Music video analysis

"This is America" 

Music video Analysis

 

 'This is America', a song by Childish Gambino, it was released on 5th May 2018. The music video was directed by Hiro Murai. Music video is still using by artists is because that in the video they can visualized the messages or story to the audiences. It helps to sell the celebrities and the music. ‘This is America'  suggests police brutality, gun issue, violent and racism, all these issues by using music video. In this music video Childish Gambino creates a star image as he is an ideology. He is a rapper who cares about society issues, not like other rappers who write about money, women and drugs. 

At the beginning, the music starts and we see an old man playing guitar, the camera tracks down to Gambino standing there not facing the camera. As he turn back he starts with a weird dance. The camera focusing on Gambino most of the time by tracking. The whole video looks like is one shot. When Gambino walks to the man, he takes out a gun and poses like Jim Crow.

Jim Crow (picture on the left), who is a 19th century theatre character, American white man covered in black, which is a racist depiction of African American. He shoots the man with a bag covered his head. This could be suggesting that he doesn't even understand or know the person under the bag, all he knows is that he is African American.

Start with a gun shoot sound effect, the music changes to hip hop genre, before it was chill, with guitar at the back. Gambino passes a gun to a kid. The kid takes it carefully with a red fabric in his hands. Gambino keeps dancing like nothing happened. Later on, two people dragged the dead body away, which suggests that in America the gun has given more cares than a person.

Throughout the music video, Gambino is dancing with some kids wearing school uniforms. Behind them, there are so many things going on, such as violence, suicide etc. For the first time watching, most people will be focusing on their dance, but what is important and the messages are all behind them. This is delivering the message of we normally more interested in entertainment or celebrities and not care as much to the society problems. The camera zoom out to long shot, turn to a choir. All of their facial expressions are very happy and positive. Gambino walks in, then his facial expression suddenly changes to annoyed and get out the gun and shoot all of them. This suggests that people killing for no reason just because they hate them and annoyed by them. Hate crime is a big issue due to racism in America. This also link to a case happened in 2015, state of south Carolina.

A white man about 21 years old walked into an African church during their bible learning time and opened fire with gun then killed nine people in total. After this shot, the gun was carefully pass on to another person again. When we first see the choir was in a close up shot, then the camera zoom out in order to let the audiences see the whole picture when Gambino set fire. The impact of this is to shock the audiences by seeing 10 people passed away at once. In the video, whenever Gambino finishes shooting, he would turns straight back into his dance, which suggests two things.

First is that killers don't care about killing, they can act like nothing happened even though just killed 10 people. Also means we focused within a short period, and when another thing came out we moved our focus point and forget what we were angry and sad about. The dance movements included some trending movements at that time.

In the next scene, there is a police car behind Gambino, which suggest that police is doing nothing while there are killing going on.  The camera continues tracking Gambino form close up to long shot when he dances. The camera then turn to some kids with face masks on and holding phones, shooting from low angle, feel like they are watching down. The masks and phones suggests that, we use social media to spread the problem and we record them down but we don't say anything or do anything about it. 

The camera then turn back to Gambino and kids dancing in the centre. We can see a person dressing all black on a white horse riding pass. This is representing Bible- Revelation Chapter 6.8:' And I looked, and behold, sa pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. '.  

Behind the white horse, is a police car. In blacks' eyes police cars means Hades.'. Behind the white horse is a police car, suggest that for black people, when they see police they feel scared. This relates to cases happened in 2016 and 1992. In 2016, a black man got called stop by a police, the car owner was about to tell the police that he does have guns in his car but when he took out his gun, the police shoot him seven time and got killed straight away. In 1992, there were 4 police officers acted violent to a black man and caused him passed away, Both of the cases end up with police officers getting no legal punishments. 

The camera zoom in to close up and Gambino did a fake hand sign of shooting, the kids run off. Those kids did not run off before when all the things happened at the back but they are scared when Gambino did a fake sign, which suggests that because he is black so people assume that he is about to set fire. Also, when those school kids ran away, there are 17 seconds silence in the music video which links to American school shooting happened in Florida 2018, there were at least 17 death.

The camera starts track backwards, when Gambino goes on a car, there is a man covered his head up playing guitar. This means that black culture has already spread and famous in the world but black history and the racism problem are still bot be seen. The camera tracks down backwards and fade in black. In the end we see Gambino running in the dark, with white people chasing him at the back. That is the only time we see white people in the whole video. This suggests that he feels trapped and he is trying to run away.

Another point is that the video is set in a big white warehouse, the inside looks like a jail and it is all white which delivers the message that black people are trapped in a white people's world, at least they feel like it. The costume in the music video for Gambino is very simple, he has a grey pants and two golden chains necklaces. The chains gives a hip hop vibe which links to the music genre. Those kids are wearing school uniform to suggest their age.

This music video is not only just suggesting that blacks are always the victims, it is suggesting that many crimes and violent are made out of all of us, police officers, people who just watch etc. The reason Gambino is having school kids dancing with him at the back is because, kids are naive. They are having a good childhood but they don't know what is like in the society, and dances, music are the ways they cover up their hurts, especially kids. Black cultures like music are their biggest tool to fight for and that is why Childish Gambino uses music and this video to spread the messages. The intersexuality could be movie 'Black Panther', in the movie there is a line where N'Jobu says,' All over the planet, our people suffers because they don't have the tools to fight back.'. The theme and imagery for this music video is similar to movie 'Get out', this movie is also suggesting issues such as race, gender and class in America.

Reference:

https://time.com/5267890/childish-gambino-this-is-america-meaning/

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/childish-gambino-this-is-america_n_5af05c12e4b041fd2d28d8e9?ri18n=true

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43604048

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43066226

http://www.petrieinventory.com/narratives-of-entrapment-in-this-is-america-and-get-out