flute (kind
of sounding like it wants a snake to emerge from its pot) and the moaning sound
of a woman singing “Ay”. The song has a conventional R&B beat, enriched by
the sounds of a Spanish guitar and flamenco-like hand clapping. Other elements
that stand out are the horns blasting the theme and the Arabic flute that
started it all. This ensemble of sounds is culturally rich and resembles the
well-known musical styles of both pop stars. The narrative of the song is sung
by its two protagonists, two women who are friends and have both been cheated
on by the same man. In the beginning the affair is revealed, after which the
women seem to be a bit hostile towards each other. Which is understandable, after
all the guy promised that one of them was “worth it, his one desire”. As the song progresses their attitude towards
each other changes: “Can’t we laugh about it (ha ha ha)/It’s not worth our time/We
can live without him/Just a beautiful liar”. The women unite, realizing it was
the man who wronged them and should be blamed. They start objectifying him to
being nothing more than beautiful and a liar. Their resilience (James 2013: 78) is empowering, Beyoncé and Shakira stand up to their oppressor.
Well, there you have it, a song about female
empowerment. Commence the music video! Smoke mysteriously hides the faces of
Beyoncé and Shakira, slowly revealing more of their features. The ladies are
dancing in water, with clouds as their backdrop. They both wear ankle long
black dresses which are wet and cling to their bodies, revealing and
accentuating their famous female shapes. As seen from afar, one could think to
be seeing one woman dancing in different dresses and on different locations. Actually,
the video keeps alternating between shots of Beyoncé and of Shakira who are
basically looking the same and are making basically the same movements. Their resemblence could be a symbol for the male gaze, which is indifferent to the individual identities of women as it seeks to objectify them. They
are not filmed in the same shot until the bridge of the song, when they forgive
each other and dance perfectly synchronized to symbolize this achievement. The
dancing in the music video Beautiful Liar
is inspired by oriental movements such as the twisting of arms and hands, the turning hips, and belly dancing, a style Shakira is particularly known for. Combined
with the Arabic looking scribbling on
the wall, waving drapes and the night sky, the video has a sensual
feeling to it. In this case, the mystic sensual feeling that can be associated
with the orient. While they make these movements, the ladies stare into
the camera, seducing the viewer with their flirty and sexual looks as if they
were trying to please a man. The male gaze assumed by the camera is even more obvious
when the viewer gets to see the fragmented bodies of Shakira and Beyoncé,
waving their hips in a close-up (James 2013: 96).
So what happened here with our song and music video? A song about two women overcoming a scandal imposed upon them by a scumbag of a man received an added layer of sensuality (or even: sexuality) through the creation of an accompanying music video. The overload of sexual aspects has not gone unnoticed and was
satirically reviewed by Anna Pickard for The Guardian (Pickard, 2007). She comically exaggerates the objectification both women suffer from because of the way they are protrayed in the video. So why does a song from two powerful women about overcoming a man feel a bit off? Precisely because of the latter, according to Robin James. Beyoncé and Shakira's music video fits into her "Look, I Overcame" (LIO) narrative. She explains this “Look, I Overcame” to be a way of
performing resilience over an oppressive (male) force which demands it
to be explicit, legibly, and spectacular (James 2013: 88). She states that “Looking is a necessary element in resilience narratives: it’s
not just that you must overcome, but that your performance is seen, public, and
available for consumption by others.” (James 2013: 106). It is obvious that this is what happens in Beautiful Liar - Bey and Shakira perform their resilience and do so by staring their oppressor/the camera right in the eye. Their gaze can be seen as nothing less than grabbing the camera by its balls. The LIO narrative, like the one performed by the two pop stars, is problematic according to James because its performer needs to be damaged first. This not only accomodates oppressive male behaviour, but also justifies it as a need, as a standard (James 2013: 89). Even though Beyoncé and Shakira's actions in the music video seem like an empowering example for women, the fact that they needed to overcome a man to begin with affirms society still needs feminism today.
Feminism and female pop celebrities can be a
touchy and complicated subject, their behavior is analyzed constantly within the discourse of a patriarchal
society. Beyoncé, who identifies as being a feminist, is not afraid to act out
this feminism. Roxane Gay elaborates on a bizarre situation in her amazing Ted talk about “bad feminism”. At the 2014 MTV VMA’s Beyoncé performed in front
of the word ‘Feminism’. She could not have undertaken a more direct approach to
displaying her alliance to feminism. This did not lead to a celebration of it, but made cultural
critics question and rate the level of Beyoncé’s feminism rather than taking her word for it. We have a
long way to go before society has a neutral starting point from which to create and judge creative texts and the artists behind them.
AH – SH – MS – GV – MW
Thesis: The work of established female pop stars is often analysed and then criticised (often by females, as being too sexual) within a patriarchal discourse. Is there a way to escape this?
Bibliography
Robin James. (2013). "Look, I Overcame!" in Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism, Zero Books: pp 78 - 124.
Pickard, Anne. (2007). ‘Beyonce f Shakira – Beautiful Liar’ in The Guardian. (accessed on 27-9-2015).
In the thesis you stated that female popstars can't escape the patriarchal discourse. But maybe there are already artists who have escaped it, like Lorde. She doesn't emphasize the male gaze in her performance, and even puts down other female artist that let themselves portray this way. Do you agree or do you think that she stays in the same discourse even though she tries to distract herself from it.
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