Pink Floyd - The Wall: rock music as ars politica

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The Wall is a concept album released by Pink Floyd in 1979. It addresses the personal crisis, gradual isolation, and emotional breakdown of a fictional rock star named Pink. The Wall was almost exclusively Roger Waters' work, who also wrote the screenplay for the film directed by Alan Parker in 1982. The latter included animation sequences by Gerald Scarfe, while Bob Geldof played Pink.

The Wall largely articulates a critique of the music industry. It actually grew out of Waters' frustration at live performances taking place in large venues and in front of mass audiences. The profit-orientated nature of this type of concerts led, as Waters argues, to the experience of alienation: "I became very conscious of a wall between us and our audience and so this record started out as being an expression of those feelings".  

However, The Wall is also a critique of power relations produced in the context of institutions such as the school and the family, as well as of ideologies such as nationalism and militarism.  The film responded to this type of content through emblematic images, such as the depiction of the school as a disciplinary factory, where massive lines of docile students are crushed in a coordinated fashion (The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2). 

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According to Waters, the music industry focuses on ticket sales rather than on whether or not concerts become a  meaningless ritual; as he argues, "the show must go on, at any cost, to anybody. I mean I, personally, have done gigs when I've been very depressed, but I've also done gigs when I've been extremely ill". In the second half of The Wall, the alienated rock star Pink breaks down and is immediately subjected to medical treatment (Comfortably Numb), so as to remain functional as a commodity (The Show Must Go On). This is a significant turning point of the narrative, in that Pink hallucinates under medication and sees himself as a fascist leader, while the concert is turned into a rally and is followed by attacks on minorities (In The Flesh, Run Like Hell, Waiting for the Worms). 

Waters refers to the following experience: "Montreal 1977, Olympic Stadium, 80,000 people, the last gig of the 1977 tour, I, personally, became so upset [...] that I spat at some guy in the front row, [...] which is a very nasty thing to do to anybody. Anyway, the idea is that these kinds of fascist feelings develop from isolation".  In this respect, The Wall's critique of fascism focuses on the level of desire; Pink's reactionary fantasy is indeed an expression of his subconscious. This is also where the concept of the hammers originates from. In the film they are visualised as the emblem of the organisation Pink leads in his hallucination; "we've used the hammer as a symbol of the forces of oppression", notes Waters. This sequence comes to an end as a terrified Pink regains his consciousness and  screams “Stop!”

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Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari focused on the production of reactionary subjectivities in the context of capitalism (Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972/1983). They argued that fascism emerges at the micropolitical as well as at the macropolitical level, and that class struggle both requires and includes the production of radical forms of desire. In this respect, they distanced themselves from traditional, dualistic and bureaucratic models of political struggle, and suggested heterogenuous, counter-hierarchical and decentrealised forms of action (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980/1987).

While introducing the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault refers to  “the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us” (Preface, in Anti-Oedipus, op.cit, p. xiii). In the context of The Wall, the self appears to desire the very power they have suffered from. It is characteristic that the deformed faces of the students who had been crushed by the disciplinary machine of the school (The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall Part 2), now reappear to cheer for the reactionary subjectivity embodied by Pink  in his hallucination (Run Like Hell). Moreover, the character of the schoolmaster, a principal agent of coercion and humiliation, turns into one of the hammers which symbolise Pink's imagined organisation (The Trial). Hence, the political content of alienation is defined as a desire of power, because of which Pink emotionally identifies with the institutions he rationally opposes.

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In the final part of the album the wall collapses, and thus Pink's alienation comes to a symbolic end, while the last track's lyrics (Outside The Wall) eloquently reflect upon what has been at stake throughout the work: 


All alone, or in two's,

The ones who really love you

Walk up and down outside the wall. 

Some hand in hand

And some gathered together in bands.

The bleeding hearts and artists

Make 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. 


Foucault had argued that it would be a mistake to perceive Deleuze & Guattari's writings as some sort of long overdue, holistic and reassuring theory. In contrast, he suggested a reading of their work as an artform: “ars erotica, ars theoretica, ars politica” (Preface, in Anti-Oedipus, op.cit., p. xiii). In a similar manner, Waters refuses to offer an easy and comfortable answer. The last sound heard in Outside The Wall is in fact the phrase “Isn’t this where....”; while the phrase “....we came in?” is the opening sound of the first track (In the Flesh?).  

Τhe circular form of the narrative thus suggests a need for a continuous and stable critical stand against  power relations; and the choice to make such a stand is evident of the political integrity of its agents.