An Analysis of This is America by Childish Gambino

In the song “This is America” by Childish Gambino aim at racism and gun violence in the black community. It contrasts the perception of the black experience and often brutal by displaying it ironically with a happy and carefree chorus and dark. The violent way people are killed and how guns are treated in the video ties back in with the message in lyrics about racism in the United States and how the. In the music video “This is America” by Childish Gambino people are violently gunned down by Gambino. The guns after the killings are placed nicely on a cloth while the bodies are dragged away with no care. In the music video, the guns are treated better the people shot dead by Gambino. The cloth the guns are placed on is red which represents the way Republicans feel about guns over human lives. The shooting in the video represents the amount of gun violence in the United States. In the music video, there is a pause of the music for 17 seconds which are in honor of those who lost their lives to the Parkland high school shooting in Florida.

The lines “this is celly, that’s a tool” is a refence to an unarmed black man who was killed because police thought he had a on him gun, but it was his phone. There are many ties to racism in the music video for the clothing in the video. Thru out the Gambino is seen only shirtless with grey pants on which are similar those the Confederate soldiers wore. The first scene when Gambino kills someone the stance he takes seems to mimic a Jim Crow poster. Gambino’s movements and facial expressions are all overly exaggerated. This is a reference to the minstrel shows in the 18 and early 1900 where white actors would perform blackface and act out the common stereotypes of African Americans. The scene with the African American church choir is a tie to the Charleston church mass shooting in 2015 which found to be racially motivated. The shooter Dylan Roof in an article six week after the killings stated “I do not regret what I did. I am not sorry.” Gambino after shooting the choir in the video seems to walk away with no sympathy for what he did. The last scene shows Gambino running down an empty hallway trying to get free of the people chasing him.

The people are racism and Gambino is trying to escape them. One primary key to the music video is the dancing by Gambino. Gambino does many dances mostly viral, but one dance he does is a South African dance call the Gwara Gwara. This is a nod to the apartheid in South America which is very similar to . The dancing also distracts the viewer’s eye from the background which is chaos. The background includes a biblical sign of a hooded man on a white horse which is a sign of the apocalypse.