this is america song analysis essay

An Expert’s Take on the Symbolism in Childish Gambino’s Viral ‘This Is America’ Video

D onald Glover released a new song and music video “This Is America” under his musical moniker Childish Gambino on Saturday Night Live this weekend — and the four-minute, single-take music video is laden with metaphors about race and gun violence in America.

The “This Is America” video, which has already racked up more than 20 million views on YouTube, reveals provocative imagery of the rapper as he guns down a choir at one point and dances while violence breaks out all around him. Childish Gambino/Glover ‘s decision to wear just a pair of gray pants without a shirt in the video, allows viewers to identify with “his humanness,” as he raps about the violent contradictions that come with being black in America, says Guthrie Ramsey, a professor of music history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Warning: Graphic violence

“The central message is about guns and violence in America and the fact that we deal with them and consume them as part of entertainment on one hand, and on the other hand, is a part of our national conversation,” Ramsey tells TIME. “You’re not supposed to feel as if this is the standard fare opulence of the music industry. It’s about a counter-narrative and it really leaves you with chills.”

Here’s Ramsay’s take on four key moments from “This Is America.”

The first gunshot

The opening moments of “This Is America” show a man strumming a guitar alone to choral sounds. Within the first minute, Gambino shoots the man, who has been tied up with a head cover. Childish Gambino hands the gun to another man, who safely wraps it in a red cloth as the obscured man is dragged away. The moment goes right into the first rapped chorus: “This is America / Don’t catch you slippin’ up.”

Ramsay says the timing — that this happens during the song’s move from choral tones to a trap sound — allows Gambino to straddle contradictions and also allows the viewer to identify with his humanness.

“He’s talking about the contradictions of trying to get money, the idea of being a black man in America,” Ramsey says. “It comes out of two different sound worlds. Part of the brilliance of the presentation is that you go from this happy major mode of choral singing that we associate with South African choral singing, and then after the first gunshot it moves right into the trap sound.”

The early moment shows, too, that Gambino “could be anyone,” according to Ramsey. “You have him almost unadorned, as if he were totally without all the accoutrements of stardom,” he says, noting that Gambino dances in neutral colored pants, dark skin and with textured hair. “It’s just him, and therefore, it could be us.”

Gambino dancing with schoolchildren amid violence

Gambino and a group of kids clad in school uniforms dance throughout much of the “This Is America” video, smiling through impeccable moves as violence erupts behind them. The moment could be open to numerous interpretations — for example, Ramsey says, the dancers could be there to distract viewers in the same way black art is used to distract people from real problems plaguing America. But, Ramsey says, it’s better to absorb the video as a whole because America itself is a country of “very strange juxtapositions.”

“Even though we think of popular culture a a space where we escape, he’s forcing us to understand that there’s actually nowhere to run,” he says. “We have to deal with the cultural violence that we have created and continue to sustain.”

The style of dancing by Gambino in the video also calls out the way we consume culture. Gambino samples at least 10 popular dance moves derived from hip hop and African moves, including the South African Gwara Gwara dance, according to Forbes . Ramsey says the use of so many famous dance moves show how ultra-popular pieces of culture lose their specificity over time as they become more ubiquitous.

“It’s really a commentary on how much violence and contradictions there are in the consuming of pop culture, particularly in the violent elements of it,” he says. “With all the conspicuous consumption that global capitalism inspires, part of what we are consuming is this appetite for violence.”

The gunned down choir

Toward the middle of the video, a choir sings enthusiastically in a happy tone before Gambino shoots them all. The massacre and its quickness recall the 2015 Charleston shooting in which white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church basement , Ramsey says. The image and what it evokes shows how people struggle to reconcile with and separate different instances of violence, according to Ramsey. As we consume violence on all sorts of platforms, be it in the news, through music videos or television shows, it becomes difficult to absorb very real instances of mass murders.

“You can’t escape the violence,” Ramsey says. “But you’re being forced to separate how you feel about it in our digitized world. The virtual violence, the real violence, it’s all confused.”

Gambino running away in the closing moments

The final moments of the video show Gambino running, terrified, down a long dark hallway away from a group of people as Young Thug sings “You just a Black man in this world / You just a barcode, ayy.” Gambino’s sprint goes back to a long tradition of black Americans having to run to save their lives, according to Ramsey, who says one song dating back to slavery in the 19th century was called “Run N— Run.”

“A black person running for his or her life has just been a part of American culture dating back to slavery,” he says.

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The “This is America” Song by Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino’s song “This is America” is a striking and insightful statement on the nation’s current status and its social and political problems. In the music video, which was released in 2018, Childish Gambino, better known as Donald Glover, raps and dances through a succession of wild events. (Glover, 2018). Gambino employs the ideas of prejudice, discrimination, and racism in “This is America” to criticize the structural problems that perpetuate oppression and inequality in the country.

From an ethical standpoint, “This is America” clearly states its position on the topics it discusses. The song’s lyrics and visual representations both denounce the prejudice and brutality that minoritized groups, especially African Americans, must endure in the United States. The media and the criminal justice system are two examples of the bigger societal systems that support these problems that are criticized in the song. The moral posture adopted in “This is America” is one of protest and struggle against the institutionalized injustice experienced by underprivileged communities.

The message’s underlying ideals are those of protest and resistance against systemic oppression. The song criticizes how America’s institutions, including the media and the criminal justice system, support injustice and violence. The message also emphasizes how African Americans themselves are victims of violence and persecution while African American culture is misused and commercialized. These ethical disagreements and ideological conflicts may have varying effects on various social groups. For Black Americans, the theme is one of resistance and unity against structural injustice. On the other hand, those in positions of authority may interpret the message as a challenge to the status quo and a demand for change. Depending on their backgrounds and standing within the larger social and political institutions that uphold injustice and inequality, many will respond to the song differently.

The lyrics of “This is America” perfectly capture the experience of Black people and how the government and police treat them differently. The famous line “This is America, police be trippin’ now,” in particular, is a reference to the pervasive problem of police brutality faced by Black people in America (Glover, 2018, 1:16). The term “trippin’” suggests that the police are acting unfairly and unreasonably, which is a common experience faced by Black Americans. The use of strong metaphors and images draws attention to the paradoxes and double standards present in American culture.

Furthermore, the music video itself, which is a visual embodiment of the lyrics, is an especially effective tool for communicating the message. Bright colors, vivid graphics, and disorderly backgrounds contrast sharply with the somber and frequently violent subjects addressed in the lyrics, heightening the impact of the message. This contrast between the lyrics and the visuals is intentional and serves to underscore the dichotomy of Black life in America. Therefore, the dancing and visuals serve as a potent instrument for bringing the song’s themes to light.

In conclusion, Childish Gambino’s song “This is America” is a potent cultural text that analyzes the structural problems that support oppression and inequality in America through the lenses of prejudice, discrimination, and racism. The frantic pace of the music video draws attention to problems, including racial prejudice, gun violence, police brutality, and the appropriation of African American culture. The song is a potent weapon for resistance and protest against structural oppression because of its unequivocal ethical stance.

Glover, Donald. 2018. Childish Gambino – This Is America (Official Video) . YouTube. Web.

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Project #1: A Rhetorical Analysis of “This is America”

I chose to do my rhetorical analysis project on the “This is America” music video by Donald Glover, or his more well known rapper alter ego, Childish Gambino. During his hosting of “Saturday Night Live,” he released the four minute, one-take music video. The video quickly accumulated millions of views totaling more than thirty million on Youtube in forty-eight hours. The video itself was filled to the brim with references to African American violence in the USA and was created to start a discussion about guns and violence in America and how it is so closely intertwined with the African American community. He released it following recent cases of shootings when tensions were high. A month prior to the release, there was a national student walkout to protest gun violence in America. He chose to use his music video to elevate the issues that society was dealing with.

The song creates a strong juxtaposition of the two main types of music that are often associated with black people in America: the close-knit South African choirs and trap music. The video starts off with the choral singing and immediately shifts to a trap style of music following the initial gunshot fired by Donald Glover, referencing the violence associated with that kind of music. The poses and the dances that the people perform in the music video reference the highly racist minstrel shows that were performed in the early 19th century as a way to mock people of African descent. Later on in the music video, an all black choir is seen performing and is shortly gunned down by Donald Glover as the song suddenly switches to a trap style once again. This sudden act of violence is a reference to the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina where a white supremacist shot and murdered nine African Americans during a prayer service at an important old African Methodist Episcopal Church. Amidst all this, there is chaos happening in the background of the video with African American students dancing along with Donald Glover in uniform. All these changes in visual and audio elements follow a cyclical pattern that likely alludes to the shift in the state of mind of the American population whenever a major incident of gun violence occurs. The nation will be in a state of anger and grief and demand that change must happen but ultimately nothing is ever achieved and the mood will once again die down and be forgotten until the next tragedy happens. The masses become outraged one second but becomes unconcerned and happy the next much like the shift in style for this song. The trap music closely associated with gun violence shifts to a happy carefree choral style in a cycle.

During the music video, Donald Glover says “this a celly. That’s a tool.” which can either be a reference to the shooting of Stephon Clark which occurred two months prior to the release of the video. Stephon Clark was an African American teenager who was shot due to the police’s claim that he had a pointed a gun at them when in reality he had only been carrying a cell phone. This line can also be stating that cell phones are important tools in documenting the unjust treatment of black people in America since the camera pans over to a bunch of black children filming the violence and chaos happening in the video on their phones. Donald Glover also says, “ Look how I’m geekin’ out. I’m so fitted. I’m on Gucci. I’m so pretty. I’m gon’ get it. Watch me move,” which alongside the odd dance moves, seems to represent how Americans are often so distracted with the black people in the entertainment industry that they neglect and often choose to ignore the violence and unfair treatment that black people experience everyday. This is also supported by the last few lines where he says “You just a black man in this world.You just a barcode, ayy. You just a black man in this world. Drivin’ expensive foreigns, ayy. You just a big dawg, yeah. I kenneled him in the backyard.” He says that black men are just barcodes which means that they’re just numbers in this society. They are “kenneled in the backyard” because Americans refuse to deal with the fucked up way black people are treated in this country. All of the unfair treatment and violence happens in their backyard but they kennel it away to not deal with it. They choose to focus on the superficial aspects of the black community and not deal with the real danger that they are put through on a day to day basis despite this country’s promise of equal rights to all and an equal right to life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness.

This music video leave s you with a feeling of uncomfortability. All the violence and sudden shifts in mood create a sense of unease much like what black people experience everyday. Their lives can go from happiness to sudden violence and tragedy and they can’t help but feel unsure of what the next day has in store for them due to the prejudice against them. There isn’t a particular audience that Donald Glover is trying to communicate to. He is showing the entire world that America is incredibly flawed. He doesn’t really rely on Logos as much since the entire video is meant to show how illogical the country is. (I suppose that is a way of showing Logos I guess? To show that something is illogical is to help divert it from that illogical route.” The use of Pathos is very apparent in the sudden violence shown. Much like what Aristotle thought of rhetoric, the violence can be used to teach the audience to not imitate these bad actions. The feeling of dread, anger, pity, and uneasiness mix together during the video. The children dancing amidst all the violence will spark a feeling of fear and dread in the viewer since it is natural for humans to care for children. It almost sparks an evolutionary parental instinct in all of us.

Donald Glover uses Ethos just for starring in the video since he is widely known for being a jack-of-all-trades. His career has spanned from comedy writing to a successful musical career to directing and starring in his own TV series. The TV series, “Atlanta” was created to be a black comedy-drama that showed the viewers the African American experience without altering it to be more relatable to non-African American people. Donald Glover weaves these artistic narratives under the guise of commercial media. The only limits he really has is to not create material that is too disturbing for public viewing since all of his work is presented on regulated platforms like FX and Youtube.

I personally believe that Donald Glover accomplished his goal with the video. He used it to spark a discussion and garner attention for the issue via an incredibly popular social media platform alongside national television. The song immediately went to the top of the charts. I have incredible respect for him as a per son and an artist and his proper use of ethos, logos, and pathos has left a grim reminder of the horrible state our society is currently in.

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‘This Is America’: A Powerful Social Commentary

Donald Glover, (aka Childish Gambino) has achieved astonishing success both as an actor and musician. This year alone he has won two Emmys, a Grammy and a feature role in Star Wars spin-off ‘Solo’. But it is his latest musical release, ‘This Is America’, which has really got people talking.

Gambino uses his platform to voice just some of the troubling social problems endured by black communities in Trump’s America. In just 4 minutes it references prevalent issues from gun violence to police brutality. Having racked up close to 150 million views on YouTube, ‘This Is America’ has proved to be a huge success, predominantly because of its power to provoke political conversation. With one video and one rap Gambino has highlighted many of the hardships within USA.

Directed by Hiro Murai, “This is America” juxtaposes both overt and subliminal political messages with huge visual impact. The video explicitly references topics such as America’s gun violence epidemic and the relentless massacring of black people. The video features the shooting of gospel singers, which is most likely a reference to the 2015 Charleston church shooting which killed nine African Americans.

What is most striking about the video is Gambino/Murai’s attention to detail.  It opens somewhat peculiarly, with Gambino’s movements awkward and unnatural. However, some have commented how the rapper’s posture resembles Jim Crow, a 19 th century stereotype constructed to justify contemporary Caucasian oppression of African Americans. Jim Crow was played a white man in blackface and dressed in rags to portray an ethnic depiction of poverty and inferiority. Gambino’s reference perhaps therefore suggests that he himself is a white man in disguise. As the only killer in the video, Gambino’s Jim Crow-style caricature could more broadly be interpreted as a comment on the racist persecution of black people.

The repetitiveness of the ‘This is America’ chorus could be a reflection […] of America’s power as a force dominating and oppressing black culture

The video also draws on different styles of dance, ranging from South Africa’s Gwara Gwara dance to BlockBoy JB’s shoot dance. By using popularised moves, the video highlights the issue of people enjoying black culture without actually acknowledging the suffering which produces it such as systematic racism and police brutality. Amidst scenes of chaos, Gambino and several schoolchildren continue dancing as if nothing has occurred.

Although this upbeat dancing seems misaligned with the explicitly dark themes, there are several different interpretations. For one, the dancing in the foreground distracts the viewer from the chaos unfolding in the background. The dancing is therefore a deflection from the brutal realities of America, and more broadly illustrates society’s tendency to selectively choose aspects of black culture. Alternatively, dance here could be a form of escapism, as the lack of interaction between the dancing and violence is an attempt to avoid what is going on and instead retain a sense of false normality. The young ages of the dancers, all dressed in school uniform, is also striking. This suggests child-like naivety or ignorance to what is unfolding around them, or rather the young age at which black children are immersed into such a hostile and brutal world.

Another political message can also be seen through the treatment of the guns. Once fired, all the guns are removed in a red cloth before the massacred bodies are taken away suggesting an emphasis on concealment. Here Gambino highlights America’s shameful moral compass, as weapons are valued over human lives. The graphic way in which they are massacred further emphasises this immorality, losing all dignity when hurriedly dragged away.

Murai juxtaposes chaos with the passivity of bystanders who are occupied on their phones. This can be read as a subliminal dig at social media. More specifically, this offers a commentary on our ability to be so distracted by social media that we cannot see what is happening in reality, and the way in which social media can desensitise us. For example, if news of terrorism and police brutality are appearing frequently on a social media feed, it is easy to become accustomed to this and desensitised to the shock of the event.

By juxtaposing the title of the song with the troubling issues explored, it is suggested that the two are deeply intertwined

Similarly, if such news is broadcast amidst pictures of friends and so on, one may not think much of what is happening. By embedding news items in these social media platforms, it normalises them to an extent. However, somewhat ironically, it is through the social media platform of YouTube that this video is accessed and its political message promoted.

The power of the visuals conveys dark themes, and clearly if you isolate the music from the video these political nuances will be missed. That said, its fundamental political message is also apparent in Gambino’s use of music. The track features backing vocals by American rappers Young Thug, Slim Jxmmi, BlocBoy, 21 Savage and Quavo, and draws on a number of musical styles. The opening creates a fairly upbeat atmosphere, using acapella singing followed by Spanish-inspired guitar playing. The lyrics ‘We just wanna party’, played over a light drum beat, further adds to the relaxed musical feel. This is abruptly shut down after the first gunshot, at which point Gambino declares ‘This is America’. Suddenly, the music becomes darker and heavier. The syncretic melodies, trap cadences, and repeated bass note creates a brooding and unsettling atmosphere. The repetitiveness of the ‘This is America’ chorus could be interpreted not only as the relentlessness of what is going on in the US, but also America’s power as a force dominating and oppressing black culture.

Whilst ‘This Is America’ seems to be have more of visual impact than a musical one, it is undeniably a track with political resonance. By juxtaposing the title of the song with the troubling issues explored, it is suggested that the two are deeply intertwined. Issues of police brutality and gun violence are presented as vital components of America’s past and current identity, offering a powerful social commentary. For Childish Gambino, as is the case for many, this is the real America.

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Art Grayson

Nuclear scientist, navy veteran, burgeoning researcher.

Childish Gambino's "this is America" is a matter of cultural importance

Most issues of sufficient meaning and importance to Black Americans begin and end in manichean form, and Gambino’s latest, “this is America,” is a prime example. From the black opening frame with its white lettered, cursive title, to the final chase scene, we are shown the major components of America brought to bear, as viewed by Gambino, and by the Black America for/to whom he speaks, are concerns of place and importance, beauty and ugliness, joy and violence, and other dichotomous pillars of the Black experience. Its prima facie is a meticulous display of perspective and symbolism. Uplifting soulful vocals and rhythms juxtapose a dingy, industrial space, as the camera moves in from the foreground toward a lone chair focused in a narrow depth of field in the middle ground, acoustic guitar atop, and Gambino barely visible as a sliver of a Black body between a white-painted girder and a white-painted pipe in the background. Toeing that fine field of focus, the barefoot guitarist enters, stage left, pacing a calm beeline to the guitar and taking a seat to play. 

A slight contrast is noted between the strength and beauty of the player, with the worn out guitar. The camera passes the guitarist, and Gambino comes into full view, popping to the beat. He spins, eyes off in the lower distance as he jerks, rolls and flexes in classic Black form, full of the weirdness and flavor of an aged granddad showin’ ya how it’s done , and all the grandeur of a proud tribal dancer performing for the Negus. The choral spirituals with the tribal melody complementing his verse during this scene follows steadily in the wake of his most recent album, “Awaken, My Love,” an album evoking Afro-futurism. His dance is a movement retracing the camera’s path from the guitarist. See his hair: a nappy, worn, and handsome growth of African descended heredity. See his gold: adorning the Black chest it stands out, two chains. His gestures quickly turn from a bold display of ferocity and virility, to a juvenile stance as he reaches the seated man, sans guitar. Head bagged, hands tied, clothes tattered and worn, the player is now a dingy part of the surrounding grey and off-white industrial space. 

Not knowing what you are about to see can amplify the effect a stimuli has upon you, and diminish your preparedness to see it. Whether a trigger warning is an sensitive or deleterious way to introduce a person into dramatic information that may arouse traumatic feelings due to experiences s/he has had in the past is a heated debate. Gun violence in a music video can be no easy thing to watch, and many who watched this video, excited to see Childish Gambino sing or dance his way further into their hearts with funny lyrics or twisted metaphors about Black awkwardness and his growing fame may’ve been starkly disappointed, even startled to see him stoically execute a bound band. Amidst a flurry of Black death, mass shootings, police brutality, and other viscous attacks on our daily lives, Gambino’s “this is America” is vital truth in reflection. It is the kind of piece that highlights the maturation of his career from Freaks and Geeks, his sophomoric debut to many as a rage-filled lyricist with a hilarity and complexity unlike anyone in the game at the time. Go back and watch “Freaks and Geeks” again ( video linked at 0:12 ), and you’ll notice the opening frame is a similar black screen with bold white letters, followed by a slowing creeping camera coming in through a large industrial space, framed by floor to ceiling poles, and Gambino pacing in from stage right. He goes on to flex and dance and jerk his way into your heart like a romantic fish hook—if you struggled to like him, you came around eventually, and if—like me—you had been wanting out of the lake of sameness in the music industry, he had you hook line and sinker. 

Gambino offers a bone chilling reflection of America, tempered with inspirational drum beats and melodies of the African diaspora, light-hearted smiles, and playful youths twirling in the midst of gritty violence. This light touch and heavy handedness is a powerful tool being pioneered and revamped by a few daring artists recently, such as Gypsy Noname, whose calming spoken word prosody is a alluring introduction to what you immediately find to be a stark and cogent account of Black beauty, Black death, and life in Chicago. “This is America” has depth and keen use of imagery and timing. It goes beyond gratuitous violence to deliver a painfully strong message: our issues are old, if not timeless, so how distracted are you willing to be? He pulls the trigger and all hell breaks loose.

Kids running wild in all directions, some hanging out the windows of a car creeping slowly by like the hyphy movement of the Yay Area, some dancing on top of cars with a young one blowing money everywhere in a direct reference to to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” ( video linked at 3:07 ), a few brandishing weapons, one bicycling, and did you even notice those fucking chickens?! The first act is bananas, yet artfully choreographed in a single take, a rare cinematic tool of a few luminary directors. Throughout the video these scenes progress in complexity as the backdrop of the motif: dated cars from the 80’s, police cruisers, bedlam, and trash can fires like many scenes straight out of NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton.”

Act two returns to the choral melodies and uplifting joy of an archetypal Black American church. The return to an upbeat African rhythm and a soulful hymn, instantly foreshadows a return to the exposition. Right on queue, in comes Gambino, popping in with a broad smile, dancing and sliding his way into our hearts—except…no. A mirthless face with a nonchalant demeanor replaces his joy as he levels the choir with a fully automatic volley. Hear the score: a crescendo of blood curdling screams, bullet fire, and tumultuous mass terror. Hear the ad libs: money, black man, whoop, don't catch you slippin up, hey!, whoa, yuh, aargh!, yea, yea, hey, hey, uh, whooh (echoed). The violence of the video is consistently contrasted with a light-hearted touch. You will find it reinforced in the background audio effects and the frivolity of the young troupe accompanying Gambino scene to scene in spite of the burning cars, abundant chaos, and a hooded horseback harbinger of the negro apocalypse.

Act two was brief, but loaded. The third act, also brief, is wide open in content and composition, much like the opening scene of act one, and again we have the uplifting choral hymn and African rhythms in the background score bringing us in. Tossing a blunt, Gambino gets down like James Brown atop the roof of a beat up red sedan. Accompanied once again by the guitarist to his right, seated in his light peach shirt and slacks like the guitarist from the opening theme of “Chappelle’s Show,” prison-hooded head bobbing, and a curiously placid female poised on the hood of a silver sedan to his front-left. The final scene opens eerily in darkness with Gambino barreling down a corridor full pelt. His wide, fear-stricken eyes stand out against the darkness as he moves into the lighted corridor, and his pursuers come into view, slightly. From first glimpse, they could be cops, the weapon-wielding teenagers from act two, or an angry mob. Is he being chased out of town? It would appear so, and by unidentifiable, plain clothes people. Is this the last we’ll hear from him, definitely not.

ATG, 5/6/2018

• Childish Gambino's "this is America" is a matter of cultural importance

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The Real Meaning Behind Childish Gambino’s “This is America”

Childish Gambino's had everyone dissecting the video for his latest single, "This Is America." Here's what we found when we looked deeper at the piece.

View this video on YouTube

During Donald Glover’s astounding guest spot on Saturday Night Live , the multi-hyphenate took to the stage as Childish Gambino to debut a new song titled “This Is America.” Glover gave a thrilling performance of the track, then unleashed the single online, as well as the official music video , which many are calling brilliant and disturbing. With a title like “This Is America,” both descriptions fit.

While the song itself is a great sonic follow-up to what Gambino put forth with 2016’s Awaken, My Love! , there’s a lot to unpack with the visuals, which, as Akilah Hughes pointed out , take place entirely in a warehouse, similar to the video for Gambino’s 2011 single “Freaks and Geeks.” Both feature Childish showing out for the camera, but instead of a one-man performance, “This Is America” brilliantly takes on a number of issues plucked directly from recent news.

Very early on, an actor by the name of Calvin The Second (who definitely resembles Trayvon Martin’s father Tracy, but is not, in fact, Tracy Martin ) strums on a guitar to the track. By the time the camera moves with Gambino back to the chair the man was sitting on, he now has a hood covering his head, and Gambino’s standing behind him, hitting a terribly familiar Jim Crow pose , before aiming a gun and shooting the man through the head. A well-dressed person in a polo shirt and slacks then brings a red cloth out so Gambino can carefully place the gun into it. This special cloth makes it clear there’s real care and consideration given to how the firearm is being handled. Meanwhile, the dead man’s body is left lying on the ground, only to be dragged off-screen, all while Gambino continues his performance, smiling and dancing like nothing has happened, as if that black body isn’t worth anywhere near as much as the instrument used to end its life. A similar moment of gun violence during a happier singing sequence happens later, after Gambino uses an assault rifle to mow down a church choir.

Those two sequences alone have a few messages buried within them. At the top is a play on how Americans view their guns. Whether it’s the NRA or anyone who grips their 9MM tightly while reciting the Second Amendment, the last thing some Americans want to lose is their right to bear arms, even though the NRA was slow to speak on the murder of Philando Castile , an African-American man who was shot to death by a cop despite alerting the officer that he had a permit for the gun in his vehicle. The guns many say they acquire to protect their lives end up being more important than the growing number of lives taken by police officers on a disturbingly-regular basis. The church choir sequence is even more tragic when you realize that it’s more than likely a reference to that horrific 2015 massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Immediately after he takes someone out, Gambino looks right into the camera and starts his verse with the phrase: “This is America.” You can’t get more direct than that.

Speaking of the turn up, there’s a lot of awesome dancing in this clip. Gambino, surrounded by a number of younger kids, hits everything from Blocboy JB ’s now-iconic shoot dance to the gwara-gwara, which hits even closer to home when you realize that the kids dancing with him appear to be dressed in the school uniforms that South African children wear. This symbolism speaks to how folks will stay scrolling timelines, searching for the perfect meme or commenting on the latest songs, consuming distractions while the world around us burns, figuratively and literally. It’s hard to tell if this is ignorance to what really matters or a coping mechanism and escapism from the fuckery of everyday life, but it’s definitely something that Gambino touches on in this video. Many are also seeing Gambino’s performance as a way to dance in the face of the oppressors.

Now, while all of this is going on in the forefront, there’s a ton of chaos erupting in the background. There are fires, people rioting, and a bunch of cars that look at least 20 or 30 years old (remember, Castile was killed in his ’97 Oldsmobile). There’s even a hooded figure riding a white horse, which could be a reference to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which anyone up on their Bible knows is a reference to the end of the world in the Book of Revelation. According to the Word, the first horse was a white one.

One of the most interesting moments in this video is when Gambino says, “This a celly / That’s a tool.” In the clip, the camera pans to a group of kids with their faces covered, appearing to be recording the insanity on their cell phones. It’s either highlighting just how powerful the cellphone has become in documenting these horrific acts of violence being brought upon us these days, or a reference to the Stephon Clark case, where police thought Clark was holding a gun or a tool and shot him to death in a backyard, only to find out he was holding his cellphone.

If that interpretation is correct that would mean that Glover wrote and recorded this song, then shot the video for it, some time after Clark’s death in late March 2018 . Glover swiftly turning around art that speaks directly to recent news isn’t unheard of, considering that Glover “leaked” that script for his now-cancelled Deadpool animated series referencing #WhoBitBeyonce during the same week we tried to figure out #WhoBitBeyonce. AKA we’re just amassing proof of how much of a creative genius Donald Glover truly is.

One of the heaviest moments is the end of the video, which finds the warehouse dark and seemingly barren, until we see Gambino running for his life from a lynch mob of what appears to be all-white faces. There are a number of schools of thought on this ending; some posit that it’s the ideals of white supremacy intruding on the life of black people. Others have likened it to a slave running through the woods at night. One has to wonder if this was Gambino’s attempt to escape The Sunken Place, which could explain why Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya introduces Childish Gambino on Saturday Night Live right before the performance of “This Is America.”

Look, Childish Gambino does a lot of insane dancing in what appears to be a one-shot onion of a video. As you peel back the layers, you get a beautifully dark portrait of the ultra violence and rage running through America, and, most importantly, residing in the minds of black Americans trying to survive this insanity. That Gambino can take these strands and weave them into a cohesive narrative over song, dance and video underscores that he is today’s foremost creative voice for our people.

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24 things you may have missed in Childish Gambino's 'This is America' music video

The music video for "This is America" capped an important weekend for Donald Glover .

Glover released the 4-minute opus under his musical alter-ego Childish Gambino, after performing the song on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." It launched a storm of conversation on social media and quickly became one of the most trending videos on YouTube .

Like much of Glover's work, "This is America" is cryptic and loaded with shocking imagery and metaphor. The track's tone swerves from happy-go-lucky psalmic readings to more alarming verses. In typical Glover fashion, he dismissed close readings of his work in an interview at the Met Gala Monday night .

"I just wanted to make a good song," Glover told E! . "Like something that people could play on Fourth of Julys."

Directed by his frequent "Atlanta" collaborator Hiro Murai and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the music video touches on gun violence, the precarious state of black bodies in the US, and how we've historically used entertainment to distract us from pervasive cultural and political problems. But the music video's iconoclastic images and many layers deserve close examination to fully parse.

Here are 24 things you may have missed.

Less than a minute in, Gambino strikes a pose and kills a guitarist with a bag over his head.

It happens just as the video drastically shifts from a cheerful to aggressive tone.

Some initially believed the guitarist was Tracy Martin, the father of slain teen Trayvon Martin. But he's actually played by Calvin Winbush , a Los Angeles-based musician and actor.

The pose resembles Jim Crow.

As noted by several people on Twitter , including "Dear White People" creator Justin Simien , the pose resembles a classic illustration of Jim Crow,  the fictional racist character that characterized African-Americans as " lazy, stupid, and inherently less human." The character was created and performed by Thomas D. Rice in the early 1800s at early minstrel shows.

Later, the term " Jim Crow"  referred to a series of racist segregation laws that emerged during the Reconstruction Era. 

The evocation may be a reflection on what just transpired: Glover dances around while a black man played guitar, entertaining the viewer, but the threat of violence against African-Americans is inextricable from that entertainment.

Or it could be a reference to Michael Jackson.

Others feel the pose evokes  Michael Jackson in his 1991 music video for "Black or White."

Another part of "This is America" also resembles "Black or White."

Near the end of the video, Glover is dancing on top of a car, and it's similar to Jackson's moves in the "Black and White" video, as well. 

Michael Jackson also dances on top of a car.

Glover has riffed on Michael Jackson before, most notably in the  "Teddy Perkins"  episode of his FX show "Atlanta."  He seems to see Jackson as a black man aggressively groomed for show business , that may have also had a violent underside .

Gambino hands his gun to someone who takes it away in a cloth, while the body he shot is dragged away.

It's representative of guns being treated with care and priority while black bodies don't get the same dignity.

That it's red is also significant.

Glover could have picked any color for the fabric. He chose red, INSIDER's Alana Yzola theorizes , because it's representative of Republican-dominated states, which she says often value guns over black lives.

He's shirtless for a reason.

Glover's exposed torso is there to remind us that he is black and vulnerable, according to Yahoo's Ken Tucker .

"Glover wants to remind us that violence is committed against black bodies like his with some regularity and with no heed to whether the body in question is that of a celebrity or an ordinary citizen," Tucker writes.

Notice the buttons on his pants?

Glover's clothing choices are also loaded with meaning. As one Twitter user suggested , Glover's pants seem inspired by a particular pair of trousers worn by Confederate soldiers . And his yellow shoes may also be a reference to canvas shoes worn by Confederate soldiers .

Glover's garments are a reminder of the historical violence inflicted upon African-Americans, and his dancing serves to highlight the ways we're continually distracted from that history.  

At around the minute mark, action begins to take off in the background.

The video shifts in tone as Glover dances past the guitarist he shot. Black men run across the warehouse-like room as people drive by in a car. The background becomes increasingly busy and frenetic as the video continues.

Someone dancing on top of a car shoots what looks like dollar bills out of a toy gun.

It could be a commentary on Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy who was shot by Cleveland police in 2014. Glover could also be drawing a connection between violence, entertainment, and profit in capitalism.

Gambino kills a black church choir, evoking the Dylann Roof shooting.

In another shocking turn, Glover mows down a church choir with an assault rifle. It's an image that seems to reference the  killing of nine people  at a predominantly African-American church by white supremacist Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

The gun is an AK-47.

Roof used a Glock pistol in his massacre, but the AK-47 — used by Glover in the video and originally created to kill masses of people in war — is a weapon of choice for mass shooters in America .

Once again, the gun is whisked away with care on a red cloth.

Even after the Roof massacre, the United States failed to pass a single law restricting gun ownership.

Glover may be sending a message about how the US prioritizes the protection of guns over the protection of black bodies. Glover moves fluidly from violent act to violent act, just as America does with mass shootings.

Two minutes in, he reveals a new tattoo.

Glover has had a tattoo that reads "Truth is a power" — a reference to the works of Kierkegaard — for a few years now. In this video, he debuts a new one above it, written in a script font, which appears to say "Love is a passion." 

Someone commits suicide in the background.

As Glover and the kids are dancing, someone leaps off the railing and apparently commits suicide. The images of smiling, dancing black children nod to the ways that black cultural production is often commodified and appropriated by white audiences. 

Throughout the video, Glover's dancing serves as a distraction from the awful things happening around him. He and the kids around him seem to be performing a variation on the Gwara Gwara, a South African dance Rihanna famously performed at the Grammys this year .

Glover seems to be saying that America uses entertainment provided by its black celebrities as a distraction from the death and violence it forces on its black citizens. It also sends a message about the ways that the lives of black Americans are often devalued in our culture. As  Vibe writer Bianca Salvant notes , "It  is relevant to ask why their bodies are worth more on a field or court than on the streets of America."

He raps "This is a celly/That's a tool."

As he raps those verses , the camera pans up to show multiple kids holding cell phones.

The line could have multiple meanings.

The next verse, "On my Kodak," referring to the film brand, could refer to how the proliferation of cellphones allows people to capture images of police violence.

It could also be a reference to the March 18 police shooting of Stephon Clark , an unarmed black man holding a cell phone.

Or it could refer to prison cells — the warehouse where the music video takes place somewhat resembles a prison — which are used as tools of oppression.

Death gallops by on a white horse.

The image appears to be a reference to verse 6:8 in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. In the King James translation , it goes like this:

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

A police car follows death on the horse, perhaps symbolizing the tacit connection between police violence and death for black Americans.  

After pretending to open fire, there are 17 seconds of silence, possibly for the victims of the Parkland shooting.

Glover poses as if he's about to kill the children who were dancing around him, but he isn't actually holding a gun.

The song comes to a halt, and Glover strikes up a joint to smoke. There are 17 seconds of silence, which some on Reddit interpret as a moment of respect for the 17 victims of the February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida .

Did you notice the screen corners?

If you look closely, you'll notice that the edges of the screen have started to curve in — timed perfectly to the point at which Glover shoots the guitarist on screen. It's a visual cue, meant to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and unease.  

At this point in the video, the corners push back once again.

This scene represents the apex of that transition. Once Glover pauses, the corners start spreading back out, and the camera begins to pan away.

Hey, it's SZA.

SZA shows up sitting on a car in the next scene wearing a dress by French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier . She also posted an image from the set on Instagram . It's not really clear why she's there, but it may hint toward a future collaboration between the pair.

Many of the cars have the driver's door open.

It could be representative of how African-Americans are often forced to pull over and step outside of their vehicles by police officers. Black drivers are asked to pull over at higher rates than white drivers, according to research from Stanford University .

All of the cars are old.

As Adrienne Gibbs notes in Forbes , all the cars in the video are models from the '80s and '90s. Not everyone can afford the new, flashy cars in most rap music videos. It may also be a commentary on the American obsession with capitalist consumption.  

The ending of the video draws comparisons to "Get Out."

The final scene of the video shows Glover running from what seems to be white riot police officers.

Some people understood it as him running from "The Sunken Place" from "Get Out," a metaphysical place that holds the black consciousness while a white mind takes over a black person's body.(When Glover performed the song on "Saturday Night Live," "Get Out" star Daniel Kaluuya introduced him.) It could be read as Glover trying to escape simply being a body to be used by white people for distraction. 

Another reading understands it as Glover as a slave running through the woods, which may hold a similar metaphorical meaning.

And some viewers read the scene as being directly connected to the pause in the video where Glover lights a joint. In the end, Glover says, police care more about black men using drugs than gun violence. And it's an especially prescient message when, according to the NAACP , "African-Americans represent 12.5% of illicit drug users, but 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated in state facilities for drug offenses."

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“This Is America”

Best New Track

By Stephen Kearse

May 7, 2018

In recent years, Childish Gambino has moved from main act to bit player in the sprawling Donald Glover portfolio. Gambino, originally a jokey rap vehicle, found mainstream success with the P-Funk pastiche of his 2016 album “Awaken, My Love!” , but that wider recognition coincided with Glover himself being increasingly praised for his skill set in full, rather than his individual talents. In his opening monologue for “SNL” this past weekend, even Glover veiled his own rapping past: “It all kinda worked out for me, I was on a show called ‘Community,’ I play Lando Calrissian in the new Star Wars movie Solo , and if you’re black, I made ‘Atlanta’ and ‘ Redbone ,’” he joked. “I’m an actor, writer, and a singer,” he summarized. It’s hard to parse the value or intent of this constant omission of rap, especially given “Atlanta”’s deft focus on the rap industry, but one thing is clear: Childish Gambino, the rapper, has become an anachronism.

“This Is America,” then, is a bit of a reset. Here, he uses the ambivalent reception of black art to represent the tightrope of being black. Built on the sharp contrast between jolly, syncretic melodies and menacing trap cadences, the song presents Childish Gambino as confident and cutting. “This is America!” he chants as the song swings between harmony and discord. Choice background vocals embellish both moods: cherubic hums and ecstatic screams for the singing sections; and manic ad-libs for the rap verses, often provided by other rappers (21 Savage, Young Thug, Quavo, Slim Jxmmi, and Blocboy JB). Glover’s voice bridges the two worlds, dropping to an austere deadpan for his rapping and ascending to a syrupy coo for his singing. “Don’t catch you slippin’ up,” Glover warns as he pulls off the balancing act with ease. In his past music, this versatility would have been a humblebrag; here it becomes conflict.

The video for “This Is America,” directed by Glover’s frequent collaborator Hiro Murai, turns this tension into satire. Bare-chested and sprightly, Glover trots through a warehouse dancing and gunning people down; seamlessly transitioning between these activities, his face is inscrutable, hidden behind a smile. The video and song use the candor of trap to ground the rapture of black joy, and thus the ambivalence of the United States’ relation to blackness. “Are we your blessing or your bane?” Glover seems to ask. It’s an urgent and worthwhile question.

The bulk of Childish Gambino’s work trafficks in iconoclasm, distinction from the rest of the rap pack; hearing him adopt such Atlantan sensibilities, backed mostly by Atlanta rappers, almost feels like revisionism. He is from Atlanta, but that connection has only recently migrated into his work and has often felt transactional, a trend that continues here. It’s hard not to wonder what he gains from this reclaiming of his hometown. “This Is America” works without such self-examination, but Glover’s stake in this conversation is noticeably absent. Glover powerfully invokes America’s testy relationship with blackness, but what about his own?

• Democracy / Propaganda

‘This Is America’: strengths and paradoxes of a critique of violence

by Luis Velasco-Pufleau · Published 01/08/2018 · Updated 30/09/2021

After it was released on 5 May 2018, the music video by Donald Glover (alias Childish Gambino ) ‘ This Is America ,’ quickly went viral. It unleashed passionate debates across both social networks and traditional media. The video generated hundreds of discussions in newspaper articles, videos and blog posts, echoing thousands of tweets, images and comments posted on several social media. Aside from some texts that analyze the political dimension of the video by putting them in the wider context of Donald Glover’s artistic career , the majority of articles and videos promise to reveal the symbolism , references , “ hidden meanings ” or “ theories ” behind ‘This Is America’. These explanations, which consist of deciphering some of the historical or perceived references in the video’s images and words, are largely based on comments posted on Twitter or in other articles across the Internet.

Childish Gambino’s exaggerated gestures and movements, his unassailable and unpredictable body, seem to be a cry of anger against the structural violence suffered by African-American citizens. The video clip is a strong criticism of gun worship in the United States, and for a few people Donald Glover’s virtuoso work renews the American tradition of protest songs . However his criticism of consumer society and the entertainment industry seems less obvious. If ‘This Is America’ was seen over two hundred million times on YouTube in three weeks, it also means tens of millions of online ads viewed by the same people and millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Paradoxically, the vast majority of articles on ‘This Is America’ are silent on Donald Glover’s activities in the entertainment industry and the political consequences of his participation in films produced by studios owned by the Walt Disney Company. The commodification of Glover’s body asks the fundamental question: to whom do our bodies belong? This post examines some of the strengths and paradoxes of ‘This Is America’, a provocative piece of art.

Aesthetic distance and multiplicity of interpretations

The richness and symbolic density of ‘This Is America’ encourage multiple interpretations, most of them with a strong political content: criticism of the violence generated by social injustice and racial discrimination ; condemnation of the cult of arms in the United States; denunciation of the shameful legacy of segregationist laws . 1 The execution of a black man, seated and with a cloth bag over his head, by a bullet in the back of his head could be seen as the denunciation of the armed violence in the United States on African-American citizens. Gambino’s gospel choir shooting could be a reference to the shootings perpetrated in the United States in a Methodist church in 2015 and in a Baptist church in 2017 . The various dances performed by Childish Gambino accompanied by black girls and boys dressed in school uniforms would aim to divert our attention away from the violence that takes place in the background, similarly mass consumerism and social networks distract us from the violence endured by our fellow citizens. Gambino’s exaggerated movements and postures could be a reference to the racialized behaviour of the character of Jim Crow, whose name was given to laws legitimizing racial segregation in the southern states of the United States from the late 19th century until the mid-1960s. The knight who crosses the back of the post-industrial scene of the video on a white horse could be one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Finally, the nightmarish chase at the end of the video could refer to the horror movie Get out .

Donald Glover refuses to provide the media with a ready-made explanation of the meaning of his work. He insists that it is the viewers who must form their own opinion and, therefore, that all aesthetic and political readings are valid. In doing this, Glover introduces what the philosopher Jacques Rancière called the ‘aesthetic distance’, a form of art effectiveness based on “the suspension of every determinate relation correlating the production of art forms and a specific social function.” 2 This assumed polysemy of the work allows its appropriation and mobilization by various actors in the political field in order to break the dominant consensus. According to Rancière, this makes it possible to create a political community where “the excluded is a conflictual actor […] carrying a right not yet recognized or witnessing an injustice in the existing state of right.” 3

Armed violence and sonic spaces

When watching ‘This Is America,’ the viewer is surprised by the abrupt changes in the attitude of Childish Gambino, the character played by Donald Glover, which precede the performance of the African American guitarist and then the members of the church choir. The contrast between Gambino’s emotions and gestures before the executions and the moments of the act is brutal. Moreover, these outbreaks of armed violence seem arbitrary and inexplicable in the context of the actions shown to us. They are all the more incomprehensible as the people executed participated in the smooth running of a collective musical action. Before they were shot to death they were part of the music.

Structurally and narratively, the moments of the performances mark the transition between lyrical sections, with voice-overs and/or the choir singing and dancing, with sections where Childish Gambino begins rapping in the first person with the phrase “This is America”. The perception we have of an acceleration of things happening in video is subtly driven by the mixing of two heterogeneous sonic spaces within the video clip. On the one hand there is the song itself: it was recorded, mixed and mastered in the studio (so the video is not a live recording of the song). On the other hand are the sounds that seem to come from the space where the video is filmed: screams, sounds of riots. The postindustrial hangar is first shown empty, then gradually fills up with people facing the police symbolized by a car, people running or dancing and even an ‘apocalyptic’ white horse.

Sonogram of ‘This Is America’: structure and narrative elements

Our attention is constantly held by the contrasts between the sections, the unpredictability of the narration and the growing presence of the hangar’s sonic space. Then suddenly, there is a 15-second break, when Childish Gambino shoots an imaginary weapon at an off-field target. We hear the sounds of people running and screaming, before he lights what appears to be a cannabis joint. Donald Glover gives us clues about this gesture in a recent interview published in The New Yorker, where he makes the link between the trauma caused by the violence suffered by African Americans and their use of cannabis, stating that the black characters of his TV series Atlanta “aren’t smoking weed all the time because it’s cool but because they have P.T.S.D .—every black person does.” 4

The politics of the black body and structural violence

The silence of the long 15-second break sets in motion a transition that leads us to another space, a nightmarish reality where Gambino is pursued by a crowd of people who probably want him dead. He runs for his life while the voice-over sings “You just a black man in this world, You just a barcode, You just a black man in this world…”

Throughout the video we are caught up in the gestures and movements of the bodies dancing in the foreground as well as the bodies moving, struggling and shouting in the background. They are black bodies that denounce through their gestures the historical violence to which they have been subjected, the null value of their lives in the face of firearms that take their existence away in a second. Childish Gambino’s body does not leave us indifferent, it seduces, surprises, frightens. He recalls the price to pay for centuries of oppression, this coming only a few days after rapper Kanye West , a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, declared that 400 years of slavery seemed to him to be a choice for those who had suffered it. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “America understands itself as God’s handiwork, but the black body is the clearest evidence that America is the work of men.” 5

On the paradoxes of ‘This is America’: to whom do our bodies belong?

Just as Donald Glover uses his body to denounce gun violence, the confusion of genres and contradictions of the entertainment industry are also manifestly embodied in his body and in the use that the Walt Disney Company can make of him. Glover asserts: “I’m scanned into ‘Star Wars’ now, my face and body.” He is aware of the consequences of Walt Disney owning the image of his body, not only for the purpose of marketing Star Wars products but also for producing other films based on his digital image. “Who’s to say that at some point they won’t take that scan and say, ‘Let’s make another movie with Donald. He’s been dead for fifteen years, but we can do whatever we want with him’.” 6 Even dead, Glover’s body can generate capital for his owners. As Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut asserted, “in late capitalism, the dead are highly productive.” 7

The contrast on how Donald Glover uses his body in this Star Wars ad and in ‘This Is America’ is striking. He embodies the paradoxes inherent in the neoliberal chaos of the United States, this ‘America’ of which he speaks. The considerable impact of ‘This Is America’ should not hide the issues raised by its commercial dimension and the appropriation of this work by the entertainment industry and web giants. Even if the mix of genres assumed by its author could be considered as a strategy of circumvention or symbolic inversion, ‘This Is America’ asks the question: to whom do our bodies belong? This question is fundamental because it is closely linked both to slavery – the power to dispose and destroy bodies – and to the consumerist enslavement produced by our neoliberal societies of control.

Cite this blog post Luis Velasco-Pufleau (2018, August 1). ‘This Is America’: strengths and paradoxes of a critique of violence. Music, Sound and Conflict . Retrieved April 13, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.58079/rnxf

• According to the recent report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America, « the United States remains a chronically segregated society. Blacks are 2.5 times more likely than Whites to be living in poverty, their infant mortality rate is 2.3 times that of Whites, their unemployment rate is more than double that for Whites, they typically earn only 82.5 cents for every dollar earned by a White counterpart, their household earnings are on average well under two thirds of those of their White equivalents, and their incarceration rates are 6.4 times higher than those of Whites. These shameful statistics can only be explained by long-standing structural discrimination on the basis of race, reflecting the enduring legacy of slavery », Philip Alston, ‘ Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States of America ’ (United Nations Human Rights Council, 4 May 2018), 14–15. [ ↩ ]
• Jacques Rancière, ‘The Paradoxes of Political Art’, in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics , trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 138. [ ↩ ]
• Jacques Rancière, ‘The Ethical Turn of Aesthetics and Politics’, in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics , trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 189. [ ↩ ]
• Tad Friend, ‘ Donald Glover Can’t Save You ’, The New Yorker , 26 February 2018. [ ↩ ]
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 12. [ ↩ ]
• Friend, ‘ Donald Glover Can’t Save You ’. [ ↩ ]
• Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut, ‘Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane’, TDR/The Drama Review 54, no. 1 (March 2010): 14. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2010.54.1.14 [ ↩ ]

Tags: democracy dissensus listening music embodiment politics Rancière slavery social justice

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 by Luis Velasco-Pufleau · Published 16/02/2020 · Last modified 21/12/2022

Music, Sound & Conflict

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A Racial Analysis of Childish Gambino's "This is America"

The choir scene does not only mean what you think it does..

Posted May 9, 2018 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Childish Gambino's This is America offers a welcome reprieve from the most recent Kanye controversy , but Donald Glover's (the artist's real name) new song and video are themselves provocative, inspiring (requiring perhaps) multiple commentaries on their meaning.

Rather than writing an analysis of the whole video, as others have done, I want to instead do a deeper dive into one small part: the scene with the choir. I do so in the hope that understanding the nuances of this scene will help us better understand the video as a whole. If you happen to be one of the few who hasn't yet seen the video, you can find it below.

Other commentators (e.g., this NPR story , this Time article , this Atlantic piece ) have generally focused on how the choir scene recalls the 2015 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. This seems likely. Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who was apparently radicalized by the shooting of Trayvon Martin and reports of so-called “black on white crime ,” killed nine black people during a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. In This is America , ten members of the choir are gunned down, not nine, but Roof actually hit ten and one survived.

Even so, the church scene is not only about what happened in Charleston. This part of the video, like the earlier portion, intended to juxtapose happy and positive aspects of African American culture (in this case the Black church) with the violence that surrounds and impacts the black community. Roof and other white supremacists may be part of this violence, but the threat is more pervasive and more insidious.

Rather than focusing on one tragic incident, I believe this scene, like the entire video, is intentionally ambiguous in order to invite a variety of different interpretations. Consider, for example, three very different interpretations, among many other possibilities.

• It is a criticism of the black church for focusing on materialism ("get your money, Black man") while the community is being ravaged.
• It is a criticism of black men (if you interpret Glover's character as a representation of black men, which I personally do not) whose violence fails to adequately discriminate between those who would do them harm and those who try to lead righteous lives, including in their own communities.
• It is a criticism of America (if you interpret Glover's character as a representation of America, as I do) for not valuing black lives, even when those lives are innocent and righteous, as represented by their participation in the church choir.

So, which of these, if any, are right? That is, which of these meanings did Glover intend to convey? It's tempting to ask this question, and then try to answer it, but I think it's the wrong question. As is always the case with ambiguous stimuli, what the viewer or reader thinks is happening has much more to do with their life experiences and beliefs than with the stimulus itself.

There is no point in asking what Glover intended the scene to mean. If he intended to present an unambiguous narrative, he would have done so. The ambiguous symbols suggest that he wanted multiple interpretations. Perhaps he wanted people to do some personal reflection on the relationship between religion and violence. Perhaps he wanted to invite dialogue. Maybe he just wanted people to watch his video over and over in order to figure it out. Either way, there is no one right answer here. The question is not what is it that Glover intended but rather what is it that the viewer takes from it.

There is, however, some context – the name of the song, the lyrics, the rest of the video – that suggests some interpretations might be more accurate and truthful than others.

This is America . That this is a commentary on the United States might seem obvious to Americans (isn't everything always about us?), but the music has South African influences and the clothing seems culturally ambiguous. The title provides important information.

Black men are the focus. The word "Black" appears as a racial signifier 28 times in the song. All but one of those times it appears as "Black men." If this seems a tad overdone, consider how common it still is for white Americans to assert that race isn't important and that we should all focus on our shared humanity, even as black men and women continue to experience disproportional access to education , health care , and justice .

Glover is America. In the church scene, just as in the earlier scenes, Glover is self-assured and brash. He kills multiple people (including the choir) and afterward continues to dance and mug for the camera, seemingly without a care in the world.

On a literal level, it is hard to make sense of this juxtaposition of violence and dance. But as I mentioned in #3 above, I think Glover's character is intended as a representation of America. As such, it is not Glover (or Black men) doing the killing. It is not even white men. Rather, it is the country itself. It is America, with its racist history and contemporary disinterest in black lives, that takes the lives of black people, even innocent, church-going black people, and continues to smile and dance as though the violence was unworthy of notice.

Yes, some of this violence takes the form of self-identified white supremacists but other violence is systemic — racially biased school discipline, racially segregated low-income housing that isolates those living in poverty, subcultures that glorify guns and value them more than people. This systemic violence can be just as deadly. I think it's part of Glover's commentary.

What does the church scene mean? To me, it is all of the following:

• It is a criticism of America for not valuing black lives, even when those lives are innocent, as represented by the church choir.
• It is a criticism of the pro-gun lobby for making guns so accessible that there is no place that black people are safe, not even a church.
• It is an observation that violence is unpredictable. A man entering a church with hardly any clothes could be looking for shelter or for God. But he could just as easily be looking for vengeance.
• It is an observation (criticism?) that Americans seem content to consume popular culture (as represented by the choir and his own dancing) while people (specifically black people) around them are getting killed.

Again, I don't assume the above is definitive. Earlier, I wrote that what the viewer or reader thinks is happening has much more to do with their life experiences and beliefs than with the stimulus itself. I am not immune from this tendency. As readers of this blog know, much of my writing and community work focus on racial justice and restorative responses to acts of injustice. Like others, I am interpreting this work of art through my own personal filter. As such, it is not the truth but rather my personal truth.

There is room for other truths.

There always is with art.

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches, studies, and writes about race relations, conflict, and restorative justice.

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Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' and the New Shape of Protest Music

In 2014, a Rolling Stone poll declared Bob Dylan’s "Masters of War" the best protest song of our time. Recorded in April of 1963, during that fierce spell of racial and economic tumult, Dylan, in his folksy pragmatism, rages against the Cold War and the military industrial complex, singing: "You play with my world/ Like it’s your little toy." Corralled by social margins during that same era, the tenor of resistance for artists like Sam Cooke ("A Change Is Gonna Come") and James Brown ("Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud") was voiced in anthems of anti-racism and self-pride. Out of the 1970 Kent State shootings—where the National Guard killed four students during a school protest—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded the stringent "Ohio."

Donald Glover ’s trap gospel "This Is America" is a piece of trickster art that soundly rebukes the natural DNA of the protest song and constructs it into a freakish chronicle of imprisoned torment. In the dozen or so times I’ve watched the 4-minute video, which was released last Saturday and has already amassed 50 million views on YouTube, I kept thinking how much it reminded me of Kara Walker’s grand Antebellum silhouettes , which juggle themes of the grotesque—torture, death, slavery—in one graceful sweep.

Working under his rap pseudonym Childish Gambino, Glover, like Walker, suggests a story of impossible escape. It’s tough work, blood-soaked and vacant redemption, but—and here’s where the artifice begins to reveal traces of brilliance—it’s playful and soul-moving to the point one only wants to keep peering into its dark interiors, waiting for the next truth to sprout.

Hiro Murai, who directed the video, is no stranger to Glover’s rhythms and deceptions, having lensed Atlanta ’s wooziest, most disorienting episodes (“Teddy Perkins,” “The Woods”). Here, he seems content to let the scene unfold simply; all the kineticism comes from Gambino, who slinks, then transforms with cartoonish ferocity. With hollow-eyed conviction and no forewarning, he shoots a black man in the head from behind in one sequence, and rifles down a 10-person choir in another. The warehouse tornadoes into chaos and smoke. "This is America," Gambino insists. "Don’t catch you slippin’ up/ Look at how I’m livin’ now/ Police be trippin’ now." The lyrics are unadorned, raw, hauntingly spiritual. Later, over a ribbon of oily vocals, he tells us: "Grandma told me/ Get your money, black man." But the ironies have run flat by then—there are no riches to be had. The jig is up.

Notice, too, how the beat is uptempo, sporadically layered with Afrobeat pulses and church hymns. Gambino and his co-producer Ludwig Goransson trick the ears; they fabricate joy and stack it against Murai’s jamboree of ruin and violence. Atlanta rap contemporaries—among them, Young Thug, Quavo, Slim Jxmmi, and 21 Savage—enter the song’s orbit through a gumbo of yelps, ayes, skrrts, and woos. Both song and video take on the impression of collage.

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"This Is America" is successful in the way all art should be: Its meaning wraps around each listener differently, a beautiful, nebulous showpiece with a thousand implications. How Gambino and Murai go about bringing those implications to the surface—turning the suffering and trauma of black people into a cinematic playhouse with no way out—and whether that makes it truly vital, is harder to sift through. (Notice that Gambino’s grim odyssey never takes him beyond the white walls of the warehouse, almost as if he’s trapped.) What "This Is America" ends up becoming is one of the most unconventional protest songs of the modern era.

The images are especially significant to Gambino's puzzle. For most people, "This Is America" was first consumed in video form—the song and footage were released simultaneously during Glover’s Saturday Night Live performance last weekend. The images, above all I believe, are what Gambino wants to resonate, to burn, to damn. The sum is one of naked invention—destruction so bare in its presentation it’s hard to know what exactly the viewer should be looking for.

There are three videos happening within Murai's scope. The first is in the foreground, where Gambino and a cluster of school kids perform choreography sewn together from across the black diaspora, invoking the Gwara Gwara with identical rigor as they do Memphis rapper Blocboy JB’s popular "Shoot" dance (which went viral thanks to a collaboration with Drake ). The second video is the background, a canvas of unblinking devastation: burning cars, falling bodies, raging crowds. A world of gun and flame. The third is both of these ecosystems working in symbiotic tandem. Together, they imply complicity on the part of its black actors—that there is plenty of fault to share in the destruction.

That very duality, even if just teased at, is precisely what makes "This Is America" such an unorthodox protest song. Whether imbued with a social or political slant, songs of resistance typically envision a clear villain or threat—a president, a war—but Gambino doesn’t just cough up one, he gives us a multitude. There are no solutions. No paths forward. Just a trove of questions.

After the antiwar soundtrack of the 1960s and ’70s, the protest song pushed forward. Under the boot of Reaganomics, incendiary rap group NWA found a target in law enforcement with 1988’s "Fuck Tha Police," followed by Public Enemy’s rallying call "Fight the Power." Years later, in 2004, Green Day would damn the Bush administration with timeless punk brava. "Well, maybe I’m the faggot, America/ I’m not a part of a redneck agenda/ Now everybody do the propaganda/ And sing along to the age of paranoia," they sang on 2004’s "American Idiot."

With Black Lives Matter ( Janelle Monae’s "Hell You Talmbout" ) and #MeToo (MILCK’s "Quiet") came resounding psalms to the opposition of the day. In 2016, YG and Nipsey Hussle’s "FDT" gave us a plain-spoken mantra—"Fuck Donald Trump"—that has yet to lose bite. Collectively, these were songs meant to check the power-drunk, the intolerant, the warmongering, the racist. Their force lay in their ability to defeat apathy, to anger, even to galvanize.

"This Is America" diverges from this lineage, insisting instead on pain: working to accept it, to get past it, but never being able to.

And in this, his ultimate trick is his most nightmarish. Throughout the video, Gambino and the school children are the lone people untouched, dancing with the history of Jim Crow alive in their feet , contorting and romping, faces plastered with sly, elastic grins. But it turns out to be a mirage—in the final flash, Gambino’s character is seen manically fleeing down a dark hall, a mob at his back. With harrowing clarity one last note boils, then pops: even when you play their game, they still turn on you. "This Is America," unlike so much protest music, ends as it began—with death, pain, blood. We never know what exactly comes of Gambino, but Young Thug’s closing lyrics bear the impact of a dagger. "You just a big dawg, yeah/I kenneled him in the backyard."

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A Discussion on Politics, Counteractions and Affections of This Is America by Childish Gambino

A few weeks ago, a one man band named Childish Gambino a.k.a. Donald Glover released his latest video of the song ​ This Is America​ on Youtube (2018). The moment the video dropped on the internet, it raised a big dust upon the discussion of representation of race in entertainment sector in the United States and black music's role in the American cultural industry. Even though the structural, institutionalised racism against the African American population in U.S. is an issue that is frequently discussed in the sphere of arts, popular culture, realpolitik and activism, This Is America approaches this issue through a specific use of aesthetics, hence, offering a visual and audible experience to the audience, rendering many discussions unearthly through creating a feeling of a strong discomfort together with a joy that actually connects to the discomfort again via guilt and bemusement. The video can be considered as the primary representation of the song's harsh and straight forward approach towards the role of black music within the cultural industry. However, the song itself constructs a similar representation via making use of sharp changes in the patterns of rhythms, lyrics and themes that creates a strong aesthetical narrative through sound on its own. Thus, both the musical and the visual components of This Is America are subject matters in this case study, aiming to demonstrate the use of critical imaginary and aesthetics in doing of a recent popular song. In the search of an aesthetics that is critical of existing power dynamics and systems of domination in the postcolonial world, popular culture itself should be considered as a medium deserving to be analysed due to its wide global reach.

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A song can manifest itself as a critical instrument in the vast socio-political atmosphere. Often times a song conceals its real meaning within layers of linguistic elements and through visual communication. Upon the release of Childish Gambino’s This is America (2018), the music video has been assumed widely assumed to contain semiotic elements that criticize the injustice politics of race in America. To dig deeper into this assertion, we use Machin’s Lyrics Analysis (2010) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar approach (2006) to analyze the illustrated semiotic elements. Both frameworks are two Multimodal Discourse Analysis approaches that explore interdisciplinary analysis in the discourse-oriented research. This article finds that Gambino does question the practice of black discrimination through gun and police violence in present America by utilizing distant words and excessive gestures in his visual communication as a diversion. They are purposefully placed to gain a prof...

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Donald Glover’s Answer to Why He Made ‘This Is America’ Is Perfect: ‘A Song for People to Play on Fourth of July’

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Donald Glover ‘s “ This Is America ” music video has inspired countless think pieces across the internet over the last several days (read Vulture’s “What It Means When Childish Gambino Says ‘This Is America,’” or NPR’s “Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America’ Holds Ugly Truths To Be Self-Evident” ), but what does the song and video actually mean in Glover’s eyes? It turns out he’s not going to give fans that answer so easily.

E! caught up with Glover on the red carpet of the 2018 Met Gala and asked the artist behind Childish Gambino what his intentions were when writing “This Is America” and filming its instant-classic music video. Glover responded with self-aware and politically-charged misdirection: “I just wanted to make, you know, a good song. Something people could play on Fourth of July.”

Glover sported a grin and refused to comment further on the song, but his answer was a potent one nonetheless. As “Dear White People” creator Justin Simien observed in his own analysis , Glover’s music video tells a history of black oppression in America (from Jim Crow to police brutality) and depicts America’s false promise of freedom. The idea of “This Is America” being an anthem for Fourth of July, a holiday celebrating America and its values, only makes the lyrics and video’s imagery more urgent.

Glover’s “This Is America” video has become a phenomenon with nearly 50 million views in its first four days.

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