I could write an 8 to 12-page research paper on either of these music videos. The number of references, statements, ideas, questions, and more in both the music video for Childish Gambino’s This Is America and Beyonce’s Formation (without hours and hours of close reading and analysis) seems infinite. But I will not close read either of these music videos in my blog post because the entire time I was listening to Post cast #12 The Song that Doesn’t End I was thinking about my Senior year of high school’s history class. We did a whole unit on the Vietnam War protest songs. We close read songs, the texts, rhythms, context, and more. My teacher had us all close read the songs and then we would discuss in class our thoughts which lead to long discussions about interoperation and perspective. I thought it was fascinating and sadly have forgotten which songs we close read. But this podcast did prompt me to go find a lot of my old work from the class and made me think of other discussions we had in high school about music.

My homeroom teacher was a science teacher and a musician. One day in homeroom he had us all come in and he put the music video for Childish Gambino’s This Is America on the large screen in the front of the classroom. We watched it and discussed it, I do not know for sure if this is true, but I feel as though not many other people here at UR had high school experiences like mine in which a teacher could put on a video like this one and not get hate for it. I feel lucky that my high school teachers brought up such things. And I think it is fascinating that here two years later these discussions are no less prominent. Fascinating but also disappointing as I feel as though music videos like this one have only become more relevant to our day-to-day lives. While I say that I do not mean they were not relevant then but simply I, and many others, are more educated than we were two years ago and we see things such as racial-based violence in the news more and more each day.