From as early as
1962, the overcrowding in Paris schools was becoming increasingly problematic.
Despite a huge uptake in students, amounting to around 160,000 in 1968, courses
were longer and the drop-out rate increasing. Thus when in 1962, what became
known as the ‘Love War’ began in protest against the separation of male and
female student quarters at the university in Nanterre, students were able to
amass great support. Between 1962 - 68 numerous sit-ins and even ‘sleep-ins’,
along with the boycotting of classes, and the eventual strike of 68’ applied considerable
pressure upon university officials and the government. They had shown they were
not above targeting African American students in the past and with the proposal
of a more rigorous selection process their prejudices were made abundantly clear
and subjected to harsh opposition.
The advancement
of North Vietnamese forces and the Tet Offensive saw a wave of surprise attacks
across the country against the opposing American forces and their allies. This marked
a monumental shift in attitudes towards the war as it proved disastrous for the
US, whose soldiers were severely unequipped and untrained for guerrilla warfare.
The events which transpired in Vietnam from January 30th 1968
brought fierce opposition against the war and although unknown at the time,
resulted in brutal retaliation by American troops and their allies, and in the
case of the Mai Lai Massacre of March 16th, the murder of hundreds
of innocent Vietnamese women and their children.
1968 for many is
considered to mark the end of the Civil Rights Movement, or at least the end
and beginning of a new era of the Modern Black Freedom Movement. On April 4th,
from his hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr was shot
dead. The eruption of riots and protest in the days following ignited a new,
unrelenting will in African Americans to seek and achieve justice. This took
the form of the Civil Rights Act, which signified a major victory on the road
to achieving greater equality for African Americans.
The Rolling
Stones 1968 song Sympathy for the Devil is a reflection on these defining
moments in history fuelled by racial hatred, greed and political agendas, and
it proclaims Satan to be the instigator of such events. Generally speaking
however, Jagger’s depiction of Satan more closely resembles that of the snake
in the Garden of Eden, or a trickster summoned at the crossroads, who presents
a choice or dilemma, as opposed to the more common interpretation of absolute evil.
The song implicitly suggests that the devil is also responsible, or at least had
a hand in the Vietnam War and various social crises affecting students, both
black and white and Black Americans. In this sense, the devil is an embodiment
of corruption, discrimination and hate within humanity, but can also be seen as
a sort of liberator, a catalyst for change, and moreover, a common enemy to
revolt against. Jagger’s lyrics may have been influenced by books such as
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and the
Margarita and his interest and perhaps even involvement in Satanist and
other cult movements clearly informed his lyric writing process, but the
overall message received by the masses was one encouraging resistance to the
world’s many evils; A warning to the people to know your enemy, to be actively passionate in fighting corruption.
Sam Aldorino Flett
______________________
Gerd Bayer, Heavy
Metal Music in Britain (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009)p.150______________________
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and the Margarita, (Random House, 2010)
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