Cypher Avenue’s favorite enigmatic actor-slash-rapper Donald Glover has finally unveiled his 24-minute short film “Clapping For The Wrong Reasons” today. Just a couple weeks ago he teased out a weird trailer for the piece and the full short film reveals to be just as “strange” as the promo.
For those unfamiliar, Donald Glover is an actor on NBC’s comedy “Community” and moonlights as rapper Childish Gambino. “Community” will be returning for a fifth season this fall but Glover will only appear in 5 of the 13 episodes allowing him to focus on music and another new television show. The new show is called, “Atlanta” centers around the music scene in the city and will air on the FX Network.
Clapping For The Wrong Reasons is weird, beautiful, odd, fascinating and disturbing for many reasons. It doesn’t feature a coherent narrative storyline and ends in a very unsettling and odd way. It also features unexplained cameo appearances by the likes of Trinidad Jame$, Topanga, Chance the Rapper, Flying Lotus and porn star Abella Anderson. Um, okay.
As weird as this short is, I couldn’t stop watching it to try to figure out what was happening and what it meant.
What are your thoughts?
SCREENSHOTS:
Same here, Bruh! I watched it on a continuous loop on another website. So, I’m not sure what the end or beginning was. But I went through the complete narrative–twice! I felt the range of emotions very much like yourself–fascinated, repulsed, puzzled, amused, etc. It was creative and very evocative. I’m just not sure which overreaching emotion it was ultimately supposed to evoke. D. Glover, as an artist, is most definitely a puzzle wrapped up inside of an enigma. Brotha so deep, we need to call him “The Black Hole!”
His film is very experimental. And I kinda like experimental!
“Sometimes you just can’t explain things”
Like this short, lol. I like it nonetheless. Kept me drawn. Same feeling I’d get from walkin thru a museum (of any sort).
I caught this one a while back. But Donald is my dude, so I gotta give him props. Great short.