Tommy

Tommy is a famous rock opera by Pete Townshend of The Who.

Little Tommy

In Ken Russell's 1974 movie version, Mrs. Walker's RAF husband was shot down in the war, so "his unborn child will never know him." Young Tommy sees his widowed mother (Ann-Margaret) carrying on with Uncle Frank at Bernie's Holiday Camp.

In the movie's paradigmatic scene, Tommy is visited at bedtime by the spectre of his father. He follows him out of his bedroom and sees him confront his mother and her lover (who knocks out Tommy's father with a lamp). Drenched in the sweat of their passion, Tommy's mother sings,

What about the boy? What about the boy?

What about the boy? He saw it all!

Frank and Mom sing, "You didn't see it; you didn't hear it . . . How absurd it all seems without any proof ... You won't say nothing to no one [about] what you know is the truth!"

Tommy becomes hysterically deaf, dumb and blind. "The guilty are safe but always accused by his empty eyes," while Tommy daydreams about being back with his father again. "The truth shines so bright it can melt winter snow."

At the Christmas party, while the other children rejoice in Heaven's generosity, Tommy "doesn't know who Jesus was or what praying is."

Tommy, can you hear me?

"See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me."

How can he be saved?

His mother gave him a Nativity scene for Christmas, but he rejects it.

Grown-up Tommy

When he grows up (played by The Who's Roger Daltrey), his mother brings him to a cult who worship Marilyn Monroe, a "woman who can bring eyesight to the blind". The perverse ritual centers on rock and roll, sexuality and whiskey.

His stepfather Frank takes him to "the gypsy, the Acid Queen ... I'll tear your soul apart" (Tina Turner) who places frightened Tommy inside an iron maiden which injects him with drugs. Tommy becomes his father, then Christ, then a skeleton infested by snakes, before returning to himself and tumbling out.

One night, Tommy is left with his cousin Kevin, the school bully, the classroom cheat, who (in what may only be vivid fantasy) tortures him because he "has no one to play with today". Another night, he's left with his "wicked Uncle Ernie" who in an ambiguous blacked out sequence (possibly) rapes Tommy.

The famous Underture provides the musical setting for a scene in which Tommy gropes through a junkyard and finds a pinball machine: Gottlieb's "Kings & Queens".

The song "Extra" is converted from miracle cure to pinball championship, as a neat transition to the movie's most famous song.

Pinball Wizard

We see Elton John playing a 4-octave plastic keyboard attached to a pinball machine. At first we see only his hands and hairy forearms, but with a sparkling motley shirt, oversized round polkadot glasses and a two tone wool cap topped with a silver sphere he is clearly the reigning Pinball Champ. As the camera dollies out, we see his huge feet under trouser-clad stilts. In this rewrite of the classic song, the champ is a sore loser; he doesn't want Tommy to become the new "table king". As the song ends, he topples from his machine and is carried out through the booing audience. Tommy gets his pinball crown.

Ann-Margaret now showcases her (meagre?) talents in the notorious "baked beans" episode in an all white bedroom furnished with a spherical chair, spherical lamp, and a round bed with round pillows. Although her son's pinball wizardry has made her a rich woman, she wishes she could "drive his blight from her mind". When she throws her liquor bottle at the TV, out comes suds, baked beans and chocolate (in her fantasy). The movie may have been rated PG, but this scene is an R for sheer raunch.

Frank finds a doctor (a 38-year-old Jack Nicholson) who can cure the boy. The leering doctor says there's nothing *he* can do, while making a pass at his mother.

Do you hear or fear or

Do I smash the mirror?

She throws Tommy against the mirror into which he had often gazed and (like Alice) he goes throw it. He falls into a pool and ...

I'm free. I'm free!

And freedom tastes of reality.

Cult leader Tommy

Tommy runs throw a forest (with combat imagery) and a beach, where he's "waiting for you to follow me" (a new Messiah). He strips the jewels from her and 'baptizes' her in the surf.

In "Sally Simpson", a teenybopper ignores her preacher father to sneak off to watch Tommy lead a meeting of his new cult and gets a lurid gash across her cheek for her trouble.

Clashing motorcycle gangs stare up as Tommy descends from the sky in a hang glider ("I'm a Sensation").

But in the end it turns into a money-grubbing operation where you "buy your way into Heaven". Participants wear eyeshades, earplugs and "you know where to put the cork".

In "We're Not Gonna Take it", the rebellious disciples smash the pinball machines, stab Frank and kick Tommy in the head. "We foresake you / gonna rape you / let's forget you better still."

Tommy's mother is killed, the camp is engulfed in flames as the band reprises "Listening to You / See Me". In what may be a return from the spurious religion Tommy had created, he is free to truly follow God.

Listening to you

I climb the mountain

I get excitement at your feet