It felt like the calm after the Beyoncé storm last week. Sure, we saw a few headlines here and there about angry anti-Beyoncé protesters rallying against her Super Bowl performance. And then there was that one time the BeyHive went after conservative pundit Tomi Lahren’s controversial Beyoncé halftime review.
But it felt as if Beyoncé’s “Formation” video and her Super Bowl performance were slowly making their way out of headlines.
Until Saturday Night Live happened last night.
No, no one was really talking about Melissa McCarthy as host, while the Kanye and Kyle Mooney rap battle made its rounds on Twitter. A few commented on Kanye announcing that his new album is online during a bizarre moment mid-performance.
But it was the spoof trailer titled “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” that, uh, slayed.
And they’re right. People lost their collective minds when the video dropped. But this video isn’t about everyone. It’s about how white people, specifically, turned the song and music video into a thing that it was not: a video forthem. And because of this, madness ensued.
The SNL trailer covered it perfectly: the over-the-top coverage from media that week (from “Beyoncé released new music that embraces her black heritage” to “Beyoncé’s video is unapologetically black” and “She black… out of nowhere!”); the fact that white people couldn’t relate to the lyrics (“‘Hot sauce in my bag swag?’ What does that even mean?!”), to white people facing the harsh truth that, no, the song is not for them (“This song isn’t for us… but usually everything is!”).
“It was the day white people lost their Beyoncé.”
The message behind the video was on-point, and it was something everyone needed to see. Did most people (read: white people) overreact to the video and halftime performance? Sure. Can we use this spoof trailer to finally put an end to it? Let me answer that question with another question: Have you been on the Internet lately? Of course not, but it does emphasize a very important point — one that Jessica Williams brought to our attention the week prior on The Daily Show: “The point is Beyoncé is black, and this song is her message.” That’s it. Simple as that.
More: Beyoncé’s ‘Formation; video slayed, but her message falls flat
What did you think of SNL‘s “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black”? Tell us in the comments below.
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