Blog #7

Being that my group's topic was based on the music video by the Flobots "Handlebars," I decided to focus on the use of power, and how it can greatly affect the lives of many. The song by the Flobots describes the speaker's rise in power and how he becomes blind in his journey for more control. The speaker changes throughout the course of the song and doesn't have the same simple views as he once had. The song begins with innocent lyrics such as "I can show you how to scratch a record," to more darker lyrics such as "I can end the planet in a holocaust." There is also a line in the song where he states that "I can lead a nation with a microphone," signifying the amount of authority he has over the population. Which reminds me of Adolf Hitler and how he was able to lead people to do something so horrific as committing the Holocaust, where millions of people where murdered. A current dictator that this song relates too is Kim Jong-un, leader of the communist country of North Korea and how he has complete control over what the citizens do and how they conduct themselves. Where the government has a tight control of what t.v. shows are aired, and has government approved haircuts that people must choose from. I can also relate this sense of control to the dystopian novel, The Hunger Games in which President Snow has absolute control over all of the 12 districts and the Capital. Where the annual hunger games are conducted and 24 kids compete to the death in order to signify the power of the Capital over the districts and keep them from rebelling against the government. Where all of these topics relate back to the sense of absolute power and how people get too carried away with it and become self absorbed in keeping their power.