This is America Music Video Continuous Shot
Less than a minute in, Gambino strikes a pose and kills a guitarist with a bag over his head.
It happens just as the video drastically shifts from a cheerful to aggressive tone.
Some initially believed the guitarist was Tracy Martin, the father of slain teen Trayvon Martin. But he's actually played by Calvin Winbush, a Los Angeles-based musician and actor.
Another part of "This is America" also resembles "Black or White."
Near the end of the video, Glover is dancing on top of a car, and it's similar to Jackson's moves in the "Black and White" video, as well.
Gambino hands his gun to someone who takes it away in a cloth, while the body he shot is dragged away.
It's representative of guns being treated with care and priority while black bodies don't get the same dignity.
That it's red is also significant.
Glover could have picked any color for the fabric. He chose red, INSIDER's Alana Yzola theorizes, because it's representative of Republican-dominated states, which she says often value guns over black lives.
He's shirtless for a reason.
Glover's exposed torso is there to remind us that he is black and vulnerable, according to Yahoo's Ken Tucker.
"Glover wants to remind us that violence is committed against black bodies like his with some regularity and with no heed to whether the body in question is that of a celebrity or an ordinary citizen," Tucker writes.
At around the minute mark, action begins to take off in the background.
The video shifts in tone as Glover dances past the guitarist he shot. Black men run across the warehouse-like room as people drive by in a car. The background becomes increasingly busy and frenetic as the video continues.
Someone dancing on top of a car shoots what looks like dollar bills out of a toy gun.
It could be a commentary on Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy who was shot by Cleveland police in 2014. Glover could also be drawing a connection between violence, entertainment, and profit in capitalism.
Gambino kills a black church choir, evoking the Dylann Roof shooting.
In another shocking turn, Glover mows down a church choir with an assault rifle. It's an image that seems to reference the killing of nine people at a predominantly African-American church by white supremacist Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Once again, the gun is whisked away with care on a red cloth.
Even after the Roof massacre, the United States failed to pass a single law restricting gun ownership.
Glover may be sending a message about how the US prioritizes the protection of guns over the protection of black bodies. Glover moves fluidly from violent act to violent act, just as America does with mass shootings.
Two minutes in, he reveals a new tattoo.
Glover has had a tattoo that reads "Truth is a power" — a reference to the works of Kierkegaard — for a few years now. In this video, he debuts a new one above it, written in a script font, which appears to say "Love is a passion."
Someone commits suicide in the background.
As Glover and the kids are dancing, someone leaps off the railing and apparently commits suicide. The images of smiling, dancing black children nod to the ways that black cultural production is often commodified and appropriated by white audiences.
Throughout the video, Glover's dancing serves as a distraction from the awful things happening around him. He and the kids around him seem to be performing a variation on the Gwara Gwara, a South African dance Rihanna famously performed at the Grammys this year.
Glover seems to be saying that America uses entertainment provided by its black celebrities as a distraction from the death and violence it forces on its black citizens. It also sends a message about the ways that the lives of black Americans are often devalued in our culture. As Vibe writer Bianca Salvant notes, "Itis relevant to ask why their bodies are worth more on a field or court than on the streets of America."
Death gallops by on a white horse.
The image appears to be a reference to verse 6:8 in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. In the King James translation, it goes like this:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
A police car follows death on the horse, perhaps symbolizing the tacit connection between police violence and death for black Americans.
After pretending to open fire, there are 17 seconds of silence, possibly for the victims of the Parkland shooting.
Glover poses as if he's about to kill the children who were dancing around him, but he isn't actually holding a gun.
The song comes to a halt, and Glover strikes up a joint to smoke. There are 17 seconds of silence, which some on Reddit interpret as a moment of respect for the 17 victims of the February shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
Did you notice the screen corners?
If you look closely, you'll notice that the edges of the screen have started to curve in — timed perfectly to the point at which Glover shoots the guitarist on screen. It's a visual cue, meant to evoke a sense of claustrophobia and unease.
At this point in the video, the corners push back once again.
This scene represents the apex of that transition. Once Glover pauses, the corners start spreading back out, and the camera begins to pan away.
Many of the cars have the driver's door open.
It could be representative of how African-Americans are often forced to pull over and step outside of their vehicles by police officers. Black drivers are asked to pull over at higher rates than white drivers, according to research from Stanford University.
All of the cars are old.
As Adrienne Gibbs notes in Forbes, all the cars in the video are models from the '80s and '90s. Not everyone can afford the new, flashy cars in most rap music videos. It may also be a commentary on the American obsession with capitalist consumption.
The ending of the video draws comparisons to "Get Out."
The final scene of the video shows Glover running from what seems to be white riot police officers.
Some people understood it as him running from "The Sunken Place" from "Get Out," a metaphysical place that holds the black consciousness while a white mind takes over a black person's body.(When Glover performed the song on "Saturday Night Live," "Get Out" star Daniel Kaluuya introduced him.) It could be read as Glover trying to escape simply being a body to be used by white people for distraction.
Another reading understands it as Glover as a slave running through the woods, which may hold a similar metaphorical meaning.
And some viewers read the scene as being directly connected to the pause in the video where Glover lights a joint. In the end, Glover says, police care more about black men using drugs than gun violence. And it's an especially prescient message when, according to the NAACP, "African-Americans represent 12.5% of illicit drug users, but 29% of those arrested for drug offenses and 33% of those incarcerated in state facilities for drug offenses."
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Source: https://www.insider.com/this-is-america-music-video-meaning-references-childish-gambino-donald-glover-2018-5