The Musical - Arizona State University
The Musical
A Film Journal by Sean J. Carney
ENG 105 ONLINE
Dr. Steve Beatty
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Pink Floyd’s The Wall:
One Hell of a Trip
An Essay by Sean Joseph Carney
ENG 105 Online, Film Journal
[pic]Album Advertisement, 1979
It only takes one small piece of square shaped paper, no more than a quarter inch across in any direction. Perhaps it is decorated with psychedelic tie-dyed colors, or maybe Warhol’s famous Marilyn face, possibly even that perfect icon of Americana Mr. Mickey Mouse. Either way, the image on the paper is not what is of concern here, but rather what is contained within the paper. What’s contained is a concentration of synthesized chemicals, a special recipe concocted in Switzerland in 1943 by a curious and celebrated scientist Dr. Albert Hoffman. In this particular order, the chemicals’ proper name is lysergic acid diethylamide (Cohen 27). Such a long and polysyllabic string of words has much less of a reactionary affect with people than the slang terms most often used to describe this almost accidental achievement of contemporary science. Most people know of it simply as LSD, acid, base, blotter, fry, liquid, or one of the other thousand names that street hustlers have assigned it in the last sixty years. The drug is an indescribably complex one, affecting the mind and the body after ingestion and producing noticeable effects that in some cases can last up to twelve hours or more. Scattered thoughts, surreal and invasive memory recollection, enhanced sensory experiences, puzzling child-like mentalities, increased abstract and randomly associative thought patterns, a feeling of “newness” about what one is seeing in the world, the delightfully powerful fragmenting of lights and colors, numbness of the posterior limbs, and a profound sense of a dichotomously enjoyable and frightening vulnerability are all just parts of the trip. But the most important of these aspects of LSD is the latter, that strangely fun and scary sense of vulnerability. This state allows the user of the drug to absorb the world around them in a more focused, yet ironically scattered manner. While one by all standards feels entirely “fucked up” under the influence of acid, there exists a simultaneous sense of unprecedented clarity and universal awareness. Persons experiencing this are quite susceptible to new ideas, and are as impressionable as an eager child. If anyone knows the potential of this state of mind, it is surely the highly revered progressive and psychedelic rock band of the golden drug era Pink Floyd. They are a group infamous for intentionally catering to the hallucinogenic experience of its audience with grand spectacles of colorful lights, powerful and commanding walls of orchestrated dissonant sound, and an ambient and textural arsenal of truly amazing music that seems to encourage visiting the “other worlds” of consciousness. It is no surprise then that when the Floyd hired Alan Parker to direct a full length feature film based on their 1979 double album The Wall, the movie would ultimately be presented as the vision of an intensely introspective and visually monumental LSD trip.
Roger Waters, the group’s primary songwriter and vocalist, penned the screenplay himself after the completion of the epic album. Parker was hired in by the group to capture the psychedelic and very personal aspects of the album’s music and lyrics in a unique visual manner. He succeeds in effectively rendering the music for an optical experience, creating a picture that looks and feels as intense as the Floyd’s music. From the editing of this strangely avant-garde 1982 film, to its replacement of traditional narrative dialogue with a plot progressed only by images and specifically placed music, the entire work feels very much like a hallucination. This peculiarly unorthodox method of storytelling evokes a feeling of true passivity in the audience, a feeling based on their confusion and simultaneous voyeur like interest in the story. While most films rely on constant interaction between characters through language that can be easily understood by a plethora of peoples to keep audience interest, The Wall entirely ignores the systematic and calculated approaches of mainstream cinema. This relates quite concretely to the ideals of the drug culture, a sub society that rejects and avoids the lifestyles of the sober working stiffs. In fact, the non-mainstream presentation of the film is actually quite difficult to comprehend at the first go. It encourages a second look, much like one’s first drug experience might, beckoning them to have another try and push the envelope further. But it is the achievement of that previously mentioned passivity in the audience that keeps them quiet, jaws agape, and eyes straining to collect every small piece of imagery on the screen. A passive audience is by every standard an impressionable audience, and can be in many ways be described as an entranced group. However, the group is by no means “dumbfounded.” What they are experiencing, through the psychedelic imagery and epic music is a state of Alert Passivity, a fair description of certain LSD states (Cohen 68). It is the mind frame described earlier, the complete intoxication of the mind and body that somehow allows for perceived supreme mental clarity and critical evaluations of the surrounding world. Though the Floyd’s audience cannot seem to escape the experience of The Wall, they are quite able to fully utilize their mental capacity to explore the undertones of the film and assign meaning to those abstract ideals.
Utilizing a fair amount of film montage techniques that date back to the experimental motion pictures of Salvador Dali and even the Dadaists, the movie can very easily be described as non-sequential. Images of war weave into childhood memories of an overbearing mother, animated hammers march like Nazi soldiers and are abruptly surrounded by a white brick cartoon wall that tears across the land, and obedient prep school students suddenly find themselves riding a conveyer belt through a dimly lit warehouse towards an impossibly large meat grinder. These random shiftings of time and place, and the accompanying intense mnemonics recall very literally the effects that acid produces within the human brain. An LSD trip is like an unholy carnival full at once of all the inspiration and the ugliness inherent in the mind; a kaleidoscopic ride through the memories of one’s own life, and even of collective human life, complete with simultaneous ecstasy and sheer animalistic primal fear. The development of events in this type of film though does not seek to represent consequential happenings in the world, but traces through a psycho-associative matrix of relationships, representing a non-temporal mental state (Le Grice 93). Experiencing LSD is nothing like experiencing the usual corporeal world, thereby justifying that experiencing this film is nothing like experiencing an average Hollywood excuse for fine cinema.
One aspect of the film though trumps all others in relation to its psychedelic nature. That aspect is the incredibly diverse and always poignant musical accompaniment. Strangely, The Wall is indeed a musical; it uses its soundtrack and songs to progress the narrative very much like the films Grease or The Sound of Music did. Perhaps the most unique thing about this film though is that is musical aspect never wanes or disappears; the movie is by its very nature only communicated through song. Only on a few occasions are we to believe that one of the film’s characters is actually aware of the soundtrack or participating in it by actually singing. That surreal feature of the movie lends itself to being very psychedelic and strange, never once
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Film Advertisement, 1982
offering the audience the chance to feel as though they are watching a normal film. Without the comforts of regular dialogue between the film’s characters, it becomes difficult to see the film as a two dimensional entity separate from us. Strangely, it seems to include us.
Music not only annihilates the space that lies between a listener and it, it also establishes a feeling of space inside of us, and by opening up this space, actually succeeds in enlarging us (Bromell 73). Mainstream films consist of actor to actor dialogue, resulting in a very two-dimensional experience that excludes the viewing audience. By eliminating that separation, Floyd engulfs the viewer in a multi-dimensional experience. What this does is incorporate the audience, allowing them to subjectively narrate the dialogue within their own mind. The artistic medium of music is almost impossible to define; it is at once a tangible and intangible entity. It can be felt, but it cannot be touched. It encompasses the listener, shattering the negative space between a stereo speaker and the ear, and fluidly fills an entire environment.
Thus, the music in The Wall incorporates the complex mind frame of each viewer, bringing them into the wildly imaginative story in a manner that motion picture soundtracks had never before even attempted. Users of LSD have often described the experience as one that evokes a feeling of universal consciousness, the doorway to collective being and thought. By connecting the audience intimately to the story, The Wall also produces a sense of unity betwixt viewer and subject. In that simultaneous space between these two entities, images on the screen are able to spring forward with life. Their ability to do this relies on the lyric and melodic structure of each movement in song. Music relies on rhythm, and the human body as well has a rhythmic nature. The beating of the heart, the pulse, and the thought patterns of the brain as it digests and encodes information all respond very literally to moving sound and harmony. Psychedelic rock musicians have long known of this phenomenon, utilizing ambience, mood and intentional dissonance to speak to the natural rhythms of the human body. Therefore, their music not only enters a listener through the ears, but passes like a welcome guest through the epidermal layer and creates very real physical sensations. As the images in The Wall captivate and challenge the eyes, the expansive music touches the ears and the body. The film is a physical experience that affects and captures its audience, taking hold of their senses and mind very much as would the drug LSD.
Who can deny that the powerful ambience of the song Comfortably Numb suggests a drug like haze to a listener? “There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying,” boasts the song as a string section builds up a wall of warm inviting melody. But LSD is not like the modern drug ecstasy, it does not inherently produce only enjoyable effects. Other songs in the soundtrack illustrate the frightening nature of a “bad trip.” The second song on the record, called Thin Ice, effectively conveys a feeling of urgency and panic. “Don’t be alarmed if a crack in the ice should appear under your feet. You’ll slip out into depths and out of your mind with your fear flowing out behind you...as you claw the thin ice.” Suddenly an explosion of drums, bass and electric guitar drown out the solo piano of the early part in the song. The heavily laid distortion on the guitar wails and howls, pulling the listeners mind back and forth as David Gilmour’s adept fingers bend the squealing notes of his guitar in a highly unorthodox manner.. Here, like in many places in different songs from The Wall, the Floyd employ a minor key to suggest the fear and sadness of the drug experience, then creatively adding several intentional flat notes that serve to confuse a listener’s anticipation of the melody. Those unanticipated notes assure that no viewer or listener can become entirely comfortable during the experience, solidifying the Alert Passivity in the audience.
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Album Artwork, 1979
Bob Geldof is the actor who takes on the role of “Pink Floyd,” the jaded and drugged out rock and roll star whose maniacal psyche the film focuses on. He is introduced in the early frames of the film perched in a chair awkwardly in a burnt out daze, holed up in some hotel in Los Angeles, post the illusionary glory of the drug experience. Henceforth, the film skips quickly through a barrage of “memories” as Pink’s subconscious mind wades through the strange experiences of his life that have brought him to his present day apathy towards the world. Many of these memories are not actually his own; visions of his father dying brutally in the trenches of World War II could have never been witnessed firsthand by young Pink. And the finale of the film, a twisted animated court scene where everyone Pink has known in his life come to chastise and accuse him of his crimes does not happen in the actual world. Neither has Pink truly dressed in war fatigues and zombie-like make-up and paraded back and forth on stage, screaming at his fans and degrading them for being drug users, Jews, homosexuals and Blacks. However, these abstract fantasies, or perhaps nightmares, further allude to the perceived universality of thought and collective memory experienced by those who venture on an LSD trip. It does not matter that Pink has never witnessed or participated in these things. What matters is that he, in the depths of a drug binge, actually believes that he has. Thus, the audience is encouraged to believe that they have as well, right along side of their film counterpart. They are encouraged to believe this because the film’s unorthodox presentation suggests an inexplicable association between screen and audience, a universal experience.
When on LSD, the highly complicated ideational structures of the mind are probably caused by a flood of associations which are ordinarily repressed. It is as though the nerve net has been reset at a lower threshold, permitting the transmission of masses of associations normally denied passage (Cohen 66). The mind under the influence of a hallucinogen is then entirely vulnerable, very much like the audience while viewing The Wall. Pink does not want to envision his father’s death, but he cannot dam the flood of thoughts entering his LSD infested brain, regardless of any conscious efforts on his own part. And a viewer, taken aback by this strange film is left with no choice but to feel and think as Pink does, or to walk out on the film entirely and lose the unique experiences that it offers. They too are witnessing the frightening hallucinations, and are hearing and feeling the sounds that come with them. It becomes apparent that tripping is not by its nature an enjoyable experience. It is rather a potentially dangerous psychedelic journey that has little sympathy for the unsettled psyche. And the film portrays this by its very essence, as memories of willing and beautiful groupies are intruded by heinous visions of a demonic and entirely sexual Venus Fly Trap gobbling up a phallic plant that tries to woo and seduce it. If this cartoon does not recall a terrible acid trip, then one is left to ponder what exactly will.
Certainly, the band Pink Floyd is no stranger to the detrimental effects of LSD abuse. The band’s original guitarist and lyricist, Syd Barrett, ate LSD tabs like a gluttonous child consumes chocolate. His erratic stage behavior, often consisting of him staring up wide eyed and empty headed at the house stage lights whilst mindlessly strumming a single chord for entire songs nearly demolished the group before it ever achieved any kind of significant success (Melichi 126). In the film, the levels of madness reached by Pink seem very much like those of Barrett. Having been personally affected quite negatively by the LSD craze, the band seems intent on subtly conveying to the film’s audience the idea that being “experienced,” as Jimi Hendrix described it, was not the single key to personal salvation and enlightenment. While one could never argue that Pink Floyd took an anti-drug stance, it is apparent that they are aware of the dangers of drug use and wanted to promote the responsible pursuit of recreation through psychedelics. Their stage shows, films and music cater quite distinctly to the drug culture. But it is within their lyrics that one finds the simultaneous explorations of the madness that drugs can potentially bring. It is a quiet, but cautionary message for anyone who is not too spaced out to pick up on it.
So although the band’s avid fans are notorious for their fascination with psychedelics and the accompanying counter culture, Floyd is quick to illustrate that the unaddressed hazards of their recreation. In the film, Pink ingests countless substances on his road to iconic stardom, and is left tortured in his desolate mind by the subsequent maniacal visions and hallucinations. These after-effects and their resulting visual interpretations are the optical basis of the movie. From the transforming and morbid cartoons of soldiers dying in the field and a mother swelling quite literally with jealousy, to the Nazi like rock show that Pink fantasizes presiding over, viewers are assaulted with the psychotic realms of his brain. The most startling aspect of this though is the way that he serves as a viewer surrogate so effectively. Pink is not a protagonist or an antagonist by general film standards, but rather a hollow body waiting to be inhabited by ever person who watches his downward spiral.
Many people who watch The Wall comment that they were unsettled by the film, noting that it was invasive in nature, confusing and left an empty feeling inside once it had finished. The majority of movies leave a viewer with a sense of serenity and closure, that all is well and resolved. The reactions of those who witnessed the almost heroic tragedy of Pink are a testament to the film’s pursuit of LSD like experience. They identified and lived with Pink, albeit for only ninety minutes, and are confused as to why their main character, their film self, failed. What they are feeling is incredibly similar to the after effects of an LSD trip. There is a gaping hole that was so close to being filled by the psychedelic experience, but was then torn open again violently as the magic of the drug abruptly exited their nervous system. Drugs are like selfish lovers in a sense, providing enough pleasure to intrigue continued interest, but ultimately offering little in the way of true fulfillment.
Experimental film makers are concerned with evoking the unconscious states of mind that structure experience. They want to make films that are personal and very psychological (Moore 15). By providing a real experience similar to LSD, The Wall facilitates very introverted thoughts and feelings that are often uncomfortable for a viewer. As aforementioned, the final results are not meant to comfort an audience, but to actually cause discomfort and disorder for them. Pink is in theory an anti-hero. There exist moments where he provides pleasure, and instances of true entertainment. His fate though is ultimately and unavoidably a dreary and isolated one. That fate is quite reminiscent of the withdrawals associated with frequent and irresponsible drug usage. The Wall was a breath of fresh air for the campy and all too predictable film climate of the early 1980's, and still serves as an example of finely executed “interactive” cinema. Anyone who becomes curious about the LSD experience can have one without complicating their health or mental stability and well being; they need only commit an hour and a half to watching the closest thing to the effects of actually eating up a mass of psychedelics, Pink Floyd and Alan Parker’s The Wall.
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Film Advertisement, 1982
Works Cited
Bromell, Nick. Tomorrow Never Knows. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Cohen, Sidney. The Beyond Within. New York: Atheneum Press, 1966.
LeGrice, Malcolm. Abstract Film and Beyond. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977.
Melichi, Antonio. Psychedelia Britannica. London: Turnaround Press, 1997.
Moore, Barry Walter. Aesthetic Aspects in Recent Experimental Film. New York: Arno
Press, 1980.
Pink Floyd. The Wall. Columbia Records, 1979.
The Wall. Dir. Alan Parker. Perf. Bob Geldof. Columbia Music Video, 1982.
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This Film Journal, Copyright 2004, Sean J. Carney
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