title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The fourth and fifth singles released were "Freedom" and "All Night", respectively. Both became moderate hits with the former (released September 2016) peaking at US number thirty-five, and the latter (released December 2016) peaking at US number thirty-eight.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" received universal acclaim from music critics upon release, and is widely considered to be Beyoncé's "magnum opus". At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received a weighted average score of 92, based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: In "Spin", Greg Tate calls "Lemonade" "a triumph of marketing and musicality, spectacle and song, vision and collaboration, Borg-like assimilation, and — as of 2013 — the element of surprise". Lauding both the film and album, Tate writes "Visually, literarily, choreographically, cinematically, this full accessing of her Southern bona fides shows up in the HBO project as ritual evidence that Bey's spent her downtime delving into the avant-garde mysticism of black-feminist poetry, novel writing, dance, gallery art, and film... The album, however, is out to sonorously suck you into its gully gravitational orbit the old fashioned way, placing the burden of conjuration on its steamy witches' brew of beats, melodies, and heavy-hearted-to-merry-pranksterish vocal seductions. In her mastery of carnal and esoteric mysteries, Queen Bey raises the spirits, sizzles the flesh, and rallies her troops." AllMusic writer Andy Kellman called "Lemonade" "culturally seismic" through its "layers of meaning and references, and experienced en masse through its televised premiere", adding that "the cathartic and wounded moments here resonate in a manner matched by few, if any, of Beyoncé's contemporaries."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: In a five-star review for "Rolling Stone", Rob Sheffield calls "Lemonade" "a welcome reminder that giants still walk among us", describing it as an "album of emotional discord and marital meltdown... from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game". Sheffield writes ""Lemonade" is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous... Yet the most astounding sound is always Bey's voice", which is described as "her wildest, rawest vocals ever". Sheffield also compares "Lemonade" to Aretha Franklin’s "Spirit in the Dark" and Nina Simone’s "Silk and Soul" in the way that the album "reach[es] out historically, connecting her personal pain to the trauma of American blackness". Ray Rahman for "Entertainment Weekly" agrees, writing that "Lemonade" is "a raw and intensely personal plunge into the heart of marital darkness" as well as "a feminist blueprint, a tribute to women, African-Americans, and, especially, African-American women". Rahman further praises the diversity of the album: "[Beyoncé] can do rock, blues, country, avant-garde, whatever. "Lemonade" stands as Bey's most diverse album to date. Sinister strip-club-in-the-future R&B... sits right next to a slab of Texas twang. Led Zeppelin and Soulja Boy become bedfellows."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Alexis Petridis of "The Guardian" wrote that the album "feels like a success" and that Beyoncé sounded "genuinely imperious". Petridis praises the musical arc of the album, commenting on how the music "slowly works itself up into a righteous frenzy of anger, shifting from the becalmed misery of opener "Pray You Catch Me" via the sparse simmer of "Hold Up"... before finally boiling over on the fantastic "Don't Hurt Yourself": a ferocious, distorted vocal as commanding as anything she’s recorded". "The Daily Telegraph" writer Jonathan Bernstein felt it was her strongest work to date and "proves there's a thin line between love and hate." Nekesa Moody and Mohamad Soliman from "The Washington Post" called the album a "deeply personal, yet ... a bold social and political statement as well". Writing for "The New York Times", Jon Pareles praised Beyoncé's vocals and her courage to talk about subjects that affect so many people, and noted that "the album is not beholden to radio formats or presold by a single". Greg Kot from the "Chicago Tribune" felt that "artistic advances" seem "slight" in context towards the record's "more personal, raw and relatable" aspects, where it came out as a "clearly conceived" piece of music, meaning it had a "unifying vision" for what may have lent itself to being "a prettily packaged hodgepodge".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Reviewing the album in "The Independent", Everett True wrote that it "is fiery, insurgent, fiercely proud, sprawling and sharply focused in its dissatisfaction", with Beyoncé "pick[ing] up the mantles of both" Prince and Nina Simone. Writing for "Slate", Carl Wilson describes "Lemonade" as "a spectacle to rival "Thriller"" and "a beautiful and often disturbing kaleidoscope of poetry, feminism, racial politics, history, mythology, emotional upheaval, family, and romance that can be watched again and again and will be for years to come". Kitty Empire of "The Observer" writes that "female endurance and pragmatism are celebrated with warmth, anger and wit on this astounding visual album" and that "it’s unlikely there will be many more albums this year that will unite high art and low in the same way as Beyoncé’s jaw-slackening latest". Jillian Mapes of "Pitchfork" wrote that "The increasingly signature cadence, patois, and all-around attitude on "Lemonade" speaks to her status as the hip-hop pop star—but this being Bey, she doesn’t stop there... "Lemonade" proves Beyoncé to also be a new kind of post-genre pop star". In "The A.V. Club" Annie Zaleski wrote that it was "yet another seismic step forward for Beyoncé as a musician" that "pushes pop music into smarter, deeper places".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Shahzaib Hussain, writing for "Clash", stated: ""Lemonade" is Beyoncé at her most benevolent, and her most unadulterated. Treating her blackness not as an affliction but a celebratory beacon, "Lemonade" is a long overdue, cathartic retribution." Sal Cinquemani of "Slant Magazine" wrote that the album "is her most lyrically and thematically coherent effort to date." Maura Johnston of "Time" wrote that its tracks were "fresh yet instantly familiar" with an "over-the-top but intimate" sound. Jamie Milton of "DIY" wrote that "there's so much more than an enthralling story to draw out of this all-slaying work", where "Beyoncé can count herself as a risk-taker breaking new ground, up there with the bravest." "Exclaim!"s Erin Lowers wrote that "If you've ever been handed lemons, you need "Lemonade"", calling it "an album in which millions will find their own struggles reflected back to them, as therapeutic as it is utterly dazzling". Britt Julious of "Consequence of Sound" describes how "With nods to Voudou and Southern Black gothic storytelling, "Lemonade", the visual album, wove chapters of emotional grief into a piece of art about the black woman... Separated from the visual, the album itself acts as dexterously as the film, exposing the rawest elements of Beyoncé’s personal life while framing it against the universal — the machinations of internal paranoia, the all-consuming well of fury and anger, and the bottomless depths of sadness." Julious continues by praising the song cycle nature of the album: "Taken as a whole, we hear the threads of this from song to song on the record. If "Lemonade" is a record about dismantling the cycles of abuse, ripping open the secrets we keep hidden (especially within the closely guarded black community), and finding healing, purpose, and even greatness in the process, then it is personified in the arcs of each track... The songs stand as joined entities, two dichotomous halves of the grief process". PopMatters writer Evan Sawdey felt few albums could ever be considered "as bold, complex, or resolute as "Lemonade"," and the BBC's Mark Savage, describing "Lemonade" as "an album with a complex narrative arc... that demands to be heard in one sitting", noted that Beyoncé had become an albums artist with a range extending beyond that of radio play.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: At the end of 2016, "Lemonade" appeared on a number of critics' lists ranking the year's top albums. According to the "BBC", it was the critics' top album of 2016, while according to Metacritic, it was the second most prominently ranked record of 2016, and the album that was listed at number one by the most publications (37 publications). "Lemonade" was ranked as the best album of the year by such publications as "Rolling Stone", "Billboard", "Entertainment Weekly", "The Guardian", "Digital Spy", "The Independent", "The Associated Press", "The New York Times" (Jon Pareles list), "Los Angeles Times" (Mikael Wood list), "Pop Matters", "Pretty Much Amazing", Idolator, "Stereogum", "Complex", "Consequence of Sound", "Wired", and "US Weekly". "Paste", "USA Today," "NPR" also included the release on their list of best albums of 2016. The album appeared within the top twenty of numerous publications year end lists including: "Village Voice"s,"Slant", "Exclaim!", "Spin", "NME", "FACT", "Drowned in Sound", "Uncut", "Mojo", "Q", and "Pitchfork".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" was named the best album of the decade (2010s) by "Consequence of Sound", "The Associated Press" and "Spex". "Lemonade" was also named the best music video of the decade by "The Daily Beast", as well as one of the best movies of the 2010s by "Vox" and the eleventh greatest film of the decade by "Hyperallergic". "Rolling Stone" "The Independent", "New York Post", "Billboard," "Paste Magazine," "The A.V. Club," "WXPN The Key", and "Refinery29" declared "Lemonade" the second best album of the 2010s. "Lemonade" was named the third best album of the decade by "Tampa Bay Times," "Insider", and "The Young Folks," while the "Genius" community and Chris Willman for "Variety" named it the fourth best one. "Uproxx," "Noisey," "The Independent," and "The Wild Honey Pie" named "Lemonade" the fifth best album of the decade. "Pitchfork" listed "Lemonade" as the 41st greatest album of the decade. "Time", "Paper", "Stuff", and "The Sydney Morning Herald" included the album in their lists of the best 10 albums of the decade. "Lemonade" was included in "The Atlantic"'s "Time Capsule of the 2010s". "Lemonade" was included in "Triple J"'s top 15 biggest music moments of the decade list.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" is the 26th best album of all time by "Metacritic" score. In 2020, "Parade" named "Lemonade" the best music video of all time. On "Rolling Stone"'s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, "Lemonade" was placed at number 32, citing the album's exploration of "the betrayals of American blackness" and "all of the country's music traditions". "BBC Radio 4"'s named "Lemonade" the eighth greatest risk in 21st century art, with the judges saying that Beyoncé "resisted the commercial pressure not to be political in order to stand up for what she believed in and let audiences into her personal life as never before". "The Guardian" listed it at number 25 on their ranking of the 100 best albums of the 21st century. On their list of the top 100 albums of the publication's existence, "The Quietus" named the project at number 9. In 2017, the album was ranked at number 6 on "NPR"s list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. "Consequence of Sound" named Lemonade the second best album of the last 15 years (2007-2022) and the 18th best one of all time.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Formation" won in three categories at the 2016 BET Awards for Video of the Year, the Centric Award, and the Viewers Choice Award. At the 2017 BET Awards Beyoncé was nominated in 7 categories and won 5, including Album of the Year, Video of the Year for "Sorry" and Best Female R&B/Pop Artist. The "Lemonade" film was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Variety Special and Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special. From the four categories, Beyoncé was nominated in the two mentioned. The album's visuals received 11 nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. They included Breakthrough Long Form Video for "Lemonade", Video of the Year, Best Pop Video, Best Direction, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography for "Formation", Best Female Video and Best Art Direction for "Hold Up", and Best Choreography for "Sorry" and "Formation". Beyoncé went on to win eight of her nominations, including Video of the Year and Breakthrough Long Form Video.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: She received two nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards Japan for Best Album of the Year for "Lemonade" and Best Female Video International for "Formation", eventually winning for Best Album of the Year. At the 2016 Soul Train Music Awards, Beyoncé was nominated for eight awards including Best Female Artist, "Lemonade" for Album of the Year, and "Formation" for Song and Video of the Year. Beyoncé went on to win all four awards. "Lemonade" won Best TV Show – Special or Limited Series at the African American Film Critics Association. At the 2017 NAACP Image Awards, "Lemonade" was nominated for Outstanding Album and Outstanding Variety – Series or Special, "Formation" was nominated for Outstanding Song and Outstanding Music Video, and "Freedom", featuring Kendrick Lamar, was nominated for Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration and Outstanding Song. The album received four awards, including Outstanding Album, Outstanding Song and Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration for "Freedom" and Outstanding Music Video for "Formation". At the 2016 ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards, "Lemonade" received the award for Best Awards or Event Special, as well as "Hold Up", "6 Inch" and "Denial" all being nominated for Best Short Format: Web Series, Music Video or Commercial.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, "Lemonade" received three nominations: Album of the Year, Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Film. "Formation" received three as well: Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Music Video. "Hold Up" was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance, "Don't Hurt Yourself" for Best Rock Performance and "Freedom" for Best Rap/Sung Performance. Beyoncé went on to win two awards, Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video for "Formation". "Lemonade" won Outstanding Television Documentary or Special at the 2017 Black Reel Awards.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" won a Peabody Award in Entertainment, along with the following description by the board of jurors:Adroitly bringing together stories about betrayal, renewal, and hope, "Lemonade" draws from the prolific literary, musical, cinematic, and aesthetic sensibilities of black cultural producers to create a rich tapestry of poetic innovation. Defying genre and convention, "Lemonade" immerses viewers in the sublime worlds of black women, family, and community where we experience poignant and compelling stories about the lives of women of color and the bonds of friendship seldom seen or heard in American popular culture. This innovative and stunningly beautiful masterpiece challenges us to readjust our visual and sonic antennae and invites a reckoning with taken for granted ideas about who we are. For the audacity of its reach and the fierceness of its vision in challenging our cultural imagination about the intimacies and complexities of women of color, we recognize "Lemonade" as a Peabody Award winner.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: In the United States, "Lemonade" debuted at number one on the "Billboard" 200, with 653,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 485,000 were pure album sales. This made the highest opening-week sales for a female act of the year. Subsequently, she broke the record she previously tied with DMX, by becoming the first artist in the chart's history to have their first six studio albums debut at number one. In the same week, Beyoncé became the first female artist to chart twelve or more songs on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 at the same time, with every song on the album debuting on the chart. Additionally, "Lemonade" was streamed 115 million times via Tidal, setting a record for the most-streamed album in a single week by a female artist.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The album slipped from number one to number two in its second week, selling 321,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 196,000 were pure album sales. It remained at number two in its third week selling 201,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 153,000 were pure album sales. "Lemonade" was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June 2016. According to Nielsen's 2016 year-end report, it had sold 1,554,000 copies and 2,187,000 album-equivalent units in the United States. Following its April 23, 2019 release on all streaming services, "Lemonade" returned to the top ten on the "Billboard" 200 at number nine, while its only added song, the original demo of "Sorry", debuted at number four on the US R&B Songs. On May 20, 2019, the album was certified double platinum for shipments of two million copies, and triple platinum on June 13, 2019, for shipments of three million copies. In Canada, the album debuted at number one with sales of 33,000 copies.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart selling 73,000 copies in its first week of release, with 10,000 equivalent sales (14% of the total sales) accounting for streaming, marking the largest ever for a number-one album since the chart began including streaming. The album marked the singer's third number-one album on the chart and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on September 9, 2016, for shipments of 300,000 copies. All of the album's tracks also debuted within the top hundred of the UK Singles Chart. As in the US, 2020 is the first year since release that the album has not appeared on the UK Chart.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: In Australia, "Lemonade" sold 20,490 digital copies in its first week, debuting atop the Australian Albums Chart and becoming Beyoncé's second consecutive number-one album in the country. It received a platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments of 70,000 copies.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" also peaked atop the charts in numerous European and Oceanic countries including Ireland and Belgium, where it spent five and seven weeks at the summit, respectively, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland and Sweden. In Brazil, it debuted at number one and received a platinum certification from Pro-Música Brasil.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" has been credited with reviving the concept of an album in an era dominated by singles and streaming, and popularizing releasing albums with accompanying films. Jamieson Cox for "The Verge" called "Lemonade" "the endpoint of a slow shift toward cohesive, self-centered pop albums", writing that "it’s setting a new standard for pop storytelling at the highest possible scale". Megan Carpentier of "The Guardian" wrote that "Lemonade" has "almost revived the album format" as "an immersive, densely textured large-scale work" that can only be listened to in its entirety. Myf Warhurst on "Double J"'s "Lunch With Myf" explained that Beyoncé "changed [the album] to a narrative with an arc and a story and you have to listen to the entire thing to get the concept". "The New York Times"' Katherine Schulten agreed, asking "How do you talk about the ongoing evolution of the music video and the autobiographical album without holding up "Lemonade" as an exemplar of both forms?" Joe Coscarelli of "The New York Times" describes how "some brand-name acts are following Beyoncé’s blueprint with high-concept mini-movies that can add artistic heft to projects," with Frank Ocean's "Endless" and Drake's "Please Forgive Me" cited as examples of artists' projects inspired by "Lemonade". Other projects said to have followed the precedent that "Lemonade" set include Lonely Island's "The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience", Thom Yorke's "Anima," Sturgill Simpson's "Sound & Fury", and Kid Cudi's "Entergalactic", which were all albums released with complementary film projects"."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Beyoncé's use of various genres on "Lemonade" has been credited with setting the precedent for music to transcend genre, with "NPR" writing that the album "leads us to this moment where post-genre becomes a thing". The use of various genres has also been credited with kickstarting the reclamation of certain genres by black people. "Daddy Lessons" has been credited as starting a trend of "pop stars toying with American West and Southern aesthetics," as well as setting the precedent for "The Yeehaw Agenda," the trend of reclaiming black cowboy culture through music and fashion. "Don't Hurt Yourself" has been credited with the reclaiming of rock by black women, with Brittany Spanos for "Rolling Stone" writing that "the re-imagination of what rock can be and who can sing it by Beyoncé and her superstar peers is giving the genre a second life – and may be what can save it."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Several musicians were inspired by "Lemonade". American rapper Snoop Dogg named his fourteenth studio album "Coolaid" (2016) after "Lemonade." British girl group Little Mix cited "Lemonade" as an inspiration for their album "Glory Days" (2016). American rapper Cardi B was inspired by "Lemonade" for her upcoming album, which she says is "going to have my "Lemonade" moments". Naming "Lemonade" one of her favorite albums ever, English singer-songwriter Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice said that it helped her to "put in more thought to what makes a good album flow". American singer The-Dream wrote a response to "Lemonade" titled "Lemon Lean" in his EP "Love You to Death", saying that the album changed the way people think about their relationships. American singer Lauren Jenkins used "Lemonade" as the inspiration for her album and long-form music video "No Saint". American comedian Lahna Turner released a visual album entitled "Limeade" in homage to "Lemonade." American singer Matt Palmer was inspired by "Lemonade" to create his visual EP "Get Lost". American musician Todrick Hall's second studio album "Straight Outta Oz" was made as a visual album due to "Lemonade". British singer-songwriter Arrow Benjamin was also inspired by "Lemonade" for his 2016 EP "W.A.R. (We All Rise)", saying: "Every piece on this project was created from a visual, so that's why I was extremely inspired when I saw "Lemonade.""


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Ann Powers for "NPR" opined that Fiona Apple was influenced by "Lemonade" when implementing black musical traditions on her 2020 album "Fetch the Bolt Cutters", while Jenna Wortham for "The New York Times" drew a parallel between both albums as "blueprints for how to take in all that emotion and kind of how to push it back out in a way that’s cathartic and constructive". Dan Weiss of "Billboard" wrote that Shania Twain's "Now" "couldn't have existed without" "Lemonade", as an album that "completely changed the course of breakup album history" in which the artist is "someone at their full creative peak pushing herself into new niches, dominating new musical territories." Kadeen Griffiths from "Bustle" states that "Lemonade", as an album that deals with issues related to black women, "paved the way" for Alicia Keys' "Here" and Solange's "A Seat at the Table." Danielle Koku for "The Guardian" stated that "Lemonade" aided the return of African mysticism to pop music, writing: "By taking African mysticism to the world stage, Beyoncé stripped it of its ancient pagan labels." Many critics have noted that Jay-Z's thirteenth studio album "" (2017) is a response to "Lemonade", with Jay-Z referencing lines from "Lemonade", such as the "You better call Becky with the good hair" line on Beyoncé's "Sorry", with Jay-Z retorting: "Let me alone, Becky" in "Family Feud".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards (2017), Adele dedicated her Album of the Year award to Beyoncé and said: "The artist of my life is Beyoncé... the "Lemonade" album, is just so monumental." In a 2021 interview with "Vogue", Adele claimed that Beyoncé should have won the said award instead of her. After the show, she went into Beyoncé's dressing room and "said to her, like, the way that the Grammys works, and the people who control it at the very, very top—they don't know what a visual album is. They don't want to support the way that she's moving things forward with her releases and the things that she's talking about." She revealed that the award she received in the mail was broken and that she wedged a lemon into the broken part, and went on to claim that, "[f]or [her] friends who are women of color, ["Lemonade"] was such a huge acknowledgment for them, of the sort of undermined grief that they go through." American musician Stevie Wonder called "Lemonade" "a great work, a great art piece". U2's Bono included "Freedom" in his "60 Songs That Saved My Life" project to celebrate his 60th birthday, writing: "In my 60 years, I was served many platters but rarely one like the Queen Bey's album "Lemonade"."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" has inspired artists in media other than music, including art, literature, film, television and theatre. Misha Green, creator of the 2020 television series "Lovecraft Country", described how "Lemonade" inspired the direction and flow of the show's score, saying: "What Beyoncé did on "Lemonade", with bringing in the poems and taking us on this collage of a journey, that wasn’t just music and visuals. [It was] also words and really using those words as a score." Bill Condon, director of the film "Beauty and the Beast" (2017) says the visuals behind "Lemonade" inspired him for the movie: "You look at Beyoncé's brilliant movie "Lemonade", this genre is taking on so many different forms… I do think that this very old-school break-out-into-song traditional musical is something that people understand again and really want.".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The Royal National Theatre's 2018 production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra featured a costume inspired by "Lemonade", with costume designer Evie Gurney describing how she wanted to draw a parallel between Cleopatra and Beyoncé, as the latter is "a woman in the public eye who was subject to a lot of scrutiny [and] actually created a platform for herself to take back the narrative of her own story, and it was an extraordinary act of power." The character of Catherine of Aragon in the West End and Broadway musical "Six" was inspired by ""Lemonade"-era Beyoncé". Ellie Kenrick's 2018 play "Hole" at the Royal Court was described by its directors as "a stage version of Beyoncé’s "Lemonade" album", as an artwork about feminism and historical oppression of women that consists of song, dance and spoken word.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Fashion stylist Salvador Camarena paid homage to "Lemonade" by designing a room dedicated to the album during Modernism Week, saying "That album is such a visually stunning album. There are so many iconic looks from the video, I kind of wanted to implement that world into that room." The young adult anthology "A Phoenix First Must Burn" edited by Patrice Caldwell, which explores "the Black experience through fantasy, science fiction, and magic", has the aim of "evoking Beyoncé’s "Lemonade" for a teen audience". A 2017 video game titled "Lemonade Rage" was created in homage to "Lemonade" and the "Hold Up" music video. The cover of Marvel's 2017 "America" comic book paid homage to the "Formation" music video, with its illustrator saying "America is a comic that is all about representation, feminism and fighting for what’s right... I could think of no better parallel than Beyoncé."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Sales for Warsan Shire's chapbook "Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth" increased by 700 to 800% after her poetry was included in the "Lemonade" film. Beyoncé's mention of Red Lobster in "Formation" increased sales at the restaurant chain by 33%, which made employees rename popular menu items after Beyoncé and call the effect the "Beyoncé Bounce". Designers of the costumes that Beyoncé wore in the "Lemonade" film spoke with "Complex" about the impact that this had on their careers; for example, Natalia Fedner, who designed Beyoncé's dress for "Hold Up", stated that because of the dress's inclusion in Lemonade, "I was on 'Entertainment Tonight' being hailed as a 'designer to watch'." The inclusion of imagery from the 1991 film "Daughters of the Dust" in the visuals for "Lemonade" helped bring the film back to theatres, with director Julie Dash stating that "Lemonade" "just took me places that I had not been seeing in a long, long time. It just re-confirmed a lot of things that I know to be true about visual style and visual metaphors. And the use of visual metaphors in creating, redefining, and re-framing a Creole culture within this new world."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The popular "Lemonade braids" hairstyle worn by black women is named after a hairstyle that Beyoncé wore in "Lemonade". Georgia Murray for "Refinery29" sourced the 2020 fashion trend of wearing yellow to "Lemonade", writing that Beyoncé's yellow dress in "Hold Up" "kickstarted an obsession with yellow that we’re still seeing the effects of today". The use of the lemon and bee emojis increased due to the release of Lemonade, with a Twitter spokesperson telling "Time:" "Before "Lemonade", the lemon emoji had no meaning. Since the launch of "Lemonade", the emoji has taken on a meaning of its own". The MTV Video Music Award for Breakthrough Long Form Video, which Beyoncé ultimately won at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, was reintroduced after 25 years due to the "Lemonade" film.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" was parodied and was paid homage to in various media. In an episode of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" titled "Kimmy's Roommate Lemonades!", character Titus Andromedon parodied the videos for "Hold Up", "Sorry" and "All Night" after he suspects his boyfriend of infidelity, coining the term "Lemonading". This episode was subsequently nominated for two Emmy Awards: Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics for the "Hold Up" parody "Hell No", and Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series for Tituss Burgess. The "Hold Up" music video was also paid homage to in "The Simpsons," "Making a Scene with James Franco", "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," and "The Daily Show."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "SNL" produced two sketches on "Lemonade": one entitled "The Day Beyoncé Turned Black" after Beyoncé released the "unapologetically black" "Formation", and the other entitled "Melanianade" which parodied the "Sorry" music video featuring impersonations of Donald Trump's female family members and aides. In a "Late Night with Seth Meyers" sketch titled "Beyoncé Lemonade Late Night Aftermath", females staffers empowered by "Lemonade" paid homage to the visuals, costumes, songs and poetry featured in the film. "The Late Late Show with James Corden" produced a parody entitled "Lemonjames: A Visual Monologue", where James Corden gave his monologue by recreating parts of the "Lemonade" film such as the "Pray You Catch Me", "Don't Hurt Yourself" and "6 Inch" music videos. Actress Goldie Hawn and comedian Amy Schumer produced a parody of "Formation". The Season 2 premiere of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" featured a musical number that was an homage to "Lemonade", including parodies of "Formation" and "Pray You Catch Me".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: For Beyoncé's 36th birthday, various black female public figures recreated a costume that Beyoncé wore in the "Formation" music video, including Michelle Obama and Serena Williams. The first episode of British comedian James Acaster's 2020 podcast titled "Perfect Sounds" (in which Acaster discusses why 2016 was the greatest year in music with various comedians) featured Romesh Ranganathan and focused on "the genius of "Lemonade"".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: "Lemonade" has also received notable attention from scholars and authors outside the music industry. In partnership with the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, a talk at Seminole State College "discussed how Beyoncé embodies the conjure woman in her iconic audiovisual work "Lemonade" as a contemporary revision of Zora Neale Hurston’s groundbreaking study of conjure and its place in Black women’s spirit work." Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) announced "The "Lemonade" Project", a twelve-month series of conversations centered around the visual album. The series will explore the themes of race, gender and class addressed by the album.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Kinitra Brooks and Kameelah Martin have produced "The Lemonade Reader", described as "an educational tool to support and guide discussions of the visual album at postgraduate and undergraduate levels, [which] critiques "Lemonade"’s multiple Afrodiasporic influences, visual aesthetics, narrative arc of grief and healing, and ethnomusicological reach." University of Texas at Austin professor Omise’eke Tinsley wrote a book entitled "Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism" that was released in 2018, which "analyzes Beyoncé’s visual album, "Lemonade", in relation to the sexuality and gender of Black women". University of Albany professor Janell Hobson produced a lesson plan based on her class on "Lemonade", saying "Beyoncé’s "Lemonade" stimulates class discussions and assignments as a highly visible pop project striving to create deeper conversations on the meanings of Blackness, womanhood, and feminism." Dissect Podcast have since dedicated their sixth season to "Beyoncé’s masterwork "Lemonade"." The host, Cole Cuchna and cohost Titi Shodiya, "make leaps of interpretative wonder, fusing insights, music theory, instrumentation, and lyric interpretation with social analysis to empower fans to build deeper connections with Beyoncé’s artistry."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: In a 2020 "New York Times" article titled "The African-American Art Shaping the 21st Century", which contained 35 prominent black artists talking about the work that inspires them most, American actress Kerry Washington relayed about "Lemonade" as a game changer "visually, musically, but also sociopolitically, and anthropologically. The release of "Formation" and the consequent performance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show caused both conversation and controversy due to its "unapologetic Blackness". Many articles and think pieces were produced discussing the importance and meaning of the song and performance, such as the BBC, who produced an article entitled "Beyoncé's Super Bowl performance: Why was it so significant?", and "TheWrap", who produced an article entitled "Why Beyoncé's Formation’ Matters So Much: A Perfectly Choreographed Political Debut Before 112 Million." "Lemonade" as a whole also inspired many think pieces, particularly written by black women, that analyze the messages and significance of the album, such as Miriam Bale for "Billboard" who named "Lemonade" "a revolutionary work of black feminism".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Megan Carpentier of "The Guardian" named the album "a pop culture phenomenon" and wrote: "It is not an exaggeration to say that there is no other living musical artist who could ignite such a broad and unavoidable conversation just by releasing a new album – even a visual one." Writing in the same publication, Syreeta McFadden noted that the "Formation" video depicts archetypal southern Black women "in ways that we haven't seen frequently represented in popular art or culture". Melissa Harris-Perry of "Time" magazine said that "Beyoncé publicly embraced explicitly feminist Blackness at a politically risky moment."


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Since its release, the album has spawned a large syllabus of literature and academic studies. The University of Texas at San Antonio offered a class in the Fall of 2016 based on the album. The course, titled "Black Women, Beyoncé and Popular Culture", explored how the visual album "is a meditation on contemporary Black womanhood," before advancing and diving into the "theoretical, historical, and literary frameworks of Black feminism," according to the syllabus.


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga hosted a "Lemonade Week" in April 2017, which featured discussions on feminism, theatrical performances, celebrations of African-American women writers and poets, and choreography tutorials. Harvard University hosted "The Lemon Drop": a discussion that explored the nuances of "Lemonade." University of Arkansas offered a course that analysed the influence of Black feminism on Beyoncé and "Lemonade." University of Pennsylvania ran two courses that explored politics, race and gender through the study of "Lemonade".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Michigan State University hosted a discussion on "Lemonade" as part of their series for "exchanging ideas and exploring the lived experiences of underrepresented and marginalized communities".


title: Lemonade (Beyoncé album)

text: Chatham University based a writing class on "Lemonade", where "students get to examine how they fit into the power systems around them". Valdosta State University offered a course on "Lemonade", "unpacking the many themes found in "Lemonade," including Black identity, feminism, marital infidelity, sisterhood, and faith." The College of Charleston hosted a discussion by Black feminist scholars, exploring "Beyoncé's use of southern landscape, Black women, music, and African-based spirituality". University of North Georgia offered a class entitled "Okay, Ladies, Now Let’s Get in Formation: Intersectional Feminism in Beyoncé’s Lemonade" that explored the music, lyrics and visuals of "Lemonade".


title: Treasure (band)

text: Treasure (; Japanese: トレジャー; stylized in all caps) is a South Korean boy band formed in 2019 by YG Entertainment through the reality-survival program "YG Treasure Box" (2018–2019). The band consists of 10 members: Choi Hyun-suk, Jihoon, Yoshi, Junkyu, Yoon Jae-hyuk, Asahi, Doyoung, Haruto, Park Jeong-woo and So Jung-hwan. Former members Mashiho and Bang Ye-dam went on hiatus in May 2022 and departed from the band in November 2022. Treasure debuted in 2020 with the single album "" – the first in a tetralogy of albums that collectively sold over one million copies in five months.


title: Treasure (band)

text: Junkyu, Bang Ye-dam and So Jung-hwan had stints in entertainment since childhood. Junkyu started as a child model whilst Bang recorded songs for animated shows and competed on "K-pop Star 2" (2012–2013) and finished as runner-up behind Akdong Musician (AKMU). So briefly starred as a child actor and joined the Taekwondo demonstration team K-Tigers – where he won an award with the team. Mashiho had a cameo role in AKMU's "Spring of Winter" (2017) while Jihoon, Bang and Doyoung filmed for "Stray Kids" (2017) as trainees. Choi Hyun-suk and Junkyu competed on "Mix Nine" (2017–2018), finishing in fifth and thirty-fifth, respectively.


title: Treasure (band)

text: YG Entertainment documented Treasure's formation with a series aired simultaneously through JTBC2 and an internet network. "YG Treasure Box" (2018–2019) unveiled twenty nine male trainees in November and were gradually eliminated as the show progressed. The finale finalized the septet — Haruto, Bang Ye-dam, So Jung-hwan, Junkyu, Park Jeong-woo, Yoon Jae-hyuk and Choi Hyun-suk — under the name Treasure. The label revealed a second lineup of trainees — Ha Yoon-bin, Mashiho, Doyoung, Yoshi, Jihoon and Asahi — under the name Magnum in January 2019. The two aforementioned teams were collectively to be called Treasure 13; however, after Ha's departure from the label in December 2019 to pursue a solo career, Treasure and Magnum were merged into one permanent team named Treasure, the label's first boy band to debut since the launches of Big Bang, Winner and iKon.


title: Treasure (band)

text: In January 2020, Treasure was re-introduced to the public with weekly pictorials and performance videos, which included the single "Going Crazy" (미쳐가네; "michyeogane") from "YG Treasure Box" (2018–2019), to which label-mate Mino of Winner contributed in production, alongside variety programs on YouTube such as "Treasure Map" and "T.M.I". The label expressed their intent to use Big Bang as a blueprint: "Treasure is planning to release new songs 3~4 times until the end of the year [...] it's a similar promotion method of how Big Bang released single albums every month when they first made debut back in 2006". Ahead of debut, Treasure became the fastest Korean act to chart on the "Billboard" Social 50 and peaked at number 3 on August 29. Bang also became the band's first member to release solo content with the digital single, "Wayo" (왜요; "waeyo") on June 5. Broadcast promotions were not carried out due to his focus on preparations for debut with Treasure. Notably, label-mates Kang Seung-yoon of Winner and Lee Chan-hyuk of AKMU participated in its production. "Wayo" peaked at number 10 on the "Billboard" World Digital Song Sales chart and entered the "Billboard Korea" K-pop Hot 100 chart at number 98.


title: Treasure (band)

text: Treasure debuted on August 7, 2020 with the single album "", the first installment of "The First Step" series. It amassed over 170,000 pre-orders several days ahead of the physical release on August 13. Its lead single, "Boy", found commercial success in Japan, topping music streaming platforms such as Line Music, Rakuten and the AWA rising chart. The music video for "Boy" surpassed 10 million views in 26 hours and 20 million views in six days on YouTube, eventually becoming Treasure's first to reach 100 million views on the platform. Treasure began promotions on August 9 with their first broadcast appearance on SBS' "Inkigayo". The single album itself was certified platinum by the Korea Music Content Association (KMCA), the group's first ever certification. The to "The First Step" series was released on September 18. Its lead single "I Love You" (사랑해; "saranghae") topped the monthly chart of Rakuten Music for the month of September with less than two weeks of tracking. The group also acquired the title "Half a Million Seller" as a result of the total album sales figures and earned their second platinum certification from the KMCA. The , which was released on November 6, included the B-side single "Orange" (오렌지; "olenji"), which was the group's first self-produced song by member Asahi. Treasure surpassed 710,000 sales in three months since their debut. On November 28, the group won their first Rookie of the Year at the Asia Artist Awards. Concluding "The First Step" series, Treasure released their on January 11, 2021. It marked their third number one on the Gaon Weekly Album Chart and peaked atop the Gaon Monthly Album Chart for the month of January. The series ended with over one million copies sold, making Treasure a "Million Seller".


title: Treasure (band)

text: Treasure lent their voices to the soundtrack of the TV Tokyo Japanese anime "Black Clover" for the series' 13th ending theme song. First revealed on January 5, 2021 through the anime itself, the song also served as the group's first original Japanese release. It was digitally released on music streaming platforms as multiple versions on January 22 and February 14, respectively. The full version of "Beautiful" entered the "Billboard Japan" Hot 100 chart at number 58 and the "Billboard" World Digital Song Sales chart at number 23. In commemoration of the final episode of the show, the full version of "Beautiful" was played at the request of the director of "Black Clover"'s last episode. Treasure's Japanese debut album, with their first Korean studio album, was released on March 31 with an accompanying music video for their single "Beautiful". It included the Japanese versions of all their Korean releases to date, alongside their newest single. The album debuted and consecutively charted at number one for four days on the Oricon Daily Chart and debuted atop the Oricon Weekly Album Chart with 57,000 sales in its first week. On April 2, Treasure made their Japanese television debut on the Nippon TV music program "Buzz Rhythm", where they performed the Japanese version of "Boy". On October 2, Treasure held their first "private stage", a fan meeting called Teu-day. The event took place at the Olympic Hall in Olympic Park. Due to COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions, venue tickets were limited, and cheering was prohibited in favor of stomping and clapping. Teu-day was also simultaneously broadcast online to those who purchased a ticket and was streamed in 100 countries.


title: Treasure (band)

text: YG Entertainment revealed a prelude of "The Second Step" on New Year's Day. The group's first extended play (EP), "", surpassed 600,000 copies in pre-orders by eight days time and was eventually released on February 15, 2022. The music video of its lead single, "Jikjin" (직진), acquired a ₩500 million ($420,000) investment by the band's label and accumulated 10 and 20 million views in 21 hours and under three days, respectively, on YouTube, both career highs for the group. Its view count rose five times faster than previous releases. "The Second Step: Chapter One" sold 700,000 copies in three days after its release, also a personal best. On February 24, Treasure received their first-ever music show win on the cable network program, "Show Champion" with "Jikjin". The b-side, "Darari" (), from the extended play found success on the platform TikTok as part of a challenge which reached 500 million views with over 1 million uploads. Treasure released the sophomore extended play, "" with its titular single, "Hello" on October 4.


title: Treasure (band)

text: The band's first Japanese EP, with the same title as their first Korean-language EP, was released on March 23, 2022.


title: Treasure (band)

text: On November 8, Bang Ye-dam and Mashiho were announced to depart as members of the band following their hiatus in May to pursue extended studies in music production and recuperate in health respectively.


title: Treasure (band)

text: In August 2020, the group collaborated with global creative studio Line Friends in the participation of designing new character intellectual properties (IPs). The product, later revealed to be branded as TRUZ, was presented in various forms, including messenger stickers, music sources, shots animation, character products and more. Augmented reality (AR) filters were also launched through Instagram. On April 29, 2021, TRUZ's newest doll collection sold out domestically in one minute through the official smart store, while the items were sold out in under an hour in 18 countries overseas, including those in Asia, South America and North America.


title: Treasure (band)

text: Treasure became models for the naturalist cosmetics brand Manyo Factory in January 2021. The brand achieved its highest sales through a mobile live broadcast on CJ Olive Young following the group's product recommendations to its viewers. That same year, Treasure became brand ambassadors for Ruangguru, an Indonesian educational learning platform, and models for I'mmune, an aloe immune health functional food by Univera, and its brand campaign "'Cultivating a Happy Immune Habit".


title: Treasure (band)

text: Members of Treasure participated in labelmate Sean of Jinusean's charity marathon event "Miracle 365" in July, August, October and November 2019. Awareness and funds were raised to build a rehabilitation hospital for children who require medical treatment caused by disability.


title: Treasure (band)

text: On July 5, 2020, members of Treasure participated in a volunteering program organized by YG Entertainment through Blue Angel Volunteers at an animal shelter in the Gyeonggi Province. A total of 33 YG Family staff members and labelmates contributed to the program. Volunteering activities included creating shelters, cleaning, restocking feed supply and more. That same year, in September, Treasure became advocates for children diagnosed with cancer. Through a partnership with YG Entertainment and Muju YG Foundation, the group encouraged individuals to help make a difference by donating via the Naver platform Happy Bean. On March 19, 2021, YG Entertainment announced that Treasure, alongside Muju YG Foundation and Um Hong-gil Human Foundation, participated in opening a human school support fund through Naver's Happy Bean to help the construction of schools for children and adolescents in Nepal's underprivileged areas. In addition, Muju YG Foundation donated 100 million won to the fund. In April, the group used their social media platforms to advocate for the 51st Earth Day. They voiced concerns on environmental problems, including climate change, and promoted the three action words interest, participation and consistency to better express how to tackle on these issues.


title: Treasure (band)

text: Through the band's debut press conference, they stated their main role model and influence towards their careers were their labelmate seniors under YG Entertainment through their various music releases and videos.


title: Franka Potente

text: Franka Potente (; born 22 July 1974) is a German actress. She first appeared in the comedy film "After Five in the Forest Primeval" (1995), for which she won a Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Actress. Her breakthrough came in 1998, when she portrayed the titular role in the acclaimed action thriller "Run Lola Run", for which she won a BAMBI Award for Best Actress. She received further critical acclaim and a Bavarian Television Award nomination for her performance in the television film "Opernball" (also 1998).


title: Franka Potente

text: After half a decade of well-received roles in German productions, Potente made the transition into Hollywood with her role in the biographical crime film "Blow" (2001), and achieved wider recognition for her appearances in "The Bourne Identity" (2002) and "The Bourne Supremacy" (2004). She portrayed communist revolutionary Tamara Bunke in "Che" (2008), and psychologist Anita Gregory in "The Conjuring 2" (2016). Her other notable films include "Anatomy" (2000), "The Princess and the Warrior" (2000), "Creep" (2004), "Romulus, My Father" (2007), "Eichmann" (2007), and "Muse" (2017).


title: Franka Potente

text: Potente has starred in the television series "Copper" (2012–2013), "Taboo" (2017) and currently, "Claws" and "Titans". She also played recurring roles in the second seasons of "American Horror Story" (2012) and "The Bridge" (2014).


title: Franka Potente

text: The elder of two children, Potente was born in Münster, West Germany, and raised in nearby Dülmen. Her mother, Hildegard, is a medical assistant, and her father, Dieter Potente, is a teacher. Her Italian surname stems from her great-grandfather, a Sicilian slater who migrated to Germany during the 19th century. When she was 17 years old, Potente spent a few months as an exchange student in Humble, a suburb of Houston, Texas.


title: Franka Potente

text: After finishing high school in Germany, Potente enrolled at the Otto Falckenberg School of Performing Arts in Munich. Potente took acting jobs outside school time and appeared in her first movie in the 1995 student film "Aufbruch". She was then spotted by a casting agent and appeared in the film "Nach Fünf im Urwald" ("After Five in the Forest Primeval"), directed by her then-boyfriend, Hans Christian Schmid. She played the role of a 17-year-old girl named Anna who, in search of freedom in an urban environment, runs away from home with a boy who has a crush on her. The film premiered at the 1995 Hof International Film Festival and opened in German theaters on 25 April 1996. She received the 1996 Bavarian Film Award for Young Talent for her work in this film. She subsequently finished her last year of training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan.


title: Franka Potente

text: Potente returned to Europe and worked in German and French films; her breakthrough came with 1998's "Lola rennt" ("Run Lola Run") after meeting the director, Tom Tykwer, in a café. Specifically written for her persona, her role was that of a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to save her boyfriend's life. Budgeted at US$1 million, the arthouse thriller was a critical and commercial success, grossing US$14.5 million worldwide. "Variety" wrote that her performance was "heroic, fierce, frightened and vulnerable all at once", while "eFilmCritic.com" called her casting a "smart choice". Following her newfound success, she starred opposite Teemu Aromaa in "Downhill City" (1999), a small-scale drama directed by Finnish director Hannu Salonen, and in the romantic comedy "Bin ich schön?", about people having trouble with love and identity, which was released on 17 September 1999 in Germany.


title: Franka Potente

text: In the German-language horror film "Anatomy" (2000), she starred as a medical student who wins a place at an exclusive Heidelberg medical school, where she uncovers a gruesome conspiracy by a secret Anti-Hippocratic society. The film was a box office success in Germany, grossing US$10.5 million domestically, and "Variety", in its review for the film, remarked: "Boasting a gutsy performance from sturdy young German star Franka Potente ("Run Lola Run"), "Anatomy" is creepy, sometimes gruesome, widescreen fun that pushes all the right buttons. Out-performing "Scream" at the local [box office] and the biggest German pic of the year so far, this is natural latenight/fantasy fest fare that could become a cult item on half-inch and possibly even theatrically". Also in 2000, she had the starring role in the romantic drama "The Princess and the Warrior", directed by Tykwer, her "Run Lola Run" director. In the film, she portrayed a psychiatric hospital nurse who, after a near-death experience, enters into a relationship with an anguished former soldier (Benno Fürmann, also her co-star in "Anatomy") who lapses into criminality. The independent film was favorably received by critics; "eFilmCritic" stated that Potente "proves her versatility as an actress here with a much more subdued character, but is still capable of delivering powerhouse emotional scenes", while the consensus of review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes was: "More slow-moving than "Run Lola Run", this film nonetheless offers an intriguing storyline about love and fate". She received nominations for the European Film Award and the German Film Award for Best Actress.


title: Franka Potente

text: Potente's first English-language role was that of an airline stewardess who becomes engaged to cocaine smuggler George Jung in the biographical crime film "Blow", alongside Johnny Depp. The film received mixed reviews, while it grossed US$83.2 million worldwide. She played a film editor in the controversial independent drama "Storytelling" (2001), with Leo Fitzpatrick and Selma Blair. It premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and received a limited release in most international markets. Potente next found a much wider recognition from audiences for her performance in "The Bourne Identity" (2002), co-starring Matt Damon. In the film, she played a European woman who grows closer to the titular character, a man suffering from extreme memory loss and attempting to discover his true identity amidst a clandestine conspiracy within the Central Intelligence Agency. A positive critical reception greeted the film upon its release, and budgeted at US$60 million, it grossed US$214 million globally. After her role in the film, she starred in the American films "All I Want" (2002) and "I Love Your Work" (2003), and in the German production "Blueprint" (2003).


title: Franka Potente

text: She briefly reprised her role in the German horror sequel "Anatomy 2" (2003), and also took on for the second time her part in "The Bourne Supremacy" (2004), which made US$288.5 million around the globe. In 2004, she starred in the British-German horror film "Creep", as a woman locked in the London Underground overnight who finds herself being stalked by a hideously deformed killer living in the sewers below. Despite mixed reviews, the film grossed US$3.2 million in UK cinemas. "ViewLondon" wrote: "The performances are good, particularly Potente, who avoids scream queen clichés by making her character surprisingly unlikeable – Kate is rude and arrogant in her early scenes and the fact that she's German is, of course, a coincidence."


title: Franka Potente

text: In 2006, Potente appeared in the German coming-of-age drama "Elementarteilchen" ("Atomised"), based on the novel "Les Particules élémentaires" by Michel Houellebecq and directed by Oskar Roehler. She wrote and directed "Der die Tollkirsche ausgräbt", a silent also released in 2006. She next starred with Eric Bana and Kodi Smit-McPhee in the Australian drama film "Romulus, My Father" (2007), about the struggle of a couple to raise their son amid great adversity. For her portrayal, she was nominated for an Australian Film Industry Award for Best Lead Actress. Starting in May 2007, Potente had a three-episode recurring arc in the FX drama "The Shield", where she played Diro Kesakhian, "the ruthless godmother of L.A.'s Armenian mafia". Also in 2007, she appeared in "Eichmann" (2007), a biographical film detailing the interrogation of Adolf Eichmann.


title: Franka Potente

text: In "Che" (2008), a two-part biopic about Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Potente took on the role of communist revolutionary Tamara Bunke. She described the film as "really epic and [...] very emotional", during an interview with "Vulture" magazine. The film, first screened at the Cannes Film Festival, garnered a positive critical response while it made US$40.9 million worldwide. "The New Yorker", pointing out Potente, remarked that "[m]ajor figures come and go, diverting the plot without registering much of an impact", and "The Hollywood Reporter" described her part as a "small role" and felt that the actress "seems utterly uncomfortable in every scene". In 2009, she appeared in the "House" television series two-part episode "Broken".


title: Franka Potente

text: Potente filmed the American neo-noir film "Shanghai" in Bangkok, Thailand, with production wrapping in August 2008. The film, set in the 1940s Chinese spy world, was released on 9 June 2010 in China, and on 2 October 2015 in North America. In 2011, she played the leading role of a passenger in the drama "The Sinking of the Laconia", about the Laconia incident. The two-part television film first aired in January 2011 on BBC Two.


title: Franka Potente

text: Potente starred in BBC America's first original scripted series, "Copper", as a shrewd Prussian businesswoman and the madam of a brothel, in 1860s New York City during the American Civil War. The show premiered on 9 August 2012 and had the largest debut in the network's history. It was subsequently renewed for a second season, but the BBC announced its cancellation following its finale. Potente subsequently had a two-episode appearance in "", as a woman who claims to be Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank.


title: Franka Potente

text: In 2014, Potente landed a role on the second season of the FX series "The Bridge" as Eleanor Nacht, a "fixer" for the cartel. She returned to the big screen in the horror sequel "The Conjuring 2" as real-life German-British parapsychologist Anita Gregory, who investigated the Enfield Poltergeist case in the late 20th century. "The Hollywood Reporter" found her to be "curiously sidelined for much of the action", but with a worldwide gross of US$320.3 million, it emerged as Potente's most widely seen film. Also in 2016, she obtained the two-episode role of a "calculated and determined" Chief Inspector in the second season of the Canadian supernatural series "Dark Matter", and in 2017, she was cast in a supporting role in the BBC period drama series "Taboo", alongside Tom Hardy.


title: Franka Potente

text: In 2020, she made her first feature film "Home", for which she was also responsible for the screenplay. The film premiered in October 2020.


title: Franka Potente

text: Based on Potente's correspondence with colleague Max Urlacher during his time in Los Angeles, a book entitled "Los Angeles – Berlin" was published in September 2005. In May 2009, Potente published her second book "Kick Ass – An Alternative Workout", co-written with her personal trainer Karsten Schellenberg. In August 2010 her first volume of stories "Zehn" was published.


title: Franka Potente

text: After relationships with German film director Tom Tykwer and American actor Elijah Wood, among others, Potente married American actor Derek Richardson in mid 2012, in a private ceremony. The couple live in Los Angeles, and have two daughters, born in 2011 and 2013.


title: New Age

text: New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term "New Age" themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a "milieu" or "zeitgeist".


title: New Age

text: As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-twentieth century influences such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. Its exact origins remain contested, but it became a major movement in the 1970s, at which time it was centered largely in the United Kingdom. It expanded widely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular in the United States. By the start of the 21st century, the term "New Age" was increasingly rejected within this milieu, with some scholars arguing that the New Age phenomenon had ended.


title: New Age

text: Despite its eclectic nature, the New Age has several main currents. Theologically, the New Age typically accepts a holistic form of divinity that pervades the universe, including human beings themselves, leading to a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate, particularly by channeling through a human intermediary. Typically viewing history as divided into spiritual ages, a common New Age belief is in a forgotten age of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom, declining into periods of increasing violence and spiritual degeneracy, which will now be remedied by the emergence of an Age of Aquarius, from which the milieu gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine, and an emphasis on unifying science with spirituality.


title: New Age

text: The dedication of New Agers varied considerably, from those who adopted a number of New Age ideas and practices to those who fully embraced and dedicated their lives to it. The New Age has generated criticism from Christians as well as modern Pagan and Indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by academic scholars of religious studies.


title: New Age

text: The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to its scope. The scholars Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Sælid Gilhus have even suggested that it remains "among the most disputed of categories in the study of religion".


title: New Age

text: The scholar of religion Paul Heelas characterised the New Age as "an eclectic hotch-potch of beliefs, practices, and ways of life" that can be identified as a singular phenomenon through their use of "the same (or very similar) "lingua franca" to do with the human (and planetary) condition and how it can be transformed." Similarly, the historian of religion Olav Hammer termed it "a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs" that have emerged since the late 1970s and are "largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an "air de famille"". According to Hammer, this New Age was a "fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu". The sociologist of religion Michael York described the New Age as "an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities" that are united by their "expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential."


title: New Age

text: The scholar of religion Wouter Hanegraaff adopted a different approach by asserting that "New Age" was "a "label" attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it" and that as a result it "means very different things to different people". He thus argued against the idea that the New Age could be considered "a unified ideology or "Weltanschauung"", although he believed that it could be considered a "more or less unified 'movement'." Other scholars have suggested that the New Age is too diverse to be a singular "movement". The scholar of religion George D. Chryssides called it "a counter-cultural "Zeitgeist"", while the sociologist of religion Steven Bruce suggested that New Age was a milieu; Heelas and scholar of religion Linda Woodhead called it the "holistic milieu".


title: New Age

text: There is no central authority within the New Age phenomenon that can determine what counts as New Age and what does not. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age reject the term "New Age" in reference to themselves. Some even express active hostility to the term. Rather than terming themselves "New Agers", those involved in this milieu commonly describe themselves as spiritual "seekers", and some self-identify as a member of a different religious group, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism. In 2003 Sutcliffe observed that the use of the term "New Age" was "optional, episodic and declining overall", adding that among the very few individuals who did use it, they usually did so with qualification, for instance by placing it in quotation marks. Other academics, such as Sara MacKian, have argued that the sheer diversity of the New Age renders the term too problematic for scholars to use. MacKian proposed "everyday spirituality" as an alternate term.


title: New Age

text: While acknowledging that "New Age" was a problematic term, the scholar of religion James R. Lewis stated that it remained a useful etic category for scholars to use because "There exists no comparable term which covers all aspects of the movement." Similarly, Chryssides argued that the fact that "New Age" is a "theoretical concept" does not "undermine its usefulness or employability"; he drew comparisons with "Hinduism", a similar "Western etic piece of vocabulary" that scholars of religion used despite its problems.


title: New Age

text: In discussing the New Age, academics have varyingly referred to "New Age spirituality" and "New Age religion". Those involved in the New Age rarely consider it to be "religion"—negatively associating that term solely with organized religion—and instead describe their practices as "spirituality". Religious studies scholars, however, have repeatedly referred to the New Age milieu as a "religion". York described the New Age as a new religious movement (NRM). Conversely, both Heelas and Sutcliffe rejected this categorisation; Heelas believed that while elements of the New Age represented NRMs, this did not apply to every New Age group. Similarly, Chryssides stated that the New Age could not be seen as "a religion" in itself.


title: New Age

text: The New Age is also a form of Western esotericism. Hanegraaff regarded the New Age as a form of "popular culture criticism", in that it represented a reaction against the dominant Western values of Judeo-Christian religion and rationalism, adding that "New Age religion formulates such criticism not at random, but falls back on" the ideas of earlier Western esoteric groups.


title: New Age

text: The New Age has also been identified by various scholars of religion as part of the cultic milieu. This concept, developed by the sociologist Colin Campbell, refers to a social network of marginalised ideas. Through their shared marginalisation within a given society, these disparate ideas interact and create new syntheses.


title: New Age

text: Hammer identified much of the New Age as corresponding to the concept of "folk religions" in that it seeks to deal with existential questions regarding subjects like death and disease in "an unsystematic fashion, often through a process of bricolage from already available narratives and rituals". York also heuristically divides the New Age into three broad trends. The first, the "social camp", represents groups that primarily seek to bring about social change, while the second, the "occult camp", instead focus on contact with spirit entities and channeling. York's third group, the "spiritual camp", represents a middle ground between these two camps that focuses largely on individual development.


title: New Age

text: The term "new age", along with related terms like "new era" and "new world", long predate the emergence of the New Age movement, and have widely been used to assert that a better way of life for humanity is dawning. It occurs commonly, for instance, in political contexts; the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, proclaims a "new order of ages", while in the 1980s the Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed that "all mankind is entering a new age". The term has also appeared within Western esoteric schools of thought, having a scattered use from the mid-nineteenth century onward. In 1864 the American Swedenborgian Warren Felt Evans published "The New Age and its Message", while in 1907 Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson began editing a weekly journal of Christian liberalism and socialism titled "The New Age". The concept of a coming "new age" that would be inaugurated by the return to Earth of Jesus Christ was a theme in the poetry of Wellesley Tudor Pole (1884-1968) and of Johanna Brandt (1876-1964), and then also appeared in the work of the British-born American Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949), featuring prominently in such titles as "Discipleship in the New Age" (1944) and "Education in the New Age" (1954). Carl Jung frequently wrote of the "new aeon/aion," denoting the shift from the "Platonic month" of Pisces to that of Aquarius.


title: New Age

text: Between the 1930s and 1960s a small number of groups and individuals became preoccupied with the concept of a coming "New Age" and prominently used the term accordingly. The term had thus become a recurring motif in the esoteric spirituality milieu.


title: New Age

text: Sutcliffe, therefore, expressed the view that while the term "New Age" had originally been an "apocalyptic emblem", it would only be later that it became "a tag or codeword for a 'spiritual' idiom".


title: New Age

text: According to scholar Nevill Drury, the New Age has a "tangible history", although Hanegraaff expressed the view that most New Agers were "surprisingly ignorant about the actual historical roots of their beliefs". Similarly, Hammer thought that "source amnesia" was a "building block of a New Age worldview", with New Agers typically adopting ideas with no awareness of where those ideas originated.


title: New Age

text: As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age has antecedents that stretch back to southern Europe in Late Antiquity. Following the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, new esoteric ideas developed in response to the development of scientific rationality. Scholars call this new esoteric trend "occultism", and this occultism was a key factor in the development of the worldview from which the New Age emerged.


title: New Age

text: One of the earliest influences on the New Age was the Swedish 18th century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who professed the ability to communicate with angels, demons, and spirits. Swedenborg's attempt to unite science and religion and his prediction of a coming era in particular have been cited as ways that he prefigured the New Age. Another early influence was the late 18th and early 19th century German physician and hypnotist Franz Mesmer, who claimed the existence of a force known as "animal magnetism" running through the human body. The establishment of Spiritualism, an occult religion influenced by both Swedenborgianism and Mesmerism, in the U.S. during the 1840s has also been identified as a precursor to the New Age, in particular through its rejection of established Christianity, its claims to representing a scientific approach to religion, and its emphasis on channeling spirit entities.


title: New Age

text: A further major influence on the New Age was the Theosophical Society, an occult group co-founded by the Russian Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century. In her books "Isis Unveiled" (1877) and "The Secret Doctrine" (1888), Blavatsky claimed that her Society was conveying the essence of all world religions, and it thus emphasized a focus on comparative religion. Serving as a partial bridge between Theosophical ideas and those of the New Age was the American esotericist Edgar Cayce, who founded the Association for Research and Enlightenment. Another partial bridge was the Danish mystic Martinus who is popular in Scandinavia.


title: New Age

text: Another influence was New Thought, which developed in late nineteenth century New England as a Christian-oriented healing movement before spreading throughout the United States. Another prominent influence was the psychologist Carl Jung.


title: New Age

text: Drury also identified as an important influence upon the New Age the Indian Swami Vivekananda, an adherent of the philosophy of Vedanta who first brought Hinduism to the West in the late 19th century.


title: New Age

text: Hanegraaff believed that the New Age's direct antecedents could be found in the UFO religions of the 1950s, which he termed a "proto-New Age movement". Many of these new religious movements had strong apocalyptic beliefs regarding a coming new age, which they typically asserted would be brought about by contact with extraterrestrials. Examples of such groups included the Aetherius Society, founded in the UK in 1955, and the Heralds of the New Age, established in New Zealand in 1956.


title: New Age

text: From a historical perspective, the New Age phenomenon is most associated with the counterculture of the 1960s. According to author Andrew Grant Jackson, George Harrison's adoption of Hindu philosophy and Indian instrumentation in his songs with the Beatles in the mid-1960s, together with the band's highly publicised study of Transcendental Meditation, "truly kick-started" the Human Potential Movement that subsequently became New Age. Although not common throughout the counterculture, usage of the terms "New Age" and "Age of Aquarius"—used in reference to a coming era—were found within it, for instance appearing on adverts for the Woodstock festival of 1969, and in the lyrics of "Aquarius", the opening song of the 1967 musical "Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical".


title: New Age

text: This decade also witnessed the emergence of a variety of new religious movements and newly established religions in the United States, creating a spiritual milieu from which the New Age drew upon; these included the San Francisco Zen Center, Transcendental Meditation, Soka Gakkai, the Inner Peace Movement, the Church of All Worlds, and the Church of Satan. Although there had been an established interest in Asian religious ideas in the U.S. from at least the eighteenth-century, many of these new developments were variants of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sufism, which had been imported to the West from Asia following the U.S. government's decision to rescind the Asian Exclusion Act in 1965. In 1962 the Esalen Institute was established in Big Sur, California. Esalen and similar personal growth centers had developed links to humanistic psychology, and from this, the human potential movement emerged, strongly influenced the New Age.


title: New Age

text: In Britain, a number of small religious groups that came to be identified as the "light" movement had begun declaring the existence of a coming new age, influenced strongly by the Theosophical ideas of Blavatsky and Bailey. The most prominent of these groups was the Findhorn Foundation, which founded the Findhorn Ecovillage in the Scottish area of Findhorn, Moray in 1962. Although its founders were from an older generation, Findhorn attracted increasing numbers of countercultural baby boomers during the 1960s, to the extent that its population had grown sixfold to c. 120 residents by 1972. In October 1965, the co-founder of Findhorn Foundation, Peter Caddy, a former member of the occult Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, attended a meeting of various prominent figures within Britain's esoteric milieu; advertised as "The Significance of the Group in the New Age", it was held at Attingham Park over the course of a weekend.


title: New Age

text: All of these groups created the backdrop from which the New Age movement emerged. As James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton point out, the New Age phenomenon represents "a synthesis of many different preexisting movements and strands of thought". Nevertheless, York asserted that while the New Age bore many similarities with both earlier forms of Western esotericism and Asian religion, it remained "distinct from its predecessors in its own self-consciousness as a new way of thinking".


title: New Age

text: By the early 1970s, use of the term "New Age" was increasingly common within the cultic milieu. This was because—according to Sutcliffe—the "emblem" of the "New Age" had been passed from the "subcultural pioneers" in groups like Findhorn to the wider array of "countercultural baby boomers" between c. 1967 and 1974. He noted that as this happened, the meaning of the term "New Age" changed; whereas it had once referred specifically to a coming era, at this point it came to be used in a wider sense to refer to a variety of spiritual activities and practices. In the latter part of the 1970s, the New Age expanded to cover a wide variety of alternative spiritual and religious beliefs and practices, not all of which explicitly held to the belief in the Age of Aquarius, but were nevertheless widely recognised as broadly similar in their search for "alternatives" to mainstream society. In doing so, the "New Age" became a banner under which to bring together the wider "cultic milieu" of American society.


title: New Age

text: The counterculture of the 1960s had rapidly declined by the start of the 1970s, in large part due to the collapse of the commune movement, but it would be many former members of the counter-culture and hippie subculture who subsequently became early adherents of the New Age movement.


title: New Age

text: The exact origins of the New Age movement remain an issue of debate; Melton asserted that it emerged in the early 1970s, whereas Hanegraaff instead traced its emergence to the latter 1970s, adding that it then entered its full development in the 1980s. This early form of the movement was based largely in Britain and exhibited a strong influence from Theosophy and Anthroposophy. Hanegraaff termed this early core of the movement the "New Age sensu stricto", or "New Age in the strict sense".


title: New Age

text: Hanegraaff terms the broader development the "New Age sensu lato", or "New Age in the wider sense". Stores that came to be known as "New Age shops" opened up, selling related books, magazines, jewellery, and crystals, and they were typified by the playing of New Age music and the smell of incense.This probably influenced several thousand small metaphysical book- and gift-stores that increasingly defined themselves as "New Age bookstores", while New Age titles came to be increasingly available from mainstream bookstores and then websites like Amazon.com.


title: New Age

text: Not everyone who came to be associated with the New Age phenomenon openly embraced the term "New Age", although it was popularised in books like David Spangler's 1977 work "Revelation: The Birth of a New Age" and Mark Satin's 1979 book "New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society". Marilyn Ferguson's 1982 book "The Aquarian Conspiracy" has also been regarded as a landmark work in the development of the New Age, promoting the idea that a new era was emerging. Other terms that were employed synonymously with "New Age" in this milieu included "Green", "Holistic", "Alternative", and "Spiritual".


title: New Age

text: 1971 witnessed the foundation of est by Werner H. Erhard, a transformational training course that became a prominent part of the early movement. Melton suggested that the 1970s witnessed the growth of a relationship between the New Age movement and the older New Thought movement, as evidenced by the widespread use of Helen Schucman's "A Course in Miracles" (1975), New Age music, and crystal healing in New Thought churches. Some figures in the New Thought movement were skeptical, challenging the compatibility of New Age and New Thought perspectives. During these decades, Findhorn had become a site of pilgrimage for many New Agers, and greatly expanded in size as people joined the community, with workshops and conferences being held there that brought together New Age thinkers from across the world.


title: New Age

text: Several key events occurred, which raised public awareness of the New Age subculture: publication of Linda Goodman's best-selling astrology books "Sun Signs" (1968) and "Love Signs" (1978); the release of Shirley MacLaine's book "Out on a Limb" (1983), later adapted into a television mini-series with the same name (1987); and the "Harmonic Convergence" planetary alignment on August 16 and 17, 1987, organized by José Argüelles in Sedona, Arizona. The Convergence attracted more people to the movement than any other single event. Heelas suggested that the movement was influenced by the "enterprise culture" encouraged by the U.S. and U.K. governments during the 1980s onward, with its emphasis on initiative and self-reliance resonating with any New Age ideas.


title: New Age

text: The claims of channelers Jane Roberts (Seth Material), Helen Schucman ("A Course in Miracles"), J. Z. Knight (Ramtha), Neale Donald Walsch ("Conversations with God") (note that Walsch denies being a "channeler" and his books make it obvious that he is not one, though the text emerged through a dialogue with a deeper part of himself in a process comparable to automatic writing) contributed to the movement's growth. The first significant exponent of the New Age movement in the U.S. has been cited as Ram Dass. Core works in the propagating New Age ideas included Jane Roberts's Seth series, published from 1972 onward, Helen Schucman's 1975 publication "A Course in Miracles", and James Redfield's 1993 work "The Celestine Prophecy". A variety of these books were best sellers, with the Seth book series for instance selling over a million copies. Supplementing these books were videos, audiotapes, compact discs and websites. The development of the internet in particular further popularized New Age ideas and made them more widely accessible.


title: New Age

text: New Age ideas influenced the development of rave culture in the late 1980s and 1990s. In Britain during the 1980s, the term "New Age Travellers" came into use, although York characterised this term as "a misnomer created by the media". These New Age Travellers had little to do with the New Age as the term was used more widely, with scholar of religion Daren Kemp observing that "New Age spirituality is not an essential part of New Age Traveller culture, although there are similarities between the two worldviews". The term "New Age" came to be used increasingly widely by the popular media in the 1990s.


title: New Age

text: By the late 1980s, some publishers dropped the term "New Age" as a marketing device. In 1994, the scholar of religion Gordon J. Melton presented a conference paper in which he argued that, given that he knew of nobody describing their practices as "New Age" anymore, the New Age had died. In 2001, Hammer observed that the term "New Age" had increasingly been rejected as either pejorative or meaningless by individuals within the Western cultic milieu. He also noted that within this milieu it was not being replaced by any alternative and that as such a sense of collective identity was being lost.


title: New Age

text: Other scholars disagreed with Melton's idea; in 2004 Daren Kemp stated that "New Age is still very much alive". Hammer himself stated that "the New Age "movement" may be on the wane, but the wider New Age "religiosity"... shows no sign of disappearing". MacKian suggested that the New Age "movement" had been replaced by a wider "New Age sentiment" which had come to pervade "the socio-cultural landscape" of Western countries. Its diffusion into the mainstream may have been influenced by the adoption of New Age concepts by high-profile figures: U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer, British Princess Diana visited spirit mediums, and Norwegian Princess Märtha Louise established a school devoted to communicating with angels.


title: New Age

text: In 2015, the scholar of religion Hugh Urban argued that New Age spirituality is growing in the United States and can be expected to become more visible: "According to many recent surveys of religious affiliation, the 'spiritual but not religious' category is one of the fastest-growing trends in American culture, so the New Age attitude of spiritual individualism and eclecticism may well be an increasingly visible one in the decades to come".


title: New Age

text: Australian scholar Paul J. Farrelly, in his 2017 doctoral dissertation at Australian National University, argued that, while the term New Age may become less popular in the West, it is actually booming in Taiwan, where it is regarded as something comparatively new and is being exported from Taiwan to the Mainland China, where it is more or less tolerated by the authorities.


title: New Age

text: The New Age places strong emphasis on the idea that the individual and their own experiences are the primary source of authority on spiritual matters. It exhibits what Heelas termed "unmediated individualism", and reflects a world-view that is "radically democratic". It places an emphasis on the freedom and autonomy of the individual. This emphasis has led to ethical disagreements; some New Agers believe helping others is beneficial, although another view is that doing so encourages dependency and conflicts with a reliance on the self. Nevertheless, within the New Age, there are differences in the role accorded to voices of authority outside of the self. Hammer stated that "a belief in the existence of a core or true Self" is a "recurring theme" in New Age texts. The concept of "personal growth" is also greatly emphasised among New Agers, while Heelas noted that "for participants spirituality "is" life-itself".


title: New Age

text: New Age religiosity is typified by its eclecticism. Generally believing that there is no one true way to pursue spirituality, New Agers develop their own worldview "by combining bits and pieces to form their own individual mix", seeking what Drury called "a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas". The anthropologist David J. Hess noted that in his experience, a common attitude among New Agers was that "any alternative spiritual path is good because it is spiritual and alternative". This approach that has generated a common jibe that New Age represents "supermarket spirituality". York suggested that this eclecticism stemmed from the New Age's origins within late modern capitalism, with New Agers subscribing to a belief in a free market of spiritual ideas as a parallel to a free market in economics.


title: New Age

text: As part of its eclecticism, the New Age draws ideas from many different cultural and spiritual traditions from across the world, often legitimising this approach by reference to "a very vague claim" about underlying global unity. Certain societies are more usually chosen over others; examples include the ancient Celts, ancient Egyptians, the Essenes, Atlanteans, and ancient extraterrestrials. As noted by Hammer: "to put it bluntly, no significant spokespersons within the New Age community claim to represent ancient Albanian wisdom, simply because beliefs regarding ancient Albanians are not part of our cultural stereotypes". According to Hess, these ancient or foreign societies represent an exotic "Other" for New Agers, who are predominantly white Westerners.


title: New Age

text: A belief in divinity is integral to New Age ideas, although understandings of this divinity vary. New Age theology exhibits an inclusive and universalistic approach that accepts all personal perspectives on the divine as equally valid. This intentional vagueness as to the nature of divinity also reflects the New Age idea that divinity cannot be comprehended by the human mind or language. New Age literature nevertheless displays recurring traits in its depiction of the divine: the first is the idea that it is holistic, thus frequently being described with such terms as an "Ocean of Oneness", "Infinite Spirit", "Primal Stream", "One Essence", and "Universal Principle". A second trait is the characterisation of divinity as "Mind", "Consciousness", and "Intelligence", while a third is the description of divinity as a form of "energy". A fourth trait is the characterisation of divinity as a "life force", the essence of which is creativity, while a fifth is the concept that divinity consists of love.


title: New Age

text: Most New Age groups believe in an Ultimate Source from which all things originate, which is usually conflated with the divine. Various creation myths have been articulated in New Age publications outlining how this Ultimate Source created the universe and everything in it. In contrast, some New Agers emphasize the idea of a universal inter-relatedness that is not always emanating from a single source. The New Age worldview emphasises holism and the idea that everything in existence is intricately connected as part of a single whole, in doing so rejecting both the dualism of the Christian division of matter and spirit and the reductionism of Cartesian science. A number of New Agers have linked this holistic interpretation of the universe to the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock. The idea of holistic divinity results in a common New Age belief that humans themselves are divine in essence, a concept described using such terms as "droplet of divinity", "inner Godhead", and "divine self". Influenced by Theosophical and Anthroposophical ideas regarding 'subtle bodies', a common New Age idea holds to the existence of a "Higher Self" that is a part of the human but connects with the divine essence of the universe, and which can advise the human mind through intuition.


title: New Age

text: Cosmogonical creation stories are common in New Age sources, with these accounts reflecting the movement's holistic framework by describing an original, primal oneness from which all things in the universe emanated. An additional common theme is that human souls—once living in a spiritual world—then descended into a world of matter.


title: New Age

text: The New Age movement typically views the material universe as a meaningful illusion, which humans should try to use constructively rather than focus on escaping into other spiritual realms. This physical world is hence seen as "a domain for learning and growth" after which the human soul might pass on to higher levels of existence. There is thus a widespread belief that reality is engaged in an ongoing process of evolution; rather than Darwinian evolution, this is typically seen as either a teleological evolution which assumes a process headed to a specific goal or an open-ended, creative evolution.


title: New Age

text: MacKian argued that a central, but often overlooked, element of the phenomenon was an emphasis on "spirit", and in particular participants' desire for a relationship with spirit. Many practitioners in her UK-focused study described themselves as "workers "for" spirit", expressing the desire to help people learn about spirit. They understood various material signs as marking the presence of spirit, for instance, the unexpected appearance of a feather. New Agers often call upon this spirit to assist them in everyday situations, for instance, to ease the traffic flow on their way to work.


title: New Age

text: New Age literature often refers to benevolent non-human spirit-beings who are interested in humanity's spiritual development; these are variously referred to as angels, guardian angels, personal guides, masters, teachers, and contacts. New Age angelology is nevertheless unsystematic, reflecting the idiosyncrasies of individual authors. The figure of Jesus Christ is often mentioned within New Age literature as a mediating principle between divinity and humanity, as well as an exemplar of a spiritually advanced human being.


title: New Age

text: Although not present in every New Age group, a core belief within the milieu is in channeling. This is the idea that humans beings, sometimes (although not always) in a state of trance, can act "as a channel of information from sources other than their normal selves". These sources are varyingly described as being God, gods and goddesses, ascended masters, spirit guides, extraterrestrials, angels, devas, historical figures, the collective unconscious, elementals, or nature spirits. Hanegraaff described channeling as a form of "articulated revelation", and identified four forms: trance channeling, automatisms, clairaudient channeling, and open channeling.


title: New Age

text: Prominent examples of New Age channeling include Jane Roberts' claims that she was contacted by an entity called Seth, and Helen Schucman's claims to have channeled Jesus Christ. The academic Suzanne Riordan examined a variety of these New Age channeled messages, noting that they typically "echoed each other in tone and content", offering an analysis of the human condition and giving instructions or advice for how humanity can discover its true destiny.


title: New Age

text: For many New Agers, these channeled messages rival the scriptures of the main world religions as sources of spiritual authority, although often New Agers describe historical religious revelations as forms of "channeling" as well, thus attempting to legitimate and authenticate their own contemporary practices. Although the concept of channeling from discarnate spirit entities has links to Spiritualism and psychical research, the New Age does not feature Spiritualism's emphasis on proving the existence of life after death, nor psychical research's focus of testing mediums for consistency.


title: New Age

text: New Age thought typically envisions the world as developing through cosmological cycles that can be identified astrologically. It adopts this concept from Theosophy, although often presents it in a looser and more eclectic way than is found in Theosophical teaching. New Age literature often claims that humanity once lived in an age of spiritual wisdom. In the writings of New Agers like Edgar Cayce, the ancient period of spiritual wisdom is associated with concepts of supremely-advanced societies living on lost continents such as Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu, as well as the idea that ancient societies like those of Ancient Egypt were far more technologically advanced than modern scholarship accepts. New Age literature often posits that the ancient period of spiritual wisdom gave way to an age of spiritual decline, sometimes termed the Age of Pisces. Although characterised as being a negative period for humanity, New Age literature views the Age of Pisces as an important learning experience for the species. Hanegraaff stated that New Age perceptions of history were "extremely sketchy" in their use of description, reflecting little interest in historiography and conflating history with myth. He also noted that they were highly ethnocentric in placing Western civilization at the centre of historical development.


title: New Age

text: A common belief among the New Age is that humanity has entered, or is coming to enter, a new period known as the Age of Aquarius, which Melton has characterised as a "New Age of love, joy, peace, abundance, and harmony[...] the Golden Age heretofore only dreamed about." In accepting this belief in a coming new age, the milieu has been described as "highly positive, celebratory, [and] utopian", and has also been cited as an apocalyptic movement. Opinions about the nature of the coming Age of Aquarius differ among New Agers. There are for instance differences in belief about its commencement; New Age author David Spangler claimed that it began in 1967, others placed its beginning with the Harmonic Convergence of 1987, author José Argüelles predicted its start in 2012, and some believe that it will not begin until several centuries into the third millennium.


title: New Age

text: There are also differences in how this new age is envisioned. Those adhering to what Hanegraaff termed the "moderate" perspective believed that it would be marked by an improvement to current society, which affected both New Age concerns—through the convergence of science and mysticism and the global embrace of alternative medicine—to more general concerns, including an end to violence, crime and war, a healthier environment, and international co-operation. Other New Agers adopt a fully utopian vision, believing that the world will be wholly transformed into an "Age of Light", with humans evolving into totally spiritual beings and experiencing unlimited love, bliss, and happiness. Rather than conceiving of the Age of Aquarius as an indefinite period, many believe that it would last for around two thousand years before being replaced by a further age.