19 pages 38 minutes read

Gil Scott-Heron

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1971

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Symbols & Motifs

Television

The television is a symbol for consumption of mass media. Scott-Heron represents television as a distraction from important political work and introspection. The television appears throughout the poem, starting in the first stanza when the speaker warns the implied reader, a complacent Black person, that real change cannot be achieved if the reader consumes television much in the same way a person consumes drugs. Numerous other references are to television programs that include an idealized picture of the American home and important relationships; these images center whiteness and present a sanitized, unrealistic portrait of the United States.

Television is also a medium that reproduces dangerous, stereotyped representations of Black America, a point Scott-Heron makes by including allusions to the 1968 riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the fourth stanza and more generic representation of police-involved shooting of Black people in the fifth stanza. Not only is television anaesthetizing: It presents Black death as entertainment. “The revolution will not be televised” (Line 5) because the medium is too static and too controlled by corporate and government interests to be a tool for true change.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
Unlock IconUnlock all 19 pages of this Study Guide
Plus, gain access to 8,500+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
+ Mobile App
+ Printable PDF
+ Literary AI Tools