The trickster qualities of Bohemian Rhapsody

Sidhu

The trickster qualities of Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody is a song written by Freddie Mercury from Queen. It is well-known for its defiance of boundaries and classification much like the trickster. The song begins with a slow opening section, driven by Mercurys iconic piano playing that is bridged by an emphatic guitar solo into an opera section before moving into a heavy rock section marked by a tone of anger and finally ending on a softer note. Due to this wild musical nature of the song and its content, it represents one of the most well-known and best loved songs of all time among classic rock fans. However, most people use it as a punchline, like most other well-known Queen songs. The reason for this is unclear. It could have been Freddies queer personality, the questionable qualities of 70s rockers in general or simply some poor infidels way of making sense of an enlightened tricksters questioning of unnecessary boundaries and restrictions. This song is well-known for the inability of anyone to pinpoint the meaning as intended by Mercury, who wrote it. Like the trickster and his constant occupation of liminal spaces or boundary regions, this song has avoided being classified in terms of its overall meaning. Just like the trickster in a liminal space, there is no one real category to place Bohemian Rhapsody into. In fact, just like the trickster, there lies an infinite possibility of interpretations for Bohemian Rhapsody, each relevant to the person who is interpreting it.

This is especially true of the beginning section of the song, which entails a young man who has thrown it all away after killing a man. One may interpret this literally or one may interpret this section metaphorically based on personal experience, such as when one becomes a new person following a powerful experience. This is very likely what Freddie had in mind when writing Bohemian Rhapsody, although we cannot be certain. This is because around the time this song came out, Mercury was questioning his heterosexuality. Thus, this song may be his coming out. The man he killed could have been his straight self, which was forced onto him by society and its heteronormative culture. In fact, around this time in his career, i.e the 70s, Mercury was known for cross-dressing and gender bending especially in his live performances. He frequently cross-dressed on stage. In Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, Marjorie Garber discusses the contribution of transvestites and their actions to society today. She discusses how the manners "by which heterosexuality had encoded and recognized itself have become detached from a referent with which those signs are thereby revealed to have had a conventional rather than a natural connection" (Garber 147). Through queering, the trickster attempts to raise questions regarding the norms we have taken for granted all along. Inherently in nature there exists no reason for these norms to be held up as reality. Mercury realized this and consequently abandoned these norms because he didnt identify with the heteronormative culture of society. Paul Radin delineates this brilliantly in his book The Trickster, in which he theoretically analyzed some trickster myths from North America. He wrote is this a speculum mentis wherein is depicted mans struggle, with himself and with a world into which he had been thrust without his volition or consent (x)? When the trickster is forced to follow norms that he neither created nor wants, he inevitably begins to fight with these norms. This is what Mercury did throughout his life and is clear throughout Bohemian Rhapsody. However, all this is shrouded within a nebulous cloud that is the tricksters way of questioning society. The trickster is never upfront about the way he critiques society. Eric Savoy discussed this point in his The Signifying Rabbit, in which he delineated how performing in a drag queen costume is much more than just defying culture and traditional gender classes. This display, is a self-conscious aesthetic that plays with style and power, rather than an embrace of one's 'true' nature against the constraints of straight society (Savoy 203). Rather than simply accepting that everybody is different and subsequently welcoming everyone regardless of queer idiosyncrasies, Freddie takes it a step farther. He attempts to redefine the gender roles of society altogether. Through Bohemian Rhapsody, Mercury was critiquing society and its rigid structures, although it may not have been obvious.While the first section of the song criticizes society for its illegitimate culture, it is simultaneously marked by a tone acceptance by the narrator as he comes to terms with the fact that he can no longer live his life as he has been living it previously but must go against society. Mercury is not clear as to what this change is but this theme continues in the operatic section, which describes the two sides of good and evil fighting for, what is likely, the soul of the narrator. They are essentially the two opposing sides of the trickster-hero dichotomy or the Apollonian-Dionysian duality. In Friedrich Nietzsches The Birth of Tragedy, he discusses the Apollonian (rational and ordered) and Dionysian (sensual and emotional) sides of life. The Apollonian embodies the drive ... toward the drawing and respecting of boundaries and limits; he teaches an ethic of moderation and self-control (xi). The Apollonian is the morally upright hero, who respects the boundaries of society and strives to maintain these divisions against the trickster. The Apollonian is not willing to let the narrator of the song go and even states that Beelzebub has a devil put aside for the narrator indicating his fate is sealed. The Dionysian, on the other hand, is the drive towards the transgression of limits, ... and excess (xi). It is the trickster part of the human, which strives towards transgressing boundaries to determine for himself whether or not passing these limits is actually beneficial to himself. The Dionysian is fighting the Apollonian part to let him go free of a force that is dictating everything that the narrator can do against will, just like how society dictates what we can and cannot do. Both of these concepts are partially needed to achieve fulfillment.

The dislike of society and its rigid constrictions is also readily apparent in the angry tone of the heavy section towards the end of the song. The lyrics of that section are:

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye.

So you think you can love me and leave me to die.

Woah, baby. Cant do this to me baby.

Just gotta get out, just gotta get right out of here.

The lyrics in and of themselves were undoubtedly crafted with word choices to get across the angry tone. The lyrics entail a stinging dislike of someone who has hurt the narrator. This person is someone the narrator trusted, which can be seen from the fact that the choice of words the narrator uses when singing about this person. This can be seen in the choice of words love me and baby. However, from the lyrics, this person has at some point in life severely hurt the narrator. Following on from the earlier interpretation of the first section of the song, one may interpret this similarly as a continuation of the stinging rebuke of the way society initially treated the narrator but eventually abandoned the narrator and left him alone upon discovering that the narrator was not conforming to the gender stereotypes of society. In general, that which is perceived as odd by society has always been treated. Even in the 1600s (and for long before), Galileo Galilei was subjected to cruel treatment because he went against what the church taught even though he was right. The narrator, however, is strong and realizes that he must leave this world because it is not a world he wants to live in. He realizes that this culture of society has no right to determine the way he will live his life. Through this song, the narrator has questioned society and its structural systems. Although everything eventually returns to normal, in this temporary state of flux, Bohemian Rhapsody has performed the task of queering and reminded society to constantly question everything. Harold Scheub discusses this in his book Story, in which he talks about storytelling and how the storyteller conveys the meaning of a story within the context of African stories although the analysis is far more general. Scheub states that even when order is restored after the momentary descent into anarchy, we cannot return to normality completely; we have been changed by ... tricksters illusions. In the process, we have seen a part of the world in a fresh way (271). The aim of a trickster is to constantly challenge society to see things in a new way as a method of renewal. This is fundamental in allowing society to rid itself of any unnecessary restrictions that impedes its flow towards a more enlightened state.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a trickster in and of itself because it defies categorization like most songs which do not contain three or more genres of music. It also contains several instances that perfectly describe the feelings and thoughts of the trickster. Of particular relevance to this discussion is the essay The Destructive Character by Benjamin Walters. In this essay, Walters discusses several idiosyncrasies of the destructive character in delineating theoretically why the destructive character acts the way he does. For example,

The destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble. The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this reason he sees ways everywhere (Revista Punkto).

These two points can shed new light on the ways of the trickster. In his inability to

terminate his life, he continues living. Having been dealt the cruel blow of life, the trickster chooses to do whatever he pleases. It only makes sense since life did not ask his permission before handing him this opportunity that he lives it on his terms. This same message is conveyed in Bohemian Rhapsody. In the lines I dont wanna die. But sometimes I wish Id never been born at all, the narrator intimates his indifference life;

he doesnt want to end it, but if it ended it wouldnt be the worst thing to happen to him.

Later on in the song, during the heavy section after the opera section, he angrily goes against a cruel oppressor. He ends the song in the much softer final section by saying anyway the wind blows, i.e. he is open to anything and everything that life has to offer. In other words, he is willing to live life as and when life offers itself to be lived and not in the manner in which society wants him to live out his life, with his own devil waiting for him at the end of it.

Works Cited

Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York:

Routledge. 1992. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2007. Print.

Radin, Paul. The Trickster. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. 1956. Print.

Savoy, Eric. The Signifying Rabbit. Narrative 3.2 1995: 188-209. Jstor. Web. Sep. 20 2014.

Scheub, Harold. Story. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1998. Print.The Destructive Character. Punkto Magazine. Web. Sep. 18 2014. .