Music video analysis: Childish Gambino 3005

The music video that I have chosen to analyse for this blog post is Childish Gambino's 3005 from his album Because the Internet.

Because the Internet is an album that Gambino created to find meaning and growth in the age of the internets expansion.

In the video Gambino takes on the role of a character that he created named 'The Boy' who is said to be a rich 20 year old who just lives his life throwing parties and trolling on the internet. In the beginning of 3005 he mentions that he had "A house full of homies, why it feel so the opposite" this is in reference to his character but it seems that he is now going through a sort of existential crisis in which he does not know what he is doing with his life at the current moment. 

The set of the video is also really important to the overall structure of the music video as throughout the music video the whole video is shot on this Farris wheel in the dark. The constant spinning could possibly be showing the constant loop in time that he feels he is going through and that there was almost no change in  his day to day life and that he is trapped in a cycle. 

In this small section of the music video we get a very smooth and somewhat complex loop that shows outside of the Farris Wheel though the footage of the outside of the Farris wheel might not be integral to the video the loop could mean or be a visual representation of no matter how hard he tries to turn away or find and exit out of his loneliness he will always be brought back to where he is and that he'll have to face these challenges himself. 

Another constant in this music video is that the bear that Gambino is seated next to on the ride appears to become more and more beat up and worn as we get further into the song, this could be symbolising the inner damage that Gambino's character is taking as he keeps having his self destructive thoughts throughout the song until it eventually overwhelms him.

"Nobody got it figured out so therefore I've lost all hope of a happy ending". This is a line that reflects his thought process throughout the video he has been telling himself that if nobody else on the planet has figured out and who they are and want they want to become that there is such little hope in figuring out what he's doing that he might as well give up as he sees no point in an outcome that will almost never happen.

By the end of the music video we loop back to the seat on the farris wheel however Gambino is now gone and the bear is left by itself ripped and torn as though it has been there for years. This could mean that Gambino was completely lost in his existentialism. Another meaning this could hold is that the bear symbolizes his old life and how he distanced himself from it more and more that it eventually aged and was forgotten by Gambino leaving it in the past as he moves on trying to live his life instead of being in fear of living alone.