This Is Not America

I'm glad we liked it and know the movie...but does anyone know the the SONG MEANING? ;-) I'm stumped.

sad it is hahaha in my view it speaks of desillusions.. beatuiful lines telling about one's hopes not reaching destination, becoming a melting identity..

it can be seen as a song about aknowledging the fact that you've lost something precious in which you believed in.

• America representing that 'glorious destination' ...the land of milk and honey! - yeah i sure love the music and melodies and it suits well the lines if it speaks of shattered hopes ...it can be seen as someone's broken dream or broken love? maybe... anyway...something like that

In the film The Falcon and the Snowman that this was made for, the main character is captured and beaten by the police in Mexico(?) or maybe somewhere else, it's been awhile since I've seen it. He protests, saying "I am an American citizen!" which gets the reply, "This is not America". To me, the song's about one's rights and privileges that get taken for granted until they're gone. Really paranoid song, but that's the 1980s in a nutshell.

To me it's the theme of alienation, that Bowie feels his 'normal' envoirment changing for the negative. As he doesn't have a 'faint idea' how these changes came along (or are in progress) he feels that he no longer is in a place he knows.

just the title says it all: 'This is not America' This is not the country I grew up in. Not how I know it.

Timothy Hutton's character, Christopher Boyce, goes rogue as a result of profound disillusionment with the CIA when the squalid reality of their dirty tricks overthrows his idealistic illusions. This causes him to plummet into a maelstrom of espionage wherein he is unable to orient himself in a solid sense of reality.

"This is not America" refers to the "America" of his naïve, childlike dreams.

This was one of my favorite movies from my youth - the song always touched me deeply - interpreting it from the standpoint of what it means to the film I see it as Christopher Boyce' (played by Timothy Hutton) dissillusionment of this country - Thru his government job he comes upon information of how the US is manipulating and taking advantage of weaker foriegn nations and governments- he sees it as the BIG LIE the HIGH LEVEL OF DECEPTION- to him this is not the America he believed in 'little piece of me will die" there was a time that he believed America was pure and good but with his discovery of this top secret info "I could have the faintest idea" it is not the America he grew up believing in...Bowie addresses later in the song how Boyce' disillusionment destroyed his life (most of it in prison for espionage) "Falcon spirals to the ground" "So bloody red tomorrow's clouds"...

Gorgeous song, from one of my favorite movies. The story actually is about a guy that gets a job at a private contractor that handles the US secret services communications. He stumbles upon an old file, obsolete secrets about an armament project that never happened. All the while keeping this job he feels his faith for his country fading, and with these secrets he sees an opportunity to protest against the US. He devises a plan to sell the useless secrets to the Russians. He gets his childhood friend to act as a go between : he gives his friend a piece of information and the friend goes to Mexico, to the KGB's offices, to sell them the secrets. But the plan eventually turns against them, as the Russians get hungrier for more info and the friend develops a heroin addiction that requires more and more money. This is all based on the true story of Christopher Boyce and Daulton Lee, and their story is well documented on the net.

That song holds its own, but in the context of the movie takes all its meaning. True that it is a direct allusion to lost dreams, the American dream.

Timothy Hutton's character, Christopher Boyce, goes rogue as a result of profound disillusionment with the CIA when the squalid reality of their dirty tricks overthrows his idealistic illusions. This causes him to plummet into a maelstrom of espionage wherein he is unable to orient himself in a solid sense of reality.

"This is not America" refers to the "America" of his naïve, childlike dreams. "America" is an ideological illusion and fetishtic fiction.

sorry, the whole song...:)

I think it's a great song. It seems that the original meaning in the movie is about how many other nations don't enjoy the freedoms that Americans do. But I think that a couple of other meanings have emerged. Bowie plays the song to a British crowd in 2000 - check youtube - and there it seems to have the meaning of "we're British, not American." Another youtube video also used the song to spread a progressive message - that the George W administration did not represent America.

Part of the lyrics seem refer to a dying dream, (the American dream?) to promise unfulfilled - "this could be the biggest sky." But instead, the clouds will be bloody tomorrow. So, although it doesn't fit the movie script, the critique of America seems like a main theme.