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culture

The Naked Face of USA;
Childish Gambino - This Is America

The movie The Help worked to publicize1) the discrimination2) against Abileen and Minny, two African-
American housekeepers. It revealed 1960's racism plainly3) on the big screen. Since then, there has been
a lot of effort to decrease such discrimination, but it still exists. A song with a similar goal was recently
released.

Childish Gambino's This Is America was released on May 5th, 2018. It hit the top of the Billboard Chart
for two weeks, pushing out Drake's Nice For What. It also became Childish Gambino's first song to reach
number one on the Billboard Chart. The song was praised for its high quality by many listeners. However,
the main element which made it one of the hottest songs of 2018 was the music video for the song. The
song and music video contain many symbols and metaphors that express criticisms of modern society
and its social conditions. Unfortunately, Childish Gambino himself doesn't like talking about the analysis
or meaning of the video, so most of the analyizing is done by the public. Shown below are the two most
reliable guesses from all the numerous opinions.

In the first scene, Gambino puts his gun to a man's head while the man's hands are tied behind him.
During this, he poses in a strange position which is quite similar with the figure of Jim Crow. Jim Crow is a
fictional black character popularized by white actors in American minstrel shows. A minstrel show was one

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1) publicize: 대중화하다
2) discrimination: 차별
3) plainly: 적나라하게

26 MYEONG-SHIN GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL