A venerable old man wearing a crown and leopardskin robe sits surrounded by his family and exquisite works of art; a group of young men in pink suits sit staring out to sea; a beautiful woman cradles a child on a beach; four figures in zebra bodysuits race along a corridor, a boy hurtles through space like a silver meteor.

"You can't wear a crown with your head down," says the voice-over.

These are just a few of the scenes from Black Is King. Based on the music of the film The Lion King: The Gift, it is described by Disney+ as a tribute to "the voyages of black families, throughout time" and a celebration of black "resilienceThe quality of toughness and flexibility that enables you to bounce back after setbacks. and culture [...]. A story of how the people left most broken have an extraordinary gift and a purposeful future".

The album has been received with huge acclaim all over the world. Beyonce has even been credited with creating a new art form - a mixture of film, fashion, design, and music that conveys multiple symbolic and allegorical messages - in the cause of "Afrofuturism", the practice of imagining what Black people could be in the future, based on who they were in the past.

But some critics, whilst acknowledging its flair and ambition, also have reservations. Even as Wesley Morris of the New York Times hailed it as a reminder that "beauty will make you tolerate anything", two of his colleagues on the same paper raised questions about its authenticity as a portrait of a continent.

"Much will be debated about whether Black Is King is an African-American fantasyCritics have come up with a term for portraying Africa like this: "Wakandafication", referring to the fictional Kingdom of Wakanda in the film Black Panther. of Africa," wrote Salamishah Tillet, while Jason Farago described it as "a cartoon fairyland". Mark Richardson's verdict in the Wall Street Journal was that "Black Is King is opulent and relentlessly beautiful, an escapist vision of paradise".

Some of the most trenchantSharp-edged. It derives from a French verb meaning "to cut". criticism has come from female writers and academics.

Jade Bentil, a researcher at Oxford University, complained in a tweet that Beyonce had boiled down thousands of African cultures to further the cause of capitalism. The journalist Sophie Rosemont lamented the fact that the singer had focused primarily on tribal traditions: "It is too bad that Beyonce doesn't seem to take contemporary Africa into account."

But others have expressed heartfelt gratitude to Beyonce for celebrating their cultures.

"To be singing in my language of Xhosa - to stand in that place for my African people, I feel so honoured," said one of the performers, BusiswaA South African poet and singer-songwriter.. "In the video, I felt like a sorceress, a queen - I felt everything majestic and royal. We were treated with the utmost care and respect, and being on that set was the most incredible experience of my whole life."

Some say yes. The film offers a view of Africa that focuses too much on what Africa was in the past, with no room to consider the Africa of now. The continent continues to be perceived as a monolithic space of masks and animal prints - both feature prominently in Black Is King's visual narrative - rather than 54 countries, with a vast array of peoples, practices, languages, and cosmologies.

Others argue that Black Is King is triumphant proof that Beyonce has decided to dedicate her work to supporting the cultural development of Black people the world over. As the academic Kinitra Brooks puts it today: "This visual album cements the reign of Queen Bey as a global icon, creating her own rules and markers of success. She has gone all-in on Black. And Beyonce rarely, if ever, loses."