This is America – lyric analysis

This is America from Childish Gambino is a music/video which tends to transmit a

variety of messages through its lyric and also from its video.
The video starts in a very slow and calm way. With a man sitting on a chair with a guitar.
But suddenly Gambino shots the man who doesn’t have a guitar anymore, but a sack on his head.
That is, the video shifts from a calm or funny way to something serious like if he wanted to say
“hey! pay attention. this is serious.” And automatically, who is watching changes his idea about
the video.
The video and lyric portrays many phenomenon’s of the reality of the black society. One
of them is criminality. But in this video criminality is among black people and not a matter of
white killing black. We see that twice when Gambino shots the men and when he shots the choir.
In this case Gambino represents black people and the place is America. The video brings you
into the reality of black people itself. Moreover, the crime between black people is also
represented when he says in the lyric “contraband, contraband I got a plug in Oaxaca they gonna
find you like blocka” In other words he has a trafficker and they are going to find someone and
kill him with a bullet.
During the video, Gambino dances and makes strange moves. This is used as a distraction
in the video that may take you out of what he really wants you to see. Which is what is
happening in the background. This can also be seen as the way sometimes people use distractions
to make you lose what is really important and that they don’t want you to see or even the way
people are distracted very easy by a simple things and they end up by losing the most important
content.
However, on the background of the video there is a lot of movement, what seems to be a
chaos. Something is happening there. There are people running with woods on their hands, cars
burning, others walking in cars and yelling. This leads to the manifestations of black people. The
way they show they’re angry and the way they want to say that they want changes.
This leads to a sense of insecurity. Gambino refers to the America as a place where there
are guns on his area, while the police is tripping. In the video we see police cars stopped but no
police around. This shows how the police care about black people and also shows that they don’t
give much importance about what is happening or even about protecting the black people what
leads to the sense of insecurity in the video. So this is a critique of the way they the black people
are treated because they don’t have protection. Another phenomenon that he criticizes and
represents in the video is suicide. Which is something that also affects the whole world in a large
scale. We see this when a guy jumps from the first floor of the building and seems to hit the
ground. It shows how many people deal with problems, but also a phenomenon that is affecting
our actuality.
He also criticizes another issue that is also affecting our current society. Which is, the
fact of people using cell phones too much. On the same floor where the guy jumped, there are
some kids with their phones and Gambino says this is a celly, it’s a tool” what it means is that
mobile phones they are tools to help people in many areas but in actually they are being used for
different purpose and not for the right purpose. This is leading people into depression for
example, and also leading people to suicide.
At the ending of the video we see Gambino running out from the building and also people
running after him. This shows and emphasizes the chaos, the feeling of insecurity and also
shows the terror in in his in the way he acts when he’s running. Finally, at the ending of the lyric
the background voice says” you are just a black man in this world” that is you don’t have no
value in this world, that you’re just another one. This is also a critic to racism.

Gambino, C. (2018). Tis is America [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY