Thought some of you might enjoy this.
Donald Trump’s The Wall
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
by 21 Comments
Thought some of you might enjoy this.
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Bloody hell, thanks for this. I’ve only seen bits so far, but those bits are astounding. Really good of the uploader to include the option to skip to songs. In The Flesh and Run Like Hell are just wow. [runs to post on Facebook]
A very impressive effort.
It’s a shame that I’ve never taken to that album, because it is the obvious choice in the current circumstances.
This theme and concept works far better than Roger Waters’s rather jejeune psychodrama, IMHO. Like many others here, i don’t particularly rate the album (though Junior and I enjoyed the concert as a bit of a no-brainer concept spectacle), but it takes on much more relevance with Trump as a focus.
I couldn’t agree less, Vin-cent. It takes on the same relevance as it had right from its origins. Its themes were always ego-driven insanity, fascist contempt for others, narcissistic alienation. Waters saw these traits in himself, now we see them in Trump.
Also, there was never anything jejeune about the original. It was hugely ambitious; deeply personal yet wide reaching at the same time. Don’t forget, it was conceived, right from its very beginning, as an album/film/stage show project.
I agree there’s something about the album that’s unlikeable – its taint of overblown pomp, I suspect – but I think the reasons it works so well with that Trump video are because the images are pretty close to what Waters had in mind in the first place. This is particularly evident in the harrowing Run Like Hell segment, which is actually very close to the scenes in Alan Parker’s movie.
Do we know if Rog has seen this and what he thinks? ‘Twould be interesting.
What an extraordinary labour of “love”. I thought it was just going to be one song but they’ve gone for the Full Wally and done the whole double album. I can imagine it would be even more impressive on a cinema screen with a decent sound system.
Will the Trunpification of albums be a new fad? Can I nominate Welcome to my Nightmare?
One ray of the light in these dark days is that Alec Baldwin is back as Trump in SNL and the President Elect is fuming and tweeting like a baby bird. As we know from 20 Rock, Baldwin has a great sense of comic timing and now he has a dream role. Not available in Sweden but the few seconds I’ve seen have been very funny. The body language is hilarious.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/arts/alec-baldwin-returns-to-snl-as-president-elect-trump.html
That’s the thing, now.
One minute we’re all horrified by what America has done to themselves and the next we’re pissing ourselves laughing at the most ridiculous politician-buffoon in the world barring Kim Jong Un.
I’m swooping in to point out that it’s 30 Rock, KFD.
I have a private unaired theory about Baldwin’s Trump. Yes, it is very good – but it’s not uncannily good. Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin was uncannily good and pretty much made her name.
Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey work together closely on 30 Rock. Baldwin does a good Trump impression…and sees an opportunity in a similar vein to Fey/Palin. Good though he is, it won’t catch on as well.
Not uncannily good, agreed, but grotesque enough to resonate with most people. It would be hard to get an impersonation of Trump down exactly because he’s already so far beyond normal that he’s hard to caricature.
I am sure your theory holds water BC. The fact that Baldwin is not uncannily good is probably why the Donald is so upset, He does have very high standards and of course a great sense of humour and feels shortchanged.
Love it KFD – brilliant spin skills. Perhaps you missed your vocation?
See also Maureen Lipman, who I hadn’t seen for some time but who popped up on HIGNFY apparently to advertise herself as a satyrical Theresa May (and a pretty good one too).
Maureen said in order to impersonate Theresa, the trick is to “hollow out your body”. It sounds a bit strange, but it made perfect sense when she demonstrated it
“Are there any queers in the theatre tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There’s one in the spotlight, he don’t look right to me,
Get him up against the wall!”
It doesn’t really work. The only time you’ll hear stuff like that now is from those great friends of the left in the religion of peace.
Or you could go for dinner with Mike Pence.
I think we’re beyond satire.
Very interesting. As one who really likes the album it just made me want to play it. You couldn’t make him up, could you.
Let’s face it, The Wall is never going to be built. But I think people are getting a bit over-excited about, omg, A Wall as opposed to just A Big Scary Fuck-off Barbed Wire Fence with dogs and men with guns and everything guarding it, as exists at most hard borders throughout the world. No, that doesn’t include between Belgium and France, for example, and hasn’t that just worked out all I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing?
Dougie, you may be correct that people are getting a bit over excited about the wall, but clearly most of the world’s borders are not demarcated by barbed wire, dogs and armed men. Unless the phrase “hard borders” is meant to denote such things, in which case you’ve constructed a tautology Trump himself would be proud of, if only he could spell the word.
What is true is that there appears to be a trend over the last five years towards the “hardening” of land borders. Whether that’s a reflection of growing nationalism or a product of the same factors that are driving said nationalism is probably in the eye of the beholder.
Either way, I think there are far bigger things to worry about re: Trump than what he’s likely to do with that border.
Indeed, and for the record, I am far from a Trump enthusiast. As a libertarian, I despair at the options currently available, as there is a marked swing towards big state mercantilism and protectionism on both sides of the Atlantic which I feel is misguided. That said, I fully understand why, say, a steelworker in Pittsburgh or Scunthorpe is unlikely to view kindly an argument which states that his or her job losses are for the greater good. Trump, of course, does not have the will or the ability to reverse this situation.
My point about the wall was that either a border is meaningful or not. If it can be breached with relative impunity then it isn’t really a border worth the name, is it? if what people want is open borders (a view with which I have much sympathy) then argue as such.
Thanks, Dougie – that all makes sense. One of the features of Trump’s win that has surprised me the most is how incompatible it seems with the US’ own longstanding tradition of small government/libertarian thought.
I agree that it’s going to be extremely difficult to roll back the clock on globalisation, but I’m not as sure as everyone else seems to be that the Trump and Brexit votes are directly analogous – while promising to bring back the coal industry, etc will undoubtedly have helped Trump in certain swing states, Clinton won a majority amongst low income (sub $50,000) voters, which is the reverse of what happened here. For me, the key feature of the US election was less the people who voted for Trump (less in number than voted for Mitt Romney) and more the several million Democrat/Obama voters who stayed away – “voter suppression”, I believe Trump called it.
On the border, I don’t think it’s necessarily that people are desperate for totally open borders. I think it’s more the combination of a candidate who wasn’t shy of sending out racial dog whistles angrily and repeatedly pledging to build a physical wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. I think there’s plenty of room for some nuance between a physical wall and simply flinging open the doors. As we all know; in recent history, intense nationalism, coupled with protectionism hasn’t worked out that well. Given that this seems to be the prescribed medicine for the reversal of globalisation, we probably have some interesting/potentially quite scary times ahead.