"This is America"

Overall music video "This is America" discusses different big issues in America therefore it is an untypical  music video because it is quite graphic and there are a couple of big statements that childish Gambino is making with mes-en-scene and lyrics. The video starts off in a large car park. The primary color is white, the whole car park is very bright white, I think that is made to show the story clearer, it's like a blank white page. 

We see a dark skinned man playing the guitar, that's when we are introduced to Childish Gambino, it's clear that he is Childish Gambino since there is a long introduction to him and later on his voice is the voice that lip syncs with the song.The first graphic scene comes on and Childish Gambino shoots the man playing the guitar. Which could be the racism in America.

The first and clearest representation we see is a group of dancing people dressed in school uniform to reference the nowadays common school shootings in America due to open and legal weapon carriage.
There is a quite long scene of Gambino and some students dancing as chaos appears around them, this could represent how government tries to cover up big issues by just ignoring them, therefor the dancing. Gambino strolls through the large parking lot and we see dark skinned church quire singing a positive song. This shows the stereotypical black churches in America where they usually sing very positive songs about God and etc.

Shortly after we see Gambino come out of the back door and shoot all of them down. This refers back to the general shootings in America but also a specific church shooting that happened in 2015 , the Charleston church shooting, where 9 people were killed due to racism. The scene is yet again quite graphic.

 

 The scene goes back to dancing and chaos. Throughout the video there are a lot of references to police and police targeting black people. 

At this point Gambino's lyrics quote 

"I'm so fitted (I'm so fitted, woo)

I'm on Gucci (I'm on Gucci)
I'm so pretty (yeah, yeah)"

It shows in depth of how most things in the politics and Hollywood are covered up in this richness, making people want to idolize actors, singers and just famous people, forcing people to ignore the real life and be jealous. 

The chaos calms down and Gambino takes out a joint. This could represent the legalization of weed in some of the states and it can also be stereotypical associated with the rap culture. Gambino then climbs an old car, throws the joint away (which I think is his personal message that you don't need to do drugs to have fun) and starts dancing as the camera zooms out. We see a lot of old American cars and an attractive black woman sitting on one of them, I personally think this is Gambino going against the stereotype of rap/ hip hop culture who love to show off expensive cars, houses and hot women.

The narrative zooms out completely into the darkness and we see Gambino running, he looks scared and distressed, he is running away from something. We then see a lot of people running behind him and I am not sure if they are running with him or after him. I think the ending is quite confusing and the only explanation I could come up with is that all of the people that are running, are running from reality, from all those problems that Gambino mentioned earlier.

Overall the song almost contains two different songs. It switches between this catchy and positive part to a very depressing/ realistic part when Gambino mainly talks. I also think Gambino could be representing America in general, because he was the one shooting people and ignoring the issues.

This piece is very unlike Childish Gambino, I think this took him a while to create and he is definitely looking at spreading a message. the music video could potentially trigger pretty much anyone and everyone, black people, white people, people who carry guns legally, the police, shootings victims and many more.This video is meant to shock you, it's meant to stay in your head and I think he succeeded in doing so.