The singer’s gig in Dubai, where same-sex acts are a criminal offence, potentially punishable by death, shows how money can crush sentiment. Photo / Getty Images
The singer’s gig in Dubai, where same-sex acts are a criminal offence, potentially punishable by death, shows how money can crush sentiment. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION
Her last album, Renaissance (Act I), was an LGBTQ+ battle cry. The first of a “three-act” passion project aimed at creating, as Beyoncé said in her mission statement, “a safe place, a place without judgment. A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release,feel freedom.” By paying homage to the black and queer pioneers of disco, funk and house music – using samples of underground drag icons and the industry’s most revered LGBTQ+ creatives – the album was, the Gay Times declared upon its release last July, “a queer euphoria from start to finish.”
There was plenty of euphoria at Beyoncé's private gig at the launch of the Dubai Atlantis Royal hotel on Saturday, and plenty of stars there to watch the 41-year-old artist get propelled 16ft up in the air, above the hotel’s vast Skyblaze fountain, while fireworks detonated around her – but all that LGBTQ+ sentiment had been silenced by a reported £19.3 million (NZ$36.8 million) cheque.
Because you can’t “scream”, “release”, or “feel freedom” in a place that is far from “safe” and free of “judgement”: a place where same-sex acts are a criminal offence, potentially punishable by death. So the online fury is justified. Yesterday campaigner Peter Tatchell added his voice to those of “disappointed” fans, accusing the singer of putting “a money-grabbing pay cheque before human rights.” Bev Jackson, co-founder of the LGB Alliance, said that the performance “casts a shadow over her support for lesbians and gay people.”
That understates the eye-watering severity of Beyoncé's hypocrisy. When you consider that the multi-platinum selling US artist didn’t perform any tracks from her Renaissance album on Saturday night, this wasn’t so much casting a shadow over her LGBTQ+ tub-thumping as making a mockery of it.
Renaissance debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart last year and was Spotify’s 2022 most-streamed album of the year in a single day by a female artist. So Beyoncé reaped the rewards of her loudly voiced moral rectitude, just as Lady Gaga, Madonna and Elton John (all of whom have also performed in Dubai) did before her. I only hope those suitcases full of Dubai dollars were worth it, and I’d like to say that you can’t have your virtue-signalling cake and eat it – but I fear that’s no longer true.
Beyoncé performs on stage headlining the Grand Reveal of Dubai's newest luxury hotel, Atlantis The Royal on January 21, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal)
After all, we’re living at a time of empty statements and hollow gestures; impassioned online diatribes whose significance is instantly forgotten. Remember all those heartfelt hashtags in support of Me Too, the Time’s Up pins worn on Hollywood red carpets, the black squares posted on Instagram in support of Black Lives Matter, the celebrity hair cutting reels in protest at the treatment of Iranian women, those LGBTQ+ rights OneLove rainbow armbands Harry Kane, along with the captains of six European countries, were adamant they would wear at the World Cup in Qatar – right up until they realised the gesture could earn them an instant booking? What you won’t remember is the follow-through.
The new puritan generation feel things so deeply – until they don’t. Until the next day, week or month, when a fresh injustice catches their eye, along with a new social media gimmick to illustrate that strength of feeling. Until the Brit Awards’ halo-topped gender-neutral stance is revealed, as predicted, to have eradicated female talent, until that dream break to Dubai, Morocco or Tunisia (where it’s also illegal to be homosexual) presents itself, until a fashion bible declares crocodile skin bags cool again or Beyoncé's catchy new track from Renaissance Act II drops. Then the new puritans become guilty of equal hypocrisy.
Nothing illustrates that pick ‘n’ mix morality better than the online musings of one conflicted fan on Sunday, as images of Beyoncé's 19-song show flooded the Twittersphere. “You can’t release a statement album like Renaissance, celebrating the LGBTQ+ community and then perform in a country that criminalises and kills LGBTQ+. I love her but she still deserves to hear about it.” Hear about it, but not, you understand, take action. Not now that do-gooding has been replaced by feel-gooding.
Her most recent album, Renaissance (Act I), was an LGBTQ+ battle cry. Photo / Getty Images.
Describing how woke campaigns on race, gender and sexuality assuage guilt in the young, and give them a “green pass to secure your position as a good person”, former social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh has a few suggestions. “Help out at the local soup kitchen?” she writes in an essay for a new edition of a book entitled The State of Independence. “Join the army? Become a teacher?” Then again, “Why do that, when all you have to do is join a Twitter mob that will cleanse you well enough to earn a quarter of a million a year in the City and read the Financial Times?”
Why do that, when memories are shorter than an Instagram story, when nobody expects any follow-through, when signalling virtue is so much easier than showing some?
