The Nostalgia Critic and The Wall

0:00 Okay, let’s talk about The Wall.

0:03 The Wall is a multimedia project created by English rock band Pink Floyd,

0:06 consisting of a 1979 studio album,

0:09 a live performance touring over 1980 and '81, a 1982 experimental film,

0:15 a 2010 through 2013 revival tour, a 2015 concert film, and a 2016 opera.

0:21 The plot of all the various adaptations center around a rock

0:25 star named Pink who struggles with depression and substance abuse.

0:28 In the midst of an emotional spiral Pink reflects on/hallucinates

0:31 the events of his life that have led to that point,

0:34 including vivid fabrication of the death of his father in World War 2,

0:38 hazy memories of The Blitz, his relationship with his mother,

0:41 creative dissatisfaction, a decaying marriage,

0:43 and a job in the music industry where he is treated as a commodity to be used,

0:48 all of which form the metaphorical bricks in the emotional

0:51 wall that Pink uses to separate himself from the world.

0:54 I want to focus in mostly on the 1982 film, because it is,

0:58 I think, the adaptation that is able to do the most with the concept.

1:02 The film was written by Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters,

1:05 directed by Alan Parker,

1:07 with animation by Gerald Scarfe, and it is, well, it’s a pretty heavy film.

1:12 It can be a hard watch.

1:14 It comes from a very dark place,

1:17 emotionally speaking, there’s a lot of disturbing imagery.

1:20 It’s a very angry film.

1:22 [phone ringing]♪ When we grew up and went to school there

1:28 were certain teachers♪♪ who would hurt the children any way they could.

1:33 It’s pretty abstract in its presentation,

1:36 relying heavily on associative imagery rather than conventional narrative,

1:39 and this is both a strength and a weakness of the film.

1:43 Abstraction is, counter-intuitively, very efficient.

1:48 It allows a movie to be about a lot

1:51 of things simultaneously by letting symbols bleed into one another.

1:55 The movie pinballs between war, classism, police brutality,

1:58 the criminalization of youth culture,

2:01 Thatcherism, generational trauma, commodification of art,

2:03 and the home-grown fascism of the nations that bragged about beating the Nazis,

2:08 and it’s able to do this pretty fluidly.

2:11 The film’s underlying anger is, true to form, often incoherent,

2:16 struggling to vocalize and manifest the exact shape of the subject,

2:21 falling back on abstract imagery in order

2:23 to suggest an emotional truth where literalism is insufficient.

2:28 This allows the film to create really powerful moments.

2:32 A running motif is anti-war, expressed as a seething rage of betrayal,

2:37 abandonment, and exploitation at the hands of the system.

2:40 Roger Waters’ father was a conscientious objector during World War 2,

2:44 a pacifist who drove ambulance during The Blitz.

2:47 In 1943, however, he changed his mind and was commissioned

2:51 as a Second Lieutenant in the Territorial Army in September of that year.

2:56 He was dead five months later.

2:57 In ‘Goodbye Blue Skies’ the Union Jack shatters into pieces.

3:02 For all its bravado and blustre,

3:04 English nationalism is just blood in the gutter.

3:08 Soldiers sent to war don’t die for their country, they just die.

3:13 The boys beat the Germans and came home just in time to build atom bombs.

3:17 Symbols shift and merge and break apart,

3:20 juxtaposed and contrasted in order to create an impression

3:23 of their interconnected relationship in a way that is

3:27 difficult to do using mere words and, core to the theme of the piece as a whole,

3:33 no one specific thing is the load-bearing cause.

3:36 There is no singular source of the sickness

3:39 in society that isolates us from one another,

3:41 that suppresses us, that brutalizes us, that exploits us.

3:45 They are all just bricks in the wall.

3:48 This abstraction, though, can also work against the film.

3:51 A lot of the film’s imagery, almost forty years later,

3:55 has an almost juvenile Makes-U-Think shallowness to it,

3:59 worn down by a generation of trite

4:01 commentary on the relationship between art and commerce,

4:04 in no small part directly influenced by The Wall,

4:07 that, y'know, cheapens The Wall simply by association.

4:11 The lack of a concise resolution, the lack of a clear point at the end,

4:16 which functions for some viewers as a powerfully disquieting denial of closure,

4:21 also leaves the door open for symbols to take

4:24 on meanings counter to their intended or desired use.

4:27 A centerpiece moment in the film comes when Pink, suffering an overdose,

4:31 is revived by his manager and record industry flunkies

4:34 in order to be dressed and pushed out on stage.

4:37 In this state Pink conceptualizes himself in an alter-ego,

4:42 a fascist dictator indoctrinating teens,

4:44 primed by a conformist education system, into hate and violence.

4:49 This sequence, spanning the songs In The Flesh, Run Like Hell,

4:53 and Waiting for the Worms,

4:54 includes dramatization of hate crimes and sexual assault.

4:58 The film’s imagery of crossed hammers,

5:00 invented for the movie as a deliberately unsettling expression of contemporary

5:04 fascism and its ability to utilize the banal, the blunt,

5:08 the simplistic, was adopted in 1988 by actual neo-Nazi group the Hammerskins,

5:13 a now fractured organization whose dispersed members remain

5:17 active in other hate organizations to this day.

5:21 The potent imagery, structured as a condemnation,

5:24 was still adopted by people who saw

5:27 the violence not as horrifying but as aspirational.

5:30 The character of Pink holds fears and resentments

5:34 towards women that are emotionally challenging to watch expressed

5:38 on screen and while a mature audience can certainly

5:41 parse the difference between a character’s excuses and reality,

5:44 the film’s lack of closure means there’s

5:46 little guidance on what the audience is ultimately

5:49 meant to take away from the depictions

5:51 of Pink being devoured by a predatory, vaginal flower.

5:56 And part of that is rooted in the film’s emotional rawness,

5:59 the dark place of the psyche where thoughts and fears

6:01 and beliefs are not rational but are deeply potent and extremely present.

6:06 Pink intellectually understands that his own

6:10 self-destruction and alienation drove his wife away,

6:13 but emotionally still conceptualizes her as a consuming predator.

6:18 It doesn’t all make sense or resolve

6:22 or coalesce because we don’t all make sense.

6:25 Everyone is the illusion of order constructed, brick by brick, out of chaos.

6:31 So, while The Wall is far from flawless and certainly not for everyone,

6:35 there are still, I feel, deep emotional truths in there,

6:39 a human story about the contradiction of being,

6:42 the self-amplifying spiral of isolation,

6:44 and the fragility and hypocrisy of power.

6:48 The album is good, but it was always written with a visual component in mind,

6:51 be it the concert or the film,

6:54 and I think the album definitely feels less than whole as a result.

6:58 The movie also adds ‘When the Tigers Broke Free’,

7:01 which is a song that I think adds a lot of welcome depth to the story.

7:04 It’s a really potent encapsulation of how Waters

7:07 feels about the system that killed his father.

7:11 And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me♪♪

7:19 [baby cries softly] And this is a movie that Doug Walker,

7:24 a man whose bread and butter is getting

7:27 irrationally angry at movies for 9 year olds,

7:31 decided to riff in the form of a parody recreation.

7:36 Good old Pink Floyd made a movie devoid of even the slightest bit of subtlety.

7:45 Okay, so...

7:47 what is this?

7:51 Why does this exist?

7:53 I’m going to have to say a bunch of unkind things,

7:57 and there’s really no way around that, because the observable facts are just,

8:02 prima facia, unkind.

8:04 [Dracula voice] Well, maybe it’s the other way alound,

8:06 I don’t know, I’ve got a high school education!

8:08 Muahahahah!

8:09 This is pandering like hell♪♪ [Dan] Basically it’s

8:14 impossible to engage with something like The Wall,

8:16 even sarcastically or disingenuously,

8:17 without leaving a lot of yourself on the table as a result.

8:21 What you fixate on, what you think is silly,

8:24 why you think it’s silly, these are all revealing.

8:28 And that’s not to say that you need to love

8:31 The Wall or even like The Wall or, you know,

8:34 you’re a phoney or a poser or shallow if you don’t,

8:38 it’s just that defending that position is going to demand emotional honesty.

8:42 For most critics that’s not a problem, but...

8:47 we’ll see.

8:48 The Nostalgia Critic, AKA The Critic,

8:50 AKA That Guy With The Glasses is the brainchild of Doug Walker,

8:54 an aspiring filmmaker from the suburbs of Chicago who, in 2008,

8:58 stumbled into an early online video success

9:01 with the then-nascent genre of angry reviews.

9:04 The basic format, more or less unchanged in 13 years,

9:06 involves a recap of the plot of a film interspersed with one-liners and skits,

9:11 usually with the comedy predicated on slapstick reactions

9:14 of either extreme confusion or extreme anger or both.

9:18 "Seven million." [cha-ching sound] "Never leave the cave without it." "A bat

9:23 credit card?" "They gave him a bat credit card?" "They had the BALLS

9:31 to give one of THE GREATEST SUPER HEROES OF ALL TIME

9:36 A BAT CREDIT CARD?!" In September

9:39 2019 they published Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall,

9:42 a 40 minute musical review featuring musician Corey Taylor,

9:45 his son Griff Taylor,

9:46 and the collaborative works of musician Rob Scallon, and animator Fennah.

9:50 The reception was… not good.

9:54 All in all it’s just not very funny at all♪♪ "No exaggeration,

9:59 I’m not being facetious, I’m not trying to be a dick.

10:04 This is the worst movie review I have ever seen."

10:07 "When I first tried to watch Doug Walker’s The Wall,

10:10 um, this is what happened to my computer,

10:13 so clearly it was trying to protect me." This review has

10:16 become somewhat notorious online because there

10:19 is something deeply compelling about it.

10:23 The art-house ego-trip had fallen and slipped to the bargain big

10:29 for $3.93♪♪ There is a tremendous amount of effort on display,

10:34 but it’s also really lazy, if that makes any sense.

10:37 The priority really seems to be in doing a lot,

10:41 doing everything, rather than doing any of it particularly well.

10:45 And this is what’s confusing.

10:48 There’s so much going on, so many collaborations, so many moving parts,

10:53 that it clearly took time and energy and passion,

10:57 an energy and passion that needs to be maintained on some level

11:02 for the weeks and weeks that it takes to put all this together,

11:05 but there’s no evidence, whatsoever, of what was actually driving that.

11:11 You don’t just make something like this on accident in an afternoon.

11:15 This would have taken weeks, if not months, to coordinate.

11:19 The collaborations with Satellite City and Rob Scallon needed to be arranged,

11:24 Corey Taylor and his son needed to come out to Chicago,

11:27 the final version of The Trial probably took eighty hours just to render,

11:32 not even including blocking and animating.

11:35 Then there’s writing, recording, props, costumes,

11:37 all of which you can cut a lot of corners

11:41 on, and make no mistake the corners here are extremely cut, but there’s a floor.

11:48 Certain things are still going to take all week no matter how half you ass them.

11:52 So on some level you have to care,

11:55 you have to care a lot to commit to this amount of work.

12:00 And that passion, you know, it can come from just really loving The Wall,

12:07 or just really hating The Wall,

12:09 or feeling like you have a lot of stuff to say about it,

12:14 but it’s gotta come from somewhere.

12:16 In the middle Doug does an ad for the companion album,

12:19 that they were selling– for money– that Doug describes

12:22 as a love letter to Pink Floyd and their music,

12:25 and it’s just… "This is just such a love

12:28 letter to Pink Floyd’s music and The Wall,

12:30 and you can download the album in the link

12:32 below." ...so hollow as a pitch because the product,

12:36 the thing that we’re watching and listening to,♪ the art-house

12:41 ego-trip♪♪ is extremely clearly not a love letter to Pink Floyd,

12:46 and is dominated by someone who, based on the words being said,

12:50 doesn’t seem to know much about Pink Floyd at all in the first place,

12:54 and really doesn’t like what they do know.

12:57 it’s us vs.

12:57 them, I don’t even know who us or them are,♪♪ I just want to be angry so

13:02 I can be Tweeting♪♪ Doug doesn’t seem to understand

13:05 The Wall on even a surface level, and...

13:08 really just doesn’t appear to care much about

13:12 The Wall one way or another, sort of?

13:17 There is at no point any sense

13:20 that Doug has any personal relationship to the material.

13:23 Based off the depth of Doug’s commentary it

13:25 reads very much like the opinions of someone

13:27 who watched The Wall for the first time

13:30 after already committing to do a full recreation,

13:33 and then didn’t particularly enjoy it,

13:35 and wasn’t really able to digest it because the whole viewing

13:40 went through the filter of looking for ideas for the recreation.

13:43 The commentary is extremely shallow while also being deeply petty and mean,

13:51 but then also the longer you go into the review the further it drifts from even

13:55 being about The Wall and the more it

13:58 becomes a showcase for Doug’s own unrelated opinions.

14:01 There’s no clear sense of what viewpoints

14:04 the various characters are supposed to represent,

14:06 The Critic is used to voice multiple different stances,

14:10 being both critic, audience surrogate, creator surrogate,

14:13 narrator, and protagonist,

14:15 but then all of those are caked in various layers of sarcasm that make

14:20 it really difficult to parse what the message is actually supposed to be.

14:25 The whole of it is just very unclear.

14:28 The commentary, when it’s not completely off topic,

14:31 waffles between faint praise like “well,

14:33 I guess the song is kinda rad” and really performatively cruel stuff,

14:38 like calling the creators clout-chasing fakes.

14:41 None of it feels like the kind of good-natured ribbing you’d get

14:44 from actually invested fans who are making fun of a thing that they love.

14:48 What’s missing, at the core, is any sense of motivation.

14:53 "That’s it?" "We’re stopping there?" "Well, yeah,

14:57 the movie did." "I didn’t even get a line." "Hell,

15:00 I didn’t even sing a song." "What’d you even think of the movie?" "Well,

15:04 the movie ended on such an open vagueness that it

15:07 only makes sense the review end on such an open

15:10 vagueness." You get to the end and have no

15:13 idea why this was the form this product should take.

15:16 Why make a straight reproduction of pretty much 50% of the entire film?

15:21 Why make a complete companion album?

15:23 Why put this much effort into a video about a subject

15:27 that you just don’t seem to have any substantive opinions on at all?

15:31 And why put all this effort into this concept for this specific movie?

15:38 "I liked it fine." "Yeah, me too." "A little full of itself,

15:40 but good music and imagination." "Fair enough." And having these questions

15:44 afterwards is very bizarre when you’re talking about a review,

15:48 something that is, theoretically at least,

15:51 predicated entirely on, ya know, talking about your opinions.

15:55 And this is where we need to accept the reality that this isn’t really a review,

15:59 it’s not a parody, it’s not a commentary, and it’s not a spoof.

16:04 It’s barely even about The Wall.

16:06 It’s honestly closer to fanfiction, in a way?

16:10 Doug wants to be a filmmaker, he wants to make art, but he can’t,

16:14 because he’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t

16:17 much interested in what other people think or feel,

16:20 and all his ideas boil down to “what if Batman met

16:25 Mario?” [Doug] "Slapstick focuses on the most important rule of comedy,

16:28 that all comedy in, one way or another,

16:31 is based on misery." [teleporter noise] [dramatic

16:37 music] [Doug] "With little to no dialogue,

16:41 quickly identifiable characters, and nothing but chases.

16:44 People see it as classic because it’s so minimal, and yet so interesting.

16:49 It says so much with just a few clever choices.

16:52 ‘Fury Road’ is the same way." [Dan] He is

16:55 YouTube’s own home grown Tommy Wiseau or Neil Breen,

16:58 complete with the same unwillingness to learn how a camera works.

17:01 "Hey, so you invited me up here,

17:03 whatcha wanna to do?" "Just watch TV." "You invited me up

17:07 here to literally watch TV?" "I’m a successful musician with millions,

17:10 how can you expect me to be happy?!" It has that same

17:14 heady mix of incompetence and ego that is absolutely intoxicating to talk about.

17:19 So much of the actual content is predicated

17:22 on readings of the material that are just wildly wrong,

17:26 and yet so absolutely confident in their delivery.

17:30 Doug decided to accuse an eighty minute movie of being too long and padded,

17:35 and then didn’t even flinch as he

17:37 sandwiched that between a rant about people being

17:39 mean to him on Twitter and an eight

17:42 minute argument with a busty nightmare squirrel.

17:44 And it’s that element, that deeply misplaced sense of confidence that really

17:49 just makes Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall captivating.

17:52 Like The Room it’s a deeply cynical

17:55 product made by a fundamentally untalented man,

17:57 bored by the idea of personal growth, building so many layers of self-protective

18:03 irony that it becomes unintentionally revealing.

18:06 "You mean like ‘The Room’?" "No." "Yes." "Shut up." Doug

18:08 is utilizing The Wall as a showcase for his own ideas,

18:11 his own lyricism, his own jokes, his own singing.

18:14 This video is him strutting his stuff as a filmmaker.

18:18 So while some of it is about The Wall,

18:20 for the most part the further you get into it

18:23 the more it shifts to just being about Doug.

18:25 This is a bit of a struggle to describe,

18:28 which is why I’m kinda repeating myself over and over,

18:31 but it makes sense when you see it.

18:33 [guitar]♪ Tweeting.

18:34 ♪Waiting for the point.

18:39 A bunch of it is just disconnected Weird Al

18:41 style parody songs about things that grind Doug’s gears,

18:44 and the parts that are about The Wall are, more often than not,

18:49 so off base that you would believe the entire thing was recreated

18:54 from decades old memories if it weren’t

18:56 for the granular details that are included.

18:59 It is not Doug Walker’s review of The Wall,

19:03 it’s just Doug Walker’s version of The Wall.

19:06 So let’s talk about some specifics.

19:09 Is this quite what you expected to see?

19:12 Doug’s parody of Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 is

19:15 an immediate standout to people as just one of the worst

19:18 things they’ve put in their brains that they didn’t find on rotten.com♪

19:23 we need more victimization♪ [Dracula voice] there are no good teachers,

19:30 not one, not even by accident!

19:32 Restyled as ‘We Need More Victimization’ the song

19:36 is simultaneously a criticism calling The Wall whiney,

19:40 engaging in bizarre whataboutism,

19:42 and a thinly veiled rant about online culture war nonsense,

19:47 a subject that will crop up a few times throughout the video.

19:51 Most of the substance of this is

19:55 contained in Doug’s inexplicable Dracula impression.

19:59 [Dracula voice] "Welcome to high school where all the teachers are

20:02 monsters!" "I know it looks like they want to teach you something,

20:05 but they don’t!" "They just want to eat you up because we’re evil

20:09 bloodsucking vampire things!" "Mwahahaha!" Doug’s argument

20:12 here is that everyone thinks school sucks,

20:15 that that opinion isn’t special or noteworthy or substantive,

20:18 that The Wall is just dunking on school

20:21 because it’s a popular opinion with teenagers,

20:24 and, the bizarre whataboutism of pointing out

20:28 funding issues with the American public education system,

20:31 while throwing in some stale jabs about

20:34 school teaching algebra instead of car maintenance.

20:38 "Do you know what we teach in these walls?" "How to fix a car, pay your taxes,

20:42 ace an interview, perform first aid, manage your insurance,

20:45 cook healthy meals, or do household repairs?" "Preposterous!

20:48 We pay other people to do those things.

20:50 We teach important things you need to know in life,

20:52 like algebra."♪ oh our education system’s broke♪ [Dracula voice] "Well,

20:58 maybe it’s the other way alound, I don’t know, I’ve got a high school education!

21:02 Muahahahah!"♪ This is pandering like hell♪♪ L-O-L so school sucks,

21:09 grow a damn pair of balls.

21:12 Now, at the surface level here it just needs to be said,

21:16 Doug is transparently imposing his own experience of school in 1980s,

21:20 1990s suburban Illinois on Waters’ experiences

21:23 in Primary School in the 1950s and 60s.

21:27 In England.

21:28 So just at a very fundamental level

21:30 this doesn’t work because it’s a complete non-sequitur.

21:33 It’s a response to Another Brick In The Wall that’s so off topic,

21:37 that misses the mark by such a wide mile,

21:40 that it’s clear he just wasn’t paying attention.

21:44 More than that, though, what interests me here is the way that this version

21:48 is an argument in support of the status quo.

21:51 Like, let’s talk about the grim cowardice of “school

21:54 helps you get a job.” [Dracula voice] "It’s all

21:56 part of our seclet plan to make sure" "you’re

21:58 more likely to get a job when you’re older!" Like,

22:01 okay, let me back up a bit and illustrate the problem here.

22:04 The roots of public education are split between two major motivators,

22:08 the first being philosophical, and the second being industrial.

22:11 The philosophical argument is that knowledge is inherently valuable,

22:14 and it is a moral good for society to educate everyone,

22:18 that a society with a widespread familiarity with the physical sciences,

22:22 mathematics, ethics, literature, and the arts is a more inventive society,

22:27 and a more ethical society.

22:29 The industrial argument is that school should exist to prepare you to work.

22:35 This is rooted in the real history of much of public education,

22:38 as early efforts to expand public education were driven by industrialists whose

22:43 growing empires needed more specialized laborers

22:47 to do the work of middle management, which mostly means accounting.

22:51 The idea, from their perspective,

22:53 was you could convince the government to teach everyone the reading,

22:56 writing, and arithmetic needed to do the job,

22:59 which would make it easier to fill all the positions needed,

23:03 lower training costs,

23:04 and drive down the price of math and literacy based labour.

23:08 This second argument has had a lot of power and influence

23:12 over the shape of education in the last two centuries,

23:15 and is still alive and well today.

23:18 There is a tremendous amount of ongoing debate in education circles about

23:22 the balance between raw theory and the pragmatic modern reality of labour.

23:27 There’s tons of people who will argue

23:29 that we should really have two school tracks,

23:32 so that the students who just aren’t that interested in math and Shakespeare,

23:36 who think algebra is useless, can go watch Amazon training videos for a couple

23:42 years and get right to work in the fulfilment warehouse.

23:45 The criticism, which Waters is directly engaging

23:47 with in Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, is that this arrangement,

23:51 school as a pipeline to industry, means that what is taught in school and how

23:57 it is taught will be dictated by industrialists, by corporations.

24:01 The school system, then,

24:03 becomes nothing but a systematic reshaping of children into ideal workers:

24:08 obedient, compliant, and narrowly trained in only what is needed for the job.

24:14 It is a reduction of people to exploitable labour, to uniform bricks in a wall.

24:19 It is critical of the fundamental ordering of society.

24:23 Why should these institutions,

24:24 rampant with abuse and steered by corporate ghouls,

24:28 be given so much power over us?

24:30 Why, especially, should they be given so much power over children?

24:34 This all is part of the multi-layered metaphor of The Wall.

24:37 There is the autobiographical element,

24:39 placed in the specifics of English primary school in the 1950s and 60s,

24:44 and the ways that those experiences shaped Waters into the adult he became,

24:48 which then serves as a means to criticize the existence of the system itself,

24:53 because the abuses he suffered, the physical violence of beating children who

24:57 failed in the rote recitation of number tables,

25:00 were systematized, and took place within a system

25:04 that was at best indifferent and at worst approving.

25:08 This continues to resonate with people to this day because regardless of whether

25:12 or not corporal punishment has been

25:15 abolished and more idealistic pedagogies have prevailed,

25:18 institutionalized school is still an institution

25:21 and will never be an unalloyed good.

25:25 It will always be vulnerable to corruption, to abuse, to manipulation,

25:29 and the question of whose agenda is served

25:33 by the structure and material must remain an eternal debate.

25:37 So, yeah, I feel confident saying that Doug’s

25:41 argument here just isn’t very well formed,

25:44 it’s unclear, shallow, and doesn’t actually engage with the question.

25:49 D minus.

25:51 "Wait time out, is this really a World War 2 reference?" "No,

25:55 it’s just a bunch of kids being herded onto

25:57 a train to a horrible torturous building- ooooh." "Yeah,

26:00 and we’re really comparing this to high school?" Following

26:03 “We Need More Victimization” is an extended skit where Doug,

26:07 dressed as The Critic, defends The Wall from criticism.

26:10 "No, no, it’s just meant to look weird and creepy.

26:13 They’re not implying… that." The Critic is positioned as the rube,

26:17 his defences are clearly meant to be hollow and weak.

26:20 The problem is that the accusations he’s

26:24 sarcastically defending the movie against only hold

26:27 weight based on Doug’s own shallow misreading

26:30 of everything else up to this point.

26:33 In The Wall, Pink, as a child, hiding in a train tunnel,

26:37 sees schoolchildren as faceless blobs crowded into cattle cars,

26:41 and envisions himself, too, becoming faceless.

26:44 This is the beginning of The Happiest Days of Our Lives’ which

26:47 is effectively just the intro to 'Another Brick in the Wall Part 2',

26:50 during which the faceless children are fed into a meat grinder.

26:54 So the more immediate imagery is a slaughterhouse.

26:58 Is that, in part or by extension, also a Holocaust reference?

27:03 Yeah, it is.

27:04 It is a “World War 2 reference.” Because much of the album

27:08 and movie are about the after effects of that war.

27:12 It’s not an abstract concept that’s

27:15 just being name-dropped for aesthetic symmetry,

27:17 it’s a real event that people lived through,

27:20 and The Wall is in no small part a reflection on growing

27:24 up in the shadow of that and reflecting on the value of it,

27:28 or more specifically the lack thereof.

27:31 The statement is that the inhumanity of the system,

27:35 its goals and methods, are ultimately homoousian,

27:38 of the same stuff, as the inhumanity that leads

27:42 a system to load humans into cattle cars.

27:46 That comparison is only inappropriate if, one,

27:49 you think the message is simply “school sucks”, and two,

27:53 you’ve been ignoring the role of World War 2 within the film up to this point.

27:58 "Oh come on, they’re just saying school sucks,

28:00 they’re not making any connections to that.

28:02 Now let’s go on to the next song that talks about

28:05 the horrors of World War 2- ah crap." "See." "It’s just a coincidence!

28:09 Maybe?

28:10 I don’t know." As those of you familiar with The Wall may have noticed,

28:14 this is all out of order because the joke doesn’t work if you do it in order.

28:18 Doug’s joke is a setup for his version of Goodbye Blue Sky,

28:22 retooled as So Long, Weird Song.

28:26 D-d-d-d-doesn’t this seem too heavy?

28:30 Is World War 2 with monsters too silly?

28:33 Originally this is all the other way around.

28:35 Goodbye Blue Sky leads into the train tunnel which

28:38 segues into Another Brick in the Wall part 2.

28:40 The reason that matters is because originally the imagery

28:44 of Goodbye Blue Sky is the setup for later imagery.

28:48 Gerald Scarfe’s powerful visualization of the War and specifically

28:51 The Blitz as a psychological force that scarred

28:54 the collective psyche of the people as deeply

28:57 as it scarred the land and the bodies of soldiers.

29:00 Like, I cannot stress this enough,

29:03 Goodbye Blue Sky is one of the most potent pieces of filmmaking I’ve ever seen.

29:10 It is ruinously effective at using its imagery to convey

29:14 the sheer scale of damage and waste that the war represents.

29:18 It’s grim, and haunting, and very important as a foundation for what follows.

29:24 In ‘So Long, Weird Song’ Doug asks if “World War 2 with monsters” is too silly

29:30 for a movie that also complains about how

29:33 High School bites.”♪ D-d-d-d-doesn’t this seem too heavy?

29:39 Is World War 2 with monsters too silly?

29:44 Oh Roger Waters did you ever wonder why these images of slaughter

29:48 made it in a film♪♪ that also sings about how high school bites?

29:54 Which, of course, again,

29:56 is predicated on that actually being the message, which it isn’t,

30:01 and indulges in a deeply misplaced

30:03 level of literalism by describing the sequence

30:05 as “World War 2 with monsters” as though

30:08 this were a direct-to-video Pacific Rim sequel.

30:11 Now, this kind of literalism is a pretty regular part of Doug’s normal bit,

30:15 it just really falls apart here.

30:17 It’s one thing when it’s aimed at corporate franchise schlock aimed at kids,

30:20 but it’s just really obviously misplaced and inappropriate when applied

30:25 to a deeply earnest piece of art that is overtly symbolic,

30:30 unapologetically symbolic in its attempt to communicate what this real event,

30:35 that really happened, felt like to live through.

30:39 He also calls the song “Oscar bait”,

30:41 which is funny because it’s both literally wrong,

30:44 Goodbye Blue Sky wasn’t eligible for an Oscar in the first place,

30:47 and also because it’s such a deep insult that it’s really revealing.

30:53 So long Oscar bait song.

30:57 Smoke a bong and it’ll feel less wrong.

31:01 Now, I actually don’t think Doug was literally calling the song “Oscar bait”,

31:06 I don’t think he thinks they were specifically playing towards the Academy,

31:10 but I do think that he thinks The Wall is spiritually Oscar bait,

31:15 which is to say insincere.

31:17 The capstone here, for me, is the replacement animation, which is, first of all,

31:22 just visually awful and cheap in a way

31:25 that would be considered sub-par for 2007,

31:27 and second, is just so petty and mean that this is what makes

31:33 it very funny when Doug calls his album a “love letter to Pink Floyd”.

31:37 The imperial eagle is labeled Ego,

31:41 and the frightened ones are labeled self-content?

31:45 Self-content?

31:46 I honestly can’t tell if that’s supposed to be

31:49 content or content because neither really makes sense?

31:53 I think he’s saying ego is the destroyer of self-content?

31:57 Like, Roger Waters’ dissatisfaction is not the result of any real problems,

32:02 but is a product of his own...

32:05 ego?

32:06 That would parse, because the lyrics

32:08 of the song do directly address Roger Waters,

32:11 and later a cloud labeled “my problems”

32:14 grows flowers of pity and then blasts another

32:18 cloud labeled “other people’s problems.” [acoustic guitar]♪ ooooooh

32:29 oooooh ooooooh oooooooh♪♪ [clap of thunder] I dunno,

32:37 I think it’s one thing to describe The Wall as whiney or juvenile,

32:41 to say in effect that it encapsulates a really teenage mindset,

32:45 but it’s quite another to accuse the creators of being disingenuous,

32:50 ego-tripping fakes who milk imaginary problems for pity.

32:54 I don’t think you can make that accusation and then

32:57 turn around and insist that you liked it fine,

33:00 and made a love letter to its creative vision.

33:03 That’s the kind of thing that you say about something

33:06 you just really don’t think very highly of at all.

33:10 That’s why I watch, despite it being so whiny, ya see.

33:18 This is pandering like hell♪♪♪ So long Oscar

33:24 bait song♪♪♪ You’re not Oscar bound♪♪ "This is

33:30 such a love letter to Pink Floyd’s

33:32 music and The Wall" The song Comfortably Numb,

33:35 retooled as Comfortably Dumb, is where things start to really wander off topic.

33:40 It’s not really about The Wall but it’s

33:42 kinda about Doug’s relationship to The Wall, and to media in general,

33:46 and it’s probably the most honest song Doug put into the project,

33:50 almost certainly not on purpose.

33:52 Nominally it’s about the pacing of the film,

33:54 and Doug reiterates once again that he thinks Roger

33:57 Waters’ opinions are the illegitimate whining of a millionaire,

34:01 but it’s also Doug saying he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t care to.

34:06 The movie is challenging and he just doesn’t have

34:09 any interest in engaging with it on its own terms.

34:12 He has become comfortably dumb.

34:16 I just don’t understand, is this now how I am?

34:25 I have become comfortably dumb.

34:33 And, you know what, I’m not going to disagree.

34:39 You said it, man.

34:40 I don’t know if it works as self-deprecating

34:43 humour because I don’t think it’s comedically true, I think it’s just true.

34:47 Going into the ad break there’s a changeover.

34:50 So, okay, up to this point Corey Taylor,

34:53 the frontman for nu metal band Slipknot,

34:55 has been playing the equivalent role of Pink.

34:59 As they transition Corey is replaced with Doug,

35:02 so Doug plays Pink for the equivalents

35:04 of In The Flesh and Waiting for the Worms.

35:06 This is part of a running gag,

35:08 being that the actual rock musician doesn’t get to sing a song

35:11 until the very end at which point he plays the Spongebob Squarepants theme,

35:15 and also probably just a logistical extension of only getting Corey

35:18 out for a day or two and block shooting all his stuff.

35:22 The other thing that’s going on, which is

35:25 far more trivial but bothers me so much,

35:28 is that the exterior shot is overwhelmingly blue,

35:30 and I’m not sure if this is a stylistic choice or a mistake,

35:35 that they just forgot to set the white balance properly and just left it.

35:40 Because Doug does that, just, all the time.

35:43 After the ad break, which consists

35:45 of an uncomfortably over-acted ad for online data

35:48 harvesting scam Honey and Doug’s own tie-in

35:50 recreation of the entire album The Wall,

35:53 which, again, they were selling for money, we get this.

35:59 [Music: ‘In The Flesh’] Truly every frame is a painting.

36:13 Well I’m that nameless foe, ha!

36:16 No, okay, so, mm, where do I start with this?

36:22 I got some weird news for you sunshine.

36:26 This was dissin’ Thatcher’s administration♪♪ But it’s

36:31 vague enough to put anyone you feel♪♪ Politician,

36:35 showman, just put their face here!

36:39 No...

36:40 no Doug.

36:42 No, it really wasn’t.

36:45 Are there any queers in the audience tonight?

36:48 It really, it really, really wasn’t that vague.

36:52 That one looks Jewish, and that one’s a coon!

36:56 Not vague at all.

36:58 Get ‘em up against the wall!

37:00 Against!

37:01 The!

37:02 Wall!

37:02 Not even a teeny tiny bit vague.

37:06 [Doug singing]♪ That one’s looking stressed, he wants to feel oppressed.

37:11 Put him in the wall!

37:13 Post!

37:14 Okay, so this whole segment is just Doug

37:16 venting about people being mean to him on Twitter.

37:19 It is completely disconnected from The Wall,

37:21 not even a tiny bit about the movie, it’s just Doug using the veil of alter

37:27 ego to express an otherwise authentically held belief.

37:30 And that’s honestly a charitable reading of it.

37:34 Because otherwise you’re saying that a criticism of Thatcherism,

37:41 the policies of austerity, of rigid enforcement of Christian norms,

37:46 the violent suppression of political dissent,

37:48 of a rising home-grown fascist movement,

37:51 criticisms that pre-date the AIDS crisis but would hold true well into the 80s

37:57 as governments decided it was unofficial

37:59 policy that AIDS was a divine punishment

38:02 and a solution to their “gay crisis,” you’re saying that all that isn’t

38:09 substantively different from people yelling at each

38:13 other on the internet over Batman movies.

38:17 that one looks like he really wants to be outraged!

38:21 Now with social media you have the stage!

38:26 So, yeah, I think the most charitable

38:30 read is that Doug’s just talking about himself.

38:35 [chanting] Hashtag!

38:38 Hashtag!

38:39 Hashtag!

38:40 Hashtag!

38:41 [cheering] Alright, there’s only one major section left

38:45 and this is maybe where I risk a controversial opinion.

38:50 Common among reactions to this video is to say

38:53 that while the review as a whole is really bad,

38:55 the animation at the end is really good, it’s the best part,

38:59 and anyone who is criticizing the review should, you know, be kind to Fennah,

39:03 the animator who put it all together, because it was a lot of work.

39:08 So what happens is Corey enters the Channel Awesome office and is

39:13 about to confront Doug when Doug is interrupted by a phone call.

39:17 [phone ringing] "Or is it just a misguided ego

39:20 trip into self-indulgent world that we all live in, pardon!

39:23 [yelling] Who is it?!" "Hello there, Critic.

39:26 It’s Sullivan Croft." "The Satellite City guy?" "Yes, actually.

39:31 Um, I was, uh, is Lucy Lacemaker there?

39:34 Is she there?

39:35 ‘Cus I was, ah, it’s just a thing" [crosstalk] "S-sullivan,

39:37 have you found her yet?" "Uh, shut the fuck up." Now,

39:40 I’ve done all the research to piece all

39:43 this together so that I can summarize it,

39:45 but on first viewing I had zero clue what was going on.

39:51 I don’t know who this is,

39:52 but it’s clearly a reference that the video expects me to get,

39:56 there’s clearly some sort of backstory to these characters,

39:59 it’s not just an abstraction, and just to really add to the confusion

40:05 the whole thing is this mumblecore overlapping ramble,

40:09 and it looks like garbage, and you can’t understand what they’re talking about

40:12 because you can’t understand what they’re even saying.

40:15 "You’re not exactly giving creation all of its credit,

40:18 it’s not like you just shit out the Horcrux that Voldemort never

40:21 meant to make." And then this thing shows up and the barely

40:27 intelligible dialogue just keeps going until the whole thing segues

40:31 into The Trial where it honestly doesn’t get much easier to understand.

40:37 Lazy.

40:41 Constantly????????????????

40:43 Lazy♪♪ Now, before we get into this any further,

40:49 yes, there’s a lot of technical competency on display.

40:52 Modelling is hard, texturing is hard, rigging is hard,

40:56 animation is hard, hair simulations are hard,

40:59 all of this represents hours and hours and hours and hours of work.

41:03 There is a lot of effort on display here.

41:06 Okay.

41:08 So, Fennah is a YouTube animator who makes

41:10 a series called Satellite City which is, I guess,

41:13 a skit show with a combination of live action and CG animation and way, way,

41:20 way too much lore for a series with an average episode runtime of 130 seconds.

41:26 So the characters in The Trial are all characters from Satellite City,

41:30 and it’s- it's just not good.

41:34 Kinda the real change of pace is that it’s not

41:37 good in ways that are new to the review so far.

41:40 From what I can glean this segment was made

41:42 by Fennah more or less in isolation rest of the video.

41:45 The track on the album is called Fennah’s The Trial,

41:48 the credits say it’s produced by Fennah,

41:50 and so it does seem like Fennah wrote and produced all of it,

41:53 using his normal stable of voice actors.

41:56 Which makes sense because the opinions are bad,

41:59 but they’re a different kind of bad.

42:01 The entire song is sung in-universe from the viewpoint

42:04 of these characters who feel that The Wall

42:07 falls short because all the animated monsters

42:09 in the movie don't get enough screen time or development,

42:13 and then another character comes in and says that, you know,

42:17 I guess we can give it a pass because it wasn’t trying to tell a story.

42:21 ♪This film's not bound by characters It's a visual

42:26 affair♪♪ It never aimed to tell a story rather,

42:32 a sprawling canvas of emotion, visual splendor♪♪ Okay, so this sucks.

42:39 That’s just a really weak,

42:42 disingenuous argument being filtered through a character in order

42:46 to scrub it of any meaning or ownership,

42:49 because heaven forbid you put an actual opinion out into the world.

42:53 It’s also just wrong at a very basic level.

42:56 The Wall is telling a story.

42:58 It’s not conventionally told,

43:00 and it’s a little loose, but it’s very comprehensible.

43:04 The animated monsters at the end

43:06 of the movie aren’t under-developed in the slightest,

43:09 because they’re extensions and representations of characters that were

43:14 already present in the rest of the movie.

43:17 They are a psychosexual visualization of those literal

43:20 characters and the ideas those characters represent:

43:24 parents, the state, the education system, intimate partners.

43:28 The problem with using Fennah’s horny edgelord steampunk

43:31 furry OCs is that they actually are underdeveloped.

43:35 If there’s even an attempt at using them in a metaphorical

43:38 fashion then that’s lost in the clear specificity of the crossover.

43:42 They’re not present in any meaningful capacity through the rest of the review,

43:46 they don’t represent anything substantive, and they are,

43:49 for the most part, awful over-baked designs for one-note characters.

43:55 fills me with the urge to decapitate!

43:59 So you’re going to have this over-designed horny rat thing

44:02 lecture about how The Wall is all style over substance,

44:06 devoid of intellectual development,

44:07 then alien big titty goth girlfriend calls the movie lazy?

44:11 "And when I heard you were reviewing the much-to-

44:15 be-desired Wall I figured I’d find my own tuppence.

44:18 Style over substance, showcasing a bunch of weird creatures and worlds,

44:23 not a drop of intellectual development."♪ Lazy.

44:30 Constantly????????????????

44:32 Lazy♪ Cringe.

44:36 There’s no other word for it.

44:37 This makes me cringe.

44:38 It’s embarrassing.

44:40 On a deep level the entire structure of this just doesn’t work.

44:42 It’s poor criticism and it’s not even an appropriate

44:45 parallel to the segment that it’s a recreation of.

44:49 If this were actually a coherent work this isn’t

44:51 where you would put the movie on trial,

44:54 this is where you would put Doug on trial.

44:56 This is where you would take all the other ideas from the rest of the review,

45:00 consolidate them in one place, interrogate them,

45:02 and interrogate what they say about their author.

45:05 So, no, I don’t think this is the “good part” of the review,

45:08 because it’s still a tremendous amount of effort put into modelling,

45:12 texturing, and rigging a fundamentally bad concept.

45:15 Just at the basics it’s confusing and muddled.

45:18 Creatively it seems to have started from the ending,

45:21 the chant of Tear Down The Wall,

45:23 taken from the original and recontextualized to mean tear down The Wall,

45:27 the movie, and working backwards from that is a bunch of stuff just hammered

45:33 into place because if you’re doing a full

45:36 recreation then you’ve gotta put something in there.

45:38 You’ve got a lyric sheet to fill out and time to kill.

45:41 And of course, afterwards,

45:42 the whole review ends with a lazy lampshade of the fact

45:45 that the review didn’t actually contain anything of substance.

45:49 "Okay!

45:50 I liked it fine." "Yeah, me too." "A little full of itself,

45:52 but good music and imagination." "Fair enough."

45:54 And the resolution of the gag that Corey

45:57 Taylor hasn’t done anything yet in the form

45:59 of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song.

46:01 Spongebob Squarepants!

46:03 Kinda the buckwild thing here is that if

46:05 there were less effort put into this, if

46:07 the substance was otherwise exactly the same but there

46:11 wasn’t a companion album on sale for money,

46:14 there wasn’t an entire end-to-end abridged recreation,

46:17 if there were just one or two songs and a bunch

46:21 of lazy jokes about the movie being really pretentious,

46:24 then I don’t think this would compel people in the way it does.

46:28 There’s an effort on display that is its own form of earnestness,

46:33 and it just all falls flat, because it’s just no good.

46:37 It’s trying to be impressive without being vulnerable.

46:40 And simultaneous to that it’s pissing on a really

46:43 earnest piece of art specifically for being vulnerable.

46:47 And to see this all played out against the backdrop of a movie

46:51 from a band that is decades and decades and decades old,

46:54 well outside Doug’s normal wheelhouse,

46:57 with no clear indication of why this particular movie, this album,

47:02 is something that Doug feel is worth this much effort, it’s a baffling product.

47:10 [Hat!Dan] But wait!

47:12 Holy crap!

47:12 It’s long running character Hat!Dan, the Dan With a Hat!

47:16 But what did you really about it?!

47:18 Oh, I guess I liked it fine.

47:20 A little full of itself but they put in a lot of effort.

47:22 yeah!

47:24 Yeah!

47:25 [gunshots]