This is America and Brooklyn 99 Moo Moo - Reflection

On May 5th Childish Gambino released his new song This is America. The music video covers such themes as gun violence, racism and many other big issues in America. It explores the flaws within the country, without ever explicitly stating the flaws.

The biggest and most important message in the music video is, of course, showing the state that America's in. That's why the music video is called This is America, it's showing you what America is. A country that likes to believe it doesn't have any flaws. The dancers show the carefree nature of the country while everything going on in the country is happening behind is everything they choose to ignore. So gun violence, racism, police violence, being a bystander by just recording a video, gangs, and most likely some other things that I didn't pick up on that the video shows.

I found a lot of the issues that were shown in the video interesting, but the most notable one was the people with masks taking videos of what was going on below them. I find this one interesting as a lot of people seem to do it, rather than taking action people would rather get views on YouTube by taking a video. Sometimes doing this is against what safety officers are asking them to do. It's very similar to the incident Disney had just over a month ago when the Maleficent float from the Festival of Fantasy parade caught fire. Many cast members were urging guests to clear the area, but many of the guests decided that staying in the line of danger to get a video of the dragon was a much better decision. And it's happened to Disney before, where the cast members wanted people to not take videos of an incident, but people did it anyway just to get views on YouTube. So this scene in the video shows quite a big issue that we have in today's society.

Another interesting issue is shown right at very of the video when he's running away from from the police. While the camera remains blurry on the police officers, it clear that they certainly don't appear to be black. This is one of the only instances of white people showing up. It's pretty clear what this shot represents as it is still an issue. This issue is the racial profiling of black people by white police officers. This is seen in an episode of Brooklyn 99, which I have written about below. There have also been multiple incidents within the past few years of white cops not giving black people a chance to speak when a white cop approaches them. 

A third issue is shown in the video is seen a couple of times and it's how America holds firearms on some sort of pedestal. Shown twice in the video, guns are taken away in a cloth an carried with care. Now out of context taking care of your gun sounds like a pretty regular thing to do, as if you don't take care of it then it might not work as expected. But it's what happens alongside the firearms being taken away. Both times someone is shot, someone takes away the firearm and the dead bodies were either left there or were dragged away with little care.

The Brooklyn 99 Episode Moo Moo of the show 4th season is an episode where the show decides to cover a heavy subject. In this case racism. While looking for his twin daughters toy 'Moo Moo', a police officer (specifically white) comes up to Terry and asks him what he is doing. With police officer believing that Terry is up to suspicious activity. This is the police officer racially profiling Terry just because he is black.

I think Brooklyn 99 did an excellent job covering this issue, not only did they decide to cover the issue, but they also showed it from multiple different views. These views include Holt, Cagney and Lacey, Jake and Amy, as well as the rest of the precinct. Especially as a show about police, it's a very understandable topic to cover especially when the show has such a diverse cast. The way they talked about and made it an unavoidable issue, especially with the twins, was nice. And even though cop tried to say it was just an accident Terry didn't let him off easily.

Any sort of media should be able to cover issues like racism. My big reason for this is some people might only ever watch sitcoms and if sitcoms never cover those sort of deeper issues then no one will be exposed to them. Even people in comedy cover deeper issues like Bo Burnham. Sometimes sitcoms may be able to make these issues a lot more understandable or less depressing. I've heard a lot about shows like Black Mirror of 13 Reasons Why and that they both cover pretty deep issues. But their downfall is having a bad plot, glorifying issues that shouldn't be glorified or just overly depressing. Brooklyn 99 does it with plenty of jokes scattered throughout just so the episode doesn't become too depressing (although that would be very hard to make a Brooklyn 99 episode depressing).

Comparing the two media together, one big similarity is the ending scene to This is America and Terry Getting approached by the police officer. From what we saw from the video Childish Gambino has done nothing wrong what so ever, but of course at the end, he's being chased down police. In Brooklyn 99 Terry was doing nothing wrong either yet he was still arrested. Since the ending is unclear, when Childish Gambino getting chased down by the cops we can only presume that he was likely to have been arrested. Terry, after he was arrested, had people there to help him while sometimes the people are just seen as suspicious and not even given the chance to ask someone for help. Apart from that presumption difference there's a series of very obvious differences like Terry was by himself and nor was he in the middle a massive gang fight. There are probably plenty of other differences, but there quite a few of them.

For ease of understanding verbally Moo Moo was a lot more impactful, but visually This is America is a lot more impactful mainly because the lyrics require you to think deeply to understand their meaning. This is America mainly just displayed a lot of America's issues and there was no real storyline to it. While Brooklyn 99, being a TV show with a plot its story is, of course, a lot better while it may not have the same impact of This is America it's certainly a different turn for the show.