I remember when I first saw the “This is America” music video. I had already heard the song, and was not prepared for the disconnect between its catchy melody and the violence depicted in the video. The second execution, where Donald Glover shoots the choir, was especially jarring. It happens so suddenly, and your brain almost doesn’t know how to interpret the senseless act of violence. Pairing the upbeat and fun song with the shocking and grim video was a smart choice. It forces the audience to consider that something is wrong, and that the problem is hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0“Slaying New Black Notions”, Osman discusses how\u00a0the video shows a “relentless looping,” and people’s “inattentiveness to the horrors behind them” (Osman 40). The video illustrates how we’ve been desensitized to the violence committed against Black Americans on a regular basis. As Osman identifies, “our inattentiveness is designed to
\nmaintain a system” that allows discrimination and violence to take place. Horrific things happen, and then the newest trend or piece of information diverts our attention, causing the atrocities to fade into the background. I think that music allows this work of art to be much more effective in conveying a message than it would be with only visuals or text. The song creates a rhythm for the visuals, and serves to illicit a positive emotional response, which makes the audience’s negative reaction to the visuals even more jarring in contrast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember when I first saw the “This is America” music video. I had already heard the song, and was not prepared for the disconnect between its catchy melody and the violence depicted in the video. The second execution, where Donald Glover shoots the choir, was especially jarring. It happens so suddenly, and your brain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4477,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4477"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7435,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7433\/revisions\/7435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}