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Childish Gambino's This Is America

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“I don’t want to give it any context. I feel like that’s not my place. I feel like if I do that it doesn't feel good to me, it doesn’t feel good to anybody. I feel like whatever I make is for the people, and after watching it you can walk away with whatever you need to walk away with.” Donald Glover, (Childish Gambino), says this in an interview with Chris Van Vliet when asked if he could explain what his latest release, “This is America” is all about. Since the release of “This is America” in early May 2018, social media has been flooded with interpretations of the symbolism used by Gambino in the music video. Turning many readers into researchers trying to uncover the hidden messages. One of the most fascinating things about “This is America” is the way Childish Gambino uses his skills as an actor to help express his America. It may be Childish Gambino singing, but it’s Donald Glover performing. In Childish Gambino’s “This is America” he uses his skills as the actor Donald Glover to tell a story about the relationship between America and the black culture throughout …show more content…

If you only keep your eyes on the dancers you will miss all of the violence in the background. There are a number of shootings, people running for their lives, fires and smoke going up in the backgrounds, suicides, and gang violence. Fans have found the use of Gambino’s distractions have a direct correlation with the world today. Think of the amount of coverage events involving celebrities get and how real problems do not make the social media cut (Rao, Sonia). Gambino specifically raps, “this a celly, thats a tool,” soon after the camera is direct towards a number of people glued to their phones and filming all of the horrors happening around them. Ultimately symbolizing the way we use phones to cover up and distract us from the events that are taking place in the

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