Childish Gambino's Song 'America' By Hiro Murai

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This is America, a song written and sung by Childish Gambino was released in 2018 with an accompanying music video directed by Hiro Murai. This video follows a group of young African American children as they dance behind Gambino himself while in the background, chaos is breaking out and depictions of political/societal issues are portrayed. The music video is full to the brim with imagery and iconography of historic events, current societal views and a lot of the symbolism used in this video are used in a way to allude to how backwards thinking and out of touch society is today. The first use of symbolism is through Gambino’s costume that he wears for the full duration of the video, specifically, his pants. He is wearing pants that look almost identical to those worn exclusively by white men in ‘Confederate’ times. The white men that were the enemy of the black population in the 1860’s. A time …show more content…

Before we can see Gambino’s costume, an African-American man walks into the frame as the camera zooms in on the space to the right of him. The camera then pans around to reveal Gambino standing, back facing us and then it is just him in the center of the screen with the other man now out of frame. Since Childish Gambino is African American, him wearing the pants as the main piece in his outfit, acts as a visual oxymoron because him wearing pants worn by the ‘enemy’, contradict. This is because he’s wearing a symbol for the time where his ancestors were wrongfully treated by white men and a time where African-Americans experienced a huge loss of their people and immense mistreatment. I believe that the symbolism through Gambino’s costume is a challenge to

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