Perhaps that’s unfair; she does, after all, amalgamate them into a world of her own making. But while Black may be king, this project and all its trappings position its auteur, as the voice-over says in the film, as the “divine archetype.” In that context, she raised the stakes herself. Salamishah Tillet, contributing criticA little over an hour into “Black Is King,” Beyoncé, with tears in her eyes, places a baby boy, wrapped in a blanket, up a river inside a reed basket. But, the waters here also invoke the Middle Passage, with each ripple break recalling the fateful journey in which New World slavery, and America itself, was born. And while “Black Is King” shares those 19th-century aspirations of equality and Black dignity, it, in our age of Black Lives Matter, knows it has to resort to mythmaking since racial justice remains as firm as the shifting sands that backdrop so much of this visual album.

Source: International New York Times July 31, 2020 21:12 UTC