In the sixties, the counterculture phrase "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out" coined by the High Priest of LSD, Timothy Leary, was in fact saying to "Get stoned, abandon all constructive activity" and the rest would follow.
Today LSD actually stands for Liquid Screen Display and we have in a perverted way finally achieved Timothy Leary's wish. We turn on the television set, tune into a soap opera, the news, a film, a reality show and then we drop out. In 1974 Gil Scott -Heron already made the link between the power of television and what could be understood as the ultimate expression of reality, revolution. Do you remember this…?
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
By Gil Scott-Heron
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
and skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
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.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods 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 May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney 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 proper 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.
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 white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, the 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 may 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, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
But in reality the revolution was televised all along. The revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies became the stockbrokers of the 80's and all the marches and demonstrations were put on VHS and kept for viewing on special family occasions. Ideologies were put in a can and served cold. And then we realized that it was television that was live and not the revolution. Slowly but surely we had been hypnotized, driven to substitute our reality for the fabricated reality of television. We were in fact little by little poisoned. Murdered by television. Like in the title of the bad 1935 B movie starring Bela Lugosi. Then again, even in this film, what you see is not what you get. In the film nobody is murdered by television. A murder actually takes place on television. Live. It's that subtle and we've had many re-runs since then…
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