This Week 5.11.18
Donald Glover’s Moment & Donald Glover’s Foil
This Week is a column from TGYN where various members of the TGYN community sounds off about what’s on their mind. It comes out weekly. Thus the name.
“This is America” the new song and music video from Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, is dominating pop culture at the moment. One of the ways you can tell is because, in a true sign of the times, the focus around the piece went completely meta. Almost immediately after its release, the conversation went from being about the video to being about the conversation around the video. Then there was a conversation about the conversation about the conversation. Then the whole thing collapsed on itself and created a rift in the time-space continuum. It was a crazy week!
Personally, I’d like to skip by the “This is America” conversation except to say that I think it’s a fantastic piece of art, and you should check it out. Instead, I’d like to focus in on how impressive Donald Glover’s current run really is. A quick summary of his current projects includes “Atlanta”, arguably the best show on television, “This is America”, currently a cultural centerpiece and an undeniably well-crafted work, hosting what may have been SNL’s best episode of the season, and a major role in a forthcoming Star Wars movie.
Working in different mediums, Glover is able to tell a variety of stories and reach a number of audiences. “Atlanta” is a great show, but it works in a niche. Plenty of the people going to see Star Wars are quite likely unaware of “Atlanta”. Those who see Glover as the happy, care-free Lando will probably be surprised to see the role he plays in “This is America”. Even those who listened to early Childish Gambino records, then checked out for a while, would probably be surprised with how the music has progressed. None of these differences give one project or another more or less importance, but their wide-range is notable.
Massive film franchises, artful television shows, politically charged music and music videos, Glover really is doing it all. I’ll be curious to see where he goes from here. He’s been famous for some time, and even before his fame he was working in high-profile roles, like as a writer on 30 Rock. He’s had a chance to grow into this massive role, he seems prepared for it, and we’ll see where it takes him.
Which brings me to another person of interest in our current moment, Kanye West. A popular thing to say in the past few weeks is that Glover is actually doing what Kanye thinks he’s doing. There’s some merit to this. Kanye, unlike Glover, seems wildly unprepared. He’s throwing out headline-grabbing statements in an effort to support “free thinking” without providing much or any substance behind what he’s saying and appearing fairly ignorant about the topics he’s commenting on. “Free thinking” shouldn’t mean “propagating falsehoods”, and Kanye doesn’t seem to have yet made the distinction between truth and everything else. There’s a difference between free thinking for empowerment and just going with whatever pops into your mind.
Glover, meanwhile, appears to be providing some pretty significant, thought-provoking art that’s more accurately showcasing the realities that many are facing today. He seems to be the one that is really advocating empowerment and speaking truth to power.
Glover is approaching this with surgical precision. Kanye is throwing everything against the wall, posting screenshots of text conversations in real time, and just kind of yelling a lot.
But while many are ready to write Kanye off as being off the deep end, or as a secret Trump supporter finally revealed, I don’t believe this story is at its conclusion.
It is possible Kanye will continue on this path and will come out in favor of not simply Trump’s ability to subvert expectations, but his policies as well. To me, that seems unlikely. What seems more likely is Kanye eventually finds a way to express admiration for people who do the unexpected in the face of doubt while simultaneously taking the more progressive stance you might expect from him and rebuking Trump’s policies. Hopefully, that will come with an apology for the hurtful and at times dangerous statements he’s made over the past few weeks as well.
I could very well be giving Kanye too much credit. Admittedly, I want this to be what happens. Maybe that’s a fault of mine. But at the same time we should all be hoping that people are able to rise above their ignorance and learn, and we should help them to do that. We shouldn’t righteously shout that we’re done with them and root for their demise. Who does that help?
Disagree — vehemently — and do not endorse thoughts and actions you don’t agree with. But resist pushing yourself completely away or writing people off.
And with that, we’re on to the recs.
Recommendations
In the spirit of providing you That Good You Need, here are a few things I’d recommend checking out.
- This is America: See above.
- Atlanta: See above (Are we sensing a theme here!)
- Travis Scott — Watch ft. Lil Uzi Vert, Kanye West: Did you know that Kanye has a verse on a real song — not one that talks about poop — that came out recently? If all you’ve heard recently are the other two highly questionable songs he released, I’d encourage you to take a listen.
Thanks for reading. Check out This Week next week, and every week, and make sure to keep up with all things That Good You Need.
