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text

( I'm going to decide on a punctuation scheme but pop songs don't actually have
them and are ambiguous as to meaning. )
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide:
no escape from reality.
Open your eyes,
look up to the skies and see:
I'm just a poor boy.
I need no sympathy
because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low:
Anyway the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me.
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.
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.

Too late, my time has come;

sent 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.
Mama, ooh, (Anyway the wind blows),
I don't want to die.
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all!

I see a little silhouetto of a man.

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?
Thunderbolts and lightning!
Very, very frightening me!

(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo.
Galileo, Figaro.
Magnifico.
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.
Easy come, easy go: Will you let me go?

Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Never, never let you go.
Never let me go, oh.
1 No, no, 3 no, no, no, 6 no, no.
Oh, mama mia, mama mia. (Mama mia, let me go.)

Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?

So you think you can love me and leave to die?
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby.
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right out of here.
(Oh, yeah, oh yeah)
Nothing really matters.
Anyone can see.
Nothing really matters.
Nothing really matters to me.
Anyway the wind blows.

notes
Text with Commentary by a Language and Anthropology Scientist: Bohemian
Rhapsody.
By Mr. Larry Rogers, BA Linguistics, Michigan State University
On Tuesday, 6 28 2016
"Bohemian Rhapsody", English language and Western popular music, made 1975,
released 1975.

Very seldom, I do small treatments of English language pop music songs in an

effort to make use of my training in the science of languages.
Previously, I've done work on words from "Love Don't Cost a Thing" by Beyonce
(Facebook, a year ago) and "Intergalactic" by the Bestie Boys (for a Summer 2009
Humanities course), among other studies which may have no resulted in a written
document.
My more notable specialization of studying famous invented languages and their
medium ( television, movie, or novel) have seen me do more of my best at
anthropological and linguistic explanation of "pop culture" as it's called.
I've selected this song today because we did it at KTV last night and because it's
very popular, very international (USA and UK+), and its lyrics don't make much
sense.
I looked up the Wikipedia article today and found it explained it very well as a
parody of Western opera, something which I have enjoyed a lot in the past and
with which I am familiar.

Now, it is the nature of my work when glossing and explaining texts to choose
ancient texts which I think for some reason to be worthy of the attention - I work
with everything from very important to very unimportant ancient texts. I also do
work on modern languages but not as much. This is because of my specialization
and interests, I study religions as anthropological phenomena, big time theoretical
stuff that spans the ages.
I like to emphasize about pop songs that they're carefully constructed to be
ambiguous and appeal to as many people as possible. Of course, it's contested
whether anyone should listen to them at all, but most do and they're up for grabs
for anthropologists to discuss in a learned and hopefully helpful manner.

English pop songs are written ambiguously so as to appeal to as many people as

possible. There is a certain ideology that goes with them but they're ambiguous
enough to be interpreted well outside that ideology. In today's version of the
Wikipedia article, we have quotes from cast and crew that the song is nonsense, is
partially nonsense, is a parody of opera, and is autobiographical and person about
the lead singer.

For this study, I'm going to assume it's a parody of opera and tells stories.
First, I used a type-up of the lyrics from azlyrics.com .
Now I've found the original on YouKu and will try to make any corrections I can to
the lyrics.
After listening to the song, I think the explanation given to Iran was entirely
correct. I've studied several of Queen's songs and their autobiographies on
Wikipedia and my opinion is that this song is a reflection in part of Ferguson's
Zoroastrian faith. Queen kept it a mystery because it's so religious and didn't
want to turn people off.

Some people don't believe in religion.

The protagonist is in Heaven.

This is the protagonist, whose life was hard.
He is ultimately saved because of his mercifulness and resignation to the Will of
God.

As a young man, he killed someone else.

He may be caught or killed in revenge or something.

"As if nothing really matters" refers to resignation to the Will of God.
For some reason, now the protagonist is dying. Perhaps he was mortally wounded
in the fight or the aforementioned lethal occurence.

Zoroastrianism refers to God as The Truth, though Islam and Christianity have a
final judgement.

His life was difficult

Here's the Private Judgement scene, like The Book of the Dead. Wikipedia tells us
these are rival parties in Hell arguing over custody of his eternal soul. Silhouetto
is outline or shadow. There's a lot of humorous and confusing uses of Italian
words and names here, parodying opera, which is usually sung in Italian and takes
study.
scaramouche: "A stock clown character" (Wikipedia) in Italian opera. Fandango is
(Wikipedia) "a lively couples dance from Spain".

Galileo: Famous Italian, not notably Damned, very famous for controversies with
clergy and popularly misunderstood as a Science vs. Religion thing.
Refering to various characters from opera, devils and angels argue for custody of
the soul of the protagonist.
Figaro: Comic figure from Italian opera, not notably Damned.
Magnifico: Magnificent One in Italian.

Bismillah! : Arabic phrase, BI SM ILLAH, In the Name of God! The "Iranian

explanation" says that by calling on the Name of God, the protagonist is Saved.

Mama mia: my mama

Beelzebub: Satan. In at least some schemes of the Christian Hell, one or more
devils are assigned to torture individual residents throughout eternity.
This might be Christ in his anger at the Damned. Another interpretation on
Wikipedia has this as the protagonist before he killed the man. Or maybe this is
the Damned eternally inpenitent, powerless, and frustrated. Their protests come
to nothing.

I think the song is popular because it's anti-establishment and very rock and roll.
It was 1975, rock was harder edged. People listen to pop music to meditate on
their emotions and also connect with a broader message, an ideology. What the
song means and to whom is pretty clear when you look at the people who listened
to it and what they did with the lyrics and how they lived their lives.
And of course it's possible to interpret the song from other religious viewpoints.
That's the idea.

The idea behind pop music is that it appeals to as many people as possible.
Opera is favored by rich people and most of everyone else doesn't like it. Hence,
this work both parodies and relishes opera. Pop music is also a way for its
performers to make a lot of money. So they just write songs that they think their
audiences want to hear. Any good quality to the music is coincidental to them
having what the people want to hear.

The popularity of opera among rich people seems to derive from its popularity
among rich people in the last 500 years of Western history. It's basically folk
theater for rich people. It was always something that rich people only could afford
and it speaks to them and not poorer peoples. All songs, all "entertainment" is
like this. It speaks to its audience, it talks about what they have to deal with.

Opera has its own ideology and morality which it refers to, which its audiences
may or may not know about, understand, or embrace.

I'm a bit like the rich or the Upper Class and I know it. I often get mistaken for
Lower Class and Upper Class. What I do is have my own thing going, for humanity
I read things that nobody reads and work toward making them more accessible
with the home of making even bigger theoretical issues more accessible and
explorable for everyone, by which I mean scholars who have the time and
resources to apply themselves to the issue with the hopeful goal of arriving at a
correct or sufficient or decent understanding thereof (unlikely) and sharing a
responsible and reasonable version of this with everyone else.

For instance, on my recent vacation to an island chain off the coast of China (paid
for by work), I was reading the Classical Chinese 'The Classic of Odes'. Not a lot of
people even read this anymore. For thousands of years, it was near the very
center of Chinese literacy and civilization.
And there are other works in ancient languages which were at the center of far
older and far smaller civilizations. Who is there to care what they say and their
usefulness to modern humanity? I, for one.