Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Amy Schumer Lands in Hot Water After Beyonce Parody Video

Amy Schumer is being accused of culture appropriation and disrespecting Beyonce, pop’s reigning queen.

Schumer, along with friends Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack and Goldie Hawn, made a parody video of Beyonce’s recent single, “Formation,” a song that takes a provocative look at police brutality against African-Americans and includes references to the Black Panthers and Hurricane Katrina.

Laid over with the lyrics from the original tune, the video shows Schumer and company badly performing hip hop dance moves like twerking, and posing in a variety of outfits including sun dresses and police vests.

Some critics responded to the video by accusing Schumer — who appears in the video with a mostly white crowd — of culturally appropriation and detracting from the message of “Formation.”

“Like, wtf is wrong with Amy Schumer?! She gotta go. #AmySchumerGottaGoParty,” wrote Imani Gandy, a legal analyst and blogger, on Twitter, using the hashtag some have employed for this controversy.

Schumer has been accused of racial insensitivity in the past, once after posting a Tweet she later deleted that suggested black men are more likely to commit sexual harassment than others.

She responded by insisting the video was a “tribute” to Beyonce’s original, and then said in an Instagram video, “I’m grateful. I’m grateful for all of this shit.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.