Standing Rock seeks to determine if ‘Dark side’ and ‘Oz’ is a coincidence

of Standing Rock Cultural Arts, have sat around dinner tables discussing the synchronicity when “The Wizard of Oz” is played without sound to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” The supposed matching up of particular scenes and actions in the Victor Fleming movie with the lyrics and feel of the album has circulated through word-of-mouth and become a popular urban legend.

“I said, ‘Let’s have some fun with this and see what happens,'” Ingram said. He contacted Tom Simpson of the Kent Stage and set up a midnight viewing of “Dark Side of the Rainbow” tonight at the Kent Stage.

Ingram seeks to determine if the combination is simply a legend based on coincidence, or perhaps not a coincidental legend at all as its synchronicity is based on significant psychological and philosophical truths. He has never seen the full combination, only YouTube clips, in which he said the synchronicity during the tornado scene and the changing of the film from black to white colors is interesting.

Ingram cites psychologist Carl Jung as a person with evidence for the matching. Synchronicity is defined by Jung in “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” as psychic parallelisms that have no causal explanation. For example, simultaneous occurrence of thoughts, symbolism or psychic states.

“There’s a lot of truth to what Carl Jung said about the matching up and connection between two things even though there are long spans of time between them,” Ingram said. “Science can’t prove that.”

Ingram said the great thing about the synchronicity of “Dark Side of the Rainbow” is that supposedly Pink Floyd was not consciously thinking about the different elements that coincide with “The Wizard of Oz.” They are simply ideas that are paralleled, such as the song “Money” having strong materialist connotations, and the movie having a strong theme of silver and gold.

Psychology professor Ben Newberry, said that “Dark Side of the Rainbow” could synchronize because of inherited sets of ways of thinking about things that are common among all humans. An example of one of these many ‘sets,’ called archetypes, is the way humankind naturally and primitively thinks about a mother, Newberry said.

“Art, literature and everything in culture represent archetypes,” Newberry said. “That means, then, you can take any two pieces of art and say they are synchronized. Because artists inherently express archetypes, it is natural that different pieces of culture reflect each other. The only surprising thing would be if they didn’t.”

Chance or not, the Kent Stage will be filled with people enjoying a good album and a good movie, Ingram said.

Contact all reporter Brenna McNamara at [email protected].