Childish Gambino, otherwise known as Donald Glover, is a musical artist who has had success marketing rap to a new generation of listeners. You may have heard him perform with Chance the Rapper and Jhene Aiko, and you may have even seen him on “30 Rock” with Tina Fey. The ostentatious image of the man on magazines and music videos would be anyone’s first opinion of Glover, but his FX TV show, “Atlanta,” is able to use insightful storytelling to share modest messages about our world and prove his ability to speak with sincerity on issues he deems significant.
Alluding to Glover’s own origins in the music industry, “Atlanta” is a story about an up and coming rap artist and his associates. The lives of rapper Paperboi and his cousin and business manager Earn is portrayed in a series of loosely related vignettes. Earn, portrayed by Donald Glover, plays a supporting character, despite Glover’s fame as a mainstream rapper. In fact, on the screen, Glover’s flashiness is gone. The focus of the show and the purpose of the creator being only a supporting figure shows the pain of struggling for fame and the consequences that follow this journey. The focus on the duo trying to leave their marks on the world is refreshingly honest and truly down-to-earth.
Like the show’s honest creator, the methods of production are just as modest. “Atlanta” succeeds in creating an interesting, gripping story without having to prove itself with excessive theatrics. Though each episode is kept in a thirty minute segment, the plot is clear and fluid from beginning to end. What’s unique is the way that “Atlanta” is able to fit commentary, political or social, into these relatively small episodes, along with that plot. For example, “Atlanta” often intersperses the development of a character’s background with bits of commentary that reveal different perspectives about that character’s life. There’s a certain delicacy that goes into juxtaposing these elements in a TV show; you want to have a healthy coverage of both the show’s characters and other input like social commentary. The most unique story arises in episode 7, or “B.A.N.” This episode is filmed as a normal talk show piece, with a host and one of the main characters as a guest speaker. The usage of a talk show as a fresh break from the usual episodic format of the show, proved the storytelling potential that “Atlanta” has for the future. It was a bold move to produce this episode in such a quirky manner, but it broke any creative limits that the show may have had. Most notable of these quirky methods is the way “Atlanta” uses the talk-show commercial breaks as a way of making social commentary. In the beginning of the episode, the commercials are somewhat normal, an advertisement for a Dodge Charger or Arizona Tea. However, as the episode progresses, the subject matter within the commercial becomes more obvious. The last commercial is a parody of the Trix Cereal ads; a mischievous fox, who attempts to steal cereal from a group of young black children and is caricatured as a stereotypical black man, is beaten and excessively abused by a huge white police officer. The children stand up to the officer in defense of the animal, locking eyes with him, and the scene ends and cuts right back to the talk show. It’s an obvious nod to police brutality in our country. Normally, it would be a bit difficult to fit such a controversial scene into any TV show, but the ease with which “Atlanta” juxtaposed this with the other scenes in “B.A.N.” is indicative of the show’s skill of relating such heavy material.
“Atlanta” succeeds in in capturing their audience’s attention not with gaudy theatrics or gimmicks, but with a raw purpose of delivering an important social message. “Atlanta” often uses unconventional methods of storytelling on television and is bound to surprise the casual viewer. Rather than watch “Atlanta” because of Donald Glover’s own fame as Childish Gambino, “Atlanta” offers an opportunity to experience a story that reveals much about our society and the modern vision of the American Dream.
