Tag: Dissect Podcast

Ep. 8 – The Party / No Exit

After the wedding scenes that 3005 soundtracks in the screenplay, the script cuts to The Boy playing piano at his mansion as people start to arrive for yet another party, prompting the beginning of Act 3, the aptly-titled “Playing Around Before the Party Starts.”

“It was the closest you could get to having powers.”

BTI Screenplay, Act 3

The mansion is starting to get messier and messier, and apparently the cleaners have stopped showing up because they weren’t being paid. There’s trash everywhere, surfaces are sticky, and you can’t slide around on the floor. The script mourns this: “Now, dried alcohol stops you before you even get to the kitchen door. The Boy really loved sliding into the kitchen when he was a kid. It was the closest you could get to having powers.“

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Ep. 7 – 3005

In our first ever video analysis, we break down the 3005 music video (above).

BTI Screenplay

Still in Oakland, the crew head to a hotel for the night and see a wedding happening in the lobby. The crew leaves, but The Boy stays to watch the wedding. While filming the couple dancing, an older Indian dude comes up to The Boy, a sort of “meeting with the mentor” in traditional literary structures on The Boy’s current “road of trials.”

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Ep. 2 – The Library/Crawl

With his 2013 album Because the Internet, Donald Glover sought to construct a transmedia world by weaving together physical, sonic, visual, and online material Under his pseudonym Childish Gambino. For the most comprehensive compilation of the world’s components, visit S7 co-writer Camden Ostrander’s piktochart.

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Season 7: Because The Internet

Dissect Season 7 on Because The Internet by Childish Gambino begins NOW, only on Spotify.

Go deeper into the BTI world with our visual guides and the Because The Internet screenplay. For the most immersive experience, view both the visual guides and the screenplay excerpts before or after an episode.

Season 7 will be exclusive to Spotify until January 2021. Podcasts are FREE on Spotify – don’t need a premium account to listen.

S7E1 – The Transmedia World of Because The Internet

“I wanted to make something that says, no matter how bad you fuck up, or mistakes you’ve made during the year, your life, your eternity. You’re always allowed to be better. You’re always allowed to grow up. If you want.”

Donald Glover’s open letter, posted to Instagram, describing his 2013 album, Because the Internet, released under his pseudonym “Childish Gambino”

Donald McKinley Glover Jr.

Born on September 25, 1983 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Donald grew up with his siblings Bree and Stephen, as well as a steady flow of foster children. His mother Beverly ran a daycare from their home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and his father, Donald Sr, was in the Air Force and later was a postal worker.

Pictured left to right: Bree, Donald Sr., Beverly, Stephen, and Donald.

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Ep. 3 – Worldstar

“Blow up /
Worldstar before rap you already know that”

The album’s animated cover exemplifies Gambino’s first words on this track, “Blow up,” suggesting violence and explosion, but also the process by which a person or piece of content can go viral. This duality of violence and virality will reverberate throughout the track.

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“It’s an Internet cesspool that’s cashed in big on senseless fight videos. The site’s popularity has created a sort of voyeuristic feedback loop, in which disassociated bystanders immediately videotape violent incidents and act as if they’re already watching a video on the Internet”

Gothamist
Link: Cultural History of WorldStar Hip Hop, from complex.com
Link: The Rise of WorldStar Hip Hop, from marketplace.org

“Blow up /
Worldstar before rap you already know that”

The album’s animated cover exemplifies Gambino’s first words on this track, “Blow up,” suggesting violence and explosion, but also the process by which a person or piece of content can go viral. This duality of violence and virality will reverberate throughout the track.

Continue reading “Ep. 3 – Worldstar”

Ch. 4 – Apathy (Sorry)

“ANGER” RECAP

Beyoncé unleashing her rage, reclaiming her agency, and demanding the respect of her partner through a series of boasts, threats, and ultimatums, culminating in a “final warning,” where she throws her wedding ring at the camera.

CH. 4 – APATHY

Two rows of Black women seated inside a school bus, swaying back and forth, their faces and bodies covered in Nigerian artist Laolu Senbanjo’s “The Sacred Art of the Ori.”

Left, From NPR.org, members of the Washington Freedom Riders Committee prepare to leave New York for Washington, D.C., on May 30, 1961; right, from UC Berkley News, a Montgomery bus rides nearly empty as a result of the boycotts.

Overlaid with the line “Her God was listening,” a subtle suggestion that God is silent but present for Beyoncé’s suffering, one of many glimpses of hope for redemption.

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Ch. 3 – Anger (Don’t Hurt Yourself)

“DENIAL” RECAP

Beyoncé as first a sleeping, silent, and suppressed servant and then emerging as the powerful, life-giving goddess Oshun.

Left, her denial transitions to rage and destruction, culminating with a vicious knockout blow of the camera and then, right, Beyoncé stampeding a row of cars in a monster truck.

CH. 3 – ANGER

“Anger stirs and wakes in her…There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

The Edna Karr High School marching band in streets of Algiers, a section of New Orleans also known as the 15th Ward. For nearly 150 years, this area served as the location where captive Africans were held before being sold into a lifetime of slavery.

As the murder revenge fantasy is described in poetry, the camera winds ominously down a dark stairwell to the chapter’s main setting: an underground parking garage.

Malcolm X’s Interjection

“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.”

Malcolm X, May 5, 1962

The words of Malcolm X at the funeral of Ronald Stokes are laid over visual portraits of everyday Black women on the streets in Louisiana. Their strength is silently yet effectively acknowledged as they stand strong, beautiful, and resilient despite their mistreatment.

Beauty, Struggle, and Strength

The black and white images of a circle of women underground, gowns tied together at the wrist, implies a shared struggle, one that binds them all. Their movements are individualized above, but inextricably linked.

Their movements go from being individual to now being in unison; their dress and unity representing the beauty and resilience Black women share.

Beyoncé’s Dominance and Aggression

Here we are confronted by Beyoncé for the first time in the chapter, shot from a low angle to show power. As she approaches the camera, it recedes further away, as if intimidated or emasculated by Beyoncé’s direct approach and confrontation.

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