One of the most versatile creatives in the business Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino during the middle of his appearance on Saturday Night Live dropped an impactful new visual for his first single from new deal with Glassnote/RCA ‘This Is America’. The video, choreographed by Sherrie Silver and directed by Atlanta collaborator Hiro Murai, packs a lot into a four minute video. Expertly designed, Glover uses the visual to adequately address the temperature in America utilizing a ton of symbolism and imagery. Here are some of what you might have missed:

Duality

Glover cleverly plays with the idea that in this society we often can’t always focus on multiple things at a time, so he literally overlaps them so you have no choice but to see it. The song opens with chants and light hearted guitar melodies and then boom, “this is america”. The internet prematurely misidentified the guitar player Trayvon Martin’s father but was rather quickly unveiled as LA based musician Calvin II.

Throughout the video, Donald uses popular viral dances like BlocBoy JB‘s ‘Shoot’ dance & the South African Gwara Gwara dance in the forefront while the scene in the background gets increasingly more terrifying. Riots break out, things are on fire all the while Donald joined by some private school dressed students dance and smile. A clear metaphor for a couple things, the “dancing” around things like police brutality and gun violence could be seen as a metaphor for how in this country — politicians often dance around these issues and how quickly we can lose focus on the true issues when something entertaining (often at the expense of black entertainers) jumps in our view.

Through an alternative lens of interpretation: that this, and similar culture, is all America sees when they see black people. Glover often makes exaggerated poses and facial expressions while dancing in the video, which can perhaps be seen as a subtle nod to the caricatures made during the Jim Crow era.

Gun Control

Notice that the guns are treated better than the humans in the video? The irony of a video situationally shot in one take sees murder happen throughout and the guns brandished are almost immediately placed in a well dressed man’s hands in a red cloth. The victim’s body is then subsequently dragged off screen. Another piece of important irony to not lose is that while Glover is the murderer throughout, he is also the only one who is dancing with the school children. Potentially a call back to the government’s issue with mass school shootings.

And don’t get me started on the church choir getting gunned down with what is presumably an AR-15. All ten members jovial and in song are quickly laid out on the choir stand. Sound familiar? “this is America/guns in my area.”

We Can’t Look Away

In the video we spot more school children with their phones out pointing down at the action. Its unsure what part of the scene they are actually recording but the scene lines up with a verse from Glover “this is a celly/thats a tool”. Possibly calling back to the increasing presence of people recording police violence and injustice against black people.

The White Horse

As the chaos swells in the background we actually see a white horse with a rider hooded in all black almost completely missed by the school kids dancing in a circle around Glover. This might be the most straight forward piece of symbolism we see throughout the video but it happens so fast you really need to slow things down. This imagery has been interpreted as the first horseman of the apocalypse, which is normally white. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” Taken from the book of Revelation 6:8, as most stories about the apocalypse are this juxtaposition of dancing as an image of the end of times rides by is prophetic.

The SZA of Liberty

SZA via Instagram

There’s a break in the song where we see Glover motioning to shoot without a gun and seemingly goes to sleep. He then wakes up and proceeds to climb atop a one of the many 90s era cars. As the scene slow pans out we see a quick cameo from SZA in a thin dress with her hair in bantu knots sitting on a car next to Glover. In a shot posted from her Instagram, SZA captions it “Liberty” which people are interpreting to mean the statue of liberty which SZA’s hair styling might suggest. This could mean that the break between Glover’s standing slumber into this scene is potentially a break in the conditioning we see throughout the video. SZA suggesting that she is “liberty” could be a symbol of the “American dream”. Maybe a new collaboration on the way?

The Sunken Place

Young Thug sings at the very end of the video where we see Glover running out of what appears to be a dark tunnel seemingly being chased by a legion of non-black people. This is most closely theorized as a break in operant conditioning in our society. We’ve cultivated a culture in which the trivial can be emphasized while literal life or death issues lay smoldering in the background. In today’s social and political climate our priorities can be a bit askew, it would seem Glover is warning us to stay woke.

Watch the video some more times and let us know what you think. See anything we didn’t catch?