Music videos are often utilized by artists as mediums for emphasizing a song’s message. This layer of visuals can supplement the song by creating a new set of images for the viewer to deconstruct, where the lyrics on their own might lack the ‘needed’ effect. Donald Glover’s (pseudonym: Childish Gambino) latest music video, “Feels Like Summer”, is a notable example of this utilization. The animated video captures an intended meaning about climate change by using a creative means to deceive the viewer.
In Stuart Hall’s essay, ‘Encoding, Decoding’, the terms ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ are presented as analytical tools used in decoding messages. Denotations refer to literal meanings which are “almost universally recognized”, while connotations refer to “less fixed” and “associative meanings” (96). In the music video for “Feels Like Summer”, the animated Glover is shown walking through a neighbourhood in the blazing sun, while numerous African-American and coloured hip-hop artists are displayed in cameos. The denotation can be as simple as, ‘Childish Gambino walks through the neighbourhood during summer’, but the connotations are much more complex.
One connotative meaning of the video is that it represents Glover leaving the hip-hop community (illustrated by his caricature’s lack of interaction with other artists.) However, another connotative meaning about climate change ties more directly to the song’s lyrics. One of the most prominent lines are, “You can feel it in the streets / On a day like this the heat / It feel like summer.” A connotative meaning of these lyrics signifies the ‘increasing danger of global warming’. In the video, however, it seems like the images don’t all correlate to this message. This raises questions about the dominant, or preferred, reading of the video – or as Hall describes, what is part of the “dominant cultural order” (98). Although the lyrical content seems to address environmental issues, this meaning isn’t quite dominant in the hip-hop discourse community. Therefore, it seems that the ‘preferred reading’ of the video is the symbolization of Glover’s departure from hip-hop.
It’s interesting to note, however, that the ‘environmental’ message is still one of the intended meanings in both the song and the video. In the video, Glover uses the ‘preferred reading’ as a distraction from the environmental meaning (which is more conspicuous in the lyrics), in order to draw parallels to climate change ignorance. The nuanced audio takes a backseat to the striking visuals, which compliment the preferred reading. Someone viewing the “Feels Like Summer” video for the first time wouldn’t even realize there was a climate change message unless they knew the lyrics. This technique of distraction in a music video was a brilliant way to add connotative meanings to a song while challenging the dominant cultural order.