Beyoncé and Celebrity Worship

Please make sure you're sitting down before reading the next sentence. I'm admitting in print (or digital ink) that I'm not a Beyoncé fan. Although I risk an attack by the incredibly sensitive and aggressive beehive, I need to be honest. I have no problem with Beyoncé's music, her songs are catchy, her voice is . pleasant (she's no Adele), her charisma on the stage and screen is undeniable. Except in the movie Obsessed. Don't watch it. It's terrible.

Despite my indifference to her, I have to admit that Beyoncé, from her core, is someone made to entertain us and has done so from her flawless dance moves, her elaborate music videos and to the sometimes-bizarre glimpses we see of her personal life. Flashback to the grainy security footage of Solange attempting to beat up Jay Z in an elevator while Beyoncé stands there like a mummy. And then there was that whole Becky with the good hair fiasco.
The issue with Beyoncé for me is perfectly depicted in the first photo she shared to announce her pregnancy on Instagram. Beyoncé cradles her belly appearing ethereal, feminine and lavish in a bare way. The image is all those things but it's far from unique. In fact, it plays into the continuous narrative of man's narcissism, multiplied and magnified through social media, his obsession with immortality and his arrogance both as the subject and the viewer. All of it, of course, is packaged and presented as art. And I'm sure, to a degree, it can be viewed as just that.

There has always been something distasteful to me when people, famous or not, talented or not, are elevated to the status of worship. Revered, respected, valued yes, but any celebrity, actor, singer or artist no matter how they present themselves, are and should never be free from criticism simply because their work or their image is perceived as almost divine. And there's something about that photo, which was conveniently posted on the first day of America's Black History Month that reiterates the idea that Beyoncé and her children should be worshiped without question.

As I mentioned before, he who criticizes the Queen Bee faces the wrath of her beehive. The same hive that abused the teenage daughter of Rachel Roy when she was the number one suspect during the Becky with the good hair witch-hunt. The same witch-hunt that Beyoncé never put an end to despite the barrage of online abuse to a number of celebrities and well-known personalities. Her now, signature silence in the press to all things personal, political and social adds to Beyoncé's allure and gives her the appearance of balancing her private life with her public one.

However, would a private celebrity, create a very personal documentary Beyoncé: Life is But a Dream directed and executive produced by her, documenting many intimate thoughts and moments from her life? Unlikely. Would a private celebrity announce their pregnancy in an elaborate photo-shoot, producing a series of photos with virginal, goddess and semi religious imagery? I doubt it. Could you imagine Sade or Enya, both notoriously private and reserved, both equally talented, gifted and entrancing as Beyoncé present themselves publically in such a light. I couldn't imagine it for a minute.
Beyoncé is an artist and she has every right to promote and express herself as such. But isn't it worrying that the only news broke through the distressing and torrential political abyss that has been plaguing our newsfeeds recently is photos of Beyoncé looking like so many other images of the Virgin mother? The Goddess Venus? Cleopatra the last Pharaoh of Egypt?

If we were to simply break down the series of photos, mainly the first one Beyoncé posted on Instagram, most people with a knowledge in classical art can decipher the visual announcement and see very obvious references to art history's most iconic works. Think of the Early Renaissance painter Botticelli and his universally recognized work, The Birth of Venus (1486) or Rococo period painters such as Watteau and his work A Mezzetino or Boucher's, The Toilet of Venus (1751) and the portrait of Marie-Louise O'Murphy (1751). There is also the Flemish portraitist Van Dyck and his painting Queen Henrietta Maria (1632) or even Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring (1665). Beyoncé's use of flowers could be attributed to the painter Jan Brueghel the elder and his still lives of flowers from around 1600 and Latin American works that featured many floral decorations most obviously in the work of Frida Khalo.

The criticism here isn't that Beyoncé borrowed these references, was inspired by these movements, dipped her hands into the rich history of art to create her own. That is to, a degree, what artists do. It is their right. Art isn't sacred, the past isn't sacrilegious. But . . . It only feels appropriate to quote Pablo Picasso here when he stated that, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Ironically that quote itself has been imitated, stolen and plagiarized until Picasso made it his own.

What bothers me about Beyoncé's photo is, as Picasso stated, good artists, copy. Beyoncé has fallen into a pattern, like many of her contemporaries and those before her who have taken melodies, references, dances moves from history and the streets without ever understanding their context and then reducing their authenticity and appropriating them into their own message of the minute.

In Beyoncé's case right now, her aesthetic sensibilities and messaging seems to be centered around her immortal command of feminine strength and power. She is the voice of the people, she is the voice of the modern women, she is the mother, she is the queen, she should be worshiped.

Some may argue that Beyoncé's whole image is simply created to sell records and concert halls. Others believe that she expresses semi political, feminist, social statements disguised as pure entertainment. We are constantly standing in this blurred space when it comes to Beyoncé. Again this is her allure.

The strategies that celebrities apply to plan their announcements for album names, tour dates, single releases is one thing. But this obsession, this arrogant obsession, to also plan and manipulate birth announcements, names of children is cheap and contrived.

Beyoncé is a super star, yes, but she isn't a God. Though she is a visual storyteller painting herself as both muse and artist, she isn't the Virgin Mary. Although she sings for and has been the voice of a segregated population of people, she isn't an actual Queen who holds court or a politician who has changed the law. And even those people shouldn't be worshiped. No one should. Beyoncé is a human being and even though the images of her are immortalizing her as something else, it's dangerous for us to elevate her as something divine.

Imagine for a moment if Kim Kardashian posted photos of herself, veiled and virginal, looking like an Egyptian Queen, a sultry water spirit to announce her pregnancy. Everyone would be asking, who does she think she is? Kanye West who is known for his prolific tweeting and proclamations of his greatness shouldn't be reprimanded for saying what Beyoncé is showing.

If you look very closely at Beyoncé's images and other visual cues from her body of work you will learn that all celebrities are arrogant, all of them are fickle, all of them are paradoxical and hypocritical. Attributes that like all of us, make them human.