How does Formation use media language to construct a diverse and complex representation of black people?

A wealthy, glamourous representation of black people 

• Beyonce’s hair is braided with exceptional care, encoding high quality and a status symbol. Yet it also symbolises her culture and ethnicity. This is black hair.
• B’s jewellery is silver, untarnished, and clearly expensive. Yet it also is extensive. She wears much Jewellery, she is clearly showing off her wealth and power, symbolising confidence and extravagance.
• This is further anchored through her white, which unsubtly displays her wealth
• A vintage, well maintained car also symbolises wealth, power, sophistication, yet the setting is run down and collapsed, constructing yet another complex binary opposition

An intimidating and mysterious representation of black women

• The widescreen aspect ratio encodes high production values and cinema quality
• The oversized fedora is symbolic of the women’s rights movement. Yet she is surrounded by men. She is fighting by herself, yet commands an army. She is scary.
• The gesture code of the double middle fingers encodes disrespect and persistence. It is intimidating and confident. 
• The wide brim of the black hat obscures B’s face, symbolising that she is mysterious and dangerous. 
• She resembles a god of death, threatening, mysterious, and dangerous…

Beyonce as a representation of working class black women

• The flooded setting, with trees growing out of the water connotes poverty
• The MES of B’s facial expression constructs working class black women as accepting of their suffering, and clearly unhappy with the situation. This constructs WCBW as victims 
• However, B’s gesture code is confident and relaxed, which suggests power and a lack of respect for the police
• The performer being positioned on top of the police car constructs an oppositional and definition ideological perspective. If she goes down, the police go down. A nihilistic ideology. 
• B’s hairstyle and costume is connotative of a hard working black woman in the south. Loosed tied back, it is not glamorous, yet constructs Beyonce as cool, elegant, and uncaring…

Beyonce as a representation of powerful black women

• Beyonce is situated in the dead centre of the frame, and the dead centre of a line of powerful black women 
• The stance (gesture code) connotes power: confidence in their own body, and a lack of fear
• The performer’s hair is big and extroverted. Loose afro hair here connotes not only power and confidence, and independence ,confidence, and diversity of black fashion and culture 
• A line of similar woman all standing in formation connotes an idea of women standing together to fight, presenting a feminist ideology
• Beyonce’s muscular frame connotes power and physical strength 

Through these images, a binary opposition is constructed. The flooded street and the empty swimming pool both connote poverty in extremely contrasting and interesting ways