Living & Arts

Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' subverts the spectacle

In print | February 19, 2009

Film theorist, filmmaker and all-around insufferable artsy-fartsy hoochie mama Laura Mulvey spent a lot of her time writing about the gaze, specifically the male gaze. About its ability to subjugate women-folk, to exotify, to sexualize, to silence. But Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” proves once and for all just how much power there is in being the object of the gaze.

The first thing that strikes the viewer about this video is how sparse it is. It consists only of Beyonce and two backup dancers all clad in revealing, but not salacious black leotards. Beyonce is inexplicably equipped with a bionic arm … but that’s just beside the point. This video is so notoriously low budget that it has inspired numerous parodies and homages. But for its low budget, this video lacks nothing in sophistication. Set against a white, spatially ambiguous backdrop, the video relies on camera technique, lighting and, most of all, choreography to convey its basic message of female empowerment and ownership of sexuality.

The song itself is sort of like an inverse “Casablanca.” A girl is dancing up in da club, gettin’ freaky when she sees a former boo posted up in the corner. But instead of gettin’ all mopey-faced like Bogey, she asserts herself, chanting “If you like it then you should have put a ring on it,” elucidating for the listener that it is indeed his loss, not hers.

For all of Beyonce’s flippancy and confidence at having seen her old lover in da club, lines like, “Cryin’ my tears, for three good years, you can’t be mad at me,” allude to her initial distress at having lost her boo. Heterosexual relationships and the dynamics therein reveal a great deal about the way our society views women and the ways in which it encumbers a woman’s ability to appreciate herself. The breakup narrative has always been important to women, and are as diverse as Euripides’ “Medea” and Judy Garland’s rendition of Arlen and Gershwin’s “The Man That Got Away.” In heterosexual contexts, breakup narratives can betray power differentials between genders. The man is often the one who leaves because he has options, and even though we live in a day and age in which women and other subjugated groups are closer to reaching economic parity with the dominant class, it would not be rash to infer that perhaps the attitudes of male entitlement that accompanied the economic privilege of yore still persist today, which is what makes Beyonce’s song and video so powerful. She presents a narrative of victory in the face of heartbreak.

The video utilizes 180-degree pans, different lighting patterns and abrupt cuts to create a sense of urgency. That, in addition to the theatrical choreography, contributes to the video’s appeal. It is precisely because the video relies solely on the spectacle, the dance, the performance, that it is so moving. In a way, Beyonce’s video may be read (whether she realizes it or not) as a performance of resistance.

One of the most beautiful moments in the video and the song is, of course, the bridge, where Beyonce lets down her guard and shows some vulnerability. As she sings about wanting a man who can take her to “infinity and beyond,” she and her two fierce backup dancers run up an invisible ramp (invisible because the whole video is basically shot in a white room, so that the incline of the wall cannot be seen), pirouette and run back down to camera level, accompanied by an abrupt change from high key to low key lighting as Beyonce resumes her defiant chant of “All the single ladies.” For in a sense, though the verses are about a very specific situation between a woman and the man who jilted her, the lessons that the song imparts are very much universal.

Empowerment and resistance often take the most unexpected forms. But I would argue that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and the accompanying video qualify as both. I would also argue that there exist numerous people (of any and all genders) who, when they hear this song, feel genuinely empowered (myself among them). It just goes to show that the treasures of pop culture are many, and you just have to think long and hard to find them.

Lauren is a sophomore. You can reach her at lramana1@swarthmore.edu.