I’m glad that Dr.Bezio chose for us to watch “This is America” and “Formation” as part of our homework assignment! I have never seen the Beyonce video before and I found it really intriguing to watch. I found myself having to watch it multiple times in order to capture all of the imagery as well as the lyrics that went along with it. After reading the article discussing the video and Beyonce’s musical style off of the album lemonade and watching the video, the main message I feel that she is showing/telling us is almost a juxtaposition of the “high life” and “low life”, showing the viewer different aspects of black culture. I also think within her messaging she is telling the viewer that she has earned her place in this luxurious high life and that she’s helping to lead the way for more black art/artists/musicians to be brought into the mainstream. It also highlights the struggles black people face in order to get to the “high life”, shown with examples such as the police car she is standing on top of at the beginning and end of the video, highlighting the police brutality black people face daily. However, Beyonce also relates her experiences back to the way she group, such as the lines “earned all this money but they never  take the country out me”. 

“This is America” Is a video I have seen many times before, and it’s one that was discussed in many of my history classes in high school once it came out. This video shared some similar messages with Beyonces “Formation”, such as the ideas of black culture as well as police brutality. However, this video take has a bit of a darker outlook, with the music being cheery in some places, then immediately contrasted with gunshots along to the words “This is America”, signifying what “America” is like for black people and the harm that comes to black bodies in America constantly. However, watching it through again and really trying to critically analyze it showed me some more visuals and messages that I have not seen before. For example, I thought that at around 3 mins 30 seconds in the video was over as the screen goes dark, but it actually continues to show Childish Gambino running away from a mob of people chasing him. This is very contradictory to his more positive smile and dance throughout much of the video. It really signifies to me that although black people try to act happy during their daily lives with so much chaos and threatening actions going on around them, they are deep down scared of what is going on around them and feel that they cannot run away from it. Throughout the video, Childish Gambino happier facial expressions as well as many of the backup dancers tells the audience that black people are so used to the sound of gun fire and chaos that it doesn’t even surprise them anymore, and is honestly pretty disturbing to witness, which is obviously the point, especially to make viewers who are not black or do not experience this same discrimination understand straight forwardly the torture that black bodies experience everyday.