Full Dance Card

Childish Gambino's music video for the song "This is America" portrays the contradictions that exist in the fabric of American culture. A doctoral thesis could be written on its winks, nods, and blasphemies (and probably will be).

The discomfort it creates is not unlike how we feel when we hear our own recorded voices for the first time.

"That doesn't sound like me!" But, of course, it is you.

The choreographed beauty and violence on the screen is a meta-nonfiction that celebrates all that it means to be an American.

Casual brutality co-exists with the sublime beauty of our country, like nesting Russian dolls. Each scene of joyous, lit beats and lithe dance moves is briefly interrupted by the murder of innocent people. The figure who mesmerizes us with dance and song commits savage acts of violence before continuing to entertain.

And we watch it all through the depersonalized ubiquity of our screens. With every graphic murder or brutal sex crime portrayed on screen or cynical corporate exploitation of market research to slice through the body politic or saccharine-laced hyena sneer and snake oil salesmanship--separating head from heart from limb, the consumer will consume.

The consumer will consume the next viral dance move, pet video, facebook quiz, horrific news crawl, snap streak, insta whatever or take note of what thou hast twat from calloused fingertip to a child's lips.

Just before the final scene of a black man running for his life through a darkened parking garage, there is a Kevin Bacon-esque Footloose like scene of dancing on the roof of a car in a row of cars from another era, perhaps an era when once America was great.