System of a Down's Toxicity refers to, as the name implies, pollution. "Conversion, Software Version 7.0" (1) describes the change in society towards more and more technology. With "eating seeds as a pastime activity"they allude to growing unemployment numbers.
They keep asking "Now, what do you own the world?" and question the dualistic point of view, the right of mankind to do whatever they want with the environment.
Here is a YouTube-Link to the song: *klick*
And the full lyrics: *klick*
Timo,
ReplyDeleteStrong text, for sure, in terms of our class content. Particularly in popular rock and hard rock, you see quite a bit of boiled down rhetoric. That is, the lyrics seems fairly dualistic and even "Manichean"--a word that derives from the name of an early Gnostic religion in Iran, but which now signifies one of their key traits: a belief in some eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. The Manichean dualism is there, for example, with the struggle between that "sacred silence" and all the toxicity going on around it.
What is interesting to note, however, is that this is a genre that has oft been criticized for being "noise polllution," for "polluting kids' minds," for sending "poisonous messages." Given the genre specificity, this allusion to toxins becomes much more interesting.