War on Institutionalized Oppression

    When I first watched the cd lemonade, like the mass crowd of predominantly men thought, ‘aw poor Beyonce she was cheated on and made this whole piece on how bad she was hurt. Poor her.’ But this is what we (predominantly men) in our society dominated by men do, we see the victim (usually women) and think poor them. When this is the problem. Like we talked about in class, rather than x amount of men raped women, it's stated, these many women were raped. Which is the problem within our society, how we place the blame on victims, rather than the perpetrators. Without deeper, though we don’t, pick up on all the deeper meaning of setting, symbols, and metaphors put into the album. Beyonce is aware of this in her cd lemonade by taking control of historically male-dominated spaces by taking complete control of them. 

    

    Controlling places like parking garages, the super bowl, the bus, and even the master's house of the plantation. This contributes to Dr. Nardone's presentation on the album talking about a call to arms for the predominately black woman to fight back using the institutions that oppress them. The scene of Beyonce walking our of the museum or courthouse, coming out for air is very powerful. She is leaving the expectations of our society behind, which have been drowning her. Realizing she can do her own thing without caring about judgment from institutions, she is liberated. Beyonce literally embodied, “I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it.” As 25% of woman are raped in parking garages, and even more, assaulted, and Beyonce takes control of this space. The super bowl is the largest event in America, which is just an institutionalized men's club and makes a stand for feminism on the largest scale, performing formation. Historically the bus holds a lot of meaning through rosa parks and being a dangerous place for women to travel on alone. And takes over the entire bus. Going as far as the master house on the plantation. If this doesn’t make you think how savage and strong Beyonce is, then I have no hope for you. Because through the male-dominated institutions of our country Beyonce is declaring war. 

    Within my own life I’ve connected with Bayonne’s view of feminism, “If a man can do it, a woman should be able to. It’s that simple” I grew up with a strong, independent, single, widowed mother and an older sister. The only male influence in the immediate family I had was my grandfather. My norm growing up was seeing my mom clean the house, cook, take care of two children, run a company, mow the lawn, and fix anything around the house. This was my influence. So from a young age, I learned woman can do anything a man can. So women deserve the same opportunities within our own institutions in America.