Project Description

CHILDISH GAMBINO

‘This is America’

(Single Review)

by Robert Farnan

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Childish Gambino

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Childish Gambino’s latest song, This is America, generated much hype, inquisition and debate surrounding its political themes and meaning.

This is America is irreducible from its video clip. I heard it on the radio and it is the wrong medium because the semiotics is as important to the song as the lyrics. This is a unified piece of art.

Let me start out by saying I do not like the song, only because it is not in, or around, my preferred genre of blues. That said, I thought the video was awesome. Hiro Murai did a great job of directing and Sherrie Silver’s choreography was superb.

At the time of this article’s publication, Gambino’s (aka Donald Glover) video was approaching 71 million views on YouTube, which is remarkable because it was published on May 5.

Glover’s fame aside, there must have been something provocative to generate such an audience so rapidly. It may also have been repeat views that padded the numbers because the video required multiple views due to the foreground and background being dichotomous.

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A quick study of other articles indicated their drawcard was the depiction of violence. Both a point of appraisal and condemnation it was a major focus of those who ‘analysed’ the song. I want to highlight something more important, the title, This is America.

The fact that it claims to depict America and assess it in four minutes is risible in itself. Glover was probably aware of this, and if you think this song could be a panacea to America’s issues, well that is absurd. If four minutes is all it takes to solve a nation’s issues, then why don’t we ask rappers to address the other issues plaguing the world? Large and complex systems boiled down to an artistic expression, why didn’t someone think of this before? The need to find meaning in what is fleeting is likely what Glover was criticising.

Much of what I have read expressed that the song condemned white supremacy, police brutality and other cultural issues in the U.S. I believe this to be a simplistic approach that manipulates this complex piece of art to a political stance that it does not overtly or subliminally take.

Does it address some cultural issues in America? Undoubtedly.

Is it didactic? Hell no.

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I come from the approach that art is what you make it, regardless of the author’s intent. So, if some people have interpreted the song as an expression of black repression and police brutality, so be it, but I disagree.

The music and video are deliberately ambiguous, neither condemning nor condoning white or black, but exposing well-known flaws in American society. An examination of the bookends of the video was instrumental to this understanding. It began with Glover, a black man, committing murder, followed by him shooting down a children’s choir and, in the final scene, he ran away from accountability, the (white) police. Was it unreasonable for the police to chase a murderer? Was that a depiction of police brutality as some have wishfully and parochially claimed?

The spectre of death rode by on a pale horse in the background, a reference to Revelations, and Hell followed with him. Hell in the video was the police (who do not actually appear), but there was no exposition of why they represented Hell and the fact death passed by so quickly could be indicative of Glover’s inability to reconcile the role of police in society. To him, a positive and a negative.

It may be that the deliberate ambiguity of the song is an indication Glover was criticising our desire to manipulate culture; to signal our virtue when all it does is reveal an ugly partisanship.

To interpret the police in the video as solely an expression of hell is simplistic and disingenuous race baiting. Police, not actually in the video until the end, arrived after the murders, which makes me wonder how some people deciphered a condemnation of police brutality. While depicted as hell, the police also represented a source of accountability in the video. This duality layered on to the already ambiguous video, reinforced the complexity of American society Glover was attempting to convey.

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Let’s break down the video.

A man playing a guitar accompanies the sound of children singing melodically about partying and money in an all but empty warehouse. The illusion was broken when Glover came into view, adopted a possibly Jim-Crow pose, and then shot the guitarist. This visual disturbance caused a shift into Glover rapping along to trap music and an assertive, fast tempo ensued. The body was dragged away, unceremoniously, the gun laid reverently on a red cloth and all hell broke loose in the background. It was as if the gunshot was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The commentary here was straightforward. The intimation that the value of guns is greater than human life was clear. Gun violence is normalised through popular culture and when these crimes do occur they are forgotten soon enough because we are distracted by the next fad in pop culture. With references to the 2015 Charleston church shooting, ubiquitous voyeurism (a scene of kids videoing the murders on their phones) and materialism, Glover’s critiques went beyond race.

Further indication of this is that Gambino was shirtless the entire clip, which stripped away spurious pop culture affectations such as materialism, promiscuity and immorality. Combined with Glover’s joyful dance troupe juxtaposed to the anarchy and symbols in the background, and it was clear the musician’s work, pop culture itself and the social media cycle are a distraction from the real issues in America.

Glover may be suggesting that a genuine conversation is difficult and while it is easy to cast aspersions, to substantiate them is difficult. Everything in the background of the video, reality, was chaotic because it had been neglected while the foreground, culture, was comfortable because it was superficial.

Glover implicated himself in this crime of negligence by being foremost in the video, having danced uncaringly after his nonchalant acts of violence. As noted earlier the violence was a drawcard for this video, so in fact, Glover made money off the very thing he decried. It would be hypocritical if not for the self-castigation littered throughout the video. Glover may have alluded to the point that if cultural figures are your role models, then your fundamental principles are flawed. Which is a good lead into the end scene.

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Glover ran away from what may be the police or white people (or both). They were deliberately obscured. The crazed expression on his face was accompanied by the change in direction, where the scene was dimly and sporadically lit, everything confused. The background chaos had caught up to the foreground joviality. The lyrics, “You just a barcode,” attacked commercialisation. Of what?

The industry? Consumers? The black man? The entertainer? The entertaining black man?

Not the police or the system, as some have suggested. Then it would be “You just a statistic.” No, the line was ambiguous, and slightly irrelevant to the most important part of the ending.

The ending recalled the title. If America was crazed and it finally caught up with Glover, how could he escape a system he profited from and propagated? The metaphor of a crazed America became a reality because Glover was both crazed and a cause of the insanity. The ending only condemned his role in the cycle, but could not offer solution.

It may be worthwhile noting Glover’s plan to retire the Childish Gambino act in the near future. He may be practising what he preaches, a rare quality among musicians and actors.

If there is a message to this video, it is that pop culture is not a replacement for conversation on, or a panacea for, complex and difficult issues. Moreover, if you really expected a cheat sheet from a four-minute rap video then check yourself into the nearest asylum you clearly escaped from. The complex issues raised in This is America cannot be resolved while we are distracted by pop culture or by casting aspersions against racial groups. If this offended you or caused great gnashing of teeth, remember, it was just a review of what was just a video.

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AMNPLIFY – DB