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Getting Myself Into Formation:
An African Immigrant Inhabiting American Blackness
Holy shit, I spoke aloud to no one in particular in my coworker’s living room that evening, slowly leaning forward toward the TV screen as everyone else at the party around me continued to half-watch, half-chatter through the beginning of Beyoncé’s set. Incredulity at what was unfolding on the screen in front of us left my mouth hanging partly open, followed by excitement so fierce that it turned my fingertips cold. It was the first Sunday of February, 2016, and the most important game in America’s most beloved sport was in halftime. She’s hijacked the Super Bowl, I said. A couple of folks turned to me with quizzical looks on their faces, no doubt wondering if it really was that serious. She’s hijacked the Super Bowl. I repeated myself louder, as though increasing my volume might help me be better understood by my friends at the party. Holy shit.
***
I was not yet a member of the Beyhive at the time of Beyoncé’s infamous Super Bowl performance, her second and probably her last for a while. Straight facts. Though I now like to claim that membership occasionally these days — all these years after the song dropped I still have most of Formation’s choreography memorized — it was not until Super Bowl 50 that I began to consider Beyoncé’s catalogue as anything more than instant-recognition party bops. Get Me Bodied will always bump me into a good vibe no matter my mood; Drunk in Love sends me back to the days when I still had the stamina for all-night, dance-until-sunrise New Year’s parties. Though my feelings have exponentially grown since then — I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched Homecoming, and Black Is King had me in snotty tears by Brown Skin Girl — I suspect that against the feelings of lifelong Hive members, my own might at best be considered to constitute a high degree of respect.
Rarely do I find myself in sync with significant moments in popular culture, and that weekend’s moment of synchronization was, accordantly, entirely unplanned. The day before the Super Bowl I’d been home all day and bored, and decided to watch not just the Formation video that everyone seemed to be talking about on Facebook, but the entire Lemonade video album. Yet as I watched that Super Bowl show unfold I felt in sync with not just a cultural moment…
