
In the Kendrick Lamar music video for the song Alright a motif that currently comes up is cops being unnecessarily violent and shooting at African American men. Not only do we see cops shooting at black men in the music video but they also appear in different scenes doing things other than shooting. This music video shows how the artist Kendrick Lamar feels about cops and the way they treat his peers. Kendrick Lamar and the director of this music video Collin Tilley did a great job directing this music video and used certain film techniques to express specific motifs and ideas. 

One of the first times we see a cop in this music video is 1 minute and 33 seconds in. the cop we see in the video is throwing an African American man to the floor. first the viewer gets a close up of the African American man’s face hitting the concrete, which makes you sympathize for this man. After that the African American man makes an attempt to break free from the officer and the camera starts to shake which shows the chaos that’s going on at the moment. About 5 seconds in to the camera shaking it then becomes still and everything slows down and the camera zooms in on the pistol that the officer is holding. You see a bullet fly out of the pistol in slow motion which makes a dramatic effect. There is no knowledge given to the viewer of what happened between the African American man and the cop prior to this incident so this sequence in the music video makes you really sympathize for the African American man because the only thing the viewer sees is him getting thrown to the floor and then shot. He looks completely innocent and the cop is clearly portrayed as killing someone who did not have to be killed.

Cops appear in the music video in a couple other instances throughout this video but the one that really stands out is towards the end of the music video. Before this sequence occurs the lyrics of the song that play is “and we hate popo want to see us dead in the street fosho” and we see Kendrick standing on the street light and the cop uses his hand to shoot Kendrick off of it. The first shot we see in this sequence is the cop cruising in with his car, it then cuts to Kendrick joyfully dancing on the street lamp and then back to the cop getting out of his car with a shotgun. The viewer then again sees Kendrick dancing on the street post and then again cuts back to the cop who is now out of his car armed with a shotgun but rather than using his gun to shoot Kendrick down he just raises his hand and makes a gun with it. After the cop raises his hand and makes gun it cuts to a bug eyes view shot of Kendrick and it shows us how high up he is which could symbolize that he is high on life or maybe that he’s high power. We then see the cop shoot Kendrick off the light post just using his hand and Kendrick falls from the light post in slow motion. When he reaches the ground after falling it turns black and then the camera comes back to a close up of Kendrick’s face with a smile on it. Kendrick is simply just dancing in this sequence and the cop clearly shoots him for no reason. Collin Tilley, the director of this music video made an interesting decision in using the cops hand as a gun rather than actually using the shot gun. 

someone going against the claim made in this paper would argue that cops aren’t constantly being portrayed as being unnecessarily violent throughout the music video. The cops in this video could have a reason for shooting at the victims in the video, even though the people being shot at and arrested look innocent we really don’t know what they did to make the cop pursue them. The viewer is watching cops take care of justice rather than watching cops abusing their power. One could make an argument going against the idea of cops being portrayed in a negative way as violent and corrupt but they I feel that there wouldn’t be much to work with. With the lyrics included I think its pretty hard to argue against the facts that cops are being portrayed in a negative way. The music video itself and the lyrics both clearly indicate how Kendrick feels about the cops and that he clearly wants to portray them in a negative way and expose them for their corruption. 

Cops are clearly portrayed as the victims in this music video and it is also Cleary shown that Kendrick does not like how cops are treating him and fellow African Americans. A common motif that is constantly being portrayed is cops abusing their power. This music video is filled with scenes that show cop brutality but I think that the two I chose to analyze are the best examples. Even though Kendrick feels that cops are abusing their power and are quick to shoot at Black men I thought he ended the video in a perfect way by having a close up on his face with a smile on it. It shows the viewer that despite everything that’s going on everything will be “Alright”.