There were many beautiful moments shared in Beyonce's directorial debut, about her favourite subject; Beyonce. My least favourite of these being her make up free confessional, in which she told us the only way to free herself from her low mood was to go fire herself up by listening to one of her songs about making love to her husband whilst performing said act.
Only Beyonce could tell us that she gets horny from listening to herself singing about having sex and straight faced dresses it up as female emancipation.
Life is but a Dream' made no bones of being Beyonce's attempt to provide the same heavily orchestrated professionalism she does to her stage shows to her own life. We never heard it mentioned, but I am sure that off camera Mrs Carter is possibly not impartial to referring to herself as a brand and the film was a clear attempt at controlling it. There was one particularly cringe worthy moment where Beyonce plays her new album to a room full of head nodding studio execs, who unconvincingly (You can read insincerity in an English accent a mile off - we don't do hyperbole) proclaim her genius and originality after a snippet of warbling. If its honesty she was proclaiming to give us, it was only going to be her version of it.
Beyonce certainly does seem to live a charmed life and she comes across as hardworking, passionate and professional whilst also seeming certainly capable of recognising the important things in life. She has a lot of admirable qualities and strikes me (apart from her inability to tell her stylist that woman don't need to flash their ass to get respect) as a wholesome enough role model. These were all things I imagined to be essential for a women of her career status. The most surprising thing to me about her, although in retrospect it shouldn't have been, was how straight she was, almost at the point of seeming dull. If crooning to Coldplay with your husband and singing in to a hairbrush with your BFF's whilst dancing to The Cardigans is your idea of letting your hairdown, then your as much a victim of the ad execs version of the good life as we are. She made Taylor Swift look like Janis Joplin.
I am aware, reading back there is a rather snipey tone to this critique of Beyonce, which could be interpreted like sister hating jealousy which certainly isn't my intention. If Beyonce is the poster girl for 21st century narcissism, then that is partly due to the 21st Centuries digital climate of self obsession and vanity and people certainly seem do to love it. Her glossy Instagram account 'Baddiebey' (Yeah nice try Bey) is inundated with people who have taken time out to confirm that she is just as wonderful and beautiful as she says she is. I don't want to ruin the party but this kind of obsessive approach to self image is as dangerously dishonest as photoshopped magazine covers selling an unrealistic version of beauty for young girls to aspire to. It can only lead to the opposite of what Beyonce is claiming to admire - self loathing. Self loathing/Self Loving is all the same to me. For centuries women have been too selfless, putting men's needs before their own and downplaying their abilities. Beyonce's version of feminism swings the opposite way proclaiming importance just for being a woman, just for being me, just for looking like this. What she should be talking about is being able to just get on with it, remove gender, stop being so focused on the self - especially the outside and be validated for what she does, just as men have been, not because she is a woman doing it and what she does was honestly really good (See, I told you we can't do hyperbole).
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