‘This Is America’: strengths and paradoxes of a critique of violence

Luis Velasco-Pufleau (1)

1 UNIFR - Université de Fribourg = University of Fribourg

After it was released on 5 May 2018, the music video by Donald Glover (alias Childish Gambino) ‘This Is America,’ quickly went viral. It unleashed passionate debates across both social networks and traditional media. The video generated hundreds of discussions in newspaper articles, videos and blog posts, echoing thousands of tweets, images and comments posted on several social media. This post examines this paradox and some of the strengths of ‘This Is America’, a provocative piece of art.

Mots clés: United States of America; Jacques Rancière; Donald Glover; Violence; Aesthetic distance; Postcolonial body; Music and politics; Childish Gambino; This Is America

Mots clés: Musique et politique; Distance esthétique; Postcolonialité; Etats-Unis d'Amérique

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène; Histoire; Science politique

Luis Velasco-Pufleau. ‘This Is America’: strengths and paradoxes of a critique of violence. 2018, ⟨10.58079/rnxf⟩. ⟨hal-01852242⟩