Text 2: Pink Floyd - "Us and Them"
Rhetorical Situation/ Exigence
Conflict broke out between France and Vietnam during the 1940's when France lost control of Vietnam. In 1945, Ho Chi Minh took over Vietnam and declared it an independent country. The United States did not want to get involved in this conflict because it had just finished WW2 and needed sometime to recover. However, Vietnam was communist and this scared a lot of Americans. The fear of communism was greater than our want to stay out of the war and so we eventually joined. Many people were against the war because of how violent the war was. One group that was against the war was an English rock band called "Pink Floyd." Pink floyd wrote many songs protesting the war. One such song was called "Us and Them." While this song is about war, on a much larger scale it is about human nature, drawing a large audience of people, making this a very prominent and influential group during the 1960's anti-war movement.
Nice explication. So, who's "us" and who's "them"?
ReplyDeleteThank you Miss Catherine. The lyrics are open for interpretation, but I think "Us" is referring to the United States and their allies during the Vietnam War and "Them" is referring to all the communist enemies. They kill us and we kill them. It seems like nobody wins...except maybe death. Pink Floyd uses the words "Us" and "Them" to create a feeling of separation in their audience. But in the very next line, they bring it back together. "And after all we're only ordinary men." What they mean is that we are all just people. People just want to live without fear and without hate. We all just want to feel free. It's because they appeal to human emotions (pathos) that makes them such a prominent symbol of peace in the 1960's.
ReplyDeleteI like the fact that you related this song to the Vietnam war. People will have no trouble making the same connections as you did.
ReplyDeletePink Floyd wasn't really that popular in the states until dark side of the moon iirc. And the album was released near the end of the Vietnam war. Plus most of their war protest music was about the Falkland's war which their home country Britain started. I think this album was more about personal problems like madness in "brain damage" greed in "money" and not having enough time in "time" and us and them would be dealing more with isolation more than a war happening in another country they didn't really care about. I don't think you are wrong, just that it is about as likely as Miley Cyrus's latest album being about the revolutions of the Arab spring a few years ago (2011) I think.
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