{"id":468,"date":"2011-05-24T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T01:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/?p=468"},"modified":"2011-05-25T12:17:42","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T16:17:42","slug":"what-you-get-is-what-you-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/2011\/05\/what-you-get-is-what-you-see\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Get is What You See"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve watched  Beyonce&#8217;s performance at the Billboard Music Awards a few times today. Online chatter is generally gushy about the video effects and the dancing, but the song itself gets the least love among the many moving parts. &#8220;What a shame that such a performance was wasted on such a weak song. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never hear that song 10 yrs from now,&#8221; one commenter noted. <\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"314\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vbvqTPGwbZ4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>You won&#8217;t get any push back on that appraisal from me. Still, my mind wandered to what other music might make use of such a display with more staying power.<\/p>\n<p>Even more than that, however, after reading <a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/18\/until-the-next-revolution\/\">David T. Little&#8217;s column<\/a> considering the intersection of the musical and the political, tracks like &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/VBmMU_iwe6U\">Run the World (Girls)<\/a>&#8221; raise questions for me concerning the line between performance as political inspiration vs. the manipulative power of a good beat and a great designer. There is a message about empowerment that I&#8217;m seeking inside this music that I don&#8217;t cleanly hear or see. <\/p>\n<p>At first I thought it was just the idea that the influence of barely being dressed seemed slightly off message. I&#8217;m not usually such a prude, and after catching <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/k05iTQQ_wHk\">this fan-made video<\/a>, I realized it wasn&#8217;t just that&#8211;well, not entirely. The lingerie was a front on an issue that you don&#8217;t encounter when, say, reading about <a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2011\/05\/23\/saudi-woman-arrested-driving\/\">this Saudi woman&#8217;s campaign<\/a> to fight against driving prohibitions in her home country. Sexy is a powerful package, as are network production values, but I was looking for a core that brought a celebration of girls running the world to the table with something more weighty than glitz, windblown hair, and tech tricks, and that&#8217;s where this performance gave me nothing but air.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: I knew I wasn&#8217;t the only one who found something hard to swallow in &#8220;Run the World (Girls),&#8221; but <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/p72UqyVPj54\">this video<\/a> from NineteenPercent lays it out and then some. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve watched Beyonce&#8217;s performance at the Billboard Music Awards a few times today. Online chatter is generally gushy about the video effects and the dancing, but the song itself gets the least love among the many moving parts. &#8220;What a shame that such a performance was wasted on such a weak song. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never hear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64,65,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-beyonce","9":"tag-billboard-music-awards","10":"tag-political-music","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/gap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}