The Wall
1. The boy sees masks on the faces of the people in the train. Later he sees similar masks on the faces of the children in his fantasy. What is the meaning of that?
2. The riot scene ends and the camera returns to the boy in the classroom as the children recite the lesson. Think of a possible explanation for this.
3. What kind of education does the movie portray? Use the song “The happiest days of our lives” to help you:
When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would
Hurt the children in any way they could
By pouring their derision upon anything we did
And exposing every weakness
However carefully hidden by the kids
But in the town, it was well known
When they got home at night, their fat and
Psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
4. Education is only one of the various social institutions the movie deals with. What others did you notice and how are they portrayed?
5. We, in Argentina, often rely on education to solve most of our social problems. We blame education, or the lack of it, for many of them. Consider the huge success (described in the text below) of the song “Another brick in the wall” which claims “we don’t need no education” and compare it to what you think about education.
While the song is not the first example of the antieducation theme in popular music, it comes at a time when increasing numbers of students are questioning the value of their education. Thus, young people are responding to the song with uncommon — and unsettling — enthusiasm.
In May [1980], the South African government banned the song — and the album — "because "Another Brick" had become the anthem of a national strike of more than 10,000 "coloured"
(mixed) students and their white supporters. The students had been protesting the inequality of spending on education for the various races, as well as "intimidation" by teachers, whose authority the Pink Floyd song challenges. The government ban forbids radio stations to play the record, stores to sell it, and individuals to own it. https://mises.org/library/another-brick-wall
6. Up to what extent is education a way of “thought control”?
7. Explain the meaning of the double-hammer symbol. Use the scene “In the flesh” to answer.
8. The children falling into the meat grinder is a visual metaphor that makes a powerful point. What is the metaphor and what point does it make?
9. What is the wall? Can you say whether it is a good thing or not?
1-The masks represented the loss of identity because they covered up the faces of each one of the children making them all the same due to the fact that the face of someone is a clear representation of identity and differentiation.
2-I think what the explanation for the scene is to show what this kid thinks about education, as it say “teachers, leave the kids alone”, showing how oppressed kids where at that time. And taking into account the riot, in my opinion what it tries to show is what is insides that kids mind, and, to put it in one way, what his dream is.
3- the movie portrays a really tough and strict education. Children are forced to do certain kinds of activities, and punished and mocked for being creative. Anyway, this way of teaching was supposed to be, in part, due to the way the teachers’ wives treated them.
4-The main social institutions that appear in the movie are Family and
the Army. First, the family of the main character, Pink, is small, since he
is the only child, as well as the fact his father died in the WW2. When he
talks about the mother it said that she will put all of his fear on you, which
shows how bad family can make to someone. Second, the Army is show
as weak, since it’s a scene in which it shows all the dead corpses in a trench, and if we take into account the people that oppress people in the last of the scenes as the army we can say that they are also oppressors.
5- in my opinion a education is the base of everything. If there is good education I'm sure crime rate's will be lower compared to somewhere with low educational standards. The song "another brick in the wall" may claim education is not necessary, but I consider that only some types of educational strategy aren't needed. For example, the type that we see in the movie is completely unnecessary, we don't need teacher to tell us how to be or how to think; we don't need to be all the same or to be "just another brick in the wall". We are supposed to be more that that: creative, thoughtful, unique. We don't need an education that pushes us to be someone we are not, we need one that teaches us values and that lets us be who we are by guiding us to a bright future.
6- School is a place where children are supposed to learn and be taught how to behave; this is a necessary thing for society. However there ir a fine line between teaching and imposing knowledge. Teachers are supposed to give tools for children to express themselves, be creative and learn through that, also to create their own opinion on some matters. But sometimes information can be imposed on a child's mind, they are pushed to believe they have to be or behave on a specific way, maybe even pushed to stop being like themselves and start acting like others, sometimes education makes children stop thinking by their own and start repeating what they have been told, this is thought control.
I'm not saying education is not necessary, but it can be negative if it isn't managed correctly.
7- Soldiers are closely and strictly controlled: how to behave, how to think, who to support. This is what the double hammer symbol represents, soldiers that are mind-controlled just like students. We see them on the "in the flesh" scene walking on a straight line, all the same and perfectly aligned, this shows how they are pushed to be in a certain way, like a perfect citizen that is just the same as the one next to him: there is no creativity nor imagination.
8- The metaphor describes how all children are “melt” and turned into the same thing, losing their individual identity and creativity at school. Moreover, it portrays how they are destined to become the same in order to help their country.
9- From our point of view the Wall is everything that sets you boundries, that limits you. And even though it might have some good aspects, such as knowing what society says its good or not, it has more negative effects. You may disagree with society. Society might be completely wrong. Society might push you down. Sometimes you mustn't hear society at all, and it is there where innovation, vanguardism and many artists are born from.
