Medusa and Beyoncé's Laughter (Scholarly Article)

In class, we read the article called "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Helene Cixous, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen. In this article, they authors talk about how men dominate society, and women do not hold an important role in society while men are around. The main idea that Cixous brings up is that men are afraid of women and that is why they treat them with little respect. The authors believe that women can show they are more than men if they use their bodies, in this case using their faces to laugh in the face of men who told them they were less than. In Beyoncé's "Hold Up" music video, she is singing about how upset she was that Jay-Z cheated on her. In the video she stomps through the streets in a flamboyant dress and a baseball bat smashing car windows out of anger. While she is expressing her anger, she is smiling and laughing through the whole thing. In order for a women to express her feelings, she must do it with laughing confidence.

You may be wondering to yourself, what does the Medusa article and Beyoncé's music video have to do with anything? In the article, they talk about how men are afraid of women and in order for women to prove their place in society they can use laughter to show them they can be just as good as men. Cixous says, "There's no room for her if she's not a he. If she's a her-she, it's in order to smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the "truth" with laughter" (Cixous 888). This quote means that in order for women to show their feelings about a situation they have to do it with intent and with laughter to show men they mean it. Beyoncé does just this in her "Hold Up" music video. This song was in an angry response to how Jay-Z cheated on her. She says, "Something don't feel right Because it ain't right Especially comin' up after midnight I smell your secret" ("Hold Up" lyrics). This tells the listener that Beyoncé felt as though her husband Jay-Z was up to something that involved a relationship with another woman. She publicly released this music video shedding light on how cheating is wrong and she did it with a huge smile on her face and laughed through the whole thing. I think she laughed through the whole thing because it shows men that they should be afraid of women because they do have the power to influence change in the world and get a point across in a situation.

-HH :)