What is Tommy about?

Cafe Society
1

Here’s a quick review of the plot, for those of you who didn’t commit it to memory 35 years ago:

A man goes off to war, leaving his pregnant wife behind. He dies, presumably. She gives birth to Tommy. She later finds a lover. The dead husband, who is alive after all, walks in on them having sex, and the lover kills the husband. Tommy witnesses this. Mom and lover convince Tommy that he didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, never heard it, not a word of it. Tommy ends up deaf, dumb, and blind.

Over the years, mom and her new husband take Tommy to various faith healers and quack witch-doctor/prostitutes, none of whom can help. He is left in the care of various abusive relatives. He is even brought to a real doctor, who pronounces Tommy to be fit as a fiddle.

Tommy cannot see, and yet he has a habit of looking into mirrors. He also shows a talent for playing arcade games.

Frustrated, while Tommy gazes into a mirror, his mother smashes the mirror. This proves to be Tommy’s cure. He is an overnight celebrity. He starts a camp where his followers can worship him. He instructs them to simulate his former handicap and play arcade games. They think that Tommyism has turned into some sort of crazy cult, and they abandon him, threatening to rape him.

Tommy is lonelier than ever, then heads off into the hills singing about some guy he’s going to follow forever.

The end.

Is there a meaning behind all of this, or is it just a story? Is pinball a metaphor for something? Is it an idictment of the quack medical industry? Of fandom? Of religion?

What’s your interpretation?

2

Tommy served as nothing more than a vehicle for Tina Turner to scare the living shit out of me for years. Seriously, the Acid Queen scared me so bad when I saw her that I hated Turner for a decade.

3

But how could you not be turned on by those sensuous lips?

shudder

4

Yes, lots. No, none at all.

As Jimmy Ray Thudpucker once said upon being asked about the deep meaning of the words in his cryptic songs, “Man, I’m just trying to get the words to rhyme.”

5

He plays by intuition.

6

The digit counters fall.

7

IIRC, Townshend laid most of it out in a Rolling Stone interview many years ago. It was his take on organised religion, hucksters of all sorts, and belief. That and “Don’t follow leaders.”

8

I dont know what it was all about—but I think I do know how most of the fans at the time reacted: they didn’t care.
It was long, and sorta told a story, and so people agreed that it must have been , like, man, deep, or something. But nobody discussed it --we just turned up the volume as high as possible and dug the music.

9

Nah – the fans of the time caught on that it was a generalized attack on religion and following leaders. There wasn’t a lot to discuss, since the story line was fairly simple and unabiguous.

10

My take:

Tommy represented the post-WW2 generation in England. His deafness, muteness and blindness represented the alienation many English kids of the Sixties generation felt from their parents and from society at large.

Many English kids (John Lennon and Pete Townshend, for instance) of that era turned to rock and roll as their way of expressing themselves and their alienation. Pinball was probably just a symbol for rock and roll.

Townshend and Lennon, among others, found that the music they created was turning them into celebrities, even into icons. They found that kids were turning to them and looking for answers to the big questions of the day. They were being treated as latter day messiahs.

“Tommy” reflects Townshend’s plight. He was probably thinking, “I’m just a screwed-up kid who found he was good at something (in this case, music)… and now I have all these people treating me like a god. They want to follow me, but I don’t know where to lead them!”

11

That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball!!

Time to sing along!:

Elton John & The Who - Sure Plays a Mean PINBALL!

12

I saw it with my sister and step-sisters in the theater in its first run and I was way too young, maybe 12, to understand WTF was going on. My 10 year old sister had to leave the theater during the Acid Queen scene and it was two years before we could all see a scary movie again as a family.

13

According to Pete, *“Pinball Wizard” * was inspired, more or less, from a suggestion made by Nik Cohn. Townshend pretty much added it in hopes that Cohn would give it a favorable review.

14

12?? I was, I think 7. Maybe 8. And while Tina Turner (particularly that last shot of her) is about as scary as it gets you forgot the skeleton with the snakes. And cousin…was it Ernie? who ironed him. And held him under water.

And Keith Moon.

What were my parents thinking?

To adress the OP, I’d say it’s not that deep. But it’s probably reflective of the '60’s idea of the (young of course) Innocent and the corrupt society. I think astorian has a good take on it.

And I don’t know about Nik Cohn but I just figured pinball was an iconic Teenaged (in the '60 it was capitalized) thing.

Oh, and I could be wrong but I think in the original, record, not movie, the father kills the lover. Which makes even less sense I think.

15

Man, just the oppo here, I thought she was totally hot.

16

You mean even the end of the scene that I alluded to, where she was standing there vibrating??? Very disturbing. (I wonder how it would have gone if they had went with Lou Reed.)

17

Meh, can’t remember that part, guess I gotta netflix it. Has been like 20+ years since I’ve seen it.

18

Then there’s the child abuse component: *You didn’t see it, you didn’t hear it, you won’t say nithing to no one never in your life, * etc., with Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin thrown in for emphasis.

19

That would be “nothing.” “Nithing” sounds more Pythonesque.

20

Tommy’s condition is a classic double bind situation where the child is confronted with two completely contradictory messages – he has witnessed his father killing his mother’s lover (in the movie, the lover kills the father) but both parents tell him, it didn’t happen, you didn’t see a thing. Faced with the disparity between obeying his parents and believing his own eyes and ears, Tommy chooses to shut down internally, become disaffected, so he can no longer hear or see or feel anything at all.

His parents try to fix Tommy’s problem by enlisting the aid of doctors, a priest (Eyesight to the Blind), and a hooker (Acid Queen), but since no one will accept culpability for the murder which caused Tommy’s trauma, this only makes things worse, and Tommy remains locked in his inner prison. Deprived of filters and boundaries, Tommy becomes susceptible to physical & sexual abuse (Kevin & Ernie) but does find an escape when he becomes the Pinball Wizard – something that baffles everyone, because he still can’t see or hear, and apparently plays by sense of smell. (This can be a metaphor of the Creative mind, be it a songwriter or a rock star – people always ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” but to the writer, it is as much a mystery to himself as it is to everyone else. The ideas just come to mind, and there’s no way to explain why it happens.) However, it soon becomes clear that Tommy actually can see, hear & feel – he’s just psychologically blocked, as evidenced by the lyrics of “Go To The Mirror”:

Sitting in front of the mirror, Tommy can see himself, but all he sees is the image projected by all the people around him, the people who worship him and try to help him, but at the same time (from Tommy’s perspective) are also trying to hurt him. Ultimately, Tommy responds by shattering the mirror – destroying the false image of himself, thereby breaking the double-bind conundrum. At last, he’s able to see, hear, feel emotion, connect, and exult in his new found freedom. Of course, this “new Tommy” doesn’t match the expectations of all his pinball followers, so they reject him.

Years later, Tommy joins the war between the Mods & the Rockers…but that’s a different story. :wink: