
In Beyoncé music video on the song “Formation”, there are several points in which she is trying to get across. The main point of this music video is how racism is still a huge issue going on today, even after the Civil Rights Act has been passed several years ago. A lot of the things she does in the video can be compared to how she thinks black people are being treated. There are three scenes that show how powerful Beyoncé feels about the issues going on with the world. The three scenes that best describe how Beyoncé is trying to show people how bad black lives are being treated are how her and the five black individuals are dressed in all black, the scene with the young boy dancing in from of the police, and how she is laying on the car as it is sinking into the water.

In the first scene, Beyoncé is dressed in all black like she just came from a funeral representing how black people are being abused or even killed. The panel was shot with a wide shot, showing all the people around Beyoncé. Each of the people were gazing off in different directions, like they couldn’t look at each other. They couldn’t look at each other because they were disgusted by how the police and other people treat blacks as if they were less than a person. Everyone are dressed in all black to symbolize the death and torture of so many black people in the past couple of years. She wants the audience to understand the amount of racism that goes on around the country. Black lives have never been treated the same as white in history, but it has become progressive worst in past couple years, with the number of police brutalizes on black men compared to the amount on white or Latino men. The worst part of all these cases are that it’s the white police officers that are doing these shootings on young, innocent, black males. Beyoncé’s hat is pulled down to symbolize how she can’t look at all the pain and suffering of all the black individuals that are being beaten or killed. This scene helps makes the viewers of this music video think about how badly black lives are being treated. 

In the second panel, with how the young boy and the police are being shot it shows a role-reversal of what would normally would happen.  The way the police officers were shot, all the viewer can see is several armed police officers with a young black boy in front of them. The scene makes the young boy look like a threat to the police. The young boy himself symbolizes what several people sees when a police officer shoots a young black man. Most of the time when a young black man in the country is killed by a police officer, the black man is unarmed and not looking for trouble, he is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hearing reports of all these police on black man shooting when the black man did nothing wrong isn’t what people want to hear when they are supposed to be looking up to the police. In this scene, the roles are reversed, it’s not the boy who puts his hands up, but the police officers do. The reason Beyoncé does this to show what normally happens in real life with the boy normally having his hands raised with the police officers aiming at him with their guns. She wants the viewers to think about how some of the black men were killed, unarmed, innocent, and not wanting any trouble. 

In the third panel, Beyoncé is sitting on the sinking car symbolizing how the United States Police force is going down with all the non-violent shootings. The scene is shot with Beyoncé sitting on a sinking car as she is singing. The car is slowing sinking just like how the police force is slowing losing people that believe in them and looking up to them. The United States police force has been under a lot of heat with all the recent shooting of unarmed black men. Beyoncé is shot on top the car showing how she believes that the police force is below her now. She believes that if they can just shoot innocent people because of the color of their skin, then they shouldn’t have the type of power that they do. The car that is sinking is being destroyed and will never be the same, just like how black lives are being destroyed and how they will never be the same because they are always scared of what might happen to them. Now black individuals have to be scared of what they wear, how they walk, or just what they do, because they are worried about being shot. Walking down the road looking “suspicious” isn’t a good enough reason to shoot a black man or beat him until he can’t walk. 

The name of this music video is “Formation”, the meaning of the name of the song is to have black people or any people stand up against police brutalities. Beyoncé wanted to do something to show what she thought about how black lives are being treated, so she made a controversial music video that people talk about every day. This motif covers the concerns of all black lives against the police. It covers what happens to the black man when they are shot and kill by white police officers and how the United States’ police force is losing trust in the common person from all these shootings. This motif can make the reader think about how he or she thinks about whether who is to blame in the recent shootings around the country. The reason for this motif is to make the world think about how police officers are treating black people around the country. 
