Oh he presses where it hurts, Donald Glover!
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Alexandre sirois
THE PRESS
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The artist, better known in music under the pseudonym Childish Gambino, released the song two weeks ago This Is America and the shocking video that accompanies it.
Since then, she has enjoyed phenomenal success. The piece has climbed to number one on the Billboard and the video has already been viewed some 150 million times on YouTube.
It is no wonder. It is a lucid and disturbing observation of the United States today, which is more electroshock than moralizing discourse.
Donald Glover does not want to save the soul of his country. Rather, he poses as an American who wonders whether his fellow citizens have a soul.
Words, music and images are all punches given by this singer who, in a way, is a boxer disguised as an artist. He attacks the body from the first round. He intends to ring all those who have their eyes fixed on their screen. And it works ! He shakes everyone up.
He is all the more skilful because he refused to decipher his work, the meaning of which is nevertheless rich. We are free to interpret it as we wish. He does not explain it and does not explain himself.
What is clear, however, is that he denounces both the plight of blacks on American soil and gun violence. Two issues which, of course, are closely linked.
America obviously worries him. And he forces her to look at herself in a mirror. We are far from the American dream …
In the wake of the killings that have wreaked havoc across the United States in recent years (the most recent on Friday in a school in Texas) and murders in which black people are victims of Disproportionately, the artist denounces the Americans’ obsession with firearms. An obsession bordering on fetishism, he demonstrates with finesse. Notice how the guns he uses in the video are treated with care as the victims die indifferently.
This Is America ! Bitter America …
What is most tragic is that it is true. Since Donald Trump and the Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington, nothing substantial has been attempted to find a solution to this problem.
Donald Glover’s observation of the situation of blacks on American soil, moreover, is not unlike the recent writings of the brilliant essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates. In his book Black anger, published in 2015, he says he grew up realizing that “being black” in the United States is “like being naked in the face of the elements – facing guns, punches, knives, to crack, rape and disease ”. And this nudity, he adds, is “the logical and voluntary result of a policy”.
Unfortunately, it is not a simple video that will change the game. Moreover, if Donald Glover forces Americans to face their demons, his provocation is not unconventional, as Professor Greg Carr pointed out at the head of the department of African-American studies at Howard University of Washington. “I wonder if the praise of Childish Gambino would have been the same if he had danced with white children and killed white choristers?” He wrote on Twitter. Answer: of course not.
Because in the minds of many Americans, seeing a black man shoot other black people is, in a way, self-evident. The video is shocking, but it is not considered excessively offensive. Here we are at the heart of the problem. At the heart of the racial divide, which Donald Trump took advantage of to get elected. And which he has continued to exploit indecently since his triumph.
This is America ! Bitter America.
Three tracks to interpret the video
Fire arms
At the beginning of the video, it is after having shot a man at point blank range that Donald Glover begins to sing “This is America”. This is America … The message is anything but ambiguous. The identity of the first victim, however, is unclear. And it’s hard to understand why his head is covered. But the choristers shot down later (with appalling coolness) probably evoke the victims of the Charleston massacre. A 21-year-old racist killed nine people in a church in the South Carolina town three years ago.
Dance
Many have the impression that at times Donald Glover’s choreographed movements refer to Jim Crow. It was about a character created in 1832 by a white actor who, with his face made up, caricaturedly imitated a black slave. The name Jim Crow has become synonymous with contempt for black people and has been used to refer to a series of segregationist laws put in place across the United States, which will not be abolished until 1964.
Pants
Some have pointed to a resemblance between Donald Glover’s pants (he is, if not, shirtless) and those worn by Confederation soldiers in the American Civil War. These soldiers were from the southern states of the country, where the abolition of slavery was opposed. The civil war ended over 150 years ago, but acrimonious debates about it persist. In recent years they have raged, above all, over the removal of statues erected on American soil to commemorate Confederation and its soldiers.
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