POPULAR CULTURE: PINK FLOYD

Monica Gligor, CSCI, II, 40207

Starting with the 60s, we can assist to a change of the definition of culture, whose
meaning refers to an aesthetic value accessible to the elite, but after the World War II and the War
of Vietnam, we see that the definition of culture develops different other definitions, among
which popular culture becomes more and more used and practice.
In his book, John Stoney,” Popular Theory and popular culture. An Introduction”,
defines the popular culture as “a culture that only emerged following industrialization and
urbanism” (p.12). If we take into consideration this definition, the industrialization can be seen
as a tool for other aspects of culture such as the music because in this field, the music uses
different types of lenses, of lighting or perspective in order to make the show more spectacular.
From this point of view, we can speak about popular music as a mixture of genres,
including symphonic orchestra, actors, mascots and elements of theatre as the chorus. Two
examples are representative for this kind of mixture which characterize the popular culture:
Jesus Christ Superstar and The Wall. The first one is a kind of movie in which some artists of the
70s are re-telling the story of the latest hours of Jesus Christ. The viewer is surprised by the
ending of the movie when all the singers are taking the bus, except the one who interpreted the
role of Christ.

What is notable in this case is the fact that the artists were having a concert in which they
used all the tools (cross, lighting, costumes) that reinforce the meaning of the show: a re-telling
story of a known subject from a subjective point of view. Turning into a success, the concert
becomes a movie, reinforcing the idea of culture.
The Wall (1979), an album of the British band Pink Floyd, is considered a psychedelic
music, defined by Robert E. L. Masters and John Huston in Psychedelic Art as an experience:
The artists (and the authors of this book) are under no illusion that alteration of consciousness confers
the ability to create works of art. The artist, not the chemical, has to provide the intelligence, feeling,
imagination, and talent. The psychedelic experience is experience, not injected talent or ingested
inspiration, although the artist may draw inspiration from any thought or perception, whatever the
situation of its occurrence. (p. 12)
 In the case of Pink Floyd album, the viewer/the listener assist to a transformation,
through out the music, of an ordinary man into a contemporary artist with the lack of meaning of
his life, the atrocities of the war and of a trial where he is judged for being himself. From the
cover of the album to the movie made in 1982 and to the concert in Berlin in 1989, the
transformation becomes more and more important, starting with the lyrics which are full of
meanings from the relationship of the singer to his mother, to his friend, and finally to himself.

Even from the album title, The Wall, the listener is able to draw a barrier between the
he/she and the music, aspect which arises the interest of the listener. Once that the music starts,
we can assist to a expansion of a plot starting with a child whose father died in a war. This aspect
will imply a socio-political feature during the concert that the band had in Berlin in 1989, the
same year that the wall that separates the East Berlin from the West Berlin was broken up brick
by brick. Continuing with the song titles of the album, such as Goodbye Blue Sky, Another Brick
in the Wall, the listener identifies himself with a non-individual human live, where everybody is
nothing but a brick in the wall, represented as a barrier between the real world and
the(in)consciousness of the ordinary people of the 20st century.
 “If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?
You! Yes, you behind the bike stands
Stand still, lady!” (Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall, 2)
The concert of the Pink Floyd in Berlin 1989 provides to the spectator a show with moving
mascots, representing, at a large scale, carnivorous flowers, hammers marching, judge pulled up by
strings in order to make more real the meaning of the lyrics. As for the children, presented in the movie
faceless, introduced by the teacher in a chopping machine for meat, the concert in Berlin has a female
singer, Cindy Lauper to represent all the children. Dressed up like a teenager with a uniform, Cindy
Lauper performs as a showman, moving on the whole stage as if she wanted to escape from somewhere.

This scale of interpretation can be applied for those who lived in the communist era for
they are capable of drawing parallels between what happened in this time and the restrictions that
all the people should obey without complaining. From this point of view, one can consider the
music of Pink Floyd, especially the album The Wall as a manifesto against any oppressive
regime.
As for the contemporary listener, the album The Wall, marks a pastiche of music, show,
architecture, design, all of them features of postmodernism, as it is defined by Frederic Johnson,
Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
As for the postmodern revolt against all that, however, it must equally be stressed that its own offensive
features—from obscurity and sexually explicit material to psychological squalor and overt expressions of
social and political defiance, which transcend anything that might have been imagined at the most
extreme moments of high modernism—no longer scandalize anyone and are not only received with the
greatest complacency but have themselves become institutionalized and are at one with the official
culture of Western society. (p.57)

Considered as a whole, the cover poster which represents a wall on which is written in
capital red letters the name of the band, Pink Floyd, the movie poster which keeps the same
image of the wall adding for much more personal understanding, a screaming head emerging
from the wall, one can establish relationships on undermining authority or attempt to
individualism in a modern world in which individual means part of a mass.
 In addition to the cover album, the movie poster has a blue shadowed background, a red
screaming face, and some information such as the name of the band, the name of the album and
the names of the artists. The visual impact is much more implosive for the information in white
capital letters give to the reader/viewer a clue to an appropriate understanding and why not a
meaning of what the movie is about: a story of a child who becomes an artist imprisoned in a
wall that he builds around him to protect from the others (his mother especially, his teacher, his
girlfriend) and from himself.

As for the concert poster, the viewer has the same information that appears in the movie poster,
but the year of the concert and the location are added, but instead of the screaming face, the
viewer is dealing with a pig emerging from the wall, idea that reminds to an aware reader of
George Orwell’ s Animal Farm.
In conclusion, the most listen album of Pink Floyd represents for the music, the film and the
concert a starting point of the popular culture capable not only to combine different forms of art,
but also to underline a meaning of a disturbed society in which the individual is faceless, the
same society judges and convicts the individual in order to range him/her to the lines of the
masses. At the same time, we can consider the album The Wall (1986) a manifesto against this
same society which, despite its apparent cosmopolitan aspect represents in fact a prison of the
self in search of a meaning, meaning that can be found in a personal approach and understanding
of a multimodal forms of art.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. https://archive.org/details/john-storey-cultural-theory-and-popular;
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SY1gEgjtc4;
3. coffee.com_psychedelic-art-robert-el-masters-amp-jean-houston-pdf-free.pdf;
4. https://www.google.com/search?
q=pink+floyd+the+wall+album&source=lmns&bih=641&biw=1366&hl=ro&sa=X&ved
 =2ahUKEwjLoOKg-
72CAxU65bsIHQ_9DJMQ0pQJKAB6BAgBEAI#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:a4d515e2,vid:W
vMwaHXCLKM,st:0;
5. https://filmehd.to/filme/pink-floyd-the-wall-1982/;
6. Frederic Johnson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, UW
Madison, 1984;