From the May 11 edition of CRTV's CRTV Tonight:
Gavin McInnes on Childish Gambino's This Is America: “Black violence is a bonfire”
McInnes complains about people analyzing Donald Glover's video: “Analyzing intent is what fascists do”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
GAVIN MCINNES (HOST): That was Childish Gambino with his new smash hit, This is America. The song has the entire country scratching their heads, trying to figure out what he means. The left says it's about the trivialization of black lives and the glorification of guns. They say his old-timey dancing shows how entertainers try to detract from the horrific slaughterhouse America has become, because everyone wants to make money. The academics of pop culture pontificate about all the cookies and hidden allegories snuck in, from Jim Crow and black Americana. They finally get to use their liberal arts education and tell you about Stepin Fetchit. The right takes a simpler approach, they see a homicidal black criminal indulging himself with reckless abandon and then getting caught. The church shooting scene may represent Charleston [South Carolina] but it could just as easily represent Tennessee, where a Sudanese man shot eight people.
It's clearly about violence, but who is killing who? Almost 8,000 black people are murdered every year in this country and it's not by cops, it's by other black people. That's about 20 a day. White and Hispanic statistics don't hold a candle to this. Black violence is a bonfire and as this video deftly shows we've all become numb to it. So we all ask, “What was his intent? What did he mean by this? What's that mean? What are the dance moves? Why? Why? Why?”
Look, while that question may have relevance in a classroom or a court of law, it's not relevant in art. Analyzing intent is what fascists do. It's what the Canadian Human Rights Commission demanded to know when Ezra Levant printed the Mohammed cartoons. Art isn't about interrogation, it's about stimulation and discussion, it's a gift eccentric people like Donald Glover give us to privately keep. Sure they often ruin it by going, “Actually, I wrote Star Wars about white supremacy.” But Donald Glover hasn't ruined this yet. So why are we ruining it for ourselves? Besides, one of the greatest things about art is it often illuminates something the artist had no intention of illuminating. Can't we just enjoy something interesting without keeping score? Art like this isn't allowed in the Middle East. You can't make this in China. And Russians can't afford it. It's 2018 in America and we want to be provoked. Let us enjoy our crazy country, let us have fun. Because at the end of the day, that's what America is all about. The freedom to love ourselves, warts and all.
Related:
Childish Gambino's This Is America
Previously:
Frequent Fox guest Gavin McInnes calls Jada Pinkett Smith a “monkey actress”
Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes: “By every metric, men have it worse” than women