PCA 2022

Roscoe’s Wetsuit Metamodernism: How Donald Glover Uses Childish Gambino

Talk by Camden Ostrander

Donald Glover, who is more than ok at computers, is asking us to @ him.

(but he’s interviewing himself?)

Why is he doing this? What does it mean?

Has he always been like this online?

How did we get here?

#Donald4Spiderman

The Early Days

Glover began his career using the internet as a means for upward mobility - particularly in the comedy world.

He experienced the crowd-sourcing power of the web in a sincere act that was mixed with self-promotion. #Donald4Spiderman

#Donald4Spiderman would become regular content in his comedy work, and make appearances in Childish Gambino’s music - as social media becomes an essential component of the artistic worlds of Glover.

Because the Internet and Roscoe’s Wetsuit

Metamodern art is oftentimes a response to crisis, and can grapple with recent events and issues, applying itself to the world in real time (Abramson “Ten Basic Principles of Metamodernism”).

Because the Internet and the Hotel Room Instagram Notes

Gambino comes back to the internet with reality… and the web doesn’t know how to respond.

Glover’s metamodern sensibilities are a response to crisis, both the individual existential crisis faced, as well as the collective grappling with the internet’s influence. Statements made in interviews along the lines of “we are more connected than ever but I have never felt so alone” echo this metamodern sense of the internet’s effect, and reflects the social desire “to be with each other, but also elsewhere - connected to all the different places they want to be,” pursuable through the power of the web (Breakfast Club 2013; Turkle).

Roscoe’s Wetsuit

“Roscoe’s Wetsuit,” itself a phrase of simultaneous significance and meaninglessness, a mystery box of a phrase/hashtag/concept, appears throughout Glover’s Because the Internet world. It becomes a singular representation of this metamodern conception of identity, safety, and the web, contingent on its transmedia use both by Glover in his authorial role, as well as the proliferation and exploration of the phrase by his audience. The phrase first appeared on Glover’s twitter feed, and he would intermittently retweet accounts that had also tweeted the phrase (@DonaldGlover). Glover’s pervasive use of this mystery box encouraged audience investigation and spreadability, realizing his desire for audience exploration of the world he created, evidenced in the plethora of chat rooms, forums, and articles dedicated to investigating the phrase’s significance (@Genius). Transmedia implementation of mystery boxes is predicated on the notion, that, in world-building, “mystery… is the catalyst for imagination,” and fans explored the meaning of Roscoe’s Wetsuit (Rose). In this, Glover captures transmedia’s capacity for engaging audience participation through his mystery box, and illustrates the metamodern conception of identity simultaneously overlapping with other facets of identity. Finally, the connotation of the wetsuit as a protective equipment emphasizes Glover’s spotlight on constructed identity as means of more safely surfing the web.

“Awaken, My Love!” + Atlanta + PHAROS

PHAROS

then he did some song and video called “This is America”

and that did ok… mostly Donald’s response was to encourage folks to talk about it, refuse to give any answers, and then embark on a tour around it - you know, a real physical space and expression of the art… but we’re going to skip ahead to this last year or so

Pettiness and LeBron

“Did you ever tap into something that is in you that you feel is kind of bad to win?Because I struggle with that. I am naturally petty… Like, extremely petty… ‘Awaken, My Love!’ was literally because somebody said, ‘Oh, he can’t make a hit.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, not only will I make a hit, I won’t make a single video for it.'”

Donald Glover Interviewing Donald Glover - April 7, 2022

“I don’t think life is real unless some things are just for you”

“the central motivation of metamodernism is to protect interior, subjective Felt Experience from the ironic distance of postmodernism, the scientific reductionism of modernism, and the pre-personal inertia of tradition.” (Dember)

“Metamodernism inherits self-reflexivity from postmodernism, but repurposes it in a manner that, generally speaking, serves to affirm felt experience. If the “self” being reflected upon in a metamodern work is the work’s author, the result is a highlighting of the author’s own lived, inner experience. In this case the author’s own self-reflection provides a model for the reader’s self-reflection, and by extension, the reader’s own felt experience.” (Dember)