The song is good, the lyrics are interesting but the video - the video is BRILLIANT! "This is America" from Childish Gambino is full of details that were added to the video specifically to be ignored. And the story that this video tells is only complete with your reaction to it.
It's like you, the message receiver, were also at the same time a vital piece of the message being transmitted. No compliment could ever give a dimension of the communication phenomena being displayed in these 4 minutes and 4 seconds of video. I am impressed and I'm not the only one.
Just look at this video repercussion. The 'Washington Post' is astonished. Times magazine needed to hire a specialist in Music History to get a grasp of everything happening on this production.
And by the way, Times magazine found out that this video is also about themselves. According to Communication Theory, noise is anything that distracts us from the main message. News presenters are taught to dress discreetly, so they won't distract the audience from what they're saying.
And that's why you never witnessed William Bonner (famous brazilian TV anchor) presenting the 'Jornal Nacional' wearing a sombrero, for instance. But this is just the basic, shallow understanding, that journalistic writing has about the concept of noise. To Donald Glover, it looks like what the news presenters are saying is also noise.
is also distraction from what really matters, and this guy has a very practical way to demonstrate this in this video. While he dances, we ignore all the violence happening at the background. Every dance move here helps to build a an intelligent and painful metaphor about a society unable to look into its own issues.
It's not like the TV is hiding something, you can even see the truth exposed but buried under layers and layers of distractions, noise. The audience is not trained to filter what really matters, but in this video, Donald Glover apparently is trying to teach us to do this right. This is Trayvon Martin buying some candies and Iced Tea.
After leaving the convenience store, he was killed by a nut job that considered himself the superhero of the neighborhood. George Zimmerman looked at the hooded black boy, and due to prejudice, ignorance or pure evilness thought that he was a gangster. George Zimmerman wasn't arrested, despite of Tracy Martin's efforts - the father of the boy who got murdered.
Many people thought that this guy that plays the guitar at the beginning of the video was Tracy Martin himself, but it was just an actor. Regardless, the similarity is intentional, like everything on this music video. Just a few moments after Tracy Martin's doppelganger appearance, Donald Glover kills someone, maybe Tracy Martin's doppelganger himself.
And then, he makes this expression here This is the Uncle Ruckus face. He is a black, racist towards black people. and even willing to throw them under the bus.
Shortly after the murder, the gun is retrieved by childish hands, carefully, with tenderness. This is a remark about how guns became a cult symbol in the american society. And then, Donald Glover bails, while in the back, someone hides a corpse.
Here you can take a good look at his pants. I've found one of those pants to buy. It costs U$ 74 and it's part of the garment of the Confederate States troops.
The same that divided USA in the 19th century in an effort to uphold the slave labor. The Confederate troops were represented by this flag, used till today by evil individuals who mix up hatred with ideology. And by using the confederate trousers, Donald Glover observe these black teenagers, and then starts to mimic their dance.
It might be a remark about cultural appropriation. This dance, by the way, is quite specific, we'll talk about it in a few moments. Violence returns to be the central theme when this choir shows up.
Donald Glover gets a big gun and then shoots everyone. Once again, the gun is handled fondly and respectfully The scene is strong on the fictional video but unfortunately is also rooted in reality. Here, the reference is the Charleston Church massacre.
In 2015, a white man entered here and killed 9 people. This church was known for the firm action to defend civil rights of its community. Definitely there are many other aspects of this video to be explored and decoded.
Like the Death riding a horse guiding the police car. Obviously it's not intentional, but this visual composition has the same message and the same impact of a few of Emicida's (brazilian rapper) famous lines: "Paddy Wagons - what are they? Slave ships re-trafficking' Many people have been working hard to fully decode this video.
It has been a collective effort, and half of the Internet is engaged on it. Nevertheless, it will take some time to exhaust the discussion about this artistic work here. The car choice has a meaning, SZA's cameo also has another meaning, and the choreography references to all sorts of dance styles.
Much of what we see here was taken off from the Gwara Gwara, a dance style originated from South Africa. There are a lot of things awaiting to be discovered, but, luckily for you, one of the best research works on this video was written in Portuguese. And it was made by a very mindful lady called Victoria Hope.
By the way, without the grounds of her work this video wouldn't even exist. The link for Victoria's work is in the description, along with our message congratulating what she did. Really, her analysis is way more complete than Times magazine.
It will take some time to absorb all the details of this video, but the general meaning was revealed. This is about how we get used to not see all the truths that are ugly or inconvenient. The relationship between urban violence and the most dangerous and pathetic of racism is one of these ugly truths that we choose not to see.
Interestingly, Donald's personal life also has an episode that unveils all the efforts that we make to not see the truth. A while ago, he posted this note on Instagram This note made the celeb gossip news go crazy. They said that the he would kill himself.
As time passed, Donald Glover came forward to explain that the problem never was the content of the note. The problem is the social media context. These environments in which we can edit our own life and show just the best scenes.
Publish this note was an act of bravery Oddly, this publication plays with some of the same themes of 'This is America'. In fact, the same communicational phenomena lies behind both things. Both the note and the video shock us, because they bring the truth beneath the surface If the truth shocks, this is a sign that we lost touch with it.
Thanks for watching this video till the end. I would like to take this opportunity to clear up a hoax that came up on Twitter: Leonardo, we're not in the Spotify ad. Unfortunately - because unlike Youtube, Spotify pays :D Meteoro is maintained thanks .
. . (LOL) Sorry - Meteoro is maintained thanks to a crowdfunding campaign.
Our backers listen to an exclusive podcast and they also show up here at the end of the video. Many thanks Anderson and Panthro. Bye.
