Childish Gambino – This is America Music Video Analysis

 

Childish Gambino – This is America (2018)

The video opens with a shaky cam shot moving forwards to a chair with a guitar sitting on it in the middle of an empty warehouse to create an uneasy atmosphere as the start of the shot is very reminiscent of the horror genre conventions. As we get closer a man picks up the guitar and sits on the chair and Donald (Childish Gambino) is seen standing behind a pillar facing the other way until he turns around and starts dancing towards the man with the guitar, where he pulls out a gun and shoots him in a peculiar pose. At this point the shaky cam has turned into a stable dolly shot that starts to move backwards and captures the chaos around him as he is dancing going forwards. The children behind him dancing signifies the innocence of children in America as they are unaware of the horrors around them. This theme continues for the majority of the video with the main focus being on Donald and the dancing children with chaos happening in the background such as people falling from big heights, police cars driving round and even people riding horses.

A long shot is used when Donald walks into the room of the church choir where he shoots them all dead. A panning shot is also used to get a low angle looking up on people sitting on the bars of the warehouse and as it tilts back down the main group has moved to another area farther away. Another shot used is the over the shoulder shot which shows Donald walking exaggeratedly from behind and slowly pans round to the front of him where he has a serious face until he looks at the camera and pulls a double bicep flexing pose with a surprised face which quickly turns into a smile as he starts dancing again, potentially signifying the disingenuousness of the media because his mood completely changes as soon as he realises a camera is being pointed at his face. A mid shot is used on the side of Donald which shows him holding a finger gun as everyone runs away and he sparks up a cannabis cigarette. As the outro of the song starts to play the shaky cam returns and moves backwards as it moves away from the main focus of the shot, being Donald dancing on top of a car, until it eventually goes through a doorway and tilts upwards to fade into the black of the room. The camera continues to tilt up to create a clean transition into the next shot where Donald is sprinting away at full pace into darkness with an incredibly scared look on his face which is an intertextual reference to the show “Get Out” which covers similar topics that the song of race and violence in America.

The music video has a very mysterious and unnerving feel to it as there is a lot of enigma code like imagery that is unexplained and given for the audience to uncover for themselves, as a result, when this video was released in 2018 it stirred the internet intensely as many people tried to uncover the meaning of the song and the video. The hype around it spawned lots of “mashups” and memes around the song which only boosted its popularity and influence on the population and this video has only become more relevant after the tragic killing of George Floyd sparked up the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.