Donald Moen

Bricklaying Britannia: Politics in Pink Floyd's The Wall: Thatcher, Gender, Schizophrenia, and Postwar Memory Donald Moen

This book looks at how visual and sonic culture work syncretically to form political meaning; specifically, how aesthetic meaning can be used as part of a process to produce political meaning. Pink Floyd's 1982 film The Wall is a case study in how masculinity is constructed in modern Britain and how gender relates to the rise of neo-conservatism or the New Right in modern Britain. The band raises concern over Thatcher and then blames the deconstruction of the modern welfare state and masculinity on Woman. The film presents a hegemonic masculinity connecting Woman and the State as a single dominant entity within the context of post-war Britain and the rise of the New Right.