After much thought on what art piece to choose, I wanted to go with an artist that has made a few controversial songs and his name is Chilidish Gambino. His piece of artwork that I will examine will be his song “This is America” which was 2018 but mentions problems that we still have til this day. This music video and song has portrayed many indirect messages that us (the viewers) need to figure out on our own. These problems shown in the video are many ways how America handle African-American’s deaths as if it were nothing. This piece of art is saying that gun violence and racism are one of the main problems that this music video is trying to show to the world. It is ironic that during the time period that this music video came out, it was the number one trending video in all countries except America. At first glance, you are distracted from all the dancing and singing that Childish Gambino is showing. However, the amount of chaos that happens in the background is what the artist is trying to show to us. There are different reasons why I chose this artwork because back in 2018 I felt like there were so much to take in from this video that I want to write on it eventually. Also I felt that since the year of 2020, our society has felt strong to support the Black lives matter movement and this song fits that as well. This artist’s work attempts to expose the truth on how America deals with their problems, how there is still racism in our society and how social media has been a positive and a negative encounter regarding these problems.
As you’ve mentioned, Donald Glover’s music video, “This is America,” is a controversial song that is jampacked with many heavy themes and topics. I thought you made a great connection between the social and political issues of this song to the recent BLM movement. That, along with your thesis statement, sets you up with great discussion points for your essay.
I agree this song is very controversial. Childish Gambino included many important topics, as you stated. I think this is a great set piece to choose because it’ll allow you to explore several different topics and link it back to one song.
I think this is a great topic because it exposes the issue of gun violence and racism. As you mentioned, what’s happening in the background of the video is an important part of the video and I think you could find plenty of visual rhetorics there.
I think this is a very good piece that you chose to write about because it sheds light on gun violence and racism which is still prevalent today and the music video also has a lot of things going on in the background which you could write about.
I like how you are already performing some rhetorical analysis of the video in this post. I would suggest coming at this paper thinking about investigating contemporary policing in America. If police are meant to protect and serve “America” then who is included in that America? What purpose do police serve from the vantage point of Black and other nonwhite people? Examining those questions, you can look to Childish Gambino for evidence of the answers
I’ve seen this video many times and always notice new things about it that I haven’t noticed before. There’s a lot of themes to follow with this and I’m excited to see how your paper turns out.