خلاصة:
Pink Floyd was a British band whose work began in the late 60s. Roger Waters, the main contributor of the band, wrote almost all the lyrics and was also a main figure behind producing the motion picture of the album. He deliberately attacks Western media in both the lyrics he has written for the band and his solo projects. The present study finds this tendency of assaulting the media deeply rooted in the works of Western philosophers who are known as postmodern and have skeptically scrutinized the power relations underlying such apparatuses. This study sets to approach Roger Waters' oeuvre with regard to the speculations of such theorists as Benjamin, Baudrillard and McLuhan.
ملخص الجهاز:
This study sets to approach Roger Waters' oeuvre with regard to the speculations of such theorists as Benjamin, Baudrillard and McLuhan .
Keywords: Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, media, hyperreality, simulation 1.
The study selects Roger Waters from amongst the huge community of rock artists because of his direct oppositional attitude toward cruelty, injustice and war.
Of course, other rock artists such as Bob Dylan and John Lennon have been concerned with the same issues years before Waters ever started his musical career.
But the fact is that Waters has involved himself with the main subject of the present study (Media) more than other artists working in the same field.
In many Pink Floyd performances, pictures and scenes from the lives of political leaders used to be shown on the screen while the band was performing.
In the second half of the twentieth century, some other thinkers such as Williams (1974), Baudrillard (1983), and McLuhan (1967) added a great bulk of literature to the issue of media as a postmodern phenomenon.
Media Waters' solo concept album Amused to Death (1992) is based on a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) which is "about television's impact on American society" (Felix 2000, p.
Waters uses TV as a device which projects deplorable scenes like death, blood, war and murder.
Theorists like Benjamin, McLuhan, and Baudrillard have pondered on the philosophical and political aims and effects of the media.