[ad_1]
Today in Italian cinemas fate Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic that traces the story of Queen, directed by Bryan Singer, and shines by the performance of Rami Malek, who plays the main role in the group. Freddie Mercury spoke, wrote and said a lot. His silhouette with the yellow jacket, the raised fist and the microphone at half mast entered the archetypes of the culture pop of the twentieth century, like the face of Marilyn Monroe or the McDonald's yellow M. He was so stuck in his aggressive macho look, his mustache and the mirror that he had used in the eighties, also because it was the outfit used for the Wembley concert of July 12, 1986, perhaps among the most famous in the history of rock.
Although most people remember it this way, making it one of the most important figures in the history of contemporary music is what happened at the previous decades. Let's talk about Freddie Mercury scandalizing the BBC by showing up Top Pops shirtless, in mink fur and black enamel, who sings at Hyde Park dressed only in a tight and shiny white jumpsuit or who arrives on the stage of Hammersmith Odeon's Christmas concert in a white kimono, which is removed strip tease. We are talking about Farrokh Bulsara, as he was called before taking the name we all know him by – not just a name of art, but a true rectification at the registry office: a talented child who has pbaded his childhood between Zanzibar and Mumbai; a teenager who emigrated to London with his family who, to pay for his studies at the school of design, transported his luggage to the Heathrow airport, and not to notice too much the foreign origin, had taken this nickname if Anglo Saxon.
Freddie Mercury's ethnic origins have never been the subject of special attention, perhaps because they are dominated by his unusual talent or by the controversial issue of his homobaduality . The fact that Mercury was first and foremost an immigrant did not seem to interest anyone. This is not because England at the time stood out for its particularly progressive ideas about blacks (in 1979, the far-right party of the British National Front had more than 200,000 votes). It could be said that Mercury was involved, more or less consciously, in what we would call today a kind of bleaching, also fueled by himself, who has always refused to talk about his origins in public – just as he has always refused to make statements about his baduality – even if this last aspect has always remained at the center of the chronicles, especially in the eighties. The fact of having badumed a new identity so distinctly British – not by chance, the name "Queen" he chose it himself – it worked so well for the public that it overshadowed the negligible detail of the complexion.
Interpret the Britishness of Freddie Mercury exclusively for the purpose of erasing his origins, but that would be a mistake. It must be remembered that Freddie-Farrokh came from a very particular context: his parents were originally from, a small Persian ethnic group, adept of the Zoroastrian religion. who emigrated to the Asian subcontinent concomitantly with the spread of Islam. Mercury was born in Zanzibar, which at the time was a British protectorate, where his father, Bomi, was secretary of the consulate. The family then moved to Mumbai, where Farrokh began studying music and grew up with the pbadion of the first Bollywood films. The Parsis in India were and are a very marked minority of identity, whose access is prohibited to those who are not of direct Zoroastrian descent, and for that – and also because of the subdivision rigid caste subcontinent – they are never perfectly integrated with the rest of the population. Freddie's so used to being a kid outsider: an Indian in Africa, a Parsi in India and finally a Asian immigrant and gay in England.
On the artistic level, this fragmentation of identity has been translated, particularly in the early years of Queen's career, into the composition of very complex songs, with various musical and linguistic stratifications. Significant, in this sense, is the album Queen ii of 1974, today considered a pillar before the hour dell & # 39;heavy metal. The songs written by Mercury, contained in the B side (the so-called "Black side", Opposed to"White side"Written by Brian May) mixes mythical-sacred references with Shakespeare verses and the magical world that Freddie invented in his childhood, Rhye, of which he declared himself king or rather" queen ".
The most famous example of this pastiche it is obviously "Rhapsody of Bohemia". Written in 1975, it's a seemingly meaningless song, but one that reflects in it the accumulation of the most diverse suggestions: "Bismillah"Recall the formula"Bi-smi & llāhi al-Rahmāni al-Rahīmi"With which all the suras of the Qur'an open;"Scaramouche"Refers to the skirmish, a mask of Neapolitan art comedy;"Beelzebub"In the Christian religion is Beelzebub, the devil, the prince of demons, but the most controversial part of the text remains the first, in which the self narrating confesses to the mother that he has killed a man and declares himself ready to leave everything behind to face the truth Many commentators, such as biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, read a book go out: to be dead would be the heterobadual life of Freddie Mercury, who in those years ended the relationship with her partner Mary Austin, and the truth to face would be the realization of his homobaduality.
Freddie Mercury has never claimed to be gay throughout his life. That it was something that we all take for granted, but it's not at all said who identifies as such: for almost ten years, she loved Mary, "the love of her life ", before realizing that she could live out her baduality as he believed. Today, we know that badual orientation does not activate as a switch and that the attraction and love can take many forms. At the time, it was perhaps not as obvious as it may seem to us now. Freddie Mercury had bad with men, so he was gay: that was the only possible explanation. Yet in those same years, musicians like David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Elton John played with their badual ambiguity and lived homobadual relationships in the sun without anyone having anything to say.
But Freddie Mercury, unlike the others, fell ill and died of the consequences of AIDS. She was one of the first known victims of this disease, but decided to stay alone until the eve of the disappearance, when he announced it by a statement. the rumors About his dissolute lifestyle for nearly twenty years had been deafening and his illness was interpreted as some sort of inevitable punishment. The public did not like it or did not think it was the end it deserved, it was a mentality problem: in 1991, many people still thought that HIV did not could be contracted only by homobadual men. that it was the natural consequence of a life consecrated to vice. This idea was confirmed by the theory of "Zero Patient", which connects the AIDS explosion to Gaëtan Dugas, an Air Canada flight attendant who was unfairly accused of bringing the disease to United States. Dugas was described in the press as a sadist who coveted young Americans to infect them with "homobadual cancer," as he was then called AIDS. Today, this theory has been belied by the scientific community, which has indeed recognized in its creator the intention to stigmatize into a single individual all stereotypes related to homobaduality.
Many have criticized Mercury's decision to live their illness in silence. With his notoriety, he could participate in awareness campaigns, as had already done Magic Johnson some time ago. But Johnson was the most famous basketball player in the world. In addition, he was heterobadual and, thanks to his announcement, helped to make people understand that AIDS can affect everyone. Mercury, on the other hand, had just come out of a complex decade: in the 80s, the queen had just faced an unprecedented musical crisis, Freddie had adopted the look of castro clone of the American gay scene, which was not loved by the public main stream on stage, even when he's throwing razor blades, as if to invite him to shave his mustache and take a minus homobadual. The English music scene had been invaded by punk and metal, which, in their most radical expressions, were charged with homophobia and violence.
Thus, not only Freddie Mercury "was gay, so he died of AIDS", but also "he died of AIDS, so he was gay". An equation too simple for a person who has avoided this adjective with horror in all aspects of his life. Instead, he liked going beyond boundaries, going beyond boundaries and continually challenging the public, as he had done at "singing contests" at concerts. He did not fear the comparison with the complexity of things and was convinced that those who followed could appreciate it in the same way: A night at the operawith Bohemian Rhapsody, is perhaps the most successful synthesis of this intention, an album that no one believed, considered too difficult for the taste of the average listener and is now considered the masterpiece of his career.
Freddie Mercury has always been a free man, who has lived his life beyond conventions and stereotypes. He never cared what people thought, he never felt the need to explain himself, and that's where his greatness lies and why he deserves to remember his story – as well as his music. – even today.
[ad_2]
Source link
