"Tommy Deconstructed"

[kyle316@juno.com]

For all the folks on the list who don't own a copy of the big colorful
book "The Who's Tommy".

(from "The Who's Tommy", p. 49)

A PSYCHOANALYTICAL VIEW:
TOMMY DECONSTRUCTED

	To understand the truly traumatic nature of the 
scene portrayed in "Tommy," and the overwhelming 
importance of the mirror in the staging of the play, we 
should look to the work of a French psychoanalyst, Jacques 
Lacan on "The Mirror Stage" ("Ecrits", Norton, 1977).  
Indeed, I wondered whether Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff
hadn't in fact been reading Lacan's work as they prepared
their script.

	The traumatic event -Tommy's loss of sight, hearing and
speech- occurs while Tommy gazes at himself in the mirror.
According to Lacan, mirror images are involved in the development
of a child's sense of self.  Without such a sense of self, a child
can never learn to say "I" or speak of him or herself as someone.
As parents know, children have a hard time learning how to use
the personal pronoun "I".  A sense of self has to develop before
they are able to do so.

	What happen's to Tommy's sense of self during the 
traumatic scene?  His self-image -which had originally been positive
and coherent- breaks down.  His former sense of self shatters when
he is confronted with his parents' powerful new view of him as
highly dangerous.  He is someone who could, with one false move,
one inadvertently uttered word, destroy his whole family forever.

	Townshend and McAnuff imbue this scene with a momentum
unsuspected by those familiar with the record, the volume growing
to a moving crescendo as Tommy's biological parents reunite in the
urgent attempt to not merely silence Tommy, but to make him block
out the whole affair: "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it..." they
sing
ever more loudly and forcefully.  Yet the self known as Tommy did
see and hear it and instead of blocking out the incident, he blocks
himself out.

	Tommy understands that to keep the family together, he must
-according to his parents- sacrifice himself.  Rather than give up his
mother and his new father figure, he prefers to give up his precious
seeing, hearing and speaking self.  He thus paradoxically chooses to
disappear in order to continue to be loved.

[Bruce Fink, Ph.D., from "Rock Musical 'Tommy' Has 
 Resonance in Real Life," Los Angeles Times, October 4,1992]


-kyle






    
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