complicating the issue with logic
Jul. 25th, 2018 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unknownfateEver wake up with a song in your heart? Or at least in your head?
Mine was "1951/What about the boy?" from The Who's Tommy, which I watched way too young to understand and then watched so many times through my teens that my sisters know all the songs too. I haven't seen it in years since then, but having the tune in my head got me thinking, which was my first mistake.
Spoiler alert:
If you haven't seen it, it starts out with a tragic love story about young lovers separated by war. He goes off to fight and is shot down over the ocean and she gets the official letter of death at her job in the bomb factory. Their child is born on the day peace is declared and everyone is gloriously happy, but she holds him and cries through the celebration for the love she lost who isn't there to see the boy. The boy is Tommy, by the way.
Years later, still lonely and sad, she takes her now 7 or 8 year old son to a holiday camp where she meets a man and falls in love. They move in together and all is well until a strange, scarred man in a military uniform appears in their house one night. He finds her in bed with the new man and screams at them. Understandably startled, the new man grabs the bedside lamp and hits the intruder in the head, killing him.
They look up in horror to see Tommy in the doorway and panic. Their hysterical insistence that Tommy "didn't hear it, didn't see it, won't say nothing to no one, ever in your life!" is what traumatizes the boy into being deaf, dumb, and blind and sets the stage for the rest of the story.
Now, something I hadn't considered all those other times I watched it so long ago was that, if the returned love was in his neatly pressed uniform, the military must've known he'd been found and sent him home, right? Shouldn't they have informed the family? Did they just drop him off at the door in the middle of the night? "Who knows if your wife even still lives here? It's been years after all. Ha ha! Good luck!" Shouldn't he have called and said "Baby, I'm alive! I'm coming home!"
So that part made no sense. And then, what jury in the world would convict a man for throwing a lamp at a screaming stranger threatening him over his own bed in the middle of the night? They should've just called the police. Sent the boy to therapy. Got new locks for the door. Agreed what a tragedy it all was and moved on.
It's not even clear if the wife recognized him as her first husband until afterwards. What did they even do with the body? They go straight from that to trying to figure out how to undo the damage to Tommy.
Anyway, I am very aware that all of this would've stopped the story 1/5 the way in and there wouldn't have been any more rock musical about the self and awareness and bullying and child abuse and crazy religious imagery.
And we would've missed Tina Turner as the Acid Queen and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard, Jack Nicholson as the doctor and Eric Clapton as head of the Marilyn Monroe church. Things don't have to make sense all the time, I guess.
Mine was "1951/What about the boy?" from The Who's Tommy, which I watched way too young to understand and then watched so many times through my teens that my sisters know all the songs too. I haven't seen it in years since then, but having the tune in my head got me thinking, which was my first mistake.
Spoiler alert:
If you haven't seen it, it starts out with a tragic love story about young lovers separated by war. He goes off to fight and is shot down over the ocean and she gets the official letter of death at her job in the bomb factory. Their child is born on the day peace is declared and everyone is gloriously happy, but she holds him and cries through the celebration for the love she lost who isn't there to see the boy. The boy is Tommy, by the way.
Years later, still lonely and sad, she takes her now 7 or 8 year old son to a holiday camp where she meets a man and falls in love. They move in together and all is well until a strange, scarred man in a military uniform appears in their house one night. He finds her in bed with the new man and screams at them. Understandably startled, the new man grabs the bedside lamp and hits the intruder in the head, killing him.
They look up in horror to see Tommy in the doorway and panic. Their hysterical insistence that Tommy "didn't hear it, didn't see it, won't say nothing to no one, ever in your life!" is what traumatizes the boy into being deaf, dumb, and blind and sets the stage for the rest of the story.
Now, something I hadn't considered all those other times I watched it so long ago was that, if the returned love was in his neatly pressed uniform, the military must've known he'd been found and sent him home, right? Shouldn't they have informed the family? Did they just drop him off at the door in the middle of the night? "Who knows if your wife even still lives here? It's been years after all. Ha ha! Good luck!" Shouldn't he have called and said "Baby, I'm alive! I'm coming home!"
So that part made no sense. And then, what jury in the world would convict a man for throwing a lamp at a screaming stranger threatening him over his own bed in the middle of the night? They should've just called the police. Sent the boy to therapy. Got new locks for the door. Agreed what a tragedy it all was and moved on.
It's not even clear if the wife recognized him as her first husband until afterwards. What did they even do with the body? They go straight from that to trying to figure out how to undo the damage to Tommy.
Anyway, I am very aware that all of this would've stopped the story 1/5 the way in and there wouldn't have been any more rock musical about the self and awareness and bullying and child abuse and crazy religious imagery.
And we would've missed Tina Turner as the Acid Queen and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard, Jack Nicholson as the doctor and Eric Clapton as head of the Marilyn Monroe church. Things don't have to make sense all the time, I guess.
