Happy Valentine’s Day! To start off my first post, I will discuss a topic completely unrelated to this holiday and the fluff that surrounds it.
I just watched and analyzed Childish Gambino’s This is America, and let me tell you, it blew me away. Although it was my first time seeing the visual representation of this song, there was so much that I noticed right off the bat. This song and video can be interpreted in many different ways, as every time I watched it again I noticed something new and different that the artist may have been meaning to portray. This song overall depicts the black experience in America and how it is viewed from an outsider’s, white American’s, point of view. The video contrasts black culture and how it is so complex while living in the U.S.
One thing that really stood out to me was the references to the police force and shootings taking place. I think society expects black people to continue living on as if nothing has happened when a shooting takes place. When in reality, it shakes people to their core, that these tragedies are happening in their own country. It is shocking and terrifying, and causes anger and divide. This topic was portrayed so effectively through dance. Gambino begins the video dancing, but portraying some flashes of seriousness while his body twitches and his face convulces. The lyrics in the background repeat, “Go away” as if he is telling himself to suppress his other emotions. As he continues dancing, a large smile spreads across his face, despite the fact that he occasionally pulls out a semi-automatic gun and shoots his fellow African Americans through the head. Even while shooting, he does not stop dancing or smiling, as society tells him not to stop, not to feel. He is then joined by school children who dance alongside him as chaos forms all around them. The juxtaposition of the upbeat dancing against the brutal lyrics about being strapped and everyone possessing guns, and murders taking place, shadows the juxtaposition of the culture in the U.S. surrounding these shootings. America will go up in an uproar immediately after a shooting takes place, movements start like Black Lives Matter, protests begin, people get angry, and then, all of a sudden, everything goes back to as it was. The nation is expected to smile and dance and move on just as Gambino does throughout the music video.
This is such an effective use of contrast as it captures the attention immediately of the viewer. The extreme contradiction of what is taking place makes you really think; think why Gambino is smiling as he puts a bullet through someone’s brain, think how he dances besides children as this is taking place, think how he fires a machine gun at a choir singing upbeat music and then everything goes back to normal as quickly as it happened.
And this is America.
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