#also i didnt talk abt great gig cuz I think I already did but it really is THE BEST BIT

[swimmingleo]

good day to u leo this is an opportunity to expand on the dark side of the rainbow theory, if you want to— what parts of it really get you, why, what you think it All Means, any colour you like <3

omgggg heehee meggg here we go again <3 I already ranted about it here so i'm gonna try not to repeat myself too much rdfkjf but I think what I really LOVE about this theory is how the entire thing makes absolute total sense with what Pink Floyd consistently was about, whether it be the themes or on the technical side.

Ok first it all starts with this panel:

Time ?? Heart ?? ~Clock ticking~Heartbeats~ Tell me this bit of text doesn't scream PF dramatics, it actually sounds Watersian bro

also making me emotional, because DSOTM is dedicated to the lunatics, and later The Wall would be dedicated to paranoids and bleeding hearts, and they're both over 40yo, and they're the two PF albums that are still mainstream to this day and so their philosophy didn't went out of fashion, ueueue

On The Run:

The scene of Dorothy singing Over the Rainbow is dubbed with On The Run, consisting of planes exploding. PF uses again the image of a child dreaming about the sky only to meet violence in The Wall:

Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky [...]

Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the

Promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?, Goodbye Blue Sky

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue

And the dreams that you dare to dream

Really do come true, Over The Rainbow

While Dorothy is convinced dreams really do come true, Pink realizes they don't because he still has to hide from danger even long after the war ended and peace was promised to everyone. As an adult, Pink references Over The Rainbow again, maybe trying to find shelter in childhood memories as he's violently judging himself for being "crazy". Over The Rainbow is just so ridiculously emOTIONAL and it sounds so fragile, the same way PF sounds whenever they mention a dream that is "gone" or "crazy"

Money

Dorothy opening the door to technicolor world makes the noise of a cash register opening. As she walks around the place, she really thinks she is over the rainbow and that she will find happiness there. In reality, she spends her time here running from danger and longs for home. The exact same morale concludes Pink Floyd's Animals: in their quest to satisfy their "need" (for money, fame or power), the dogs lie, betray and live in constant fear, forcing their way into a system that initially rejects them. Eventually, just like Dorothy, the dog realizes all they really need is the comfort and safety of home. animals my beloved my sexy depressing hopeful wife <3

Us and Them

MEG a lot of that is you and your magic notes and your thoughts>

That's where DSOTM playing through Dorothy's moral compass is sooo cool. At that point in the movie, she's praised for having killed a wicked witch and is told how to determine bad from good (Glinda says ugly witches = bad ones, but define ugly bro). The scene also exposes all the players: good witches, bad witches, munchkins, and lil clueless Dorothy. It really illustrates so well the humanistic values PF always is about: be compassionate, open and willing to experience before deciding who is good and who isn't. PF can sound misanthropic but their albums are really about ~luv in a. peculiar way. PF's philosophy is, humans aren't inherently bad, they're taught and led to fight each other by a handful of bad guys in command, who make their bread out of the fighting, and the cycle reenforces abusive systems. Money is what the fighting's all about, the greed of a few is what deepens the gaps between people under all prisms (it's really about intersectionality). I just LOVE that bit where Dorothy is happily skipping on the yellow brick road on the line "Out of the way, it's a busy day". She's just SO blissfully unaware of what that cute lil trip has in store for her <3

Any Colour You Like

The song starts PRECISELY when Dorothy is confronted to a crosspath. She is confused, as she was only told to follow the yellow brick road: problem is both paths are the yellow brick road.

Any Colour You Like is another cute sarcasm. While the title lets you think it's about being in power of your life's decisions, it actually refers to the illusion of choice: being presented with various options that are the same colour. All yellow for Dorothy, "all blue" according to Roger Waters' original metaphor.

IM JOKING but also living for inverted colors' transcending power

Brain Damage:

Following Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage overlaps with the Scarecrow's song If I Only Had A Brain. It's already a BIG coincidonk on its own but thing is it has history:

If there is ONE song in DSOTM officially explicitly written after and for Syd, it's Brain Damage. And Syd happens to have written a song for their first album clearly inspired by the Scarecrow. It's titled um. Scarecrow lol

The black and green scarecrow as everyone knows

In Syd's song, the Scarecrow does no thinking and is opposed to the speaker who does have a brain. Because the Scarecrow goes with the flow and doesn't make any choice for himself, life isn't unkind to him. However, In Brain Damage, the speaker's brain is judged insane, because they go against the rule and stray from life's designated path. So Life, "you", is trying to restrain or actually damage the lunatic's brain: attempting to turn the lunatic who knows who they are into the brainless Scarecrow again.

Meanwhile, the Scarecrow in Oz is obsessed with the idea of having a physical brain because he thinks he needs it somehow to fit in society, and do what people with a brain do. But he proves all along their journey that he's just as clever and functional without <3

Fun bonus, some fans saw in the cover of the live album Pulse (1995) the silhouette of a kid dressed in blue and wearing red slippers:

ANYWAY BASICALLY I don't know if the entire album was written after The Wizard Of Oz, like, with the aim of synchronizing them both together from the start, or if both concepts met at some point. Demos of DSOTM were played and experimented on tours (The Great Gig in the Sky started off as just ominous music and creepy readings of the Bible lol), and some early version of songs like Us and Them were originally written for other projects. It doesn't change the fact that the final selection was mixed and edited together to cOiNcidEntAlLy perfectly fit the 40 first minutes of The Wizard of Oz, but it's hard to tell how much writing was done with the movie in mind.

That being said I think they would totally have done it as a challenge first: it was at a time where they started to reaaally have fun with the possibilities technologies offered, and PF was always about experimenting and exploiting visuals as much as playing music. Given all the movies' soundtracks they did prior to DSOTM and how this album would be their first following a certain narration, it's really adequate in context and a great technical achievement for the time.

Overall, The Wizard of Oz is just THAT perfect medium to work with. Tale-like narration, grand visuals. It has been associated with populism, political and economic allegories as well as being a cultural monument of childhood and nostalgia. Mix it all up and you get Pink Floyd lmao