"To the left, to the left."
What this country needs is some movement to the left. (Ok, I digress, already.)
Beyonce has got talent. She can sing, fo' sho'. This is a catchy song. Nice melody, gets in your head, especially since it is being played by every radio station every four songs.
And I can't wait to have the opportunity to say to someone: "You mus' not know 'bout me. You mus' not know 'bout me."That is awesome. It has so many applications. I like that it's slightly ominous: are you connected to the mob, perhaps? Is there a can of "whoop-ass" in your pocket?
This song can also be taken as empowering for women. She's got the money, she's the owner, she's got the stuff and his ass is out. As one commentator to a YouTube video exclaimed:
"I love this song like she just stading [sic] there doing her nails not faised [sic] at all GIRL POWER"
Girl power, indeed.
Yet, there is an anxiety that undergirds this song, and no doubt provides it with its erotic energy.The first hints are obvious: "Everything you own in a box to the left." His identity and life have been summed up and wrapped up nicely. It boils down to a few items. These commodities are what he is about, the last remaining symbol of his presence. Once they are gone, not even a trace will remain.
The lines are drawn; there is no sharing: "In the closet, that's my stuff. Yes, if I bought it, please don't touch." Her own identity, being grounded in this set of commodities, needs boundary maintenance. No exchanges, for all exchanges are over. The swapping of lives, saliva, and CDs can no longer take place.
And for all that I appreciate Beyonce's vocal abilities, her songwriter(s) are another matter entirely. The lovely melody and soaring vocalics come crashing down when wedded to lyrics like:
"I could have another you in a minute / matter fact he'll be here in a minute."
I won't dwell on the offense to poetic sensibilities presented by these verses.
Yet in the cacophonous clang created during the crashing "minutes," the song's anxiety ratchets up a notch. There is more at stake here than the end of a relationship. This is not merely about asserting one's independence. Beyonce as prophetess of our time announces nothing less than the celebration of the commodification of the human. Like a cog in the wheel, or like a fitting rattled loose on the factory conveyer belt, this man can be replaced with another. This other is identical, fits neatly into place, and is available according to post-Fordist "just in time" manufacturing protocol. No lag time is necessary; production can continue as planned. It will just be a minute.
Yet there is no time to lament (or continue to celebrate) the human commodity, for the song's commentary spirals outside itself. It becomes a self-commentary, removing any grounds for the possibilities of analysis it provides, pulling the carpet out from under itself. It realizes this in performance, in the very act of its audio "display" before our ears. For, as we listen to it, it begins to dawn on us that nothing about this song makes it irreplaceable. There was one right before it (a minute ago) and there'll be another one "here in a minute." The song, like the man it sings, is a reified commodity, able to be freely discarded and replaced as the economy of our identity-construction marches on.Unfortunately, this is not all. For, as the song sings the man, and sings itself, it sings the singer. Perhaps, then, the real anxiety driving this song is not just about the limitless possibilities of copulatory partners, freely replaceable, like a great line of the terra cotta soldiers fashioned for a king hoping for protection in the afterlife. Nor is it simply about the song, one among many of its kind, one pixel that becomes imperceptible as you step back to gaze at the sea of color and image. Perhaps this song drives forward, flailing, in the hopes that we will not at the end of things come to realize that, sadly, it is you, Beyonce, who are not irreplaceable.
The commodified man, as parable, opens up into the narrative itself, showing the commodified structure of the mode of communication itself. This, in turn, unravels further and implicates the enunciator as commodity. For we are well aware of the machine and its needs. Like Steinbeck's "Bank," always hungry, rapacious, devouring, this machine of which Beyonce is a part can only do one thing. It uses her on the factory floor like other mechanisms, and the erotic energy she exudes is amplified by the clinging by a thread, suppressing this reality, hoping to perform more effectively and efficiently than previous cogs, to shine so brightly so as maybe, maybe to convince the foreman that she, unlike all the others, is irreplaceable.
