Comment by animal_spirits
9 hours ago
I do love this song and I find it resonates to read the lyrics as though revolutions are censored by media (which is true). Though I found an interview with Gil Scott-Heron about the meaning of the lyrics and I find it more interesting; The revolution will not be televised because the revolution starts in your mind, at the dinner table, or reading books in the library. It won't be captured on TV because the revolution occurs when you question your own beliefs and understand something bigger.
One of the joys of poetry is that it can contain multiple hard-to-describe facets of the same concept.
* The revolution won't be televised because they won't show it to you.
* The revolution won't be televised because it's not a passive, external experience that you just consume.
* The revolution won't be televised because it starts inside yourself.
* The revolution won't be televised because we don't watch TV anymore (and are fragmented and increasingly don't even have those common touch points anymore).
Zing!
*Thats the point flying over this comment.
I'll watch the revolution when the whole season comes to Netflix and I can binge it over a weekend.
Art in general is this way. It's no wonder the more we abstract away our lives and society (through screens, deliveries, etc) the more abstract art feels more relevant to our experience.
There's a recording from the 80s where he makes the same point in the middle of reciting the poem. It's a really good version.
"A lot of times people see battles and skirmishes on TV and they say 'Ah-ha! The revolution is being televised!' Nah. The results of the revolution are being televised. The first revolution is when you change your mind, about how you look at things, and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown. What you see later on is the results of that, but the revolution, that change that takes place, will not be televised."
https://youtu.be/6xxMvoDuBFs?t=498
Yes man you got it.
That's clever.