THE DARK SIDE OF OZ

People who listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon while watching The Wizard of Oz claim there's a phenomenal synchronicity between them. Cool. But does it mean anything? The author tests the proposition.

Jim Windolf

IDEALAB

Sometime after the invention of home video, the "dark side of the rainbow" effect was born. While watching The Wizard of Oz with the sound turned off, certain people—very likely stoners—first listened to the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon, being careful to push "play" at the third roar of the MGM lion. The results were astonishing. "It's as if the movie were one long art-film video for the album," wrote Charles Savage of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, who in 1995 became the first mainstream reporter to chronicle the phenomenon. "Song lyrics and titles match the action and plot. The music swells and falls with characters' movements."

As Savage noted, the Scarecrow flops around on the grass just as Pink Floyd bandleader Roger Waters sings,

"The lunatic is on the grass." And the thumping heartbeats that punctuate the end of Dark Side of the Moon are heard just as Dorothy puts her ear to the Tin Man's chest. These are only two of roughly 100 documented instances of synchronicity between the 1973 album and the 1939 movie.

Chat-roomers and bloggers have filled countless screens to express their enthusiasm for this psychedelic parlor game. At the same time, skeptics have argued that the effect is trivial, arising only from the human tendency to impose

patterns where none exist. Which camp is right? To solve the question once and for all, I have taken it upon myself to conduct further research in this hot new field of audiovisual synchronicity. Excited? Me, too.

COMBINATION ONE

The Film:Gone with the Wind (1939). The Album: James Brown's Revolution of the Mind: Live at the Apollo, Vol. 3. (1971). Hypothesis:Revolution of the Mind, one of the great aural documents of black power, and Gone with the Wind, an epic ode to white power, will be highly synchronistic, despite certain thematic differences.

The Experiment: Early in the film, slaves appear in the cotton fields at the same moment Brown screeches "Bewildered!," the first word of the ferocious ballad going by that very name. When Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) first appears, Brown is singing, "Baby, baby, baby." That seems like a nice match, but we must, in good conscience, write it off, owing to the hyper-frequency of that word's occurrence in the Brownian songbook. A firmer match follows: wet-blanket suitor Charles Hamilton proposes to Scarlett in time to Brown's singing, "Try me." Uncannily, the singer and on-screen character are one in their desperate wooings of a not-so-willing woman.

Brown sings the word "superbad" timed perfectly to the entrance of Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) at a plantation-house party. Later, as Rhett and Scarlett make deep eye contact for the first time, Brown shouts, "Get involved!" And when their faces nearly touch, he sings, "Face to face." Need I go on?

Conclusion:Gone with the Wind and Revolution of the Mind are indeed an audiovisual match.

COMBINATION TWO The Film:Idiocracy (2006). The Album: Britney Spears's Oops! ...I Did It Again (2000). Hypothesis: The wittingly funny and dystopian Idiocracy will seem even funnier and more dystopian when viewed along with the unwittingly funny and dystopian Oops! ...I Did It Again.

The Experiment: Like The Road Warrior, its somewhat more serious predecessor in the post-apocalyptic genre, Idiocracy begins with a montage charting the decline of earthly civilization. While this is happening on-screen, Spears, to mesmerizing effect, sings the refrain from the album's opening track over and over again— "Oops, I did it again." So far, so good. The movie's hero, played by Luke Wilson, awakens from cryogenic-freeze sleep in a young man's living room. It is the year 2505. The young man is seen watching TV just as Spears sings, "When I'm watching my TV," from her rendition of the Jagger-Richards hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

But then Idiocracy and Oops! ...I Did It Again part ways. Spears goes on and on about loving boys and being loved by them, or not loving them and not being loved back, as Wilson escapes prison, discovers he's the smartest man alive, and meets with the president in an Oval Office lined with porno DVDs and Jack in the Box advertisements.

Conclusion: With its near dearth of interesting matches, the simultaneous playing of Idiocracy and Oops! ... I Did It Again serves only to emphasize the latent depressing qualities in each.

COMBINATION THREE The Film:Last Tango in Paris (1972). The Album: Barry White's All-Time Greatest Hits (1994). Hypothesis: Director Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece, called "the most powerfully erotic movie ever made" by Pauline Kael, will seem all the more powerfully erotic in the lush musical context provided by make-out music's top maestro.

The Experiment: Has anyone looked sadder than the newly widowed Paul (Marlon Brando) as he wanders the gray streets of Paris in the opening scene? On the stereo, a sublime instrumental number, "Love's Theme," crests as Brando is enlivened by a new sense of purpose, which comes to him in the form of a fetching French lass (ingenue Maria Schneider). "Love's Theme" fades just as she reaches her destination: an apartment building on Rue Jules Verne. Brando, stalking Schneider from a distance, sets a lazylidded gaze on her as "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby" kicks in.

When Brando and Schneider first face each other, eyes locked, White sings, "I'm never gonna give you up." Brando grabs her. "Keep right on doin' it," sings White as the strangers kiss. Brando rips off Schneider's stockings. What does White have to say about this? "Right on."

Conclusion: Feel that tingling? It's not your shampoo.

Furthermore, it seems safe to conclude—with caution—that the "dark side of the rainbow" effect is not imaginary. A caveat: We have here considered but three combinations. Additional research is called for. Will science rise to the challenge?