Music Video theory - blog tasks

Music Video theory - blog tasks

Childish Gambino, the musical stage name of writer and performer Donald Glover, released an incredible critique of American culture and Donald Trump with This Is America last year.

The music video is a satirical comment on American culture, racism and gun violence. Racking up 10m views in the first 24 hours, it now stands at over half a billion views and has been dubbed ‘genius’ and ‘a masterpiece’.

Create a blogpost called 'Music video: theory', watch the video again then answer the questions below:

 1) How does the This Is America video meet the key conventions of a music video?
This is America consists of many key conventions. It inhabits a performance element as it showcases lip-singing with dance moves. Throughout the song, the narrative is messaged through the singing and the dance moves. Mise-en- scene also portrays the narrative as there are different locations used with different props to show synergy with the lyrics. 
 
2) What comment is the video making on American culture, racism and gun violence?
In this video, it highlights how guns have corrupted America and increased gun violence in America due to the legislation. This is shown evidence in the music when you see innocent lives being taken away at a terrorist attack at a church. This implies that that America are not in harmony and not strict on gun violence which results to the increase in crime rates. 
 
3) Write an analysis of the video applying the theories we have learned: Gilroy, Hall, Rose and Dyson. 

Gilroy:
Gilroy is particularly interested in the idea of black diasporic identity – the feeling of never quite belonging or being accepted in western societies even to this day. Gilroy suggests that black music articulates diasporic experiences of resistance to white capitalist culture. As shown in this video, Gambino tries to raise the issue of racism, and how they have essentially have to be submissive to white people in America.

Hall:
Stuart hall talks about how the audience would often blur racism and leading people to associating with particular races with certain social classes. He also exclaims that western cultures remain dominated by white culture and that ethnic ethnic minorities are misrepresented due to underlying racist tendencies.

Rose: 
Rose recommended that hip jump at first gave gatherings of people a knowledge into the lives of youthful, dark, urban Americans and furthermore gave them a voice (counting engaging female specialists). Nonetheless, Rose has since reprimanded business hip bounce and recommends dark culture has been appropriated and abused by private enterprise. In this video, Childish Gambino is endeavouring to give the crowd a knowledge of how it resembles living in America if your dark.

Dyson:
Dyson suggests how political hip hop back in the 90s didn't gain enough commercial success as it deserved to get which eventually led to today's music which is very stereotypical as things are mainly sexualised and violent. This is very different to Dysons view as he believes "Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history and race.

Read this Guardian feature on This Is America - including the comments below.

4) What are the three interpretations suggested in the article?
He’s playing Jim Crow
He’s duping us with dance
He’s taking on the police
5) What alternative interpretations of the video are offered in the comments 'below the line'?
 
One user states, "could his message be that America is evil, racist and violent? Nah, that would be too obvious. Everyone already knows that. As with all satirical masterpieces, there must be a hidden meaning that requires ponderous artistic explanation".