6 INCHes of fire and pain
Beyoncé’s “6 INCH” is a raw, visual retelling of an affair and how pain so greatly lives within all parties involved. The music video focuses on three assumed characters: Jay Z, Beyoncé, and the mistress/stripper. Interestingly enough, this song falls under the Emptiness (Loss) chapter of Lemonade.
The entire video is shot in dim, red lighting, a popular color used throughout the film that represents both love/sex and anger. By having the same lighting for all three characters, it puts them on an equal playing field, not purposefully villainizing one specific party, and demonstrates that all of them feel a deep, sinking pain. The song is literally about this third character, the mistress/stripper, and although she would be the antagonist of the story, the lyrics prove us otherwise. We first see her on a stage behind a glass wall, seductively dancing, and again in the family house, swinging a ball and chain. In a Genius annotation of the first lyrics sung in the chorus, a contributor writes, “Bey demands respect for women like this, despite the common social degradation of women who work as exotic dancers due to the sexual nature of stripping. Looking at Bey’s feminist standpoint, however, she’s also emphasizing women’s power and due respect in whatever profession they choose.” (BOOTS, Genius)
Beyoncé begins the video, kneeling in the center of a ring of fire, while a voiceover is played of her describing a lustful act of infidelity. This visual is reminiscent of Warsan Shire’s poem, In Love and War, found in her book Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth. The poem emulates the concept of women protecting themselves and their physical and emotional safety at the expense of men who have historically evaded blame and intruded on a women’s comfort. Shire writes, “To my daughter I will say,/ ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’” (Page 28, Shire). Setting oneself on fire allows for no one to come too close, because of that deathly barrier that blocks them off.
Lemonade uses fire at the end of video by setting the door, then the house on fire. The same house in which the character Beyoncé, and Beyoncé’s doubled character of the mistress is seen swinging around a burning chain with the assumed intention of destruction (thus, the homewrecker of the story). Fire in literature can represent many things, such as “illumination and enlightenment, destruction and renewal, spirituality and damnation” (Varner)
The burning of the house at the end of the video is an obvious destruction of the figurative home Beyoncé and Jay Z have created together. While telling this story of infidelity, Jay Z (and said “homewrecker”) are destroying the love harvested by him and the faithful Beyoncé character dressed in pure white. However, Beyoncé does not sink into the pain and burn in the flames. Rather than awaiting her husbands arrival in bed, in the house she knows is being destroyed before her eyes, she calmly leaves the house, and stands outside as it burns behind her. But the question can be posed, does Beyoncé light the fire herself? As a response to her awareness of her infidelity, does she burn the house down, protecting herself before her husband can continue to hurt her any longer? This perspective brings more power to Beyoncé, but the undeniable pain lives within her during the last scene of the video while cameras shoot pictures of her standing in front of this house. Now that her relationship is on fire for the world to see, she has no choice but to face the public eye.
