Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

I walk through isle upon isle of cheaply made Wal-Mart trash cans, Rubbermaid boxes, cheap plastic wall hangers, and machine woven bed sheets, with what felt like millions of consumers slowly walking up and down the isles, buying things that advertisement and pop culture makes them feel like they need. It was here, among the masses of sheep like people being herded through the isles that I said to myself “I hate school shopping.” School shopping was a pointless activity, it seemed like everything I bought I had already had in my own room at home. Everywhere I looked in the month of August seemed like it overflowed with commercials demanding me to buy this product for my 12 by 12 foot dorm room. I was actually only able to fit half of the stuff in my room that the endless commercial propaganda told me I needed to be “cool for school.” And the half that did fit in my room took up so much space that I could barely walk around my room. It was for this reason that Roger Water’s “The Wall” reminded me so much of this futile tradition of school shopping. In the movie we can see what starts as a small town, morph into huge metropolis filled with skyscrapers and scenes of endless amount of material goods. Everything from Mercedes car tops to basketballs can be seen lining the walls and streets of this cartoon metropolis. Eventually the city gets so big it becomes a prison of material possessions. What Rodger Water’s was trying to convey with this symbolic prison was that people are trapped by their quest for an unattainable amount of material objects and wealth. People are so obsessed with this accumulation of goods and fortune that they become trapped in the confines of themselves and this want for excess that they are no longer to be free and act how they want. School shopping is no different. It is apparent just as you walk the campus of Umass that this quest for unattainable wealth and objects is rampant among the youth and even the faculty of the University. Given away by three hundred dollar coach purses, two hundred dollar tiffany bracelets, or two hundred and fifty dollar lucky jeans, the quest for the best and most expensive clothing, jewelry, cars, clothes, and accessories has become its own form of a prison for the youth of America, and Amherst has not escaped its wrath. This idea can be transferred into why many teenagers decide to go to college, so they gain get the best jobs with the best money. What Rodger Waters was trying to say with this section of the movie is that the more things you want and think you need to have, the less freedom you are able to have, and will, like the movie, eventually build up a wall around you that acts as your own personal prison. Waters also uses his main character Pink to show that as we lose the innocence of childhood and progress into maturity, we are constantly trying to capture things from our childhood to comfort us. We see Water’s main character Pink constantly distressed by the perils and stress of drugs, sex, love, and rock stardom that he is constantly pictured curling up into the fetal position, with flashbacks of him doing the same beside his mother as a child. Although this is something people of all ages do, it is easy to spot in any dorm room the desire and need for reminders of childhood for comfort. Ranging from the millions of stuffed animals I saw people carry in on move in day, the Bambi and Snow White DVD I spotted on a friends movie shelf, or the blankie that covers my bed, these manifestations of childhood take many forms, but all act as a reminder and comforter of the innocence and bliss of childhood. Perhaps the most powerful connection that Water’s makes in “The Wall” is the parallels between teenage culture and war. This connection is strengthened by the constant flashback between the concert riot scene and the invasion of what looked to be Normandy. The concert riot that is showed in the film is not quite unlike what you can see at some of the parties here at Umass. The scene is filled with cops, violence, sex, aloha, drugs, and other vices that can be seen every weekend at Amherst. One of the most striking scenes in the movie is when the concert that Pink is putting on slowly turns into something that looks more like a fascist rally rather than a concert. The scene swiftly transgresses into a scene that is nearly Hitler-esq type rally. Waters could have been here commenting on how enthralled and obsessed people can become about a certain band or music scene. This comparison is not far fetched seen by the hundreds of people you can see each day sporting their favorite bands t-shirt, a backpack written on with all their favorite bands, or the thousands of students each day wearing their white I-Pod headphones as if they needed it to survive as much as water or food. Music can become something that people are so passionate and obsessed with that Water’s parallel between the concert scene and that of the fascist rally may not be as far fetched as first thought. “The Wall” confronts viewers with hundreds of ideas, concepts, and principals. Whither they are obscure, symbolic, or are trying to connect two different ideas with a common theme, Water’s does a fantastic job in getting the viewer to think. It is amazing how many of these principals can be compared to that of life of a student here at Umass Amherst. --Thebriandonnelly 22:04, 20 September 2006 (EDT)