"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" - Aristotle

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Beyonce's Duality


Beyonce's new music video "Video Phone" featuring Lady Gaga premiered the other day. At first I didn't plan on posting about it but there were a few little things I noticed that I felt were worth mentioning.
Of course there's the usual "one eye" symbolism. This is very similar to Lady Gaga in her debut video for "Just Dance".
Beyonce's next outfit is full of duality. First of all the entire outfit, including her earrings, are black and white. There's also a black and white eye on one of her breasts. On her....panties there's the Greek Comedy and Tragedy masks. If you research these masks there original purpose was to represent duality.
To make the duality theme even more obvious they even threw in the ying and yang symbol.
I found the guys with the bags over their heads interesting. It reminded me of beheadings. Anyway, Beyonce is also wearing leopard print pants.
Multi-colored checkerboard pants. Her look is also an obvious homage to Bettie Page (dominatrix/sex kitten).
This scene was the most interesting to me. No, not because of the obvious "Roc" symbol she's throwing up, but because of the shirt she's wearing. Some thought the image was an alien but I personally say it's a mask. The earrings are what blew me away. They are the Male and Female symbols using the colors blue and red. If you've been keeping up with this blog you know that I've covered this theme a lot. At the bottom of this post I will include links to some of the posts where I've covered this theme.
Lightening bolt earrings/Phallic symbolism.

Holiday on the Moon (purple symbolism; blue + red = purple)

Christ's Musical Express ( same as above)

Magic Mirrors 3 : Future Lovers Ride

Kanye West - Flashing Lights Live

Magic Mirrors 4 : Evidence Of It's Brilliance

2009 MTV Video Music Awards

Aaliyah, Left Eye, Horus, and the Moon


6 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this video. This is the first time I've seen it. The beginning made me think of Rihanna (the hair and sunglasses)Its sort of like a homage to Resevoir Dogs or something! Anyway, have to agree with you on the blue-bag heads - that's just creepy! GaGa doesn't do much in this video except look very pale, its mostly Beyonce's show.I'm guessing, apart from the obvious phalic sybolism of the guns, they are suppose to represent 'shooting the camera' right. Still, with the green military style uniform and the Japanese style flag-loeotard there's a sort of a subliminal cue to thinking about 'war'. Don't like this song or video, it's pretty mediocre coming from these two superstars!

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  3. Great stuff, Yeshua. As usual.

    Thought you might find this magazine cover of Eva, Helena & Claudia For ‘i-D’ Magazine interesting.

    Cheers.

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  4. Thanks, Andre. the "one eye" thing is becoming boring and so obvious.

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  5. I love that sweet girl, Beyonce always do the best move. I think we need more musicians like her because we're harvest crap music like Gaga's works. I think you can add more information about Beyonce. I just love her body and their moves are awesome.

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  6. She is so beautiful, talented and sexy, this video is excellent one of her best so far.

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