Childish Gambino music video director says 'our goal is to normalise blackness'

'Being marginalised is compartmentalising trauma to exist in the world'

Childish Gambino‘s music video to “This is America” has become an intense focus of discussion – filled with layers of interpretation, social significance, and hidden references.

Now, Ibra Ake, a writer for Atlanta and the creative director for Childish Gambino (A.K.A. Donald Glover), has opened up about some of the intentions behind the video, which has already amassed more than 60 million views on YouTube.

Speaking to Tanzina Vega, host of WNYC radio’s The Takeaway, Ake said (via The Huffington Post): “We try to make stuff in a vacuum in a way where we’re not influenced by what was made before us, which usually – in the media specifically – comes from a white world and a white infrastructure.”

“We reduced it to a feeling ― a very black feeling, a very violent feeling, but also a very fun feeling,” he said of the video’s mood.

He also discussed the video’s intense confrontation between the terror of violence and its group of joyful, dancing children: “If you’re at the club and there’s a shooting outside, you still have to go get food afterwards and you have to compartmentalise that.”

“Being marginalised is compartmentalising trauma to exist in the world. I can’t stop being black because of trauma and discrimination. I still have to live life and forge on.”

"Our goal is to normalise blackness. This is how we would like to dance, but we have to be aware of the danger and the politics of how we’re perceived and the implications of the history of how we were treated.”

“There’s all this math you’re constantly doing expressing yourself,” he continued. “We’re trying to not have to explain ourselves to others and just exist, and not censor what our existence looks like as people.”

He went on to confirm several references that have been heavily theorised: including allusions to Jim Crow and to the late Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, whose dance moves are heavily featured. He also revealed Childish Gambino’s exaggerated facial expressions were partially inspired by Jim Carey in 1994’s The Mask.

Ake also responded to some of the criticism the video has faced in the depiction of violence against black people. Podcast host and writer Brittany Luse summarised much of it on Twitter when she wrote: “I think the thing I’m struggling with is that I, as a Black woman, don’t need to see images like those to feel enraged. I am already enraged.”

“I definitely feel her,” Ake said, in reference to Luse. “I think that’s just the nature of where we are and we don’t control that. I [know] a lot of people of colour who, when we’re seeing a lot of images of violence ― especially against us ― have to take a break and cry in the bathroom and go back to work. That’s just part of life in America.”

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