Courtesy of SF Gate

The past week the world of Beyonce, which is fairly synonymous with the world at large, has been nothing short of a whirlwind. Beyonce has taken me on an emotional roller coaster with dips at ‰please help my fave is problematic‰’ and ‰what did I do wrong in life to not be born as Beyonce.

In the first part of this, Coldplay and Beyonce released a video for their song ‰Hymn for the Weekend.‰’ The video takes place in India, but not just any part of India, the ideological space that Westerners tend to appropriate from India. The video is full of happy children dancing a la Slumdog millionaire, perhaps that‰’s even where Coldplay got this brain blast for prancing a foreign country because they think it looks artsy. And then there‰’s Beyonce‰’s outfit. Bless her soul, the woman would look like a goddess wearing a paper towel, but probably not her best in a cultural ensemble that does not reflect her own cultural identity. While it is certainly difficult to be critical of artists we love, it is so vital to do so. Celebrity status should not entitle someone to embody viewpoints that offend and belittle others.

The cultural invocations of music through fashion have the potential to become extremely powerful moments. While this power is not always executed well, as in Beyonce covered in henna, there are instances where it works masterfully. Beyonce did a complete 180 and harnessed her outfit choices for herself and her backup dancers during the Super Bowl Halftime show to elude to the Black Panthers. This deliberate choice highlighted the importance of black rights and simultaneously the existence of black beauty. While Coldplay possibly messed up again (the band has a long history of cultural appropriation, see ‰Princess of China‰’ featuring Rihanna) by having Hindi phrases written all over the set, Beyonce took this halftime show as an opportunity to use her power as a cultural icon to make a necessary and important statement.

While the Superbowl halftime show as a political arena is not always a concept people take a liking to, it simply comes with the territory. Meaning that if hundreds of millions of people are going to be watching, might as well use the airtime for something meaningful, not to say that running around throwing a ball and tackling others is not meaningful. Beyonce‰’s allusion to the Black Panthers was timely, nuanced and meaningful.