Ain't I a Diva? by Kevin Allred

Author:Kevin Allred
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2019-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

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WHAT’S SO QUEER ABOUT SASHA FIERCE?

BEYONCÉ FORMALLY INTRODUCED THE WORLD TO Sasha Fierce in 2008 with the release of her third solo album highlighting the character, but fans were aware of her existence even earlier. Watching Beyoncé—more personally shy and introverted—fearlessly command concert stages of all sizes was to bear witness to a force of nature. It still is. But in the early days of her career, Beyoncé cited Sasha Fierce as the alter ego that made it possible to channel such unabashed confidence and attitude on stage. Though all her albums since B’Day have been concept driven, I Am … Sasha Fierce is a double-disc concept album of the highest order. Released on two separate discs with eight songs each, the album could have easily fit on one. The distinct separation was part of the point. Listeners had to take explicit action to move between I Am … and … Sasha Fierce. Of course, the transition might not hold the same weight now that digital music reigns supreme and physical albums have become more or less obsolete. But the original artistic intent is important to mining the album’s politics.

I Am … Sasha Fierce tried to balance two different personas, two different characters, and Beyoncé couldn’t have been clearer about that. The two characters were diametrically opposed in the packaging as opposite sides of one product. The costuming, styling, and musicality for the two exist at separate ends of a spectrum: one stark in its simplicity, featuring little to no makeup and simple fashion, styling choices, and backdrops, with slower accompaniment and more mainstream, conventional song structures; the other overexaggerated, with big hair, dramatic makeup, hybrid and almost cyborgian costuming, and up-tempo beats with loose structure showcasing some of Beyoncé’s best, most unexpected, and deceptively difficult vocal work. All contained within a double-disc album concept at the precise moment the industry was embracing streaming and downloads, distancing itself from physical albums.

In the same way that partitions parallel stereotypes in Beyoncé’s other work, the duality and polar opposition of I Am … Sasha Fierce can be used to explore notions of binary thinking. With any binary, one side is always slightly, even imperceptibly, prized. Power is never equally distributed. The 2008 album and Sasha Fierce herself provide the perfect opportunity to discuss and deconstruct the imbalances and limits of binaries through one of the most foundational—and most internalized—binaries: the Western gender binary, or the idea that man and woman are the two opposing poles of possibility, with man being the prized position. “If I Were a Boy” and “Single Ladies,” both lead singles from I Am … Sasha Fierce that were released simultaneously, one from each side respectively, are explicitly about gender, and filmed in blackand-white. Another binary, and one that stylistically nods to the fact that binaries of race cannot be disentangled from binaries of gender in either single.

Approaching Sasha Fierce for class, I also suggest there’s something decidedly queer about the character—as was already touched on in relation to

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