Thread by @pintsizeclown, Bohemian Rhapsody is a musical novel chronicling the stages of queer life [...]

Bohemian Rhapsody is a musical novel chronicling the stages of queer life and the process of understanding and coming to accept your own gender and sexuality and it’s relation to society. In this essay I will...

*actually writes the essay*

Hahaha no that would be crazy... but I am going to turn this thread into my explanation for my theory

PART 1: so the song begins
“Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality” This represents the first inklings of knowledge. You are waking up, realizing something about yourself for the first time, it feels like a landslide...

Something you can’t stop, something you’ve released that you can’t put back...you are forced to face the truth about yourself.
This is reaffirmed with the lyrics “Open your eyes,
Look up to the skies and see”
You finally connect the pieces and see yourself as queer/trans

Then the lyrics come in with “I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy,
Because I'm easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me” This represents the precipice before deciding to come out...

“Whichever way the wind blows” you know you have to take the leap into authenticity, you have to begin your journey. It’s time to leave fear, sympathy, hesitation, in the past and move forward

PART 2: we begin with a confession.
“Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I’VE gone and thrown it all away” In this case, murder serves as a metaphor for coming out...

It’s confessed as a sin and something that will apparently ruin the speakers life. The old you is dead, you know you can’t go back to the way things were before but the guilt is still fresh. The underlying themes of queer religious guilt in the lyrics start to begin at this point

We move on to the exit from “the old life”
“Mama, ooh,
Didn't mean to make you cry,
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow,
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters.”
It’s time to depart from your old self, your old life completely.

The guilt is still present but there’s also a determination and complete severance from familial ties “carry on carry on as if nothing really matters” has a weight that is less present in modern day coming out stories as acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities is on the rise, but was

prevalent in elder queer journeys...it’s the weight of pardoning family from the crime of forgetting that you ever existed, of being ashamed of you, of not loving you unconditionally. It’s a line that carries the weight of “forget about me so you won’t be disappointed in me”

“Too late, my time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine,
Body's aching all the time.
Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go,
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.” This is a continuation and combination of the two previous themes,

It serves as the final affirmation of identity and also the final farewell

“Mama, ooh I don't want to die,
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all”
This is the one of the rawest fucking lines in music history and I will die on that hill. It represents all the emotions finally cracking to the surface, it’s an extremely vulnerable admital of fear

Okay so now we move into PART 3: which I like to call “the living in sin” era...this part of the song is to me kind of like a dream ballet, if that dream was a nightmare and the ballet was translated back into lyrics...this part is representative of the cognitive dissonance

and colliding of worlds that exists when you are out/ a “practicing gay”but you still have that internalized shame and still feel the lingering guilt and conflict within yourself. I like to imagine that this “scene” takes place within an actual nightmare.

In the nightmare you are in Hell Court. The Devil serves as judge, jury members and executioner. You are being damned for being queer, you try to plead your case...

We start, of course, with “I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico”

Now...let’s translate a bit, (my interpretation plz be nice) so the dream begins with the silhouette of a man. Scaramouche here, I think, translates to the devils in the jury calling the man a rogue or basically a bastard

The devils then say “will you do the fandango” which is a euphemism for being hung from a noose...the “Thunderbolt and lightning lines” illicit in my mind an image of the devil dressed as the judge banging his gavel, he towers over the rest of the court and his size and stature

are so large that the bangs of his gavel bring about literal thunder and lightning in the courtroom. Now the jury smugly tell the man to plead to jesus for mercy “Galileo Figaro
Magnifico”

Now the man begins to plead his case...
“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” I think this line refers to the familiar religious queer experience of praying/pleading to not be gay anymore...

The “monstrosity” is your own identity. You feel as if it is a burden or a punishment.

Then of course the argument goes back & forth...”we will not let you go, let him go, & so forth” I think this could represent two things...1- the inner conflict of trying to convince yourself that life would be easier if you went back into the closet and tried to live “normally”

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