Is this what "Bohemian Rhapsody" is really about?

chewing gum bum wrote:

Oh Christ! It's NOT about AIDS!!! My interpretation? It's about Freddie finally coming to terms with his sexuality and killing off Farook Bulsara once and for all and at last becoming Freddie Mercury. In the commentary in the "Bo Rap" portion of the Greatest Hits dvd, Brian says that this was a time when Freddie was going through some personal issues meaning that his sexuality was not yet defined. As soon as he was more comfortable with who he was becoming, if you notice, that's when he started wearing the ballet outfits in the late 70's and the leather look on the 78-80 tours. Freddie had FINALLY arrived. But this topic is one of great discussion but this is my view on it. AIDS came around 1981.

I totally agree with you there, i always thought it was that, Brian did say that which helped me relise its more true then i was guessing, hes was becoming Freddie Mercury reinventing himself if you like, OUR SHOWMAN!

I;m torn between the theories of sexuality and the novel. The novel seems more likely, looking at the correlation.

Only Roger Taylor Knows apparently, its obvious its about Freddie coming to terms with his sexuality

Well. Roger said something like "it was pretty obvious, when you think about it". So that could be hinting towards sexuality, or he could just be saying "if you've read the novel, you'll notice the correlation.." lol

I also thought BoRhap is about the personality thing.

"My Fairy King" belongs into this category of songs as well, as it introduces the concept of "mother mercury" (a virtual mother that justifies the existence of protagonist Mercury) and as it also consists of quite different building blocks, musically. The song uses rather complex voices, like in an outlook on things to come.
"Don't stop me now" (Mr. Fahrenheit) indicates that personality issues have been resolved, and Queen play I quite different kind of music in the 80s.
Did FM write the song Innuendo, too? It seems to me that it takes up the personality problem topic once more (after a long introduction), but this time after the "secret" had been revealed and when the tragic hero is looking for salvation on a different level. He is more emancipated now and brings to attention bigger crimes of mankind than unapproved ego trips.

I somehow doubt that FM wanted to deliver a deeper message to the audience but I could imagine that elaborating on this personality issue was a good basis for more complex songwriting.

If you knew for a fact that Freddie did read the novel you might find hints for the assumption that some ideas for Bohemian Rhapsody come from the novel but you cannot claim that there is a connection unless Freddie said so himself. It's different with Fairy Feller's Master Stroke where the connection is obvious. But if you say that the novel and the song tell YOU the same story, that's a perfectly valid point of view. It's always up to the recipient to decide on the meaning of a text as long as the recipient does not claim that his interpretation is the "right" one.

Poems are not written or read in a clinical environment. The writer's life experience reflects in the poem as well as the reader's. But art is not a blueprint of life and it's totally superficial to try and find autobiographical hints in a poem or in the lyrics to a song. Freddie was sure not a first class poet but he liked to play with art styles and stereotypes in his music and his lyrics and he was very good at it. Sure he was too good to write a song about his sexual identity crisis. But it's for every listener to find a meaning in the lyrics.

EraserHead wrote:

Its about AIDS. How is that not obvious, it mentions death and Freddie died of it DUH

Let's see,...the song mentions death, and Freddie died of AIDS, so....that's it! The song must be about AIDS!
Well, AIDS wasn't diagnosed or given a name until around 1981, so it's ludicrous to say that a song written in 1975 is about an illness that no one even knew about.....DUH

tupincs wrote:

EraserHead wrote:

Its about AIDS. How is that not obvious, it mentions death and Freddie died of it DUH

In 1975 there was no AIDS. It was first diagnostized six years later, and the just some doctors knew about it..

check it out. AIDS was known about 50 years ago!!!

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/

http://drinkthis.typepad.com/answer_this/aids_origins_of_hiv/

Beginning with a history of the mid-century polio eradication crusade, directors Chappell and Peix (a former biology teacher) take an in-depth look at the polio hypothesis and the furious response it has provoked in the scientific community. Their investigation ultimately leads them to modern-day Congo, site of the polio research camp set up in 1957 by the revered scientist Hilary Koprowski, inventor of an oral polio vaccine.

www.aidsorigins.com

While it's not definitive that Koprowski's vaccine is the direct cause of the world's greatest pandemic, what is definitive, based on the investigations, is that Koprowski and his team's research of the substrate cells from which the polio vaccines were grown was lacking. And the fact that there is even a possibility that a scientist, while eliminating one disease, created a far more deadly one--out of carelessness and arrogance--brings shame upon the scientifitic community worldwide.

This theory has been refuted by a computer analysis dates the first HIV case as far back as 1930. Although, I don't know how this would excuse a scientist of possible mass administration of the disease.

what has any of this got to do with freddie?

surely everyone knows (esp after recent magazine interviews) that brian wrote most of BoRhap ;-)

<b><font color = "crimson">ThomasQuinn wrote:

JSS: if Freddie ever read Camus, I'd be most pleasantly surprised.

Admittedly, this is from a dodgy source. But according to a woman Freddie dated in college, Freddie was into Nietzsche.

That right there could account for some of the Camus-esque effect.

"For a year they met at his flat, never at hers in North London. They discussed his [Freddie's] enthusiasms, for Nietzsche’s idea that one should never let fear impede you, and for a circle of gay friends Rosemary had come to know: Patrick Woodcock, a doctor who held dinner parties in his Pimlico home to which he invited David Hockney, Derek Jarman and many performance artists."

As she tells the saga of their doomed relationship, Freddie badgered her to introduce him to her gay intellectual artist friends, and eventually she wanted a straight boyfriend after all.

Anyway, for what it's worth.

link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1225285,00.html

--Egret

Egret: Thank you for the link - it deserves to be used more widely, so I hope you do not mind if I share it.

I Don't know what this demonstrates, but it could show that the young Freddie was quite studious - or that he was atuned philosophically into people like Camus and Nietzsche.

Certainly, I think he was for more culivatated, and sophisticated (therefore better read) than he would have us believe!

Mr. Stuart,

Glad you liked it. Link away; it's not my material, just an old link I saved.

I agree with you in speculating that Freddie was a cultivated person, though I don't think he was a great reader. I think he was probably quite keen to absorb what he found immediately useful to himself. (Didn't Nietzsche riff on Zoroastrianism?) A focused reader, maybe. And someone with sensitive cultural "antennae," so to speak.

--Egret

I suppose it's about everybody being who they really are.
I believe Freddie means by the killing them an that he killed the straight Freddie. This way you can explain the hole plot. For Freddie personal it must have meant his sexuality but also as a message that people shouldn't pretend to be somebody else.

John S Stuart wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Rhapsody

The song has remarkable similarities or references to Albert Camus' existential novel "The Stranger". However, it is not documented that this was done purposely.

I read "The Stranger" a long time ago, around 1977, but I had not considered the possibility that it was an inspiration for "Bohemian Rhapsody." Very interesting!