Deconstructing Beyoncé -- What looks good may not necessarily feel good

Beyonce Knowles, formerly of Destiny's Child, has an amazing voice and great rhythmic timing. I first remember her in about 1999 in a video on MTV for some song. I remember thinking, wow! she's cute. A few years later her group made a video for a song called "Bootylicious." I cannot watch that video without thinking what we could call "impure" thoughts, so I am on self-imposed Beyoncé restriction when she's dancing (the same goes for Shakira dancing). There's something about her that makes her crazy attractive. Maybe it's the exotic, maybe it's the voice, maybe it's her bootyliciousness. I avoid Beyoncé now because she has gone from a gorgeous singer who could also dance, to a sexpot singer that dances provacatively, wears extremely immodest clothing, and sings songs about things I feel are innappropriate and sometimes repulsive.

The sex that female pop stars seem to wrap their product in moves records. No doubt about that, but in the case of Beyoncé, she doesn't need to do it. Her voice is amazing enough that her music would stand out on its own. Mariah Carey is the most egregious example of someone who does NOT need to use sex to sell records, yet seems to get trashier with every day....like an East Coast Courtney Love in the making. Anyway, with all her talent, Beyoncé still feels the need to act like one of the women in her paramour, Jay-Z's, videos; he of "99 Problems, but a Bitch Ain't One" fame. I wish Beyoncé would come back to performing in accordance with the roots that she swore by in the early years of her fame.

If I had a nice body, I would be tempted to show it off. It's not easy to look good, and the unspoken compliments people pay you must surely be gratifying, but there's more to life than beauty, and what then when the makeup, fancy clothes, and all the trappings of sexiness come off? What's left? The REAL of desire is all there is. The real is not what we want. It's the ugly side of desire. Jean Baudrillard wrote the following in his book, Seduction:

The more one advances willy-nilly in sex's veracity, in the exposure of its workings, the more immersed one becomes in the accumulation of signs, and the more enclosed one becomes in the endless over-signification of a real that no longer exists, and of a body that never existed. Our entire body culture, with its concern for the "expression" of the body's "desires," for the stereophonics of desire, is a culture of irredeemable monstrosity and obscenity.

All of the images that bombard us, male and female, every day are just an accumulation of signs. Seeing Josh Hartnett's exposed chest or Xuxa's lowcut top are desires for a body that never exists. They are signs in a coy game of cool seduction. Since seduction is composed of the artifice of signs and gestures, it is a form of mastery over the symbolic universe. Sexuality, on the other hand, is not cultural but natural--a form of mastery over the real universe. Feminine seduction relies on artifice--makeup, fashion, the display of a shoulder, ankle (well at least in 1906), cleveage beneath black lace. And it is only through such seduction that the masculine sexuality can be subverted! This is hot seduction. But there is also, for Baudrillard, cool seduction, which I mentioned above. It is the seduction of simulacra--of films, radio, movie stars--a self seduction in which we seduce ourselves by immersing ourselves in a play of signs, simulations, images, that escape male sexuality. Some porn films, according to Baudrillard are so caught up in the signs that, "Certain films are no more than visceral sound effects of a coital close-up; even the body disappears, dispersed amongst oversized partial objects." Slavoj Zizek has written that there are websites where you can see, fullscreen, the entry into the vagina from a fiber optic camera attached to someone's penis. How much worse can the accumulation of signs get than 15 minutes of watching a penis enter and leave a vagina to the sounds of grunting and bad music! This "1st person" point of view to the sexual act leaves the viewer no longer as an individual, but as the beholder of the part of his person that has no inherent nature other than what it does. Therefore, the indivual ceases to exist; it cedes all privilege to the phallus. Heaven help us!

The tittilation of Beyoncé jiggling on the TV screen is a cool seduction that can never be subverted by sexuality, because nothing will ever come of it. This is why I do not understand why men go to strip clubs. Imagine going to restaurant and having the table set with amazing food right in front of you, sometimes even with a fork in your hand, and not being able to taste any of it. Strip clubs are the most offensive form of pornography in my opinion because they confuse cool and hot seduction. The flesh is present, but nothing can come of it. I don't even have to mention how it prostrates people and objectifies them like nothing else possible could, save slavery. I hate strip clubs more than I hate the Los Angeles Dodgers.

When Beyoncé shakes it, wearing next to nothing, for the camera, there is little left. She has become eroticizing, and because of that we the spectators view her as such. She, and anyone else that does such things, has become the object of the gaze. According to our sexuality, we should be on the other side of our gaze, taking part in the actual seduction she is attempting, but now we are the gaze of the Other....which is why the image we see on the screeen contains no sublime-mysterious point (it's all been revealed in porn) which looks at us. The voyeur indulges in porn because there is no chance of catching the eye of the other. The viewer gazes stupidly at the image that reveals all. However instead of controlling the situation as the gazer Other, the viewer is actually a pawn that the actors on the screen are trying to rouse sexually, while the viewer is reduced to a paralyzed object-gaze at the sexual mercy of the performers. Porn shackles the viewer into a hyper-eroticized game that has no fulfillment. Beyoncé should know better. Instead of the sublime essence of her beauty we are stuck with her vulgar moaning suggestive of fornication. She goes too far. Madonna falls into this same boat.

The insoluble equivocalness of pornography: it puts an end to all seduction via sex, but at the same time it puts an end to sex via the accumulation of the signs of sex. -- Baudrillard

Instead of relying on true seduction, people now depend on the accumation of cool signs to be seduced. Television shows girls at Spring Break not seducing boys with glances, blown kisses, or dancing a tad closer than an arms length away. Rather, seduction, for all the world to see, involves gyrating stripper moves as girls grind their buttocks against boys' groins. There is no mystery, no game, no seduction. The male sexuality has taken hold, and what happens is exactly what happens to Barbara Novak in Vertigo. Jimmy Stewart is seduced by her. He can think of little else. He wants to possess her sexually. He forsakes all else in pursuit of the seduction that gives him such longing. After he has conquered Novak, he is repulsed by her. She is not desirable to him at all. This is the Real of his desire. He cannot face the reality of his desire when the trappings of seduction are removed. "For seduction, desire is not an end but a hypothetical prize which exists only to burn for a moment and then be disappointed."

Alexandre Kojeve has written that Desire is not the need to have sex with the object of that desire; it is not the need to possess the body of the Other (which Derrida claims is just using someone else's vagina or penis to masturbate ourselves), but true human desire is the desire to be desired by the Other--an idea clearly illustrated in popular culture, examples:

1. Cheap Trick, "I want you to want me"
2. My Best Friend's Wedding -- Julia Roberts doesn't want to marry her old friend until he tells her he's getting married to someone else.
3. Can't Buy Me Love --Patrick Dempsey wanting everyone to like him so he pays someone to act like she likes him so others will like him. It works too. Everyone wants the girl he paid to desire them, so they befriend him hoping to earn her desire.

To me this is the truest state of desire. I want Mickelle to want me. Sure I like her body and "it" would work no matter what, but if there's no return of my love and affection, then it's just a biological issue devoid of feeling, which can only lead to depressing desublimation.

But no matter. One need only check out http://www.awfulplasticsurgery.com/ to see how fake the objects of our cultural desires are. Andy Richter used to comment on how he could see the facelift scars behind peoples' ears when they sat on Conan O'Brien's couch. So if we strip away the layers of Miss Knowles' seductress act, what are we left with?: Someone beautiful that would not desire any of the people that desire her. She is a simulacra, and therefore the odious product of the Real of our Desire.

"The true seductress can only exist in a state of seduction. Outside this state, she is no longer a woman, neither an object nor subject of desire, faceless and unattractive - for she is borne by an all-consuming passion. Seduction is sovereign - the only ritual that eclipses all others- but its sovereignty is cruel, and carries a heavy price."

This post started because I clicked on a link that said she was releasing a new album. When I saw the album's title, I realized that 1) Her publicist is a moron, 2) She is an egomaniac, and 3) It is a chance to look awry at her true nature. In spite of the position of power that her seductress act gives her, the reality is repugnant, fake, and ethereal. No matter how many times she looks into the camera and tries to provoke you with those eyes, those hips, and all that shaking, she will not desire the gazer. It's all a bunch of shit, which makes her album title wholly apropos. It's called, "B'Day" which surely refers to her name, or her birthday, but I took to mean, "bidet;" a device used to wash shit off your butt.




Fat guys feel good in the dark!