"Sober" by Childish Gambino

The music video accompanying Childish Gambino's "Sober" opens to the female lead sitting at a table being watched from across the room by an emotionless male lead with a yellow wall and a clock above him which reads 9:30.  The video continues to show what seems to be an intoxicated man trying to make the woman laugh in what seems like an attempt to pick her up. The lyrics make it seem like the male lead is pleading with an ex saying that since they broke up he has been high, I assume he means in order to numb the pain of losing her because he seems to be explaining how he can  fix their relationship and how it can be better. The color white is shown repeatedly throughout the video. It shows up on a dove and on an egg containing a white note saying "I'M SO HIGH", both of which come from the male lead's pocket and linger on screen in clear focus. White also pops up in the snow falling softly outside of the diner and accumulating on the windowsill where the scene takes place. This snow has more relevance due to the fact that prior to the female lead reading the egg note, there was no snow falling or snow on the windowsill, but seconds later it appears on the sill as if it had been falling at that rate for hours. The salt shakers on each table also are a focal point of the color white; these only matter because their black counterpart, pepper, is left out of the video entirely. The last point where the color white is focused on heavily in the video is during an electronic dance break in the lyrics where the white lights flash crazily as the male lead dances super weirdly. The color white represents many things including: purity, cleanliness, innocence, and even sanity. If we look at it as representing sanity, the color white seems to revolve oddly around the strangest character in the video, who seems really insane. The color white is even the main color of the male leads outfit while the female wears black. Therefore if the male lead is this symbol of purity and sanity, the female must be his counterpart darkness and evil; he is light and she is dark. As the song comes to an end she finally laughs at his weirdness and and starts to dance with him only to leave after a few seconds of fun. This pushes the male lead, light, back to his starting point underneath the clock where it still reads 9:30. The reason that white was the focal point throughout, ex: the snow, the salt, the lights, without any black counterpart, ex: pepper or darkness, is because darkness, the female lead, was never actually there. This is also why the time never changes, and the snow falls randomly in the background, and finally it explains the doves sudden appearance. The video is the imagination of light wanting to be balanced, or dance, with his lost partner dark again who is out in the world causing disasters such as shootings and economic recessions, while light is stuck at the diner. To wrap it all up, the song is Childish Gambino trying to show how the world needs more light in it, and then hopefully life and death will be balanced again.

Here is the video and a link to the lyrics if you want to think about it yourself.