Unlike
the movie's rather calm introduction into Pink's life, the album begins with as
much roaring lightning and thunder as the "Let there be light" of Genesis. The
pounding guitars, monstrous organ, and heavy bass and drums automatically inundate
the listener with an abundance of aural spectacle, propelling the audience into
the story without a preparatory breath…or so one might think. Actually,
those with attentive ears will notice a little prelude to the musical story in
the form of background music and a quick, nearly imperceptible voice. The music
is from the ending of "Outside the Wall," the last song on the album and the spoken
message is "…we came in?" Now if you crank up your speakers and listen to the
ending of "Outside the Wall" you'll hear, at the VERY end, "Isn't this where…"
If you were to set your CD player to automatically start the first disc at the
end of the second one, you'd hear the continuous, uninterrupted music of "Outside
the Wall" with "Isn't this where we came in?" Why the disjointed message? Put
simply, it introduces us to Roger Waters' fascination with cycles. The story of
"The Wall" is not limited to the war babies, those who grew up feeling the first-hand
effects of World War II. The story is universal, portraying the (possible) lives
of anyone who has lost a loved one, whether they are like Waters who lost his
father in the war or any number of countless people whose parents, caretakers,
or loved ones are absent from a great portion of their lives. No matter what era
we are viewing or experiencing, we will always "come in" to the story of one person
whose life is affected by the loss of another. The story is cyclical, spanning
every generation since the beginning of civilization; the music is never-ending.
Once one man's story ends, the next one begins. When Pink's wall comes down, the
children in "Outside the Wall" collect the bricks, perhaps building their own
walls and thus restarting the cycle with "In the Flesh?" In fact, as is the case
with Pink, the very moment of conception is often the moment the cycle begins.
Just
as the cycle begins with Pink's conception, his father having already left and
died when Pink was born (George Roger Waters was born September 6, 1944, nearly
seven months after his father's death that previous February), the album begins
with two birthing transitions on two narrative planes: the conception and birth
of young Pink in 1944 and the current, rock-star Pink's transition into the Wall's
completion and his subsequent final descent into insanity in the present. Young
Pink's conception isn't so much as portrayed as implied in the movie and album.
From the very first time I watched the movie, the procreative process immediately
sprang to mind upon the opening sequence of the song. The countless young concert-goers
bursting through the doors and encountering obstacles like the police before reaching
their destination, the coveted inner room of the concert house, perfectly parallels
procreative sperm obstructed by the body's natural defenses. The title itself
suggest conception as well with the question mark after "In the Flesh?" suggesting
that a physical body has not been formed yet, that there is still potential either
way towards birth or miscarriage. Accordingly, the lyrics can be read as instructions
for a child who has not yet entered life, although the speaker is quite uncertain
by this reading. Whether the speaker is God, the parents, or Life itself, the
message automatically sets up the theme of expectation and disappointment. The
unborn child wanting to "go to the show," a metaphor for life, expecting to feel
the warmth of love and acceptance from the world will most certainly be disappointed
when that expected love eludes him, replaced by a world teeming with "cold eyes"
and "disguise(s)." Although the song doesn't introduce the idea of the Wall, it
does prepare the child/listener for a world of disguises that can only be torn
down by "claw[ing]," implying that violence rather than love is necessary in order
to get along in life. This violence is further cemented by the ensuing images
of the concert-goers being beaten by the police cross cut with grisly images of
war. After giving the instructions, Pink's birth is arranged as the Speaker yells
for "lights," "sound effects,"
and "action," further equating "the show" with life, much like Shakespeare's Macbeth
comparing life to a play and every person an actor on the stage: "Life's but a
walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/
And then is heard no more: it is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/
Signifying nothing." (Act 5, scene 5) The final "Drop it on 'em!" and the airplane
dropping a bomb introduces Pink's birth as well as his first brick, the death
of his father.
The second and more obvious plane of narrative
is Pink's concert taking place in the present. As you will notice in the film,
Pink's eyebrows have already been shaved, an event that doesn't take place until
the second half of the album/movie. This technique of starting the story in media
res or "in the middle of things" is a characteristic of most traditional epic
works such as Homer's Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid. By design, starting the narrative
in the middle of the story immediately grabs the audience's attention, forcing
them to accept the current situation while waiting for the exposition to be revealed
in flashbacks. Such flashbacks not only set up the present story but also offer
a sort of chiaroscuro between the character as he was and what he is. "The Wall"
offers an interesting beginning in that the story-proper (the album's beginning
and the "beginning" of Pink's story in the movie) starts in media res, but more
towards the end rather than the true middle of the story. The first few songs
introduce us to Pink as a child as well as Pink as a famous and equally alienated
rock-star, but "In the Flesh?" shows us Pink further in the future, after his
wall is complete. Consequently, the audience is getting three different versions
of Pink almost simultaneously: the way he was (Pink as a child), the way he is
(isolated Pink 
whose
Wall is almost complete), and the way he will be (dictatorial, delusional Pink
completely shut off from the world). By starting "in the middle of things," we
can see just how far Pink has come from his innocent birth, making us all the
more eager to find out why he is that way, to witness his development from "Baby
Blue" to "Comfortably Numb" as revealed in flashbacks.
Interestingly,
all of the original ideas and emotions that spawned the original concept of "the
Wall" are buried within "In the Flesh?" The song title itself is taken from the
1977 tour entitled "Pink Floyd in the Flesh" which promoted their "Animals" album.
On the DVD commentary, Waters comments that the police and riot scenes are inspired
by true events which took place on that tour, most notably an incident in Los
Angeles when the local police chief Davis attacked "rock and roll in general"
because he was upset that there was to be a rock show in a downtown sports arena
(Waters, DVD). The police apparently beat many fans, searched everyone with a
ticket, and made numerous arrests, all for the sake of "order." The original spark,
though, is recreated in the images and lyrics of "In the Flesh?" when Pink, in
the role of demigod, dictates a set of instructions and clues to the mindless
audience. Pink's balcony performance is reminiscent of the theatrical portrayal
of gods and other supernatural entities who are often portrayed on a balcony overlooking
the action of a play, both observant and detached from the world. Such is the
very feeling that produced the idea of "the Wall" in Roger Waters' mind during
the "In the Flesh" tour; standing on stage while the audience members either got
drunk and broke out in fights with each other or starred in rapt and almost brain-washed
attention at the band as if Waters and company were gods rather than men. These
observances made Waters feel completely 
detached
from his audience and the world, eventually causing him to take on the godlike
persona that his audience was placing on him, resulting in the infamous "spitting"
incident in which Waters spat on a fan in the front row just because he could.
This idea of blind obedience lavished on a rock star is fully unleashed later
in the album with the second "In the Flesh" and will be discussed in further detail
there.
The juxtaposed shots of the concert-goers being brutally
handled and the soldiers who appear to be roughly the same age as Pink's audience
signal a birth in the metaphorical narrative, that of the world coming out of
the World War II era. Whereas the Allied soldiers fought a centralized enemy,
the kids in the present must fight the world devastated by the war. The postmodern
fragmentation stemming from the world's loss of innocence caused by the war can
be seen in many forms during "In the Flesh?": the brutal force used by supposedly
civil protection, the brain-washed look of the audience trained by social norms
to humble
themselves in front of celebrities, even the commercialization of the "Feelin'
7-UP" billboard looming godlike over the crowd outside the venue, observational
and detached. It's a disjointed world that tries to fill the void of personal
meaning with reverence for corporate products and celebrities; a postmodern world
introduced by Hitler's campaigns and the total devastation of the firmly-rooted
familial and social milieu. While the world's population increased with the baby
boomer generation, humankind never regained its sense of purity and innocence,
arguably corrupted with WWI and the birth of Modernism and fully shattered with
the second war. Thus it is only fitting cinematically to cut from the death of
Pink's father to an English garden and little Pink in his stroller, already doomed
to construct a wall.
