Amy Schumer Taking Flak for Beyoncé Parody
Today in “news that surprises no one”, some people on the internet are mad at Amy Schumer for a thing.
Schumer, along with Mother/Daughter co-stars Goldie Hawn, Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack, filmed a parody video for the Beyoncé song Formation as part of an advertisement campaign for streaming music service Tidal. Shortly thereafter, outlets like The Wrap and The Huffington Post picked up on the story, noting that some black feminists and activists on Twitter were less than pleased with the video.
While the lyrics might not make it clear, Formation is known as a highly political song. The video, part of a larger one-hour film released along side Beyoncé’s most recent album, Lemonade, is full of politically charged images, commenting on issues like police brutality and the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina crisis. The song has come to be an anthem of black power and femininity, so Schumer’s decision (if it was indeed her’s) to use this particular track for a gag is a bold one.
The activists in question began using the hashtag #AmySchumerGottaGoParty, which was trending for a short time. Ultimately however, that party is setting itself up for disappointment, seeing as how the likelihood that an A-list celebrity will be taken down by a couple hundred people using a too-long hashtag is exactly slim to none. Just this week, Schumer was named in Elle magazine’s “Women in Hollywood Power List;” it would take a force of nature to slow her momentum at this point.
Two people who likely aren’t outraged by all of this? Beyoncé and Jay Z. The musicians, who are also married, are both founding artists of Tidal, so it’s likely that the ad wouldn’t have been made without first finding out that it was kosher with Beyoncé.
Schumer vaguely addressed the backlash on Instagram in a caption accompanying a picture of herself posing scantily clad (for whatever reason):
