Jermaine Lamarr Cole born January 28th, 1985 is a true inspiration for young adults going down the wrong path and tries to portray that image for himself in many of his songs and videos. When looking at J Cole he portrays himself a lot differently than what his words speaks in some of his videos but in the video “Crooked Smile” he does show how much he wants to change today’s youth and society. This video is what I chose to analyze for this paper because it has so many different meanings between the video and lyrics. It has been interpreted into many meanings, but the main message J Cole is trying to produce and the message perceived by myself and many others is to rethink the War on drugs and what it is doing to today’s society. This challenge
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The idea of a police raid isn’t what J Cole is fighting there is nothing going against law officials, what he is trying to fight is why law officials are having to do these such things, and why so many lives are being taken due to these circumstances. J Cole uses the idea of drugs and the DEA for this scenario and depicts it well. These criminals are taking the youth right out of many communities across the nation and seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones was an inspiration to touch every other victim of the many different wars going on, in the streets every day. Another inspiration of J Coles was the movie “Fruitvale” it is a true story of a man named Oscar Grant who was killed in a tragedy due to what we will call “War on Drugs”. This may be our main part of the topic of ethos, in society we are told to trust cops and that they are the good guys but when we look at situations like these we question their trust because they have killed innocent victims while on …show more content…
Showing that these are two very different lives that will be portrayed throughout this video. But to begin we were able to meet J Cole as himself at the beginning of the video and not as the drug dealer we come to realize he is. I believe J Cole wants to show this side of his character in the video to give his audience a chance to learn who he really is as a person, brother, and son. Next a car pulls into the driveway of his house and his sister and parents run out of the car showing him a ton of love and goes on to depict an awesome afternoon with his family. As their night slowly comes to an end there is a clip of the agent in his van creating what seems to be an entry plan, and then shows the van arriving and entering J Coles house. As Leslie J Cole’s sister is awoken by the noises she watches as her brother is arrested and as she walks to the door she is shot by another agent and killed. This is another example of pathos shown in the video, as everyone realizes she is dead and is carried out both the DEA and J Cole are extremely devastated over the loss of Leslie in this raid. It is shown to the audience that the DEA agent’s daughter was friends with Leslie and that he mourns with J Cole. This idea shows that no matter who you are or what life you tend to lead death hurts, and this is also chiming into the underlying message that has been created by the video
The idea of a police raid isn’t what J Cole is fighting there is nothing going against law officials, what he is trying to fight is why law officials are having to do these such things, and why so many lives are being taken due to these circumstances. J Cole uses the idea of drugs and the DEA for this scenario and depicts it well. These criminals are taking the youth right out of many communities across the nation and seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones was an inspiration to touch every other victim of the many different wars going on, in the streets every day. Another inspiration of J Coles was the movie “Fruitvale” it is a true story of a man named Oscar Grant who was killed in a tragedy due to what we will call “War on Drugs”. This may be our main part of the topic of ethos, in society we are told to trust cops and that they are the good guys but when we look at situations like these we question their trust because they have killed innocent victims while on …show more content…
Showing that these are two very different lives that will be portrayed throughout this video. But to begin we were able to meet J Cole as himself at the beginning of the video and not as the drug dealer we come to realize he is. I believe J Cole wants to show this side of his character in the video to give his audience a chance to learn who he really is as a person, brother, and son. Next a car pulls into the driveway of his house and his sister and parents run out of the car showing him a ton of love and goes on to depict an awesome afternoon with his family. As their night slowly comes to an end there is a clip of the agent in his van creating what seems to be an entry plan, and then shows the van arriving and entering J Coles house. As Leslie J Cole’s sister is awoken by the noises she watches as her brother is arrested and as she walks to the door she is shot by another agent and killed. This is another example of pathos shown in the video, as everyone realizes she is dead and is carried out both the DEA and J Cole are extremely devastated over the loss of Leslie in this raid. It is shown to the audience that the DEA agent’s daughter was friends with Leslie and that he mourns with J Cole. This idea shows that no matter who you are or what life you tend to lead death hurts, and this is also chiming into the underlying message that has been created by the video