In her own documentary, “Life is but a Dream,” superstar celebrity, Beyonce, takes her audience behind the scenes of her extravagant life and how she came to stardom in the first place. Throughout the film, we are treated to intimate and private moments where she recounts a myriad of impactful events and how they affected her, such as her miscarriage and the birth of her daughter, Blue Ivy. It’s through these video log entries we’re given insight to her private life and thoughts on life as a celebrity. We learn about her strained relationship she has with her father and how his focus on her singer life was emphasized over her private life. We also witnessed how difficult the celebrity life can be for her as she had to fire her father and become her own manager, trying to do rehearsals when being locked out of their practice space, etc. It’s through these accounts that her audience understands the struggles associated with being a celebrity and we can assume that when she released this documentary, she just wanted to illustrate that no matter how famous a celebrity is, they are normal people just like everyone else and want to be seen like that as well.

However in the New York Times article, “Another Cog in the Machinery of Divahood,” by Alessandra Stanley, she questions the credibility of Beyonce’s documentary and how it doesn’t really offer anything in regards to celebrity documentaries. Continuing on from that, Stanley notes how this entire documentary features only Beyonce and how no one else is interviewed like in other documentaries. Just having Beyonce talk about her life with no one else to cosign or add important events that occurred in her life. I found Stanley’s argument to be valid because just having a documentary talking about the aspect of her life that fans wanted to see is adding anything new to the table. While she did reveal important events such as her miscarriage, which was something I never knew happened, perhaps showing the other side fans wouldn’t expect would be interesting twist to this documentary. An example of this would be having her sisters comment on her relationship with her father or possibly even having her father talk about his thoughts on the current state of their relationship. While I did enjoy the documentary, I feel that adding those few extra interviews with family members, close friends, etc. would have made it a lot more enjoyable and added those outside perspectives that would also lessen the bias the film already has.