How do ‘this is America’ and ‘formation’ represent America and the artists?
In the music video ‘this is America’ the genre of the video is a performance. The video was released in 2018 and the category of the song is a hip song style of music. As the video is a performance video the different meanings of the video are portrayed in different scenes of the video.
The video is opened with titles, the title which appears is ‘this is America’ in cursive writing which suggests already that the context is personal as its ‘diary like’. As it seems like it's written it unravels a shadow of the realistic life of America compared to the norm of what people think America is really like. The opening scene is an establishing shot which s wide and only shows a red seat and a guitar, the first thought about the motif is that the colour red of the chair acts as a symbol of blood and gore or even violence, this idea runs throughout the music video when Gambino shoots the man with the bag on his head and a teenager runs into the shot taking the gun and wrapped it up in a red cloth and two others drag the corps away. This connotes the normalisation of gun violence as they just move everything away and everything is normal again. ‘this is America’. This also could suggest that because these young people don’t know any different, they are oblivious to the fac that this isn't right, and something needs to be done about it. In another later shot, a church choir is singing as they normally would and Gambino walks into the shot dancing until he grabs a semi-automatic weapon and kills them all. From this shot we can also see that the colour of robe that the choir was wearing was red reiterating and foreshadowing the violence and crime again. The intertextuality of this part of the video refers again to a subject out of the norm and the vent that happened in 2015 when a man started shooting people with a gun free handily which may be shadowing the emotion of that certain event ‘this is America’. The camera work throughout the video is smooth and controlled which juxtaposes the connotations of the video which is very chaotic and amplifies the lyrics of ‘this is America’. The use of the editing showing the scene as a very grey and dull colour creates a cold and dull atmosphere attaching to the feeling of the video. This links to the desensitisation in America to gun violence. Also, as it’s set and filmed in a warehouse it seems as if crime and violence is only perceived in one light for example the Warehouse being the enclosure to the rest of the world however this event is everywhere in America. At the end we see a light of slavery and it shows him running this connotes that the whole time throughout the video he is entertaining which is what the slaves did and worked and at the end it is perceived he is running away from that.
In the music video ‘formation’ the genre of the video is a performance as Beyoncé is entertaining in the video and wearing lots of different outfits. The video was released in 2016 and the video portrays subverting slavery and women empowerment.
The video opens with a police car and her at a low angle making her seem superior and this connotes that from the background she has come from absolutely nothing to making herself so successful. In the lyrics of the song she mentions she has ‘hot sauce in the bag’ suggesting that her culture African American has a lot to do with delicious, spicy foods and growing up with that makes where she came from emphasis that she didn’t have to have fame or be wealthy to have a good life style or to be happy. In a later scene, the colour changes change from a dull setting to Beyoncé wearing colourful outfits and this may convey the dullness of the crime and violence in America but then the colour shows like a cover up of it but the colours red emphasis the blood and gore from the death that was caused int the floods. The editing makes the video feel a very fast pace and very uplifting emphasising the unedited insight into actual ‘America’.
Comentarios