Childish Gambino’s 3005 Video FINALLY Explained

[Music] in the 2013 music video for the song 3005 childish gambino is seen riding a carnival ferris wheel with the stuffed teddy bear the bear gets more and more beat up as the video progresses and by the end a large fire surrounds the wheel the bear is completely destroyed and gambino mysteriously disappears this video now has over 100 million views on youtube alone but despite its popularity most of its arcane symbols and references are still very much a mystery that is until today i'm cole kushner host of the music analysis podcast dissect which is currently breaking down childish gambino's because the internet over 13 episodes today in our very first video analysis we're dissecting the cryptic visuals of 3005 3005 is part of donald glover's larger mixed media world known as because the internet and like all things bti we have to view the song and video within the context of this world for a complete understanding composed of interconnected music film a screenplay performance art hidden web content and more because the internet explores finding meaningful connection and growth in the age of the internet at the center of the world's five act narrative is a surreal composite of donald glover his rap alias childish gambino and a protagonist simply named the boy the boy is a rich 20-something internet troll who has an existential crisis after realizing his life so far has been meaningless a monotonous loop of partying and insubstantial relationships we hear these sentiments expressed in 3005's verses gambino describes his party lifestyle and how he feels lonely despite having a house full of homies verse 2 gets even more confessional as he admits his friends are using him for his money says he's lost hope of a happy ending and concludes that we're all just ticking time bombs alluding to our inevitable deaths these thoughts about mortality combined with his feelings of alienation confirm what the boy is feeling existential loneliness at the time of bti's creation glover was heavily into existential philosophy and was constantly seen carrying this book about existential philosophers even in interviews glover was quick to mitigate people's assumptions that 3005 was simply a love song so 3005 what's it about it's funny because i've been reading comments and everybody's like it's a love song obviously like those times like it's not like one of the sadder like i feel like songs not about and it's just about like it's kind of an existential thing like it's just like kind of like i don't really like i just don't want to be i'm really scared of being alone like i'm really scared of like what is this supposed to be the hook of 3005 interrogates what society often prescribes as an antidote to existential loneliness committing ourselves to a single person forever through marriage the hook's lyrics actually resemble wedding vows and in the screenplay that accompanies the album 3005 scores a scene of the boy and his crew watching a wedding while his friends express cynicism about marriage the boy is more open-minded curious whether it could cure his loneliness in this same scene one of his friends makes what seems to be a passing reference to the 90s sitcom boy meets world but in the world of bti these kinds of passing references almost always direct us to another area of the world for further exploration in bti's short film clapping for the wrong reasons there's a scene that stars daniel fishel who famously played tapanga on boy meets world uncoincidentally this scene also centers around a wedding albeit through officials recurring dream i've had the most like strangely recurring dreams over the last week and uh it's like of my wedding but nothing is going right everything's a disaster amidst her own personal crisis official goes on to explain how everyone is ready for the wedding but her and that she's secretly a few weeks pregnant and smoking a cigarette so i tell my mom mom you don't know this but i'm three or four weeks pregnant she says not put out the cigarette she says well maybe you should go get in your wedding dress finding out that her daughter is pregnant and smoking fishel's mother simply tells her to put her wedding dress on that is in the face of the existential threat of death and decay the fact that we're all just taking time bombs she offers up the very prescription that 3005 interrogates committing to a single person forever when we key in on this idea of forever in relation to 3005 we start to see it everywhere take the song title itself 3005 is the year so far away it might as well be forever and the middle two numbers zero zero resemble an infinity symbol the symbol for forever and when we add up the outer two numbers three and five or even three plus zero plus zero plus five we get eight itself a vertical infinity symbol musically we actually find an allusion to forever in the song's chord progression that loops throughout the entire song it begins with a c-sharp minor 7 moves up to a d major 7 up again to an f sharp minor then back down to the d major 7 and finally returns to the first chord c sharp minor seven this chord progression is a palindrome something that reads the same backwards as it does forward a palindrome is essentially a self-contained loop and when divided down the center as two sides create a perfect mirror image and you know what else is palindraw making shape [Music] loops or cycles are one of the biggest recurring motifs found throughout the world of bti you might remember the video for the song sweatpants where the boy makes his way through a diner over and over again repeating the same actions as everyone else begins looking like him a similar looping structure is used in the video for 3005 as the video is essentially three nearly identical rotations or cycles around a ferris wheel the wheel itself is circular as well something that rotates around and around endlessly you're continuously moving but you're not actually going anywhere we think first of the boy's life which he's recognized as a continuous loop of partying and selfish excess he's stuck on the wheel stuck in adolescence and he needs to grow up this is one reason his name is simply the boy and the candy colored lights of the ferris wheel in the carnival setting help convey this aura of adolescence then there's the teddy bear sitting next to gambino or the boy the symbolism here is infinite most immediately the bear represents youth and innocence something that's eventually destroyed in adulthood when we experience the unforgiving nature of life and become aware of our mortality which is reflected in the bear's deterioration over time and then there's the bear's pilot hat which ties into donald glover using costuming as a part of his performance art during this time in all interviews and public appearances glover wore the same outfit as the boy including this same style hat the hat itself is most likely referencing holding caufield tat in the classic 1951 novel the catcher in the rye holden caulfield and the boy carry many similarities beside the hat as both well-to-do young men grapple with existential angst while realizing everyone around them is a phony at one point in catcher in the rye holden caulfield laments that quote people always clap for the wrong reasons this is the inspiration for the title of the aforementioned short film clapping for the wrong reasons we're reminded of how glover would comment in interviews that people were misinterpreting 3005 as a love song it seems glover may have thought people were clapping for the wrong reasons about 3005 finally a teddy bear is an object of comfort something children are given to cuddle when alone and scared in bed in the context of a carnival a large stuffed teddy bear is a classic prize tied to the idea of a date at a fair and trying to win a gift for a special someone in this way the bear is a stand-in for a relationship or more specifically marriage our commitment to forever with a single person society's antidote to existential loneliness the adult version of the teddy bear we cuddle when we're alone and scared when we understand this relationship between the boy and the bear a few more layers of the ferris wheel symbolism reveal themselves first a ferris wheel is a common setting for romance often seen in films like the notebook and love simon but more importantly we start to recognize the ferris wheel as a larger metaphor for our time on earth the boy and the bear have chosen to sit with each other on their life's ride at first the outside world is a fun zone a carnival full of magic and wonder not unlike our experience of the world as a child but as time passes the video reveals that the outside world is burning symbolic of our ever-impending death we're all just taking time bombs as gambino points out and the bear's decay over the course of the video seems to represent both the boy's loss of innocence and the fact that we're constantly aging constantly dying this latter point is conveyed by the other passengers on the ferris wheel in the first loop cycle we see a young couple likely in their 20s in the second cycle they're gray-haired clearly decades older and the third time around they're gone completely this reveals that these loops around the ferris wheel are indicative of the passage of time coupled with the impending death represented by the fire sooner or later a ride is over and this brings us to the end of the video gambino is gone and the teddy bear is completely destroyed despite the fact that we choose to marry someone almost always dies first and there's no getting around the fact that we will all die alone this is not to say marriage has no value but we shouldn't expect it to cure existential loneliness this deeper loneliness must be grappled with on the individual level we're all alone in the end so it's good wow it's that's the way it has to be really yeah i think so i learned last year the most important thing and that is like you know the only love that's reciprocal of love of self you really have to like yourself that's the thing and that's the only thing you can't rely on other people that's wack it's so wack to be like please fill in these holes in me that like i don't think i'm strong enough like that's whack and it's here that we can finally unlock the most compelling symbolic function of the ferris wheel throughout the video the main visual focus stays on the single cabin with gambino and his bear the romantic connotations of the ferris wheel and the teddy bear as a classic carnival prize imply a surface level focus on romance a single partner to ride with as the purpose of the whole thing but focus too much on a single cabin or connection and we miss the larger construction of the ferris wheel as a whole looking at the entire ride we realize that each cabin is separate but connected via the ferris wheel center despite how alone we may sometimes feel in our individual cabins we're all on the same ride all interconnected living and sharing these times together but if we focus too much on one pair one cabin or just the ride itself we lose focus of everything going on around the fun be it global warming warfare police brutality or simply the existential threat of our inevitable death the world's dangers are unrelenting and ever-present and the ferris wheel makes plain that the burning world is seen it's an exposed ride where part of the experience is looking around at the sights in today's information age we're not unaware of the world's issues but we're often content to enjoy a connection or two we've made sit back and coast all the while knowing parts of the world are burning if we focus on gambino and his teddy bear sure this is a fun little video but we fail to make other connections fail to see what's going on everywhere else you might actually remember this very technique being used as the basis of this is america where our focus on gambino's song and dance distract us from the chaos ensuing behind him the choice glover seems to lay out in both videos is the same like the boy before his crisis you can take the blue pill and selfishly indulge concern yourself with only your ferris wheel cabin the song and dance blind to the realities of the world and our larger purpose here or you can take the red pill and see the world holistically the good and the bad the beauty and the chaos and realize that we're all on this ride together that we need to help each other and act with the connections between us as our unifying purpose in order to face the existential threats of the world together [Music] you

Channel: Dissect Podcast

Views: 650,970

Rating: 4.9714746 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: dO5SA74hsHc

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020

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