This isn't the place I'd want to start, but we kind of have to. It's the year of 2014, the year of the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Black Lives Matter protest in Ferguson. And it's on May 12th of this year that a three-minute surveillance tape of an elevator ride forever changed the course of popular culture. The soundless black and white video shows none other than Beyonce, her husband Jay-Z, and her sister Solange walking into a hotel elevator.
All three are dressed to the nines. Jay's in a tux, Beyonce and Solange both in elegant designer gowns. Before the elevator door even closes, Solange is inches from Jay, screaming in his face. Solange pushes him and swings her purse at his head.
She kicks at him as she's pulled away and restrained by their security guard. Eventually, emotions settle a little, and the three stand there awkwardly, waiting. Finally the elevator door opens. More words are exchanged as they begin to exit.
Solange takes another huge swipe at Jay, and again she's restrained. The three finally leave the elevator, and the tape ends. When TMZ leaked the tape a week later, the internet exploded. Memes, think pieces, blog posts, Saturday Night Live even open their show that week, spoofing the incident.
The tape also got his own unofficial hashtag, what Jay-Z said to Solange, which people used to speculate and joke about what caused the fight. The most enduring theory was that Jay-Z cheated on Beyonce, and that Solange was standing up for her sister. Many pointed to the fact that throughout the tape, Beyonce appears noticeably indifferent. She makes little to no attempt to stop her sister, which caused people to speculate that Beyonce thought Jay deserved it.
Despite the couple's attempts to dismiss the speculation in a press release three days after the leak, the rumor mill continued to churn throughout 2014. There was Jay's alleged affair with the reality TV star, a New York Post report that alleged that the couple was barely on speaking terms, and an US weekly cover within all caps headline, Beyonce plans divorce, enough. Meanwhile, Beyonce and Jay never addressed these rumors publicly, and by the end of 2014, there was even talk that Beyonce might be pregnant again, and that the couple had renewed their vows. But even these rumors were undermined by photos of the two arguing in public, and a rumored trial separation request.
The truth was, no one really knew what was going on, and no one really would until Jay-Z or Beyonce addressed it directly. And then came April 16, 2016, and Beyonce's Instagram post heard around the world. The 22nd video contained a single cryptic shot of Beyonce leaned over the hood of a car, her face hidden behind her outstretched arm. There's a hard cut to a black screen, and a title card reads, Lemonade, a world premiere event, next Saturday, HBO.
No one knew exactly what this mysterious world premiere event was. Some said a music video or concert, others guessed a new album. Whatever it was, it became appointment viewing, as nearly 800,000 people tuned in that Saturday night to find out. And what we got was so much more than a music video or album.
It was a deeply personal exploration of identity, history, and spirituality, a visionary expression of a woman's journey from betrayal to redemption, from tragedy to triumph, from subjugation to freedom. It was the best-selling album of 2016, a Peabody Award-winning masterwork of visual art. It was Beyonce's Lemonade. Beyonce's Lemonade is an ambitious synthesis of film, poetry, and music that doesn't so much address the rumors around Beyonce's marriage, but obliterates them into irrelevance.
Rather than tabloid fodder and clickbait, Beyonce uses the visual album's 11 chapters to reclaim control of her public narrative. The infidelity in her marriage becomes a gateway into an education on how America's history of slavery and systemic injustice affect the structures of the black family. Songs like Don't Hurt Yourself find Beyonce breathing fire as she expresses the rage triggered by her husband's betrayal. Meanwhile, songs like Daddy Lessons find Beyonce reflecting on her roots and attempt to break the generational curses she inherited.
Over the course of this season, we're going to follow Beyonce on her journey to the slave castles of West Africa, the sugar plantations along the Mississippi River, and through the historic streets of New Orleans. She will move effortlessly between an eclectic range of musical genres, from rock and roll to trap, from country to R&B. We'll witness her channel Yoruba Water Goddess, sing alongside a blues legend, burn a house to the ground, and watch Serena Williams twerk inside a slave plantation. But most of all, we're going to witness Beyonce making lemonade from the lemons of American history, from the generational curses born from slavery, racism, injustice, and sexism.
Beyonce will come out the other side of Lemonade and be born, and through the artistic expression of her own redemptive story, she will lead an entire formation of women like her to power the spiritual freedom. If you're already familiar with Dissect, you might notice a few changes this season. Because the poetry and visuals of Lemonade play such a critical role in the album's message, we're going to analyze these components equally alongside our typical examination of an album's lyrics and production. We've also created visual guides for each episode, which you can check out on the Dissect website before or after an episode.
Finally, the biggest change this season, and certainly the one I'm most excited about, is the addition of our very first co-host. Her name is Titi Shodia, and she's the co-host of a great podcast called Dope Labs. Say what's up, Titi? Hey y'all, it's Titi, and I am so excited to be a part of this season of Dissect.
Titi is incredibly smart and talented. She's going to provide a much needed voice and perspective on Lemonade's subject matter, so you'll be hearing from both of us throughout each episode this season. I hope you'll welcome her into the Dissect family with open arms. Okay, I think that covers everything.
I guess now there's just one thing left to do. Titi, you want to do the honors? And so, without further ado, let's Dissect. Beyonce's Lemonade is a modern example of what's known as gazombkunzferk, a German word for total work of art.
Zhombkunzferk was an artistic philosophy put forth by 19th century composer Rickard Wagner. Wagner believed varying art forms such as poetry, music, dance, theater, costume, and set design should be seamlessly synthesized to create an artistic expression that was much more than the sum of its parts. For Wagner, such synthesis was best expressed in its ring cycle, an epic four-part, 15-hour music drama that's among the most influential pieces of art ever created. For Beyonce, her kizemkunzferk comes in the form of what she coined a visual album, which artfully synthesizes music, poetry, narrative drama, costuming, set design, and film.
There are over 200 contributors to the visual album Lemonade, including seven directors and nearly 100 music producers, songwriters, and features. By all accounts, Beyonce was heavily involved in every stage of the process, and it was her specific vision that guided the project through to its unified completion. While we have limited quotes from Beyonce herself about the specific vision, the few we do have lent essential insight into the project's ambitious thematic aim. The first quote comes second hand from Melina Matsukis, one of Lemonade's directors and Beyonce's longtime friend and collaborator.
Matsukis told the New Yorker, quote, Beyonce wanted to show the historical impact of slavery on Black love and what it has done to the Black family, unquote. A second statement clarifies exactly how Beyonce's marriage is used to express this larger point about the historical effects of slavery on Black love. Beyonce told, quote, I come from a lineage of broken male-female relationships, abuse of power and mistrust, only when I saw that clearly was I able to resolve those conflicts in my own relationship. Connecting to the past and knowing our history makes us both bruised and beautiful.
I researched my ancestry recently and learned that I come from a slave owner who fell in love with a married slave. I had to process that revelation over time. I questioned what it meant and tried to put it into perspective. I now believe it's why God blessed me with my twins.
Male and female energy was able to coexist and grow in my blood for the first time. I pray that I am able to break the generational curses in my family and that my children will have less complicated lives. Unquote. From these quotes, we can take away some key points to help frame our analysis of Lemonade.
First, Beyonce has come to recognize that our marital problems are a continuation of a larger pattern of broken relationships in her family lineage. She views this as a curse she inherited and feels its herd duty to break the whole world with this curse for the sake of her children and for the generations after them. Finally, breaking this curse requires looking deep into her past, not just her own family lineage, but to the shared history of African Americans beginning with slavery. Beyonce's intent to display the past's influence on the present day is introduced straight away in the opening sequence of Lemonade.
The Lemonade film opens with the image used for the album's cover art. Beyonce dons a large fur coat and she leans over the hood of a car. Her face hidden behind her outstretched arm. Suddenly, we hard cut to a new scene.
We see now a black and white image of a long metal chain dangling down the side of an old wooden wall. This ominous chain was filmed at a former slave plantation in Louisiana, and thus it becomes the first of many images that transport us back to America's history of torturous slavery. And so with Lemonade's two opening shots, one present, one past, we are already seeing how Beyonce is positioning her story as somehow interwoven into the fabric of this history. As the opening moments of the song Pray You Catch Me Ring Out, we cut from the image of the metal chain to a wide dramatic shot of an enormous, intimidating brick fortress.
Surrounded by dead grass and weeds, this decaying fortress is the haunting ruins of Fort Macomb in Louisiana. Built in 1828, Fort Macomb was occupied by the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. The war fought over the enslavement of Africans. In the midst of this war, the Union Army took control of New Orleans, which included control of Fort Macomb.
Among the Union troops that were then stationed at Macomb was the first Louisiana native guard, one of the first all-black regiments that fought in the Civil War. Like the image of the hanging metal chain, Fort Macomb is a still-standing relic of America's war-torn history of slavery. But knowing Macomb's housing of the first all-black battalion, we understand it represents the fight for freedom as well. On the exterior of Fort Macomb, we abruptly transition to a new scene.
We are now inside a modern-day theater. There's a stage, and on this stage we find Beyoncé halved over on her knees. Her hands are clashed together as if in prayer, a fitting way to introduce a song titled Pray You Catch Me. Behind Beyoncé is an enormous red curtain.
Before theater performance, often a plays director will take the stage and address the crowd before the curtain is pulled and the drama begins. This seems to be the visual function of Beyoncé in front of the curtain. She's preparing us, preparing herself, for the story about to be told. The red curtain is currently concealing the truth that will be revealed when Beyoncé pulls back the curtain and tells her story.
Here we can't help but think of the infidelity rumors that were so prominent in the months leading up to Lemonade's release, how Beyoncé's personal life was on the stage of public scrutiny. It appears that Beyoncé is preparing to finally reveal to the public what's behind the curtain, but do so on her terms, artfully, and in a way that reclaims control of her narrative. With the gravity of the moment properly acknowledged, Beyoncé begins to sing. You can taste the dishonor's streets all over your breath as you cast it off so cavalier, but even that's a taste constantly aware of it all.
My own little breast against the walls of your world, pray to catch over this burn. Beyoncé likens her partner's deception to an alcoholic lying about their drinking. She says, you can taste the dishonesty, it's all over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier. Her intuition senses that wherever he's saying he's been, it's a lie.
A lie he passes off is cavalier, which means to show a lack of proper concern, often with arrogance. When used as a noun, cavalier refers to a military man on a horse. At this early point in the narrative, both the nobility and the arrogance attributed to the partner puts him in the position of power, something Beyoncé will eventually confront head-on. Beyoncé continues by deeming her partner's nonchalantness and this whole kiss charade, a test.
Rather than a gesture of affection, the kiss is a test of each other's will. Her partner kisses to keep up with the lie, but also to taunt her, to see if she'll call him out on the lie. Beyoncé kisses so he won't suspect that she knows, but despite this external masquerade, internally both are quote constantly aware of it all. Each of them know in their hearts the decaying dynamics of their relationship, though currently neither one is ready, willing, or able to articulate it, to confront it, to make it unavoidably real.
Finally, Beyoncé finishes the verse singing, my lonely ear pressed against the walls of your world. Again, we have an image of the two embracing, yet what should be a display of intimacy is tarnished with the invisible, toxic dynamics that the infidelity has caused. Her lonely ear is pressed against her lover's body, which is described as the walls of his world. She's currently like an eavesdropping neighbor, with her ear to the wall, only getting muffled bits and pieces of her partner's truth, forced to fill in the gaps with her own imagination.
The majority of the song's first verse is sung from the theater stage setting, but we're also introduced to a new visual that recurs throughout the song. We find Beyoncé walking through the head-high weeds that surround Fort Macomb. Like the impenetrable walls of her partner's world, Beyoncé is not yet ready or able to penetrate the walls of Fort Macomb. She's not yet ready to confront the history we know is vital to her salvation.
Another key element in the scene of Beyoncé walking around the exterior of Fort Macomb is her wardrobe. She's dressed in a black sweatshirt and the hood of the sweatshirt is pulled tightly over her hair. This is almost certainly a reference to Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in 2012. She felt Zimmerman had racially profiled the teenager because he was a black kid wearing a black sweatshirt with a hood up over his head.
Martin's death and Zimmerman's eventual acquittal sparked protests across the country, leading to a national movement that came to be known as Black Lives Matter. The hoodie became a symbol of the movement, and many across the country, including many high-profile celebrities, wore the hoodie as an expression of solidarity. At the time of Lemonade's release in April of 2016, the Black Lives Matter movement was still in its peak, and so Beyoncé donning a black hoodie with its hood up seems to be a blatant nod to the movement. In the context of the film's subject matter, Beyoncé and a hoodie is another expression of the idea that the injustice of the past and the present are inextricably linked.
Pray to catch your whispering, I'm praying to catch your whispering, I'm praying to catch your whispering, I'm praying to catch your whispering. Pray you catch me's refrain begins with another allusion to her partner's romantic indiscretion. Beyoncé sings, Pray to catch you whispering, I pray you catch me listening. Whispering here represents her partner's secrecy and indiscretion, and if Beyoncé did indeed catch him whispering, her intuition would be validated.
She also yearns to be caught eavesdropping so that the masquerades they both are participating in can finally be abandoned. We also consider the idea that she prays to be caught as if she's doing something wrong. Perhaps she's second-guessing her intuition and feeling guilty that she's betrayed the trust of her partner by listening or spying on him. The refrain continues, I pray you catch me.
The repetition of the word pray introduces the themes of faith and spirituality, themes that will develop in a number of ways over the course of Lemonade. But we also find another possible interpretation to consider when we read the word pray, not PRAY, as in an animal that is hunted by another animal. Additional evidence for this interpretation is supported by the visuals when we hear this line, which features Beyoncé in the field of tall, head-high weeds as if she's an animal being stalked. If this interpretation was intentional, as in I pray you catch me, it would further display the dynamics in this relationship with Beyoncé the timid pray and her partner the predator, the one willing to hurt another for their own satisfaction.
As a visual album continues, the song stops and the title card reads Intuition. This formally introduces the film's first chapter, a chapter will continue to dissect right after the break. Welcome back to Dissect. Before the break, we dissected the first half of the song, Pray You Catch Me.
After the song's first refrain, the music stops and we hear the chirping of crickets. We see now a black and white image of an old Stonewall Tunnel outside of Fort Macomb. Two black women dressed in antebellum-style gowns stand inside the tunnel and look toward the light beaming from the tunnel's exit hole. Writers Camaria Roberts and Kenya Downs observed how this Stonewall Tunnel transports us back to the dungeons of the slave castles along the coast of West Africa.
These large fortresses, which include Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle, acted as holding cells where kidnapped Africans were imprisoned before being sold in the Atlantic slave trade. The African captives were crammed into the castle's dark, poorly ventilated dungeons that had no running water or toilets. The floors became filled with human waste and many captives fell gravely ill. Black women were raped by their captors and both men and women were routinely abused.
Prisoners were held up to three months in these conditions before being put on ships to traverse the equally horrific middle passage to the New World. And so these horrific dungeons alluded to and lemonade Stonewall tunnels where the last memory enslaved Africans would have of their homeland. After the appearance of the Stonewall Tunnel, a title card appears that reads Intuition, formally introducing the first of the film's ten chapters. Having just heard Pray catch me's refrain, Intuition contextualizes Beyonce's suspicions of infidelity as Intuition is defined as a thing that one knows or considers from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.
Specifically, it seems that women's intuition is being evoked here, which refers to women's adept perception of the thoughts and feelings of others using instinct alone. Interestingly, there's actually research that proves that women's intuition is more than a myth. According to research done on non-verbal communication skills, women as a group are better at reading facial expressions of emotion than men, making them better equipped to detect the subtle emotional messages of others. As the visual album continues, Beyonce begins to recite poetry.
I try to make a home out of you, but doors lead to trap doors. A stairway leads to nothing. Wonder the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet?
The poetry Beyonce resides throughout lemonade are adaptations of the work of Worson Shire. Born in Kenya to parents from Somalia, Shire grew up in London where she was appointed the first young poet laureate in 2014. The New Yorker describes Shire's work, quote, it's East African storytelling and coming of age memoir fused into one. It's a first generation woman, always looking forward and backward at the same time, acknowledging that to move through life without being haunted by the past lives of your forebearers is impossible, unquote.
Shire's poetic themes lend themselves incredibly well to Beyonce's aim of looking to the past in order to heal in the present. And it's likely for this reason Shire's work is interwoven throughout lemonade. The first poem Beyonce recites is an adaptation of Shire's piece for women who are difficult to love. It begins with the line, I try to make a home out of you.
We recognize first the past tense of tried, which implies failure. We also have gender implications here. Beyonce is quite literally positioning herself as a failed homemaker, failing to live up to the traditional role and identity society expects of her. And so her husband's infidelity results in something more than a failed relationship.
It seems to be leading to a crisis of identity as the walls of her metaphor at home, a place of stability, comfort and protection are crumbling. Beyonce continues, but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. A trap door is a product of deceit, something you fall through after being manipulated. A stairway that leads to nothing is similar.
It appears as one thing, in this case a path to ascension, only to reveal itself as the complete opposite, a sudden dangerous drop downward. And so this home Beyonce describes as not what it appears. It's less of a home and more of a haunted house. Or to put it another way, the house she purchased is a lemon, something that proves to be defective, a dud.
Like we'll discover throughout lemonade, the visual elements that accompany these lines demand that we interpret them a second way. Again in black and white, we see an image of a black woman standing in front of a house, gazing reflectively into the distance. As the line, but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. We see an empty, old wooden porch that looks out onto a field containing a few small cabins.
These are the slave quarters at the Destra Hand Plantation along the Mississippi River. While we're going to cover the history of the plantations featured throughout lemonade in a later episode, it's pairing here with the lines about trap doors and deceptive stairways forces us to consider these lines with America's history of slavery in mind. The trap doors and deceptive stairways now seem to stand in for the false promise of the American dream to America's black citizens. Indeed, black men and women were unable to make a home out of America.
It was a brutal labor camp for the kidnapped, a prison, a dungeon, a haunted house. Unknown women wonder the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet? You remind me of my father, a magician, able to exist in two places at once.
In the tradition of men and my blood, you come home at 3 AM and lied to me. What are you hiding? Beyonce continues with the line, Unknown women wander the hallways at night. In the context of the infidelity narrative, this seems to evoke Beyonce's imagining the other women her husband has been with as she perhaps lay sleepless in bed at night.
Just like the previous line, the film demands we also consider the visuals for an additional layer of meaning. We see an assembly of black women and white antebellum-style gowns standing on a slave plantation porch. It seems these women embody ancestors dating back to the 1800s. These are Beyonce's forebears.
Women who look like her lived in the same physical location as her, but were born in another era. Beyonce could just as easily be one of these women, and so her story is theirs, and theirs is hers. Though it's unclear now, it's in the spirit of these women, both past and present, that Beyonce will find the strength and resilience needed to complete her transformative journey toward healing. Beyonce continues the poem asking, Where do you go when you go quiet?
You remind me of my father, a magician, able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men and my blood, you come home at 3 AM and lied to me. What are you hiding? Beyonce expresses her disbelief at her partner's skill and deception, comparing him to a practiced magician, someone who makes a living on constructing elaborate illusions.
Specifically, it's his ability to exist in two places at once. By this it seems she means that her partner can be present physically, but mentally and emotionally he's somewhere else, likely with another woman. Beyonce also introduces another critical layer to the theme of history, lineage and inheritance by comparing her partner's infidelity to her father's, something that will be explored in great detail later in the song Daddy Lessons. We recall what Beyonce told Vogue, quote, I come from a lineage of broken male-female relationships, abuse of power and mistrust.
Only when I saw that clearly was I able to resolve those conflicts in my own relationship, unquote. And so with the additional layer of her father, it appears that to redeem her marriage, she must eventually confront the sins of her father and the lineage of broken relationships in her family tree. This idea is all the more evident as Beyonce concludes her reading of Shire's poem. Perhaps more than any other line or lyric from Lemonade, it's this next sequence that expresses the thesis statement of the entire visual album.
The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck? What a fucking curse. It's with these lines that Beyonce confirms how the song, visuals, poetry and Beyonce's personal story are all invisibly connected to the history of the Black experience in America.
We again recall the quote from Beyonce, how she wanted to show the historical impact of slavery on Black love and what it has done to the Black family. The curse that Beyonce speaks of is not only the curse of infidelity passed down from her father, it's also the curse and legacy of slavery and the varying ways it's shaped the injustices that African Americans have experienced throughout generations into the present day. With Beyonce in the present moment standing at a crossroads formed by the past and the future, she is forced to confront this historical curse head-on. This is the reason why we see Beyonce walking toward Fort McComb in a Black Trayvon Martin style hoodie.
This is quite literally the past, present and future colliding. This is Beyonce in her decisive moment, the moment that Trebit Harrowen approaches the castle to slay the dragon within. The results of her journey will have consequences for the future of her family for generations to come. Will she continue the same destructive pattern and perpetuate the curse?
Or will she be the redemptive heroine who defeats the curse for her family? And if so, can her story provide a recipe for women like her to do the same? Again, it's becoming quite clear that the stakes of Lemonade are much more than an infidelity story. Beyonce may have been the last straw that caused the dam to break the levy to collapse, but it's the years of neglect, abuse and mistreatment that's truly beneath its failure.
And so when Beyonce sings about her husband's infidelity, she does so because it's symptomatic of a greater underlying issue. The root cause of her suffering is not necessarily her husband alone, but also a society shaped by slavery. Beyonce is thus tasked with mending not only her broken marriage, but also to reaffirm that which the enduring legacy of slavery in America attempts to erase the power, beauty and worth of Black women. Nothing else ever seems to work like the smile on your face.
When it's only in my memory, it don't hit me quite the same. Maybe it's a cause for concern, but I'm not at ease keeping my head to the curb. The second verse of Pray You Catch Me begins with the line, Nothing Else Ever Seems to Hurt Like the smile on your face. Like the irony of the kiss in verse 1, the smile on her partner's face should be a source of joy, but now it's only a source of pain.
The next line, when it's only in my memory, adds to the irony of the first line. All smiles are behind them now, they exist only in a recollection of their better times together. And even now, her memory is tainted with suspicion, as they quote, Don't Hit Me Quite The Same. Again, the past cannot be separated from the present, and a memory is only as good as your feelings about it right now.
Finally, the brief verse ends with the cryptic lines, I'm not at ease keeping my head to the curb. This line parallels the final line of verse 1, My Lonely Ear Pressed Against the Walls of Your World. Now Beyonce is pressing her head to the curb, which seems to be referencing the curb of the street. This might be playing off the common phrase in hip hop, the streets are talking, which is slang for gossip and rumors being spread around inner city streets.
Coincidentally, Jay-Z has a well-known song from the year 2000 titled Streets Is Talking. Everybody stressing, food is baby, mom treats is talking, niggas is gossiping. It's not clear if this reference is intentional or not. But what is clear is that since Beyonce can't penetrate the walls of her world that is her partner's truth, she has to pray to catch wind of it through rumors and gossip.
Throughout this second verse, Beyonce sits inside a small and seek wooden bathtub. There's no water in the tub, and she's wearing a head wrap known as a teenyong. According to Beyonce stylist Marney Sinifante, the choice to feature teenyongs was an intentional reference to Louisiana's history. Quote, if you look at the visual album, you will see an African influence that touches on her heritage, where she comes from.
Beyonce told me that in New Orleans. I don't know what year that was. Black women were not allowed to show their hair. So that's where those head wraps come from, unquote.
Beyonce was referring to what was known as the teenyong law. The teenyong law was enacted by the governor of New Orleans in 1786 to quote, prohibit Creole women of color from displaying excessive attention to dress in the streets of New Orleans. The teenyong law required these Creole women of color to cover their hair with a teenyong, which is a scarf, handkerchief, or turban, as a sign of belonging to a slave class, even if they weren't enslaved. Because Creole women had lighter skin, the measures sought to downplay their beauty and differentiate Creole women from white women.
In one of many forms of resistance exhibited in Louisiana at the time, Creole women fashioned their teenyongs with colorful fabrics and donned them with jewels, allowing them to preserve their personal expression of beauty. Their ingenuity allowed them to transcend the intention behind the teenyong law, and shine despite the oppressive measures leveled against them. It's this history of ingenuity and transcendence in the face of oppression that Beyonce will tap into over the course of lemonade. But at the moment, we're still just a few minutes into the film, and our protagonist is still being established as someone who is spiritually malnourished, dissatisfied, and searching for transformation.
Like her hoodie, Beyonce's teenyong is solid black, not the colorful jeweledore and teenyongs of 18th century Creoles in Louisiana. This is the same idea behind Beyonce sitting in a waterless antique bathtub. Traditionally, water can represent a number of things depending on its context, but is most often used to symbolize birth, rebirth, purity, spiritual cleansing, and or freedom. Like her muted color clothing and covered hair, Beyonce sitting in a bathtub with no water, signifies her current lack of freedom and spiritual deprivation.
And it's with this in mind that we hear again the song's refrain, understanding now that more than anything, Beyonce is praying for change. Better catch all this more. Here in the chapter's closing moments, we discover a new layer of meaning behind the refrain, Pray You Catch Me. In the film, Beyonce is standing on top of a large city building at night.
Her eyes are teary and her hair is covered by the same black hoodie. The camera then dramatically pans up from her feet to her head, and we see that, along with the hoodie, she wears a long, solid black dress. It's as if she's dressed for a funeral. With an extremely determined look in her eye, Beyonce takes off her hood and reveals her long, curly hair.
We should recognize this as an extremely important moment. If the hood and sing young covering her hair throughout intuition were symbolic of constraint, bondage, and suppression, the removal of the head covering is an intentional act of resistance, of confrontation, of control. Beyonce's bare feet curl over the roof's ledge. We're starting to get the feeling that she might jump.
Beyonce's hands stretch out in front of her. Her palms turned upward. This image seems deliberately instilled with religious overtones, as the stretching out of one's hands in the Bible symbolizes power, healing, and transformation through God. To quote Acts 4.30, stretch out your hands to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of our Holy Servant Jesus.
It's no coincidence that in the very next shot, Beyonce mimics a cross. Her body is perfectly straight, and both arms stretch out from her sides. It seems a blatant evocation of Jesus Christ's sacrificial death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection. We think of Beyonce's quote regarding the events of Lemonade.
I died and was reborn in my relationship, and the quest for self became even stronger. Still in the cross position, Beyonce falls forward off the ledge and tumbles downward towards her metaphoric death on the concrete below. This is Beyonce's Leap of Faith, the scene in the movie where the heroine, bravely and irrevocably, crosses the threshold to confront the unknown, to enter the enchanted forest, to slay the dragon so to speak. The hero of every story at some point must take a leap of faith to unlock the transformative potential and strength that resides within them.
It's the process by which a hero becomes a hero. For Beyonce, her Leap of Faith will force her to confront the curses that run in her blood. The curse of broken male-female relationships in her family, and the curses born from America's history of slavery and racism. It's here that we recognize the final and perhaps most significant interpretation of the song's title, Pray You Catch Me.
As in, Catch Me When I Fall, Catch Me When I Take My Leap of Faith. Pushi's praying to catch her, well, it could be her partner. It could be the generational spirits of her African female ancestry. It could be God.
It could be herself. In fact, it might just be all of these things at once. Beyonce falls from the rooftop in a Christlike pose and tumbles toward the pavement below. But rather than hitting the ground, we hard-cut to Beyonce plunging into a large body of water.
Next chapter's title card, Denial, appears as Beyonce, still submerged underwater, strips away the black hoodie. What is the significance of this? Why does the entire next scene take place underwater? Why are there two Beyonce's, one awake watching the other sleep?
What does all of this have to do with Beyonce bashing in a car with a baseball bat? We'll answer these questions and more next time on DICEF. DICEF is a production of Spotify Studios. Remember, you can find visual guides for each episode on DICEF podcast.com, which also includes links to any articles cited on today's episode.
While you're there, be sure to check out our limited Season 6 merchandise and be sure to follow us on social media at DICEF podcast. Today's episode was written by Titi Shodia and me, additional analysis by Maggie Lacey and Michael Bundelow, additional research by Gail Acosta. The original music score for the season introduction was composed by So Wily of Gimlet Studios, audio editing by Eric Bass and me, song recreations by Andrew Atwood, theme music by bureaucratic. Okay, thanks everyone.
If you're listening on Spotify, the next two episodes of the season are ready for you to listen to right now. If you're listening somewhere else, you'll have to wait till next week, or just head to Spotify now where you can listen for free.