Answering All the Questions in Beyonce’s New Album

By jia.tolentino December 13, 2013

Beyonce: Are you happy with yourself?

Jia: Yes. I feel really happy with myself right now, as well as united with all women and all Beyoncé fans. It’s a testament to your artistic instincts that the Beyoncé ethos has consistently been one of interpellating the viewer in a way that erases difference and strife and hierarchy, despite the contradictions of the value system you espouse simply by continuing to be you. The face-forward swagger with which you inhabit the unfairly difficult space of black female sexuality is an inspiration that we can all learn from, and by which we might all feel quite encouraged.

For another example: you are inhumanly beautiful; you make us feel that you understand the falsity of this shorthand for worth (Perfection is the disease of a nation); you make us feel, also, beautiful, as our hearts hearken to you.

B: All the people on the planet working 9 to 5 just to stay alive. How come?

Because the life of an organism is self-interested and the exploitative temptations of free-market capitalism have led us in America to exploit much of the rest of the world while simultaneously allowing ourselves to be exploited by our richest in the name of a populist wealth fantasy that will likely never materialize.

There is a subtle disingenuousness hovering around this question. Whether your own particularly American exceptionalism (the neighborhood where you were born in Houston has an average annual income of around $35,000 and you now gross $2 million in every city you play) bears a relationship of erasure, illusion or inspiration to the economic reality of the masses remains to be seen.

B: You want me?

Yes.

B: You like it?

I really, really do.

B: Why can’t I keep my fingers off you baby?

Reading this question literally, I’m going to point you here.

B: How the hell did this shit happen?

A year of artificial, awkward, publicity-choked, politically problematic female pop stars privileging style over substance and here I am weeping at your feet and here you are selling 80k albums from 12 to 3 AM.

Also maybe part of this answer is Boots.

B: How’s it looking babe?

B: Will you watch me?

Yes.

B: Do you wanna touch me baby?

You have made this desire unavoidable.

B: Don’t you know that I give you the loving if you need it?

Yes! I do. That’s another one of your exquisite contradictions: a maniacally controlled image and a nonstop veil of performance, yet a sense that both of those things exist to please your fan base just as much as they do to serve you. I understand this in the same way that I understand your brand of feminism and sexuality to incorporate patriarchal standards and structures while simultaneously claiming independence and self-dictated value away from them.

Look at how cute you are giving this guy some love!