dark side of the rainbow

   Also referred to as Dark Side ofOz and Wizard ofFloyd. The name Dark Side ofthe Rainbow is a contraction of the 1973 album title The Dark Side ofthe Moon by the British rock band Pink Floyd, and the song title Over the Rainbow from the sound track of the 1939 film The Wizard ofOz. In addition, it has been suggested that it refers to the colours of the rainbow featured on the cover of the Pink Floyd album. The term Dark Side ofthe Rainbow denotes a peculiar pattern of thematic similarities that can be discerned while one is watching The Wizard of Oz while simultaneously listening to The Dark Side of the Moon. With the aid of this somewhat unusual procedure, over a hundred instances of perceived interplay have been reported by fans. It is not known who first established this pattern of thematic similarities, but from 1994 onwards it was widely discussed on internet sites such as the Usenet message board alt.music.pink-floyd and in the popular media. As the Pink Floyd band members (save Roger Waters) have always denied deliberate attempts to synchronize their album with the movie, the Dark Side ofthe Rainbow is commonly designated as a "cognitive illusion and attributed to a process called "apophenia, i.e. an excess of perceptual or heuristic sensitivity leading to the discernment of patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. Similar thematic coincidences have been described between other movies and rock albums, but none of these are as elaborate or as well aligned as the Dark Side of the Rainbow.

   References

   Fleming, V., director (1939). The Wizard of Oz.

   Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Pink Floyd (1973). The dark side ofthe moon. Harvest.

   Shaffner, N. (1991). Saucerful of secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. New York, NY: Harmony Books.