Dissect - S6E6 - Daddy Lessons by Beyoncé

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

We continue our serialized analysis of Beyoncé’s Lemonade by dissecting its sixth chapter “Accountability,” which features the song “Daddy Lessons.” Beyoncé looks to her past to better understand the history of broken male-female relationships in her family. She realizes that the “gun” she inherited from her father must be disarmed if she wishes to reconcile with her partner. 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 Shadea. Today, we continue our serialized examination of lemonade by Beyonce. On our last episode, we dissected the visual album's fifth chapter, Emptiness, which featured the song Six-inch. There, Beyonce inhabited a haunted house that seemed to represent the curse that's plagued her the entire album. The unbearable weight of her emptiness forced her to confront this curse head on. Wielding a red light of her own, Beyonce set fire to the haunted house.

As Beyonce looks directly into the camera, the burning house blazing behind her, we hear the end of the song Six-inch. Having set fire to the house built on deception and lies, Beyonce asked her husband to come back in a rare moment of vulnerability. This moment signals a shift toward recovery, healing, and redemption as we move into the album's next chapter. the subject of our episode today, Accountability. We cut from the image of the burning house to a black and white shot of the Louisiana Bayou, complete with the sound of songbirds and the running river. We then cut to the interior of the Maidwood Plantation House, the same location Beyonce and Serena Williams danced inside back on Sari.

From the vantage point of the master bedroom, the camera looks out over the courtyard to reveal a young black girl walking into the house below. As she walks toward the door, a title card introduces the name of the chapter, Accountability. Accountability is defined here as liability to account for and answer for one's conduct. Having allowed herself to pass through her stages of grief, denial, anger, apathy, and emptiness, Beyonce is now ready to hold her partner accountable. She wants to understand his actions and allow him to take responsibility for them. But as we've discussed throughout the season, the conflict of both of both,

betrayal between Beyonce and her partner is not between the two of them alone. It's a generational curse that she's set out to break. This is, as director Melina Matsukas put it, the historical impact of slavery on black love. Therefore, reckoning with her partner's betrayal also involves understanding how familial, historical, and societal forces have shaped his behavior and taking action to heal these wounds. Knowing that the backing image of the title card accountability is a young black girl walking into the Maidwood Mansion, we once again remember the thesis of the film. The past and future merged to meet us here. As we watch this girl, a symbol of the future, walk into the Maidwood Mansion, a symbol of the past, we understand that all parties must

take accountability for their actions, for the sake of this young girl and all future generations. You find the black tube inside her beauty case, where she keeps your father's old prison letters, you desperately want to look like her. As Beyonce recites another poem adapted from the work of Worsen Shire, we see two young black girls run upstairs to the master bedroom of the Maidwood Plantation House. They jump on the bed and play with dolls. Throughout the interlude, we see multiple generations of black women inhabit this plantation house, quite literally overcoming the past by healing in this historic place. The poem begins, You Find the Black

tube inside her beauty case where she keeps your father's old prison letters, you desperately want to look like her. Here, Beyonce imagines a daughter seeking out her mother's lipstick tube and attempt to imitate her beauty routine. She describes the daughter as desperately wanting to look like her mother, implying that she idolizes her and wants to emulate her beauty. It would seem there's much to admire about her mother, who despite the difficult circumstances of having an incarcerated partner, stays well put together and dignified. Omishike Natasha Tinsley, author of Beyonce information, expands on this saying, quote, In the idealized, smoothly shot plantation scene, the lipstick representing picture-perfect motherhood

is an ambivalent prize. It's something the mother, who's hidden it next to her father's prison letters, as if it reminds her of her own kind of incarceration, doesn't seem to want to pass on, unquote. And so while her daughter looks up to her, the mother is more acutely aware of her own pain, and seeks to protect her daughter from a similar fate. You look nothing like your mother. You look everything like your mother. Film, star, beauty.

As Beyonce recites these lines, the camera highlights the perspective of a young girl watching Beyonce engaging in her beauty routine, as if she were watching her mother. The line, You look nothing like your mother, may be cluing us into the girl's desperation. While she yearns to look like her mother,

she doesn't yet possess the same beauty and tells herself she looks nothing like her. However, the following line, you look everything like your mother, may reassure the girl that she does contain the same beauty and it will be realized in due time. Beyonce then describes the mother's looks as film star beauty, evoking an old Hollywood glamour. The girl of the poem idolizes her mother as if she were a movie star, carrying an aura of mystique. However, we rarely get to the to see beyond the elegant veneer of Hollywood stars into their deeper, more flawed human side. As such, her mother's lipstick may be masking something deeper and less glamorous than her daughter understands.

How to wear your mother's lipstick? You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick. Somewhere no one can find you. You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. Your mother is a woman And women like her cannot be contained Here Beyonce gives the girl

instructions on how to wear her mother's lipstick As her mother does She says You go to the bathroom to apply the lipstick Somewhere no one can find you This may be because the girl is not allowed To be wearing her mother's lipstick Or it may be because her mother

Also puts it on in solitude Because to show the outside world her makeup-free face would be to reveal the hard truth she uses the lipstick to conceal. Beyonce then instructs the girl, you must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. While the lipstick should allow her to quote unquote put on a happy face, it's disappointment that her mother wears. While the daughter strives to look like her mother,

in order to truly do so, she'll have to undergo all the pain and unmet desires of womanhood. Additionally, in the sense that the lipstick may represent her mother's quote-unquote own kind of incarceration, if the girl is to wear this lipstick, she must understand that it comes with a cost. Beyonce concludes the poem, Your mother is a woman, and women like her cannot be contained. While the young girl of the poem idolizes her mother, it's become clear that her mother cannot be restricted to a naive vision that exalts her beauty without acknowledging her

underlying pain. Additionally, as we discussed in our analysis of denial, society places great pressure on black women to remain composed in the midst of hardship and discourages them from expressing anger and frustration at the injustice they experience. Despite society's attempts to discourage black women from freely expressing themselves, the girl's mother cannot be contained in the box that society attempts to place her in. Instead, as this girl will come to understand, her mother is both strong yet vulnerable, beautiful yet burdened. As Beyonce says these final lines of the poem, we cut to a distinguished elderly woman smiling into the camera. This woman is the late New Orleans chef and civil rights activist Leah Chase, otherwise known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine.

Chase founded the legendary New Orleans restaurant, Duky Chase's, and is the real-life inspiration for Disney's first black princess, Tiana from the Princess and the Frog. Duky Chase's restaurant is a staple of the city of New Orleans, even earning a mention in Ray Charles's 1961, hit early in the morning. I went to Dukey Chase to get something to eat. Look at me in Saraje and Sean. Look at me in the morning. Leah Chase and her husband defied Jim Crow segregation laws by offering the restaurant

as a secret meeting place for black and white civil rights movement activists. Duky Chase was a key meeting place where Dr. Martin Luther King and other freedom writers organized the Baton Rouge bus boycott, a precursor to the Montgomery bus boycotts. Leah Chase reflects on this contribution to the civil rights movement in her TED interview with Pat Mitchell. Once you got inside those doors, nobody ever, ever bothered you. The police would never come in

and bother our customers, never. So they felt safe to come there. They could eat, they could plan all the freedom riders. That's where we planned. They planned all their meetings. In 2005, Chase's fame restaurant was severely damaged in Hurricane Katrina and forced to shut down. Amiss fears that Black cultural staples of New Orleans would be lost as Black residents were forced to move away,

Leah Chase worked to reopen Duky Chases in 2007, signifying the resilience of not only her family, but her entire city as well. As such, it appears Beyonce includes Leah Chase as a representation of the strength, resilience, and wisdom of generations of black women who cannot be contained. We transitioned from Leah Chase's Regal smile to a scene of a young New Orleans black man driving down the road in the rain. The man tells a friend about the time he met President Barack Obama. I even met the president one time, man. I didn't tell you that? Before I met him, you dig. I ain't really see myself going no while. I ain't really, you know, I ain't really cared if I live to die. No, I feel like I got to live, man.

kids and stuff, you know. You're from the hood just like me, from Chariot. You know, I'm from New Orleans. You know, that gives me inspiration on I can be whatever I want to be. Like, you know, I probably be the next spike in the shit or something.

Prior to meeting the president, the man says, I didn't see myself going nowhere. I ain't really cared if I live or died. With no hope for a fulfilling life, he feels his life is meaningless and falls into a nihilistic to indifference to the prospects of living and dying. However, he experiences a turning point

when he meets President Barack Obama. In President Obama, he sees someone he can relate to, as he says they are both from the hood, with Obama from Chicago and the young man from New Orleans. While Obama didn't grow up in Chicago, it's where he spent the majority of his political career prior to the presidency. It was in Chicago that Obama worked as a community organizer, addressing issues of poverty impacting Chicago's south side. As such, by meeting Obama, the young man experiences representation of someone like himself, someone who worked to change the harsh conditions of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, holding the highest office in the land. After this meeting, the man is inspired to live for his kids. As he describes this, we see grainy, loving images of the

young man with his family. With his meeting with Obama as a catalyst, this man was able to to break the curse that appear to be holding him back in his own life. He ends his story with a declaration that he might be the next Spike Lee, a prominent Black filmmaker. By becoming the next Spike Lee, the young man expresses a desire to speak the truth and inspire another generation of black men such as himself, thus reversing his pattern of despair and replacing it with a pattern of inspiring hope and others. Thus, while Lemonade centers on the experiences of black women, This man's story nods to the ways in which black men are also impacted by the generational trauma of slavery and the conditions of contemporary American society. Following this antidote of the young man, we return to Beyoncé's spoken word interlude adapted from the poetry of Worsonshire.

Mother dearest, let me inherit the earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wake. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Beyonce opens this poem saying, Mother dearest, let me inherit the earth. Teach me how to make him beg.

Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Beyonce appears to be at once addressing not only her own mother, but also a collective of black mothers that have come before her. In an attempt to make up for the years these women were subjugated, Beyonce seeks to reverse the power dynamics in the male-female relationships in her family by making her partner beg. She continues by asking, did he bend your reflection? Just as Funhouse mirrors distort one's image, Beyonce is asking her mother if her husband distorted herself image, making it impossible to see her true beauty.

Taken from a broad societal perspective, this line also seems to be alluding to how white, Eurocentric beauty standards undermine and distort the beauty of black women. Beyonce then asked, Did he make you forget your own name? To forget one's name is to forget an essential part of one's identity and sense of self. This also alludes to the patriarchal tradition of women foregoing their maiden names to take up their husband's surnames. Just as her name is subsumed by his, so is her identity.

These questions are starting to sound a lot like the ways Beyonce denied herself back in Lemonade's second chapter denial. Recall that Beyonce had tried to become softer, prettier and less awake to appease her partner and white patriarchal society at large. It seems her current line of questioning is an attempt to confirm a generational pattern of self-abnegation she seems to have inherited from her mother. Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors?

Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband? or your father. Beyonce asks if her mother's partner elevated himself to a godlike status, casting her mother into a subservient role. The line, Did You Get on your knees daily, appears to be a double entendre,

as her mother would have gotten on her knees daily in prayer to worship her godlike partner, as well as to provide oral sex. Beyonce then asks, do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head? While making sustained eye contact suggests an emotional intimacy and trust, closing one's eyes like doors seems to suggest her mother's partner is closed off to this sort of

relationship. She further reveals this lack of trust by turning his back toward her, causing her mother to become a slave to the back of his head, as she continually seeks an intimacy he's not willing to give. This line also directly evokes the history of slavery that impacts their relationship today. As she recites this line, we see the image. of a mother and father who appear to be arguing. This is shot from below, as if from the perspective of a young child,

perhaps absorbing these unhealthy dynamics. In her final line, she asks, Am I talking about your husband or your father? By leaving the question ambiguous, we become aware that the actions of the man she described could apply to men across generations of her family. Writer Brooke Obie further explores the implication of this question stating, quote,

Hearing no answer, Beyonce realizes that the pattern of abuse for black women in her family by the black men who are supposed to love them is far beyond just her and her mother's experience. There is an ancestral inheritance of abuse that binds her to her women ancestors. It didn't begin with her. She's not alone in this betrayal, unquote. Thus, throughout the upcoming track, Daddy Lessons, it becomes important for Beyonce to examine this ancestral inheritance of abuse in order to break the curse.

That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we heard Beyonce expressed the interconnectivity between the behavior of her husband and her father. This revelation prepares us for Beyonce's exploration of her relationship with her father

in the song Daddy Lessons. As such, it's important to take into account the full context of this complicated relationship, which Beyonce alludes to in her 2013 documentary, Life is But a Dream. I remember running as hard as I could. And my dad knew that I needed his approval.

And I think my father wouldn't give it to me because he kept pushing me and kept pushing me and kept pushing me. Every time my dad pushed me, I got better and stronger. Born in 1981, Beyonce grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Houston, where her mother owned and managed a hair salon, and her father was a top medical equipment salesman for Xerox. Beyonce discovered her passion for singing and dancing at a young age, and by the age of seven, began to compete in pageants. By nine years old, she joined the all-girl band Girls' Time, which included future Destiny's child members Latavia Roberson and Kelly Rowland.

After a disappointing loss on the TV show Star Search, Beyonce's father, Matthew Knowles, took over as full-time manager of the group in 1993. In a 1999 interview with Terry Marshall, Destiny's child member Kelly Rowland reflects on Matthew's intense managing style as a turning point for the group that propelled their success. We got new management and we got more serious. Our manager started us on this development camp

where we woke up in the morning, we went jogging, have voice lessons, practice all day, and it was just to make us stronger and also to prepare us for the future. Under Matthew's management, Girls' Time eventually became Destiny's Child and secured a deal with Columbia Records. Their first two albums, Destiny's Child and Writings on the Wall, launched the band into stardom. But despite the success, tensions mounted within the group.

Members Latavia Roberson and Latoya Luckett expressed concern over Matthew Knowles showing favoritism towards Beyonce and keeping a disproportionate share of their profits. This tension reached a boiling point when Roberson and Luckett officially expressed intent to end their relationship with Matthew Knowles. Luckett and Roberson were quickly removed from the group, replaced with Michelle Williams and Farah Franklin. Matthew Knowles continued to serve as Destiny's Child's manager and would later manage Beyonce as she ascended to even higher superstardom in her solo career. But all that changed in 2011 when Beyonce fired her father. amidst allegations that he stole money from her.

Beyonce described the difficulty of this decision in life is but a dream. I'm feeling very empty because of my relationship with my dad, and I feel like my soul has been tarnished. Life is unpredictable, but I felt like I had to move on and not work with my dad. I don't care if I don't sell one record. It's bigger than the record. is bigger than my career. In addition to Beyonce's professional split with her father,

2011 was also the year Beyonce's mother finalized divorce from Matthew after he allegedly fathered a child with another woman. It's at this point we can recall what Beyonce told Vogue magazine, quote, I come from a lineage of broken male-female relationships, abuse of power and mistrust. Only when I saw that clearly was I able to resolve those conflicts in my own relationship. unquote. Beyonce makes clear that looking to her past and understanding the relationships of her

family lineage was critical in the resolution of her own marriage. Within the narrative of Lemonade, this examination takes place in the song Daddy Lessons. Daddy Lessons was written by Diana Gordon, Beyonce, Kevin Kosum, and Alex Delacotta. It was produced by Beyonce Delacotta and Derek Dixie. The song cleverly combines two musical styles from Beyonce's Southern Heritage, Texas Country, and Dixieland-style jazz. The track begins with something you might hear walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. A simple clap keeps the rhythm, and a trio of horns improvised simultaneously. This compositional feature of more than one horn improvising at the same time

was a hallmark of Dixieland-style jazz, which has its roots in the early 1900s. As Daddy Lessons develops, an acoustic guitar enters and suddenly the song finds itself in country music territory. And just in case there is any doubt here, a yehaw accompanies the entrance of the guitar, and Beyoncé repeats the word Texas. Texas not only comments on the songs country feel, but also pays homage to Beyonce's home state. This clues us in that she'll be reflecting on her childhood and roots. The visuals throughout this intro to daddy lessons bring us back to the ruins of Fort McComb, the Civil War site where we began all the way back in the opening sequence of the film.

We recall that one shot in this sequence showed two black women in antebellum-style dresses standing in a tunnel in Fort McComb. As we discussed in intuition, writers Camaria Roberts and Kenya Downs connect the image of this stonewall tunnel to the prisons on the coast of West Africa, where slaves were imprisoned prior to being sold in the Atlantic slave trade. Now, here in daddy lessons, Beyonce sinks inside the same stonewall tunnel donning a colorful African patterned southern Gothic dress. Just like she and Serena Williams reclaim the Maidwood Plantation Parlor in Sari, Beyonce is reclaiming this dark space as her own. She is joined inside the tunnel by New Orleans blues guitarist Little Freddy King, a revered bluesman who still performs regularly at BJ's lounge in the ninth ward.

Historically, blues music served as a resource for black men and women to express the harsh realities of life in the post-bellum deep south. By singing along Little Freddy King, Beyonce once again highlights a New Orleans icon and alludes to the historical power of blues music. Beyonce opens Daddy lesson singing, Came into this world, Daddy's Little Girl. Daddy made a soldier out of me. The phrase Daddy's Little Girl generally connotates a girl with a particular attachment to or even idolization of her father.

Often a daddy's girl can be so eager to gain her father's approval that he holds a sort of psychological control over her. When considered alongside the opening poem of the chapter, we've now seen a daughter who idolizes both her mother and her father, instinctively looking to her parents for models and guidance. Although a daddy's girl tends to be considered stereotypically feminine, Beyonce contrasts this with the next line. She sings, Daddy Made a Soldier out of me, revealing the first of many masculine Daddy Lessons she received. On the surface, this appears to reference the ways in which Beyonce's real-life father pushed her extremely hard throughout her childhood in order to become a star. However, we get a second reading of this idea when we consider Lemonade's larger narrative of the historical impact of slavery on black love.

In this reading, the daddy lessons that her fictionalized father passes onto her are lessons on how to survive in a world shaped by a racist past, how to survive in a world that is hostile to her blackness. The first of these lessons for survival is to be like a soldier. Her father and the generations of black men before him were afforded a slim margin of error for survival in the war zone of the racist deep south. As such, they had to become like soldiers, composed under pressure, resourceful, and above all, immensely strong.

Beyonce continues, Daddy made me dance and Daddy held my hand. Daddy liked his whiskey with his tea. Although Beyonce's real-life father had high demands making her practice dancing over and over, he also held her hand and guided her through some of the most challenging aspects of the music industry. Early in her career, Beyonce celebrated the love and support her father had given her on her 2003 track titled Daddy. While this early Beyonce song celebrates her father as someone she hopes her husband and unborn son will emulate, Daddy Lessons offers a more complicated image of her father. It appears in daddy lessons, there are qualities of her father she hopes will not be passed down.

In the next line of the song, Beyonce reveals that her father likes his whiskey with his tea. With tea being not only a common southern beverage, but also slaying for truth, we can see that Beyonce's father is able to face the harsh truths of life by numbing the pain with alcohol. While the mother in the chapter's opening poem must cope with hardship by wearing lipstick to conceal her pain. Her father's penchant for alcohol appears to be an even more destructive form of coping.

Beyonce describes engaging in fun, albeit risky, behaviors with her father, riding motorcycles and gambling. While he raises her through a disciplined, tough love approach, he's also able to let loose in ways that are both exhilarating and dangerous. This introduces the tension present in their relationship and the lessons he bestows. Although his lessons are rooted in love, they also contain an element of danger and thus may come with a cost.

Beyoncé continues saying, he said, take care of your mother, watch out for your sister. Oh, and that's when he gave to me. Here, Beyonce's father gives her a responsibility traditionally afforded to. to the eldest sons on the frontier. She must protect and provide for her family in his absence. The chorus will reveal that her father passes down his gun in order to carry out this duty to protect. At this point in the narrative,

it's not entirely clear why her father is leaving or where he is going. While Beyonce inherits her father's gun, we must also remember the other inheritances that we've touched on in our analysis thus far, the curse of infidelity of the men in her family, and the more fundamental curse of the historical impact of slavery on black love. It would seem that, along with the gun, her father unwittingly passes down these curses to the next generation. For her father, the gun served him as a survival mechanism.

As we touched on in the first verse, to survive in a world hostile to his blackness, it was necessary for him to rely on his soldier-like strength. Like a soldier, he could not display any signs of weakness, and he must be able to suppress any emotions that could jeopardize his ability to carry out his duty to protect his family. However, this tough, soldier-like posture may come with larger consequences. Beyonce sings, with his gun and his head held high, he told me not to cry. My daddy said shoot. Beyonce's father encourages her to be strong in the face of challenges,

and to shoot her adversaries rather than cry or break down. This is a lesson she appears to have internalized up until this point in the album. We recall what she sang and sorry, that she'd rather commit suicide than allow her husband to see her cry tears over him. Rather than displaying any sign of weakness, her father encourages her to be the aggressor in situations, lest she become the victim. Beyonce then describes her father taking an oath by swearing on the Bible. It appears he's vowing to protect his family by shooting anyone who attempts to cross them.

It may be that while he has the best intentions, his oath is ultimately ineffective. While he swears this oath with his left hand on the Bible, he hasn't raised his right hand. Instead, he places his hand on his gun, an action that would complicate the intent of the oath taken. By keeping his hand on the gun, which we can assume he inherited from his own father, he holds on to all the unaddressed wounds that have repeated over and over across generations of his family, as well as the survival mechanisms that ultimately perpetrated these wounds. While he attempts to protect his family with a gun, this very same gun holds all the trauma that tears his family apart.

Beyonce continues to describe a loving, protective father who looks after his daughter and tries to instill toughness and wisdom in her so she can continue to navigate the dangers of this world after his death. But there's a twist in his advice when he reveals that it's men like him who she should be on guard against. When taken in context of the infidelity narrative, her father is saying that she should be wary of a man like himself, because he will ultimately cheat on her, just as her father has cheated on her mother. However, telling her to shoot any man like himself, he also reveals a form of self-awareness that he's ultimately failed to protect his family. This seems to go beyond

typical fatherly protectiveness to reveal an internalized self-hatred and a deep-seated belief that he does not deserve forgiveness or love. Therefore, he advises her to use the resource that he has relied upon, his gun, to shoot men like himself. But he said, girl, it's your second amendment. For the first time, Beyonce acknowledges that the advice her father gives her about strength and avoiding any signs of weaknesses isn't universally applicable. There are some instances in her life in which fighting or being combative isn't necessarily the right approach. In the case of her father, it appears that by taking on such a rough, combative exterior,

he has actually created a distance between himself and his family, ultimately leading to his departure. By avoiding any sign of weakness, her father lacked the vulnerability to express his pain and take accountability for the ways that he repeated the cycle of abuse, something that might actually allow him to heal. Although protecting his family appeared to be almost a sacred duty for him, he ultimately fails because his emphasis on avoiding weakness leads him to perpetuate the hurt. Thus, he passes on his gun to Beyonce to protect the family and do what he could not, resolve the conflict through love.

As a lemonade film continues, the song stops abruptly midway through the second verse. We then see actual home video footage of Beyonce and her father Matthew talking on a couch when she was a little girl. You wish your grandmother and grandfather was here with us? Yes. Tell him. Here, when it doesn't do. Why? Matthew asks her what they would do if our grandparents were here, and young Beyonce

answers him, have fun. As this exchange continues, the image of young Beyonce and Matthew is replaced with present-day footage of Matthew and Beyonce's daughter, Blue Ivy, playing by jumping onto a bed. Then, we cut back to young Beyonce and Matthew. Matthew asked Beyonce for a kiss and they tell one another that they love each other. This home video sequence marks the approximate halfway point of lemonade and in many ways demonstrates the purpose of the film.

Beyonce and her daughter Blue's interaction with Matthew mirror one another, highlighting the generational patterns taking place within her family. As such, we return to the work of Beyonce information author Omishika Natasha Tinsley, who states, quote, Blue's home video folded into Beyonce's shows a daughter repeating her mother's patterns with men. Shows that however Beyonce responded to her father in the past is set to become the script Blue Ivy follows when she interacts with her grandfather, father, and all the men she loves, unquote. And so the appearance of her daughter, Blue, shows just how high the stakes are for Beyonce. She must be accountable to her daughter and all future generations to break this curse for them.

By taking accountability for herself, as well as requiring accountability from her husband and her father, they can change the tendencies that lead to the broken male-female relationships in her family. Throughout the outro to Daddy Lessons, the scene shifts to a New Orleans Jazz Funeral, where a funeral procession is accompanied by a brass band. Traditionally, jazz funerals begin much like any other, with musicians playing a somber dirge as the funeral procession makes its way to the buried site. However, after the body has been laid to rest, the music switches from sad to joyous and a moment of disruption. The quote-unquote second line begins to sing and dance to celebratory

songs that honor the deceased and usher them into heaven. This jazz funeral process mirrors the disruptive function that accountability serves in the film. While Beyonce has hardly reached a place of celebration at this point, accountability does mark a definitive turning point. She moves from the anger and grief that has characterized the film up until this point, and to a state that is more inquisitive and open to the possibility of healing. While we are aware that her father has not literally died as presented in the song's narrative, this funeral scene seems to represent the metaphorical death of a father who has instilled in her the message to shoot men like him.

In this sense, she seems to be shedding this inherited message of self-loathing in favor of a more empathetic approach. As such, the funeral scene can also foreshadow a death of the curse that will be broken. The outro marks the first time that Beyonce directly addresses her partner in this chapter. She tells him that her father knew he would play or manipulate her into believing they had a loving relationship, only to use her. We can imagine this confrontation. Beyonce, holding the gun her father passed down to her, staring into the face of her cheating husband. She faces a choice.

She can fully commit to the inherited masculine posturing she has displayed throughout the film, shoot, and thus perpetuate the cycle of unexamined pain. Or she can take the gun, disarm it, and break the curse. As Beyonce's voice echoes, my daddy said shoot, we returned to the parking lot we last saw in the chapter, Anger. Recalled that it was here that we saw Beyonce at her most vengeful as she cursed out her husband and threw off her wedding ring. However, the parking lot is now empty.

Beyoncé is nowhere to be found. This seems to symbolize Beyonce's departure from the masculine, combative posture she inherited from her father and embodied throughout the first half of lemonade. While these tactics may have been necessary for self-preservation and the reclamation of her worth, Beyonce has now chosen to relinquish these tactics. She's chosen to disarm the gun her father passed down. She's now ready to move beyond mere survival into a place of healing. This healing is not for her own sake, but also for the sake of her daughter Blue, who actually

appears at the end of Daddy Lessons. Her presence is another reminder of the stakes of Beyonce's journey. Joppy. Conclusions Throughout this chapter, we see Beyonce move from idealized perceptions of both her mother and father to a more nuanced understanding of their actions. Specifically, she views their actions as a result of the curses they've inherited. We see two people who must remain stoic despite the hardships they encounter in a racist society.

For her mother, this means masking her pain with the lipstick she wears. For her father, this means carrying a gun and drinking whiskey with his tea, avoiding any and all displays of weakness. While both of the parental figures in accountability are flawed, Beyonce comes to an understanding that they are caught in the midst of this inherited generational trauma. Beyonce is now ready to afford her husband and herself the same empathetic look and begin a process her mother and father could not, the process of healing through vulnerability. This is Love Drought from Lemonade's next chapter, Reformation. A chapter will examine note by note, scene by scene, next time on Dissect. 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 6 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 T.T. Shodea. Additional research by Gail Acosta. Audio editing by Eric Bass and me. Song Recreations by Andrew Atwood.

Theme music by Bureaucratic. Okay, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.