Chained to the Boxes

I was listening to music and i listened to "The Instrumental" by Lupe Fiasco and realized that this song is, thematically, speaking of the same things as the book is. It talks about how the media in a culture decides the public discourse for that culture. This song tells the story of someone who figuratively "chains himself" to "the boxes," which symbolize things such as tv, computer, radio, etc,. In the beginning of the song, he says, "He just sits, and watches the people in the boxes/Everything he sees he absorbs and adopts it/ He mimics and he mocks it"(1-3). This is pretty self-explainable; the character is glued to "the boxes" and just learns everything from there and does it in his daily life. This goes along with how Postman says that a culture is measured by what they claim is significant. That which they claim is significant is what is talked about through the media. This is to say, that people who spend a lot of time in front of "the boxes," are having a conversation with the technology about what matters, thus learning from it and applying it to their daily lives, very much like the character in the song. When one listens to the song, they feel a sense of this concept at an extreme as if though this is all the character does. However, when one begins to analyze the song, they can thoroughly see that it's not just about someone who is lonely and does nothing but spend time in front of "the boxes," but it is really about our culture. A culture that is so accustomed to spending time watching tv, on the internet, listening to the radio, on our cell phones, and so much more.

Mario Ayala