KCL’s Professor of Pop Culture taught us ‘How to be Beyoncé’

All the single ladies were there

beyonce class dance diva KCL lecture madison moore music pop sasha fierce talk

Last night, the English department hosted a talk on “How to be Beyoncé”. Obviously, we went.

The talk was hosted by Professor of Pop Culture Madison Moore as part of Fabrication, the Kings Arts and Humanities festival. Everyone wants to be Beyoncé, so he had the Great Hall filled with sashaying divas wanting to perfect the effortless, powerful grace of queen Bey.

The queue stretched all the way into the reception with eager wannabe Sasha Fierces, and the atmosphere was buzzing. We asked some of them why they want to be Beyonce:

“She’s just a pop feminist icon really, and I think it’s just a really creative title that’s got people hooked.”

“She’s incredibly empowering for a lot of women.”

Hit that pose

“I feel like she’s got her life together; she knows what she’s doing and she’s a very powerful woman.”

“I want to find out how to be her, like everyday life, walk into uni and feel like Beyoncé.”

Madison himself looked fierce, all leather and silver, with the most outrageous boots ever seen, absolutely slaying everyone else’s attempt at sass.

These shoes deserve their own show

The talk itself was lively, with bursts of video and song to highlight the many aspects of Beyoncé’s image and persona that Moore touched on, including her very muted public voice, the importance of her references to previous iconic black women in the music industry such as Josephine Baker and Tina Turner, and her position in today’s media as a woman of colour.

It all finished in spectacular style, with a costume change on stage into a pair of tight, sequinned trousers and green sequinned blazer. Madison donned a big curly wig to perform a dance routine to Crazy in Love complete with backing dancers and confetti cannons. 

Madison Moore himself

This all comes from an online paper published by Moore under the same title, but the talk gave the public the opportunity to react and present their own thoughts on what makes Beyoncé so important and relevant.

In an exclusive interview with The Tab, we asked Madison about the ideas behind the talk.

Firstly, you are fabulous. Your pop culture flair definitely came across.

My work is about divas and fabulousness and this kind of stuff, and these are things that are not just recondite and removed and in archives or whatever, they’re things that are happening right now. So for me it’s very important for that work to be accessible to the broadest possible audience, and not just like me in a room at a desk writing a paper.

So why Beyoncé?

I’ve always been interested in her. It’s interesting for me now to be older, to in some ways have grown up with Beyoncé, and the funny thing is of all the pop stars that I’ve followed, she’s the one that has stuck around. She’s got better and has really perfected her thing, whereas the other pop stars have flailed off, have maybe become less in pop culture than she is, and that’s interesting.

Intersectional feminism came up in the Q&A, which is such a big society at Kings, and talks like this bring up a lot of discussion about sexism and racism. Why do you think it’s so important?

What I like to do is show that pop culture is dead serious, or that I’m dead serious about pop culture. We’re all part of this world and I think it’s important to explain the historical context, you know that you can be a critical enjoyer or user of pop culture and love it and also understand where it’s coming from, being critical while you engage with the cultural text of your choice.

Well she’s such an icon.

That’s the thing. That’s her brilliance, which she’s perfected and really, really crafted over the years. No other pop star has that and I don’t know what the secret is.

Are you hoping to see lots of people walking around tomorrow…

With wigs?

…more confident and sassy?

Yes, bring it to King’s. You got to have two to three wigs.