Black Is King

WARNING: lengthy post

I felt so many emotions watching this, I took notes. I thought the negative comments were from non-black conservative trolls until I decided to watch it for myself. I was excited. At first. Then I felt embarrassed. It was as if Beyonce became indignant because The Lion King received mixed reviews that she decided to take matters into her own hands, only to deliver another "Carmen" or "Obsessed" aka an effort that no one really wants to see again. Ever. When it comes to movie-making SPECIFICALLY, this one makes no sense. Some of the music videos do not correlate with the spoken word. It loosely follows The Lion King and branches off into a poetry-laced jungle haunted with mysticism. The rosy words are overly self-indulgent to the point it made me feel like melted ice cream. There were many lines about how black skin is made from the stars and how our fluffy hair is strands of wisdom, blah blah blah. It was alot of beautiful gibberish that is meant to uplift insecure women of color. In the process, the movie neglects many things. For one thing, what about light skinned women? The song "brown-skinned Girls" excludes women who are biracial (black+white) or multiracial/black like Beyonce, who prides herself in not only being black but Creole. When it comes to the "BLACK" part of Black is King...are we only talking about brown skinned to deep-brown-skinned africans and african americans?

The other thing is, this film does not represent Blackness well at all. In many scenes, there's a lot of stunting going on, flashing riches, sass and beauty.

That's not blackness. Even more heart-breaking, the part that REALLY mattered, the part about taking care of your family and working hard, is mentioned briefly by some unknown speaker. Once that's over, it's back to rolling hips and dramatic outfits... Which brings me to my next point...

Beyonce's power is her beauty. She should model often because she is incredibly beautiful, however have you noticed the only reason why people love the film is because it is aesthetically beautiful? That's about it. When it comes to choreography or story-telling etc, Black is King lacks majorly. It kind of became a fest of rolling hips and sultry gazes and synchronized flowy movements but that's nothing original nor inspiring. To be fair, it was an honest effort and better than anything I could ever do. And what was up with the whole River Baby/Moses situation?

The dangerous parts about this movie are the spiritual or religious and supremacist beliefs that seem to be promoted throughout. Speakers whisper words such as "I am the creator of all things" and exalt blackness to a royal and even celestial level. "I know I am a god," "Blackness should be equated with glory." Why though? Black is beautiful indeed, but no amount of "research" could ever make me feel above others (white servant included--seen in the music segment "Mood.") or that I am a god myself--complete with a "mother Mary" like painting of myself (major side-eye...). That is dangerous ideology. Royalty is not determined by skin color, Divinity is beyond humanity, and racism does not always or usually stem from jealousy or intimidation. This just screams "REVENGE!!!" I am not empowered by this movie, I feel like apologizing for this movie. I will give another warning, though, and that is to beware: Jesus isn't white, but black isn't god either....

Now I'm closing. Watch this movie and be wowed by the outfits and beauty. That should be celebrated. But when it comes to great story telling, black excellence, black royalty, black heroism, black love, overcoming tribalism, racism,war...

Just watch Black Panther, bruh...

After giving us Hamilton on Disney+ they go and spoil it by showing this pile of narcissism in the form of an overblown music video. They manage to go one step further from their terrible real life adaptations of classic animation with this. I fully support the Black Lives Matter movement, but, I thought it was about equality and no promoting the idea that black people are better than white people. Perhaps Beyonce and Disney would like to put more effort in helping the poor and suffering in Africa by spending the money they wasted on this on providing clean water, proper education for the children and medicines to combat the terrible diseases afflicting many Africans who live in countries where their politicians live in splendour and the children die because of a lack of clean water. I'm so disappointed in Disney for doing something that benefits one incredibly rich black woman instead of helping BAME people both in America and the rest of the world.

You can always tell when a project touches on race or politics when you see lots of both 1/10 or 10/10 reviews, it's better than 1 but way short of a 10. It dragged on, visually impressive but thats just not enough

I come from a country where we actually do have a thing such as a king and a queen, where royalty is viewed as something extremely special and representing of *our* culture and history. For that reason, and what the title of this 1 hour and half long "artsy" music video implies (that a race in and of itself can be linked to something superior), I am indeed offended by this choice. I think it's disrespectful to the meaning of my culture and several others, and a hypocritical nonsensical message, and as you've noticed by now, adds nothing but division after there are so many of us from every race supporting the whole Black Lives Matter movement with passion, and will strive to continue to do so. To remove all the humanity and make it about being supreme and "royal" is beyond me.

Of course, I think it's great to strengthen the bonds and the history and the culture and roots of people of color, especially with someone high profile like Beyoncé doing it thereby having everybody seeing it. But this is simply not it. There is nothing educational, barely anything artistic except for extremely glamourous shots and vibing music that ends up just being the background, as does the actual Lion King aspect which fades out quickly.

To the ones who keep defending Black Is King by saying that it's *Beyonce*, the "film" has no ill intentions, and we all don't have a right to feel offended or disrespected here (funny how that goes), you don't even have to watch the movie to get it. Just go straight to the trailer and they literally have the *only* noticeably white (male) in the whole thing stand as a servant in the background to a table full of fancy-dressed women of colour having a party. People have tried to furiously defend this but, quit beating around the bush. It's obvious that it's not there by coincidence, it's obvious that it's supposed to be some reversed sh* of what black people went through back when they were forced to be slaves and back when they weren't allowed bigger roles in films and tv and had to represent something like that there. But with its message in today's society, 2020 folks, reversed racism (well, racism), *really*? It's not alright. Not for the movement, not for the people, not for the cultures.

I actually happen to be a big fan of Beyoncé's music and art style (well, the previous), having loved and supported her since I was a kid when I first heard her, so to see her put out something like this... I can't even describe what I feel but it's such a letdown she would go this route.

She could've saved it all focussing on the beauty of the actual African culture and the roots and what it looks like in different places in Africa today, all the different people there, and cut that nonsense offensive title, maybe boost up her music so it doesn't feel like background as much and boost up the Lion King story, and it would've been so good. But that didn't happen.

It's like she finally took all the praise about her being a goddess with beauty and music out-of-this-world to her head and dropped it in one "film" and decided to promote it as African culture supporting all the people of color out there, giving their race a title of royalty and add in a few vain messages about strength and beauty and empowerment and that's it.

Beyoncé's status does not make her free from criticism, and this time she messed up. She deserves to know that and acknowledge she's really forced this whole movement two steps backwards in terms of adding to the discussion, and a lot of supporters of her and of the movement and in different cultures feel offended by what she put out. Please don't just hold her to another standard and let all the people offended by this slide by while you are trying to tell us none of what we think and feel is legit to this situation. We don't move forward by moving backwards.

EDIT/note: After making this review and gaining the huge likes/dislikes, someone has gone out of their way to dislike *all* my other reviews (50+). I know that for a fact since there are so many of them and several of them are just years old with previously 0 votes or some that has seen no votes for a while and are about lesser known pieces, etc.. To see this is unbelievable. I've also come across threads on Twitter dedicated to hanging out reviewers on this site, where you can actually see the usernames, speaking hateful about what is initially someone's bare experience and opinions on this film and what's surrounding it, and suggesting ways to downvote and change the rating etc. Is this the level of mob mentality and hatefulness we have gone to? As a reviewer on this site, too, I have no way of speaking back either to claim respect or do anything about it. Had to share this since it has gotten way too personal, not just for me, and you should never get consequences like this for speaking up your view and experience. I respect every single dislike and every single like on this review but I have to ask for you to be fair. That's all. Wishing good out there, and please ignore this segment while determining whether to like/dislike the actual review I have here. Thank you.

"Black is King" is a movie supposedly based on the morals and story of the 2019 Lion King, connected by Beyonce's music; a visual album. The main theme was that...Black is King (no pun intended).

Let me make this clear: I am not a person of color, and I cannot claim to relate to any of the feelings that the primary audience may have toward this movie. I personally do not believe Beyonce knew that what she was saying and doing could be interpreted as pretentious, preachy, and possibly racist(?). At first, I thought maybe I am just not the main demographic, but after reading a few of the reviews that noted that they were of African culture to any degree, I realized this movie has people completely split. I will not speak on how this movie represents a culture I do not know too much about, simply on how it made me feel.

I will start with positives. The dancing clearly has effort in it and the choreography, and some of the costumes (while mostly flashy) are at least different enough to see the lengths they went to create some sort of identity. There were some nice natural locations in deserts and jungles and rivers, which were colorful. There is also some slight touches of style that were enjoyable in camera angles, feeling like a national geographic movie.

Now the negatives. This whole film is inconsistent in nearly every regard. The editing is well-paced in some scenes, and awful in others (during some dance scenes, it looked like some high budget Tik Tok video fad). The costumes are pretty, but there are so many that it just feels like Beyonce is showing off how rich she is, and the same goes for locations, feeling like she is showing off her house. Self-indulgent really is a fitting word. The changing aspect ratios have no symbolic effect as the smaller aspect ratio is not limited to a single dance number and song. The symbolism is not always spot on, like the part where the boy is a comet, or the baby being sent down the river. The lyrics do not usually match visuals at all like the "jealousy" song. The connections to the Lion King are tenuous at best (and this is a nitpick, but why didn't they use the original Lion King? Most people agree, 2019 Lion King was not great). The poetry, from someone who is usually good at interpreting poetry, does not always connect. It is not enough to use metaphors to describe an entire group of people, you have to do something with those metaphors. Also, some of the dance moves do not seem like they should be shown to families who show young kids this, two of the scenes in particular having very sexual moves, flashing twerking very close to the camera in skin tight clothing. Some movies could pull this off because they handled their messaging more maturely, but I cannot say the same here.

This movie feels like epitome of trying to inspire people by primping out your richness and wealth under the guise of metaphors and humbleness to make only one group of people feel important. A good movie is supposed to make that group feel important, but not alienate the rest of your audience. A white person can watch "Black Panther" or "Queen of Katwe" and not feel weird for being white, a boy can watch "Wonder Woman" or "Little Women" and feel empowered just as much as a girl, and a non-Asian can watch "Crazy Rich Asians" and relate to the differences in cultures because they don't draw too much attention to the fact that they are "Black" or a "Woman", or an "Asian" any more than necessary. "Black is King" does not understand this. "Black is King" made me, at the very least, slightly uncomfortable and a little guilty for being white. I've never had that experience before and I do not want to seem like the victim here. I have stated my case well enough for you to determine if you want to see this yourself or not.