Research Of The Influence Of The Flow Of Cultures On The English Language Analysing A Song “This Is America” By Childish Gambino
“This Is America” and “Hip Hop Be Connectin’” Alastair Pennycook describes the spread to and influence on other cultures the American culture has had in his book Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, specifically in the first chapter, “Hip Hop Be Connectin’”. He emphasizes on the terms ‘global Englishes’ and ‘transcultural flows’ to describe the impact the flow of cultures has had on the English language, and to refer to the way society uses their own cultures combined with the English language in this era, particularly in today's hip-hop and rap songs. A good example that Pennycook could have used could have been the music video for the song “This Is America”, written by Childish Gambino.
There are various scenes in the video that can be identified as scenes where people engage in ongoing global subcultures while doing so in different cultures or ways. These scenes show us people (particularly Childish Gambino himself, the main figure of the music video) expressing their ideas with various rhetorical devices, particularly with metaphors. The video is a great backup for the arguments Pennycook establishes because the video proves so much of what Pennycook says without meaning to. The music video for “This Is America” (uploaded the same day the song was released, May 5, 2018) is certainly one of the most dissimilar music videos that I have ever seen. It laces elements of 2 different genres, and the transition from one to the other back and forth creates an element that confuses you, but also motivates you to find out the meaning behind it. This video was so different from regular music videos that it shocked the nation when released. The song is all about the crisis which we are currently watching happen on the daily: police brutality and gun violence. The song is all about the fear black people live in and the fear average citizens live in. The video only serves to give visuals to the lyrics, and it does so in a spectacular way; the entire video is great, full of double meaning and packed with metaphors and scenes that show us things we need to have more awareness of. However, the is a part in the video that outshines the rest. This excerpt, which starts at 1:15 in the music video and lasts about a minute long, is the part that is most laced with proof of transcultural flow.
The excerpt starts right in the middle of Childish Gambino dancing along with three teenage boys and two teenage girls in school uniforms while rapping the first verse of the song. Gambino is shirtless, he wears socks and tight gray pants. They are in some sort of warehouse, and in the background, people run around in panic. One man is standing on top of a car and he is ‘making it rain’, that is, he is throwing paper bills into the air. The verse wraps up with the teenagers and Gambino performing the Gwara Gwara (an African style of dancing) to the rhythm of the song. When the verse ends, the camera view cuts away to a church choir made up of 7 men and 3 women, all African American, all dressed in black robes. The choir sings the refrain as the camera slowly backs up to show a door off to the side. Gambino comes out the door, and dances to the rhythm of the choir, with a big grin on his face, slowly dancing his way towards us. Right before the choir finishes singing the refrain, Gambino suddenly stops dancing and smiling, his face gets sullen and he stands still. He suddenly catches an automatic rifle tossed at him by someone outside the camera's view, and the turns around and shoots the choir dead, just as they finish singing. A boy runs up to Gambino, holding a red cloth, and Gambino carefully places the gun on the cloth, the boy hurries away, treating the gun with care. Gambino starts rapping the chorus as he walks away from the dead bodies, and people with weapons run in the opposite direction that Gambino walks, they run toward the bodies. Gambino passes a police car as he confidently walks away.
The scene changes, Gambino is still in the warehouse, but in some other part of it. We see his back and the camera slowly turns to see his face, and as we turn we see his shoulders jutting to the rhythm of his rap, and we see people some distance away running towards a chaotic scene just behind him, so we were between the chaos and Gambino when we started panning around him. As we complete the turn and finally see him from the front, we see the 5 teenagers again, dancing again, smiling again, along with Gambino, as the scene around them unfolds with people running in all sorts of directions. One man jumps from the second floor of the warehouse, there is smoke and police cars and chaos in general behind Gambino and the teens. Now, a description of the visuals themselves won't do us any good without the lyrics that are being said as the visuals play. The meaning behind the lyrics must also be addressed. So: in the first verse, which is rapped from the opening scene until the Gwara Gwara scene, Gambino raps the following lyrics, with ad-lib (an additional layer of vocal inflection over the existing main in order to enhance the vocal effect and to add more variation and excitement to the vocal performance, usually found at the end of a bar) contributions from Blocboy JB, Slim Jxmmi, Young Thug, and 21 Savage: 1 This is America (skrrt, skrrt, woo) Don't catch you slippin' now (ayy) Look how I'm livin' now Police be trippin' now (woo) Yeah, this is America (woo, ayy) 1 “Childish Gambino – This Is America. ” Genius, Genius Media Group Inc.
Guns in my area (word, my area) I got the strap (ayy, ayy) I gotta carry 'em Yeah, yeah, I'ma go into this (ugh) Yeah, yeah, this is guerilla (woo) Yeah, yeah, I'ma go get the bag Yeah, yeah, or I'ma get the pad Yeah, yeah, I'm so cold like, yeah (yeah) I'm so dope like, yeah (woo) We gon' blow like, yeah (straight up, uh) When Gambino says, ‘This is America’, he is literally pleading to the viewer to look and understand the terrible visuals of the video as the reality in which we are all living. Gambino wanted to create awareness by telling the whole world ‘This is America’, ‘this’ being police brutality and gun violence and unawareness and lack of action towards stopping these things. Gambino, throughout the entire video, tries to call attention to the fact that these epidemics are happening while the victims are brutalized with impunity after having done little or no wrong. Here is proof, taken ONLY from the first verse in the excerpt: “Look how I'm livin' now/ Police be trippin' now (woo)” is an explicit reference to police brutality in America.
According to a data report collected by The Counted for Guardian News and Media, black males within the ages of 15-34 were nine times more likely than other American to be killed by law enforcement officers. To make matters worse, a well-accepted 2stereotype is that white police officers are systematically racist towards blacks. Gambiano is telling us viewers to look at ‘how he is living now’, because ‘police be tripping now’. Gambino 2 Swaine, Jon, and Ciara McCarthy. “Young Black Men Again Faced Highest Rate of US Police Killings in 2016. ” is saying to look at the way he and his fellow African Americans live in fear now that police have negative feelings towards them.
When Gambino raps “Guns in my area (word, my area)/ I got the strap (ayy, ayy)/ I gotta carry 'em”, he is referencing the glorification of gun violence against self-defense. Since guns, in general, are huge topics in hip-hop and rap, the images of guns and African Americans are now viewed as one to most people (since hip hop and rap belong to African Americans). Verified contributor and user for Genius (an American digital media company which allows users to provide annotations and interpretation of song lyrics) Grahamx states in his own words: “A huge political discussion amongst gun rights advocates and critics is the justification of self-defense with a gun—the theme of self-protection with guns acts as a segue to the bigger picture of civilian self-defense against police excessive force. Discourse around gun control and gun violence in America has historically focused on mass shootings in schools and other public areas, while ignoring more local gun violence in impoverished areas. ” This quote is so very powerful, since it states how people DO NOT focus on the effect that gun violence has in poor ghetto hoods, but only in mass shootings (the ad-lib ‘my area’ is said by 21 Savage, who is known for being raised in a horrible, horrible neighborhood, full of violence and shootings. 21 Savage ad-libbing “my area” is a deliberate nod to 21’s tragically violent past with gun violence ). And 3even then, people fight against restrictions on gun ownership using the argument of self-defense, but the only thing that one will ever need defense against is armed police officers, since - as Gambino puts it - “Police be trippin' now”. 3 Barshad, Amos. “Savage World. ” The FADER, 2017 Rodriguez 6 “Yeah, yeah, I'ma go into this (ugh)/ Yeah, yeah, this is guerilla (woo)” is a reference to guerrilla warfare, which is when a small fringe group goes up against something like a country’s military. The small group could be a reference to African Americans, and the bigger force they are fighting is police brutality. In guerrilla warfare, the smaller group usually has no chance of winning the fight, which is what Gambino could be sadly admitting in his lyrics - African Americans are doomed. Police brutality is EVERYWHERE, the entire American nation knows about this, yet nothing is ever truly done. Genius Editor MDW525 in his own words: “The rhyme scheme of this verse suggests Gambino was going to say “gorilla shit,“ insinuating how terrible this situation is without saying it and matching the song’s theme of ignoring real problems.
This song itself functions as a kind of guerrilla warfare because Gambino is never explicit in his critiques (which would be akin to more classic methods of war) but instead makes passing jabs and keeps the criticism disguised. ” “Yeah, yeah, I'm so cold like, yeah (yeah)/ I'm so dope like, yeah (woo)/ We gon' blow like, yeah (straight up, uh)” basically summarize the mood Gambino has during the violent and chaotic video. When Gambino says that he is ‘cold’, he is talking about his emotions, his ‘cold’ heart. Gambino shows insensitivity to the killing and violence around him. However, the terms ‘cold’ and ‘dope’ apply to all African Americans, according to Gambino. He states that it is easier to go around in life if you don't care about your life in the first place: if you are ‘cold’ and ‘dope’. This expectancy of death is felt by African Americans, which is then translated/applied into their forms of expression (culture) and personalities. Genius Media Group Inc. , 6 May 2018, genius. com/14502607. Rodriguez 7 As we can see, the first verse is packed with meaning. I will eventually connect all of this back to Pennycook’s argument, but I want to take a look at the meaning behind the second verse and the meaning behind some visuals before I wrap it all up into Pennycooks argument. These lyrics are pretty powerful when you think about it. This part of the song is rapped just as the 5 teenagers and Gambino start to dance for the second time. In the video and in the lyrics, Gambino is calling out and mimicking those in society who are probably paying attention to Gambino dancing and not the things going on in the background - that is to say, the people who are so easily distracted from social issues like gun violence and police brutality by things like social status, or their online image, or materialistic things, like ‘Gucci’ items.
This is the only point Gambino is trying to get across in this video: people are more concerned with the latest trend than social issues. If you only look at the surface of things (represented by Gambino dancing), you won't ever know what's going on in the background and what it means (represented by the chaos in the background of the warehouse where Gambino dances). Now then, I want to discuss what some of the visuals in this video represent just to further strengthen my argument on what message Gambino is trying to get across when he made this video. “Guns in my area (word, my area)” is rapped by Gambino, and the ad-lib ‘word’ is provided by Blocboy JB. Blocboy JB’s song “Shoot” went viral in the summer of 2017, after he 5performed a dance move to the song, and the whole world was doing it too. The ad-lib ‘word’ is a signature ad-lib of JB’s, when you play the ad-lib everyone will know that JB is about to rap.
So, Gambino performs the ‘Shoot’ dance right as the ad-lib is said. This is a nod the argument just made a couple paragraphs ago: people keep up with what's trending rather than what's important. You show that part of the video to someone, and they will instantly recognize the dance. The dance is also the only thing they will pay attention to, not the things in the background, or the things that matter. I mentioned a man ‘making it rain’ at the beginning of my argument. This man is on top of a car, surrounded by other cars. All the cars have the drivers' door open, their hazard lights flashing, are unoccupied by anyone, and are old and ugly cars. This scene has two meanings: One - the cars with the drivers' door open and the hazard lights on are symbolic of all the cars that police officers have pulled over right before killing their owners, which is why the cars are empty. So one can draw connections from this scene to the black men killed by police officers after they were pulled over. Two - the man ‘making it rain’ (throwing paper dollar currencies into the air to show off how wealthy you are) is standing on top of these cars, which are all old and ugly.
The cars represent the stalled socioeconomic mobility of African Americans in America. So no matter how rich you make yourself look, at the end of the day you are standing on top of the old ugly car: you only make yourself look rich, but you really aren't. Another scene with a double meaning is the scene when Gambino kills the choir in a spray of bullets. Right after he does so, a boy runs up to him holding a red cloth, and Gambino carefully places the gun on the cloth. The boy then hurries away with eyes only for the gun an not for anything else, such as dead bodies. This scene is very controversial, since Gambino shooting at the choir is a direct reference to the Charleston Church shooting of 2015, in which Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, murdered nine African Americans during a prayer service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (one of the United States' oldest black churches, which has long been a site for community organization around civil rights) in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. The red cloth that Gambino placed the gun in symbolizes how Republican politicians (the color of their party is red) seem to value gun rights more than lives lost. The boy who takes the gun away doesn't give a single glance at the horrifying act that has just occurred. Instead, all he cares about is the gun, which is what Gambino is trying to say about Republicans since most if not all fight against gun restrictions without considering why people want to restrict guns in the first place. There are plenty more metaphorical visuals in the video that are packed with symbolism:
- The reference to one of the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse (The Pale Horse) from the Bible, galloping with a police car (that represents hell and torment for African Americans) behind him (The Book of Revelation, Chapter 6, Verse 8: “I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death, and Hell was following him”).
- The symbolic suicide jump by a man on the second floor of the warehouse as the teenagers dance the Roy Purdy serves Rodriguez 10 as another example of people of people not paying attention to social issues.
- The pose Gambino takes as he shoots a man through the head, which is similar to that of a famous Jim Crow caricature.
- The final scene of the music video, which is reminiscent of The Sunken Place from the movie Get Out.
So Gambino made an excellent visual for his song, there can be no doubt about that, no matter if you support the views expressed in the video or not, the symbolism and metaphors are incredible. You might be wondering, “But what does all this have to do with Pennycooks argument?” I would answer to you, ¨EVERYTHING¨. You see, as stated before, Pennycooks main argument is that the spread to and influence on other cultures American culture has had is huge. And this video proves that argument in a few key ways. Firstly, I want to go back to the point of the music video: people are more concerned with the latest trend than social issues. If you only look at what is popular, you won't ever know what is important. Gambino chose to use the issues of police brutality and gun violence as the things that went in the background. This was a fine choice since people really should be doing something about these issues, but they are not. And the example of something ‘popular’, which would be presented as the main thing going on in the video, was chosen by Gambino to be dancing.
Gambino did not choose to show off a brand new luxurious European car as the main thing going on, which would still be something that is popular, valued by social media and society, and something that has no real importance compared to issues like police brutality and gun violence. Gambino also did not choose to rap alongside a beautiful model in a bikini on a beach setting, which again: is popular because so many girls would love to be that model, everyone on social media would praise that girl for having the body she has, yet one good looking girl is nothing compared to the 59 people who lost their lives in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Gambino also did not choose put on his best clothing, weigh down his neck with dozens of diamond studded necklaces, and show scenes of him ‘making it rain’, to show off his wealth. Gambino did none of this. Gambino chose the trend of dances as the main thing in his video, the distraction, if you will.
This was a great choice employed by Gambino since one usually dances in moments of happiness. But Gambino chooses to dance with awareness of what is going on around him. This juxtaposition serves as a reminder of how we lack to do anything against gun violence and police brutality, Gambino is saying that even when the world falls apart, people just dance with a big smile on their face. But there is something else. The Roy Purdy, Shoot, and Gwara Gwara are all performed by Gambino. Gambino successfully brings together dances from African, American, and African American cultures into his criticisms of what social media values. Something worth mentioning here is that immediately after the release of the music video for “This Is America”, the Gwara Gwara dance, sadly, went viral, proving that not even in the face of a critic will society pay attention to the important matters of this world. But we now have our example of what Pennycook is trying to prove, that American culture impacts everything around it. Before the release of “This Is America”, no one knew what the Gwara Gwara was. Yet on the release of the music video the whole world was dancing with that move. So we can see that all it took was for someone American to do something for it to go viral. The move wasn't even American, it was African. But by Gambino making the move viral in his video, we see people engaging in ongoing global subcultures while doing so in different cultures.
People all over the world just ignored the message Gambino was trying to get across, and instead did the exact thing Gambino was criticizing: dance while the world falls apart. However, this shows people engaging in the African dance subculture while rapping using English slang to express their (his) beliefs and ideas. Another scene that proves Pennycooks point is when we see the man on top of the car ‘making it rain’. This action originated in 2014 when Northern Irish musician Foy Vance recorded a music video for his song “Make It Rain”. In the video, we see him doing just that. And the rest is history: the move was copied by the whole world. But it evolved into something else. People on social media would get stacks of bills and show off their wealth by ‘making it rain’. Suddenly you had everyone making it rain since no one wanted to seem broke to their peers, fearing judgment. And this expression of wealth was being done all over the world. So now we see another flow of culture that takes away attention from other more important matters.
Pennycook asks us in his chapter “Hip Hop Be Connectin’”: “Is the whole world becoming a stage for American culture? Is this the ultimate triumph of global marketing, of the spread of American culture to take over the world, rendering traditional local cultural forms as nothing but a fetishist interest of cultural nationalists and anthropologist?” It certainly seems like so. Gambino, in his video, provides countless examples of society following the popular crowd by doing what's popular instead of paying attention to important matters. And by doing so, the popular acts that they do - to not look lame or as someone who isn't doing what everyone else is doing (which is apparently a bad thing) - get caught in a flow of cultures, being copied by someone off in a distant country and then the act gets modified a bit so that now you end up with the act, but with dozens of variations from the places that it went to. Gambino shows us dances and popularized acts that have gone around the world by becoming viral, and these things have most certainly been modified to the taste of people in other cultures (ironically, Gambinos video provides good examples to back up Pennycooks argument while criticizing the flow of cultures - by saying that we should stop popularizing meaningless things - as the message of his video).
In conclusion, I believe that the music video for Childish Gambino's song “This Is America” is a perfect visualization of the argument that Alastair Pennycook presents in his chapter “Hip Hop Be Connectin’” of his book Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. Gambinos video has been called one of the best music videos of the century since it calls attention to issues like police brutality and gun violence while criticizing people who keep up with trends instead of paying attention to these issues. And while it does so, it provides examples of cultures that have mashed together to create something new, or it shows us ways that cultures have flowed to other cultures to become viral, which is what Gambino admittedly criticizes. But Pennycook makes a good argument about the event called ‘transcultural flow’ and the music video for “This Is America” shows us that the very things that Pennycook states do indeed happen in the real world by showing us visuals that are critical of what Pennycook states while at the same time backing up what he states: that cultural practices undergo the process of change, reuse, and recreation in other cultures.
