Nick K. Satterly Janel Spencer WRT 101S
18 September 2019
Rhetorical Analysis of “This Is America” by Childish Gambino
In the song “This Is America” by singer and songwriter Childish Gambino released on
May 5, 2018, Gambino discusses and visually shows his opinion on the current day problems of African American life. This song/video was created because of the mistreatment and brutality of African Americans over many decades in this country. Gambino’s main project was to display and create awareness about discrimination and police brutality. When it comes to rhetorical strategies he uses, the focus is on pathos as Gambino is showing a lot of emotion and expressing it through his lyrics too, such as sadness, disappointment, and anger because of police brutality. Gambino’s main goal was to create wide controversy and bring a lot of attention to the wrong being done and lack of care for all human life. This controversy is created by the intense presentation the video gives and the message it stands for, leading to disagreement by many. This all leads up to a wide variety of reactions from the public, whether it was a lot of criticism and hate or a tremendous amount of support backing his message of the very racially corrupt country. Gambino wrote this song in hopes of changing in the country and people’s views on what’s going on in America. Gambino effectively influences his audience emotionally by displaying
emotionally intense imagery, real events, and choice words to sway the way they feel.
Preceding onto the topic of Gambino’s lyrics, he is displaying emotionally loaded language and his profession/background. Gambino’s main lyric that ties everything together is “This is America.” Without this line, it would make the video harder to interpret. Also from Gambino’s standpoint as an African American activist, you can infer he is referencing the country and its flaws. He connects to his audience by saying, “Don’t catch you slippin’ now” referring and using slang to inform the audience to be aware and careful of brutality and racism. Any small mistakes could lead to aggression towards the African American community. Another notable line from Gambino’s song recites, “Police be trippin now”; by saying “trippin” he is suggesting that police are not being humane or proceeding with just legal actions. He is claiming that Police will act wrongly upon African Americans purely off race and not their actions. Police will also hesitate to shoot a white man who is armed and dangerous, as shown in the music video. When it comes to Gambino’s lyrics about his profession, background and credibility, he will refer to himself as a “black man,” showing that he is also in danger of the negative end of the country’s corruption. As for his other lyrics “I’m so fitted, I’m so Gucci, I’m so pretty” is his way of establishing to the audience of his career. Referring to his many talents, financial successes, as well as some modeling, To wrap up the song Gambino uses the lyrics, “You just a black man in this world, You just a barcode,” displaying the level of insignificance of African American life nowadays. Lastly, Gambino shows to his audience even at the most oppressed of times, that he is still successful by driving expensive cars and having successes as an African American male. Furthermore establishing his Ethos towards his credibility as a wealthy African American male.
Moving towards Gambino’s video for the song, he displays strong visually emotional scenes as well as indicated meanings. In the video the biggest presence is pathos, from all the more upfront visuals to the subtle background ones. The video starts with very strong emotional tone, displayed by Gambino shooting a helpless Black man in a chair for no reason at all. This
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takes place after him dancing trying to show something positive or even distracting. Gambino’s visual and physical performance is embody himself as America, an example of how the country will commit violence then use entertainment as a distraction. As Gambino continues to dance the background will continue to intensify, showing violence and riots caused by things such as brutality, and Police. All while the people who dance by the side of Gambino stay safe, this is indicated meaning that the only way to stay safe is to continue ignoring the wrong and go along with the country. The next big part of the video is his nod towards gun violence, in the video at the second verse of the song you see Gambino gun down a whole black quiar. This can bee seen as a reference to a real life example of the Charleston Church shooting, which was found to be a racially motivated shooting. For one of the final scenes in the video, it shows Gambino sprinting away from what looks to be a crowd of White Americans. This is a representation of the feelings of some African Americans in today’s country. All of this lead to Gambino achieving an uproar of an audience reaction by creating something that displayed real problems and our country’s truth. There were two sides to the reactions there was positive, and negative. Both sides had their opinions, starting with the positive feedback side backing Gambino’s message. The support group agreed that the country needs change and should know wrong happening. Also a lot of support from the all lives matter movement wanting to create change. For the negative side of the audience, it came with a lot of criticism towards Gambino himself and the message he gave. The negative audience was also people using intense loaded language such as racial slurs and more. “You just a black man in this world, you just a barcode,” states how Gambino feels about America and how they treat the African Americans in society. They are only looked at as a series of numbers and nothing more. They are constantly getting murdered for things that
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have no cause to get them killed. Gambino is trying to get the attention of his audience to make them aware of what is going on. America makes you look at pointless things that brings your attention away from the things that actually matter. We as a country should be more concerned with the bad things and try to make a difference for the better. He did bring a lot of attention to this issue through the video, as you can see in the background there is death and negative things that we don’t notice at first because we are so focused on the kids in the front dancing. That is what America does to you, makes you focus on the not so serious things when we should be paying attention to the stuff in the back. Gambino does have good intentions making this video and singing this song, he is defending his people and trying to bring attention to them. It’s a call to action and people on social definitely responded. There is more attention on Twitter which most people have if they are on social media, everyone hears about police brutality and it gets covered a lot better now than it did before.
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Works cited
Donald, Glover. “Childish Gambino – This Is America (Official Video).” YouTube, YouTube, 5
May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.
“Childish Gambino – This Is America.” Genius, 6 May 2018, genius.com/Childish-gambino-this-is-america-lyrics.
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