We have decided to include a backward message, Stanley, for you,...
| | Roger Waters: The AntiChrist?
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On the 1992 solo album Amused to Death, Roger Waters included a backward
message to Stanley Kubrick. The message is on the third track - Perfect Sense Part I.
The lyrics then go on in what seems to be a reference to the Dawn of Man episode in 2001.
Waters also sampled Full Metal Jacket in the song 'Watching TV' on the the same album.
When making Amused to Death, Waters asked Kubrick
for permission to use sound effects from 2001 on the album but was denied.
The title of the album is derived from the book
Amusing Ourselves to Death,
by
Neil Postman. In the book, Postman analyses the role of television in
contemporary society with a decidedly McLuhanesque point of view
and a Huxleyan attitude towards culture.
Though the book deals
mostly with the medium of television, the essential message can be
extrapolated to other popular mass-mediated modes of entertainment as well,
such as movies and music.
| | Stanley Kubrick: Satanic Mastermind?
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There is quite an obvious self-reflexive irony in the
connection to the book. Waters knows, as a spoiled filthy rich lucky white bastard rock star, that he's not immune
from the horrors that he preaches against. In fact, he's operating from within
the institutions of contemporary mass-mediated entertainment himself. The message of Amused
to Death, it can be seen, is not that far remote from the message of The Wall
or even The Division Bell perhaps.
The relevant question here of course might be: Is the message to Kubrick somehow related to
The Kubrick-Floyd Multimedia Project? Neil Postman was a friend and contemporary of Marshall McLuhan.
Postman states in the book that his approach is based on McLuhans ideas.
Supposedly, on one occasion when asked about 2001, Stanley Kubrick responded 'the medium is
the message'. (McLuhan) This response is interesting in the light of the
prevalence of lenses and screens in the film.
Also consider the prevalence of flat images, especially the television screen,
in The Shining.
The cover of Meddle, the album
containing Echoes, is
strikingly similar to the cover of McLuhan's book:
Understanding Media, the first chapter of which is called 'The Medium is the
Message'. On the cover of the book there is an obscured eye, while on the
album cover there is an obscured ear as the counterpart.
Might this all be suggestive of some collusion between
Pink Floyd and Stanley Kubrick? According to some sources, Kubrick approached
Pink Floyd about using material from Atom Heart Mother in
A Clockwork Orange.
Roger Waters is reported to have said that his greatest regret is that he didn't
do the score for 2001.
The Kubrick-Floyd connection is thus far from arbitrary, as wacky as it might seem.
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