No Vulture, Beyoncé Does Not Owe You Her Trauma

Whitney Alese
ZORA
Published in
4 min readDec 5, 2023

--

Beyoncé’s film, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé was released on December 1st, which also aligned with the annual observation of World AIDS Day.

As with many things Beyoncé does, the release of this film comes with both acclaim and criticism, most of it fair, but a few critiques seemed more like violations of her humanity rather than actual discussions of her art.

To be clear, no artist is above criticism.

But there is a very big difference between not liking something and valid or fair criticism.

That point is being made very clear as embodied by the piece published in Vulture, “The Silence Is the Loudest Part of Renaissance: A Film” by Angelica Jade Bastién.

The piece, that reads more like a hit piece masquerading as valid criticism than anything else, has drawn its own criticism of both the writer and the publication. Many readers found the piece “bitter” and “hateful”, yes. But whether the opinions expressed were fair, not many readers agree.

--

--

Whitney Alese
ZORA

Whitney Alese is an award winning writer & creator featured in WIRED Magazine, I-D Magazine, NBC, & Chalkboard Magazine.