Pink Floyd - The Wall
In the era of cancel culture and identity politics, it goes without saying that large groups of people can be influenced by the public personae of famous individuals. Throughout history, people have altered their modes of dressing, speaking, and even thinking to emulate the rich and powerful. Celebrity endorsements carry a lot of weight in consumer culture. This is by no means a new phenomenon. Ancient Roman gladiators were known to help advertise products in the marketplace. (A scene in the film Gladiator depicting this practice was deleted because it was thought that viewers would find it anachronistic.)
One might say this is exactly why cancel culture came into being. The words and behaviors of famous people are disproportionately powerful. Mel Gibson’s career has never fully recovered from his drunken, anti-Semitic tirade almost twenty years ago, because Hollywood does not want to be associated with (or perceived as implicitly endorsing) his behavior. A generation of young progressives raised on the values of Harry Potter now finds itself between a rock and a hard place in light of the alleged transphobia of J. K. Rowling.
What is the appropriate response when public figures offend our moral sensibilities? Is it our place to punish them, so that those who might be influenced by them will think better of it, and other famous people will be more careful in the future? Public shaming, like celebrity influence, can go too far, though neither will ever be entirely eradicated. Popularity is, after all, grounded in one’s ability to fit into a popular mold. Yet this does not mean we can afford to condemn everyone with whom we disagree, or that we should judge a work of art by its creator.
If we condemn artworks because of their creators, many will condemn the film Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982) and anything else written by Pink Floyd’s controversial former lyricist Roger Waters. However, I believe we can still appreciate Pink Floyd’s music and, indeed, continue to revere Waters as a music icon while also acknowledging the potential harm done by his ill-advised political stances (most notably regarding Israel and the Russo-Ukrainian War) and his conduct toward his bandmates.
Welcome to the Obscene
As one of Britain’s first psychedelic groups, the “progressive rock” band Pink Floyd was founded in 1965 and quickly rose to international prominence. Noted for its experimental compositions, thought-provoking lyrics, and extravagant performances, Pink Floyd is also distinguished by its preoccupation with themes of disillusionment, absence, the nature of existence, systems of exploitation and oppression, alienation, war, and insanity. In other words, its music is very politically conscious, particularly that written by Roger Waters.
This is perhaps the moment for me to come clean: I have never been very interested in music. Once, in college, I saw a flyer in my dorm announcing that someone would be holding a discussion on whether we will ever run out of new subjects for music. My first thought was basically: Didn’t they run out of ideas a long time ago? Pink Floyd is the only band that has ever appealed to me for its uniqueness, and even so, their only album of any interest to me is The Wall and Alan Parker’s film adaptation thereof. That still makes them by far my favorite band.
Why does The Wall speak to me in a way that almost no other music ever has? Obviously, this album has resonated with millions of listeners because its theme of agonized isolation, of being separated from the rest of humanity as if by a wall, is a feeling everyone experiences sometimes and which, in the late 1970s, was already becoming a widespread symptom of modern living. As an autistic introvert who has always struggled with depression and social anxiety, you can see why I find it particularly relevant.
For all its fame, however, Pink Floyd has always been controversial, as one would expect of a deliberately political rock band. Of course, with anything political, one’s relation to the controversy will depend on one’s own politics. Speaking as a progressive myself, my fondness for Pink Floyd must be somewhat informed by the resonance of my own views with the band’s politics. Yet this hardly tells the whole story.
You see, Roger Waters’ lyrics in The Wall are, I believe, the most important and influential aspect of the album. One cannot easily contradict the assertion made by the immortal film critic Roger Ebert in his Great Movie review of Pink Floyd – The Wall that “Waters wrote out of the dark places in his soul, fueled by his contempt for rock stars in general, himself in particular, and their adoring fans. He was, in short, composing not as an entertainer but as an artist.” Yet, while I am in many ways politically sympathetic to Waters, and can empathize with the existential despair that inspired his most interesting work, I am singularly unimpressed by his political activism and personal behavior.
For instance, while this is not the place for an extended critique of the policies of the Israeli government, I am hardly the only Pink Floyd fan to have become disillusioned with Waters’ almost obsessive anti-Israel rhetoric over the years. There is undoubtedly a distinction to be made between criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism, just as there is a distinction to be made between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. However, one cannot suppress a certain suspicion when there are so many worthier targets in the world and someone chooses to aim so much invective against the only Jewish-majority nation on earth. Factor in Waters’ recent bizarre decision to criticize the use of the Pink Floyd song Hey, Hey, Rise Up! by Ukrainians protesting the Russian invasion, on the grounds that Putin’s war was provoked by the West, and one can see why bandmate David Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson recently Tweeted that Waters is “antisemitic to [his] rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.”
It doesn’t help that Waters has long behaved callously toward his bandmates. Although he claimed in 2013 to regret having sued Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright when he left the band in 1985, his public feud with them continues to this day. Waters remarked in an interview in February 2023 that Gilmour and the late Richard Wright “can’t write songs…They have no ideas, not a single one between them.” As the guy on the radio said when I first heard this news: “Gee, Roger, don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel!”
Sympathy for the Devil
Accounting for these qualities in Roger Waters that I consider distasteful and potentially harmful, am I morally obliged to “cancel” Waters? Whether I am or not, should my negative assessment extend to his art by association? The qualities I dislike in Waters are surely reflected, to some extent, in his art. His victim-blaming attitude toward Ukraine arguably has a precursor in that lyric in “When the Tigers Broke Free” (an original song composed for the film adaptation of The Wall) in which Waters explicitly blames “the High Command” for taking “my daddy from me” at the Battle of Anzio. As opposed to, you know, the Nazis.
It is probably impossible to objectively measure the impact of art and expression on the opinions, feelings, and wellbeing of individuals and groups. Free speech advocates sometimes seem to play a two-faced game of acclaiming the power of words to make a positive difference while also downplaying the capacity of words to have negative real-world effects. The civil liberties activist Nadine Strossen makes a powerful case against the false equation of hurtful words with hurtful actions in Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018), yet she commits this fallacy when she writes that “speech has both an enhanced positive value and a reduced negative potential when contrasted with most forms of conduct, and thus warrants special protection.”
I don’t know if anyone has ever changed their views on the Israeli state or the Russian invasion because of Roger Waters. I don’t know if anyone has ever conducted their personal behavior any differently in emulation of Waters. I can say that my extra-textual awareness of his behavioral tendencies dampens my appreciation of his work somewhat, and limits my willingness to familiarize myself more deeply with his music, both in his Pink Floyd period and after.
Yet Waters’ work would not be what it is if it weren’t for his flaws. Even if I considered both Waters and his art to be “perfect,” I could only continue to do so if my own definition of perfection never changed, which is impossible. My life would not be better without his music. And whatever “harm” Waters may have caused, it will always be at least somewhat redeemed by such insights as that gentle warning at the end of “Outside the Wall”: 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.
