On Tommy

Tommy as an album structured around two arcs broadly distinguished by one revelation.

The first part is in terms of narrative following Tommy pre-revelation in which he is disconnected from the world in inherent manner. Thematically Tommy in this part is passive, and the cure given as such are external to him. This is in contrast to Tommy’s wish in his heart that people would notice him. The revelation is when tommy look to himself at the mirror, the mirror is where one self become object to himself; the last part is when he is open to the world and thus treat other as external to him, in this part he is active and cause harm to others.

Underlying the change there is a sense of corruption of the world that reach Tommy. This can be seen in what lead to the change, while tommy early on wanted people to notice him, what people noticed is themselves that is to say they noticed him only in so far as they noticed what they cared about, his pinball ability. This ability was of course accidental strength of Tommy, something he is not necessarily noticed as the song says it was almost instinctual activity. When tommy notice it himself is when he turn this accidental strength to be his main attribute in how he relate to people fundamentally.

Ultimately being revealed to the world leading to his demise as what he sees in the world is object of revenge. This expressed more clearly with the tragical, yet ironic, ending that while before it was the fault of the people that couldn’t notice him due to external factors, now after falling to external factors made them the only way which he could be seen, though in Tommy’s case the external factors is his inability to be connected to the world before.

Another way to phrase it the world caused hardship to him due to focusing on superficial elements, the pinball abilities that weren’t even controllable,  but when he escaped his own prison tommy defined himself by exactly such qualities, that is his privations.

Though with that in mind the question the listener left to ask goes as follows:”what does the prayer of tommy that people would sense him refer to?”. This question can be  problematized further in this way :”in the first part it is not accessible as Tommy is a black box to the world, that why he could be defined by such accidental property in such an all encompassing manner; while in the 2^nd part the condition is such that one could empathize with him in terms of content, yet, due to the manner he framed it, there is no way to access it as well”

The further question one may ask is whatever the content tommy request the world to empathize with changed. One could say that essentially even with the change of regaining sense data -  he still remained as unreachable as before in the same manner – as the fact he could speak and be interacted didn’t make it so his request could be reached, that is that people would care for him as himself. While on the other hand it could be said that the content is changed in the sense that the type of empathy requested is different – on the first it refer to empathy as a fellow human being that is yet to be known, while on the latter as a human being who is known for his folly.

Another duality revealed within the question is the question of who is the hypocrite. While the straightforward reading would lead the listener to consider Tommy as the hypocrite due to the way he abused others because he got abused once he became aware of his fame - it is the others negligence as well that led to it.

This question also unite the previous question with the theme of passive/active, or more appropriately bring them into question to begin with, as while it seems on surface that the album certainly play with them, ultimately in the end it is less clear who is the cause and who is the caused and it is even less clear whatever there was change at all in the relevant sense.

But if one may to conclude he would notice that although the album raise this topics it is in overtly raise them only that they remain open. This can be seen in how the album end, that is it end with the same question it started with –  would tommy be able to be reached – symbolized by repeating the prayer we started with.

To further show it, it is worth noting in that regards that there is important change between the film and the album. In the part of the chant “listening to you” in the album it is slow and cautious and ambivalent on who is chanting but more easily relatable with the crowd. In the movie  this is more clearly triumphant and associated with Tommy  directly. The need to change it reveal that it was ambiguous before but in the revision it was directed to be a positive ending.

Even with this change, just by a little reflection one can see that merely making the chant more positive only made the movement from the prayer to the chant more jarring: To start with the shift of mood is too sudden which in turn make the message unclear – in matter of seconds the mood move from revolting masses to him crawling to the corpse of his mother with the prayer, which in turn move  to a triumphant voicing as he get baptized again to the image of the rising sun. the shifts themselves so sudden it become unclear why is there redemption? Does it mean that he was reached? But he is alone if he was reached? So should we take it that he reached by reaching himself? But in the context how is it different from the other cases? And so on the question can go. (one may be charitable and would take it that it was self realization but self realization alone seems to be not enough to me due to the tension built)

for me at at least the album ending seems to be more tight by being more ambiguous and less definitive as the question it is rasing is one that framed so that it wouldn’t be answered.

Though regardless of all that quibble, the deviation is not structural nor is it in the themes but in the conclusion of them –   and the conclusion, what one take with him, Is more personal and contingent as is even if the author can guide it and the work in itself is still capturing and illuminating.