Your Take of "The Wall" ending songs?

Cafe Society
1

Starting with the “serrogate band” to the end, what do you make of what’s happening? First, why all the negativity towards minorities? Is it a reflection of events of WWII? Is the main character trying to make sense of the senseless ravaging Europe at the time? Later, the lyrics say “waiting in my bunker, safe behind my wall, waiting for the worms…” Do the worms in this instance represent the Nazi threat to England? …or, just life’s anxieties that feast on our sanity like parasitic worms? (That’s my take on the first mention of worms with the line “…and the worms ate into his brain”.)

Last, in the “Trial”, why is the main character guilty of showing emotion? Perhaps the lyrics are being sarcastic for this is somewhat contrasted against his “exquisite wife and mother” …I wager his only “crime” was being guilty of caring when they did not treat him fairly. (Also, they say the British men are not to show emotion, so it could stem from this, as well.)

Just wondering how other SDopers may interpret the whole closing finale.

2

I think it’s also a reflection of British politics at the time, with the very outspoken National Front and the racial tensions in areas like Brixton. They’re deriding all of their countrymen that followed the prodding of such “worms” all too easily and willingly.

I think the character’s problem, as revealed at the end, is that he’s built up a “wall” between himself and those around him (spurred on by circumstances such as his missing father, overbearing mother, and psychotic schoolmaster), so that he’s emotionally isolated. His greatest fear is “to be exposed,” not only as some sort of fraud, but also exposed so that the people in his life will be able to share in his emotions.

3

The Wall came out 9 years before I was born so I’m not terribly aware of the politics that may have surrounded it, but I’ve always seen the ending as saying that Pink has closed himself off from everyone in an effort to protect himself but at the same time he desperately longs for a real connection with someone. A connection he thought he could get with his wife but she leaves him for someone else which sends him absolutely spiraling to the bottom. A lot of the war imagery, I see as psychological bombardment.

4

I assume by “serrogate band” reference that you are starting with “In the Flesh” and going through to the end.

“In the flesh” is essentially Pink exhibiting all the effects of the wall that his mother and his life experiences have built for him. All the anguish of his father dying in the war, followed by his mother desperately clutching him to her bosom and slathering on a good solid layer of traditional fear of outsiders. The recurring theme of putting minorities and other riff-raff up against the wall is just a way for him to show that nothing outside the walls of his own mind can escape judgment. No matter where the spotlight shines, it will land on someone he has been taught to judge by appearance. While this is influenced by the politics of the time, I would say that it’s not uncommon even today.

“Run Like Hell” is more about his mind rebelling against what he was taught to be unacceptable behavior and what he thinks feels good.

“Waiting for the Worms” is his recession into his own mind. Hiding behind the outside justifications for his actions and distaste for humanity. I think mixed in there is also a reference to the sensation he feels when using certain intravenous drugs, which are likely what spark the introversion again.

“Stop” is something of a moment of clarity. He wants out. He has imprisoned himself and awaits his own internal judgment.

In “The Trial” he receives that judgment by his own mental projections of his antagonists. The people who built the wall brick by brick and those he blames for behaviors that it now appears he finds reprehensible.

“Outside the Wall” is later reflection on the removal of these boundaries. Trying to reach others through their prejudice and pondering whether we can help those who may be trapped in learned behavior instead of forming their own opinions.
This is the best I could dash off at short notice. I already see a few things I want to clarify, but I guess I will do that when questions or comments prompt.

5

I don’t think they were trying to comment on any particular contemporary issues. My feeling is that they were just commenting on isolation and paranoia (especially self-induced isolation and paranoia) in general, and the social pressures that lead up to it…TRM

6

The pressures of life and performing and being a mama’s boy have all caught up to him, along with the drugs and bad marriage. He OD’s before the show, and they pump him up with some drugs to do the show and he has a psychotic break by getting in touch with his inner asshole, who challenges the audience by sneering at them and their hidden racist insides. It is the truth and he is finally free, and there is that sweet little coda at the end, suggesting all will be right with the world, but after his come down, I suspect he is the blubbering mess like Syd Barrett. The End.

7

I’ve always taken it as a Freudian thing. The Pink’s dad dies before he’s born. He’s taught to idolize him, but his smothering mother infantilizes him and never allows him to take a man’s role, thus making it impossible for him to emulate his idol. His attempts to express his emotions artistically are derided and punished by the overbearing head master. Pink is able to retain his artistic creativity to the extent that he becomes a successful rock star, but music as an emotional outlet is now tainted for him, because he’s been taught that that also is unmanly. Of course, the effect of an unfaithful wife on his concept of his own masculinity should be obvious. Unable to compete with the absent image of manhood that is his father, he begins to resent, and then outright hate his father, who is also his only reference for how to view himself. These tensions were already at a breaking point (cf “Is There Anybody Out There?”) when a near fatal overdose and the subsequent doping to get him on his feet long enough to perform causes a psychotic break, and Pink, in an effort to reject his war hero father, embraces the character of the people who killed him: the Nazis, not coincidentally, the single most hated group of people in history. As a bonus, he’s also espousing a philosophy repugnant to his essential moral nature: he’s not expressing a hidden racism, he’s embracing racism because it gives him another reason to hate himself. The Nazi pose proves unsustainable, however, and in “The Trial” he is finally forced to face the totality of his self-loathing, and as a result, his ego is utterly destroyed. The final song represents the beginning - or, at least, the possibility - of healing. Having annihilated his self, he expresses a desire to rebuild it, and he recognizes that, despite his personal history, there are people out there that he can rely on. Whether he will be able to act on these desires and realizations remains an open question at the end of the album.

I also like the Gender Queer theory. It works pretty much the same way, except replace “his father” with “society’s concept of masculinity,” and the fascism isn’t a rejection of that concept for its opposite, but rather an exaggerated expression of it. This one’s also good because The Dam Busters is much more significant.

8

Damn, finally a topic I tend to be knowledgable about, and everyone posts before I’ve even woken up. :stuck_out_tongue:

Miller’s got it right with the Freudian bent, I think. 25+ years of watching the Wall (and reading everything Floyd-related I can find) led me to the same conclusions.

9

Also, the “In The Flesh” angle was an idea conceptualized by Roger Waters during the Animals tour, as he felt (especially with American audiences) increasingly isolated from his fans, and also felt that the fans were sheep that would cheer anything loud and with pretty lights, so it didn’t matter whom was actually onstage (“surrogate band”).

The Wall is also life imitiating art imitating life in a sense, as Roger’s real life father was killed in WWII, and Roger had by the time of the recording a well-developed cynical worldview.

10

YOU, the fan who came to see the show — not Pink, not Roger Waters, YOU — have been exposed to all this music tonight which, while beautiful in its own stark way, is indeed “not what you expected to see”.

The lyrics, the presentation, the visuals, even the little audio snippets between songs, are all designed to confront you with some masculinity issues. Male identity issues.

You came to hear Pink, and zone out and have a nice spacey time but they sent us along as a surrogate band. And we’ve been disturbing you quite a bit tonight, haven’t we? All that ominously dark PF music interspersed with military overtones and yelling and taunting are part of a deliberate pattern.

YOU! FAGGOT!

We’re gonna find out WHERE YOU FANS really stand. Are there any queers in the audience? There’s one in the spotlight, looking a little shocked, a little peeled, don’tcha think?

Let’s put you on trial. You’ve wondered your whole life if maybe there’s something wrong with you. Well, I’m sure there is, isn’t there?

::trial commences::

“… I sentence you to be exposed before your peers. TEAR DOWN THE WALL!”

So, having been confronted with it, your sort of have to deal with it, yeah? You’ve just been outed, in some sense of the word (and that’s for you to figure out) by your favorite space-cadet glowing band.

::wall comes down::

All alone, or in twos, the ones who really love you
walk along outside the wall
Some hand in hand, some gathered together in bands, the bleeding hearts and the artistes makes their stand

And when they’ve given you their all, some stagger and fall, after all it’s not easy,
Banging your heart against some mad bugger’s wall.
You do know what a bugger is, yes? That’s the aggressive violent one who rape-fucks you in the ass while angrily accusing you of provoking that, saying it’s your fault that this is happening to you, for being this way, for being faggy and gentle and not properly military-male masculine.

11

Wow, Miller, that was probably the best analysis of The Wall I’ve ever read.

12

I second the kudos for Miller.
Guess what I just cued up on Napster?

13

I think the whole “surrogate band” scene/track is a reflection of how Roger Waters was viewing his mass audience by the late Seventies and early Eighties.

Here he was, writing music and lyrics that reflected his own inner turmoil, his deepest feelings about his dead father, about life, about his own longings and his own despair. At one time, his work was reaching a small, cult audience that appreciated what he was doing. But beginning with “Dark Side of the Moon,” Pink Floyd became a huge, commercial phenomenon. Suddenly, Waters was singing in front of 20,000 people a night, most of whom didn’t understand or care what he was singing about. He looked out into the audience and saw thousands of stoners, bimbos, groupies, brain-dead teens, all of whom seemed to worship him. Like any big rock star, Waters could tell his fans to clap, and they’d clap. He could tell girls to go back to his hotel room, and they would. Small wonder that he began to feel a bit contemptuous of his audience. “I could tell you idiots to do ANYTHING, and like mindless sheep, you’d DO it, wouldn’t you,” he thought.

That made it easy for Waters to imagine that, if he set himself up as a political leader, his mindless fans would follow him. It was just as easy to re-imagine one of his concerts as a rally, at which slobbering fans elevated him into their Fuhrer.

14

So in other words, he felt that way because that dude in the back of the crowd wouldn’t stop shouting “Play some Skynrd, man!”

This point is pretty well illustrated in the book A Saucerful Of Secrets. Apparently the Floyd (and Roger in particular) were quite taken aback at the behavior of the American audiences whooping it up…they were accustomed to playing to hushed crowds that were filled with reverence for the band and the concert experience, not the wild, outspoken youth of America.

15

Thanks, all! I am glad I asked! I have heard some of these overarching ideas before, but many here have shed new light on what is happening - especially at the end. I had bits and pieces, but I couldn’t put enough together to make some sense from it.

No opinion is right or wrong. They are all valid perspectives, and it is interesting to re-think key pieces of the plot from different points of view.

16

It’s circular, Pink building back up the wall.

“Isn’t this…”
“…where we came in?”

17

See The Final Cut.

… And if I’m in I’ll tell you what’s behind the wall. …

… Could anybody love him
Or is it just a crazy dream?

And if I show you my dark side
Will you still hold me tonight?
And if I open my heart to you
And show you my weak side
What would you do? …

CMC fnord!