In class last week, during the first few days, we began discussing Meursault's passive approach to life. The phrases "nothing really matters to him" and "he doesn't care at all" kept coming up, and I walked out of class with Bohemian Rhapsody (by Queen, released in the 1975 album A Night at the Opera) stuck in my head. After searching for a reason to have this particular song running through my mind, I realized that the phrase we used to describe Meursault's attitude was a popular lyric in the song stuck in my head. After further thought, I began to realize that Bohemian Rhapsody and The Stranger had many similarities, and after deeper consideration I began to conclude that Bohemian Rhapsody may have been written about Camus' The Stranger, which was published more than thirty years before. Throughout the entire song, there are similarities to The Stranger that you wouldn't expect upon listening to it.
To start off, the ballad (the second part to this song after the intro) begins with the line "Mama, just killed a man; Put a gun against his head; Pulled my trigger, now he's dead" comparable to the scene where Meursault kills the Arab man. The passive voice used to describe this terrible act completely corresponds to Meursault's thoughts and voice in this book, and while the rest of the ballad seems remorseful, the lyrics suggest that the person who has committed this crime only feels regret because "life had just begun, But now [he's] gone and thrown it all away". The lyrics imply that he regrets his actions simply because he'll miss his life and it's pleasures, not because he took the life of another. This parallels Meursault's thought process as he sits in jail, missing his human impulses, craving sex and cigarettes. He thinks of little else, and never of the Arab man he has just killed. This connection opens up the floodgates for the rest of the connections between both revolutionary cultural pieces.
In the operatic section of Bohemian Rhapsody, Mercury uses the lyrics "I'm just a poor boy nobody loves me; He's just a poor boy from a poor family; Spare him his life from this monstrosity". It is briefly mentioned by Meursault that his father died before he could even remember him. Many people believe that this missing piece in his life may have caused Meursault to have resulting emotional damage from an absent father figure (thus, nobody loves him). It can be assumed that Meursault comes from a poor family because his father died so early and his mother had to work her entire life to provide for them. Before her death, Meursault puts his mother in a nursing home because he cannot provide for her, but she seems to find happiness there. Nevertheless, Meursault comes from a poor family. The last portion of this lyric seems to reflect the attitudes of the court in Meursault's trial, who really don't want to convict him of murder, but are still appalled by his actions at his mother's funeral. Meursault could have a way out but instead must "leave [his friends] behind and face the truth", a lyric from the earlier ballad section. The most obscure connection between Bohemian Rhapsody and The Stranger comes at the end of the operatic section, where Mercury uses the word "bismallah" in a debate whether or not to "let him (the character) go". Bismallah is defined as an exclamation in the name of Allah, a Muslim invocation used at the beginning of any undertaking. The use of this word draws a connection to the Arab man who Meursault has killed, although it is in a strange position, juxtaposed between arguments to potentially let the character (Meursault) go.
Both Meursault and the character in Bohemian Rhapsody seem to share the same indifferent approach to life. Throughout the entire song, a similar line keeps appearing: "Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me", "Carry on, as if nothing really matters", "Nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters to me.". These lines have a strong flavor of Meursault's way of life. He's an extremely passive character, particularly when he interacts with those around him, and goes along with nearly everything. The only act of activeness occurs when Meursault doesn't want to die by guillotine. He racks his brain for any other options, and would even prefer being shot while running away than to be decapitated. This is similar to the lyrics "I don't want to die". "Let me go", and "Just got to get outta here", all of which are repeated multiple times. While Meursault seems ultimately resigned to his fate and the Bohemian Rhapsody character just doesn't want to die, both have rebellious attitudes to their approaching demises.
I could continue on with nit-picking similarities between The Stranger and Bohemian Rhapsody, but it is evident to me that Bohemian Rhapsody is based on The Stranger. Freddie Mercury never gave an explicit reasoning behind this song, but he certainly wouldn't be the only person to draw on literary inspiration from The Stranger to write music. Robert Smith of The Cure once said in an interview that their song "Killing an Arab", released in 1980, was based on Camus' The Stranger, and lyrics from the song clearly describe the scene in which Meursault kills the Arab man. In the end, I find the strange number of similarities between The Stranger and Bohemian Rhapsody too many to be just coincidence, Queen must have written their most popular song based on this novel.
It's interesting to imagine Mercury picking up The Stranger and then being like "aha!" "I'll make a song about that!" One often does not think of "popular" music having much sustenance, but I think one of the reasons why this song is still popular today is because of the philosophical meaning behind the words that comes pretty clearly from Camus.
ReplyDelete(also one of my favorite arrangements ;): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBLm747tyn0)
Wow, this is a really interesting theory! The song's tone definitely combines an apathy with these outbursts of passion (mainly, where the speaker pleads to be "let go") that remind me of book two of The Stranger. In the trial, Mersault's indifference is repeatedly punctured -- the most striking incident being when he wants to try. Then, later, he yells at the priest, which also can be categorized as a "fit of caring."
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that there must be a connection here! You mentioned to me in passing the idea of the similarities between the two, and I could not stop thinking about it. After reading more and more of The Stranger I kept seeing these parallels between the two. The idea that Bohemian Rhapsody is based off of The Stranger makes me like the song even more. And it also makes me wonder if Queen realized the connection, or it if what purely coincidental.
ReplyDeleteI was way more into the Cure than Queen growing up, and I've never listened too closely to the lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody" before. (On my own blog, I confess to knowing the Cure song before having read Camus' novel, and thus experiencing the novel, oddly, as a redux of the song.) You make a very convincing case that the lyrics allude pretty directly to the circumstances and the philosophical dilemmas in the novel. The aesthetic difference between the two songs is interesting: Queen's bombast and melodrama would seem at odds with Meursault's pose of cool detachment (it's hard to imagine Meursault singing like Freddie Mercury, beating his breast and emoting so lushly); the Cure's spare post-punk style, with Robert Smith's clipped and almost monotone vocals, seems more in line with Camus' atmosphere and prose style. But the Queen interpretation could be read as an expression of the emotion that might be latent in Meursault, the feelings that may indeed be there, but which he chooses not to express so directly. But the Queen narrator seems to have a much more vivid sense of his own tragedy, having "thrown it all away," while Meursault strictly resists framing his own experience as tragic. I don't quite believe Queen's narrator when he says "nothing really matters"--it's like he's trying to convince himself that this is true, but the voice sounds like *everything* matters.
ReplyDeleteThis is an epic comparison! Like Mr. Mitchell, I never really paid that much attention to the lyrics, but taking a more analytical approach to it, both works are extremely similar. I liked the similarity you found regarding Mersault's indifference and the lyrics "Nothing really matters." It's cool to see that a mainstream song like this is touching on such deep existential thoughts, and it's interesting to wonder if this book did serve as an influence in the making of this song.
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