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