Entry 63: Being Tested

I hesitated a bit about writing this character and this movie - Pink from Pink Floyd the Wall, but here it is. Pink is a mentally and emotionally unstable rock star who slowly builds a metaphorical wall of alienation around himself. When he was a kid his father died in World War II. He longed for a father figure throughout his childhood while raised up by an overprotective mother. At school, Pink was humiliated by the teacher for writing poems in class. (This is where the absolutely awesome music video Another Brick in the Wall kicks in.) He got married eventually, but his wife cheated on him while he was on tour. When he learned of the affair he was traumatized. He brought a groupie back to his hotel room but had a fit of violence and began smashing things. The groupie fled in horror. Pink broke down again and started to go insane. He shaved all his body hair off, including eyebrows, and lay faintly in his room. His manager found him and inject him with drugs to make him perform a concert. He hallucinated that he is a neo-Nazi dictator speaking at a rally. As the scenes got more and more intense, he screamed, "Stop!" and hid himself in a bathroom. In his mind he put himself on trial. In the end, he managed to destroy the "wall."
The movie is highly symbolic, but Pink did have to go through an ordeal. He is driven crazy by the things happening in his life. He at first isolated himself, but eventually overcame the challenge even though we don't know what exactly happened to him. I also thought of writing this movie because we're on the unit of symbols; the film is loaded with symbols.