Dissect - S6E5 - 6 Inch by Beyoncé (feat. The Weeknd)

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

We continue our serialized analysis of Beyoncé’s Lemonade by dissecting its fifth chapter “Emptiness,” which features the song “6 Inch.” We find Beyoncé wielding her sexuality for profit in a powerful anthem for working girls. But is there something else beneath her external show of dominance? A visual guide for this episode can be found at dissectpodcast.com. Follow us on social media @dissectpodcast. S6 merch can be purchased at shop.dissectpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify Studios, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm Cole Kushna. And I'm Titi Shodea. Today we continue our serialized analysis of lemonade by Beyonce. On our last episode, we dissected the visual album's fourth chapter, Apathy, which features the song Sorry. There, we heard Beyonce feign apathy as she and her girlfriend's drink and danced at a nightclub, all while proclaiming, I ain't thinking about you. Meanwhile on screen, we saw Beyonce find solidarity in the black women she surrounded herself with.

From Serena Williams in the Maidwood Plantation to the women painted with Yorba-inspired body art who occupied a Jim Crow-era bus. Beyonce and these women reclaimed these impossible black spaces to reestablish the power and agency she lost not only in her damaged relationship, but also in a society shaped by slavery and racism. Sari ended with Beyonce coming home from the same. the club, writing her husband a note to say she's leaving him, and suggests he now call his side-chick Becky. Just as Beyonce has gone far away from her husband for a new, unknown life, the final shot of apathy shows a group of five women walking out into the wilderness naked. It's here we meet the album's next chapter, the subject of our episode today, emptiness. She sleeps all day,

dreams of you in both worlds. A streetlight shines in the midst of a rain, and Beyonce recites the opening lines of Worsen Shire's poem, Grief has its blue hands in her hair. Beyonce's feigned apathy has moved into full-on despondence as she sleeps all day, a common symptom of deep depression. She confesses to her partner that she dreams of him in both worlds, leaving her meaning ambiguous. It may be that when she dreams of him in both worlds, she dreams of their idyllic life together prior to the revelation of his infidelity, only to have that illusion shattered,

by the looming reality of his betrayal. Like intuition, she could be imagining him existing in two places at once, both at home with her and out with other women. Or she could simply be dreaming of him when she's asleep, as well as when she's awake. In all likelihood, it's a combination of all these possibilities, as she continuously plays out each and every scenario. Thus, while in the previous chapter she repeatedly insisted, I ain't thinking about you.

Now it appears she is thinking of nothing but him, to the point that not even sleep can deliver her from these intrusive thoughts. Tills the blood uterus, wakes up, smelling of zinc. Grief, sedated by orgasm, orgasm, heightened by grief. The word till is most often used in relation to agriculture, meaning to prepare a piece of land for a new crop. But Beyonce here uses it

refer to the blood of the uterus, and we can infer that she's preparing her body for pregnancy. As tilling soil can be strenuous labor, we're left to assume that her attempt to get pregnant has been a painful, difficult process. In the following line, she wakes up smelling of zinc. Zinc is an essential micronutrient, vital for healthy soil as well as human blood. Waking up to the metallic scent of her own blood, she has once again either miscarried or gotten her period. In either case, it's clear that she's clear that she's not that. she has completed yet another painful cycle of infertility, another iteration of the curse that torments her. Beyonce continues to describe the memories of her sexual relationship with her partner

during their marriage. She recounts her attempts to sedate her grief through sleep, through the potent physical rush of sex, and with a possible hope of breaking the cycle of infertility. The grief she sedates is the same grief that intensifies her orgasm. This suggests a complex, even masochistic relationship she has to her grief, where her pleasure is heightened as a result of emotional pain. Given the fleeting nature of sex, we know that despite the temporary escape, her grief is sure to return, perhaps even more palpable than before. God was in the room when the man said to the woman, I love you so much, wrap your legs around me, pull me in, pull me in, pull me in. Sometimes when he'd have her nipple in his mouth she'd whisper,

Oh my God. That too is a form of worship. With these lines, the tense shifts from present to past, and the tone shifts from sadness to warmth. She describes two lovers in harmony with one another, a tender, even sacred moment between them. At this moment, God is in the room, suggesting not only a loving communion with one another, but with the divine as well.

And so while the entire poem takes place in the past, the tense and tone switch may indicate her recollection of two divergent points in their marriage, as she dreams of him in both worlds, one where the act of sex was inseparable from their brokenness, and another happier time. It's here that we get a true glimpse of what she's lost. Her hips grind, pestle, in mortar, cinnamon and cloves, whenever he pulls out loss.

Again, Beyonce switches tense, this time back to present. This indicates she's now describing the broken phase of their relationship, where Beyonce desperately tries to conceive a child. She compares the motion of her hips to the motions of a pestle and mortar, two ancient instruments used by apothecaries to grind ingredients, often in the process of making medicine. So too does Beyoncé use this motion to create a medicine of sorts. This comparison is reminiscent of the stereotype of the woman who gets pregnant to entrap her partner

or to save a crumbling marriage. Beyonce attempts to do the same, conceive a child, and fix the relationship. But she is unable to do even that. In the final line of the poem, her partner pulls out, making pregnancy impossible. Loss. As Beyonce completes this poem, the screen cuts to black and we hear what sounds like a door unlocking and opening, as if we're about to enter a hidden place. Then, the black screen is replaced with the eeriest image of lemonade thus far.

We have entered a narrow, very dimly lit hallway. The hallway extends into total darkness, except for an ominous rectangle of bright red light at the center. This red light compels us forward, illuminating the entire scene in a bloody, monochromatic red. Loss. As the camera descends down the hallway towards this source of red light,

we hear an untraceable whooshing, muffled footsteps, a baseline resembling a heartbeat, disembodied breathing, and the sound of drips. As we continue to be propelled near the end of the hallway, closing in on the red light,

we hear dissonant strings building and volume, creating both discomfort and suspense. This soundscape would not feel out of place in a horror film, and indeed, this is one of the many times throughout the chapter that Beyonce draws from the horror genre. These horror-like sounds build anxious anticipation and indicate that as we progress through the hallway, we are not approaching the light at the end of the tunnel that leads our heroine to safety, but something much more sinister.

In her piece, Pull the sorrow from between my legs, Lakeisha Simmons contends that the viewer is inside a woman's body, and that the quote, poetry, imagery, sounds, color and tones recreate the moment of miscarriage, the emptying of the uterus, the blood clots, the embryonic or fetal tissue, unquote. Also worth noting

is the hallway's chilling resemblance to the door of no return, a significant historical site of the transatlantic slave trade. The door of no return is located at the House of Slaves, an 18th century holding cell on an island off the coast of present-day Senegal. It was here, in the cramped cells of a red stucco prison that millions of captured Africans were subject to torture,

rape, and dehumanizing conditions as they awaited exploitation. In the midst of the red prison walls was a shadowy passageway that led to a rectangular opening of light facing the ocean, strikingly similar to the rectangular light at the end of Beyoncé's hallway. This was the door of no return. The final threshold that thousands of enslaved Africans passed through before boarding slave, ships embarking on the torturous middle passage voyage to the Americas. In this way, the light at the end of the hallway comes to signify not only the curse that's driven her marriage apart, but also the broader curse of the legacy of slavery. As we travel down this hallway,

Beyonce begins to recite Worsonshire's poem, Dear Moon, The Distraction. Dear Moon, we blame you for floods, the flush. We blame you for the ghost. We blame you for the Ghosts. Biont here details the way we blame the Moon for various phenomena, starting with floods. While the Moon's tidal force does scientifically cause floods, it appears that Beyonce is really calling attention to the fact that we assign disasters of our lives to cosmic tragedy or fate, as if written in the stars. The entity controlling her fate is beyond our reach, our control, and our understanding.

Whatever cosmic force creates floods, she understands it to hold the power that brings the flush of blood that signifies infertility and riddles her family with, quote, men who are also wolves, the men of her blood, who come home at 3 a.m. and lie to their wives, men who possess a wilderness that makes them stray from the home. Beyonce and Shire end the poem, We blame you for the night, the dark, the ghosts. We recall the ghostly places that have haunted the narrative thus far, the ruins of the Civil War site Fort McComb, the sugar plantations of the American South, and the prevailing image of this poem, the door of no return that ushered so many Africans onto slave ships.

Now facing a similar door, Beyonce is presented with a choice. Will she uphold this status quo and resign to a fate outside her control, continue the descent down the hallway to the same conclusion as her ancestors, or will she change course and alter the end of her story? That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we discussed the poetry and visuals that begin the chapter, Emptiness.

It's with the knowledge of the overarching curse that haunts Beyoncé and her underlying emptiness that we move into the subject song of the chapter, Six-inch. The basic framework of Six-Inch seems to be inspired by Isaac Hayes' 1969 rendition of Walk On By. Take, for example, the song's building introduction. We compare this with the introduction of 6-inch. A sample taken directly from Walk-On-By also becomes the basis of 6-inch's hook. First, the original.

This section is looped on 6-inch and is beefed up by the addition of a punchy kick and snare drum. If you recall our discussion of Don't Hurt Yourself Back in Episode 3, you'll remember that the song's sample of When the Levy Breaks seem to be used for its thematic implications as much as its sonic contribution. and it appears that this might be the case here with walk-on-by. Though 6-inch samples Isaac Hayes' version, the song Walk-On-Buy was actually first recorded by the legendary Dionne Warwick in 1963.

If you see me walking down the street and I start to cry each time we mean, Walk on by. Like we've seen Beyonce do throughout Lemonade, Walk-On By nods to the lineage of black musicians before her, both an iconic black soul musician from the South in Hayes and a legendary female black singer in Warwick. But we find even more when we dig into Walk on By's lyrics. The song is about a woman who's been heartbroken by a man,

but she doesn't want her ex to see that she's been affected by his leaving. She sings, Make believe that you don't see the tears, just let me grieve in private. Later she sings, Foolish pride is all that I have left, so let me hide the tears and the sadness you gave me when you said goodbye. walk on by. Of course, grief is the main emotion that permeates throughout Lemonade's first half. The album's chapter titles themselves are even based on the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's

famous five stages of grief, which include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And so we're starting to see an interesting juxtaposition between Sixth Inch the Song and everything else that colors the track in the chapter, including the song's main musical sample. Indeed, as a standalone track, 6-inch is an affirming anthem for working women. But within the context of Lemonade's narrative, we'll see that the song's production, the chapter title emptiness, the poetry, and the visuals force us to consider something much more complex. As we emerged from the sinister hallway, we cut to a red, monochromatic image of Beyonce in the back of a car with a wide brim black hat obscuring the top half of her face.

The remainder of the chapter is drunched in this red light. Six inch begins with Beyonce describing herself in the third person, signifying a certain detachment in her experiences. It's as if she's having an out-of-body experience, witnessing herself walk into a nightclub and murdering a club full of patrons. Her weapon of choice? Six-inch heels. A symbol of her feminine sexual power wielded against patriarchal sexual exploitation, twisting it for her own profit. This murder isn't literal, but rather an indication that she's killed it or slayed her performance as a stripper at this club, likely earning a massive sum for herself.

While the lyrics celebrate her commanding sexual power and success, her tone, as well as the image on the screen, complicate her message. Her obscured face, almost robotic voice, and use of the third person indicate a complete dissociation from her feelings, and even her humanity. She has gone totally numb in her emptiness. The weekend reveals just how successful she has become in her pursuit. She's created a lucrative international enterprise for herself, racking up commas and decimals as she amasses money in her bank account.

Beyonce joins the weekend at the end of the verse, they sing, She don't got to give it up, she professional, indicating that she has set a boundary for herself. While she sells her sexuality and her performance, she doesn't sell sex itself. She retains a sense of autonomy over what she is and isn't willing to do with her body. In the second half of the verse, The Weekend sings, She mixing that ace with the Hennessy.

She loves the way it tastes, that's her recipe, rushing through her veins like ecstasy. She already made enough, but she'll never leave. Beyonce fuels her sexual performance by mixing expensive cognac with Asa Spades, a nickname for Jay-Z's brand of champagne. The potent combination of liquor and her performance give her a rush akin to the drug ecstasy, temporarily sending her into a euphoria. While she's already made enough money,

it's this thrill and escape from grief that she chases, not profit. However, we actually don't hear this second half of the verse in the film version, as the weekend's voice gets stuck repeating the word comma. The horror movie elements that began in the red hallway, appear as we journey into other rooms of the house. Here it's helpful to recall the horror film trope of the haunted house, the idea that physical spaces can carry with them the horrors of their past. We enter a red-lit, dilapidated parlor and find Beyonce in the center of the room wearing a floor-length gown and a blank expression. She swings a red light on a chain over her head

like a lasso. She's surrounded by a group of solemn-faced black women in Victorian-style dresses sitting on antique furniture. It's here that Beyonce completes the Dear Moon poem that she recited as she was drawn toward the curse that haunts the heart of this house. Every fear. Beyonce seems to feel the weight of her nightmares and fears come to life. It appears that she and the other black women in the parlor

are trapped by the curse that resides in this house, the house haunted by the legacy of slavery and exploitation. However, while it seems these women are imprisoned in this house, haunted house, Beyonce wields this red light over her head like a weapon, indicating she may be their hope for escape. From this mystifying parlor scene, we cut to a wide shot of the exterior of the haunted house. It's easy to miss at first glance, but in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, we see Beyonce's silhouette standing on stage against the siding of the haunted house. We then transitioned to Beyonce at a closer angle as she moves seductively across the stage.

She's behind a sheet of glass as if she's on display, performing a peep show. On this stage, she is a fierce, menacing, and powerfully seductive woman in control of her body as she leverages her sexuality for profit. However, if we look closely, we can see the haunted house siding above the glass of the peep show stage. And so despite her attempts to distract herself from the emptiness that she fills, she's enclosed on this stage and still ultimately trapped in this cursed house. This peep show performance is interspersed with images of Beyonce still alone in the backseat of a car,

dead in expression on her face. She seems to indicate a split between her public and private personas, as in her moments of solitude, away from the rush of performance, she once again faces her emptiness. This juxtaposition of Beyonce being chauffured on her way to a peep show performance parallels the music video for Partition, a song from her 2013 self-titled album. The partition video begins with Beyoncé and her partner seated at a breakfast table. Beyonce is all dolled up and wearing black lace lingerie underneath her robe.

She repeatedly tries to catch her partner's eye with seductive looks, but he ignores her as he continues to read the newspaper. Disappointed with his unresponsiveness, she begins to fantasize about a scenario in which she is so alluring, he can't keep his hands off her in the back seat of a luxury vehicle. Like throughout emptiness, the partition video cuts back and forth between intimate scenes of Beyonce and Jay-Z in the back of the car to her performing a sexual cabaret performance on stage for him.

She's in command, and her partner is entranced by her sexual allure. It can be easy for us to get swept away in the fantasy along with her, but she reminds us of the true intention behind her performance in Partition's chorus. She just wants to be the kind of girl he likes, and for him to take all of her, her flaws, her imperfections, her mind, her body, her spirit. She wants him to really see her and desire her all the more. However, as the song ends and she snaps out of her fantasy, we abruptly transition back to the kitchen table,

where Beyonce's partner still can't be bothered to look up from the newspaper. In emptiness, Beyonce repurposes the imagery of partition, but removes her partner from the equation. She recreates the fantasy alone, as if to reclaim power for herself and chase the rush this power brings. However, just as her fantasy and partition served as only a temporary escape

from the pain of his indifference, this rush will ultimately subside, the emptiness returns, and she will need to confront the curse that looms over her. Beyonce's verse is nearly identical to the weekends, with the exception being the second line. her Yamazaki straight from Tokyo. Yamazaki is a premium Japanese whiskey brand,

suggesting that while she may be stacking up commas and decimals, when she does spend, she continues to purchase liquor that fuels the rush of her performance. As she sings this second verse, we return to the red-lit image of Beyonce in a black, wide-brimmed hat in the backseat of a luxury vehicle. She's being chauffured through late-night streets with the neon red lighting of the video evoking a red light.

district. This red light district is not populated with female sex workers, but rather anonymous men. In a reversal of gender roles, Beyonce stares out the window as she passes by these men on these red-lit streets, as if they were the streetwalkers. Rather than soliciting from these men, she has set out to capitalize on their sexual desire for her own profit. In this sense, she reverses the male gaze because she has the power to cast an objectifying eye on them without being left. looked at in return. It's the image of Beyonce exerting this power interspersed with the image of her peep show performance that characterizes the chorus. As Beyonce drives past the men on the streets throughout the chorus, we seldom see their faces.

They seem to avert her gaze as she drives past, and yet she continues to look out the window. At one point, she even leans forward a little, rolling the window down halfway to break the barrier between herself and the outside world. She looks as if she yearns for a deeper connection. While she has constructed this powerful persona, in the end, she is still alone and isolated, as her sexual performance is ultimately just that, a performance, a show that distracts her from her true pain and disrupted desire for a deeper connection. This idea is driven home by the next scene. We find ourselves back in the haunted, red-lit house. Beyonce lays in a bed, dressed in a Victorian-inspired white-laced bodysuit,

and she stares at a mirrored ceiling. In contrast to the forceful, unfeeling Beyonce we've seen drive through the streets and performing on the stage, here she appears innocent, hurt, and vulnerable, clutching a pillow as if it stands in for the partner she has lost. This is Beyonce in the midst of heartbreak. Accompanying this private moment is the song's bridge, and for the first time we hear lyrics that clue us in to Beyonce's interior state.

She sings that she fights and she sweats those sleepless nights, working as a distraction from her grief-driven insomnia. She continues with an insistence that she don't mind, she loves the grind, as if she's trying to convince herself of this. She repeats that she grinds from Monday to Friday and Friday to Sunday over and over again. This seems to indicate that the power that once rushed through her veins like ecstasy has been replaced with a constant, desperate attempt to distract herself. This repetition intentionally evokes Beyonce's 2013 song,

Haunted, from her self-titled album. Boots, the producer of both Haunted and Six-inch, has called Six-inch the spiritual sequel to Haunted. Beyonce questions why we get up and devote every day to the monotonous pursuit of material things that we mistakenly believe will make us feel alive. She repeats nine to five just to stay alive seven times in a row to highlight that this pattern repeats itself every day of the week.

In six-inch, Beyonce distances herself from the people she described and haunted, who mistakenly pursue material success for fulfillment. She maintains that when she engages in this grind, she doesn't crave material things, as craving implies the yearning to fulfill an unmet desire. an emptiness that she doesn't want to acknowledge. However, despite her attempts to mask her grief by throwing herself into her work, it seems that as she continues this endless grind from Monday to Friday and Friday to Sunday,

she encounters the same inevitable emptiness and isolation as described in haunted. In her reflections on the self-titled album, Beyonce herself admitted that it is her family that truly provides meaning in her life. Quote, I have a lot of awards, and I have a lot of awards. And I have a lot of these things in there that are amazing, and I worked my ass off. I worked harder than probably everybody I know to get those things. But nothing feels like my child saying, mommy. Nothing feels like when I look my husband in the eyes, unquote.

And so while Beyonce works harder than anyone else she knows, all of this work, power, and profit, it's ultimately empty without her loved ones, and in this case, the love of her life. As Beyonce sings the final chorus, we once. again returned to the parlor of the haunted house, where Beyonce swings a red light over her head like a lasso. She's surrounded by the same group of black women who sit motionlessly, as if trapped by the curse represented by the ominous hallway at the outset of the chapter. Up until now, Beyonce has distracted herself from this curse through the rush of her sexual performance, money, profit, or the grind itself. Despite her attempts to sedate the grief

of her losses, she cannot escape the continual pain of infant. fidelity and heartbreak. She must confront the curse head on if she wants to escape it as her fate. She must fight back. With the red light swinging over her head, Beyonce conjures a fire and sets the hallway, the heart of this haunted house, a flame. She's rejected the power of the curse. She now walks down the hallway away from the burning door behind her, and it's at this critical moment that we reach a corresponding turning point in a relationship. As the song ends, we once again see Beyoncé in the backseat of the car. But now her face is no longer obscured by the large-brim hat. Now we can see her eyes. They are closed and downturned as she almost whispers to her husband,

come back. This is her most emotionally vulnerable moment of the visual album thus far. Up to this point, Beyonce had been asserting her power, independence, and agency. Now she admits that while she does possess all of those traits, she is still human. still grieving, and still in need of her husband. This admission doesn't mean she's reverted back to the woman she was at the start of the film. She is still the same woman who smashed cars and windows with a baseball bat, tossed her wedding ring as a warning, and put her middle finger in his face. When she asks him to come back, she doesn't do so as a passive victim,

ready to fall into the same cycle of betrayal. Instead, this extreme vulnerability is juxtaposed with a show of strength the chapter's final shot. Sporting a bob and a floral Gucci suit, Beyonce stares directly into the camera as the flames of the burning house wore behind her. The camera pans out from Beyonce's face to reveal that she is surrounded by the group of black women who've accompanied her in the parlor and throughout her journey thus far. As the haunted house goes up in flames behind them, we understand they are no longer imprisoned in this house. Beyonce has resisted the pull of the curse and finally reversed course, freeing these women. While this fire may demonstrate her power

to reverse the course of the generational wounds that plague her family, it also demonstrates a desire to start over, as fire often serves as a symbol for purging and renewal. If she and her husband are going to move forward, it will require the total demolition of the house they built upon a foundation of lies and infidelity. They will need to rise from the ashes and rebrand. They will need to rise from the ashes and rebuild a home that doesn't include doors that lead to trap doors or staircases leading to nothing. Conclusions. Beyonce began this chapter, dreaming in both worlds,

both of the sacred connection she once held to her partner and of the curse that ultimately tore them apart, perpetuating an unending cycle of loss. In the midst of this loss, she was transported to a dark, ominous hallway, where she was lured beyond her control toward an ominous red light. This light seemed to represent the curse itself, the curse that encompasses not only her marital conflict and infertility, but also the legacy of slavery and its enduring generational wounds.

Under the weight of this curse, Beyonce sank into her darkest despair, a despair only temporarily relieved through the rush of performance and profit. It was the unbearable weight of her emptiness that pressed her forward and forced her to confront this curse head on, wielding a red light of her own, Beyoncé took hold of the curse and set fire to the haunted house that contained it, thus beginning her journey of recovery, healing, and redemption. She has rejected the curse's hold on her, and now, rather than blaming the moon for men who are wolves, she will demand these men answer for themselves.

But before she can once again face her partner and hold him accountable for his actions, she must first look to the past, to the lessons passed down to her from her father. This is Daddy Lessons from the album's next chapter, Accountability. A chapter will explore note by note, scene by scene, next time on Dysect. Dysect is a production of Spotify Studios. Remember, you can find visual guides for each episode on Dysectpodcast.com, which also includes links to any articles cited on today's episode.

While you're there, be sure to check out our limited season six merchandise, and be sure to follow us on social media at Dysect Podcast. Today's episode was written by Maggie Lacey and me. Additional analysis by Michael Bundalo and Titi Shodea. Additional research by Gail Acosta. Audio editing by Eric Bass and me. Song Recreations by Andrew Atwood. Theme music by Birocratic.

Okay, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.