Queen B: Beyonc and Producer-Consumer Media Culture First off, I think we can all safely say that the

happiest moment of everyones 2012 so far took place on January 7th. Im talking of course about the birth of Blue Ivy Carter, already heralded as probably the most talented girl on the planet. All the best wishes to you, lil Blue, and of course to your beautiful, beautiful parents. That said, Id like to discuss some contemporary issues that Ive been thinking about for a little while, and which these joyous events have spurred me to commit to the internet, as it were. As discussed (ad nauseum) in previous posts, I see Beyonc as particularly emblematic of the current state of our technology-based cultural production engine and voracious mediaconsuming society, and the economic structure that marry the two together. Her successful dissemination of her brand and art through various internet-based and Web 2.o technologies has made her by far one of the most successful global entertainment acts in world history. She has become, as Ive said before, the figurative masthead of internet disseminated entertainment. The world wide web has become the greatest media producing industrial complexes of all time; it is defined by: the high production value, the low-brow content and medium, the cross-genre intra-industry collaboration, the insane build of anticipation, the necessitation of online consumption, [and] the hedging of social internet landscapes to market the product. What most interests me though is how Beyonc as a global brand and celebrity personality is actively shifting our media production models across the board, internationally and crossculturally. And how this changes our economic structure. How does this affect our ethics of cultural relations? But most importantly, I know I speak for us all when I demand to know: what will Blue Ivys first word be?? Who Run the World? One thing that really fascinated me about Blue Ivys birth was how on top of shit Beyonc was from conception through the few days past her daughters birth. Her camp was in complete control of the dissemination of every fact and rumor surrounding her pregnancy; from her famous VMA announcement, to her music video production schedule, to her tour timeline, and even through her labor and her husband dropping a single dedicated to his daughter within days of her birth. In retrospect, it seems that every performance or piece of art has been part of a calculated agenda leading up to Blues arrival. (I also have a secret theory that like 4 itself is all about getting pregnant. Ill tell you about it later.) Anyway, this is sort of interesting because of the way it deviates from the normal dissemination models. Ever since time immemorial, our culture has been increasingly interested in the minutiae of celebrities lives, and of course that includes baby pictures!! Whereas celebrities of all types seem to subscribe to the common model of bidding out their babies image and details of their private home lives to various news institutions, magazines, rags, tabloids, etc., Beyonc and co. seem to eschew this method, instead carefully broadcasting facts, bits of media, and even art in their own way and own time. While its

debatable whether its more commendable for celebrities to literally sell out their child (and often use the millions worth of proceeds to fund philanthropic causes and what have you) versus the model of Beyonc et al. utilize to closely monitor information traffic and then to use the media to actively distribute their news themselves. Not to mention the dramatic news story of Beyoncs bodyguard viciously prohibiting a man from seeing his newly born daughters in the infant care ward for fear of spying. Again, we see this zealotry towards absolute control of information with the very announcement of the Pregnanc, and the music videos, and even Jay-Zs latest track Glory which samples

some of his daughters first cries. Age old questions arise: Cute or creepy? Necessarily
protective of privacy or manically paranoid? Artistic genius or self-indulgent bathos? Celebrity celebration or corporate brand-whoring? Beyoncs on-air pregnancy announcement lead to a record for Twitter with 8,868 tweets per second in the minutes after it. Likewise, over 5,000 celebrities are said to have congratulated Beyonc through technology after Blue Ivy was born. The direct worth of all this media consumption is incalculable, but clearly the PR enhancement alone that this offers to Beyoncs brand is invaluable. All of this control reflects strongly a rarefied form of media production, one that takes pieces of information and reassembles them in a controlled order and style. This type of media production hinges on the specific activity of sampling. Sampling is the quintessence of our modern media consumption and production method, and something that I think Beyonc epitomizes and that she does best. Of course sampling itself is something that has been a staple of music and performance art in general for decades, most notably its use in the contemporary hip-hop genre. But what Im thinking of, and for want of a better term will continue to call sampling, is the act of atomizing a notable aspect of one produced piece of media, taking its constituent parts, and reconstituting them under a different brand and packaging it as an original piece of art. Some sampling uses all original work that you own, like your babys crying. But most sampling seems to lie somewhere between homage and outright plagiarism, depending on the nitty-gritty legalities of duration, copyright, intent, etc. For me, the ethos of sampling is the integral trait of our post-modern community and culture. Lets talk a little bit about what that means, our post-modern community and culture, for a sec. Because it seems like a grossly prosaic and hackneyed phrase that alone doesnt mean anything at all when you think about it, but to me that is what is definitively most categorical about our culture: our media is what creates our communities, and our communities are increasingly more mediated. Similarly, those who create our media are just as likely to be those that consume it. We live in a time where everyone takes part in community and culture in some way by producing and consuming media, through atomized bits and pieces and artifacts; and more and more are these actions becoming entwined and simultaneous. Everyone essentially samples. Youtube has become a platform that typifies this relationship. Youtube is where one can see most obviously the liberating potential of the internet activated. Its where the physical literally becomes digital; where geography becomes borderless; and where producers and consumers meet. Youtube is the quintessential buffet-line for media samplers. There is no curating Youtube media beyond what the consumer decides; one watches only what one wants, or what

one is directed to through various in-community media curators. But most interestingly, on Youtube both top-level and bottom-level media producers share equal footing, and partake in a sort of democratization of consumption. So, who are we talking about here? Well, Beyonc, of course, for starters. Beyonc is who we can consider to be a definite top-level media producer. Beyond just her financial success and her brands ever-broadening multi-sector conglomeration, in the Youtube sense, Beyonc is a toplevel media producer because she is a master consumer! Her intrinsic talent and ability goes beyond just her voice, dance, and vision, but lies in her ability to watch, listen, learn, and sample a truly dazzlingly wide array of media elements. She masterfully curates her findings into a unique and singularly powerful vision of art. B is a straight-up master sampler. Now, lets be clear here. Im not saying that Beyonc is necessarily taking what are essentially ideas and brazenly calling them her own. Im not here to question Beyoncs authenticity as either an educated woman or artist. Not at all. Beyoncs real genius comes from her ability to synthesize disparate ideas into something new. But. But, there are aspects to her art and act that are without a doubt completely novel and attributable solely to Beyonc and her team; yet, it should be said that the instances where she is seen to take from other media producers are well-documented and obvious. I think its a little hard to question the authenticity of art and that its kind of a pointless discussion, but Beyoncs success is contingent on the championing of her particular message and voice. What I think is most interesting is the relationship between that final message and its constituent parts, which I believe raises some new and interesting questions critical to the understanding of media art production and consumption. The Final Countdown Beyoncs relationship with existing pieces of media have been called everything from homages to plagiarism. Im not so concerned whether her activity can legally be considered plagiarism, because plagiarism in art forms like dance is so tenuous a concept. For me, labeling her activity as one thing or the other is only important because it gives us an ethical barometer by which we can understand how our contemporary culture affects everyone involved.

Lets take the most salient examples of Bs work that have been accused of copying other works by other people. First is Beyoncs Run The World (Girls). Now, I just saw about a week ago a fascinating mini-documentary called Year of 4, which is a MUST see for just everybody. A main dramatic contention that happens around the middle of the piece is B literally finding a Mozambique dance group, Tofo Tofo, performing in a style and with movements that she envisions for her own performance. And of course she is watching this performance on Youtube! B is shown trying to mimic the moves she sees to no avail. Suddenly she announces that she wishes the dancers to be flown to New York immediately to help choreograph. So her wish is done. Team B embarks on a two-month mission to fly the dancers of Tofo Tofo half-way around the world, problematic legalities and personal desires be damned! Now, we arent quite privy to Beyoncs inscrutable arrangement that her camp makes with Tofo Tofo. According

to an MTV interview Frank Gatson, Jr., Beyoncs lead choreographer, It was hard finding them. They were really in a remote area; we had to get the embassy people involved. That was a process that took about two months or more. Hilariously, Beyonc comes to embody a key promise Youtube makes as a Web 2.0 platform: geography literally becomes no obstacle! Ironically, the only clips that can be readily found on Youtube of Tofo Tofo performances like the above have titles that reference Beyonc and Run the World (Original) or some permutation of that label. Frank Gatson, Jr. went on to say in that MTV interview that, Beyonc really loved them and Im pretty sure well see them again. It was magical. HmmOthers who are much more wellinformed than I have produced extremely interesting, detailed critiques of Beyoncs appropriation and sampling habits. Much of the criticism discusses what it means to sample from the the artistic and cultural products of communities from less-developed regions of the world. Through this lens Beyoncs production of Run the World (Girls) is problematized; the background beat for the song itself, for instance, generously samples from Major Lazers Pon de Floor, which turns out to be a remixed and masterfully produced appropriation of Jamaican Dancehall music. Dancehall as a genre is a staple musical movement of disenfranchised communities who use their music as a means of obtaining a voice against socio-economic inequality in the global south. Say that last sentence three times fast. Compounded with the magical experience with Tofo Tofo, it would seem that Beyonc really has some explaining to do. Perhaps a more popular example is Beyoncs work on her Countdown music video. Here is where Beyoncs curatorial genius seems to get even murkier. Again, rampant accusations of outright plagiarismwere aimed at B (even by the original artist herself!!) for the collective sampling she did for Countdown. This time, a major reference was taken nearly phrase for phrase including style, locale, choreography and artistic details from Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Ms. De Keersmaeker herself generousely stated: Beyonc is not the worst copycat; she sings and dances very well, and she has a good taste! On the other hand, there are protocols and consequences to such actions, and I cant imagine she and her team are not aware of it. Like Tofo Tofos wedding dance (first clip above), Ms. De Keersmaeker original pieces, Rosas

Danst Rosasand others, are nothing short of stunning! I suppose the main difference between
this instance of sampling and prior instances is that Ms. De Keersmaeker has publicly accused Beyonc of plagiarism here. Moreover, Ms. De Keersmaeker is known to make a living off her artistic production, as a living contermporary of Bs, as opposed to certain other instances we could mention. There is a socially accepted infrastructure of compensation upon which Ms. De Keersmaeker and Beyonc theoretically work on equitable terms. What isnt clear at all is what this means to the individuals of Tofo Tofo and similar artists who have not spoken out publicly, and by extension what this means to the communities they represent. Even after exhaustive research, I have only come up with a few snippets of interviews where the dance group actually was given a chance to discuss their experience candidly and

about their future plans. And here lies the real problem with Beyoncs predicament. Beyonc comes off as a cultural imperialist of the very vilest kind: Ill take that, please, and thank you. Ill take that which you find to be most culturally unique and unifying to your community and use that in my own message and art. Ill take that and build a multi-national, corporate brand and it will be a magical experience. And thats all anyones gonna say about it! What should Beyonc be admonished to do? Is her gratuity to those whose work she has sampled and subsequently transformed in message and vision necessary? Should she be thanked for bringing, however slightly, to international consciousness the work of a small dance group with hardly any public recognition? Collectively, the critics solution to this rampant, one-sided appropriation seems to be to pay it backwards. Beyonc ethically should perhaps pay agreed upon royalties, or expend resources to basically directing attention through her brand towards those of the bottom-level producers from which she has sampled. But hasnt that already happened? How much is enough??? Do you see the problem? The insidiousness of this new Web 2.0 cultural imperialism is that no infrastructure exists to protect against the exploitation of the disenfranchised, and the underlying ethics promote completely open, commensurate and democratic sharing at a loss for those unable to compete in a global market. Beyonc in her own turn is one of the most heavily sampled and copied artists of our age, though we all agree that it would be crude for her to seek remuneration from those that use her ideas directly for their own benefit and profit. In a culture whose media infrastructure is based on mass-exhibitionism where everything is free and being put out there to be payed forward then when do you pay it backward? The de

facto stance that web 2.0 technologies seems to automatically produce is an unbalanced,
unconscionable relationship that cannnot help but to exploit disenfranchised bottom-level cultural producers. And since its the whole system that is problematic, its not just the topproducers and master samplers who need be indicted, but all of us who participate in this process everyday and are just as guilty of anonymous appropriation. The Best Thing You Never Had Ive been using this softer term, appropriation for Beyoncs behavior because exploitation just seems too harsh. What were seeing here, whats really going on, is nothing short of a complete shift in how art and cultural artifacts are produced. Sampling is merely a symptom of this monumental change in means of production and associated values of cultural capital. (Just look at the kerfuffle around SOPA and PIPA and the battle between Hollywood versus Silicon Valley, as if any modern government would let one take down the other.) Words like appropriation and exploitation dont really apply. Music, print, TV, and film are all dying because the precious and immortal tie of information to physicality has been broken. Before, if I had an LP and you wanted to play the songs whenever you wanted, you would have to steal my record; now, if you want to hear a song that I own, I can copy it and now I have a song and you have a song and nothing is lost. And so now we have a technical three-way split, which is really a two-way split between: those that download the artifact legally, and those that steal the artifact just as easily (and I suppose people who still buy the physical objects, but they do so mostly to post LOL I still buy CDs #sooobehindthetimes on Facebook or whatever).

And so really the economy is not even based on cyclical markets, or recession era, bottomlevel, #OWS movements generating art, or anything else that were used to. It is instead a complete remodeling of the commodification of art. Whether you buy it or steal it, there really is no difference, because the system is jacked and were looking at a major overhaul of information infrastructure. If information, Hollywood, and global entertainment brands are the quintessential exports of America, then of course top-level producers only recourse is to do as the consumers do and buy and steal their capital in the same market that has essentially cropped up in the last seven years since Youtube was invented. Its just been seven years, can you believe it? And in seven more, how will things play out? Will the platform be a true meritocracy where top and bottom-level producers will essentially have equitable access to means of production as well as the eyes and ears to sell to? Hopefully, and the world will just be like the end of Bring It On 24/7. Im gonna go a little nuts here and pontificate, because I think that theres a lot of hope we can still hold on to. It looks like the end of the world, sure, because it is. Its the beginning of a completely new day. Heres what I think it will look like in the beginning. I foresee a new patronage system where brands are developed, incubated, and expanded online and through social media tools. The initial products will all be free, and widely distributed. Larger cultural leaders and top-level producers will help develop these brands, and feed them into more robust and advanced distribution chains like television and film, where premium prices will be paid for directly by end-users in order to help shoulder the costs of production equipment, broadcasting, and marketing. Essentially both top and bottom-level producers will be under the direct patronage of the end-user, and we can still have the big entertainment companies controlling distribution on a global level. All under an auspice where sampling will not only be accepted but encouraged. Everyone wins! Were already seeing amazing, viable examples of this now: top-level artist and all-around darling Joseph Gordon LevittshitRECord production company, Emma Caulfield of Buffy fame and her multi-media web projects, Louis C. K.s basically fool-proof direct-to-consumer distribution system, also the not unproblematic Kickstarterschemaoh, and not to mention, Justin Bieber. The way art is being moved around is changing fundamentally, additionally art is also being ethically defined around an increasingly unifying international, web-based culture. The barriers between art producers are crumbling at an astonishing rate, and we have the first real chance to see and experience the great breadth of human culture, all literally at your fingertips. Your laptop as universal juke box. But this ethos is problematized because when we put in our quarter, we as culture producers ourselves want to ensure that that quarter go directly to the artist. We have yet to hash out an effective way to ensure that transaction. Art itself has always had an extremely complicated relationship with agendas of cultural imperialism. Art is the language of culture and is continuously evolving, mongrelizing, purifying and branching apart. The fact is that art wants to be free. It wants to be shared because that is how it effects and how it moves culture. In that sense, Web 2.0 is one of the greatest boons to artistic and cultural development and sharing. Web 2.0/social/new medias universalizing, democratic voice and its relationship to cultural development is one of the most precious and unique aspects of our contemporary life. Yet in light of its increasing prevalence across the

globe, serious questions arise: if you make and share something that you cannot make money off of, or do not wish to make money off of, is it OK for someone else who can in a different part of the world do so? Currently bottom-level consumers seem to be most exploited by this system. Youtube seems to also reflect the collective desire of wanting to keep culture at all levels alive among many diverse communities. It acts as an immortal recording system for this process. We also seem to be giving in enthusiastically and without apology to the evolution of media and the sampling of culture. We urge those in our community to try new things, and to build new pieces of culture from myriad constituent parts we happen upon. We also seem to be wary of how we parse out a new economy that may allow individuals to be compensated accordingly for their work and products. This is of course a new and ever-changing process at this stage. I predict that a major movement in the near future will be towards the sustainability of cultural production from disenfranchised cultures through end-user directed Web 2.0 distribution chains and media markets. Perhaps we will one day see a boutique production studio unaffiliated with major record labels crop up under Beyoncs auspice. The question for us everyday consumers and producers in our everyday life will be how will we transform the global market to better curate media so that it reflects our ethical wishes? Really though, beyond worrying over and haranguing Beyonc for her and her global brands personal ethics (Lord knows shes already not gonna be getting any sleep anyway with Blue Ivy in the house!), Im more interested in the promises that social media and Web 2.o have made. Even if kept, do these promises actually act in the best interest of cultures, communities, and individuals around the world? Or do they inherently end up exploiting end-users and base-level producers in a way that perpetuates an archaic corporate profit system too strong to die?