Why “This is America” Reached number 1
It seems that there isn’t anyone in entertainment that’s having a better month than Childish Gambino right now. In 2017, Time magazine included him in its list of the 100 most influential people of the year. And now we know why!
Childish Gambino is paving the way to become one of the greatest to ever do it. He succeeds in pretty much everything he does whether it’s music, acting, writing or directing. Most recently, he sparked a national conversation following the release of his latest single, “This Is America” on Saturday Night Live before releasing the video that same evening. It didn’t come as much of a surprise that it ended up launching to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. However, “This Is America” and his performance on “SNL” helped all three of his albums re-enter the Billboard 200.
The clip, directed by Niro Murai, adds more than 150 million viewings so far. ‘This is America’ has razed, not only the occasional spectator, but among great professionals in the music and film industry. As an example, there are the statements of Trent Renzor who says “I don’t remember the last time you saw a video clip until the end and left it in a loop five times in a row” or Jamie Lee Curtis, who, in addition to thanking Donald Glover for his work, label the piece as “the four minutes of mandatory viewing of the year and maybe of the decade”. The singer Erykah Badu has called him “genius”. Bernice King, has said “without words”.
But, although it may seem, it is not the cover what is truly important in this achievement, shared equally by its director and its main promoter, but its content. Party and tragedy. Dance and violence. Popular anger and tranquility generated by pop culture. Foreign traditions and cultural appropriation. A fierce critique full of symbols and poisoned darts about the current situation of the black population of the United States and about the drift that is taking place in the US reality plunged into the Trump era.
‘This is America’ starts with the musician and actor Calvin the II —whose resemblance to Trayvon Martin’s father, the 17-year-old African-American man killed by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida, is undeniably— sitting on a chair to play the guitar, surrounded by a seemingly empty room in which the white color reigns.
After a movement, the camera reveals the character of Childish Gambino, who begins to dance with peculiar movements —similar to a ritual— and grimacing as he approaches the guitarist and executes him with a shot in the neck while exhibiting a pose that refers to the Jim Crow’s racist caricature; a vaudeville character created by Thomas D. Rice in the early nineteenth century, who used to be played by white men painted black.
Later he uses a rifle to shoot at a church choir, referring to the shooting in 2015 in Charleston, a clear reference to the happened in a church in Charleston in 2015-, once fired the pistol and the assault rifle, a secondary character appears to pick it up wrapped in a red cloth. This could be interpreted as a criticism of the excessive protectionism on weapons prevailing in American society, in which the second amendment is above human rights and the security of the citizenship.
Police brutality towards young black people is also signaled, as well as the tendency of rap not to comment too much on the political and social situation of the country, focusing on singing about drugs and parties. In the final image, Gambino runs down a dark corridor, which could symbolize the persecution that black people have suffered for centuries in the US. Childish Gambino looked straight at his country and threw all the criticism he wanted to make, focusing mainly on racism and weapons violence
Other symbols are present in the video, such as the appearance of death on the back of a white horse, a reference to the Apocalypse; a group of children with their cell phones and white handkerchiefs on their faces, which refer to the use of telephones to record actions of police brutality, which in several cases ended with innocent black men killed during their arrests, including teenagers.
This is America came days after Kanye West, declared that the 400 years of slavery to which the blacks in the United States were subjected was “a choice” on their part. “You were like that for 400 years and that’s it, it’s like they were inside a mental prison,” he said. Kanye West, already turned into an uncomfortable joke after calling slavery the “choice”, has limited himself to retweeting the video, in what we understand as a sign of support. He has not said anything. Almost better.
“This is America” reflect the zeitgeist of our time: to receive information about horror, beauty, death and hope without a filter and as a torrent, through multiple channels, in high definition and hundreds of millions of colors. If something makes it clear Childish Gambino is that the massacre comes to us and mutes us when he himself takes the weapon and executes it. That is a worthy element to praise.
"This is America" reflect the zeitgeist of our time: to receive information about horror, beauty, death and hope without a filter and as a torrent, through multiple channels, in high definition and hundreds of millions of colors. If something makes it clear Childish Gambino is that the massacre comes to us and mutes us when he himself takes the weapon and executes it.
