After studying and analysing the 'This is America' music video by Donald Glover, I picked up on the key topics of gun violence and cultural erasion of black people. The genre is conveyed in this music video through the use of genre conventions, for example, it is clear that the genre is rap/pop due to the imagery of police brutality, weapons and violence, these technical conventions of rap is used to sell the meaning behind the lyrics by using imagery.
The music video opens with light hearted music, Glover is seen wearing grey trousers and shirtless which emphasises his vulnerability and also it allows the viewer to identify with the ‘humaneness ’. This African upbeat music is broken when Glover references a pose by a historic character named Jim Crow, a fictional racist character who created a stereotype against black people in the early 1800s. This reference to Jim Crow suggests the topic of racial segregation laws in that era.
The threat of African Americans is resembled as Glover shoots this man as the music breaks to dialog saying 'This is America' for the first time. Each time this sentence is repeated throughout the song after every gun shot, it highlights the significance of gun problems in America.
We see the gun being carefully handled in a red cloth which intertextualises how the government respond to shootings against black African Americans, meanwhile, the man is dragged off frame without any care. This highlights the issue that guns are given more care and respect than the victim. As the body is dragged off in the background, us as the audience are focused on Glover in center frame. The camera angle does this to show that the viewers are more focused on what is in the spotlight rather than the real issues going on, how we are distracted from real world issues about race and African American history. As glover continues to walk on, he does not hesitate to look back at the victims.
The next important scene in this music video is the symbolism of how police deal with racist, hate, mass shootings, this is referenced to the Charleston church shooting in 2015. The gun chosen in this scene is an AK-47 which was created to kill mass people in wars, it is now a weapon of choice for mass shooters in America. After Glover shoots all the gospel singers, we see the rifle once again being carefully wrapped in red cloth resembling that guns are more important than black lives. Then we see imagery of police officers running to the black shooting victims, not the actual shooter who walks past them all. This is because Glover is trying to point out how police ignore the white shooter and immediately assume it was because of the black gospel singers.
As Glover and other black children are dancing, a man in the background supposably jumps off from the prison like balcony and commits suicide, in this moment Glover is smiling and not acknowledging this, which suggests the ways that black cultural production is appropriated by white audiences. His dancing serves as a distraction from the riots and violence happening behind him.
As the camera angle moves, we see more of the location of this music video. It is set in a empty wear-house with prison like balcony's. This is emphasised when Glover says 'This is celly not a tool' while we see imagery of black people recording videos on their phones off the balcony. This suggests how black people use social media and phones to document police violence and also using prison cells as a tool for black oppression.
We see imagery of a white horse being ridden through riots as cars are burning and violence is going on. This imagery of a white horse symbolises judgment day and the day that the world ends, Glover is pointing out that we all are distracted that we don't notice the world falling apart behind us.
Everyone disappears in fright when Glover pretends to hold a gun, this imagery symbolises how white Americans who do crazy things with guns aren't as feared as a black man holding a gun. The silence in this scene lasts for about seventeen seconds before the music continues.
The ending scene is very important. It highlights clear links of the themes and elements of imagery from the referenced film 'Get out'. We see Glover running for his life from a group of white riot police officers.
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