Jennifer O’Meara

In 2013, Carol Vernallis published a brilliant book called *Unruly
Media: YouTube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema*. In it, she
eloquently describe the 'media swirl' which characterises the
contemporary audiovisual landscape: characterised by heightened sonic
and visual aesthetics in music and YouTube videos, these forms are
impossible to sort into neat generic categories. Instead, each form's
'influences ripple out maddeningly, creating interferences, blendings,
loosenings of boundaries' (3). Vernallis and Oxford University Press had
the good sense to put Beyoncé on the cover, with the author dedicating a
chapter to 'Video Phone' as exemplary of the reconfigured music video
form.

Beyoncé's general approach to media is indeed 'unruly'. In 2013, she
released her fifth studio album to iTunes with no warning and a
self-title (confusing the norms of chronology). The album was
accompanied by a full complement of non-linear videos. Fast forward
three years and Beyoncé releases *Lemonade*, which has been described as
a visual album, a video album, and a conceptual film (sometimes all in
the same breath). All and none of these labels seem accurate. The
inability to firmly label *Lemonade* is no doubt a part of its appeal,
success, and context; located in the midst of the media swirl.

*Lemonade* premiered on HBO as a 65-minute film on April 23. It was also
released on Tidal, the subscription-based, high fidelity music and video
streaming service owned by Beyoncé's husband, Jay Z, and his company
Project Panther. You can download a purely audio version (45 minutes) of
*Lemonade* for €17.99 on iTunes or Tidal. Or you can sign up for a free
trial of Tidal and watch/listen to it that way. Tidal hasn't been doing
too well, and the cynical among us might see *Lemonade* as a
well-planned strategy to draw the masses to the site (where subscription
fees are up to €19.99 per month). After all, everything Beyoncé touches
turns to gold, and *Lemonade* quickly became [the fastest selling album
of the
year](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/arts/music/beyonce-lemonade-chart-sales.html?_r=1).
The release has even led to [a spike in the sales of *actual*
lemonade](http://uk.complex.com/music/2016/05/beyonce-lemonade-sales-spike).

*Lemonade*'s two output forms make for a fascinating study in transmedia
storytelling, as well as instantaneous adaptation. Given that the visual
album is fifteen minutes longer, we might even interpret the audio
version as a pure 'soundtrack' to the corresponding film. Because
although certain 'cinematic' properties, such as voiceover narration,
are edited out of the audio version, some of the diegetic sound effects
remain. Indeed, video essayist Nelson Carvajal has already created [a
seven-minute
work](http://freecinemanow.blogspot.ie/2016/04/video-essay-film-fidelity-beyonces.html)
charting the potential cinematic influences on *Lemonade*. For him, the
work of Terrence Malick is the most overt and sustained inspiration. As
Carvajal notes, one of *Lemonade*'s directors (Kahlil Joseph) even shot
B-roll for Malick's *To The Wonder*.

*Lemonade*'s premiere on HBO can also be seen as a continuation of HBO's
recent investment in music-focused programming; including the music
documentaries *Cobain: Montage of Heck* and 2013's *Beyoncé: Life is But
a Dream*. While *Lemonade* can hardly be described as a documentary, it
does further chronicle Beyoncé's personal life by including intimate
sequences with her (alleged) unfaithful spouse. And, like HBO's
performer-focused music documentaries, it assumes fans have an
insatiable appetite when it comes to watching their idols on-screen.

![](http://cms.cstonline.net/resizeimage.php?width=400&height=192&image=http://cdn.cstonline.net/assets/image/user_92/Life-is-but-a-dream-Beyonce-is-amazing.jpg){.addCaption
loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="400" height="192"}

Returning, then, to Vernallis: from the perspective of media
classification, Beyoncé's most recent audio(visual) outputs are again
unruly. Vernallis' description of the media swirl's rippling
'interference' between categories also brings to mind another form of
interference; that of sound waves, which occurs when two waves meet
while traveling along the same medium. In physics, the outcome of this
is termed 'constructive' or 'destructive' interference. With the latter,
the two pulses move in opposite directions and, upon meeting, they
cancel each other out. Constructive interference, on the other hand,
occurs when the two waves overlap and add together to form a bigger one.
With *Lemonade*, Beyoncé is simultaneously working in two media formats
(audio and audiovisual). And yet, on a metaphorical level at least, the
idea of waves overlapping to constructive effect seems apt. HBO, Tidal,
and iTunes are all effectively distributing *Lemonade* to their
respective audiences; juicing those lemons for all that they're worth.
What remains to be seen is whether this will result in a tidal wave of
influence, for Tidal, or for the future of visual albums more generally.

 

[**Jennifer O'Meara**](https://nuim.academia.edu/JenniferOMeara) is an
Assistant Lecturer in Film Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. Her
recent publications include contributions on podcasts, film posters,
music and dialogue to *Frames Cinema Journal*, *The Journal of Digital
Media Arts and Practice*, *The New Soundtrack*, and *Cinema Journal*.


In 2013, Carol Vernallis published a brilliant book called
<em>
 Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema
</em>
. In it, she eloquently describe the ‘media swirl’ which characterises the contemporary audiovisual landscape: characterised by heightened sonic and visual aesthetics in music and YouTube videos, these forms are impossible to sort into neat generic categories.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

BEYONCÉ’S LEMONADE AND THE TRANSMEDIA SWIRL