‘Queen of Camcorders’: Inside Aretha Franklin’s Surprising Viral Second Life

Aretha Franklin will forever be known as the Queen of Soul, and her legendary musical achievements have earned her multiple generations of devoted fans. The late diva’s legacy is well-established, but recently, she’s also had a surprising second life that seemingly has little to do with her creative output: She’s become a fixture of internet memes.

If you’ve been on social media, you’ve probably seen the viral clip of her throwing shade at Taylor Swift (“Great gowns, beautiful gowns”) or one of the many charming images of her posing coyly with a camcorder. Franklin may have spent decades in front of the camera and possessed unparalleled stage presence, but in the ’90s and ’00s, as more and more people began digitally recording their lives, she developed an interest in taking videos and was frequently seen with a camcorder in hand. Keep reading to learn all about Franklin’s videographer era and why fans can’t get enough of it.

Aretha Franklin’s love of the camcorder, explained

Pictures of Franklin with a camcorder have been a popular meme for years now. Often used to express that one is watching internet drama unfold, like all the best memes, these pictures are perfectly expressive without saying a word.

Recently, a series of these pictures has been trending on Reddit, with a caption reading, “This is a classic, but I always love it. The Queen of Soul was put on this earth to make music, but she was never happier than when she was documenting the world around her.” The appreciative comments range from those expressing shock that the woman in photos they knew as memes was actually a musical icon to users leaving sweet comments like, “I NEED THE DOCUMENTARY OF ARETHA FRANKLIN’S FOOTAGE!!!,” “It’d be so cool to see what the world looked like through her eyes,” and “These are so cute . . . reminds me of an auntie at a family reunion. I love these!”

Franklin’s love of the camcorder has also gone viral on TikTok, with videos speculating on why she carried it so often, and linking it to her habit of carrying a purse and demanding to be paid upfront in cash due to the unfortunate reality of frequently being underpaid as a Black woman. As one TikToker mused, “What I really wanna know is why there are so many pictures of her filming things . . . the only reasoning I could come up with is if this legend didn’t trust people to pay her on time, maybe she wanted to see things through her own eyes.”

Some TikTokers have even implored Franklin’s estate to “Drop the tapes” while speculating that, due to her constant videotaping, she could have ended up with footage of newsworthy and controversial events.

People were talking about Franklin’s camera long before it became a meme. A caption on a 1995 newspaper photo of her holding her camcorder called her “The Queen of Camcorders,” and during a ’90s TV appearance shared on Franklin’s official Facebook page with the caption “Aretha was vlogging before it was cool,” she gleefully started filming her interviewers, catching them off-guard.

The legacy of Aretha Franklin’s camcorder

News of Franklin with her camera has even reached the highbrow worlds of the art magazine Frieze and The New York Times. In a 2020 Frieze article, artist Martine Syms, who often uses video to explore Black identity in her work, wrote about her fascination with the diva as documentarian, saying, “The Franklin I have fallen in love with is a woman (utterly delighted) with the movie camera . . . Aretha loved to record people. I can tell because I love to record people.”

In a 2018 episode of the New York Times culture podcast Still Processing, released shortly after Franklin passed away at 76, hosts Wesley Morris and J Wortham talked at length about the meaning of the camcorder photos. As Morris described, “She had this camcorder that she just took around with her and just used it on people. She just would video things out in the world. It’s not like she’s some anonymous person. It’s Aretha Franklin turning this device on you . . . it’s just this beautiful thing, this beautifully human thing, about this great woman who was received as being superhuman because of her extraordinary talent. I mean, not at the end of the day—but in addition to her extraordinary talent, she also was just like your aunt. She was just like your grandmother. And she was also extremely famous.”

Wortham saw Franklin’s recording as a feminist act, musing, “She had a reputation for being difficult. She had a reputation for being tough, which is also just slang for women who don’t take any BS from anybody. But the camcorder snapshots just really make her seem like she’s enjoying life, which I think is also satisfying to see, because you never really know what happens to aging singers.”

Ultimately, Morris concluded, “It’s such a personal image of a public person having a relationship with technology that seems so uncool, and it’s actually so uncool that it is cool,” while Wortham poignantly noted, “She is so happy. I mean, if you just Google ‘Aretha Franklin camcorder,’ there is no shortage of images of her having the time of her life.”

We love seeing Franklin’s joy in action, and it’s clear that the satisfaction she found in picking up a camcorder and hitting record was far more than just a meme.