media post 4- Pink Floyd Waiting for the Worms

The portion of this song starts about 40 seconds into the clip of The Wall and only lasts about 60 seconds.




Ein! Zwei! Drei! Hammer!
Ooooh, you cannot reach me now
Ooooh, no matter how you try
Goodbye, cruel world, it's over
Walk on by.

Sitting in a bunker
Here Behind my wall
Waiting for the worms to come
In perfect isolation
Here behind my wall
Waiting for the worms to come

(Megaphone: Will the audience convene at one fifteen
outside Brixton Town Hall where we will be...)
Waiting (to cut out the deadwood).
Waiting (to clean up the city).
Waiting (to follow the worms).
Waiting (to put on a black shirt).
Waiting (to weed out the weaklings).
Waiting (to smash in their windows and kick in their doors)
Waiting (for the final solution to strengthen the strain).
Waiting to follow the worms.
Waiting (to turn on the showers and fire the ovens).
Waiting (for the queens and the coons and the Reds and the Jews).
Waiting (to follow the worms).
Would you like to see
(backgr: Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?)
Britannia rule again, my friend?
All you have to do is follow the worms.
Would you like to send
(backgr: Would you like to send them home again, my friend?)
Our colored cousins home again, my friend?
All you need to do is follow the worms.

Those are the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s Waiting for the Worms. If you cant tell by reading the lyrics, Pink Floyd is talking about WWW II. Sitting in a bunker waiting for the worms (soldiers) to come, basically meaning that he is hiding from Hitler’s Gestapo. Clean up the city, put on a black shirt, weed out the weaklings. The black representing Hitler, cleaning the city and weeding out the weaklings is getting rid of everyone who isn’t like him. In WWW II the extermination of the Jews was called the final solution. The showers and ovens refer to the concentration camps. And of course the queens are the gays, the coons, black, the reds being Indians and the Jews. As we all are well aware of Hitler exterminated anyone who wasn’t like him, you had to have blonde hair and blue eyes to be considered like Hitler and safe. There is a small section about this particular song in The Wall video; he is dressed in all black with the trademark crossed hammers of Pink Floyd, that slightly represents a swastika. He is walking down the street pointing like he would be hailing Hitler. The portion of this song starts about 40 seconds into the clip of The Wall and only lasts about 60 seconds.

Pink Floyd is reinterpreting what Hitler did into one of their many demented songs. Pink Floyd asks “would you like to see us rule again?” Basically asking us if we want another WWW II and another Hitler. I chose to use this song as a media device because I can relate it to Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression and Difference.” In the very beginning of the chapter Johnson says “fear keeps us from looking at what’s going on and makes it impossible to do anything about the reality that lies deeper down.”(page 12) Which describes the people during WWW II, everyone was afraid of Hitler so no one said anything about what he was doing. Hitler was afraid of people who were not like him because he thought he knew them which is exactly what Johnson says. Johnson says “the trouble around diversity is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference against other people” and Hitler perpetuated this.

I like Pink Floyd, their music is amazing but after reading the lyrics and really seeing what they are saying, kind of creeps me out. I guess in a way though Pink Floyd is using this song as a tool to show us how racist we really are.