Childish Gambino this is America notes

Sound:

- There is some diegetic sounds including the gunshots and the guitar

- most of the things going round in the background of the video aren't heard giving a sense of detachment

- stops for 17 seconds as tribute for Parkland. But then he starts dancing again which could be inferring people were fine to stop for 17 seconds to honour the people in a superficial easy way but then just went back to having fun

camerawork:

-Camera follows Glover through the video keeping the focus on him and not the things around him giving connotations that music videos focus on the main artist and want to keep the audiences attention away from the world around them

- Camera uses pan shots to show things to the audience such as the kids on the balcony

- Camera uses mostly a wide tracking shot so whilst the audience can still see Glover they can also see the many Easter eggs in the background

Mess an scene:

- Glover is wearing trousers which are in the same style as confederate soldiers which were the army that fought for slavery giving the connotation Glover's parody of a mainstream rap artist is on the side of keeping African-Americans in metaphorical slavery

-Glover is dancing and acting in a exaggerated way which makes him look silly because firstly it's a reference to Minstrel shows and blackface where Black people were portrayed as being idiots, sex pests, intellectually inferior ext for white people to laugh at. And Glover suggests his representations that Modern rappers act in the same way. Especially rappers and RnB who popped up in the mid 2000s and early 2010s (when the Iraq war was going on and police abuse was happening) who instead of rapping about the actual problems of the world like rappers in the 90s did like Tupac or Nas talking about poverty and police abuse for example. They instead mostly choose to make music about going to the club and having a good time or dodging the police or doing crimes (artists like 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Usher and even Jay Z at that time) this doesn't make them bad (even a lot of the 90s rappers made a lot of songs like this) it just makes it so instead of making something to help people think about it or start discourse, instead it provides escapism from the issues to distract the audience from the many issues of the world ( in the same way Glovers dancing distracts the viewer from the event in the background) which is dangerous because we don't think about how to solve these issues and these issues get worse whilst everyone is ignoring them.

And this links back to blackface because in the same way white people in the entertainment industry would want to show an exaggerated representation of black people for the rich people at the time which was untrue. Modern rappers and RnB artists do a similar thing. They give people an easy target to point at and say "this is what black people are" especially pundits on the right wing who want easy answers to why things like Black on black crime is going up. Instead of having a deep look at the whole picture which could include things like poverty, unemployment, police abuse or gun laws. They can just point at a shallow representation of African Americans and think that is the issue because it's an easy target. Glover eludes to this when after he shoots the man in the chair he give the gun to the child who cleans it with the cloth giving the connotation that the gun is protected and covered up. ( I didn't mean to write a whole two paragraphs on this but there you go 🤣)

- When the choir is shot it is a reference to the Charleston shooting when a white supremacist gunned down a church of black people trying to cite a "race war"