This is America Analysis

The 'This Is America' music video directed by Hiro Murai for the music artist known as Childish Gambino is a video which contains a continuous cycle of a number of powerful scenes that have a large quantity of hidden information and reasoning behind them. Mainly focusing on the issues in America's society from racism to gun violence, Gambino portrays it all through his music video to show people what it's really like living and being brought up in America at these times.


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The guns and how they are presented are one of the key elements that portray the issues in America. In every single shooting from the start to the end, the guns are carefully placed in a red cloth and taken away with care whereas the person (s) are left on the floor or dragged away in the mis-en scene. The reason for this is to symbolise how America values guns over human lives. Additionally, the red cloth could symbolize how “red” (Republican) politicians in particular seem to value gun rights more than lives lost. For example whenever there is a shooting- which seems weekly in America, the government always manages to cover up the issues that guns are the problem and instead blames either the race, the age or mental issues.

There are 2 key scenes where shootings are placed with the first one being the opening scene where he shoots a man with a bag over his head and the second one shooting a Singing choir, both being out of the blue, but  also intentionally this way. After each frantic scene the artist sings "this Is America, Don't catch you slipping now" which implies that if you are singing and not doing what a stereotypical black American would be doing, then you are making yourself vulnerable and chances are you are going to be shot. However, there are many perceptions of these lyrics as it may have a number of theories of these lyrics. the lyrics- this is America highlights the fact that America is blissfully oblivious to the tragic yet obvious truth until a awful scene of violence occurs, reminding the audience what it means to be black in America at this time. Once the horrific scenes have taken place then beat then changes back to the carefree tone showing we soon forget again as if nothing had happened before hand.

In the second shift, Gambino shoots at a church choir, in direct reference to the Charleston Church shooting of 2015 where a gunman killed nine people at a historic African American church in Charleston in the US state of South Carolina. The way that the scene is shot shows the ruthlessness and insane a person has to be to do such a sin due to the lack of care that Gambino withholds while shooting the choir. 
Throughout the whole of the video racism is established as something that is always an accurance is America. Childish Gambino reflects this by his dancing, facial expressions and also the mise en scene in the background. The dancing and facial expressions that he uses are depicted from the black face entertainer known as bert William's that created extremely racist impressions of black people with black makeup and an over exaggerated dance that humourly criticised the African dances. The reason why Gambino included this within his video was due to the fact that Americans find that entertaining, it is one of the only elements of African tradition that rather than being negative, they use it as a form of entertainment as if it was only formed for them.