to be or not to be a black and white skinned

Series on OCS Go and MyCanal on demand

What a month for Donald McKinley Glover (34), prolific actor, screenwriter, director, producer, comedian, but also rapper under the name of Childish Gambino! Posted on May 5, his last rap clip, This Is America, directed by Hiro Murai, in a stylized way castigates the carelessness of the United States in the face of endemic racism there: more than 110 million views on YouTube to date.

We also find Donald Glover in a good place in the film poster Solo. A Star Wars Story, presented Tuesday, May 15 at the Cannes Film Festival, since he plays Han Solo’s best friend, Lando Calrissian. Series fans, for their part, have just discovered the second season ofAtlanta, a series of which he is not only the creator, screenwriter and executive producer, but also one of the main performers. Atlanta focuses on the daily life of a trio of young black men: the scoundrel Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), who is beginning to break into the rap world under the name of “Paper Boi”; his cousin Earn (Donald Glover), who tries to become his manager after leaving college; and Alfred’s lunar right-hand man, Darius (Lakeith Stanfield).

A darker season

The series is set in a part of the city of Atlanta where staying alive is often a challenge, and where building a future – outside of prison – is a very demanding art of resourcefulness. After a first season clearly oriented towards comedy tinged with absurdity – which earned Donald Glover two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe in 2017 – this second season, while continuing to play with slapstick humor, is more dark.

This season’s episode 6, which can be seen independently from the others, is striking for its strangeness. We discover a Donald Glover who, reversing the habit that whites had of making themselves up as blacks in the entertainment world in the past, turns into a frightening puppet with white skin, like a Michael Jackson . With this unanswered question, throughout the episode: does beauty necessarily arise from suffering, from personal tragedies?

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