Well bless her heart. Such a sweet person. /s
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And if you have any experience editing video, you’d know how trivial it is to sync up the gunshot with the orchestra hit, at which point everything else just falls into place due to the aforementioned shared tempo.
Hell, the video snips off a fair bit of the beginning of Glover’s video, making it clearer they synced up the gunshot and then worked backwards from there, cutting it off at the beginning of Jepsen’s song.
(Also there’s the audio/video editing trick of “forced marriage” where we’ll tend to notice connections between pretty much any audio track played over a video track.)
Basically, there’s nothing exceptional or uncanny about how this audio and video seems to sync up, so if the only reason people are finding to justify reducing this powerful commentary on race in America to a dumb meme is because of how well the two tracks seredipitously match…well, that reason is kind of bullshit.
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Honest question, “This is America” was just released, but I’d swear I’d heard the song well over a year ago.
Am I imagining things?
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just cuz you can doesn’t mean you should.
Mmm, I am not sure one is better than the other… they both can be used for good or evil.
GOOD curators will highlight what is the best or good in specific ways. But curators can also strive for what will have the broadest appeal, and you end up with a selection of very samey, bland stuff. (Though it might still be ‘fun’.) Like what you see on TV or radio.
Organic, viral popularity still ends up with people like Paul Logan being famous. Novelty, conflict, shock, and other gimmicks can be used to game the system and get something “spread”. That doesn’t make it good. Like all those weird algorithmic cartoons on youtube with pirated characters picking bugs off of feet and the like. Then again, the good certainly CAN spread this way as well (as did CG’s video).
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OH hey, she’s Canadian. So she has that going for her 
It came out on May 5th. So unless you know someone who is in the biz or something… Or maybe it sounds like something else. His cadence is like many of the newer rap songs (which I generally dislike this new cadence, but my bias towards Glover makes me like it more.)
Or perhaps you’re on drugs.
^^^ LIke acid… 
It’s gotta be this. The hook of, “This is America” is what I’d swear was used in some gaming youtube comedy video (which I can’t find now for the life of me).
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His original video is absurdly good commentary. This mashup is less commentary but more piggybacking on the absurdity. Fun to see once. The original, though, is a masterpiece.
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“It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.”
–Woody Guthrie
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It’s way to early to try changing the subject of how African American live to whatever body what to use it for, appreciate how woke Donald is keeping us.
Nothing is sacred.
It feels like this is the kinda stuff that “This is America” intentionally tried to highlight. You have the serious message or event and we just cover it up with dancing and it fades into the back again, into the static of our daily lives.
“This is America” is Gambino shooting the guy and this cover is them all just doing a happy dance, forget about what you just saw.
For me it doesn’t sit right.
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They aren’t allowing comments on the top on…seems rather telling.
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I don’t want to get too serious in a thread about a mashup of “This Is America” and “Call Me Maybe”, but I think it’s important to remember that while we have a long, long way to go, statitsically the US is much less violent than it was in the late 80s and early 90s. That’s one of the things that bugged me about the Trump crowd; they claim that it’s the most violent it’s been ever and it’s the fault of brown people.
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The ultimate aim of culture is to create things that live outside of their creator. If the only value of your art comes from you explaining it, then the art itself doesn’t have any value. So I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that valuable art is somehow diminished if you present it in the “wrong” context. There’s a strong argument that taking art out of context reveals its enduring value.
This video evokes thoughts and feelings even with the wrong soundtrack, and without the correct cultural gatekeepers gatekeepersplaining it for me. The mashup doesn’t erase the original, it adds to it. The only thing that’s taken away is the authority of people who wanted to glom onto the original video and act like they alone knew how to process it. Of which there is quite a lot on the internet.
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Well that was a sad mess 
It bothers me more when they try to parody the video itself. After the song was out and the video had been seen honestly you could put almost any pop song up there and the point stands. I guess that’s how you know a good point has been made visually in a work of art.
(Edited to consolidate two comments into one, replying to the right thing… )
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Wow, I’ve been a fan of Donald Glover for awhile but that video was incredible. The mashup - who cares - but the original was excellent.
He was easily the best part of ‘Community’, a really good stand up comedian, and apparently he is also a very aware and intelligent musician. I guess me not knowing that is a sign of my advanced age, but still, dang that kid has talent.
