Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
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What cultural connections are explored in this episode?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. This week, we're connecting the dots between the American flag, the Catholic Church, and Beyonce. I know, I know. How are all of these things connected? Well, we're going to find out with music and Black feminism scholar, Dr. Daphne A. Brooks, and mass communication historian, Dr. Nicholas Cull. Daphne, Nick, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Great to be here. Thanks for having us, Brittany. Okay, so I got a real quick question for you. Have you ever watched something on TV and thought, okay, now this is propaganda.
Have you ever had that moment? Whenever I see Lean Greenwood singing, proud to be an American.
Well, I not only notice when things are propaganda, but I also quite enjoy it because I can see that it's meant to connect to me and I enjoy that feeling.
How did Beyoncé's halftime show spark debate?
You mean you enjoy the feeling of being reached out to?
Yeah. Yeah. You know, Brittany, I tear up for everyone's national anthem. So you're highly susceptible to nationalism across the board. These are universal themes that are invoked.
I get that. I don't know. I used to watch that show on NBC. It's not on anymore called This Is Us. I felt like watching that show every week. They were trying to tell me that I needed to have three children. I don't, but that's a story for another time. Our story today begins with none other than Ms. Beyonce Giselle Knowles-Carter, who spent her Christmas day performing the NFL halftime show in her hometown of Houston, Texas.
It's only right that we do Texas Hold'em for the first time in Houston, Texas on Christmas. Y'all help me sing.
the performance lasted more than 12 minutes and brought many of the things we associate with Black Southern rodeo culture, horses, line dances, and even real-life rodeo queens to the homes of more than 27 million viewers in the United States alone. But as the singer ascended above the crowd, belting songs from her latest album, Cowboy Carter, some viewers got a different message. In the days after the halftime performance, a TikTok user that goes by the name Han posited that through Beyonce's widespread usage of the American flag and her embrace of other symbols of Americana on the world stage, Mrs. Knowles-Carter was acting as America's best press agent.
Beyonce is this country's best propagandist right now. Like, no one is doing it like her.
This spurred a flurry of responses.
So I literally don't post for two weeks and then I come back and look at TikTok and all of a sudden Beyonce bull was making people proud to be a Black American and that's a bad thing?
The girls are being very disingenuous. Nobody not once said that Beyonce is above critique. Real quick, if you were not raised in the South, I need you to shut your mouth. This went on for weeks. Now, Beyonce is no stranger to using her music to communicate the message. Who can forget when she performed in front of the word FEMINIST in all caps and huge lettering on the MTV Video Music Awards?
Is Beyoncé America's best propagandist?
Or when she posed on top of a sinking New Orleans police car in her music video for Formation? She's also not the only superstar to traffic heavily in political imagery. You know, artists across genres have done this as well, from Michael Jackson to Bruce Springsteen. But the question of whether these acts constitute propaganda has me asking, just how prominent is propaganda in our pop culture? So, Daphne, Nick, is propaganda the right word for what Beyonce did with her NFL halftime show?
I just have a problem with it. All art is political. The great cultural studies scholars, Stuart Hall, told us that many years ago in a landmark piece called What is this Black in Black Popular Culture? He told us that culture is not a zero-sum game. And so I just think propaganda feels like a flattening out of the ways in which we think about art and cultural performance in this day and age.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What cultural connections are explored in this episode?
0:19–1:20
2
How did Beyoncé's halftime show spark debate?
1:20–3:54
3
Is Beyoncé America's best propagandist?
3:54–5:59
4
What is the role of propaganda in pop culture?
5:59–8:58
5
How do historians view the term 'propaganda' in relation to art?
8:58–11:39
6
What implications do social media platforms have on propaganda?
11:39–16:30