Childish Gambino recently released This Is America. The
music video to the song is full of symbolism that I felt was too important not
to write about. The video is layered with imagery that contain heavy meaning and
messages. The video reflects on the social issues we’re dealing with in 2018,
Donald Glover has created what is arguably the most important music video of
our generation. Glover is addressing the horrifying truth that is the
American Reality, This Is America highlights racism and discrimination, police
brutality, social media and black culture.
The video does not waste a second, every frame is full of details
of substance that are forcing these social problems into discussion within the
media.
In the opening after Donald shoots the man from the back of
the head, he hands his gun carefully for someone waiting to take it off him,
waiting with a cloth so their skin doesn’t touch it. This is reflecting on the
idea that a gun is worth more than human life. In opposition to this, the human
body is dragged out of the shot like nothing more than a heavy bin bag. This
careful handling of guns is repeated throughout the video. Every time a
shooting takes place the gun is removed with great care, always handled with a
cloth as though it is an important religious object. Arguably you could go as far
to say that Glover is stating America worships guns, in it’s refusal to change
gun laws, America has decided that guns are more important than the lives of it’s
citizens.
The choir scene is a representation of the Charleston Mass massacre,
in which white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African American’s in South
Carolina in 2015. The shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal which is one of the oldest black churches in America. There is also 17
seconds of silence during the video, many of Childish Gambino’s fans have debated
if this is a moment of silence for the 17 innocent students whose lives were
taken from them in the Parkland shootings. I would suspect so as further point
to draw awareness to need for change in America’s gun laws. 17 seconds is a
long stretch of silence within a music video. Enough to make you stop and
wonder if the song has finished. Silence is often louder than words.
There is also historical symbolism within the video. ‘Jim
Crow’ is the most noticeable, a reference to exploiting black culture for the sake
of entertainment. The origins of Jim Crow have been lost to time, but the term is
generally recognized a derogatory character, performed by a white performer who
would put on ‘black face’ at the exploitation of freed black slaves. Mocking African
Americas and segregation for the sake of entertainment for white people. The
term Jim Crow became so popular it transformed into the Jim Crow Law’s, aka the
apartheid system. Between the late 1800s up until the 1960’s Jim Crow was a
racial caste system of anti-black laws that operated mainly (but not solely) in
the Southern states.
Once again our eyes are too distracted by the dancing to
notice the black hooded figure that rides a white horse, iconic imagery to the
book of Revelations. “I looked, and there was a pale horse, and its rider's
name was Death. Hell followed him.” It’s easy to translate the message here,
the simplicity that we’re being overwhelmed with death.
In the same scene, the
room is filled with police brutality. In recent years more and more forms of
entertainment are trying to open the eyes of its viewers to the reality of police
brutality and discrimination that black citizens receive. Racial profiling from police is also brought
into the video towards the end, when Donald is dancing on top of the car, when
the camera moves out we see there are a lot of cars around him. All with their
doors hanging open on the driver’s side, a subtle reference to innocent black
people being pulled over by police for nothing more than the colour of their
skin.
The school children recording the scenes on their phones references
the use of live streams in police shootings, Donald’s lyrics “this is a celly, that’s
a tool”. A reminder that our phones are a quick access to our ability to
document the reality around us, a way to capture and exploit the truth. Yet
this is often not the case, in a generation obsessed with social media we have
become obsessed with doing anything for online attention. The children
recording this brutality have cloths over their mouths, a metaphor to the
silence of online users who capture these moments of violence. They’re quick to
take a video for the sake of views and 10 minutes of in the spot light but they
take no action to help.
In the closing of the video, Donald is running through a darkly
lit underground room. This scene also appears to take inspiration from the sunken
place in the film ‘Get Out’. After a few seconds of Donald running, we see that
he is being chased, though the figures are out of focus we are able to make out
they are white. This quite simply shows that African American’s and black
people all over the world, still have a fear of white people. And how could
they not when so much racial hate crime has risen?
There is more imagery and symbolism I haven’t touched on or
have probably missed. But overall these are the moments that really stuck out
for me. In 2018 it’s heart breaking that we still face all of these problems
and so many more. But I believe in our generation to try and fight for change. We
have to speak out and fight for equality in every way possible, seeing Donald
Grover use his art form to create something so powerful is a huge step in
bringing these topics into discussion within the media.
Article written by Holly Beson-Tams
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