Transcending "The Wall"

The film, The Wall, written and produced by the members of the band Pink Floyd in conjunction with their concept album of the same name, is a product of its time, expressing a variety of frustrations with the world which would, on first glance, seem to be anchored in simply an anti-war message fueled by the tension of the Cold War and the trauma many experienced in the wake of World War II. However, the film’s reach extends into a much more timeless statement, as one can easily interpret this film as a two-hour tirade against herd mentality. Interestingly, it also speaks to the personal dangers and problems that an individual can encounter when they choose to take the position of someone who “rebels” against assimilation into an unthinking popular culture. Of course, there are also very obvious anti-war overtones weaved throughout the piece, but The Wall appears to emphasize issues more personal and more complex than simply a statement of “war is bad.”

This movie speaks explicitly to the struggles and questions presented by Modernist and Postmodernist poets like William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Hilda Doolittle. However, the perspective seems to not offer the hope of Hilda Doolittle’s work, but instead speaks to the doomed mass of “Hollow Men,” whom T.S. Eliot speaks of in his poem of the same title. The movie appears to speak explicitly to and about the hollow men who recognize their hollowness and can’t grasp how to go about filling themselves. The Wall points out the pressure toward conformity placed upon members of modern society and the dangers and destructive power which can be existent within a mass of people moving mindlessly forward, following a leader or ideal blindly with no will of their own. To repeatedly drive this point home, the creators of this film utilize disturbing and violent images, such as the faceless mass of children moving toward the meat grinder on a conveyor belt, the marching hammers, and the rampaging bulls. These images and others like them emerge at various stages throughout the film to reiterate the imminent danger intrinsic in a mass of people mindlessly ascribing to “groupthink” rather than thinking for themselves.

While I was relatively impressed with many of the statements made and thoughts initiated throughout the film, I must take issue with the stipulation that I think was being presented that claimed that if an individual were to manage to break down the Wall, it would likely lead to what society en masse would see as insanity. I do not see this as being a necessary result of such an act. Madness does not reside in destruction of the Wall. Madness results from banging one’s head against the Wall like a dumb animal.

Of course, the Wall has many possible symbolic interpretations, but if one wants to view it as a construct of facades created by the individual, then I would also protest the belief as presented that the Wall needs to be destroyed at all, because masks can be useful commodities, as long as the person utilizing them does not identify themselves by their guises. The guises one employs in daily life do not need to be disposed of if one can simply use logic and understand that they can easily know themselves without having to eliminate the tools they utilize in order to survive. I am not the witch or the Cookie Monster I dressed up as when I was a child for Halloween just as I am not simply the artist, the writer, or the customer service professional roles that I utilize as an adult today.

The danger in utilizing guises lies then in identifying oneself by the guises utilized, not in actually utilizing those roles in order to achieve one’s desire. In order to achieve understanding of oneself, it is necessary to cease identifying with the roles played rather than trying to conform to all of them at once, for that schizophrenic need to “be” everything at once is really what can cause identity problems and incite madness. Wallace Stevens grasped this to some degree in his poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” when he struggled with the many pieces of experience he saw in the “Sargasso Sea” of a woman walking along the beach singing. The woman is not the pieces of experience, nor is she the roles that she has gathered in her lifetime… like every person who honestly examines themselves and looks for the substance beyond their cells, she is more than the sum of her parts.

Pink, the main character in The Wall, sees the forms he had utilized throughout his life as impediments to self-knowledge rather than tools to be employed, and this is his most grievous error. He spends his time focusing upon the bricks he believes are holding him in rather understanding that he is separate from the tools he has created to survive, and this is what drives him mad. Were Pink to realize he is more than the masks he has accumulated over time, his decent into madness would not even take place.

Freedom does not come from breaking through the Wall; freedom comes when one comes to the realization that they are not the Wall. One can employ the Wall as a method for obtaining protection against the ferocities of the world without being bound within its limits.

Copyright 2005 S.L. Olson