The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and drop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip
Skip out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be televised
These are the words of Gil Scott-Heron (1) (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011), a relatively obscure hero of the folk, soul, and jazz worlds, who was probably most known for his spoken word performances in the 70s and 80s (2). The song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a scathing critique of watching TV, and has served as a great reminder to me that it’s a great waste of time. When I first heard these words I was spending a fair amount of time away from TVs, camping out at folk festivals, but still very much a consumer of television whenever I was back in the comfort of my own home.
The thing that strikes me now about Scott-Heron’s “song” is that he rails so eloquently on this idea that no great change will be reported to us through our TVs, but the nature of this change, of The Revolution, is never quite revealed. So the absolute genius of the lyrics is that if they engage us, we are totally free to envision a revolution of our own choosing. But the subject is not revolution — it is the fact that if we are sitting on our sofas we are missing the revolution, and so he is essentially exciting is to embrace our own incrimination. I can’t think of a more effective way to plant a seed that maybe all this plugging in, turning on and dropping out is destroying us.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruption
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
Blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
Hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised
As Americans we are currently existing in the most divisive era since the active conflict stage of the Civil War. After that war, the country worked to unify. There were lots of stumbles, steps backward, and blatant attempts to halt or negate the progress of becoming one unified nation where all people are equal, but through a tremendous amount of persistence we defied our most basic animal instincts and truly became better than our individual selves. I by no means believe the work was ever done, but I am an eternal optimist who believes in the I Ching concept of Gradual Progress, and even today I believe we can achieve higher levels of greatness. Not in terms of wealth or power, but by actually living up to our Constitution. But again, we are currently highly divided. And why?
The revolution will be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and
will not star Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
Thinner, because The revolution will not be televised, Brother
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays
Pushing that cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not predict the winner at 8:32 or the count from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised
This part of the song eludes to television’s worst aspect — it feeds us useless information disguised as news. When we are in the habit of tuning in, there is a tremendous tendency to think that what we are viewing is relevant. It wouldn’t be coming out of the TV if is wasn’t, right? If other people are watching this, and, well, I guess I’ll just assume they are because the tv company wouldn’t bother if people weren’t eating it up en masse, then it must be important. And if Everyone else thinks it’s important then it must be true. The TV certainly doesn’t lie!
And at the very end of that section, after the long diatribe on “Rocky and Bullwinkle” bullshit, we get the “NBC will not predict the winner.” Because really, all the infotainment crap is benign . . . until the networks interweave the politics of the day. We are left with very murky perceptions of what is real and what is not. What is important and what it not. So if the addiction to the tube it set, then we really have no choice but to shrug and accept it all as the same.
Neil Postman claimed in Amusing Ourselves to Death that even children have no problem separating fact from fiction on TV. There is no harm in stupid shows, even ones that show violence, because the frame is clearly entertainment. However, he continued, its the juxtaposition of that entertainment with the pseudo real nightly news, intermingled with messages like “you deserve a break today,” that cause real harm (3).
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
Brothers in the instant replay
There will be no pictures of young being
Run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still life of
Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a red, black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the right occasion
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and
Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant
and Women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised
So here Scott-Heron hints at the revolution he has in mind, but aside from simply commenting on various other things we see on the nightly news, he’s only close to obvious when he says, “Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day,” which, incidentally may not actually get covered, so we are still very free to fill in the blanks with our own revolutionary desires.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock News
and no pictures of hairy armed women Liberationists and
Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key
nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash
Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a whitetornado, white lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a germ on your Bedroom
a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that cause bad breath
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat
The revolution will not be televised
WILL not be televised, WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live
The revolution will be live.
If you are an American who still has any hope for the kind of Democracy actually envisioned by the Founding Fathers and cultivated by the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, then I truly believe there is no more important single act you can commit to than getting rid of your television. Even voting is second to this, in my opinion, because democracy really depends on an informed electorate above all else.
People who choose TV as their primary source of information are more prone to rate traditional print/online journalism as inherently biased (this is my own hypothesis, but I have lots of reasons to think it’s a sound one). But non-TV journalism is not only less biased, but when one chooses it as their primary source they can very easily curate their own blend of outlets to get a range of information that varies from conservative to liberal/progressive. Most people who choose TV watch one news channel. Most of the people I know who choose print journalism read multiple publications. Simply by using an app like Apple News one can get as wide a range of headlines as they choose. I use that app to scan headlines every day from a range of sources that lean both fairly right and left.
If more people stop paying attention to the crap that CNN and Fox tell us is news, and stop allowing those outlets to tell us what we should think about important topics, then even the print sources will need to be more fair in their reporting. Already, if you compare Fox’s print journalism to its TV news you will see a big difference in editorial slant. The print version is still biased to the right, just as CNN is to the left, but much less so than the TV content they produce. The reason for this, I assume, is that even conservative readers are still readers, and by definition readers tend to be more assertive about reading a range of information. By default both Fox and CNN have to appeal to more sophisticated audiences in their print versions.
We all only have so much time in our day. I think a lot of people actually feel some guilt for not being more informed about important topics. Personally, once my wife and I cut the cable cord about 6 years ago, it only took a few months to start wondering how on earth I found the time to watch so much TV! Today I have to budget how much time I spend reading the news so it doesn’t have a negative impact on my family time. That is a revolutionary concept!
I know you may not be into the kind of revolution that Gil Scott Heron was hoping for, and I know I may have offended you in a myriad of ways with this post, but I can say with complete confidence that you don’t offend me! I’m not offended by any diverse thought or opinion. In fact, I love diversity of thought. I hold it dear. I hold it dear because I believe it is the THE key to democracy.
If you’ve read this far and are thinking, “Cool, I love that song,” or “Right on. I hate TV,” or anything along those lines, then you’re probably on my team. If you were bothered in any way, but somehow still are also reading, then even if you and I have radically different opinions, I think we are still on some same team, at least when it comes to what we need most in this country during these divisive times. If you don’t believe in democracy, or you believe that democracy should only be accessible to certain members of society, or that somehow survival of the fittest works as an approach to political science and public policy, well, then we are indeed quite opposed, but even then, if you’d like to have a genuine dialogue that involves both of us listening to facts and logical arguments, then bring it on! The only reason to fear such dialogue is if you’re worried that something might actually change your mind. Personally, I thrive in having my mind changed.
I welcome all comments from anyone who wants to have a dialogue about how we might be less divisive, and how we might someday get back to a dynamic, heated process of debating facts and making tough choices, guided by logic and ethics. I will not take kindly to anyone thinking this is an invitation to state racist or sexist beliefs, no matter how veiled you believe they might be. The only future America I’m interested in fighting for embraces equality and equity for everyone, regardless of skin color, religion, gender identity, physical or mental health or capacity, or any other distinction among us.
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
References:
- Songwriter: Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
- Gil Scott-Heron; American musician, poet and author, Wikipedia entry
- Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death; Public Discourse in the age of Show Business, Penguin Books, 1985.