This Is America

For this assignment, I chose the music video/song “This Is America” by Childish Gambino. This piece of music, as well as the video, draws attention to the gun violence towards black people in America. The video reveals provocative imagery of Donald Glover as he guns down a choir at one point and dances while violence breaks out all around him. He continues to say the lyrics “This is America” repeatedly throughout the song, making it obvious that he is portraying the inhumane but constant attacks on black people by the police force in our country. Gambino dances through several scenes as a normal person, but surrounded by guns and violence. He is working to provide an image of how as Americans, people have almost normalized the deaths of so many innocent civilians through gun violence because it has become so common. Gambino never looks sad or angry during the video, symbolizing how the United States government and police system has dealt with the overwhelming amount of deaths due to gun violence in this country; by simply sweeping them under the rug.

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