Illmerica, by Wolfgang Gartner
The song is a lot of fun; it's got a nice bass line, a good beat and cool electronic effects. It's on the dubstep side of things, which I know is not everyone's favorite style, but it's super upbeat and fun to listen to, in my opinion. It's been featured in a couple places, such as Forza Horizon and Teen Wolf.
But what I really want to talk about is the video.
This video is rather trippy and kind of creepy, and there's a good amount of blood periodically as it goes through war sequences, but says a lot about American history. It's called "Illmerica" for a reason. Before I go into talking about the content of the video, I just want to talk about how smoothly everything is done - it's some of a collage of different mediums, from what I think are old photographs to paintings that they've taken portions of and animated, as well as various effects like blood splatter, explosions, and electricity. From just a purely compositional perspective, I think it's really awesome.
Basically, the video highlights the kind of destruction we've caused, flashing through scenes of Columbus arriving in America and offering food (and what seems to be a radioactive substance, which I think is supposed to suggest how they somewhat poisoned the Native Americans through their goods and diseases), and the use of guns and slaughter of the native people.
It flashes very briefly to a sign that says "Jamestown" too, and then also points out the use of Christianity to condemn people. Or just a criticism of religion in general, how it can be twisted to be used for evil. I think it's a scene mocking the Salem witch trials around 1:09 before it goes forward to the Revolutionary War.
The White House is put up, but right after, a line of what I assume are supposed to be slaves runs across the scene, highlighting this part of our history, where we still believed it okay to buy, sell, and own other people. There are a couple more scenes of slaves and the Underground Railroad, before returning to the wanton slaughter of Native American peoples again.
There is more war again, this time, I believe it is the Civil War, with the North and South battling against each other; Abraham Lincoln makes an appearance, and he is assassinated at the end of that sequence.
Now we move into pollution, and how as development continues and cities are erected, we create toxic waste that pours into the land and water. There are two signs that are particular important in this sequence, which are "Ellis Island" and "Help Wanted, No Irish Need Apply". There was a lot of immigration during this period of time, but there was still so much discrimination. It's interesting because now, the Irish are more or less considered part of the general white population and don't face all that much discrimination now, but at that time, they faced a lot of challenges in America.
We see WWII flash by, too, with the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombs. (Admittedly, they kind of skip over WWI, and the stock market crash seems to be out of order?) Space exploration makes its appearance as well, and then the advent of video games and then the modern day, with Obama making an appearance at 5:14.
Overall, despite some flaws, I think this video did an awesome job with doing a really quick overview of U.S. history in an artistic and cheeky way while being critical at various points and showing how awful we were at times. My only complaint would be that there isn't much representation of a couple other minority groups like Asians and Latin Americans in the context of U.S. history.
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