Gun Violence In Childish Gambino's This Is America

For several decades, gun violence in America has been an important yet difficult topic to speak about. Now more than ever, there seems to be the need to talk about gun violence and police brutality. More people are finding their own ways to get involved to try to stop it. Many are looking for stricter gun laws and/or go out protesting. While others are using social media and other platforms to show how guns ruin lives, not just for those hit by the bullets.

The black lives matter movement started in 2013, and since then many people have joined the movement to end police brutality, racial profiling, and gun violence. Athletes, actors, singers, etc. have used their platforms to spread word about all of this. Several artists have produced songs

It is already being called “one of the best films of 2018.” According to the Boston Globe, Gambino “taunts rap culture’s obsession with machismo, material success, and the glorification of gun violence.” For years rappers have used gun violence as a topic in their songs, but have glamorized what really is going on. Gambino painfully shows the truth about gun violence and how it truly affects people. The video is not easy to watch, but it is also very hard to not be fixated on.

The video starts off with Gambino’s character dancing around. He stops dancing to be handed a gun and shoots a sitting man playing a guitar in the head. When he goes to shoot the man he leans back into a symbolic pose. The message behind the pose is that the Jim Crow laws were a set of racial segregation laws, the pose that Gambino went into was from a Jim Crow painting, used to show one of America’s elements of racism in history. The gun is taken away with great care, while the dead man is dragged away with no care. Showing how it seems that people care more about guns than the lives of

According to the Washington Post, “The camera quickly glides past young people with their phones out as Glover says, ‘This a celly, that’s a tool.’ Cellphones have been used to record police officers shooting or choking black people in the past few years.” People are more likely to film violence, than go try to stop it. The last scene in the video shows Gambino terrified and running away for his life. This scene is said to be a reference to the movie, Get Out. Time Magazine says, “A black person running for his or her life has just been a part of American culture dating back to