Unseen Text - Music video


This is America - Childish Gambino 
  • Paul Gilroy- Postcolonial attitudes have constructed a racial hierarchy where White people are given more positive and important roles. For Instance, the police officers are white and in the background, there are people seen causing disturbance who are people of colour. The binary opposition paints the officers as good. 
    • This reinforced through the camera movement. When the police cars are first introduced it is a tracking mid-shot of Gambino with it being right behind him. This attracts the audience's attention. Whereas the protesters are always shown in a wide shot. 
  • The only ones being shot are black people and it is done without thought or hesitation which could an intertextual reference to how injust police brutality is. 
  •  As well as with the binary opposition of the police officers and the background characters who are protesting? the focus is more on the police officers as they have more of a grand entrance. And the protesters are almost blurred and not as focused on. We can apply Gilroy's theory of 'othering' 
  • The mise-en-scene of Childish Gambino's costume could be a reference to the dual identity that the black people struggles with. 
  • The cloth around the guns is the symbolism of how important it is in society. And how it has more value than a person. 
  • The people who are not being chased in the music are Childish Gambino and the backup dancers. there could be deeper meaning implying we as a society pick and mix how ideologies. We only like black people for entrainment purposes? this is reinforced through the performance style that Childish Gambino is performing, the moves imitate those that were performed by slaves.
  • Binary Opposition between the first and last scene. The lighting at the start of the music video is high key- lighting during which Childish Gambino's character is happy and ecstatic. This could be a visual representation of him living in a utopia world and refusing to accept what is going on around him. Its idea is to strengthen when the character smokes later, perhaps weed, which is a way of escapism. This contrasts to the ending shot when it is lowkey lighting, and he has more of a distressed facial expression, close up of him running towards to highlights his fear. This could be the point where he snaps out of the disillusion. 
  • Each time the gun is given to a child after he shots people. This reflects how gun laws in America very light and not strict. Also maybe a subtle reference to a school shooting. 

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